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If you have ever had plantar fasciitis then you know how debilitating it can be.
And if you haven’t had it before, lucky you, I hope you never have to deal with it.
Roughly 3 million Americans (10% the general population) have to deal with plantar fasciitis at some point in their life (Plantar Fasciitis – StatPearls, n.d.) so it is no wonder I hear it talked about quite frequently.
Unfortunately I became part of this statistic last year.
Like most hard headed people I felt it in my left foot but tried to ignore it, eventually though it got so bad that when I woke up in the morning and had to walk to the bathroom, I honestly considered crawling because the pain was so bad.
I don’t really know how it happened. If I had to guess, I think it had something to do with rucking with a weighted vest and doing that in a combination with minimalist shoes with almost no padding in them. I don’t know that for sure but it was the one thing I had added to my movement routine in the weeks leading up to the plantar fasciitis occurring.
Regardless, I have heard enough people talk about their plantar fasciitis and ask me what I did to resolve mine to eventually decide that I should just write a blog post that I can point people to.
I am not a movement specialist, doctor, or physical therapist, so none of what I write in this blog post is supposed to help anyone medically. Please consult with your own medical professional before implementing anything I am about to say. I am purely sharing some of the things I tried in my nearly year long journey to resolve my plantar fasciitis.
With all that out of the way let’s dive into the first thing I did to resolve my plantar fasciitis.
Get Out Of Pain
Shoe Choice and Inserts
When I eventually admitted I had plantar fasciitis and I needed to do something about it, I told my coach Dr. Mike T Nelson and he said the first thing we need to do is get you some pain relief. He asked me when it felt good vs when it felt bad. I told him the only time it felt good (or not terribly painful) was when I was wearing my running shoes which were a pair of Altra Torrins. He immediately said, “Let’s wear those as much as possible to get you out of pain.”
This went against what I was taught about foot health which was to be barefoot as much as possible and wearing minimalist shoes when you had to wear shoes.
However I had reached the point where the tissue on the bottom of my left foot was so inflamed that every step without shoes on or in my minimalist shoes was causing me pain and I was not giving the inflammation in the tissue time to resolve.
Reluctantly I began to wear my running shoes nearly all day long.
AND IT WAS AMAZING!!!!
It felt so good to walk and not be in pain after taking every step.
Eventually I came across some inserts I could put in my minimalist shoes (a pair of Vivobarefoots) that allowed me to wear them as well. These inserts from Dr. Scholls worked really well for me. If you have minimalist shoes and would like to continue to wear them I suggest you pick these up and throw them in your shoes to see if it helps.
If it doesn’t help then search for a pair of shoes that has a good amount of padding. I know this may fly in the face of everything people say about foot health and foot strength, but when you are dealing with plantar fasciitis you will never be able to have healthy feet unless you can get out of foot pain. If that means wearing a padded shoe most of the day or using some inserts in your minimalist shoes that is OK because, in my opinion, it’s step #1 in getting back to having healthy feet.
KT Tape
The other thing that seemed to help get me out of pain was using KT Tape on my foot, ankle, and calf. If you are not familiar with KT Tape it’s the tape that you see sometimes on athletes on TV.
https://portmelbournephysio.com.au/what-is-kinesiology-tape/
Now this could be placebo, but I felt some pain relief when my foot was taped vs when it was not tapped.
How did I tape my foot?
I just followed this video:
As far as what tape to buy, I found the “pro” version of KT Tape lasted much longer on my foot than anything else. It costs more, but you use less because it stays on longer.
Mobility and Strengthening Exercises
Once you start to relieve the pain from the plantar fasciitis you can move on to actually trying to fix the problem.
I spent a lot of time trying different things. Many of the things I tried did nothing for me even after consistently doing them for weeks.
Eventually I narrowed things down to a protocol that I THINK made a difference for me.
Does that mean it will work the same for you?
Unfortunately not.
But like myself, you have to try different things and see what works. My hope is that these help save you some time.
Foam Roll and Mobilize The Lower Legs
While the pain may be in your foot, it could be caused by dysfunction in the leg. So lots of time working to mobilize and strengthen the muscles in your legs can help relieve the pain in your feet. This is why I spent a lot of time focusing on the legs in these next two videos.
