r/flatfeet

hi! I'm getting married next year and have been dreading finding shoes for the wedding. What heels did you guys wear/will you wear for your wedding? Thanks!!

Hi Guys,

I'm now 31 and have had flat feet for my entire life.

I can remember it first being picked up by a teacher at my junior school who sent a note home to my parents that there was something wrong with my gait as I have always duck walked.

I went off to the podiatrist and got some inner soles and carried on my life pretty much as normal. I was never much of an athlete but always enjoyed sports etc. The podiatrist basically just said that it was the way my body was put together (very "externally rotated") and to just wear the inner soles and carry on with life.

Even today I still run on the treadmill a couple of times a week and walk at least an hour each night so it's not like I'm not able to function by any means.

What I'm concerned about now though is the knock on effects that the way I walk and stand has on my body as I've developed very tight hips and also have always struggled with being round shouldered and had quite poor posture. Having done more research I've found that these problems are all very likely to be linked to my feet and I'm concerned about them getting worse as I get older and beginning to impact my mobility.

Is there anything I can do to counteract these effects? It's difficult to know where to start when I've most likely got imbalances all the way up my body and a lot of the stuff I see on YouTube is quite contradictory.

Some advice would be much appreciated.

I am 49 year old women and had flat feet since I was a kid. In the last year I started get a lot of severe ankle pain which later was diagnosed as a torn posterior tibial tendon. There was no one incident that caused the tear , I think my arches just started dropping even more and the tendon ripped.

Anyway, no surgery but was prescribed naproxen and custom orthotics. I don’t feel like the orthotics help much: they make the side walls of all the sneakers basically collapse and my arches still fall inward. I joked and said I need ready heavy duty hard ones because I am about 250lbs (I’m six foot so also really tall)

Does anyone have the same issue with the orthotics ? Is there a heavy duty orthotic you used that didn’t bend under weight ?

The outside of my ankles even hurt due to this constant pronation

I'm almost 50 and have been dealing with flat feet my entire life. A few months ago, the pain got really bad and I went to a podiatrist. He recommended orthotics (which I now have and am getting used to) and said that I have tendonitis in my ankles.

My feet are feeling better with the orthotics, but my ankles are still killing me. It's a circle around both ankles, and they both have swelling on the inside and outsides.

Has anybody dealt with this type of thing? Does anything help long term?

I had flatfoot reconstructive surgery on May 7. On June 15 I went in for a postop visit. Surgeon wanted weight-bearing x-ray. As they stood on the x-ray machine, we heard a loud pop. My Achilles tendon ruptured on my heel bone and fractured my heel into several pieces. I had to have emergency surgery and the Achilles had already started migrating up the back of my leg. Three weeks ago I went in for another follow up and a screw had popped through my heel. I had to have emergency surgery again and all the hardware was removed. Now my Achilles tendon is totally non-reactive. I’ve heard of people walking with an nonreactive Achilles, but not one combined with a flat foot reconstructive surgery. With this situation, it is very hard to walk. Has anyone ever heard of this and now a timeline of when I might be walking again?

As someone who has flat feet and unfortunately suffers from the side effects as all of us flat footed people know about for me it also comes with being self conscious of how my feet look and I have terrible accessory navicular bones sticking out.

What i hate about summer is seeing people comfortably walking around with their perfectly normal arched feet in barefoot shoes, my partner i love her to bits she is a barefooter and we have hardwood flooring and she has the perfect feet and i honestly am jealous. I need and used custom orthotics and have to use stable solid trainers and can't be without that for walking and my distance is limited until the pain really kicks in. I f**king hate having flat feet. Sorry to rage but at least people here will understand

I wear running shoes pretty much all the time unless an occasion calls for being dressed up. The orange and black New Balances I have on now are starting to feel less comfortable with every passing day, and the innersoles are shredding. My feet have been flat as pancakes since I was about 9 or 10 (in my mid-60s, now). I want to replace my NBs but I don't want to get those fugly white and navy mall walkers that they sell in Kohl's--ugh. Need some suggestions--don't have to be NBs, just something that (a) had decent support, (b) does not have an overly thick sole, and (c) will not make me look like an old fart. Budget is a little over $100.

I had a full ATFL replacement after breaking my ankle a year and a half ago earlier this year finally been given the go ahead to return to normal was wondering if anyone had a good suggestion for shoes that will help the ankle? I have some mild tissue swelling in the back of my foot still that they said is normal hope a good pair of shoes with my orthotics can help fix that

You all probably get a lot of posts like these here, but I am trying to look for a new pair of shoes to help reduce pain with my flat feet. Here's some information that may help:

• My left foot is a lot flatter than my right foot, and definitely gives me more pain
• I am getting custom orthotics, so I would need them to fit into whichever shoes I get
• I am overweight and do not exercise often (though I am in physical therapy)
• These shoes would be used for daily walking and standing, not running
• I typically only wear one pair of shoes at a time, so these would ideally last me for around a year

My podiatrist recommended me both HOKA Bondis as well as Brooks Beasts, but I am also looking at the Brooks Adrenaline GTS 25s as a potential option. Do any of these sound like what I need, or are there any other recommendations that people have? Thank you.

