Introduction
This is the first of four pieces on walking. It begins with the foot.
The foot sits at the bottom of the body and is the only part of us that touches the ground. People call it a foundation. But it is nothing like the flat, immobile board that word suggests.
Within a single step, the foot changes shape.
Collapse on landing, lock on push-off
The heel meets the floor. At that instant the arches of the foot move toward collapse. Body weight and the shock of falling are absorbed by a change of shape.
Weight then rolls forward — from the heel along the outer edge, across to the ball of the big toe. And just before push-off, the arches tighten and go hard. The foot that was collapsing becomes a spring that pushes back against the floor.
Collapsing, then locking. Unless a structure can switch between the two inside one step, it cannot walk. Rigid, it has nothing to absorb shock with; soft, it has nothing to push with.
That is why the foot has 26 bones and 33 joints. The number is not complexity for its own sake. Changing shape takes that many parts.
What follows is a look at the structure, with one aim: to see how that switch is made possible.
The bones count off: one, two, three, four, five
Twenty-six is a lot. But count down from the top of the leg and a pattern shows up.
The thigh has one — the femur.
The lower leg has two: the tibia and the fibula. The tibia is the thicker of them, and nearly all the weight comes through it. The slender fibula sits on the outside, doing less weight-bearing than fine-tuning.
The two are joined by the interosseous membrane. Not two bones wrapped separately and then glued together: they are wrapped as one, with the membrane run down between them like fingers pushed into the seam. It is continuous with the periosteum covering each bone, so there is no border between them.
The membrane gives the muscles more surface to attach to. And because of the direction its fibers run, it changes the relationship between tibia and fibula itself. The two bones can shift slightly against each other.
Below the ankle there are three: the talus, the calcaneus, and the navicular.
The talus is the first bone to receive the weight coming down the leg. The calcaneus sits beneath it, the navicular in front. Together the three form the subtalar joint and distribute weight into the two longitudinal arches.
Next comes a line of four: the three cuneiforms and the cuboid. The cuneiforms follow the navicular; the cuboid follows the calcaneus.
Then five. Five metatarsals line up in front of the cuneiforms and the cuboid.
One, two, three, four, five. After that come the toes — two bones in the big toe, three in each of the others. Twenty-six in all.
The reason this way of counting is useful is that the branching of weight from above is written into the numbers. Weight taken by one bone becomes two, then three, then four, then five, spreading as it reaches the floor. Force coming up from the floor runs the other way, gathering from five back to one.
The joints alternate: hinge, spiral, hinge
The 33 joints also fall into order once you sort them by character.
The joints in the toes are hinges. They bend or they straighten, and that is all.
Just behind them, the five joints at the ball of the foot are hinges too, but with a small amount of rotation available. That small rotation is what works as weight rolls from the inside of the foot to the outside. Try drawing a small circle with the big toe alone and you can feel it.
Further back, the tarsometatarsal joints are hinges again. The near ends of the metatarsals are squared off and can barely rotate. And at this joint the second metatarsal is set more deeply into the cuneiforms than the others, because the second metatarsal is long and the second cuneiform is short. That inset is what keeps the front of the foot from shearing sideways when you land hard — coming down from a jump on a basketball court, say.
Then the subtalar joint traces a spiral. The underside of the talus glides on the calcaneus and the navicular, tipping the foot inward and outward: inversion and eversion, or supination and pronation. Cup the heel in one hand, move the forefoot with the other, and you can feel how complicated the movement is.
Above it, the talocrural joint is a hinge again. Toes up and toes down — dorsiflexion and plantarflexion — and nothing else.
Simple hinges and complex spirals, alternating. That arrangement is what lets the foot answer both to the movement coming down from above and to whatever the ground happens to be doing.
Put in terms of walking: on landing, the spiral of the subtalar joint turns shock into rotation and lets it escape. On push-off, the hinges work, gathering force into a single direction and delivering it to the floor. Spiral when collapsing, hinge when locking.
One distinction is worth keeping. When someone sprains an ankle, what is taken violently into inversion is the subtalar joint, not the ankle proper. Ligaments cross both joints, though, so the swelling does affect bending the ankle up and down. When someone says they turned their ankle, the place to look is below the ankle.
Three arches
The foot touches the floor at three points: the ball of the big toe, the ball of the little toe, and the heel. Join them and you get a triangle, with an arch between each pair of points.
The medial longitudinal arch runs from heel to big toe — what is usually called the instep. The talus takes weight from above, hands it to the navicular, and it continues through the three cuneiforms into the metatarsals.
The lateral longitudinal arch runs from heel to little toe, built from the calcaneus, the cuboid, and the fourth and fifth metatarsals. Seen from the side, the cuboid is trapezoidal, wider at the top. It does exactly what the keystone does in a Roman arch. Squeezed from both sides, the cuboid is held clear of the ground.
