How I Fixed my Plantar Fasciitis for GOOD

These are my five most potent exercises that I use to ease my symptoms of plantar fasciitis and, more importantly, rebuild my body from the ground up so that I never have to experience plantar fasciitis again. This has to be one of the most requested videos ever. I get questions all the time asking me how I fix my plantar fasciitis. The truth is, I don't really know. We can never really definitively know what solves an issue and all we can do is just try new things, stick to them for a little while and measure the progress and improvement. By a little while, I mean like more than once or twice. In this video, I'm going to show you some new things that you can try out. This is far from being a comprehensive list of all the exercises that are useful for helping plantar fasciitis but these are the key movements that I've found personally most beneficial. No matter what your approach is to fixing plantar fasciitis, it requires you to become interested in your own body to move, to experiment and, in a way, you kind of become your own primary healthcare practitioner and I think that's a good thing because at the end of the day, there's no one that has a higher vested interest in your health than you do. So with that said, let's get into it. Come on, just get to the exercises. These first two exercises I want to show you are kind of what I used in crisis mode. They're things I did to keep my symptoms at bay just to kind of calm the storm when I was doing my hike across Spain. My first response to plantar fasciitis was fairly instinctual. It's just to start massaging the bottom of the foot and getting to know my feet a little better. You want to avoid massaging directly on the area of pain but instead, explore the areas of the foot where you can place some light pressure whilst being able to flex and extend the toes. Work back and forth across the foot for a few minutes and at the same time, mobilize each of the toes by just manipulating them back and forth. So just grab them and bend them back and push them forward whilst you're massaging with the other hand. So you might not feel any really tight spots when you're just massaging with the toes in their natural position but just discover what happens when you pull your toes back. That really exposes a lot more of the tissue and you can really get in there and start to understand where those little tight spots are. And this really is about getting to know your foot, like just get in there and feel where the sensitive parts are but it shouldn't be painful. I mean, we call this making friends with your foot for a reason, like you wouldn't go up to someone and poke them in their most sensitive area when you're first getting to know them, would you? People think that massage is meant to be painful, it's not supposed to be enjoyable, so just relax and enjoy it. After repeating this for a few minutes, you should find the bottom of the foot can handle a little bit more pressure and one way I like to step this up is by using a trigger point ball. A little cork one like this you can bring on a hike, could be a lifesaver. I would do two minutes up and down and two minutes side to side covering all the surface area of the arch of the foot and as when doing any stretching or mobility, you want to breathe deeply, you want to relax and let the muscle drape over the implement. For a more advanced version of this drill, I would place a broomstick or in the case of a hike, a trekking pole on the floor so you can just play with how much pressure you're putting into the foot and into the knee as you're driving it over and try and move the toes at the same time. Step back and forth, side to side, go looking for like really tight areas and breathe deeply, wiggle your toes a little bit and then go searching for another area. My second symptom reliever was something called the toe glove. The idea with this movement is to further mobilize and separate your toes and this can be done by working the fingers into the gaps between your toes. Start by working the tips of the fingers, grabbing the toes and just working your hand around the foot both in a clockwise and then in an anti-clockwise direction or vice versa. First knuckle is level one, second knuckle is level two, third knuckle is level three and really pay attention to where your toe mobility is limited. Try to slowly work in more range by working the fingers deeper and creating those bigger and bigger circles. I think toe mobility is one of the key factors in avoiding plantar fasciitis from the start as it directly relates to the stretch and load placed on the fascia, not to mention its role in pushing the foot off the ground during the gait cycle. If your toes struggle to bend and flex under the load of just your hand, it's unreasonable to expect the toes to be capable of absorbing, transferring or pressing the weight off the ground as it's meant to do with each step you take. So start building more mobility and range of motion and really start working those toes loose. Now the next three exercises are related to treating the actual cause of plantar fasciitis and obviously that can vary from person to person but I think these three hit on the most important areas and I certainly found these three most helpful for me when I was getting back some strength and mobility in my feet. So the first one is the standing toe extension. So to begin with the standing toe extension, most of you will just begin here placing a little bit of weight into the ball of the foot and into the toes and put as much weight as you can handle comfortably whilst bending the knee and driving the knee over the toes. Eventually you'll be able to build enough strength to be able to safely step back and forth without any pain. At first you might need to do that quickly if you don't have the control but the idea here is that we're building the ability of the plantar fascia to be strong and controlled under load and that is essentially what's happening in each step. We're just really mimicking the pattern that happens in toe off with each step. At the most basic level plantar fasciitis