Plantar Injury
Plantar Injury
Plantar Injury
Foot Side View
Foot Top View
Bottom of Foot
Extensor Tendonitis
Foot Tendonitis
Foot Ligaments
Cycling Injuries
Your Plantar is not supposed to stretch. It is a band of tissue that holds the arching bones of your foot in place. Plantar Fasciitis is exactly what happens when your plantar stretches under too much stress.
The plantar fascia is a thick band of tissue that stabilizes the arch of your foot, connecting your heel bone to your metatarsal (the ball of your foot).
The plantar fascia is there to pull your heel and ball of foot together.
This holds the arch of your foot in place.
It is supposed to be like an iron rope.
You don't want your plantar fascia to stretch, or your foot's bony arch will collapse.
The Plantar is not a muscle either.
So, you cannot exercise it to make it stronger.
It's a big ligament on the bottom of your foot that holds your bones together.
It doesn't stretch and it doesn't get stronger with exercise.
There's nothing around it that you can exercise to give it support.
If it's damaged, it just needs a break so it can heal.
There are a lot of sites online promoting exercising and stretching that just doesn't work.
A lot of those exercises and stretches can make your condition worse.
Those are companies that want to sell you sham products to make a buck, or influencers chasing followers.
Read on, and understand your condition and what to do to really get better.
Your Plantar is one of the most heavily loaded components in your body.
With every step it is pulling so hard between your heel and the ball of your foot that your entire body rises on the ball of your foot and the arch stays in place.
Your plantar is not supposed to stretch one bit.
If it does stretch, it tears.
It may tear all in one spot (a torn plantar), or it may get damaged over a large length of the tendon (which we refer to as Plantar Fasciitis).
Either way, the solution to a Plantar injury is absolutely not doing more of what damaged it in the first place - stretching.
Similarly, you should never wear a tight band or strap around your arch when you are active.
There are sites that sell them as 'solutions' to Plantar injuries, but the reality is they are just going to make your situation worse!
Never have anything pressing on or squeezing around the arch of your foot when you are active. Never.
The concept of 'arch supports' are entirely marketing and truly more likely to further injure your plantar.
It's sad but true, all those people trying to sell you on arch supports are just trying to make money at the expense of your foot health.
That horrible pain you feel when you get up in the morning is because overnight your foot actually did some healing.
The small tears started to close up and then when you took those first steps, the strain tore them all open again.
Years of evolution have taught our bodies that we need to use our feet anyway, so after the first few moments of pain, our nervous system mutes the messages and the pain subsides.
We rest and we heal; we are active and we do more damage.
This is classic Plantar Fasciitis.
You are not alone. Millions of people have had the same issue.
The best thing you can do for your foot is to NOT stretch and NOT do exercise. ... at least for a little while as your body gets over the hump of healing.
You may find advice on the internet that says do this stretch or that one or exercise in this or that way, but it's all wrong.
It may be an athlete or a naturopath or a physiotherapist or maybe even a doctor of some sort, but they are absolutely wrong.
Until the pain cycle goes away, your feet need rest.
Don't exercise. Don't stretch. Rest your feet as much as you can until the pain stops.
Once the pain has largely gone you can start to become more active again but at all times watch for the pain returning.
If the pain shows up at all, ease up again.
It's not forever. Once you get on top of the condition you will get back to your old self over time.
You just need to respect your injury in the short term and let it heal.
To be clear, you exercise muscles, not ligaments or tendons or your plantar.
Exercise can be part of recovering from a Plantar injury, but it's the second part, not the first part.
The first thing you need to do is rest your injury.
Stop exercising, stop moving as much as possible - for a short time - to allow yourself to get over the initial injury.
Depending on how bad the damage is, that rest could be a few days or a few weeks.
Your pain will be your guide. If it still hurts, you need to keep piling on the rest.
A big reduction in activity over a long period of time though, causes your muscles to get smaller - in this case your calf muscle.
This process is called 'muscle atrophy'.
If the atrophy is significant you will want to do exercises later in the healing process to rebuild the lost muscle.
This is often where physiotherapy comes in.
Physiotherapy is for the second stage of the healing process, the rebuilding process.
If you start exercising too early in the recovery process you are only going to prolong your condition or perhaps even make it worse!
Since stretching and exercise will move you backward, what can you do to help yourself heal?
There are some good options.
As you are starting to realize, Plantar Fasciitis is a case of repetitive healing and reinjury.
You take a couple steps forward then you end up going a couple steps backward.
The trick is to make the backwards steps as small as possible and the healing steps as large as possible.
Try to rest your affected foot as much as possible.
Consider using crutches to keep the weight off your injured foot.
Use the ColdCure® Foot Wrap to relieve your pain and internal inflammation.
ColdCure® can also be used to treat any flare ups of pain that occur during the healing process.
Most importantly, use the ColdCure after any significant activity to help your foot stabilize any new injury.
This limits the size of the backward healing steps.
Use the BFST® Foot Wrap 3x to 4x per day to promote blood flow to your injured plantar.
This increase in blood flow works to heal your damaged tissue, accelerating the recovery process.
BFST treatments make the steps forward - the healing steps - as large as possible.
Keep doing BFST® treatments for several months after the pain is gone.
The healing process takes much longer than most people think.
Even once the pain has disappeared, your plantar may only be 20% or 30% healed.
That doesn't mean you can't restart activities.
You can increase your activity as the pain goes away, just increase it slowly and if the pain returns let up again.
Do this and your Plantar Fasciitis can truly heal - finally.
