Hey everybody! Coach Andrew here from EarthFIT. Why do I have my shoe off? Well, we’re gonna address plantar fasciitis, a popular demand today in this video. First two points I wanna make though. However, before we jump into it, point number one is do not self-diagnose. We don’t know what’s going on with our bodies unless we have looked at it with a professional. A medical professional could be a doctor, could be orthopedic, etcetera… Who’s helped us diagnose what’s actually going on. So let’s say that’s a diagnosis of plantar fasciitis, that’s an inflammation in the bottom of our feet, typically towards the ball of our feet right… So just below the ball, just starting our arches of our feet, there’s 130 or so muscle groups from ankle below. So there’s a lot going on that we don’t know about. And what do we do all like, what do we do? 

We walk, we stand that requires musculature and our arches of our feet and toes and things like that all the way through the calves all the way up. The kinetic chain to be working, to keep us upright. So a lot of action going down there, especially if you’re walking and you’re running all day.

A lot of repetitive movements. Point number three, I guess, is gonna be… I personally have like six or seven different assessments that I can go through with you to address the actual root cause of the issue point B just cuz you have inflammation in the plantar fascia doesn’t mean that’s where it starts.

The root cause of it could be a hip or the way that you shift your hips or you have a hip hike or you’ve had a knee repair or you know, knee replacement surgery or you tore your ACL and there’s a lot of issues going on with your knees that relate to your ankles. So you may have an ankle injury, who knows?

So we gotta pinpoint the root cause of the issue based off previous issue injuries. When they happened, how they happened, repetitive movements, what you do on a daily basis for work, how do you sleep? Um, literally your positions of your sleep affect you, right? You’re sleeping 7-8 hours a day, maybe sometimes a little less for some people, right? Sometimes a little bit more. And then also, what your daily activity is like. Right? Lots of stuff we gotta collect first before we actually pinpoint the root cause of the issue, which probably isn’t the bottom of your feet. All right.

So let’s say we pinpointed it a good routine to start with, a starter routine. There’s millions of other things that can, that you can customize to actually help the plantar fasciitis. Pick a tennis ball or a lacrosse ball, start rolling the ball and the arches of your feet then work to your Achilles tendon and your calf musculature of the posterior side, which is the soleus and gastrocnemius muscle groups. But you don’t have to know that. I’m just saying the back of the calves right back here is what you wanna start the foam roll. And you can even do a little lacrosse ball work or massage on it as well, right? Refer to my ankle mobility videos in the past to learn how to stretch properly and how to foam roll properly or how to actually roll out properly.

Then after you roll, then you wanna stretch right? The toes, the ball of your feet, arch just literally with your hands all the way through… you’ll feel it, you’ll feel a relieving sensation when you start stretching out that area, work your way to the achilles tendon and your calves refer to other videos. All right? So that’s how you start. If you have any questions, reach out to us, we’re always here to help, but you… Hopefully you’re a little bit more aware of what may be going on, go to your doctor and then hope we can help you out a little bit more with a stretching mobility routine, pinpointing the root cause of the issue. And then you have to go do strengthen routine, right? So that involves a lot of band work, a lot of towels, a lot of instability control instability, right? To help you strengthen up some key musculature from toes, all the way, the kinetic chain, literally all the way up so that we can give you the best shot at overcoming plantar fasciitis for life. I’ll see you guys in the next video.

-EarthFIT Coach Andrew