Can Your Client Touch His Toes? What It Tells About the Stability and Mobility of His Body?

Touching toe appears to be simple but this classic exercise holds plenty of water. Something can go wrong while touching toes. If your client is unable to touch his toes something is required to be fixed. Clients want quick results. Sometimes they want to deadlift. However, you know that your client is not prepared for deadlift. There is a certain amount motor control in lumbar spine and hips are required. Moreover, there is an adequate amount of stability that is required.

Can The Client Touch Toes?

It is important to assess client’s ability to touch toes. With this, you can judge the hamstring flexibility of the client.  Touching toes is way more complex than you think.

According to Selective Functional Movement Assessment:

If a person can touch toes without bending knees, it reflects clean hips and spine movements.

If he cannot, you need to investigate. There is a stability and mobility issue.

To understand the problem, you need to understand the concept called regional dependency, given by Mike Boyle and Gray Cook. They observed that there is a relation between mobile and stable segments of the body.

This means, if the client is experiencing pain in the lower back while bending, it might be because of unrelated impairment in some other anatomical region.

The inability of touching toe is an example of regional dependency. It indicates the limited integrity of thoracic, lumbar and cervical spine of the client. There is a lack of spine and trunk coordination while touching toes.

Get To the Root of the Problem  

Best fitness center in new york city can learn a lot about the body of the client simply by asking him to touch his toes. There are some exercises your client can do to get the insight of the root cause. 

Touch Toe of Single Leg

• Wear no shoe and stand with feet together.
• Shift the body weight on one leg and keep it straight. Bend on other leg and come up on the ball of the foot.
• Ask the client to aim for the toe of the straight leg and slightly bend forward. (see how far the client goes and what he feels)
• Now repeat the same with another leg.    

If you notice any difference while touching toes of legs, the client has some hip restrictions. Therefore, first of all, you need to address these hip restrictions. This problem can be addressed with following exercises:

• Spine Belly Breathing
• Long Sitting Test, And
• Foam Rolling