How to FIX Plantar Fasciitis Permanently! (for 50+)

are you one of the many people who suffers from plant of fasciitis and just can't get rid of it if you are then this video is perfect for you because I'm going to show you how to solve it once and for all if you don't know who I am my name is will harow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio INF farum and today I'm going to be showing you my six-step process to fixing planta fasciitis permanently now plop fasciitis is an incredibly common condition of the foot it tends to cause pain at the back of the heel underneath the foot and the pain could be particularly bad for the first 10 or 15 minutes of the morning especially when you put your feet down to the floor now it tends to start very slowly over time although sometimes you can have plant fasciitis that starts quickly as well and it causes horrendous pain here it can affect walking and it can make life very very uncomfortable now the plant of fascia is this tissue here at the bottom of the foot and basically it joins the front front of the foot to the back of the foot and it transmits forces through the toes back through the foot here and propels us off the ground when we walk so it's got a very important job it also keeps the structure of the foot you can see that from the inside of the foot we've got a nice natural Arch and the planta faser is one of the things that keeps that arch in place it's almost like a spring loading mechanism of the foot now the problem with the planta fascia is it behaves a little bit like a tendon in that it can develop where and tear and it can also develop tiny little micro tears in it over time through overuse or injury that can cause pain right on its insertion point so that is where people end up with pain with plant fasciitis right on the bottom of the heel now there are four big causes of plop fasciitis that we need to understand the first cause of plant fasciitis is tight carves So Cal tightness or the muscles at the back of the lower leg if they become tight what they do is they pull up on the heel which brings the foot into this position and that puts more stress on the plant of fascia cuz the heel is almost like a fulcrum it's like a pivot point so if the heels pulled up this way this area here becomes tighter as well so tight carves are a bad thing another problem for plant fasciitis is flat feet so if you've got poor foot posture and your feet cave inwards like this that can be a risk factor as well another cause of plant fasciitis can be poor Footwear so Footwear with no cushioning like sand or flipflops or like Court shoes and tough office shoes they can also lead and contribute to plant fasciitis then the fourth cause is overuse so if you suddenly decided you wanted to go out for a 20m walk or you've been training for a marathon and you're not used to that kind of thing that is also a risk factor for developing this condition now the good news is it should get better if we follow the right steps so I'm going to show you my six-step plan this is the exact plan I take people through in the clinic and hopefully it will help you to fix your problem at home as well so let's have a look at the six steps it's important to note that the exercises involved here are not suitable for everyone so make sure you get checked out and only do them if they feel comfortable let's have a look at the exercises now so the first thing we need to do to fix plant our fasciitis is to fix those tight carves and I'd say 90% of people with plant fasciitis do have tight carves so this is such a worthwh exercise and one of the best ones so the carves are these muscles here the muscles at the back of the lower leg and if they're tight they pull up on the heel which puts stress on the planta fascia can cause the problem luckily we can stretch the calf quite easily and I'm going to show you one great exercise to do so so this is the calf stretch all you need is a wall or something to lean on so you can put your body weight against so two hands flat on the wall like this the affected leg is going to go at the back with the heel and the foot on the floor the other foot stays flat as well and you're going to keep the back leg straight and then you're going to bend that front knee like this and what we want to do now is hold for 30 seconds when we start to feel a stretch at the back of the calf and then relax there like this now when you're doing this stretch is very important not to allow your foot to cave in because if we allow the foot to cave in basically we're stretching the part of the calf that isn't necessarily as linked to the planter fascia so like this we need to keep a nice Arch underneath the foot foot as we Bend forward in order to stretch the right part of the Cal I'll show you on this leg as well so if I was to allow it to cave in it would look a little bit like that but what we want to do is keep that nice open Arch there and then lean forward like this until we get a stretch in the calf now all of these stretches should be held for 30 seconds minimum that's been shown to be the optimal time and you can do this as much as you like throughout the day the more the merrier really so that's your first car stretch to do I also like to Target the lower part of the calf with plant fasci Isis CU it's just as important so that needs a slightly different stretch so this is the cus stretch it's similar so we're going to get into the same position we're going to have both feet flat on the floor but this time we're also going to bend the back knee and instead of coming forward like that we're now going to sit back onto that foot at the back and what we should find is we get a stretch but the stretch is lower down in the Cal so we're sitting back into the stretch