Plantar Fasciitis: Exercises to Relieve Pain

While its name may be difficult to understand or remember, anyone who has experienced plantar fasciitis is not going to forget the intense heel pain it causes. Plantar fasciitis occurs when the plantar fascia fibrous tissue that connects the heel bone to the toes along the bottom of the foot gets inflamed. And it doesn’t necessarily stop with the heel pain.

The same inflamed tissue can affect our foot alignment and so change the way we walk. This, in turn, can affect the knees, hips, lower backs and spines as a result. And it can happen the same way in reverse – the plantar fasciitis might be triggered by pain in the lower back affecting our gait.

Fighting the Pain with Stretches and Exercises

Fortunately, physiotherapy can help those with plantar fasciitis reduce the pain and the inflammation that feeds it with therapy, an so can you with the following stretches that may release the tension in the plantar fascia tissue.

Start early when getting out of bed in the morning by flexing your foot up and down 10 times before standing up, and massaging your foot underneath the arch. You can also try to use your toes to roll up a facecloth or small towel, or try to pick up marbles with your toes while sitting on the edge of the bed.

During the day and evening, try your hand, or rather, your foot, at doing these simple stretches and exercises to try and loosen any tightness in the muscles of the feet and calf, and strengthen your foot at the same time:

Stretching

 

The calf and heel

Leaning against the wall with both hands and your feet flat on the floor, bend the unaffected knee frontwards while keeping the affected one straight and slightly behind . Holding this position for around 10 seconds should lead to a stretching sensation in the calf and heel of the affected leg. Repeat it two or three times.

The foot:

While sitting in a chair, roll a round object under the arch of your foot. You can use either a golf or tennis ball, rolling pin, piece of thick wooden dowelling or a thick foam tube. Keep doing so for about two minutes to stretch the foot muscles. As you get more confident and it is comfortable for you to do so, try doing the same thing while standing up.

Another exercise to stretch the foot involves sitting on the floor with your legs out straight and using a towel wrapped round the ball area of injured foot, pull it upwards towards the shin of the same leg, holding it there for about 20 seconds and repeating about 3 times.

The toe

While sitting on a chair, reach forward and pull your big toe up and backwards towards the ankle and hold it there for about 20 seconds, repeating 3 times at intervals during the day.

The Plantar Fascia

To relieve muscle tightness in the plantar fascia itself, sit on a chair, cross the heel of the affected leg over the other and hold it with your opposing hand pull the toe towards the ankle of the unaffected leg to stretch the arch of the injured foot. Hold for 10 seconds and try for 3 repeats.

Foot flexes

Increase the blood flow to the foot and relieve tension in the calves by using an elastic stretch band while sitting flat on the floor with your legs stretched out straight in front of you. With the band looped round your foot and the ends in your hand, gently point your toes outwards and away from the body before slowly returning them to their original position and repeating the foot flex 10 times.

If these stretches prove to be too painful to do, or you don’t experience any difference in pain levels despite doing these exercises and stretches for a considerable period of time, it might be wise for you to contact a physiotherapist for help in reducing the pain and returning normal functioning to your foot