Real talk: When was the last time you stretched out your toes? If the answer is, um, never, TikTok would like to have a word with you. Fitfluencers are raving about the power of toe spacers to help you avoid injury, run better, and improve your balance and posture.
But do they actually work, or is it just another social media trend that doesn’t pass muster?
Well, it depends on who you ask. “Foot and toe mobility is kind of a controversial topic,” California-based physical therapist Jacob Van Den Meerendonk, DPT, tells SELF. While some experts think that giving your little piggies a good stretch has serious perks, others aren’t sold. Yet the more scientists look into what the tiny muscles in our feet can do for us, the more we’re learning that we should probably be giving them a little more love. And, yes, that might include taking advantage of toe spacers.
So…what are toe spacers, anyway?
Essentially, toe spacers do exactly what their name implies. “They put a space between your toes,” Pennsylvania-based podiatrist Alicia Canzanese, DPM, president of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine, tells SELF. Typically made out of silicone (or sometimes cloth), these tools slip in between each of your toes, spreading them out away from each other. “They’re meant to restore the natural alignment of the foot structure,” Dr. Van Den Meerendonk says.
Toe spacers can help strengthen your feet, which can benefit the rest of your body too.
The theory is that readjusting alignment allows us to use the smaller muscles of our feet more effectively. Most of us need an assist in that department thanks to a lifetime of wearing shoes that squeeze our tootsies into a too-narrow toe box: When your toes don’t have enough room to move around, the little intrinsic foot muscles can’t work the way they were meant to and end up weak, Dr. Canzanese says. “Using toe spacers is a way [to] help retrain your brain and encourage those muscles to activate more,” she says.
The benefit: stronger, more mobile feet—which can mean healthier feet. “There’s evidence that [suggests] that if we have an increase in control of our foot mobility, that we’ll see less injuries within the foot, specifically plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendinitis or any tendinitis of the foot,” Dr. Van Den Meerendonk says.