Plantar Fasciitis - How To Fix This Horrible Foot Pain

if you have plantar fasciitis at the moment there's absolutely no doubt how painful it is if you don't know what plantar fasciitis is it's a painful condition of the bottom of the foot so if you've been walking around and every time you take a step it's painful at the bottom of the foot then that's probably what you're experiencing right now now plantar fasciitis is irritation of the plantar fascia now you can't easily see on this model but essentially the plantar fascia is a fascia that covers the bottom of the foot it's quite a thick fascia almost like a ligamentous structure so you can see the bottom of it here starts from the heel bone and it would cover the entire bottom of the foot all the way up to the front of the foot up here what it does is it allows support in the foot so every time you take a step or plant your foot on the floor it allows cushioning and gives it some sort of resistance like an elastic recoil so in plantar fasciitis we get pain on the bottom of the foot mainly towards the side of the big toe and it can be especially painful down towards the heel so this sort of bottom half of the foot can often be more painful than up the front so the pain comes from inflammation or tearing of the plantar fascia for some reason the plantar fascia has become tight so every time you take those steps it's causing slight tearing and irritation now in my opinion i don't believe that it's just the plantar fascia that is causing the problem i also believe it's probably the muscles and the tendons underneath that as well so what we're looking at here is probably a multi-factor problem the fascia and the muscles and the tendons and in later stages of plantar fasciitis where the heel bone is and the fascia connecting to the heel bone you can get some bony spurs some bony growths so it's called a heel spur and this can apparently cause pain in some people as well although when it comes to heel spurs some people will have heel spurs but not have pain whereas other people won't have heal spurs but yet will still be in a lot of pain so the problem with the conventional approach to plantar fasciitis is that most practitioners and most therapists are only working on the bottom of the foot they're they're doing soft tissue work they're doing massage they're doing stretching sometimes certain practitioners might put you in splints to sleep in overnight sometimes they might put you in boots or they get you doing a lot of rolling with golf balls massage balls tennis balls all of that rolling is only really going to cause more problem the problem is here but the cause is not necessarily here so working solely on the bottom of the foot and no pun intended that is not necessarily going to make the problem any better we have to start thinking elsewhere so we have to start thinking about the mechanics of the foot we have to start thinking higher up so as we've already shown you know you've got this fascia that comes down here and then it continues over the heel and connects with the achilles tendon and then up into the calf complex so we have to start working into the calf releasing the calf bringing better blood flow to the calf and then thinking higher up into the knee hip hamstring glutes lower back as well so when you're trying to address the problem the cause is not always in that area so start thinking outside the foot now in order to fully understand how plantar fasciitis works we need to understand some basics of foot mechanics now in your foot so this is a left foot you should have a natural arch this arch varies depending on person to person some people are very flat footed so this arch would be almost non-existent and other people have a very high arch now in my experience most people i see who have plantar fasciitis are either people with normal arches or people with slightly flattened arches i very rarely see people with high arches with plantar fasciitis and my theory behind that is so the plantar fasciitis so the plantar fascia attaches to the heel and attaches to the front of the foot now if you've got very high arch that those tissues are going to be a little bit shortened but because there's probably very little movement through the foot through the bones of the foot that plantar fascia very rarely gets a really a lengthened stretch whereas people with normal arches and flat arches tend to have more mobile feet so the amount of stretch going through the plantar fascia will probably increase more than someone with a high arch now when we're looking at a foot what we should see is there should be some natural movement there should be some natural movement with that arch so as someone is walking we're expecting the arch to kind of bend a bit more and also then straighten out a little bit more so when we're assessing someone for plantar fasciitis the first thing we need to do is obviously look at the foot how well is the foot moving are all the bones moving okay is there too much mobility through the foot is there a good movement within the heel bone on the ankle if that is stiff that could potentially cause more movement to go through the foot so we want good movement through the ankle and we want good movement to happen through the heel bone if either of these two are stiff then the foot is going to have to compensate and therefore that's going to put more stress through the fascia and the muscles and the tendons on the bottom of the foot the next thing we need to consider is what's happening higher up if someone has good stability within the knee the hip the back the pelvis then the foot should be working as per normal but if someone has a very weak or instable glute muscles or hips then you could end up getting more rotation through the leg that can then put a lot more strain and roll through the arch of the foot so again weak or unstable hips and glutes could potentially lead to some problems down here in the arch so although we've discussed so far the the plantar fascia we need to think further afield we've got to think further outside the foot so although we've got the plantar fascia here causing us the problem is that the cause probably not one thing we need to then do is think okay what's what's the next thing above it so if we continue in the direction of the plantar fascia we come up into the achilles tendon obviously we've got the ankle and foot mechanics as well come up into the kidneys tendon and then up into the calf so if you have tight calf muscles you can't get this forward bend of the ankle we can't get this dorsiflexion of the ankle so that's going to put a lot more strain through the bottom of the foot then if we've