This first video shows you how I use a hand foam roller to work all around the bottom half of my leg. The foam roller I used is designed by Dr. Kelly Starrett from The Ready State and can be purchased through Rogue.
I also found that going around the leg with a lacrosse ball helped too. I like using the Supernova (again designed by Dr. Kelly Starrett) because it has a tacky surface which grabs onto the skin and moves things around. It helps “loosen” things up more than just a normal lacrosse ball. This second video shows what I would do with the lacrosse ball.
Heel Raises – Research Based Symptom Relief
Along my journey to heal my own plantar fasciitis I came across a website called Fasciitis Fighter. This company produces a couple of different tools that can be used to help alleviate plantar fasciitis but the one I was interested in was their Foot Strengthening Trainer. This trainer is based on research done that showed doing some heel raises with your toes placed on a rolled up towel were better than stretching for healing plantar fasciitis (High-Load Strength Training Improves Outcome in Patients With Plantar Fasciitis: A Randomized Controlled Trial With 12-Month Follow-Up, n.d.).
You can see a video of the exercises the research participants did in the below YouTube video
The good news is you don’t need the Foot Strengthening Trainer from Fasciitis Fighter to do this. As you can see in the video above all you need is a rolled up towel and a step.
However the Foot Strengthening Trainer has the advantage of not having to roll up the towel and provides some extra padding which I was a fan of. It is also not terribly expensive either.
Fasciitis Fighter also provides a great guide on their website on how to use the Foot Strengthening Training including sets, reps, and progressions to do as you gain more strength.
The sets, reps, and progressions from the study were as follow:
The exercise was completed every other day and the progressions were made after the following timelines.
• 0-2 weeks – 3 sets of 12 repetitions
• 2-6 weeks – 4 sets of 10 repetitions
• >6 weeks – 5 sets of 8 repetitions
Resistance was then added as tolerated via a backpack containing books and the exercise was conducted at a tempo of 3 seconds up, 2 seconds hold, 3 seconds down.
Personally what did, and still do, is as follows:
1 set of 14-17 repetitions with both feet on the trainer.
1 set with each foot of 7-8 repetitions with one foot on the trainer.
That is it.
I made sure each repetition was slow and controlled, roughly the 3 seconds up, 2 seconds hold, and 3 seconds down as in the research study, but I don’t really time things.
I would suggest you spend some time when you first start out doing this exercise just using both feet. Once you start to feel some relief in your plantar fasciitis I would then try to incorporate some single leg repetitions.
Band Exercises
Finally there are some band exercises you can do to strengthen the muscles around the calf. I actually used these same exercises when I had a case of posterior tibial tendonitis.
Basically these exercises involve wrapping a band around the foot and then moving the foot into and out of the resistance provided by the band in the 4 main plains of motion.
Here is a video demonstrating the 4 exercises
In the video she uses a theraband. Any exercise band will work but to start you want to use a band that provides VERY LIGHT resistance. While we are trying to strengthen the muscles we don’t want to only be able to do 2-4 reps we want to do somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 reps SLOW AND CONTROLLED.
I also just did one round of these exercises and that was enough for me. However you could try and do more rounds, but I would suggest spacing them out. For example, doing one round in the morning and then one round in the evening.
As you get stronger you can increase the resistance of the band either by stretching it further or getting a thicker band. However, don’t rush it, this will take time. These are small muscles we are training so it will take time to get them stronger. Consistency is key to this process, try to do these exercises 3-5 times a week at least.
Toe Yoga
Another limitation that can cause compensations leading to plantar fasciitis is lack of mobility and flexibility of the toes. Trying to gain the ability to move your toes via toe yoga is a great intervention to increase the range of mobility your toes have.
Here is a great video from the guys over at the Foot Collective demonstrating some beginner friendly toe and foot mobilization exercises.
Many of these are very similar to what I do but might be more friendly for those who are just starting out and really need to scale back the exercises.
Below is my own personal toe yoga routine.
Fringe Interventions
These next interventions are more fringe in that I don’t really know for sure if they actually helped. In addition the cost of them might make them prohibitive. That said, if you want to throw the kitchen sink at the problem you might want to consider them.
Infrared Tape
This tape is similar to KT Tape but it is supposed to provide infrared therapy to the tissue.
