What Your Toes Know Before You Do
Most conversations about ageing well focus on the heart, the mind, or the muscles we can see in a mirror. Foot and gait specialist Courtney Conley, whose new book Walk: Your Life Depends On It makes the case for walking as a basic physiological need, argues the more revealing story is happening much lower down — in the small, easily ignored muscles of the foot.
Sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass usually discussed in the context of arms and legs, reaches the feet too. Toe strength in particular fades faster than grip strength as we age, and Conley notes it's one of the strongest predictors of falls in later life. It's the toes, pressing into the ground, that stop your body from tipping forward with every step you take.
A two-part test you can do right now
Self-check :
Dexterity — can you raise and lower your big toe independently of the others?
Splay — lift your foot and spread your toes. Can you see daylight between them?
Splay matters more than it sounds like it should. As your heel lifts and your weight rolls through the ball of the foot on push-off, that forefoot needs to be wide, stable and strong — not just to avoid problems like bunions, but because the way your foot loads the ground quietly shapes what happens at your knee, hip and lower back further up the chain.
"It's kind of like a window into the brain,"
Conley says of foot awareness — better sensory input from the ground translates into better balance and motor control everywhere else.
Why flat ground doesn't train any of this
Here's the quiet problem: pavement, treadmills and polished floors ask almost nothing of the foot. The surface does the stabilising work the intrinsic muscles are supposed to do, which is part of why Conley is cautious about long-term orthotic use too — support the arch indefinitely and it stops learning to support itself. Real terrain is a better teacher. Sand shifts under load. Tree roots and packed earth trails force constant, tiny corrections. Each step becomes a small rep for exactly the muscles that flat, predictable ground lets go soft.
This is where an island setting does something a gym can't replicate. A morning walk from Parohe down to the shoreline moves you across packed clay tracks, native bush root systems, and open sand — the kind of varied, uneven ground that keeps toe splay, ankle mobility and balance genuinely in use, not just moving.
Walking, the way it was meant to happen
At Parohe Island Retreat on Kawau Island, the trails aren't a workout circuit — they're simply how you get from the lodge to the water, to the next headland, to breakfast. Guided walks take in native bush and quiet coastal paths at a pace set by the terrain itself, and the private beach is there for anyone who wants to finish barefoot, letting sand do what no shoe can. It's an easy, low-pressure way to give your feet the varied load they've likely been missing — and to notice, the way Conley suggests, what your body is telling you about how it's ageing.