Feet are the Foundation
I have been blessed with excellent genetics. It's always been easy for me to be very active, and I gain strength and flexibility quickly (when I work on it). It had gotten to the point where I kind of took it for granted. So, imagine my surprise, when around the time I started Kung Fu I started getting foot pain. I was getting it just walking around, but also I noticed that my toes weren't bending as far as I wanted them to during bowing in. And when I tried stretching my toes regularly, the pain got worse. Weird. Well, it turned out that the culprit was the fact that I had spent the previous decade tromping around construction sites in very protective, but not flexible and probably too tight, steel toe boots. Not only that, I wore them outside of work, too. Apparently, feet can lose flexibility and strength if you don't let them, ya know, flex. And shoes with narrow toe boxes can cause your toes to slowly bend together, ...