How to avoid toe injury?

Question

This question is more focused on kickboxing since it is the discipline I practice. But it would be of course handy to know for martial arts in general.

I have been training for a bit more than a year and I keep getting my toes injured. I asked my trainer and he said that it's pretty random since sometimes the feet hit the defensive elbow of my opponent etc.. etc..

So concretely I want to know what can I do to prevent future injury, of course you can't avoid it to 100% but there must be something I could do to bring down those chances. (It is horribly painful at least for me)

I have heard about strapping together the toes. Is this effective?

Thanks a lot!!

How my toes where hurt:

• My little right toe got inflamed and is painful when I touch it or move it, it was when I hit the elbow of my opponent.

• The big toe on my left foot got hurt once I hit the knee of my opponent and got worse when it got stepped on the same day.

Both toes are relatively ok now, not yet completely healed but I can train effectively. I just want to prevent future injury.

Answer 1

One way I protect my feet in my classes is I wear shin guards with a foot flap or sleeve. There are full encapsulating feet protectors as well, they basically cover the entire top of the foot, with straps on the bottom allowing your bare foot to come into contact with the ground.

For toe injury, foot space is very important, keep your toes pointed or a basic foot shape during a kick with the top of the foot or a block. Curling your toes and kicking with the ball of the foot for push kicks, horse kicks, etc. It took me quite a while to get my foot shapes correct to where I wasn't banging my toes here and there.

When blocking, or getting block and you hit someones bones, elbows are the worst, there's not much you can do about it. Maintain control, not striking with a lot of force or too fast but striking with intent is all I could recommend.

Answer 2

Your little toe incident sounds like a fracture. The big toe may be the same, or just a deep seated hematoma (bruise).

In either case there is very little you can do to prevent this, toes are not really made to collide with solid objects at high speed. Strapping toes together is not particularly productive due to the shortness of the toes, the fact that they are brittle anyway, and the toes need to be able to spread and move on the support foot in order to be able to support you properly during the kick. The golden rule is to keep your toes out of the way¹. You should also avoid doing big power kicks (like the roundhouse or leg kick) using the top of your foot, as the bones there are also somewhat brittle - use your shin instead. To achieve this you may have to stand a little closer to your opponent when you deliver the kick.

To treat the injury, find a Chinese apothecary near you and talk to them, they have a variety of treatments for bruises, strains and fractures. One I've used for many years is called Zheng Gu Shui, it is dirt cheap and works by promoting blood flow through the area where it is applied.

Possibly your best option though is conditioning. Have you ever seen pictures/video of the Muay Thai practitioners kicking banana trees? That is done specifically to toughen the bone structure in the shin and foot area. It takes time, lots of time, maybe years to achieve a good result. You might want to consider conditioning your big toe - the way I do it is to extend the big toe, curl the other toes down out of the way and then gently kick the end of the big toe against a solid surface, increasing the power of the kick over time. This hardens the end of the toe and strengthens the two joints in the toe (making the joints less susceptible to bruising).

¹Unless using the toe as the weapon (usually the big toe, much like using the fingertip to strike with)

Answer 3

I had the same problem. It keeps happening from time to time even now, but I identified what helped me avoid this. I practice Muay Thai, so usually my focus in on striking with the shin rather than the toes, unless for a teep.

1) Strike with the shin. I used to strike with my Toes instead of my shin when I wasn't pivoting fully on my supporting leg. This was due to me not opening the hip and ending up do a kicking just with my leg. You can find a better explanation below. https://breakingmuscle.com/learn/swinging-the-bat-how-to-do-the-muay-thai-roundhouse-kick There are two problem with this: - The kick won't have enough range. It will fall short and end up making contact with the toes. (so make sure to pivot on the supporting foot) - The kick won't have enough power as the hips aren't driving them.

2) Try kicking the forearms and biceps instead of always aiming for the body. Once you get your opponent to raise his guard, you can go below and kick the body.

3) Don't kick Upwards. Your kick should travel at an angle , not vertical. This can again be achieved by having proper form.

Answer 4

Happens to me a lot,

The solution is to shorten the distance for the kick to hit with ankle rather than toes, to fully open your hips so that your foot hit the target flat instead of sideways.