Function of the toes? (specifically the big toe)

[Edd]

A bit of background to why I'm asking the question:

 

I've had problems with the arches of my feet for most of my life and especially the left main arch - Extremely sharp pains I now believe from too much collapse.  In the past year or so I found out my left leg is the longer leg.  I injured my big toe of the left foot several times around 3 years ago which led to the end joint not moving.  I've managed to get a little passive movement back and lately a tiny bit of active movement.  I hadn't had that arch pain for about 10 years but it came back a couple of weeks ago.  The compensations were huge as I guess my CNS really didn't want it to happen again?  I started bearing weight on the outside of my foot and got outside knee pain.  I just couldn't walk naturally at all, all the memories of over 10 years ago came flooding back.

 

What I believe contributed to the pain returning was I bought some new minimal shoes and unlike the rest of my shoes I forgot to put a 4mm heel raise in the right shoe.  I had been wearing these a lot and had been on my feet more than usual.  Also I had been trying to gain some flexibility in the dorsiflexion of my toes so perhaps overstretching my weak arch?

 

So getting onto the subject question, I noticed my left foot is a lot weaker at 'scrunching' the toes/pushing through the toes.  When walking, should I be pushing through the big toe (or any toes)?  At the moment I don't with either foot, my toes are pretty much passengers that just get walked on.  The ball of the foot behind my big toe is baby soft on each foot and looks like I've never walked on them, wheres behind the middle 3 has a fair bit of callusing - Collapsed front arch I guess.  I feel that if I were to more actively use my toes / big toe I'd actually bear some weight behind the big toe and not so much weight through the ball of the foot behind the middle 3.

[Craig]

You don't want to get stuck in the habit of thinking about how you're walking all the time, just walk. That being said, you may need periods where you give extra attention to something particular (in this case pushing through the big toe) to bring it to the party. So perhaps you do think about it for some time, but with the eventual goal of not thinking about it once again, however in this new case it works when it should.

There is already a fantastic pinned thread about rehabbing the feet pinned here, so read through that and watch all of the videos. Balance work on a pole and grip work with the toes will also help, but the toes are part of the entire chain, simply teaching the toe in isolation is not enough, you must learn to coordinate it with the rest of the system (as well as isolated rehab).