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Toe alignment is a massively important part of our health, especially as an athlete or someone who is on their feet all day long.

It effects the well-being of the feet, lower legs, and even the rest of the body to many people’s surprise. The toes and feet are your base and they have an enormously demanding job of balancing and supporting your body weight constantly.

Keeping (or restoring) the natural alignment of your toes will be vital in your long-term health as many people find they will experience conditions like bunions, hallux limitus/rigidus, hammertoes, plantar fasciitis, sesamoiditis, and many more.

The benefits to healthy toe alignment are numerous so we will save that for another stand-alone post. Today, we’re just going to talk about the easiest way to identify if your toes are lined up correctly and how you can do so if they aren’t.

The Test

The test is very simple to conduct, and you may be surprised to find out that you have some misalignment in your feet (just like I do).

Take a look at your bare feet and locate the metatarsal bones of your foot. Those would be the long, skinny bones that run from the base of the ankle into the toes.

If you’re thin like me, those bones might already be visible in your feet. If not, pointing your toes upward or pulling them back should expose where those bones lie.

What we’re looking to see is that our metatarsal bones line up from where they begin at the base of the ankle, running all the way through to the ends of the toes in as close to a straight line as possible. Obviously it won’t be perfect, but we’re hoping to see no clear divergence of the toes being pushed in and being off course of the metatarsal bones.

In my own feet for example, you can see that I have a couple toes that are misaligned from the metatarsal bones. Namely, the outside toes (biggest and smallest) have been pushed in over time.

Why Does This Happen?

I think it’s safe to say that anyone reading this grew up wearing narrow footwear that compromised the natural positioning of our toes. Plain and simple, this means your toes have likely been getting smashed together for years instead of being allowed to spread out, and now you can see and feel the repercussions of it.

That being said, you also may have naturally wide feet.

I have come to realize that I myself have wide feet and that makes my shoe selection process even more stringent. I have to buy wide-toed shoes or I will run into trouble as I already have. The wider your feet are, the more your toes will get pushed together while inside of shoes.

What Can You Do to Realign Your Toes?

The most obvious thing to do is invest in better quality footwear. You need footwear that is made in the best interest of your foot’s structure, and that leaves us with mainly minimalist and barefoot shoes.

The minimalist shoes that I recommend the most for beginners are Xero Shoes, particularly the Hanas that they make.

I have also come into other footwear that is made with the foot’s width in mind, such as Altra shoes. These are shoes that I hope to be trying out in the very near future

Another great thing to do is invest in toe spacers. Toe spacers will gradually reposition your toes back to their natural alignment over time, if you wear them consistently. This is what I have pictured in the thumbnail of this article.

I like to wear them at night after a day of work where I’ve been in shoes all day long. They have somewhat of a therapeutic effect as well because they are allowing your feet to relax and get improved circulation, among many other benefits.