The lateral arch is very stable. Thomas Myers writes that in twenty years of practice he has seen only a few collapsed lateral arches, and those only where there had been severe trauma or a deformity of the foot.
The transverse arch exists in two places: across the balls of the feet, and further back, through the cuneiforms and the cuboid.
At the back of the two, the three cuneiforms are all wedge-shaped, points down. The shape of the bones is the arch, so the more weight comes onto it, the tighter it gets. The portion at the ball of the foot has no such help from bone shape; it depends on ligament and muscle.
The difference shows in where calluses form. With a normal arch, they appear under the first and fifth toes. When the arch at the ball of the foot has fallen, they appear under the second, third, and fourth.
Myers also passes on a dancer’s way of naming the two longitudinal arches: the medial one is the “toe foot,” the lateral one the “heel foot.” The medial takes weight from the tibia and delivers it to the front three toes. The lateral, like the outrigger on a canoe, is less about carrying weight than about balancing the whole.
The division of labor in walking can be seen through those names. The heel foot takes the landing; the toe foot does the push-off. Within one step, the lead passes from outside to inside.
Bones move during that handover. On landing, the cuboid supports the medial arch from underneath. On push-off, the navicular descends. And finally the weight arrives at the big toe.
Heel and toe, ear and eye
Walking means landing on the heel and pushing off from the toes. Those two also mean something while you are standing still.
Weight sits more toward the toes in some people, more toward the heel in others. And that bias is tied to which sense a person leads with.
Use the eyes, and weight moves toward the toes. Use the ears, and it moves toward the heel.
The reason is the architecture of the face. The eyes are at the front; the ears sit behind them. Whichever sensor is doing more of the work shows up directly in the front-back placement of your weight.
So knowing which you are using more right now, toe or heel, tells you something about how you are weighting your senses. Someone who walks tipped forward may be leaning too heavily on sight.
In Rolfing, the sensors that support posture are treated as a triangle with three vertices: eye, foot, and inner ear. The Triangle of Support. Organizing the foot alone will not steady that triangle.
Part 4 takes up the triangle.
On flat feet
Flat feet are the subject people ask about most.
Start with Ida Rolf.
Flat feet are not flat feet. They are flat shins. If you really know the anatomy of the shin and the retinaculum, you should have no problem with the flat feet.
The problem in the foot is not in the foot but in the shin. The reason is simple: every muscle that lifts the arches from above is in the lower leg. Part 2 goes into this in detail.
Myers adds another observation.
Fine arches are not born; they are made. Every one of us arrives flat-footed. Arches are created in the acts of standing and walking.
And he treats this as the same phenomenon as the secondary curves of the spine.
An infant’s spine is a single primary curve, rounded. Lifting the head while lying face down brings in the curve of the neck; crawling brings in the curve of the low back. Those are the secondary curves — not there to begin with, but drawn out by movement.
The arches of the foot come into being the same way. The intrinsic muscles of the foot and the calf muscles work, and the arrangement of the bones is remade. The knees straighten, and then, as standing and walking begin, the arches appear.
Walking makes the arch, and the arch makes walking possible. In sequence, walking comes first.
Take that view and both a fallen arch and an excessively high one become questions of the balance between primary and secondary. The shape of the bone is not the fault; something was missing, or in excess, in the process by which the shape was drawn out.
On high arches, incidentally, Myers writes that in twenty years of practice he has yet to see a genuine one. Most feet that look high-arched do not have a high arch: the metatarsals are angled downward. Sit, cross one foot over the other knee, let it hang completely slack, and look. Relative to the ankle and calf, the back half of the foot looks ordinary. Only the front half points down.
There is also an honest word from the practitioner’s side.
If they have flat feet, to create an arch, they have got to want to create an arch. The client has to do exercises and has to have the wish to create arches. You do not create arches through Rolfing.
Hands-on work does not change the shape of bone. What it can do is set up the conditions in which the arch can work. After that, the arch is made in that person’s own standing and walking.
Does each phase get the time it needs?
Watching someone walk is not only a matter of speed and stride length.
How long is the stride? Does the heel stay on the floor for a while, or does it spring up the moment it lands? Is there time in which the toes press the floor? Is there time in which the foot rolls?
What is being watched is whether each phase gets as much time as it needs. Where a phase is short of time, the work of that phase gets skipped — the shock of landing is not fully received before the body moves on, or the foot leaves the ground before the push is finished.
Within one step, the foot collapses and locks. That switch takes time.
Where this meets the second Rolfing session
The second session of the Ten Series works with the foot.
