Do you have foot pain? When you wake up in the morning is it way way worse right at
the base of your heel? Almost like somebody is hammering a nail into your foot? If so,
bad news, you probably have plantar fasciitis like tens of millions of people all around the
world. In fact an estimated 10 percent of all of us will get plantar fasciitis at some point. You
probably went online and you found information about ibuprofen, and ice, and massage balls,
and different stretches. You probably tried it and it's not working right? If so, this video is for
you. Hey, my name is Lucas. I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a teacher trainer, and to be honest we don't
get a lot of plantar fasciitis in the yoga room. It just doesn't happen so much with the kinds of
poses and exercises we do. But all of that changed in March of 2020. We had the pandemic lockdown,
the first lockdown. We weren't allowed to go outside and I started sneaking out at night to
go running, to go jogging. Really the first time I went jogging in my adult life. Most of my exercise
happened in rooms like this. I got really into it. It felt great to have my heart beat and to sweat,
and for the first couple of months I was little by little increasing my distance. I started off
with 2 km and then 3 km, working up to about 5 km per day and probably about 25 kilometers per
week. It was really great. I got so excited, I bought a new pair of shoes and herein enters the
problem. Within about one week, I didn't make the connection right away, but within about one week
I got terrible plantar fasciitis, so bad that when I woke up in the morning I'd make a noise
and literally limp to the bathroom. I had pain all the way from the morning, all the way through the
evening. I'm a yoga teacher, I spent all my day on my feet like this. It was a huge problem. Like
you, I went online and all of the advice I found was not only not helpful, a lot of it actually
made things worse. I got really frustrated, then I got curious, and then I found a solution.
Here's what you need to know about plantar fasciitis. The pop advice is really wrong
and in this video we'll talk about the anatomy of your plantar fascia, talk about some of the common
reasons why it gets injured, maybe it's like me, maybe it's different for you. Lastly, I'll give
you this three-pronged approach to healing which will hopefully be helpful. Quick disclaimer here:
I'm a yoga teacher, this is based on my personal experience. If you have a real foot problem
go see a podiatrist, err on the side of caution, go see a medical doctor. This is for educational
purposes only. If you'd like to skip forward to this three-pronged approach I mentioned you'll
find a PDF download in the description below. Let's start off by talking about the anatomy. It's
really important when you're dealing with plantar fasciitis that you understand what's going on. The
"itis" in plantar fasciitis means inflammation. And the truth is most of us have plantar
fasciopathy, which is a degradation of the tissue. It's wearing out, sometimes there's inflammation,
sometimes there's not. The reality is it's just semantics, it doesn't really matter. The condition
needs to be treated the same. Here's the deal with your plantar fascia. As the name suggests it
is made up of fascia. Fascia is a very abundant, unique form of connective tissue in your body and
it usually gets lumped in with other tissues like tendons, or ligaments, or cartilage in your knee.
But your fascia is very, very different. These tissues I like to refer to as stupid tissues.
They don't have many nerves, they don't have good blood supply, they're really slow to heal,
they're really low in terms of their metabolic function. And then you get into fascia. This is
very, very interesting, dynamic, smart tissue, lots of nerve endings, lots of pain receptors,
lots of mechanosensors. You can feel where your foot is in space, you can feel lots of
things with your fascia, there's also lots of circulation. This is good news. It can heal,
although those pain receptors will make it feel really bad, it's important that
you understand the difference between this tissue so you can understand how to heal it.
So from a healing perspective, the most important thing you need to ask yourself is what happened.
What do I mean by that? What happened for me is I switched shoes. I went to a very minimal shoe,
that hardly had a sole on it at all. I switched to a shoe called Merrell Trail Gloves and I
love these shoes. They look cool, they feel great. Even to this day I love these shoes.
But I wasn't ready. Meaning my plantar fascia wasn't ready for that level of stress,
25 kilometers a week with a minimal sole shoe. My plantar fascia was getting stressed in a way that
it wasn't used to, hence the plantar fasciitis. My question for you is what happened to you?
Open up a calendar, go back and look and I promise you, something that you did
instigated this problem. New shoes, old shoes, insoles, a new workout, no workout, stress, a new
diet, something in your life changed. Here are common things that people do. Flip-flops
in the summer, new stress on your plantar fascia, skipping rope, hill sprints can be really common.
Any kind of change to your movement, to your exercise, to your stress routine, can potentially
add stress to that piece of connective tissue that it hasn't seen before and in the short term it can
become inflamed or degraded. And this is what you need to isolate. The next thing you need
to understand when you're looking at your plantar fascia is that the solution is not what everyone's
recommending. The silly KT tape, massage balls, elbows, massage guns, ice, ibuprofen,
none of those solutions are going to help to heal this tissue, and most of them are going
to cause more damage. If you've got inflammation, if you've got damage, you've got degradation here,
jamming a massage ball here, excessively stretching, putting a silly piece of tape on,
none of that stuff's going to help. What you need is to heal through scarring and you need
to heal in a way that's functional. The way that fascia heals is through inflammation and scarring
and it lays down new collagen. You do need to keep moving, because you need that fascia to organize,
the fibers to organize in a functional pattern. But you need to reduce the intensity and you
also need to reduce the pressure on that plantar fascia. What does that mean? No flip-flops, no
barefoot, no minimal sole shoes. You can still do a wide toe box, you can still do a zero drop, but
you need to get a thicker soled shoe. For me that was a brand called Altra, there are other brands
like HOKA, and there are other brands that might be working for you. This is not a shoe commercial,
this is a let's reduce the pressure on our plantar fascia. That's step number one. Step number two is
you do need to stretch, but not that plantar fascia. Leave that thing alone. You want that
strong webbing resilient. In fact, you need it to heal up strong, but you need to stretch upstream,
specifically your calf muscles, your soleus and your gastrocnemius, and you need to stretch that
with your heel on the floor. We'll look at those poses in just a moment. Finally, you need to take
a look at nutrition. There are specific foods that can help, I'll share with you after we stretch.