How does that work?
Here is the description from their website:
Tourmaline is a therapeutic mineral that has been used for millennia in Eastern medicine and around the world. Tourmaline enhances the flow of chi. The nanometer sized tourmaline particles that are infused into Tourma®Tape are subtle, yet powerful. The tourmaline absorbs body heat and then transmits that energy back into the body in the form of far infrared light. That energy is converted by the tiny nanometer size tourmaline particles in the tape, into the form of far infrared energy. This process is called thermal-photonic conversion. Far infrared saunas have been used historically for their therapeutic value.
The tourmaline in Tourma®Tape reduces the oxidative stress in the area of the body area where it is being used and also produces negative ions that encourage a more alkaline environment in that area. Alkalinity promotes healing at a more rapid rate. Other benefits of negative ions, include; scavenging free radicals and reducing inflammation, as well as increasing blood flow and oxygen levels in the bloodstream. Collectively, these benefits will not only encourage accelerated healing, but also a more rapid recovery form physical activities.
I know it sounds a little out there for sure.
I used it on and off throughout the time I was dealing with my plantar fasciitis.
I would put a strip on the bottom of my foot and then tape over it with KT Tape as shown in the video referenced above. I am unsure if it made a difference, but it certainly didn’t hurt at all.
Peptides – BPC 157
At one point I was so desperate for relief I was willing to try anything. I had heard several podcasts on peptides in the past and the one that comes up over and over again was BPC 157. The reason why is that it is supposed to be great for “accelerating healing”.
Here is a great podcast on the topic with Dr. Andy Galpin, Dr. Ryan Greene, and Dr. Mike T Nelson on the topic of peptides.
Since Dr. Nelson is my coach, he was able to connect me with Dr. Greene who is the medical director at Monarch Clubs. After speaking with him Dr. Greene prescribed me some BPC 157.
BPC 157 needs to be injected near the area where you want the healing to occur. The needle was very small so that is something to be considered if you have a fear of needles or don’t want to stick yourself.
Also this was not covered by insurance and I needed to pay out of pocket for it. It was north of $200 for a one month supply of BPC 157.
Given its price and there being a chance that it might do nothing for you (plus the hassle of injecting yourself with it) I would say this should be the very last intervention you look into.
Wrap Up – Fix Plantar Fasciitis
This blog post actually ended up being a lot more than what I imagined when I first decided to write it. To summarize what I would suggest, again not as a medical professional, here is what I would do.
First, get out of pain. The biggest intervention that moved the needle for me was using a more padded shoe. Any shoe will do, remember at this point the goal is to get the inflamed tissue to relax to get you out of pain so you are able to do more things pain free. Wearing a padded shoe all day long may not be the best thing for your long term foot health but this is an acute intervention to get you to the point where you can start improving your foot health.
If you have minimalist shoes, I suggest looking into getting an insert to put them on, like the Dr. Scholls insert I linked to above.
Once you have some pain relief you should begin to mobilize and strengthen everything below your leg. Using a foam roller and a lacrosse ball doing the protocol I have outlined in this blog post is a good place to start in my opinion. It should help give you more range of motion in your legs and feet and alleviate some pain.
On the strengthening front, I would start with the heel raises and band exercises. I think the toe yoga I mentioned above would be a good add on, but I am unsure if that really helped me.
I personally found these interventions to move the needle on my own plantar fasciitis. The fringe interventions I mentioned might have helped as well, but I don’t have a good sense if they did or not. I would spend several months focusing on getting out of pain and working on your mobility and strength before trying any of the fringe interventions.
I hope you found this post informative and can help you or someone else who is suffering from plantar fasciitis. As a coach my goal is to help everyone improve all aspects of health whether that be healing from an injury or losing weight. All of the content I put out is free and contains actionable advice just like you found in this blog post. To keep up with all my content sign up for my newsletter using the form below and I will email you each week with content meant to take your health to the next level!
References
High-load strength training improves outcome in patients with plantar fasciitis: A randomized controlled trial with 12-month follow-up. (n.d.). PubMed. Retrieved October 9, 2024, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25145882/
Plantar Fasciitis – StatPearls. (n.d.). NCBI. Retrieved October 9, 2024, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK431073/