♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists on the internet. ♪
(cheerful tone)
- Goo baba. (exhales) - He's zen, yes.
Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet. - In opinion, or course, Bob.
- Today, we're gonna show you three guru self treatments
to stop plantar fasciitis, foot pain, fast.
- That's right, Bob, I was practicing being a guru.
- Very good. - That is a bad joke.
Anyways, yeah, I went through it,
and I've gathered up information
from our clinical experience, yours and mine,
55 years worth, our videos that had research
to support these exercises, as well as viewer feedback,
how things are working.
And I came up with these three exercises
and treatment for plantar fasciitis.
That's how this is a whole video is produced.
- By the way, if you're new to our program,
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Okay.
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- That's right, you can't go wrong with the podcast, Bob.
- All right, Brad, you're gonna go to work now.
- Oh, yeah.
So we're talking about plantar fasciitis, foot pain.
Yeah, that's right.
You just take that sock right off so we can show.
Plantar fasciitis is very common.
Usually everyone seems like they get it sometime
throughout their life.
And show where you typically get pain.
- Well, it's a thick band right here,
actually three components to it.
It's actually shaped kinda like a triangle.
Here's the narrow part of it.
You can get pain anywhere,
but this is very common right here,
right in this spot, the inner arch, right by the heel.
Most people go, "Right there, that's where it hurts."
- Over the years,
as a young therapist, I would show people
how to stretch the calf and that foot.
And then there was one component of stretching
that I was missing,
and actually you had found some research
on the great toe stretch.
- This fascia also goes up into the toes,
and there's some strands that go up into that area.
So when you stretch it, and we recommend every morning.
This is healing at night.
There's a tear in here.
Every night, it starts to heal.
You wake up, oh, it feels good.
You step on it out, ow, it starts hurting right away.
- Putting weight on it,
those first few steps can be very uncomfortable.
- Right, so you're tearing it open again.
So we want to prevent that.
So what we're gonna have you do is actually
before you even get out of bed, you're gonna grab the foot.
and you're putting it into dorsiflexion, which is-
- Maybe you should lie down on the bed,
so that you can kind of show
how you do that figure four position.
- Well, I'm gonna be the wrong way now.
This way.
- You don't have to do that in bed.
That's where you start.
- So you can go like this.
You're in the figure four position.
You're gonna grab, and, I don't know,
can you see how that's...
- Yeah, if you can zoom in close.
I should have a mark and mark you up, Bob,
but you can see it's fascia,
that area here. - You can see the strands.
So I'm pulling the toe down here.
I'm pulling actually all the toes down
and I'm pulling the foot. - Plus the dorsiflexion, yes.
- [Bob] So I'm moving the foot this way,
and I move the toes this way.
- And you'll find if you do this,
you're not gonna do this really aggressively right away.
You're gonna kinda work in. - Right,
just work your way into it.
Give it some nice stretching,
but you should feel the stretching there.
Then, when you get out of bed, you're gonna go ahead
and put shoes on before you even take a step,
'cause you want the arch support
to prevent the tear from happening.
- Even though he's already stretched it.
And you can continue the stretch.
We wanna continue keeping that fascia stretched.
And the way you do that in a chair, you can do it at work
if you're in a chair or wherever you can find a chair
with shoes on, so it's really convenient.
What you'll do is
here and you can see I'm gonna bend,
and I'm gonna dorsiflex my ankle,
in other words, let my ankle go like this.
And it does work better
if you have like a chair with rollers on,
but you don't have to, you can just slide your foot back.
And you can see my great toe right now is extending
I'm dorsiflexing my ankle, and I'm getting that stretch.
You can hold that there for 15 to 30 seconds,
or you can do pressure on and pressure off
and do that five to 10 times.
And do that every hour or two hours,
so that you maintain that flexibility.
- Right, what you'll find is if you sit for a while,
it's starting to heal again.
And you get up, you might actually retear it.
- It started tightening again
if you've been sitting for an hour or two.
- So it's a stretch you'll wanna do before you get up
if you've been sitting for a while
- And then let's go to number two, Bob, the manual massage,
or we're gonna show an option to that.
But we wanna keep that circulation.
We wanna keep the scar tissue from adhering
and keep it supple.
- So I like using my thumbs to start off with.
And you might not be able to tolerate going
right over the painful area.
You might have to work around it to start off with.
If you can get someone close to you to do this for you.
all the better for you,
(both laugh) but good luck.
No one's touching my stinky feet, I'll tell you that.
- Now, did you mention, I was taking my shoes off
preparing for stage three,
did you talk about being aggressive?
You have to get into it.
- Yeah, I'm really pushing here.
This is no time to be soft.
And you can actually do a splaying massage too.
So you're gonna put your thumbs together,
and then pull them apart.
This is what my wife said,
"Why didn't you show this to me right away?"
She goes, the splaying it what helped her.
- [Brad] Did she have to watch one of our videos first?
- [Bob] I don't know what happened.
(both laugh)
- [Brad] Good thing that's all over.
- [Bob] Yeah, it's all over.
So anyway, eventually you can get into that area
that's tender, hopefully,
and you can do some splaying there too.
Circles and splaying.
And you can do it in the morning when you wake up
after you do the stretch.
- Stretch, do the massage.
Now you're gonna find out that your thumbs get pretty tired.
You could go, like (indistinct) says,
10, 15, or longer minutes, but your thumbs wear.
Mine wear out after about two minutes, maybe three.
