Video Transcription
Hi everybody, Dr. Ryan here. Today we are going to be covering a set of exercises and stretches for plantar fasciitis.
Let’s get into it.
Plantar Fascitis
So with plantar fascitis, we actually have a few different things we’re going to cover today. One of them is a little bit of a secret muscle that not many people work on when we have plantar fasciitis. So we’re going to start; I have a trigger point ball here. You can absolutely use a racket ball or a tennis ball or something like that as well. The first exercise is a ball roll on the bottom of the foot. So I usually like to do this while I’m sitting at the table eating dinner or something like that. Bottom of the foot. And we’re just going to roll back and forth on it. Now you kind of want to get the outside of the foot, want to get the middle of the foot, want to get the arch of the foot as well. Okay, so we’ll do that.
Soleus Muscle
The next one is the soleus muscle. So this muscle is kind of the secret muscle that no one talks about when we talk about working on plantar fascitis. If we come just to the middle of the leg and fall off the bone, there’s a muscle deep in there called the soleus. Now it’s bone, soleus muscle, then the calf. The only way you can get to it is with a pinpointed type of thing, like a ball. So we’re going to roll up and down along this muscle. It will be tender in almost everybody, but with plantar fasciitis, it’s very, very sore. So I’ll roll up and down on that one.
Towel Scrunch
The next exercise is a towel scrunch. So we put our heel on the back of the towel and lay our foot down. From there, we’re going to want to reach our toes out, grab and pull the towel back. It’ll look something like this, and we’ll repeat until the towel has come all the way back to us. Good.
Calf Stretch
The last thing we are going to do is stretch out the calf. Now we can use a wall. We can use a stair. In this case, I’m just going to use a block here. We’re going to put our toes up onto it, and we are going to lean into the toes, and we’re going to feel a stretch all along the backside of the leg there. It’s a great stretch to end the series.
Now, if we find that there’s a lot of inflammation at the bottom of the foot, one more thing to add would be to do an ice bath. Take a bucket of water, put some ice in it, put your foot in there, and let that kind of calm down and relax. And that is a whole series to help you with your plantar fasciitis.
