Seventeen collegiate American football players had their toe strength measured with the toes curled down, and again with the toes lifted. Push-off force with the toes lifted — the position in the picture — correlated with pro-agility and 3-cone times. Curled-toe strength did not. Neither predicted straight-line sprint speed.
Toe-Rx works that lifted, loaded position: it holds the toes open, and you close them against it. The case is for your cut, your break and your first step — not your 40. An eight-week trial in 28 trained athletes improved cutting and horizontal jump and did nothing for sprint acceleration. We are not going to tell you otherwise.
Yuasa Y, Kurihara T, Isaka T. Relationship between toe muscular strength and the ability to change direction in athletes. Journal of Human Kinetics, 2018;64:47–55. Cross-sectional, 17 players — an association, not a training result. Tourillon R, et al. PLOS ONE, 2025;20(6):e0313979 — the trial. See how we read the evidence
The football study found the relationship in one specific position: toes lifted, pressing down. Not curled. Toe-Rx gets you there, then gives you something to push against.
Toe-Rx sits between the toes and holds them apart, wider than you can spread them on your own after a season in cleats. Sit with it in for a few minutes. This part asks nothing of you.
Why it matters here. Cleats are fitted tight and hold the toes together. Spreading them is not the goal — it is the setup. With the toes held apart, the muscle that pulls the big toe outward is engaged, and the closing movement in step two has somewhere to work from.
Still wearing it, lift your toes, then press them down into the floor, squeezing against the foam as they close. Fifteen to twenty times. This is the working part.
This is the position. Lifting the toes is dorsiflexion at the joint where the toes meet the foot. Pressing down from there is push-off from that lifted position — the measurement that correlated with agility in the football players, and the one that curled-toe strength did not match. Towel scrunches train the curled version. This trains the lifted one.
Wearing it is not the part that works
Someone tested this directly. Twenty-four people wore a toe orthosis for eight weeks; half of them also performed a toe-spread-out exercise. The orthosis-only group showed no significant change in anything measured. The group that added the movement improved significantly in all three measures.
So we are not going to tell you that sitting with something between your toes will change your feet. The movement is the part that counts. And the resistance is foam — the trial that improved cutting loaded the toes far harder than that, on a dynamometer. Whether foam gets you the same gains is untested. What it gets you is the position, and something to close against, in ten minutes after practice.
Kim MH, Yi CH, Weon JH, Cynn HS, Jung DY, Kwon OY. Effect of toe-spread-out exercise on hallux valgus angle and cross-sectional area of abductor hallucis muscle in subjects with hallux valgus. Journal of Physical Therapy Science, 2015;27(4):1019–1022. · Tourillon R, et al. PLOS ONE, 2025;20(6):e0313979.
Football is the one sport where the toe research is in-sport rather than borrowed. That is a reason to read it more carefully, not less. Every entry below says where its finding stops.
Push-off strength with the toes lifted went with agility. Curled-toe strength did not. Neither went with sprint speed.
Yuasa, Kurihara and Isaka measured toe strength with the metatarsophalangeal joints plantarflexed and again dorsiflexed, then ran their players through change-of-direction and sprint tests. Only dorsiflexed push-off force correlated with the agility tests. The authors concluded that change-of-direction ability is more strongly affected by toe strength in that position, and may be improved by training in it.
Where it stops Seventeen people, one measurement each. It shows that the two things go together in football players — not that training one improves the other. It found no relationship with straight-line sprinting, and we will not pretend it did.
Read the study (doi: 10.1515/hukin-2017-0183)Eight weeks of forefoot strengthening improved cutting and horizontal jump — and did nothing for sprint acceleration.
Tourillon and colleagues ran the trial the football study called for. Toe flexor torque and muscle volume rose substantially in the training group (92% of athletes exceeded the minimal detectable change). Cutting and horizontal jump performance improved, with 42–67% of athletes exceeding the detectable change, and the gains were traced to better medio-lateral force transmission during the cut. Sprint acceleration did not change. The effects held through four weeks of detraining.
