I’m a pretty avid twitter follower and do plenty of my own tweets - mainly from my personal account, but the tweet I saw today via Active.com just plain made me angry. It’s not their fault as they are a content driven site but the content of this post ‘4 Ways to Fight Plantar Fasciitis‘ that came courtesy of Runners World is just seriously crap advice which many athletes and non athletes take for granted because the opinions come from so called professionals!

Let me break the article down for you and then show you a way that WILL fix Plantar Fasciitis from all the causes!

The article starts with “Plantar fasciitis is a painfully frustrating injury..” - they got that part correct and from there onwards it goes pear shaped. It’s all about specifically treating the bottom of the foot or what they are referring to as the plantar fascia. The article is basically saying if you have tried everything and have had no success in 3 months, than it’s time to ‘pony’ up to paying excessive amounts of money for so-called innovative procedures. Quite frankly they will do exactly the same thing as the other treatments looking at the bottom of the foot - nothing. If you have been seeing a therapist for 3 months and it’s not fixed, then I am not going to apologise in saying… ditch your therapist!

Extracorporeal shock wave therapy - a painful treatment which requires sedation and $150USD a pop and will need multiple sessions… How about Platelet-Rich Plasma where they draw blood and reinject is for a measley $1000-$2000USD. Botox - seriously are you kidding me? $350-$500USD a session and all it does is block your pain receptors. Folks this is our bodies way of telling us somethings up. Lastly there is the fun treatment of dry needling directly into the bottom of your foot and may need a steroid injection to follow up and will hurt like buggery to both your foot and your back pocket at $150-$200 session.

Come on, where is the freaking commonsense people?

I’ll bet my last dollar none of the people providing these services offer a full money back guarantee.

Do you really need to even be thinking of going down that path? I fully understand the pain and frustration of overuse injuries… I have been there and spent the money! However these CAN be a thing of the past when we do a couple of things. First as I have mentioned before is that we need to take full responsibility for our overuse injuries and that means learning to look after yourself and understand the mechanisms at play. Then you need to take action without continual hits to your bank account.

Friends it’s time for some education.

To fully and completely rid the debilitating foot and heel pain we need to address muscle tissue, shoe choice, daily posture and even your daily dietary habits. It is going to take a multifaceted approach.

Muscle Tissue and Foot Function

Our feet are the foundation for the body’s structural integrity. So, when talk about addressing the foot and its functionality, we need to look directly at the muscles that control how the foot functions.

Aches and pains of the foot such as in the heel or in the bottom of the foot can be a real show stopper. No running or walking and even getting out of bed can really hurt.

The muscles actually in the foot, for the most part, are designed to move the toes. They base themselves in the bottom of the foot and they attach somewhere in the toes. There are other muscles that give the foot range of motion. All of these muscles house themselves above the ankle and below the knee. The muscles in the lower leg connect in the bottom of the foot, thereby controlling the foot (like a puppet).

When these muscles (puppet strings) in the lower leg become short and loose their elasticity you will loose function in the bottom of the foot. This creates the pulling sensation in the bottom of the foot and repetitive motion and stretching can cause little micro tears that cause inflammation and you guessed it… pain.

For simplicity sake there are 3 main muscles that contribute to the aches and pains within the bottom of the foot. The posterior tibialis bases itself in the bottom of the foot, specifically in the arch. There is the soleus… which sits above the posterior tibialis and lastly there is the gastrocnemius or calf, which is layered on top of the soleus.

For now, treating these 3 muscles with self mysofacial release will give you the greatest rate of return.

The point is, all the muscles in the calf region connect in the bottom of the foot. Once they get over worked and under paid, they will pull from their insertion and origin points. This not only causes loss of flexibility in the foot and ankle, but also creates aches and pains within the bottom of the foot.

It only makes sense that in order to free your foot from the inability to function properly and the discomfort associated with the muscles pulling from the insertion points in the bottom of the foot, then you must go after the puppet master.

The bottom line is you have to treat the muscles that control the foot to regain range of motion in the foot. As it pertains to foot aches and pains, by creating elasticity (with massage or Myofascial release) within the muscles that connect in the arch of the foot you are going to allow the muscles to rebound to their natural state. This reduces the amount of tension on the bottom of the foot, specifically in the arch of the foot.

Other Factors

Dehydration, repetitive motion, poor biomechanics while moving, sitting or even sleeping and dietary choices, can make our muscles stick together. This will contribute to your foot pain. So, by simple addressing hydration you will help keep your muscle tissue healthy.

How you sit, which I have mentioned many times before is a huge causing factor in foot and heel pain. When you sit with your feet tucked in under you and your heels raised off the floor this will shorten the muscle tissue in your lower leg, thus pulling on your insertion points and creating pain.

Shoes with built up heels and high heels also compound the problems and even how we sleep (face down is the worst as your feet are plantar flexed all night).

When we get all this tension and add motion we get little micro tears that create inflammation - the body’s natural way of kick starting the healing process, however many of the western foods we eat such as processed grains are pro-inflammatory and only add to the problems by developing chronic inflammation.

