For walking, running, and balance, your big toe matters more than you think. Seriously. If you can’t lift and move your toes with control, especially your big toe, you’re setting up for problems. That’s where toe yoga comes in.
What is Toe Yoga?
Toe Yoga helps make sure your toes can move independently. It’s not about stretching—it’s about control. Can you lift your big toe while keeping the other four down? Can you press the big toe down while lifting the others? No? Don’t worry it’s harder than you think! That’s because we never think to train or exercise these small muscles.
Why It’s Important
These exercises help strengthen the stability of your foot. You need a strong stable foot to walk or run without eventually causing injury. Your needs at least 55% extension through it to fully engage your glutes. Yup, your glutes! But it makes sense. Walking, running, jumping—it all travels up the chain. If your big toe doesn’t get the extension it needs, something else will try to do its job. That means compensations start happening. Sometimes it’s ankle or plantar fascia pain, sometimes it’s all the way up in your hip. Either way, your natural gait suffers.
The Muscles at Work
There are a lot of muscles that help us walk and wiggle our toes. Some of these muscles start within and end within the foot (intrinsic) while others start in the shin or calf area and end in the foot (extrinsic). Each of them helps to either extend or flex the toes.
Big toe dysfunction is often coupled with arch dysfunction. Common problems that can be helped with toe yoga are plantar fasciitis, posterior tibial tendinitis, and shin splints. More surprisingly to some, it’s possible that you can also suffer from high hamstring tendinopathy, and glute tendinopathy. How can something that far up the chain suffer? The way your foot moves directly impacts how the rest of your lower body moves. That’s why issues happening up the chain can be easily correlated especially when logging lots of walking and running miles.
How to Do Toe Yoga
- Lift your big toe while pressing the other four down.
- Then reverse it—press the big toe down while lifting the others.
- Keep your arch lifted the entire time and apply even pressure through the plantar plate.
Keeping your arches lifted properly is key! If your arch drops, you won’t get the same benefit. Also, maintain even pressure across your plantar plate. That’s the strong, fibrous tissue under the ball of your foot where your toes connect to your foot. If you collapse into your arch, you’re loading it unevenly—and missing the point.
Watch Our Toe Yoga Video:
What’s Next?
With toe yoga we often see 2 common issues. You never actually use toe yoga functionally… You do it, but it doesn’t carry over to movement. Or you try to integrate it too soon. Your feet aren’t strong enough yet, so you compensate.
It’s really important to keep this as an isolated exercise before incorporating it into functional work. You want to really be able to do this exercise with ease before incorporating strength and functional movement.
Next week, we’ll show you two exercises to build strength and apply toe yoga into real movement. You won’t be stuck wondering “why am I doing this again?” or simply not seeing the results you need.
Tune in next week for more!
Arches Falling During Toe Yoga?
Our MDRx Arch Restoration program is designed to rebuild strength where it starts—at the ground level. With guided exercises and proven strategies, we help you reconnect with the muscles that support your arch, improve stability, and reduce pain from the ground up.
This isn’t just foot rehab—it’s a movement upgrade.
Whether you’re walking, running, or training hard, strong arches are the foundation. Our step-by-step plan shows you exactly what to do so you can stop guessing and start moving better. Let’s rebuild your base, so the rest of your body can move like it should.
