I used to loosen my laces under the till by three o’clock. Here’s what a colleague explained to me that nobody had ever told me.

Eight hours on my feet a day, for eleven years. It wasn’t the pain that made me go looking. It was the little gesture I was making without even noticing.

There’s a gesture I used to make without thinking.

Around three o’clock, behind my till, I’d slip my left foot behind my right calf and push down on the heel to loosen the lace. Discreetly. Then I’d put my foot back flat, and hold on until closing.

I’d been doing it for so long I no longer saw it. It was a customer who pointed it out one day, laughing: “You’re dancing behind your counter!” I laughed too. And that evening, taking my shoes off, I didn’t find it funny at all.

It didn’t happen overnight

At first it was just the end of the day. A soreness on the side of my foot, where the bone sticks out at the base of the big toe. I’d get home, take my shoes off, and twenty minutes later it had gone. You don’t go to the doctor for that.

Then it became three o’clock. Then midday. Then I started choosing my shoes differently: not the prettiest ones, the widest ones. I put away two pairs I loved without ever telling myself I was putting them away for good.

And one morning I realised I’d stopped going to the Saturday market. Not as a decision. Just because, after a week on my feet, the idea of walking two more hours didn’t even cross my mind any more.

I tried everything. Really, everything.

Before I tell you what changed, I need to tell you what didn’t work, because I suspect you have the same drawer I do.

Silicone toe spacers. The first ones, from the chemist. Then the pricier ones, with the little tab. They do their job: they hold the toe apart. The trouble is, the evening you don’t wear them, everything is exactly as it was. Nothing builds.

The night splint. Rigid, with straps. I lasted three weeks. Three weeks of sleeping badly, waking up with the strap slipped off. It’s in the bottom drawer. I could tell you exactly where.

Insoles. Custom-made, from a podiatrist, for a sum I’d rather not mention. They changed the way I put my foot down, that’s true. On the side of the big toe, nothing.

Toe-separator socks, gels, exercise videos. I did the exercises. Seriously, for two months. Picking up a towel with my toes, spreading my toes. Except the one exercise you’re meant to do, moving the big toe away from the others, I simply couldn’t do. I’d look at my foot, I’d strain, and nothing moved.

I thought I was doing it wrong. I understood later that I wasn’t.

Then Nadia sat down next to me

Nadia has worked in a pharmacy for twenty-two years, in the same shopping arcade, two shops down. We cross paths in the break room. One Thursday she watched me rubbing the edge of my foot and said:

“You too?”

I said yes, for years, I’ve tried everything, nothing lasts. She nodded like someone who has heard that a hundred times. Then she asked me a question nobody had ever asked me:

“Can you move your big toe away from the others? Right now.”

I tried. Nothing.

“There,” she said. “That’s where the problem is. And it’s not your fault.”

What she explained to me with a paper napkin

She took a napkin and drew a foot seen from underneath. Then a line along the inner edge, from the heel to the big toe.

“That line is a muscle. It’s called the abductor hallucis. Its only job is to pull your big toe away from the others. To hold it back.”

She tapped the drawing. “The trouble is, it’s a muscle you never use on purpose. You walk, you run, you stand for eight hours, and it barely works. And once your toe has started to lean, it no longer gets any chance to contract. It’s resting. It has been for years.”

And then she said the sentence that made me understand, in one second, what ten years of trying had never explained:

I sat there without saying a word.

Because all at once, everything I’d tried made sense. The spacer asks nothing of the muscle: it does the spreading for it. Neither does the night splint: it locks the toe, and a locked muscle doesn’t work. Insoles spread the load, they don’t call on that muscle. And the exercises, those famous exercises, were asking me to contract on purpose a muscle I could no longer contract on purpose.

None of those things was bad. They were all solving the wrong problem.

“So what do you do, if you can’t contract it yourself?”

That’s exactly what I asked her.

She told me it’s a problem rehabilitation has known about for a long time: when someone can no longer contract a muscle on purpose, after being immobilised for example, electrical muscle stimulation is used. Small electrical pulses trigger the contraction in place of willpower. It’s neither new nor exotic. It’s an established technique.

“And there are now braces that do that for this muscle in particular. While holding the toe in line at the same time.”

Holding it at the same time is the point she insisted I understand. The muscle has to work and the toe has to be held in line while it works. Otherwise it’s contracting against nothing.

My first fourteen evenings

I ordered that same evening. After everything I’d spent for nothing, one more time wouldn’t make much difference.