occurs when the load placed on the tissue exceeds the actual capacity of the tissue. So my approach was to increase the capacity of the tissue with these gentle toe extensions. If I had to guess I would generally perform like three sets of 20 on each leg. But what's more important than reps is seeing how much of your body weight you can comfortably hold with the toes bent. And should you be doing these exercises on both feet? I would say yes, you always want to be preparing the tissues on both sides so that we don't run into the same problem later on down the track. This is an old favorite of mine you've probably seen in other videos. This is the dorsiflexion sit. The idea here is to place the toes bent underneath the feet. Hold for as long as comfortable in this position with the toes fully flexed and the plantar fascia under load. Breathe deeply through your nose and relax here for two minutes. If it's impossible for you to relax and be comfortable here then work your way back into this position slowly rocking the hips back as far as you comfortably can. The more weight you can take off your hands and more weight you can put onto the hips the more challenging it will be. Once reps become more and more comfortable aim to hold the bottom position for a little bit longer. I like to focus on holding for one slow deep breath. It's a really good duration to work towards because it puts you into a relaxed state. And what we want to do is signal to the body that you can be relaxed and you're comfortable and you're in control of that position. But if you're really struggling here just back off a little bit because you certainly can go too far too quickly with this. So just check your ego at the door just ease into a variation that you can do comfortably and work out from there. And always remember it took a long time for your body to reach a point of dysfunction and it's going to take a while for you to get back to functioning properly so hang in there. Okay fifth and final exercise. Finally we have the wide balance drill and I think anyone who has really struggled with plantar fasciitis for the long term needs to start integrating balance work. But because very few people understand the true role that hips play in plantar fasciitis, I'm not one of them. All I know is that gaining more balance and control of my hips coincided directly with easing of my plantar fasciitis symptoms. So take that as you will. I've taped out a big Y here just to kind of demonstrate to make it very clear for you what this movement should look like but you really don't need to do this. Although it is a really nice way to kind of measure your progress. For example you might like to just put on a marker where you can reach and extend that range over time. I think why this works is because we're working balance. We're holding a strong arch in the foot so really kind of grip the ground with your toes here. Control the hips, control the knee and really slow this down. You don't want to be on day one trying to reach as far as you can. That's not the object of the game here. What we're trying to do is maintain that really nice core integrity, control of the foot, control of the foot core and really be 100% control of the movement. One little tip though, if you find the knee is tracking over to the medial side of the line, that's bad news. We want to keep that knee out driving over the second and third toe for all of these movements. I think a lot of people think of balance training as just for old people or kids developing motor skills but really a is super fun and b is so beneficial for generating some control through your torso, hips, knees, ankles, feet all at the same time. But if you are struggling with ankle mobility like I did then check out this routine. There's a whole playlist, several videos and a free ankle mobility guide that you can download as well. So when performing any of these five exercises, keep these following rules in mind. Only ever move within a pain-free motion. You don't want to be experiencing pain in any of these moves. Discomfort yes but pain no. Maintain controlled breathing through the nose whilst doing these positions. Again that's to stimulate the vagus nerve, signal to the body that we are in control and we're gaining mobility and it's a good thing and we can just tell the body to relax by breathing in nice and calmly in through the nose out through the nose and it's going to help you just tune into your body a little bit. Third you want to chase a feeling of fatigue where the muscles feel like they're being worked. Don't worry about the reps here. Everybody's going to be different depending on where they're strong and where they're weak. I really just want you to chase a feeling of fatigue here to just work until you've got maybe one or two reps in the bank then you can call it a set. Move on to the next exercise in the circuit and that'll give you a little bit of time. Come around and do the whole circuit at least one more time. Two rounds is good, three is even better. So they are my top five exercises for plantar fasciitis. You can perform them one after another in a circuit. I would start out by doing this just one day, see how you recover over the next couple of days and hit it every third day for a week or two. If you're responding well and your symptoms are going down then repeat it every second day and again monitor your symptoms and see if they improve. Finally just keep in mind that the body doesn't operate in separate parts. This is links in a chain. So feet, ankles, knees, hips, it's all working together as one system. So simply just focusing on the feet is probably not going to help your situation. You need to expand and start training the body as a whole. And I think that single leg balance is really massively underestimated when it comes to plantar fasciitis and for training hikers in general. That's why I made this video, three of my favorite bodyweight balance moves that you can try out right here. That's about it for this one. Thanks for watching, do all the things, like the video, subscribe. That's all for this one. I'll see you on the summit.