I just had reconstruction surgery last Tuesday on 7/28 (I’m 9 days post-op). I’ve spent a ton of time with Gemini (Google’s AI tool) understanding the mechanics, process, everything to do with this surgery and during my process found personal stories on this sub to be the most beneficial to read. I wanted to give my story in case other folks feel the same!

My background: flat feet my whole life, Marine Corps 1998-2007, numerous back injuries (grade 2 spondy of my L5-S1, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, the works). For decades I assumed my back was my only real injury but discovered upon visiting a podiatrist in 2023 (I thought it would be smart) I discovered that my feet are at least as bad if not worse. It’s very apparent that my Marine Corps experience took my flat feet and wrecked them (and my back among other things) and I’ve been on a long-term collision course with problems and now I just had my first ever surgery.

I noticed pain in my ankle early last Fall and in November I got an appointment with the Podiatrist for 12/29. Ten minutes into my visit he told me I needed to have surgery. I pushed the surgery to the summer for a variety of reasons.

Here’s what I had:

RIGHT FOOT CALCANEAL OSTEOTOMY, POSTERIOR TIBIAL TENDON REPAIR, FLEXOR DIGITORUM LONGUS TRANSFER, SPRING LIGAMENT REPAIR, ACHILLES LENGTHENING

I had some nerves the morning of my surgery but nothing really pronounced until they got the IV in and got the process going. I got two nerve blocks to start, they wheeled me in, and after 4 hours of surgery and 2 hours in the PACU, I met with my surgeon. The most interesting thing he told me for the purposes of this post was that the PTT was torn in a bunch of places and there was one really big tear. Pre-surgery he hoped to repair the tendon but needed to bridge it once in my foot and he saw the damage.

I was much more mentally able than I expected but in retrospect the fog wasn’t fully gone until the second day after surgery. I expected the pain to be awful but wasn’t afraid of it and to be honest, in my experience, the pain has been far easier to manage than I expected. It never got above a 5-6 and those levels were very short in duration/easily managed by meds. I did feel pain while waking up in the PACU and they gave me a 3rd nerve block (sciatic given on the outside of my knee).

The earliest stirrings of feeling were about 10 hours after surgery began so I started taking the Percocets at that time to avoid falling behind. It was probably the smartest thing I did with this surgery as I wasn’t sure to expect with regard to the nerve blocks. I only took them for about 36 hours and was then on 325mg Tylenol and 400mg Ibuprofen 3x per day. I stopped taking Ibuprofen 2 days ago and haven’t taken a Tylenol since 3am today when I had my first foot cramp.

The first two nerve blocks were 75% gone within 36 hours and the last one didn’t start going away until day 4. I still have some pins and needles, mainly in my toes, but the main thing I feel now is the nerves firing here and there, 85% of which happens when I lay in bed from 7-10pm before going to sleep.

I had a swelling breakthrough when I could feel space inside the splint about 4 days after surgery. I have basically only used my knee scooter thus far (no crutches yet) and encourage everyone to get some padding for it because there’s a cumulative, painful effect on my shin. I’ve read that getting the full cast next Weds will help alleviate that (among other things).

I’ve been super aggressive in being active for short spurts on the knee scooter - ten-ish minutes every hour and outside of that I’m toes above nose. I’ve been using a frozen water bottle under my knee 3-4x per day. As much time spent being toes above nose and icing behind knee is literally the key to my first 9 days. Don’t screw around with simply elevating or sitting upright - toes above nose. The overwhelming majority of this experience hinges on how seriously you are controlling your swelling. I think it’s super important to be active throughout the day to keep your blood flowing (and if you’re of a certain age avoiding blood clots) but I can’t stress enough how you have to find a way to be toes above nose the rest of the day period.

The hardest part of the recovery so far is that I’m terrified of accidentally standing on my foot or falling on it - I had a couple toe taps early on and one mild heel bang but I got a system going about 3 days in. I cannot recommend strongly enough how crucial it is to practice several actions before your surgery:

1. Butt scoot up and down stairs (especially standing up without using your foot)
2. Sitting on the toilet (getting up without using my foot was really hard for the first 5 days and I foolishly did not practice this)
3. Showering (practicing this was very revealing)

A couple random notes:

1. Your foot will get hot and sweaty. It is what it is
2. I raced to get off the Percocets as fast as I could and I think the biggest part of that was being so diligent in being nose above toes/icing
3. An adjustable base for your bed will make the difference (not cheap but I had one for my back already and it makes nose above toes 10x easier than stacking pillows

I know I have several milestones to hit, and though I’ve seen others say getting the full cast on sucks, I’m excited about my foot not having space inside the cast anymore, getting a slight respite of fresh air on my foot, and the slightest relief from worrying about banging my foot (I’ve read that the full cast is slightly more protective than the half cast/splint).

Overall, so far, this has been much less miserable than I expected. I know everyone’s journey will be different but I feel like I’ve seen more negative posts than positive ones here so I wanted to convey my overall (so far) positive experience. The rate at which my physical feeling improves continues to increase and I got an amazing night of sleep last night (two nights ago wasn’t great but I overdid it during the day and it took all night for my foot to calm down).

Let me know if you have any questions!

Edit: grammar