toe movement

How come when I try to move one of my smaller toes, the other three move, too? I want to be able to move all my toes indepdently of each other; is this possible to do?

I believe it is possible. On a show about the children of thalidomide, one man who was born without arms was able to do almost everything with his feet. They showed him playing the piano with his toes and they moved independently. Of course, he had been working at it since he was a kid.

Yes, it can be done. In my junior high we had a guy come in who had no arms too. He could write, dress himself, eat hamburgers, etc… all with his feet and toes. He then played the drums and piano for us among other things. The muscles and tendons/ligaments and neccesary equipment are all in the feet and the brain is capable of “pulling the right strings” with enough practice. I can move my toes fairly well, but due to lack of practice I’m not really well coordinated and don’t have much power in the toes yet. I don’t know the proper training techniques, but you can start by picking up easy things with your toes like a shirt, then try harder things like a pencil or coin. I thought I heard somewhere that Houdini could snap his toes like you snap your fingers.

The main muscles acting on your toes are the flexor digitorum longus, flexor digitorum brevis, extensor digitorum longus, extensor digitorum brevis. Generally speaking, each of these is a single muscle which splits into tendons for each of the lesser toes. Contracting one of these muscles will either flex or extend all of the toes at once.

You can control individual digits using smaller muscles close to the toes: dorsal and plantar interosseous muscles, and lumbrical muscles. In the shoe-wearing world, these smaller muscles do not get the workout for which they were designed, and are usually quite weak. On top of that, your ability to control them is minimal, since it hasn’t been practiced.

The shape and structure of the bones in the foot prevent it from ever being as flexible as the hand. But the muscles are roughly the same, so there’s no reason the toes can’t be quite flexible and precisely controlled.

Think thats the only problem that most of have??
Try this is one : Try and bend your pinky without bending ur ring finger!!!

I can wiggle my pinky toes independently of the others. But I probably have a tendency toward, well, long tendons – I can also bend my elbows at about a 190-degree angle. It’s great for freaking out my dinner companions when I reach over the napkin holder for the ketchup. :smiley:

Along the lines of jaysha’s post, try this:

Hold your hands palm to palm fingers pointing up. With your palms still together move apart (fully) each set of fingers (ie index fingers first then middle fingers and so on) You should be able to do this no problems. Now, bend down your middle fingers. Try moving apart each set this time. You can do them all except the ring fingers. Aparently this is because the muscles for Middle and Ring fingers are shared at some point along the arm. Don’t know if this relates to the OP but it’s kinda fun :slight_smile: