Stretching Your Feet to Relieve Heel Pain
“Hi, this is Dr. Silvester and I’m going to show what we’re going to talk about today is stretching the heel, the plantar fascia. One of the most common things we see is patients with heel pain, and that’s usually the plantar fascia in most cases and so we’re going to show you how to stretch that ligament.
The first thing we do, in most of our visits here when they have chronic plantar fasciitis or even if plantar fasciitis hasn’t been there for very long. The first step with this is to put your toes up against the wall flat. Candy’s going to show us how to do that. You want to make sure of a couple things. Make sure your toes are kind of flat against the wall, your heel is on the ground, and then gently start moving your knee forward.
This is a neat exercise because you can do it sitting down or standing up, you can do this while you’re sitting at the table. A lot of people will say, “Well gee, I do this and I don’t feel a lot of stretch down here on the bottom of my foot where my heel hurts,” and that’s true because you don’t have stretch receptors there. You have them in the back of your leg, and so when you start feeling the stretch back here, that’s enough. You don’t want to overdo it and push your knee way far, because that can actually aggravate the ligament, but it’s a nice easy stretch over a long period of time.
We tell our patients usually to do this at least 2-3 times a day for 2 minutes each time. So, it’s a nice easy stretch over a long period of time. Do this especially first thing in the morning because a lot of times when you first get up your heel is pretty sore, and this will help that. That’s how you stretch the plantar fascia. Thanks!”