Where it stops The athletes came from soccer, rugby, track, basketball, handball, volleyball and tennis — no football players. The protocol was high-tension isometrics on a dynamometer-type setup plus rebound jumps, supervised, twice a week. That is not ten minutes with a foam separator, and we are not going to imply it is. What the trial establishes is that the position matters and the gain is in the cut.
Read the trial (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313979)Toe flexor torque explained about a third of the variance in how hard athletes drove the ground at top speed.
The same group's earlier study. Metatarsophalangeal flexion torque, together with foot stiffness and foot-ankle reactive strength, accounted for 28–35% of the variance in vertical impulse and contact time during maximal-speed sprinting, and correlated moderately (r 0.38–0.55) with explosive tasks.
Where it stops Association, not cause. It explains part of the kinetics, not the outcome — and the trial that followed found those kinetics improved with training while acceleration itself did not.
Read the study (doi: 10.1080/02640414.2024.2367365)Running backs and quarterbacks get turf toe more than linemen. Artificial turf raises the rate.
George and colleagues pulled every turf toe injury from five seasons of NCAA surveillance data. The positions injured most were the ones that cut and sprint explosively, and the authors attributed the difference to forefoot stress. Artificial turf carried a higher rate than grass.
Where it stops This is the injury the sport named. It is a hyperextension injury of the big-toe joint, and its established prevention is restricting that joint — stiff plates, taping. A toe spacer is a mobility tool and has no role in preventing turf toe. We say more about this in the next section, because it is the most important thing on this page.
Read the study (doi: 10.1177/1071100713514038)Receivers and backs carry the most foot injury history. Turf toe costs six weeks and ranks second for ending careers.
At the 2006 NFL Combine, 72% of 320 players had a foot or ankle injury in their history — running backs and wide receivers at 83%, offensive linemen at 80%, kickers and special-teams players at 100%. Among severe foot injuries in NCAA athletes, turf toe had the second-highest career-ending rate. In the NFL from 2010 to 2015, a turf toe injury meant an average of 42.6 days out, and three of seventeen returning players had needed season-ending surgery. Performance after return did not differ from position-matched controls.
Where it stops The Combine figure is all foot and ankle injuries, not turf toe alone. No source we found breaks turf toe out by receiver versus corner versus back — the surveillance data separates skill positions from linemen and stops there. We have not invented finer numbers.
Read the NFL outcomes studyThe device on its own changed nothing. Adding the movement changed everything measured.
Both groups wore a toe orthosis for eight weeks. Only one also performed a toe-spread-out exercise. The orthosis-only group showed no significant change in any of the three measures. The group that added the movement improved significantly in all three, including the size of the muscle that pulls the big toe outward.
Where it stops Not athletes, and a different device. It is here because it is the reason we keep saying the movement is the part that counts — and the reason ten minutes with Toe-Rx is a real ask, not a passive one.
Read the study (doi: 10.1589/jpts.27.1019)Three things we don't claim
That it makes you faster. The football study found no relationship between toe strength and sprint time. The trial found no change in sprint acceleration after eight weeks. The evidence is for the cut, the break and the first step. If your 40 is what you are chasing, this is not the tool for it.
That it prevents turf toe. Turf toe is the big toe bending too far back. The prevention is stiffness, not mobility. Nothing that opens the toes has any role in it, and if you have had one, the joint's stability is a clinician's call before it is anyone else's.
That any of this has been tested in linemen. The football study did not separate positions. The injury data puts skill positions first. The three-point stance loads the big toe in exactly the lifted position the study measured — but that is mechanical reasoning, not a finding, and we have not found a study of the stance itself.
We sell a foot product, so read this knowing that. The one toe injury named after your sport is an injury of the big toe bending too far back — and everything that has been shown to prevent it works by letting the toe bend less. Nothing that opens the toes has a role in it. We would rather you heard that from us than found out from a trainer after buying something.
A sprain of the big toe's joint — the ligaments and plantar plate underneath it. Named in 1976 as a shoe-surface related football injury.