got poor mechanics in the hip let's say you've got poor stability so when you're walking instead of having this nice strong hip and keeping the knee out what if the weak what if the muscles in the hip and the glutes were weak and causing your your your thigh to roll in your knee to roll in and therefore your foot to roll in that's going to put a lot more strain through the bottom of the foot so as we're walking one thing we should see is the heel strike first it rolls from the outside of the foot as we transfer over and take a step through we move on to the ball of the big toe and then onto the big toe and continue the step so if your foot mechanics or your gait mechanics are not working properly let's say you're planting your foot and straight away moving on to the inside of the arch so your knees collapsing in that's going to put a lot more strain through the muscles tendons and plantar fascia on the foot the next thing we need to consider is higher up as we are taking a step there's this kind of counter rotation through the body if you don't have that if you're too stiff through the upper body and so as you're stepping you're not counter rotating what needs to happen then is you're putting more rotation through the leg and through the foot so that's going to cause the foot again to collapse in so that's going to put a lot more strain through the plantar fascia so although the problem is in the foot we need to think higher up into the cuff into the hip into the spine is your gait mechanics working properly are you rotating through your spine so if you're not if you're tight anywhere else in the body that could potentially be causing you problems within your feet now when it comes to the rehab and the treatment of plantar fasciitis a lot of practitioners will just offer the same one-size-fits-all approach to everyone but not everyone is at the same stage now if you've seen any of my previous videos you probably would have heard me talk about the three phases of recovery the first phase is we've got to get the pain and inflammation down then the second phase is to increase the flexibility and the mobility within the joints and the tissues and then the third phase is about restoring strength and stability so if you have plantar fasciitis right now and it's extremely painful the chances are you're probably going to need to focus on phase one you're gonna have to get that pain and inflammation down so the last thing you want to do is start going in with some deep tissue work or stretching or strengthening so in this phase what i like to do is gentle massage of the foot that helps just to increase the blood flow through the tissues so what that does is it helps the tissues to repair because that fresh increase of blood brings with it repair chemicals and nutrients needed for those tissues to repair what it also does is it helps to relax the tissues make them more pliable so then when you start walking they're not so tight so they're not going to cause you so much pain but it's gentle massage and the reason it's gentle massage is so that it doesn't cause any more tissue damage because that will increase inflammation that will increase pain and that will make your problem worse then the next thing i like to do is apply ice so if it does feel particularly inflamed applying ice will help to reduce some of that inflammation now although ice and soft tissue massage gentle soft tissue massage seem to be opposites in nature the ice will help to restrict blood flow so that will help to push away inflammation and then the massage will help to encourage more blood to the area but that's going to bring new blood not inflamed blood so those two will work actually quite well together then the next thing i like to do is usually working up into my calf so i like to use massage or my massage gun and just try and get the calf muscles and the calf complex broken down softened up a little bit more so that that isn't causing so much strain through the heel and into the plantar fascia so if you are in acute pain if your problem really is very painful and you've been prescribed stretches or strengthening exercises and my advice would be not to do them at this stage wait for your pain to come down once your pain comes down to about a 4 out of 10 then you can move into phase two which is the stretching phase so once your pain has come down to about a four out of ten you're probably ready for phase two which is the stretching phase now a lot of the time people will tell you to put your foot up against the wall put your toe up against the wall and stretch like this but actually that's not a very functional way of stretching i mean you're never really walking like this and stretching like this and when you are that's not cause that's not where it causes you pain in your plantar fascia so instead what i prefer to do is get people to stretch with their foot behind them now we're going to stretch the cuff so we're going to stretch the left calf in this instance so have your foot behind you straight leg so your knee locked out and then holding against the wall just lean forwards and try and get the hips forwards and feel the stretch should be just below the knee so you can hold this for about 30 to 60 seconds if this is causing you too much pain in your plantar fascia then just ease it off again sometimes people say put things underneath the toes but i think that's just going to cause excessive strain through the plantar fascia it's just going to make things worse so i'm not going to suggest that if you find that that helps let me know in the comment section below if you find that that is the approach for you then tell me but for me and for my clients we seem to find that just having a flat foot is fine so once you've done that for about 30 to 60 seconds then you can ease yourself off and this time you can now bend your knee so keeping your heel on the floor try and bend your knee so again we're still working on stretching the calf but this time you should feel a little bit lower there's focusing now more on the soleus muscle so i would do this again for 30 to 60 seconds and if you have it on both sides then obviously do it on both sides but you can repeat this throughout the day as often as you like but we're working on the calf to try and take some of that tension through the heel into the plantar fascia then the next thing you could try if you are feeling like it's not too painful is with one foot just lean forward slightly and then almost as though you're going to be doing a calf raise but not so extreme so roll onto the front of your foot and just very gently lift your heel just a couple of millimeters off the floor half an