Summary

As you can see, no gimmicks - just a simple No B.S multifaceted approach to treating overuse injuries.  It takes responsibility on your part to both treat and look at areas in your daily habits that could be contributing to your foot and heel pain. Sit correctly, minimise or cut out pro-inflammatory foods, seriously look at your shoe choice and do some self myofascial release daily especially targeting your problem areas.

Your foot pain starts in your calf… not your foot.

As usual please leave your comments below and lets fix this!

KM

The below video shows what it means to have a winning attitude. Tyler shows that while circumstance can make things difficult, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible!

“I put the wheelchair in the corner of my room, and decided I’d just get up and fall down until I didn’t fall anymore. That’s how I learned to walk again” — Tyler Moser

Recently I have seen many people with lower limb injuries, actually a lot from our friends down in Melbourne! Not sure what’s happening down there but I have done this little video blog covering lower limb injuries like calf strains, plantar fasciitis, achillies problems and basically any sort of foot and heel pain. Enjoy and I hope it helps. Watch the video before you read the rest!

A Primer on Inflammation

So you have been doing everything right. Treating your muscles with some love and getting into the areas I discussed above in the video, you’ve even been getting out of that bad habit of sitting at the office desk with your feet tucked under you and your heels raised off the floor… but your injury just doesn’t seem to be getting better.

I mentioned in the video that it’s going to take a multi-faceted approach to be totally rid of your injury and that brings me to discussing our pro-inflammatory western diet. I guess you may never have thought that it could be your diet that is keeping you injured or in pain! Low level chronic inflammation may just be one of the big culprits. It’s easy to visualise. You train and your muscle tissue binds up a little (we lose mobility), a shoe choice or posture habit further compounds the issue while dehydration causes our tissue to resemble beef jerky and is easier to tear (even small micro tears) which creates more inflammation (the bodies way of healing), but what happens when the food we ingest also create more inflammation?

We create this low level chronic inflammation that left unchecked will just continue to destroy tissue but it gets worse because the neutrophills whose job it is to kill the invaders sense this on-going inflammation and pump out free radicals to get rid of the perceived threat. You may have heard before that free radicals aren’t so great, and in this case they are not as they will destroy good healthy cell walls and DNA. This compromises our bodies immune response (been sick a lot) and if this is kept up, pain will result but it could also be the fertiliser to disease!

What causes inflammation then?

There is many things in our western diet that create inflammation and over the coming weeks I will go deeper into super important topics such as omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratios, why we have to be careful of what we eat, eats! Why grains and refined sugars are the cause of putting on fat and many more subjects pertaining to nutrition. Today I am just going to provide you with a couple of lists. One that contains pro-inflammatory foods that you should look to avoid and then anti-inflammatory foods you should consume. I won’t be giving you the how’s and why’s today but they will come so you have the ability to become empowered and make better informed decisions than those just derived purely from clever marketing.

Foods causing inflammation

• Grains and refined sugars
• Red meat from industrially raised animals
• Oils rich in omega-6 (corn, sunflower, safflower, soy) basically any vegetable oil
• Trans and Hydrogenated Fats (should be completely avoided)
• Dairy products from industrially raised livestock
• Eggs from industrially raised hens fed grains (corn, soybeans)

The anti-inflammatory powerhouses

• Vegetables such as: Garlic, broccoli, spinach, kale, bok choy, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, capsicum (peppers) and chilli
• Organic Red meat from animals fed grass and or flax meal
• Olive Oils (EVOO), flaxseed oil
• Fish oils (make sure you buy a quality supplement and not one off your supermarket shelf) 1-3 grams/day
• Fatty cold water fish like non farmed salmon and tuna
• Dairy products from animals fed on grass or flax meal
• Organic eggs from hens raised in a natural environment and fed flax meal (do your research as free range sometimes means a door in the cage to a small patch of dirt)

By following the above you will be on your way to reducing inflammation and thus more likely to get rid of your injury or pain that much quicker, plus there are tons of associated health benefits. I know some of you will be thinking that you need your grains and this is only the case if you’re an endurance athlete. But that dose not mean you should follow the conventional wisdom when it comes to diet for endurance athletes. I know many with depressed immune systems and blame it purely on the training (big volumes can have that effect) but if you have been sick a lot then I would look further into the impact of grains on your health, which I’ll do over the coming weeks. So if your an endurance athlete by all means eat them, but eat them exclusively in the hour post exercise > 60 minutes and always have protein and fruit/vegetables so you minimise the blood acidosis levels.

Thanks for reading and please leave your comments below. That way I can help to empower you to long term health and performance.

Today I want to take a step back and discuss muscle tissue health, because healthy tissue not only allows the body to perform but it keeps the body’s biomechanics optimal and pain free.

Our ability to move is created from skeletal muscle and the average male is made up of 42% while the average female is made up of 36% of this type of muscle tissue.

There are many things to consider when we think of muscle tissue health, from the basics such as the strength, elasticity and flexibility of the tissue to the more in depth parts that make up healthy tissue such as Hydration status, Protein turn over rate and Acid Base Balance to name a few.