here and you should feel a stretch in your cus muscle which is down here okay so it's just above the Achilles and to the sides okay so it's part of the calf but it's a different part and it also makes up part of um or it leads into the Achilles tendon so it's just as important as the first type I'll show you that stretch again from a different angle so you've got one knee uh both knees bent sorry with the back knee bent as well and we're just going to sit back back into that ankle at the back trying to keep that arch of the foot and feeling that stretch slightly lower down in the CF again 30 seconds each time as many times as you feel you can throughout the day now the second exercise we're going to do is called a planter fascia release and for this exercise you're going to need a tough ball like one of these massage balls or a golf ball perhaps or if you're very tender on the bottom of your foot you might want to use a squash ball instead which is a bit soft of I'm going to use this and basically what we're going to do is we're going to massage the area of the plant of fascia not where the pain is but where the tightness is and for most people the tightness on the plant of fascia is around the middle of the foot the pain tends to be here on the heel but the tightness tends to be in this soft bit here so we're going to avoid the heel do not massage the painful point but do try and work on the soft area of the plant of fascia now this area tends to have knots and can feel a bit bubble wrappy when we press on and that means that um basically it's tight and that tightness is contributing to the stress on the saw area so to make this exercise work you sit in a chair you put your ball on the floor like this and you're going to put the middle and front of your planter fascia on the ball and you're just going to use some pressure directly down to work on the tight spots in the planta fascia so we're just rolling it around and we're looking for tight saw spots now they should almost feel like a nice pain if you're getting it right should feel like it's a little bit sore but it feels like it's releasing something and that's really what we're going for and we're keeping a relaxed foot so we're not trying to pull our toes up towards us and we're just putting pressure down and rolling it around if you find a sore spot pay particular attention to that point and just slowly work it out of the plant a fascia like that and I recommend for people with this problem that they spend about 5 minutes per day doing this now remember we're not doing it on the heel so not on the painful point just on the tight spots in the planta fascia distal to the painful Point okay so I do 5 minutes in a row you might want to do that each day splitting it up into into smaller chunks or you can do it all in one go and after you do it your foot should feel better you should feel like you can walk with less pain in your heel so we've stretched the plant a fascia and we've also stretched the carbs but that only tackles half of the problem because to fix this issue what we also need to do is strengthen the right areas in the lower leg and start to trigger some turnover of the tissue so this next exercise is going to show you how to do that now before I show you the exercise just so you're aware 91% of Watchers of this channel have not yet subscribed so if that's you do just scroll down down hit subscribe subscribe to the channel now cuz then you can hear about our new videos as soon as they come out and I'll be eternally grateful to you too anyway let's have a look at this exercise so this exercise is called the heel raise with toe lift and to make it work you just need a towel and something to hold on to so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take our towel and we're going to roll it into a little bit of a sausage shape like this and then we're going to put that sausage shape on the floor Okay so we've got a rolled up sausage like that in the towel on the floor and then what we're going to do here is we're going to put just our toes onto the towel so it's not the whole foot it's not the for foot it's just the toes on the towel like this and what this does it just lifts those toes up a little bit away from the floor then the exercise is quite simple we're just going to bring our weight forward and up lifting up by raising the heel hold for a second at the top and then very slowly allowing the heels to drop back down to the floor and then we try again so lift up like this hold for a couple of seconds then we want to take about 4 seconds to get back down to the floor so it's up in two and then down one two three four in four and the idea here really is to keep working until we start to get some fatigue in the calf muscles at the back of both legs now if this is very simple for you what I would do is I would go up on two take the good one away so it's just the right one we're working and then slowly lower down just on the bad leg so again up on two take it away and then slowly back down now only do that if you find you can do more than 15 of the first one if you can't do 15 just stick with the first variation of this and again with this exercise we're going to try and do it a few times a day whenever you get a minute just do a set of these because it starts to get that planta fascia tissue healing a lot quicker and strengthens the carves which is also very important now the fourth step for fixing planta fasciitis is to choose the right Footwear now when we talking about the right Footwear what we need really are cushioned heels and some support for the arch so that means flip flops and sandals are not typically the best Footwear for plant of fasciitis although the caveat is there are some sandals now like Birkenstocks that