inch or so off the floor by doing this you might feel a bit of a tug through the plantar fascia through the base of the heel if that causes your pain though just stop but what we're trying to do here is just apply a bit of tension through the plantar fascia we're not stretching it if we wanted to stretch it we'd be bending the toes we're not trying to stretch it we're just trying to put a bit of a pull a bit of tension through those tendons that's going to help to start remodeling some of those tissues and again i would do this maybe for about 10 seconds per repetition and then drop that down have a rest and then just do that up to about five times but you don't want to be doing it too much you just want to give a bit of tension through those tissues just to cause a bit of change now the next thing once you've gone through a period of stretching for at least a couple of weeks i would probably suggest three to four weeks of just stretching of the calf calf hamstring glutes everywhere up but not necessarily into the foot once you've gone through that period if your pain is now a bit less a bit lower then you can start to strengthen now in the previous phase we started to do some of these gentle heel raises just putting some tension through the tissue on the bottom of the foot now what we can do is start adding more resistance so push against the wall a little bit more and so you're almost fighting yourself coming up so we're going to do the same thing but this time it's more resisted so lifting the heel just a small amount off the floor and down if that feels okay then try going a little bit higher pause and down we're kind of strengthening the calf but also it will be strengthening some of the muscles in the foot you can keep going up higher and higher there's nothing wrong with strengthening the calves up higher and higher and higher pause at the top and down so once you've done that for a period of time that's great the next thing we can do is to start working more on the tissues in the foot so all i would suggest for this is just a balanced exercise so find a stable surface so floor nothing else on the floor and just balance if your balance is pretty poor you might find that this is actually quite difficult and your knees are going all over the place and your foot is going all over the place and you'll feel a burning pretty quickly that's fine so do that for only maybe about 10 seconds as you get better and better you can hold for up to a minute the longer you do it the more you're going to start to feel burning in certain areas and that simply just indicates what's weak now if that's easy for you then the next thing you can do is put something on the floor that's unstable so here i've got a balance pad you could use a towel be creative with what you've got but now we've added instability we're causing the muscles to work harder so the muscles of the flexors of the toes that's going to help to strengthen the bottom of your foot if you need to hold on to something that's absolutely fine the purpose though is to try and be unstable so you're using those foot muscles ankle muscles leg muscles hip muscles all to work and to strengthen so i would build that up to about 60 seconds but starting off 10 so you don't want to go too much too soon but over time as you get stronger you can start going more and more in terms of time now as i've already mentioned plantar fasciitis is potentially an inflammatory condition so it's causing pain it's causing inflammation on the bottom of your foot so one thing we must consider is what you are eating and drinking that could also be leading to an increase in inflammation nutrition is a very important component when it comes to dealing with pain and dealing with inflammation so if you if you are eating a potentially poor diet a diet that's high in sugar processed foods trans fats or just foods that simply your body doesn't agree with potentially you're increasing inflammation within your body so that could be contributing to the pain and the tightness within your foot so i would really recommend that you start improving your nutrition and all you need to do is just start eating more vegetables more quality food less processed foods we're not going to go into the specifics of diet but what i would just say is the better quality nutrition you have coming in the better quality of blood you're going to have and so the better able your body is to try and fix a problem the next thing i would also suggest is hydration is your hydration good are you drinking plenty of water drinking plenty of water is going to help maintain your fluid balance within your body inside your tissues and outside your tissues it's going to help to maintain good kidney function which is going to help to maintain electrolyte balance so potentially drinking water could help to relax some of the tissues within your foot and then the last thing i would just suggest is maybe trying some magnesium glycinate supplements now magnesium is a really important and very useful mineral within the body it does about 300 different things maybe more one of the main things magnesium does is it helps muscles to relax so by taking a magnesium supplement particularly a magnesium glycinate that could potentially help the tissues in your foot to also relax now i've had a lot of good success with my patients who've got plantar fasciitis by giving them magnesium glycinate one thing i would just say is make sure it's a good quality magnesium glycinate supplement but the magnesium really helps to release or relax some of the tissues within the foot and also helps to reduce inflammation as well so it's a really important and really valuable mineral and a really good supplement for you to take so what i would suggest is give it a try let me know in the comments below if you've tried magnesium glycinate and how you got on with it the dosage i usually recommend to my patients is about 400 to 600 milligrams a day so i hope this video has helped you i hope some of the stretches and some of the techniques we've done in this video is going to give you some relief what i want you to do is just let me know in the comment section below if you've tried any of these what has worked and what hasn't and if there's anything that i haven't covered in this video that has worked for you please let me know because it's not just me it's other people like you reading the comments that will get benefit from your comment thanks for watching i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Precision Wellbeing

Views: 17,721

Keywords: Plantar fasciitis, Foot pain

Id: h5TY-7gRxJ4

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 10 2021