Plantar fasciitis treatment with 4 exercises for fast relief

Plantar fasciitis is an overuse injurie of your plantar fascia. Your plantar fascia runs from your calcaneus or heel bone to the ball of your foot.

It’s a tendon plate that is important for weight bearing. It carries about 14% of the total weight on your foot.

Your plantar fascia transports the forces produced by your calf muscles trough your achilles tendon and plantar fascia to your foot to move it.

When your ankle is stiff or your calf muscles or achilles tendon are to weak or to stiff your plantar fascia has to take over the task and becomes overused.

That caused irritation and pain.

Plantar fasciitis symptoms are particular for the condition. If you don’t have these symptoms, you don’t have plantar fasciitis. If you want to be sure about your condition, you have to get an ultrasound examination. That’s because the pain under your foot can also be radiating pain from your calf muscles. The only way to know for sure is to get an ultrasound.

The location of the pain is always at the front side of your heel bone under your foot at the medial or inner side. It’s at one specific point and doesn’t radiate. It feels like a sharp pain.

The second particular symptom is a pain in the morning. You will feel the most pain in the morning when you get out of bed. At this moment, your foot has been resting for 8 hours. That results in stiffening of your plantar fascia. The stiffness of your foot will cause more pain eventually. When you walked around a bit or stretched a bit, the pain will disappear.

Also, walking or running for a more extended period causes more pain under your foot. It is caused by overusing your foot. That results in more damage and, therefore, more pain.

Lastly, when it hurts more to walk barefoot than to walk with shoes, it indicates plantar fasciitis. When you walk barefoot, you put more pressure on your plantar fascia. It also results in more damage causing more pain.

Also read: Calf muscle pain treatment with 3 exercises for fast relief

There are several plantar fasciitis treatments available. However, some are more effective than others.

But before you start your treatment, there are several things you can do to reduce your symptoms.

The most important thing you have to do is to give your plantar fascia as much rest as you can.

The rest is needed to reduce the irritation.

I know it’s tough to give your foot some rest because you have to use it always.

But luckily there is a way:

You can buy these plantar fasciitis insoles for pain relief. They not only reduce the pressure on the painful spot.

They are also great in solving flat feet which is one of the most common causes in developing plantar fasciïtis.

Also, these insoles can help reducing knee pain and lower back pain for you as well.

When you’re walking, you are using your plantar fascia. It increases the irritates to become worse and worse. By limiting your activities, you give your plantar fascia time to recover. That also applies to standing for a long time.

Secondly, you should wear the right shoes. The right shoes are shoes that give a lot of support and reduce the pressure on your plantar fascia. Good examples are sneakers or walking shoes. Bad examples are high heels, boots or flip-flops.

Now you know what not to do so let’s start talking about the exercises you can do to relieve your pain.

The first thing you should do is stretching your calf muscles.

As I’ve shown you before tight calf muscles are one of the causes of plantar fasciitis. It reduces the mobility of your ankle and increases the stress on your plantar fascia.

Also, tight calf muscles can cause radiating pain to your heel, mimicking plantar fasciitis.

The following plantar fasciitis stretch stretches your calf muscle:

• Place your painful foot behind you in a straight line with your other foot
• Extend your hip and knee and keep your heel on the ground
• You will feel the stretch in your calf muscle
• Hold this position for 20 second
• Repeat this three times

You can also find the exercise in this video.

After a few days, you will feel that your calf muscles get looser and hurt less.

Your calf muscle is attached to your heel bone through your Achilles tendon.

Together with your calf muscle, you also have to stretch your Achilles tendon because also he causes tension on your plantar fascia.

The following plantar fasciitis stretch stretches your Achilles tendon:

• Place your painful foot behind you
• Bend your knee and move your weight as far as you can to the back
• It’s like squatting on one leg
• Hold this position for 20 seconds
• Repeat it three times

You can also find the exercise in this video.

These two exercises usually count for 50% reduction of your symptoms.

But there is more work to do to solve your problems completely.

Together with reducing the tension in your calf muscles you also have to increase the movement of your ankle.

When your ankle is stiff, the forces in your leg don’t distribute equally.

That can cause overuse of your plantar fascia.

You can perform this exercise in the following way:

• Stand on the tip of the toes of your painful foot
• Now try to make circles as big as you can
• Perform this both clockwise and counterclockwise
• Repeat this several times a day

You can also find the exercise in this video.

The last exercise you have to do focuses on strengthening your calf muscles and plantar fascia.

Lack of strength in your calf muscles is the most common reason for them to tighten up.

So when you don’t train them, they will tighten up again which will make your symptoms come back.

You can perform the exercise in the following way:

• Stand on two leg
• Stand on your toes
• Slowly come back down
• Repeat this ten times
• Do this three times

You can also find the exercise in this video.

After a while, you will see that the activity becomes too easy.

You can increase its difficulty by repeat it 15 or even 20 times.

After this, you can perform the exercise on one leg. When you can do three series of 15 repetitions on one leg your calf muscles, and plantar fascia is strong enough to cure your plantar fasciitis.

These are the four plantar fasciitis exercises you can do at home to cure your heel pain.

Sometimes however you need an extra hand to solve your problems completely.

I’ll discuss the options you have here.