Forefoot planted, heel up, and a load drives the toe backward past its range. A tackler landing on the back of your calf while your toes are on the turf is the textbook version.
In the NFL, an average of six weeks out. Among severe foot injuries in college athletes, the second-highest rate of ending a career.
Three things that matter more than anything we make
Plate stiffness, and whoever manages your equipment
The established protection against turf toe is a stiffer forefoot — a carbon or steel plate in the cleat, or a stiff-soled shoe during recovery. It limits how far the big toe can bend back. If your position lives on the forefoot, this is a conversation with the equipment staff, and it is worth having before the season rather than after the injury.
Basis Stiff-soled footwear is the nonoperative treatment in the clinical literature (Drakos et al., 2015). Plate stiffness as prevention is clinical consensus; we did not find a randomised trial of it in football and we are not claiming one exists.
Taping, when the trainer says so
Turf toe taping restricts big-toe extension the same way a plate does, on the joint itself. It is a trainer's tool with a trainer's judgment behind it, and it is the opposite of what a toe spacer does.
Basis Standard athletic training practice. Its point is restriction — which is why we are putting it in front of a product whose point is not.
A clinician, after any big-toe injury
Turf toe runs from a mild sprain to a torn plantar plate, and the two are managed differently — the severe version can need surgery. Stress and stability testing is how that gets decided, and it is not something a product page can do. If you have had a turf toe injury, nothing goes between your toes until whoever is managing it says it can.
Basis Drakos et al., 2015 (plantar-plate disruptions in collegiate football; stable versus unstable injuries managed differently). Lindsey et al., 2020: 91% of NFL players returned after high-grade turf toe, but operative cases performed worse afterwards. Get the grade right first.
Where we come in
After those. And on a different thing.
The football study did not measure how far the toes could bend. It measured how hard they pushed from the lifted position. Strength in that position is not the same thing as range of motion in it — and the case for Toe-Rx is the first one, not the second. The open step is how you get to the position with the right muscles engaged; the grip step is the work. Nothing on this page should be read as "loosen your big toe." If it ever reads that way, we have written it wrong.
There is a reasonable mechanical argument that strong toe flexors working from the lifted position help hold the big-toe joint stable under load. We think it is sound. Nobody has tested it against turf toe, and we are not going to call it protection.
Every other day is enough. The trial that improved cutting ran eight weeks at two sessions a week; the trial that showed the movement mattered ran eight weeks. Nobody has found a shortcut, and nothing we have read says daily beats every other day. You already do small things repeatedly for a long time before they show. This is that, for a position your feet are in at every snap and never train.
The session
Open
Work each toe fully into its slot and sit with them held apart. No effort needed — let the foam do it. Expect it to feel strange rather than difficult. Feet that spend their working life in a cleat have very little experience of being wide.
Circle
With Toe-Rx still in, use your hand to rotate the tips of your toes in small controlled circles, ten in each direction. Moves the toe joints through a range a cleat never allows.
Grip
Still wearing it, lift your toes, then press them down into the floor, squeezing against the foam as they close. The working part — and the position the football study measured. Lift is the setup. Press is the rep.
About ten minutes per foot, sitting down, bare feet only. Toe-Rx can be used in water, so the first two steps work in a cold tub or a foot soak after practice. Full instructions and photos
Where it fits around football
After practice, once the cleats are off
Your feet are already bare and the day's work is done. If you only ever do it at one time, do it here.
On a rest day
Nothing to work around. This is how the training was delivered in the trials — as its own session, not something attached to a warm-up.
Before practice, and never on game day before kickoff
Holding a stretch for 60 seconds or more has been shown to temporarily reduce maximal force, and the effect grows with duration — a 3–5 minute spread sits well past that line. The minutes before you need to explode off the line are the wrong minutes for a long static hold. That research was done on large muscle groups, not toes, so treat it as caution rather than proof. It is still the only timing the evidence argues against.
