Plantar Fasciitis: Steps to Fixing It (Hint: It's not insoles)

Probably the most overworked and underappreciated part of our bodies is our feet.

If you’ve ever experienced that pain in your heel when your foot first hits the floor in the morning then you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s hard to walk because with each step the part of your body that touches the floor is sending up shockwaves of pain. So you end up limping around, searching for those “arch support” insoles to stick in your work heels or dress shoes. They’re supposed to help but for some reason the problem never seems to go away.

Without even knowing it you’re making the problem worse.

Our feet are the last part of our body that comes into contact with the ground, with our entire body weight bearing down on them. All day, every day. No other part of our body has so much constant demand put on it. Given that fact you’d think we would want our feet to be the toughest and strongest they can be. I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Big tobacco, fossil fuels, for-profit insurance; these scandals pale in comparison to the marketing lies of Big Footwear.

Just kidding, those industries are far, far worse, but big footwear is pretty bad. Every day they show you ads and tell you about the next generation of shock absorbing, arch supporting, physics defying footwear that is going to make you run faster and longer and charge up more stadium stairs than you ever have in your life. Because you gotta protect your feet, right? They need cushioning and support, and a huge sole that dampens the damaging impact of the ground. Your feet are soft, delicate flowers that need to be wrapped in a protective layer of cushioning and shock absorption. Hopefully at this point you don’t need me to tell you that’s complete nonsense.

Who makes it through the jungle alive, Indiana Jones, or the pampered prince sitting on his fluffy pillows being fed grapes by his servants?

If you want to avoid foot pain and all the things that go with it then you want your feet as strong and tough as possible. Plantar Fasciitis can be caused by a myriad of things. Stuffing your feet into tight, cramped shoes all day is one of them. Sitting all day is another one. Even standing for long periods can cause this problem. But the biggest problem is not knowing how to address these issues to preserve the strength of your feet. When you shove your feet into tight, uncomfortable shoes for long periods, the muscles in your feet get tight and cramped up themselves. This can lead to your calves getting tight also. As anyone who has had plantar fasciitis knows, your feet hurt, but if you rub your calves, they feel pretty tight and beat up too.

When you sit all day your hamstrings become shortened and your glutes inactive. This can also lead to sciatica but it can also severely impact plantar fasciitis. To put it simply: you’re inactive. And even if you go to the gym or do some form of exercise, chances are you’re not undoing the damage you’ve done from sitting all day, or having your feet cramped up in terrible shoes, by working the knots out of your feet, foam rolling and stretching your calves, stretching your hamstrings, and then doing some glute bridges or something to get your glutes active before you start your routine. It also helps to activate the tibialis muscle, which is the muscle on your shin and helps support the arch in your foot. You can do this by putting some type of weight or resistance around your toes and then flexing your toes up toward you against the resistance so your shins warm up.

In conclusion.

So there you have it. Ditch the awful, tight, constrictive shoes, along with the ones that pad your feet up in some kind of pillow. Have at least one day a week, or maybe the evenings when you’re done with work, be a barefoot session where you walk around with no shoes or flipflops or anything on your feet. If you have plantar fsciitis or even just foot pain in general, use a foot massage ball (my favorite small massage ball), or a rope at the gym, or a frozen water bottle, or anything really to break up the tension in your feet. Then foam roll your calves, stretch your calves, stretch your hamstrings, activate your glutes and tibialis, and you should be good to go. Depending on the severity of the condition you might have to do this routine for a week or two before the foot pain goes away.

If you have any questions feel free to hit us up in the link below!

Ask A Question

What Is Corrective Exercise?

We use the term “Corrective Exercise” pretty regularly and promote its importance and value. But like with a lot of commonly used terms this one shouldn’t become a catch-all phrase that no one really knows the meaning of. Because in fact it’s quite straightforward.

If I had to summarize corrective exercise in one sentence, I’d say it’s like doing physical therapy rehab for your whole body except you don’t need to injure yourself or have had surgery in order to start doing it.

The name can be slightly misleading since the word ‘exercise’ typically leaves the impression of doing something that’s active and requires a lot of effort and movement. While this can sometimes be the case in later stages of Corrective Exercise in order to reorient the worked on muscles to the rest of the muscular system, the usual structure of Corrective Exercise is generally slow, controlled, deliberate movements intended to affect a specific muscle or small group of muscles.

These days a lot of us have occupations that require us to sit for long periods, often in front of a computer, with our heads sticking out like a turtle toward the screen and our shoulders rounding forward and down toward the key board. Or maybe it’s the complete opposite, and you have to stand most of the day, either in front of a computer, a spreadsheet, or moving from one workstation to the next. Either way, repetitive movement can reek havoc on the body. People sitting for long periods end up with neck and shoulder pain, low back pain, and probably hip pain. People standing for long periods also end up with hip pain, and you can probably add in knee and foot pain as well. Technology may make our lives easier, but it certainly doesn’t help us maintain the physically functional levels that our bodies are intended for.

And this is where the problem can start. With the intention of staying healthy and active, we go to the gym, or take a fitness class, ride a bike or follow along to an exercise video at home. While these are great intentions, most of us are entering into these activities still carrying the effects of our job’s physical demands. Pain is not some arbitrary sensation that can be ignored because you don’t want it, or avoided if you just don’t do certain things. There is a reason why your hip, or knee, or back, or shoulder or whatever hurts. Sitting and standing for long periods affects our muscles and puts excessive demand on other muscles not meant for it. This is where Corrective Exercise becomes extremely beneficial.

If you know that sitting for long periods causes a shortening of hip flexor and hamstring muscles and deactivates your glutes, and that poor posture and weakened core muscles put strain on your lower back, then it should be logical that correcting those muscle imbalances is of paramount importance. If you don’t then your exercise routine is basically just grinding away at those same muscles that are under strain already, usually making the pain worse and eventually leading to injury. Corrective exercise uses a two part approach; the first is to understand your daily patterns to predict where you’re most likely to be tight, weakened, and under or over active, and the second is to actually observe your basic movements to confirm the predictions and figure out how limited or severe the situation may be.

From here the goal of Corrective Exercise is to help restore functional muscle movements by lengthening shortened muscles, strengthening weakened muscles, and educating on the circumstances that created this problem in order to stay healthy and prevent it from happening again. In a lot of ways it can be compared to the use of physical therapy after surgery or a serious injury. Muscles that have been injured or have ceased their intended function due to lack of use are worked on until proper strength levels are achieved and pain is eliminated and full functional movement has been restored.

Send us an email with any questions and sign up for a free consultation! Thanks for reading!

Ask A Question