Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #7 - Plantar Fasciitis/Heel Pain - Exercises

Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. In this episode, we're going to be talking about some strengthening exercises for heel pain. This is the third part of three here. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the signs and symptoms of heel pain, how it would present. Last week, we showed you some stretching exercises, for it to help you start to help alleviate that. And this week we're going to start off by, showing you, some strengthening exercises. So, you have a whole thing to work on your heel pain, whether it be arch pain, heel pain, whether it's Plantar Fasciitis, Achilles Tendonitis, or whatever may be on your foot, these things should help with that. And if you have questions and you want to go back, you can always go back to our website and I'll be underneath there and you can link into that and you can go back to the previous couple of episodes that are underneath our blog heading on our website. So you can go back and review things if you want to if you happen to miss the first two. So, thanks for joining us and we're going to get started here.

So we're going to work on what we call an arch set. So you're just trying to create an arch and standing there or sitting, preferred versus standing but if you can do it standing, it's fine. You want to try to minimize the toe-curling because that's what you're going to want to do, but just try to create an arch and get those muscles to function correctly. And you can do sets of , say two of twenty, two of thirty, three of twenty; something like that. They're pretty easy to do, you can just do them periodically In the evening, watching TV at Work, taking your shoes off if you're sitting at a desk; it's a pretty easy thing to do. The next thing we'd do is start to work on the calf and the Achilles Tendon a little bit and do some eccentric strengthening, so what we call some eccentric heel raises. You're going to go up on two legs evenly, shift your weight over to one side, pick the leg up and then down on one, then back down, Up on two evenly,shift the weight over just to one leg, pick the other foot up and down on one. Up over and down. Now, if you need to keep your opposite foot down, you can't pick it all the way up, If you need to keep that tippy-toe down for balance and the majority of the weight is on the other leg, that's fine. So up and now we'll go to the other side over and down. Up, over and down. And typically for that, we are going to be doing a couple of sets of ten---two or three sets of ten on each leg for that. That was maybe a little more difficult, hopefully, you're not having pain when you do it, but hopefully, it loosens up as you do it.

Now, the next one we're going to do is some resistance band work, we call it Ankle Four Away because we're going in four different directions and I'm going to show you here on the floor. I'm going to grab what I need. So you're going to see my band here, and I've got it tied around this post at my foosball table here. And you can just sit and you pull back and you determine the resistance on it. And now pull in your foot back, call it doors deflection and you got some resistance and you're working the muscles in the front of your shin there. I'm going to do two to three sets of ten to fifteen repetitions there. Next, you can do just the opposite. Same green kind of band resistance, whatever resistance you feel comfortable with, and you either determine how much pull and resistance is on it. Now we're going to work on pushing on the gas pedal. We're going to clutch, if you still have a clutch, now we're going the opposite; we're going, pushing down what we call Plantar Flexion. Slow and controlled, let it come all the way up, getting really stretched in the back and then push down. You can do it barefoot, you can do it with your shoes on; does not matter, no preference, nothing's not one better than the other.


So the next one we're going to do is move the foot out. And this way you put both legs and I'm going to put this band now around my opposite on the bottom side of the opposite foot and use that as a fulcrum. And now I'm going to just foot in and foot out, foot in and foot out. So I've got my foot around the bottom of it, I'll let it come in, and now I'm going out, in and out, slow and controlled.Try to do all the work at the ankle instead of the hip, and leg rolling in. My knee and hip stay and it's just my ankle is doing all the work. Now we're working the outside part of the muscles here. And finally, we're going to work on the inside part and you kind of rearrange that a little bit. We cross our legs now, and so that the opposite leg still becomes a fulcrum and now I'm pulling in. I go out a little bit and pull in and out, in and out, pulling in and out. So you cross legs over your foot, yes becomes the fulcrum. And how much you pull in this determines how much resistance is on that. Do you want it to be a good resistance, not too easy, but not too hard, you want it to try to work smooth? You don't want to be jerky or like a cog wheel. So you want to try to be nice and controlled.

And then the last thing we're going to work on is balancing on one leg.So I'll show you here too. So you can hold on to something, I'm using the foosball table here, I can use my pillow if I want to. You just want to start, try to balance on one leg where you're keeping your legs in good alignment. You're just going to pick up that opposite leg, the knee that you're standing on is going to be nice and soft. We're looking for a level waist and we're trying not to collapse in or just the opposite, we're not going to try to go on the outside part of your foot. You want to try to keep the weight equal on your foot front back in and out as I said, and the knee is soft, not locked out hard. The waist is level and your legs are in good alignment, you're not having your leg out in front of you and I'll show you what that looks like from the side here. So here, same thing, legs in good alignment, you're just picking that leg up. The knee is not locked out, it is actually just a little soft. And still same thing, waist level, you're not trying to dip your hip here. And holding on with one hand or two hands is legal, and you want to have that equal weight on your foot inside, outside, front to back. And the big thing you want to try to really concern yourself with there is not trying to curl your toes for stability imbalance, you want to try to keep your foot rested and your toes rested. You just want to just have your foot there. If you can do an arch set, that'd be great, but otherwise, just keep your foot there and just try to keep that equal weight. And you can hold that for 10 seconds, 20, 30, 40 seconds, as long as you want. And then as you get better with doing that, you can no hands; you can brush your teeth, fix your hair. Don't do any food preparation with knives, it's a little too dangerous; you don't want to lose any digits or have to go to the ER.

So those are four basic exercises. We talked about doing arch sets, we talked about doing eccentric heel raises, we talked about doing resistance band four ways----all four directions, and then balancing on one leg. So you work on those things as well as the stretches and a couple of the icing, the pain management side of it as well, and doing some of the foam rolling and self-soft tissue. And hopefully, that will help out your heel pain, your arch pain, and your Achilles tendonitis. And as long as you're consistent and consistency's always the key on a daily basis.

So thank you so much for joining us. As I said, there's a link, for the website to look at the previous episodes. We have actual plantar fasciitis, heel pain, and arch pain workshop coming up next Monday night, the 27th at 6:30 PM. It'll be in the clinic as well as zoom. So we have either option, you can do it virtual or in person. There was a link for that underneath here, as well as you can click on that and register. If you want some more information, get some one-on-one attention, ask some questions, that sort of thing. And please, keep sending your questions to j.king@ptadvantagepc.com any health, wellness, or PT-related questions that you want to be answered so we can keep supplying you with information and education and trying to keep you guys on top of your game and keep you healthy. Thank you very much. And we look forward to seeing you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joe. Bye.