Healthy Feet While Jogging: Simple Tips for Runners

Your foot is a complex masterpiece of nature: 26 bones, 29 muscles, 33 joints, over 100 ligaments, and more than 200 tendons make it a highly resilient yet flexible part of the body.

A healthy foot is essential for jogging. Running shoes that are too tight, improper lacing, or a misalignment can quickly lead to discomfort. Don’t let this reduce your performance or spoil your enjoyment of the sport. That’s why you’ll find everything you need to know to keep your feet healthy and fit while running right here.

Too Much Pressure on Your Toenail

Numb feet during a run and a blue toenail afterward indicate that blood isn’t flowing properly through your foot. This can have various causes: your shoe is too small, the fit of your running shoe doesn’t suit your foot, or you’re not lacing your running shoe properly—lacing it too tightly restricts blood circulation. “Runner’s toe” refers to a permanently darkened toenail, which often develops after long runs because too much pressure was applied to the nail over an extended period. The result is a bruise under the nail, which in the worst case can cause your nail to lift off the toe. This can be very painful.

Choosing the Right Shoes Is Key

To keep your feet healthy while running, you should definitely seek advice from a specialist retailer when buying shoes. Fit and comfort are crucial here. Your feet should have a secure hold, but you should still be able to move your toes freely. If your forefoot is slightly wider, you should also make sure that the front of your running shoe isn’t too narrow.

How to Lace Your Running Shoes

If your toenail turns blue after a run—or if you’ve even developed a runner’s toe—the pressure on your toes is too high. You can prevent this by lacing your running shoes correctly. To do so, give your toes plenty of room to move. Start at the top eyelet on the inside of your running shoe and pull the other end of the shoelace diagonally through the opposite eyelet near your toes. Then thread the shoelace parallel through the opposite eyelet and, as usual, diagonally up through the remaining eyelets to the ankle. Tip: Always pull the laces from the outside in. Even if your feet go numb, you should pay attention to how you tie your running shoes. Don’t tie the laces too tightly before jogging so that blood can circulate freely, since your feet expand while running.

Make sure you treat your feet well and care for them properly in your daily life. If you have to wear tight shoes all day, give your feet a break in the evening, take a foot bath once a week, and try to walk barefoot as often as possible. If you suffer from heel spurs, it’s also important to restore the natural tension in your plantar fascia through targeted exercises. Self-massage, in which you roll out the plantar fascia, can help with this .