Muscular aches and pains  occur as muscle looses it flexibility and elasticity and dehydration further compounds these problems as the tissue binds up (meaning the muscles adhere together).

So let me do a quick overview on how you can with some simple daily rituals create healthy muscle tissue that allows pain free movement and optimal performance.

What makes up good muscle tissue health?

Strength training: As we know strength training provides the stimulus for us to recruit more muscle fibers for a more forceful contraction (better sporting performance), it also provides other overall health benefits such as increased bone, ligament, muscle, tendon strength and resiliency (less potential for injury), and a temporary increase in metabolism (which will help fat loss), improvements in cardiac function and an elevation of HDL (the good cholesterol).

We are able to train strength in the gym or anywhere for that matter with our body weight or more specifically we can train it in our sport. In triathlon we can train strength on the bike by using a bigger gear thus higher resistance and also ultilising hills where you have to overcome gravity. Swimming we can use paddles, bands, towels etc and running we can also use hills.

Incorporating some strength training into your weekly program will see a positive effect in your muscle tissue health.

Elasticity: Without going too in-depth, elasticity is the ability for the muscle to lengthen and rebound to it’s normal state. As your biomechanics break down, so does your body’s muscular structure or elasticity. Also when our muscles loose their elasticity they can become stretched past their capacity which can cause irrevocable damage to the muscle and insertion points.

The goal is to have our muscles resemble a bungee cord which is pliable, flexible and supple as opposed to a rigid rope. One thing to remember is that we cannot stretch a knot out of a rope, but we can knead or massage out the knot!

We can regain muscular elasticity with massage and self massage using our performance tools.

Flexibility: Many of you know my stance on stretching… if not you can read it here (If you can’t access the article then sign up to get access to our bonus section)

Flexibility doesn’t actually mean stretching! The muscles role is to contract and relax. When we stretch a muscle, we actually loose elasticity in that muscle and that weakens our muscular-skeletal system instead of strengthening it and if done regularly it will have long term effects on our muscle tissue health and not the ‘effects’ we are looking for!

Stretching your own muscles is a direct way to injury and at the minimum muscle soreness.

To gain flexibility or the ability for our joints to bend during movement we need to undo the high levels of muscular/joint tension. We do this by recreating ‘elasticity’ via compression and force feeding blood flow and nutrients into the muscle.

Hydration: Lean tissue contains about 75% of water by weight, so when we allow ourselves to get dehydrated our muscles start to take on the appearance and function of a piece of beef jerky. Your tissue looses it’s elasticity, it’s suppleness and pliability. This creates pain and also a higher likelihood of tears and muscular dysfunction.

Simply getting hydration under control will not only help eradicate pain but with electrolytes in the mix it will keep your muscles functioning properly and allow the good nutrients into the tissue while flushing the waste toxins out.

Zym have some awesome portable effervescent tablets that you drop into your water, kind of like Beroca but with all the electrolytes we need. Another easy way to get in your required electrolytes is a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. The only thing you need to add, is a little sodium (salt) as fruits and vegetables don’t contain this important electrolyte.

Check your hydration status by checking the colour of your urine. A light shade of yellow and all you need is water, A little darker then get some electrolytes into you. Brown.. well maybe a trip to the doc is in order!

Protein Turnover Rate: What? Basically all our body’s tissue goes through a regular program of turnover. We want to increase our turnover rate because it improves our muscle quality and to do this we need increase both protein synthesis and breakdown. The breakdown occurs in training while a high protein diet will help rid the old bound up tissue quickly and build new healthier tissue in its place.

Acid Base Balance: When we exercise we increase our blood acidity levels or blood acidosis, nothing wrong with that, but did you know that most post session recovery foods we consume are also net acid enhancing. Meaning they increase our blood acidity levels even further.

This is where we can run into some issues in terms of muscle tissue and bone health as this metabolic acidosis creates muscle and bone wastage which will seriously affect performance and health.
The body likes to be in balance and the only way without dietary intervention to reduce blood acidity naturally by the body, is to pull nitrogen out of the muscle tissue and take minerals out of bone i.e. we end up cannibalising our muscles and bones… NOT GOOD!
Especially for athletes… There is a quick fix which is to provide our body with net alkaline producing foods that lower our bloods acidosis levels. These foods are simply fruits and vegetables. Add these to your post training recovery mix and you’ll be all good.

Summary

To summarize it quickly and on the simple things you can do to ensure you have good quality muscle tissue is to make sure you stay adequately hydrated. Treat your muscle tissue by giving them some love (daily) with self massage and massage. Increase lean protein in your diet while making sure you get fruits and vegetables in which your processed carb rich foods. Finally make sure you’re doing some sort of strength training in your weekly plan.

Healthy muscle tissue will let you live pain free, while allowing you to get optimal performance. Now who doesn’t want that!

I have had many people ask recently about how to effectively treat IT Band Syndrome. Here is as short video blog on how a few simple practices can see you get rid of the nasty ITB problems (like Andrew’s) quickly and also effectively. I’ll have comments activated by tomorrow, so you can leave your thoughts or even requests.