Starting at the Base

Almost every movement we do relies on our feet interacting with the ground. My favorite way of demonstrating the importance of traction is to imagine yourself pushing a sled. For most people an empty sled would be fairly easy to push. Then adding more and more weight to the sled would become increasingly difficult, but manageable up to a certain point. Now, imagine pushing that sled while on the ice. Here we can see that by decreasing your foot's ability to make a strong contact with the ground, we've lost a lot of the potential to convert the strength in our muscles into movement of the sled. This is true to some extent with every step we take as we push off of our back foot. Many chronic injuries in the knee, hip, and low back happen from our body's compensation to any inefficiencies of converting power from our muscle contractions to force into the ground.

A bouncy and reactive foot also creates efficiency in another way. Force from the ground into our bodies can "bounce" back and turn into force from our bodies back into the ground. It does this by loading the ligaments and tendons and letting them snap that energy back into the bones and out through the foot. The foot has to receive this energy and then push it out with every step. Both mobility and rigidity of the foot is important to achieve this.