Toe Spacer Rebrands as Spacer Mobility, CrossFit Games Athletes Reap all of The Company’s Foot Health Benefits
If you’re on social media, you have probably seen all the cool people—CrossFit Games athletes like Danielle Brandon, Sara Sigmundsdottir, Emma Lawson, Emily Rolfe, and Jeff Adler to name a few—posting pictures of themselves wearing the Toe Spacer, a device that quite literally separates your toes, all the while improving foot mobility and stability and reducing any foot pain.
Though the Canadian company The Toe Spacer is best known for its toe spacer tool, they’re about so much more than just toe spacing, which is why it’s in the process of turning itself into Spacer Mobility.
“The intent from Day 1 was just to share foot health content, and then it turned into sharing toe spacers, but then as we have grown we have realized there is a lot more to foot health and there are so many other products that can help with stability and mobility,” said the Toe Spacer co-founder Mick Baker.
“So we think that dropping the Toe in our name and going with Spacer Mobility is a really good way to encompass the tools that we are going to be releasing and the tools that we already have.”
Four Other Popular Spacer Mobility Products Gaining Momentum
The EI8HTBALL
The EI8HTBALL is similar to taping two lacrosse balls together, but it’s a lot more effective and less painful because it’s a bit flexible, so when you put your foot on it to massage the fascia there’s a little bit of give to it.
“A lot of people think that harder is better, but for the fascia, if you have any inflammation and you roll on anything super hard, like a lacrosse ball, your body tenses up and goes into a defense mode and doesn’t relax into it, and that’s really the goal of giving yourself a self-massage: to release any tension and tightness, not further aggravate the area,” Baker said.
Three-time Games athlete Rolfe said she uses the EI8HTBALL ball “a lot before and after a workout with lots of jumping.”
“You know when you do a ton of box jumps and your feet just kill? It feels so good rolling on those arches afterward, and I think rolling them beforehand prolongs when the pain sets in during a workout,” she said.
Brandon added that the toe spacers are still her favorite product, “but the EI8HTBALL ball feels so good on the bottom of your feet.”
The Rock Mat
The Rock Mat is a firm foam mat with mounds and is designed to stimulate and activate the sensory receptors on the bottom of your feet.
“The sole of the foot has over 100,000 sensory receptors in it, and we spend our whole day in shoes, and when we get home and we put slippers on and go to bed, and all those sensory receptors really don’t get the opportunity to be activated or to be exposed or stimulated,” Baker said.
“So by stimulating your feet, you hit sensory nerve endings, and you also strengthen the brain-foot connection, and that will help with stability because it gets your foot to fire to make your brain think, ‘I’ve got to make decisions quickly to stay upright,’”
The Rock Mat is designed to be stood on, for example, when you’re at home doing the dishes, or at your standing desk, or when putting on make-up in the bathroom—basically whenever you’re standing around for a little while, Baker explained.
That being said, you can also do single leg exercises on the Rock Mat, as it helps improve proprioception—the body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location—which is especially important as you age, as you start losing your sensory exposure.
When Adler first used the Rock Mat, he was surprised how good his feet felt afterward.
“I recommend it to everyone. We spend so much time on our feet, but forget to take care of them,” he said.
The Toe Mobility Band
The Toe Mobility Band is designed to improve overall foot stability, to reduce bunions and combat deformation from narrow toe box shoes, and most notably, to improve big toe range of motion.
Having range of motion in your big toe is important, Baker explained, because it allows for not just better foot stability and foot alignment, but it contributes to proper arching of the foot and acts as a shock absorber.
New Item: The Ripple Ball
One of Spacer Mobility’s newest products is The Ripple Ball, a vibrating deep massage ball with four settings to allow for multi-directional rolling over particularly tight spots, especially the calves, as they can often become tight and then cause foot pain, Baker explained.
Rolfe has been using the Ripple Ball “a lot lately to roll my forearm specifically where my scars are to loosen the scar tissue,” she said, referring to the emergency surgery for a blood clot she had while in Madison, WI for the Games in the summer.
“It’s also great to lie on and get your back,” she added.
Coming Soon: Spacer Mobility App
From toe spacers to massage balls, to mobility bands and wedges to the Rock Mat, the goal for Spacer Mobility has and will always be the same: To share foot health education.
And this will become even easier to do when they launch their new app before the end of the year, an app that will offer both educational content and foot health exercises and programs.
“The core of it will be free so that people can learn more. I think it’ll be an added tool for people to improve their mobility and foot health,” Baker said.
Because, as Adler said, “We can all benefit from showing our feet some love.”
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