Struggle walking, jogging or just being on your feet for long periods of time?
Well you could be suffering with Plantar Fasciitis.
If this is you then below I have a great selection of videos for you. Firstly giving you a short explanation of what Plantar Fasciitis
What is Plantar Fasciitis
Quick Fix Plantar Fasciitis
Now you know a bit more about Plantar Fasciitis, the next two videos are all about how you you can get some instant pain relief. It can then open a window of opportunity then for a long term fix!
Long Term Fix Plantar Fasciitis
Now those exercises have given you some pain relief you can start the next exercises. These will help fix your arches and stop your foot pain for good.
Any questions about any of the exercises feel free to give me a message!
If you have any of the above it could be a muscle called Glute Medius and it’s weakness that is causing the problem.
In a nutshell a weak glute medius can reduce your athletic performance and it can also predispose you to injuries at your hip, knee and ankle.
Before I get into how you go about strengthening I’ll give you a bit of back ground about the Glute Meidus…
The glute medius is in charge of abducting, internally rotating and extending the hip.
For everyday movements it keeps the pelvis from dropping during walking and running.
Without this we’d look like we would be walking with a limp. This means the glute medius plays a massive role in our everyday life.
But how does my glute medius get weak in the first place?
The muscle can get weak from somethings so simple as when standing having more weight on one leg than the other and also sleeping on your side with your top leg bent (a bit like the foetal position) both these positions start causing weakness as they elongate the muscle causing stretch weakness.
This weakness can lead to ‘Trendelenberg gait’, lower back pain, Iliotibial band syndrome and lateral ankle injuries
So now you know what a weak glute medius can do, how do you strengthen it!?
My go to exercise to begin with the ‘clam’
Side lying with both knees bent up. Line up heels with hips and pelvis. Keep pelvis neutral or slightly buttock region of the top leg, sometimes in the bottom buttock as well. Aimfor 2-¬‐3 sets of 10-¬‐20 forward (don’t let it roll backwards or open up).
•Breathe out, engage core and lift top knee up towards the ceiling slightly.
•Breathe in and lower slightly.
•Repeat to fatigue. Aim to feel it in the lat reps
The easy way to progress this to tie a theraband round so it is just above your knees and repeat the above. You’ll notice a complete change in difficulty
As always if you would like more advice or you would like to book a session, give me a call on 07759689612.
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Continuing from last week’s post- something else that links in well with stress and can exacerbate the symptoms that stress has on the healing of wounds is a person’s diet, sleep and whether or not they smoke or drink.
Sleep
Mild moving through to severe sleep disruption is relatively common when someone is stressed.
This sleep disruption on its own without stress has been found to increase wound healing time.
sleep
Diet
Diet can also slow down wound healing time as if you are low on sugar, polyunsaturated fatty acids and protein this can reduce the body’s ability to heal itself as it doesn’t have the right materials.
burger
Alcohol
Bar
Alcohol consumption holds back wound healing as it disrupts your cardiac and immune function, by reducing the amount of collagen that can be layed at a time.
Smoking
smoking
Smoking also doesn’t help at all due to all the toxins and nicotine which is inhaled during a puff.It delays healing due to decreasing the amount of oxygen available to the injured area and it also slows down the speed at which the body’s immune system works.
Remember I offer Sport Massage, Swedish Massage and injury treatment in Newent, Gloucester, Cheltenham, the Forest of Dean and surrounding areas.
Stress!!
As we all know, stress isn’t great and everyone in the world goes through it at varying points throughout their lives.
Stress can be anything from a GCSE exam through to trying to find a job or just trying to work out where you are going with your life.
Stress can have varying impacts on your body and not least when you are trying to recover from an injury.
Multiple studies have been conducted over the years and have found that stress from various elements can dramatically slow the healing process.
For example carers who were stressed caring for dementia patients were found to take 24% longer (9days!) to heal from a biopsy.
Moving onto exams, dental students also had a biopsy taken, the students who had the biopsy taken during exams took 40% longer to heal than the students who had the same biopsy taken during holiday time.
Lastly in older men and women, when they were stressed, anxious or depressed this caused a longer healing time than the ones who weren’t the above healed at a much quick rate.
Tips to help stress – taken from the NHS website on stress- Link below
1. Look for the positives in life- be grateful for what you have and not you don’t (glass half full)
2. Accept you’ll always have jobs to do, prioritise your work load from most important to least.
3. Have a bit of me time, this is where you take time out just to do something for you, be that a hobby of yours through to a relaxing massage.
These are just a few examples to help reduce stress! http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/reduce-stress.aspx
Christian, L. M., Graham, J. E., Padgett, D. A., Glaser, R., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2007). Stress and wound healing. Neuroimmunomodulation, 13(5-6), 337-346.
Grab yourself a bargain this month, as for the whole of March I am halving my initial assessment price from £45 for an hour and a half to just £22.50.
You might just want a relaxing massage, or you may need help with an injury. Whatever your needs I can tailor the session around you!
Foot orthoses – have been found to help with preventing shin pain and lower limb stress fractures such as the Tibia and metatarsals However they have been found not to have any effect on musculoskeletal injuries such as Achilles pain, knee pain or lower back pain.
Shock absorbing insoles were not shown to be able to prevent injuries full stop and in one study were actually found to be
slightly harmful.
1 in 10 need insole to prevent a lower limb or back injury, while 1 in 20 need insoles to prevent stress fracture.
The authers of the analysis do state a lot of the studies were poorly designed so to take the above with a pinch of salt e.g. different insoles being used, different controls
and also that most participants had a military back ground and therefore don;t cover the general public
Therefore you may want to think twice about using the insoles you were potentially sold to help prevent achilles pain or Plantar Fasciitis. If you would like to have a more indepth the journal is below.
Bonanno, D. R., Landorf, K. B., Munteanu, S. E., Murley, G. S., & Menz, H. B. (2017). Effectiveness of foot orthoses and shock-absorbing insoles for the prevention of injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis. British journal of sports medicine, 51(2), 86-96.
‘Am I pronating enough?’ ‘Am I pronating too much?!’ ‘Is that why I’m getting injured?’ Are questions runners have recently asked me when talking about their feet.
Studies seem to be saying a big resounding NO! pronation is not associated with an increase injury risk.
In fact some studies actually have concluded 7-10 degrees of pronation may be an advantage! SO don’t go thinking you need to aim for neutral!
Why do people have a view that pronation is bad and increases injury risk?!
Well the most likely explanation is down to marketing from shoe companies labelling pronation as harmful and providing a solution which is normally a very expensive shoe aiming to correct something that was never an issue!
Shoe companies may claim that their products help reduce injury risk but to date there is no evidence that supports this.
Sales>science.
Comfort has now been found to be a factor in determining injury risk.
If you had gone out and bought a new pair of shoes based on the fact you thought it was going to ‘correct’ an issue you had with your foot and persevered with using it. You are more than likely doing more harm to yourself!
In a study- 106 participants were told to pick the most comfortable shoe insert.
There were 6 to pick from and 5 were seen as the most preferred (picked at roughly the same frequency)
After being left to train for 4 months against a control group, the test group ended up having 53% less lower extremity injuries!
So there you go, don’t worry about finding the perfect angle or worrying about correcting your foot. Just go out and pick what shoe feels most comfortable for you!!
To have a look at the journals in this post go to:
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