Hi guys, Kris from Custom Fitness here, your Amarillo personal trainer. Today we’re going to be talking about plantar fasciitis. This is going to be the first part in a two part series, so be on the lookout for part two coming soon. And if you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188
So, today we’re talking about plantar fasciitis. How, people come in all the time and say,” Help, I have plantar fasciitis. It hurts, and the doctors keep telling me that the only really fix for it is surgery or shots.” So it’s true that most podiatrists are gonna tell you that you can do some sort of an injection, or a surgery to fix it. Does it work? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s kind of a tossup, as to whether your body is going to respond well to that treatment or not.
But believe it or not there’s actually a lot that you can do beforehand and on your own to possibly, at least minimize the symptoms, if not alleviate the symptoms. Obviously, it’s not gonna work 100% for every single person. But a lot of people feel a lot of relief, whenever we start to work through the plantar fasciitis realm, and start to release things within the leg and the foot to help that. And a lot of our clients leave here without having the pain that they had when they came in, which is awesome. Right? That’s a great thing, I love being able to help people like that.
Let’s talk first about what causes the pain, what is plantar fasciitis? Plantar fasciitis is where you typically are going to have a pain, kind of through the midsole of your foot, through the arch, possibly up into the bowl of the foot, back to the heel. It could be different places for different people, but it’s pretty much going to run down the bottom of the foot. It may be worse in the morning, maybe worse at night. Depends on once you’ve been doing during the day.
What it is though, is it’s actually typically a shortening on the muscles and tendons in that realm. So if we just focus on the foot, like a lot of people do, they’ll roll say, an ice water bottle on their back and forth. And that will help to reduce some inflammation, but it doesn’t really fix the problem. The problem typically comes … I don’t know if you can see this or not, from your achilles tendon. From this from here, rather than down here.
So this is a point of pull. You’re achilles tendon comes down to the heel, and it attaches it on underneath the foot. Well, if your calf is shortening, and your achilles tendon is shortening, it’s going to pull that foot. And if you’re not a pointed position like this, and you start to stretch, it’s going to start to pull that shortened ligament.
So what we usually do is, we start off with one of three things to kind of fix that. But what we ask our clients to do at home is, pay attention to what kind of shoes are you wearing? What kind of stretching are you doing? If you’re constantly wearing high heels or wedges, anything that keeps your foot more at a point rather than flat, that could be shortening it. Or it can be making it worse. You’ll typically feel better in those types of shoes. Because again, if it’s pointed there’s less pressure, less stretch on that tendon.
So, a lot of people tend to gravitate towards that. And if they’re not really stretching that foot, if they don’t ever take an extended step and press that heel down behind them. Or, do some active stretching for it. If you’re constantly sitting in a desk with your feet out in front of you, as you put in proper keyboarding posture, our feet will be in front. We don’t have much of a stretch of that Achilles tendon. More often than not, our legs are crossed, which again leads to that drop foot, or that pointed foot position.
The more that we do that, the less that we have flexibility wise through that achilles tendon. And our body, as we’ve discussed many times before, is highly adaptable. Meaning that, if you tell us that you don’t need to flex and stretch, it’s not going to that. It’s just energy pointing, and relaxing, and shortening those muscles. Because it says, “Well we don’t really need those that much. We don’t use them that way. So we’ll just shorten it, make it more compact.” So it causes tension there.
There’s a lot of things that we can do to cause it. What can we do to fix it? As we said there’s about three different ways that we start with. Number one is the easiest fix at home, and that is rolling a cold water bottle on the arch of the foot. Possibly like an ice water bottle, a frozen one. Just back and forth, and that’s going to help reduce inflammation. Because as you pull up those structures, you’re going to have more inflammation there to deal with. So, that’s gonna help in that realm. But again not going to fix the problem completely.
So i’m going to end part one here. In part two we’re going to be talking more about plantar fasciitis.
If can’t wait for part two, or you want to know more about Custom Fitness and what we do here, then please give us a call. If you’re wanting the accountability and help with creating an action plan to see results, or are wanting to someone to help create a workout plan to push you to your greatest potential, then that’s what we’re here for. Our trainers are here to look out for you and make sure that you are meeting your goals in a safe way.
At Custom Fitness, we customize a plan for you. We sit down with you and find out what your needs are and then build a health and fitness plan around that. We have an entire team of dedicated professionals to help you with your health and fitness goals. To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.