So we found a couple of ways you could do it.
You can take a tennis ball or a lacrosse ball,
and that gives some massage.
It doesn't do anything like
- The splaying. - the manual,
but you could do that at work actually,
and you can work it.
Keep away from the tender spot if it's really tender.
We've started using these guns
as well as a lot of millions of other people.
A massage gun that has some good amplitude or travel.
And this particular one here, we really like.
You can see it's going there now.
I like to do this with a round head.
There's five heads that come with a lot of these
and ours comes with five different heads.
And I'm gonna show you.
Now, one thing I'm not gonna recommend is
to just go straight in to that fascia,
'cause that's too aggressive.
You might tolerate it up here,
but we wanna actually do it as a cross friction.,
so the head's going this way.
And that's why I use the round ball on there.
And I'm just gonna work it here.
And I'm gonna work my way back towards the heel.
Now there's that tender spot that's typically right there.
If you get there and it's really painful, don't hammer.
- [Bob] Yeah, we're not trying
to increase soreness. - Just stay away from it.
You're gonna find out after a few days
or as it starts to heal,
you're gonna get more over it then.
And you can adjust.
If I just got it over lightly, it's okay.
Press down.
But when it starts to hurt, get away from it.
- You can lower the speed.
- It's got five speeds on it.
I'm as high as we can go.
Whoa, yep.
Ooh.
And you're gonna find, this actually feels good.
And you just stay away from that tender spot.
- What's nice about massage guns,
they come in handy for everything just about.
- Yeah, you're gonna use it like...
You wanna use on the calf actually, as well with this.
Now there's one thing, there's a lot of different ways
to treat more than these three.
We think these are the best,
but tell them about our series, Bob.
- Oh yeah.
Actually, if you go to bobandbrad.com,
go to the Program section,
and we have a whole series on plantar fasciitis,
I don't know, 30, 40 videos.
- Somewhere around 30, I think.
- It's all free.
And there's also, along with each video,
we have a PDF that you can click on and print out.
- You have to have a printer. (laughs)
- Yeah, you have to have a printer.
So you can actually take it along with you
if there's exercises, or we talk about...
It's really well done, I think.
- Oh yeah, so you've got all the videos that you need
on plantar in one spot.
You don't have to go around.
Plus a PDF printout is as efficient as you can get.
- Just watch the ones that pertain to you,
and you're gonna be good as gold.
- All right, so, Bob, I do wanna go to number three.
People are waiting.
Now this last one is from a study
that we've just found this year.
- Very interesting.
- Oh, here it is.
What you're gonna need is a towel, kind of a thick one.
- Almost like a beach towel.
- Fold it up, so it's here.
I've got maybe an inch or two here,
and I'm gonna go there.
Now the fascia Bob talked about is here.
We wanna actually strengthen the muscles underneath.
And those muscles are responsible for curling the toes.
And then there's the peroneal longus,
which the muscle bell is here,
and the tendon goes behind the ankle around here,
and it goes to here.
I'll show you the exercise for that.
Now the idea of strengthening those two muscle groups
is to take stress off of the fascia that's injured.
So, without further ado.
- You don't have to understand all that.
You just have to understand how to do the exercise.
- So I'm gonna put my toes on the towel,
so my toes are extended.
Now, in theory, the study put them at 25 degrees extension.
You don't have to measure it or anything,
but get it about here on that.
And then you're going to push down as hard as you can
for three seconds and relax,
push down three seconds and relax.
Okay, you're gonna do that five times, wiggle your toes,
give it a little break, do the other foot,
three seconds to relax.
Four sets of five reps. - So it's a lot of reps.
- Well, it's not gonna take you that long,
but it does take a little practice
once you do it a few times.
- So basically 20 times on each foot, right?
- Yeah, yep, mhm.
Then after you do that,
we wanna get that peroneal muscle.
And the way you do that
is I like to put...
You need dorsiflexion, so we got a little extension
on that tendon or tension, I mean.
(laughs) Tench.
And we're here, and I'm gonna put this foot off here.
You have to have room for your knees to go together,
and then you go up
and back down. - Knees are in.
- [Brad] Yes.
- Why don't you face him? - Yep, that's a good idea.
I need something for balance.
Here. - See how he's on the edge
on both sides?
And the back edge on the side edge.
The primary brunt of my body weight is going to the ball
right here, the ball of the foot,
and that stresses that peroneal muscle.
- You'll feel it on the outside calf here.
That's where the peroneal muscles are.
And that's where you should feel the strengthening going on.
- Now they're saying do 25 of these.
- Well you may not be able to start off with that.
- The goal is four sets of 25.
That's what they did in this study.
If you do four sets of 10 and you've had enough,
that's good.
But then you're gonna work up as you get stronger.
And that showed strength in those two muscle groups.
So yeah, that's the most recent.
- This is an investment of time,
but it's what it takes sometimes
to get rid of plantar fasciitis,
which you can go on for years.
- Exactly.
I thought maybe year, year and a half.
And then the one study that was done in the UK,
they had the average length, I think, was 33 months
of these 37 people, 57 feet,
because some people had it on both sides.
It was a good study.
Anyways.
You think it's never gonna go away.
So you gotta get after it.
- You gotta dedicate some time to it.
All right, remember Brad and I can fix just about anything-
- Except for- - A broken heart,
but we're working on it, Brad.
- Right, yeah.
We've got the foot down.
We're working our way up.
(both laugh)
(cheerful tone)