When you think about stretching, don't think about stretching your plantar fascia itself. We want
to stretch upstream, so that we can increase our dorsiflexion and reduce the amount of pressure on
our plantar fascia when we're walking, running, or even just when we're standing in place.
To that end, we'll focus on stretching our soleus muscle and then our gastrocnemius. To stretch your
soleus, you can do that with a bent leg. But your gastroc requires a straight leg. We'll work with
a two-minute hold on each leg, one minute with a straight leg for your gastrocnemius, and one
minute with a bent leg. You should be working at about seven out of ten intensity, so not too much.
And let's do two minutes max, because we want to be gentle. The key thing here is your heel
needs to stay fully planted on the ground the entire time, otherwise if your heel is lifted
we'll be putting too much pressure on your plantar fascia. This is where all the problems originate
from at the start. We'll position ourselves next to a wall. I have this strange mirrored wall,
but you can just use any wall in your house. Step into a lunge, but again remember your back foot,
the heel is ground down into the floor. I have a timer here. I'll start with two minutes. I'll
place my elbows on the wall so I can get a really nice firm pressure. My front foot is basically
useless. You can lift it up off the ground, or if you place it on the ground just make sure
it's very light. The key thing is in the first stretch my leg is all the way straight and my heel
has to be firmly planted down into the ground. With our leg straight we preferentially stretch
our gastrocnemius which crosses the knee joint. So we'll hold here for a total of one minute
and then for our second minute we'll bend our knee. The challenge again is to not allow that
heel to lift up off the ground. Inhale through your nose to the count of four.
Exhale through your mouth to the count of eight.
Good. Now bend your knee for our second minute. You just need a slight bend in
the knee and you should feel that stretch move down, down, down stream in your calf muscle.
We're preferentially stretching our soleus muscle. Both your soleus and your gastrocnemius,
they're going to affect dorsiflexion, which is toes towards your knees,
as you can see here in this position. And as you have greater range in your ankle there's less
direct pressure put on your plantar fascia itself. Inhale through your nose for four.
Exhale eight.
Inhale nose four.
Exhale mouth for eight.
Good. Release your legs and switch. I'll reset my timer again. The key thing,
it's very very difficult to remember, but make sure to position your heel firmly down on the
ground. I'll use my elbows against the wall, so you get a really firm press from the wall.
All the way back through my heel, driving that stretch up here into my gastroc by having a
straight back leg for our first minute. We use nose-to-mouth, four-eight breathing,
to help to reduce the stretch reflex. This is particularly important for this first variation.
Your gastroc really fights you with a strong stretch reflex. Inhale to the count of four.
Exhale for eight.
For the second minute, I'll bend my back knee slightly, but make sure to keep that heel placed
on the floor. When you bend your knee it'll naturally want to pop up. Make sure you adjust,
so your heel stays firmly on the ground. We'll move into the second part of the pose,
taking the stretch down into our soleus muscle. These poses should be done once a day. Do them
towards the end of your day and don't do them before exercise, do them after. Whether you're
walking, or running, or doing any other form of exercise, these poses should be done after, not
before. And again, we're working upstream to put less pressure on our plantar fascia downstream.
Good. Release your leg, make your way up. You can punch out that stretch.
And we are done. Two minutes per leg. One minute straight leg, one minute bent leg,
and you're good to go. So we've talked about the importance of reducing the amount of stress
on your plantar fascia in the short term. We've talked about potentially reducing the
mobilization and the intensity of your exercise on your plantar fascia as well. Remember to work
upstream and stretch your calf muscles, specifically your soleus and your gastrocnemius.
Do those poses every day, towards the end of your day. The last thing we need to talk about
is nutrition. There are specific foods that are really helpful for collagen synthesis,
for scarring, for healing your plantar fascia. Micronutrients, specifically zinc and vitamin C,
copper, and sulfur. You can get these from whole foods. You can also take very inexpensive, safe,
supplements. I'll put a full list of them down below as well. If you're suffering from
plantar fasciitis, if you landed on this video really frustrated and discouraged,
don't worry, there is a pain-free future ahead of you and it isn't even months away. In many
cases you can get there in a matter of weeks. If you found this video helpful and you'd
like more science-based yoga videos, please hit subscribe down below. Any questions, comments,
I answer all my own comments down below. If you would like to find my teaching calendar,
you can find that at yogabody.com and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.