Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #6 - Plantar Fasciitis/Heel Pain - Stretches

Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning everybody! Happy Wednesday. And welcome to your next episode. I believe this is number six of your Weekly Cup of Joe. Thanks for joining this morning. Hope you've been enjoying the segments we've been doing. This is our second of a three-part segment talking about heel pain, Plantar Fasciitis it's also can be used for Achilles's Tendonitis, Achilles Pain, and Arch pain as well. So, we talked about signs and symptoms of Plantar Fasciitis last week, and some things to play detective and how to look at things in your aspect of being like I said, a detective during the day, what might be aggravating, what might be changing and causing some of your pain today. We're going to talk about some stretches that you can do and start to work on to help alleviate some of that discomfort that you're having in your foot and heel, especially the heel pain first thing in the morning kind of thing.

So what we're going to do first, I'm going to change my position here and you're going to see we're going to do some stretching. First, we can stretch out the toe flexors, which are the muscles in the bottom of your foot, and you can just stretch out those flexors. And just by pulling your toes, if you want to passively stretch those out, okay, you're just pulling your toes backwards. Bending them backwards towards your shin to stretch out, you can pull the foot back too, stretch out the bottom of your arch as well as the bottom of your foot. So you can just passively do it if you wanted to do it that way; it's a nice and easy way to start. The next way you can do that is can start stretching out the calf and your Achilles tendon. And the calf is made up of two different muscles. So I'm going to try to show this appropriately here so you can do your classic wall stretch. So you have put one leg back, the knee is straight, the foot is facing forward and you just gently lean into the wall. Your front leg bends your back leg stays straight. Then you're stretching out the calf, you'll feel it may be behind the knee, you may feel it in your tendon, and the Achilles’ tendon down by the heel, but then where your tight is, where you'll feel it. And after doing that for 15 or 20 seconds, you back off, and then you can bend both knees and lean forward. And now, you'll feel deeper, a little lower down, closer to that heel, farther down in that calf region. No pain, just gentle stretches, deep breathing and relaxing, same thing, 15 or 20 seconds. And we do that three times on each leg.

If you want to work your toe flexors a little bit, you can actually then find a dumbbell and put on your toes. It works a little better when your shoes are on. You put your toes up on that dumbbell, and now you're bending those toes backwards. At the same time, you're doing that calf stretch. So now you're stretching up toe flexors, the arch, your Achilles's tendon and then your calf, and even your hams potentially a little bit. So that works really well. You don't mind dirtying up your walls or making sure you have clean feet or clean shoes. You can do that same kind of stretch by putting your feet, so your toes are up on the wall or your shoes are up on the wall with your toes, bending backwards, and then keeping your knee straight and stretching it out and leaning into it or bending deeper with a knee bent. So you can do them both ways. Another great place is a curb to do that or at the gas station is another great place to do that at that ledge where the gas tanks are at and stuff, you can just stretch out there, it's a great place to do it. You're not there on an everyday basis, but just the thought. So those are some great stretches that you can do. You can even stretch all the way up. So if you're tight, typically in your hamstrings, stretch out your hamstrings. If your quads and thighs are tight, stretch those out. If your hip fluxes are tight, make sure you're stretching those out. If your butt is tight, make sure you're stretching out your butt. So stretch out all the way through and those tensions, if you start to ease them, hopefully, will decrease stress all the way down the chain to your heel and your Plantar Fascia and your ach or your Achilles Tendon or whatever is creating that heel pain.

So something else that you can do is just do some gentle self-massage. And most people have probably tried this in the past or done some different things. So you're doing a little self-massage, so you can take a tennis ball. You can take a soup can, or mine's a tomato sauce can, and you can just roll that on the bottom of your foot, along that arch, try not to squish it, dent it or anything like that, you don’t have to put that much pressure. You don't have to go directly on the heel where it hurts, you can just go in the meat of the area. You can do the inside of the foot, and the outside of the foot. You can use a tennis ball as well, lacrosse ball works. You want to use that weight. If you want to use the weight, you wanted something a little bigger, you can even just use a foam roller. In three to five minutes doing something like that on each foot or the affected area can be very beneficial for you. Last week we talked about using a frozen water bottle, so using some ice on the area to calm it down. So you can freeze a 16-ounce, 12-ounce water bottle, and then you can roll the bottom of your foot. So you get cold and a foot massage at the same time. So that can be done also and do that on a regular basis.

So we gave you some great tips today, as far as some stretches and doing some soft tissue work. Primarily we recommend that you do those mornings and nights. So you do those first thing in the morning before you start your day, and you do those at the end of the day before you go to bed. So hopefully that helps take the tension out of it at the end of the day you sleep a little better, you're not so tight when you wake up and then you can stretch it out right before you get going. And then you can periodically stretch it out throughout the day and keep things loose. So hopefully those times will, I bet you're working on it, will keep the Plantar Fasciitis and all the muscles looser and you're not having that as sharp a pain throughout the day or after you sat for a while or first thing in the morning. So, if you know you're going to be sitting for a long meeting, or a long car ride or whatever, stretch out before, take breaks during if you can when you stop for a pit stop or make sure you stretch really well before you get out and walk. So just kind of plan ahead as well.

We'll do part three next week, in which we'll talk about strengthening exercises. So thank you so much. I think last week I forgot to talk about a focus for the week, so I apologize for that. This week we want to talk about perspective and look at what people are talking about as far as being an active listener. So instead of us always being the ones that talk, we would just want to step back and be present at the moment and listen to whomever we're dealing with at that point in time. Whether it be a family member, a friend, or a coworker, put everything aside, put the phone aside. So you're not texting, not looking at Facebook at a time, put down your work that you're working on, whatever it is, just be present for that person that you're interacting with and try to do that more and be more intentional. And so, you can clear the clutter in the head and you can really truly listen and foster those relationships. So if you can work on that this week, that'd be fantastic.

We do have the Plantar Fascia heel pain, and foot pain workshop at the end of the month, July 28th at 6:30 PM. So there'll be the link for registration below. You can call the clinic, as well. So if interested in hearing them a little bit more about it and getting in some more detail and some more in-depth on some of these stretches and what's the cause and what you can do to help yourself out, you can definitely register for that. So thank you very much. And we'll see you next episode of your Weekly Cup of Joe. Bye.