Banged my bare heel stepping wrong on concrete and bruised it, realizing to protect it I’m instinctively using more of a “correct” stride, rolling my weight through the outer edge of the foot

Normally I’m “flatfooted”, rolling weight more through the center of slightly splayed feet. I used to think of this as a consequence of low arches, but now I think I had the casualty reversed. I’ve realized how to walk “right” since then but as is I balance my weight with my calf muscles, if I lift my arches my underdeveloped ankles quickly get exhausted bearing my full adult weight

A physical/sports therapist could probably retrain me and maybe for joint reasons I’ll have one someday. As is, my weight-bearing is somewhat less efficient and quicker-exhausting and I’ve been more vulnerable to ankle sprains, flat feet as disqualifying issue for a military draft kinda felt like a copout but I guess those are serious concerns for someone tasked with marching heavy packs across rough terrain.

(I have a sense I might be more relatively efficient going uphill, though, with ankle motion limited anyway and my calf/thigh muscles already trained to bear near-100% of the burden)