What has and hasn't been tested
The position has been tested in football players: lifted-toe push-off went with agility. The training has been tested in athletes: eight weeks of high-load forefoot work improved cutting. The two have not been put together — nobody has trained football players' toes and counted their cuts, and the training that worked used loads a foam separator does not provide.
So this is a reasonable protocol built from two studies that point the same way. We think that is worth ten minutes every other day. We do not think it is worth doing through pain, doing after a big-toe injury without clearance, or doing in the hour before you have to move.
Two decisions: how firm, and what size. Football players get the second one wrong in a specific way — you know your cleat size to the half, and it is the wrong number here.
Decision oneFirm or Soft
Soft
Start hereA gentler spread. We recommend it first to everyone, and to football players in particular: a high tolerance for discomfort is an asset on the field and a liability with an unfamiliar movement. Every instinct you have trained will tell you to push through the first week. Don't spend that instinct here.
Firm
More resistance to close against, and a wider opening. Right once the Soft feels easy rather than merely bearable — for most players a few weeks in. Both types cost the same, so moving up is a decision about your feet, not your budget.
Size
Do not use your cleat size
Cleats are fitted tight on purpose — a locked-in forefoot is what you want on turf. That fit is a half to a full size under what your foot measures, and it describes nothing about what this has to fit. Use your street shoe size, or better, measure your bare foot.
| Toe-Rx size | Women's US | Men's US |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 4.5 – 7 | below 7 * |
| Medium | 7 – 9.5 | 7 – 8.5 |
| Large | 9.5 – 12 | 8.5 – 14 |
* The maker's chart gives no men's range for Small. If your men's US size is below 7, you are in Small territory — but at that size, measure your bare foot rather than trusting a conversion.
On an iPhone or iPad, open any product page in Safari and tap the 3D image to place a full-size Toe-Rx on the floor in AR. Hold your bare foot beside it before ordering — it is the closest thing to trying one on.
If you land on a boundary, or your toes aren't average
Shoe size measures length. What has to fit here is the width and thickness of your toes. Big feet with narrow toes and average feet with broad ones both exist on every roster.
After a turf toe injury: not without clearance
If you have had a big-toe injury — this season or an old one that still feels different — nothing goes between your toes until whoever managed it says it can. Turf toe runs from a mild sprain to a torn plantar plate, and only stress and stability testing tells the two apart. A spacer pressing on a joint that has not been graded is a decision for your trainer or clinician, not for a product page.
Wrong size? We'll swap it. Sizing from a shoe size is an estimate, not a guarantee. If your Toe-Rx pinches or slips once you try it, get in touch and we will exchange it for the size that fits. Please do that rather than adapting to it. Wearing the wrong size is uncomfortable and can cause injury — and adapting to gear that does not fit is a habit worth leaving in the locker room.
In college football players, toe push-off strength with the toes lifted went with agility and not with sprint speed. In trained athletes, eight weeks of forefoot strengthening improved cutting and horizontal jump and did nothing for acceleration. The case is for the cut, the break and the first step. It is not for your 40.
Turf toe — the injury named after your sport — is a stiffness problem, and nothing that opens the toes has a role in preventing it. What Toe-Rx offers is strength work in the lifted position the study picked out, after practice, never before kickoff, and never on a big-toe joint nobody has cleared. Ten minutes, every other day, out of cleats.
References
Every figure on this page comes from one of these. Where a study's findings run out, we have said so in the section that cites it.
About these claims
One study on this page was done in football players, and it measured association, not training. The trial that showed training improved cutting was done in athletes from other sports, with loads a foam separator does not provide. No study has tested Toe-Rx, and no study has trained football players' toes and counted their cuts or their injuries. We have joined those findings together because we think it is reasonable, and we have said where that reasoning starts.
Toe-Rx is not a medical device. Nothing here is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition. It has no role in preventing turf toe, and it should not be used on a big-toe joint that has been injured until whoever is managing that injury has cleared it. If your foot hurts, if the big toe is visibly drifting, or if you have reduced sensation in your feet, speak to someone qualified before using anything that presses between your toes.
