These boots are made for walking: How to help with Plantar Fasciitis and other causes of foot pain

This month I am going to show you an exercise which will help your feet. In particular, I am going to show you some exercises which will help with plantar fasciitis.

There are lots of issues that can cause pain in your feet such as plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendinopathy.

With plantar fasciitis, you get pain in your heel, in the “ball” of your heel where it weight bears, and with Achilles tendonitis, it is pain in the Achilles heel- the back of your ankle where the heel joins the muscles at the bottom of your calf.

It is very important to take care of your “foot posture”. Having flat feet or other gait issues can cause problems radiating all the way up the legs, to the hips, and into the pelvis and spine, causing pain, known as referred pain, or causing you to hold yourself in a certain way bringing on other injuries or pain in your back, hips or legs.

The muscles that are being activated in this video are the posterior tibialis. They are muscles in your lower leg that help you to plantarflex and invert the ankle, and maintain integrity in your foot posture. This exercise will help strengthen those muscles to give you more support to help keep your feet healthy. It also works all the way up the body to help with pelvic floor and glutes.

These muscles also help with the arches in your feet. If you have issues with the posterior tibialis muscles this can lead to flat feet or flat or fallen arches.

This is just one of many exercises that you can do to help ensure good “foot health”.

Other useful things to ensure that you are able to “keep on walking”:

• Go barefoot as much as possible.

• Wear proper shoes. Wearing shoes that crush the toes can cause bunions and pinch the nerves in between the metatarsals (bones in your feet) causing Morton’s Neuroma.

• Wearing orthotics can help if you have pronation issues- check with your doctor or podiatrist to make sure this is ok

• Other easy foot exercises:

  • Rotating your ankles- 10 times in each direction

  • Roll a tennis ball under your feet

  • Pull your toes towards your ankle (10 times each foot)

Disclaimer: These are NOT my videos, they are posted as per You Tube’s content sharing policy.

No responsibility is accepted or assumed for any injuries howsoever caused through the performance of the exercises outlined in these videos.