do have pretty good foot molding which can work well for planta fasciitis but your typical flat-shaped soles are not fantastic for this problem barefoot shoes probably not a good idea for planta fasciitis just because there's no cushioning for the heel I don't mind those as a whole but when you've got plant fasciitis not typically a good idea now I personally had plant of fasciitis and one of the best things for me was wearing a pair of these you can see these are my old dirty running trainers but this is exactly the kind of thing that can help so these are the Nik Air Pegasus I've not been paid to mention these they're just my favorite trainers and basically they've got really spongy cushioned heels but they also have support for the foot they've got a carbon fiber plate within them which means the the shoe can't be bent in half that's very important so you want rigid structure but soft cushioned heels and ideally a bit of a a heel raise there at the back so this is the kind of thing I would go for now you want to be wearing these as much as you can whilst you're getting better so that might even mean putting them on around the house to wear them around the house and obviously when you're out and about walking on concrete something with cushioning like this can really really help now the fifth essential thing for plant of fasciitis is to watch your resting position of your foot and your ankle now we think about exercises and we think about walking but not many of us think about how we sit and how we lie down and what our feet are doing then and just because you're not on your feet doesn't mean you can't be helping your problem to get better whilst you're sitting and resting so if you're sat at a computer and you have your uh feet out in front of you and your feet are floppy what that's effectively doing is allowing the Cal to very slowly get tight again so you're almost undoing some of the work you did when you were stretching it out so what I would prefer to do is to have your legs tucked underneath you at the desk when you're sat so that your calf is actively on a little bit of a stretch that's just my theory and I think that helps people to get better a bit quicker and equally when you're lying in bed if you lie on your back and you tuck your sheets in at the bottom of your bed that's going to push your toes down like that and equally that's going to put your calf into a shortened position and it's going to undo some of your stretching so we shouldn't sleep with our uh sheets tucked in at the bottom of the bed because that's going to pull your foot down you want to have your sheets out at the bottom of the bed so that your foot can stay relaxed and ideally not pointing down away from you as well and then the sixth thing to consider when we're talking about plant of fasciitis is use of an insol now if I was going to prescribe an insole for someone I would always go down the route of prescribing custom fit Orthotics and these are Orthotics that are prescribed specifically for the patient Based on data we've taken from our foot scan um walking pad which basically scans someone's foot and as they walk assesses their biomechanics tells us exactly how they walk and how their foot interacts with the floor and then allows us to build a 3D printed orthotic based on the data so typically we get something like this which is molded perfectly to fit someone's foot if you're uh interested in this kind of service and you're local to the area obviously we can do this for you or you can find a foot scan and fits recognized provider fits with a pH but if you don't have access to something like this or you want to go down a route which is a bit cheaper then I would look for an inso with something called a planter fascia pad and this is the kind of thing we're talking about these are just store-bought insoles they're not as good as the custom fit ones because they're not specific for you but they will provide some support to the arch which helps with a foot that's collapsing inwards and it will also provide some cushioning to the the painful area of the plant of fascia so this is what I would go for if you just want a generic one but these are vastly superior in how they can take pressure off the planta fascia and we can get a planta fasciitis pad put in there for you as well so that is definitely something to consider if you've noticed your foot is caving inwards and it can help the problem to get better as a result so anyway those are the six things I would tick off with someone who has plant of fasciitis if I was seeing that person in clinic the other thing we would do is soft tissue work to their calf to their planta fascia and ultrasounds to the area where the planta fascia is painful those three things tend to speed up recovery as well but the six steps I've given you are things you can get on with at home I hope you found this video useful if you have please leave a comment below and let me know and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book it's called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you so much for watching I appreciate your time and I'll speak to you on the next video

Channel: HT Physio – Over-Fifties Specialist Physio

Views: 143,109

Keywords: Farnham, Surrey, Physio, Physiotherapy, Knee Pain, Health, Exercise, Wellness, senior health, Over fifty, flat feet, foot pain, healthy feet, podiatry, physical therapy, plantar fasciitis, achilles tendon, achilles tendinitis, achilles tendinopathy, over-fifties, foot health, foot care, stretches for over-fifties, bob & brad, athlean X, foot exercises, calf stretch, foot pain relief, plantar fascia pain relief, achilles pain relief, achilles exercises

Id: 2k92DGPzVbU

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2023