What is being watched in the session is not whether the sole has softened. It is whether the force returning from the floor travels through the ankle, the knee, the hip, and into the pelvis. For an arch to work is also for force to pass through it.
And what Myers writes at the end of his article maps directly onto how the second session finishes. When the hands-on work is done, have the client bring their attention to their feet. Have them notice where their weight is falling, let them sway a little, and feel what the feet are now doing.
Observe, intervene, observe again. When the change is felt by the person and not only by the practitioner, awareness of the body grows.
Where this goes next
Part 1 has followed how the foot changes shape within a single step: 26 bones, the alternation of hinge and spiral, three arches — and the fact that the arches are made by walking.
But as the section on flat feet said, the muscles that lift the arches are not in the foot. Every one of them comes from the lower leg.
When you walk, what moves the foot is not the foot.
Part 2 takes up the relationship between the foot and the lower leg.
The series
- Part 1: The Foot Changes Shape With Every Step — How the Arches Are Made (this article)
- Part 2: The Problem in the Foot Is Not in the Foot — From the Lower Leg to the Pelvis
- Part 3: The Leg Begins Below the Ribs — The Psoas and the Diagonal
- Part 4: Reading Gait Through Gravity — Tonic Function and Palintonicity
Note, September 2026
I first wrote this piece in April 2015. I had just come home from a year of traveling, and a trip to Sri Lanka was on the calendar for the following month.
The title carried a “(1)” and no sequel ever appeared. I wanted to write about walking, but I did not have enough to write with. What I managed then was the names of the bones, the kinds of arches, and the relationship to the lower leg — textbook material, rearranged in my own words.
Eleven years later, the sequel exists. Part 2 on the lower leg and the pelvis, Part 3 on the psoas and the diagonal, Part 4 on gravity and Tonic Function. And this piece, the first, has been rewritten from the ground up.
Why I can write it now is not mysterious.
In those eleven years I completed the basic training in Munich, certified as a Rolf Movement Practitioner, took continuing education, and in 2025 was certified as an Advanced Rolfer. Palintonicity, the Triangle of Support, Pre-movement — the terms Part 4 turns on. I had none of them in 2015.
There is one more thing, which happened just before the rewrite.
In August 2026 I spent four days walking in Shikoku. I climbed Mount Tsurugi, a mountain used for centuries in Japan’s tradition of mountain asceticism, and walked the ridge from there out to the neighboring peak of Jirōgyū and back. Tsurugi is 1,955 meters; the round trip is close to five kilometers. I did it in ordinary sneakers — no boots, no poles. On paper I was the least equipped person there.
And I wasn’t especially tired afterward.
The person I walked with was. Same trail, same hours, same order. Fatigue arrives in different amounts.
I can’t give a clean account of why. What I can say is that nothing in me was gripping. You watch the stones and choose where to put your feet, but you aren’t deciding with your eyes alone; you feel how the sole is reading the ground.
That same evening we crossed the Iya vine bridge — forty-five meters long, fourteen meters above the river, woven from mountain vine. The slats are set far apart and the gorge shows through the gaps. The whole thing sways with each step.
There my body did the opposite. Fear. I knew perfectly well the bridge is inspected and maintained. My body shut anyway, and gripped.
A few hours earlier the same soles had carried me up a mountain. Same day, same body.
The difference was what lay underneath them. On the mountain there was ground, and the ground was there as something that would hold me. On the bridge, what was under the soles was a fourteen-meter drop.
On the last day of the trip I walked the passage beneath the main hall at Zentsūji, the temple built where Kūkai — the founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan — is said to have been born. There is no light in it at all; it is not the kind of dark your eyes adjust to. You put your left hand on the wall and follow it.
There, the sole of the foot and the left hand did the work of the eyes. With no object to look at, there is nothing to attend to but the space itself.
Four days, and the same pair of soles gave three different answers.
What I wrote in 2015 was the structure of the foot. How many bones, how the arches work, which muscles lift them. None of that was wrong. In this rewrite that part is, if anything, thicker.
But the foot is a structure and also an organ that enters into a relationship with the place it is in. What am I standing on. What is underneath it. What is around me. What the sole receives is not only the hardness and shape of the floor.
Eleven years ago I could only write the first of those.
And what I can write now is probably still only half. Part 4 says that the aim is not to improve how someone walks but to set up the conditions in which the body can walk naturally. What those conditions include, I don’t yet fully see.
The rest, I expect, will be written eleven years from now.
References
- Thomas Myers, “The Foot: Understanding the Arches,” Massage Magazine, September/October 1997.
- Myers studied with both Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais, and from 1992 to 1995 served as chair of the Rolf Institute’s anatomy department. He is also the author of Anatomy Trains.