I’ll tell you how it went for me. Nadia had warned me: everyone is different, don’t compare.

It’s been several months now. I still put it on most evenings, especially after the busiest days. It hasn’t become a chore, it’s become a habit. Like taking your make-up off.

And I’ve been back to the Saturday market. Twice. It doesn’t look like much written down, but it’s something I’d stopped doing without even noticing.

See the offer and availability ↓

Why it hits people who work on their feet so hard

That’s the question I put to Nadia the following week, because I’d noticed something: of the six cashiers in my shop, four have the same foot as me. That’s not a coincidence.

She explained that standing isn’t the same as walking. When you walk, the foot rolls, it works, the pressure points keep changing. When you stand for eight hours on a hard floor, the foot takes the load without ever varying. The weight always lands in the same place, and the front of the foot spreads under it.

Add closed shoes all day long, often required, rarely the widest, and you have the perfect combination: constant pressure pushing the big toe inwards, and a muscle that never gets a chance to hold it back.

Cashiers, hairdressers, care workers, waiting staff, builders, shop assistants. We all have the same hard floor and the same eight hours.

What I wish someone had told me ten years earlier

There are three things I now repeat to my colleagues, because they’re the three things that cost me the most time.

First: it’s not “your age”. That’s what I was told twice, and what I told myself a hundred times. Except a muscle that hasn’t worked for ten years isn’t a matter of years. It’s a matter of use. It’s not the same thing, and you don’t deal with it the same way.

Second: relieving isn’t the same as working. Everything I bought gave relief. In the moment it feels good, and you think something is moving forward. Nothing is. The relief stops the second you take the thing off, because nothing has been asked of your foot in the meantime.

Third: regularity matters more than intensity. At the start I wanted to turn the intensity up quickly, thinking it would go faster. Nadia stopped me. A muscle gets stronger through short, regular sessions with rest in between, not by forcing it. Fifteen minutes every evening beats an hour on Sunday, by a long way.

What it actually changes in a working day

I want to be honest on this point, because this is where people get the wrong idea.

It doesn’t make your day on your feet comfortable. The floor is still hard, eight hours are still eight hours, and if you’re looking for something that takes away end-of-shift tiredness, this isn’t it.

What it changed for me is quieter. The lace gesture, I no longer make it every day. When I get home, I no longer rush to pull my shoes off in the hallway. And above all, it’s the silliest thing but it’s the one that counts, I don’t think about it all day any more.

Because that’s what it had become, really. A background thought, all the time, about one spot on my body. Not having it any more is the first thing I got back.

The questions my colleagues asked me

“Isn’t it just a toe spacer with batteries?”

That’s what I thought at first, too. No. A spacer does the spreading instead of your muscle. Here, the strap holds the toe while the pulses make the muscle work. Take away the electrical part and all that’s left is a spacer. And you already know how that goes.

“Does it hurt?”

No. It’s a tingle, never a shock. Ten intensity levels. I started at level 1 the first evening and stayed at the bottom of the scale for a good week. You go up when you want to, or never.

“Do you wear it at work?”

No, and this matters: it’s not something you wear in your shoes. It’s a fifteen-minute session, sitting down, at home. For me it’s during the evening news. It changes nothing about my working day.

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

Sixty nights to try it, from the day it arrives. If you feel nothing, you send it back and you’re refunded. That’s what decided me, after everything I’d bought with no guarantee at all.

One evening, I did the maths

Out of curiosity, I added it up. The spacers, three models. The night splint. The custom insoles. The socks. The gels. And the two pairs of wide shoes I bought only because mine no longer fitted.

The total made me uncomfortable. I won’t give it, but let’s say it’s several times the price of the brace. For things that were, every one of them, solving the wrong problem.

And that’s only the money. There are also eleven years of late afternoons loosening a lace under a till, the pairs put away, and the Saturday mornings I let go without ever deciding to let them go.

Two choices, tonight

You can close this page and carry on as I did for eleven years. Loosening the lace around three o’clock. Choosing the widest shoes. Giving things up without ever deciding to give them up. It’s easily done, and nobody around you will notice.

Or you can give that small muscle along the inner edge the one thing it has never had: a reason to work. Fifteen minutes in the evening, sitting down, without changing anything else.

I can’t promise you what it will do for you. Nadia didn’t promise me either. But I can tell you it’s the first thing I ever tried that was aimed at the right problem.