My Journey to Becoming a Functional Podiatrist
Part Two: When I Started Questioning Traditional Podiatry
For many years, I practised podiatry in the way I had been trained. It made sense to me, it helped many of my patients, and I genuinely believed in what I was doing. But eventually, a few uncomfortable questions began to emerge.
In Part One: Where It All Began, I shared the story of starting out as a 22-year-old podiatrist — newly graduated, relatively sheltered and suddenly driving all over Melbourne with two suitcases of instruments and a podiatry drill.
Those early years taught me resilience, independence and how to step into situations that felt unfamiliar.
What I didn’t know then was that many years later, I would need that same willingness to step outside my comfort zone again.
This time, professionally.
👣 The Traditional Years
For much of my career, I practised what I would now describe as fairly traditional podiatry.
I prescribed a lot of orthotics, and I genuinely believed in what I was doing.
I prescribed them for adults and children. My own children wore them. I wore them myself.
Orthotics could be useful for influencing load, improving comfort and helping manage particular conditions. I also believed they could address alignment or biomechanical factors and reduce stress on painful tissues.
And for many patients, they helped.
I became very good at identifying what was “wrong” — naming pathologies, recognising biomechanical abnormalities and finding areas where load wasn’t being distributed as I thought it should be.
The solution was often to support, correct or accommodate those findings with an orthotic and a structured shoe.
For many years, that approach made sense to me.
People often felt better, and I felt good about the work I was doing.
🏠 Building My Own Practice
Around 2007 or 2008, after years of moving between different locations and renting rooms, I signed the lease on my own shopfront in Burwood East.
It became the home of my practice for the next ten years.
By then, I had years of experience behind me. I had built a busy practice, developed confidence in my clinical skills and had a clear idea of how I believed many foot problems should be treated.
I wasn’t looking for a different way of practising.
But gradually, questions began to emerge.
Eventually, I couldn’t ignore them.
🦶 When the Podiatrist Became the Patient
One of the biggest turning points came when I developed forefoot pain myself, with symptoms resembling a neuroma.
Suddenly, I was the patient.
So I did what I had been trained to do — and what I had recommended to my own patients for years.
I tried orthotics, metatarsal domes, supportive shoes and footwear with anatomical footbeds.
And my foot still hurt.
It was uncomfortable and, if I’m honest, somewhat embarrassing.
Here I was, the supposed foot expert with years of clinical experience, and I couldn’t solve my own foot pain.
In hindsight, though, I’m incredibly grateful for that experience.
Because suddenly I wasn’t looking at the problem purely through the eyes of a practitioner.
I was experiencing what it felt like to do all the “right” things and still have pain.
And it reminded me of something incredibly important:
An approach that helps one person may not help another.
Sometimes a reasonable treatment needs to be changed, combined with something else — or reconsidered altogether.
Most importantly, my own foot pain made me curious.
❓ Something Wasn’t Adding Up
Around the same time, I began noticing patients arriving with more and more “solutions”.
Multiple pairs of orthotics.
Increasingly technical shoes.
Inserts, cushioning and supports.
Yet many of them were still in pain.
That didn’t necessarily mean those devices were inappropriate. Pain is complex, and there can be many reasons why it persists.
But it did make me wonder whether we were always looking broadly enough.
Were we considering strength? Mobility? Activity? Tissue capacity? Footwear? The rest of the body? The person’s individual goals?
I began asking myself:
Were we always getting to the factors contributing to the problem?
And then there was something else I couldn’t ignore.
👟 I Started Looking at Shoes Differently
A significant part of my working day involved treating corns, callus, painful and ingrown toenails, bunions and toe deformities.
And at some point, something very simple dawned on me.
The shoes people were wearing could sometimes be contributing to the very problems I was treating.
Of course, footwear isn’t responsible for every foot problem. Genetics, anatomy, injury, age, activity, medical conditions and individual movement patterns can all play a role.
But footwear can contribute to pressure, friction and restricted toe space.
Once I really started comparing the shape of the human foot with the shape of many conventional shoes, I began looking at footwear very differently.
Many of the shoes I had recommended throughout my career were marketed — and professionally accepted — as being “good for your feet”.
They were supportive, cushioned and structured.
And those features can absolutely be useful for some people.
But I began asking another question:
What shape is the shoe asking the foot to accommodate, and is that appropriate for this particular person?
Once I started asking that question, I couldn’t unsee it.
This wasn’t about blaming shoes for every foot problem or deciding that supportive footwear was suddenly “bad”.
It was about becoming curious enough to question something I had previously taken for granted.
Perhaps instead of asking only how much support a shoe provides, I also needed to ask whether its shape, fit and features allowed that particular foot enough comfort and opportunity to function.
And that eventually led me to a much bigger question:
Had I spent years looking primarily at what was wrong with people’s feet, rather than also asking what those feet might be capable of?
That question changed a lot for me.
I didn’t have all the answers.
But I knew I wanted to start looking for them.
And strangely enough, doing that would take me back to an idea that had fascinated me long before I ever became a podiatrist.
Next: Part Three — The Barefoot Shoes That Taught Me a Lesson