What is Overpronation?
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Running Biomechanics: Overpronation
Corrective Exercises:
Wide hips and knock-knees predispose you to excessive pronation at your feet. Rehabilitative exercises should focus on strengthening the muscles that rotate your foot to its outer border, countering pronation. The muscles that raise your legs to the side must also be worked, reducing how close your knees are drawn toward each other. Pronation increases your risk of multiple hip, knee and ankle injuries. Use exercises that reduce your risks of such injuries.
Balance Exercises
Balance exercises such as the stork force you to use your leg muscles to attempt to rotate your foot inward, maintaining your balance; your body moves during this exercise instead of your foot because your foot is planted against the ground. Perform this exercise first by balancing on one foot for 30 seconds; switch feet and complete for 30 seconds, according to Peggy Houglum, Ph.D., in her book "Therapeutic Exercise for Musculoskeletal Injuries." For additional challenge, stand on an exercise pillow balance disc with your eyes open for 30 seconds, then switch to your left foot.
Resistance Exercises
Improve the strength of your hip abductors and lateral hip rotators, encourages Paul Chek of the Corrective High-Performance Exercise Kinesiology Institute, reducing the effects of pronation. First, do walking lunges for two sets of 20 total repetitions; lunges strengthen your abductors as you step up from a lunge to switch legs. Then, do stationary, multiple-directional lunges. Perform this version of the lunge by first lunging forward and pushing back to the start position with your right leg. Then, lunge to your side and push back to the start position again with your right leg. Next, use your right leg to lunge backward and return to the start position. Complete the stationary lunge by performing the same exercises with your left leg. Each set of the three lunges is considered one repetition. Do two sets of 10 repetitions per leg. Increase the intensity of stationary or walking lunges by hold dumbbells or a medicine ball.