- ♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're going to talk about - show you two stretches
to heal plantar fasciitis.
- That's right, Bob.
- Now we're assuming you're a very busy person.
And so I want you to try these things first.
If they don't help go to Bob and brad.com. Go to the program
section. We have a whole free program on plantar fasciitis.
That will take you to the end point.
I mean, that'll take you to the-
- Yeah, there's a number of videos.
Look at the titles,
see if it pertains to you 10 minutes long or so.
And it has a PDF printout of all the exercises and a review
of the video. There's absolutely no cost.
There's no strings attached, not even your email.
So again, if this doesn't work,
that would be a good go-to of background.
- All right let's just start, Brad.
- Okay, then.
- So the plantar fasciitis can be very stubborn.
It can take awhile to heal.
- Ooooo.
- And there's a good reason for that.
I've kind of taken a marker
and drawn along where the fascia is.
- What do you mean you kind of have?
- I have done it.
- You have done it. Look at that.
It looks like a candy cane.
- Yeah. So the fascia is a very tough material
and it gives support to your foot and that,
what are you saying?
- We call it tissue in the medical field.
He calls it material.
- Well, they don't know what a tissue like a blow your nose
with a tissue. So anyway, it's a very tough material
and it supports your arch and it's always got pressure on it
when you're standing on.
- Right.
- So when you actually damage it, which is often right here.
- Yep.
- Cause that's where the arch is. It's tough to heal it
because you're always putting pressure on it.
- But you know, often that's where that fascia connects
to the calcaneus bone.
- The heel bone.
- Is it calcaneus bone?
- Yeah.
- I thought I had that-
- But what are telling the lay-person for?
- Well thank you, cause sometimes I forget anyways. Yeah.
So that just happens to be where the micro tears,
if you will, and they're painful especially in the morning.
- I can hear people out there saying right now, Brad.
Well, why don't I just,
I can take the pressure off it and let it heal.
That's what happens every night, you take the pressure off.
It begins to heal. What happens in the morning?
- Well you put weight on it,
it puts the pressure back on that injured spot
and it retears the healing. And it it's like a scab.
You keep ripping it open every day when you put weight.
And if you have those symptoms,
when you put weight on it initially out of bed-
- And it hurts-
- that's what's happening.
- That's what's happening, right.
So what you want to do before you even got out of bed
is do one of the stretches.
- Sure.
- And the first stretch you're going to do.
You can see this band or tissue
or whatever you want to call it.
- Material.
- Material. Yeah. It goes all the way up.
It actually connects to the big toes, big toe.
- You've got more than one big toe. Well it's possible.
- Bunch of toes.
So what you're going to do is grab the big toe
and the other toe.
- Sure.
- you're actually going to bring the ankle up this way too,
to dorsiflexion.
- And this works good while you're lying down,
you're still in supine position.
You can just, you know, relax and do this.
- Yeah, very easy to give it a stretch like this
before you even got out of bed.
then what should you do when you get out of bed, Brad?
- Yawn?
- No. Put shoes on right away.
Take some of the stress off of it.
- Before you take, go weight-bearing right.
- So this is the one stretch we're going to do first.
Every morning, before you get out of bed,
I would also recommend this. If you've been sitting awhile,
do this stretch before you walk again.
- And you can do that in your chair.
Like here I am say I was working on my computer or whatever
for an hour or two,
I'm going to go back like this and I can just give it a
stretch without going through the contortions like this.
- Oh yeah. Good point, Brad.
- Yeah. We've done this in a video or two,
a couple of years ago.
- Yeah we have.
- But that's an option or you can do this.
- Now, the second stretch.
- Oh number two.
- Is maybe a little less obvious.
Why are we stretching the calf muscles?
Well, if your calf muscles are tight,
what's going to happen is when you're walking,
the movement has to happen somewhere,
somewhere along your leg.
If you,
these are tight and it's not giving them the motion you want
to get, you're going to spread the forces to the foot.
- Well, maybe we should clarify.
If you think of the muscles here in the calf muscles,
go through the big Achilles tendon,
which connects directly to the heel bone,
which is connected to the fascia.
So it's like a chain and everything affects everything
else from here all the way down to your toes.
- Right. Exactly. So if this is tight,
it's going to put more pressure on this. Simple as that.
- Yep. Exactly.
- So these have got to be stretched out. Very important.
Brad, do you want to show how to stretch those?
- Yes, actually, I'm going to show a couple of options.
Number one, if you don't have any tools or equipment,
simply make sure you have your shoe on. It's much better.
The wall stretch. I'm not pushing the wall for a stretch.
It's all happening right here.
My heel goes flat to the floor and I keep my toe pointed
straight ahead towards the wall,
not out to the side like this,
and then I'm going to lean forward.
Like I'm pushing the wall, but I'm really stretching this.
And I do it with my knees straight. And then I bend my knee.
It gets a different posture.
- Very important. Very important to do them both.
- Yes it is.
If you, this is my personal favorite,
there are other things, but inclined board or a slant board.
- Brad actually has a video where he shows you
how to make this. Brad's a handy guy, by the way.
- Yeah. This is one I made actually about 6, 7,
maybe 8 years ago. They last forever.
- My son still uses his, well, I just saw it.
- I did multiple things. Nobody cares about this,
but I made one for my daughter, one for your son
and one for my wife. They all have them.
- Yep.
- And we stretch them out.
The reason I think this works is because you can relax and
you use all your body weight and-
- You can really lean forward.
- You can lean forward.
- Yeah. I like learning forward on the bed.
- Yep. Boy, I shouldn't just relax.
- You really want to stretch those two muscles,
those two areas.
Now, if you want to enhance that a little bit,
you might take a massage gun.
You say, well, massage is not stretching.
Yes it is. If you massage an area,
you're kind of doing micro stretching on it.
So if you take the massage gun
and we got the mini massage gun, the Q2.
You don't want to hit right over this area right here.
Right away.
- (Brad) No because that's-
- (Bob) You won't be able to tolerate it.
- (Brad) That's tender there.
- (Bob) So you want to massage around the areas
that may not be painful and it'll start loosening up
this area. Eventually, if you can tolerate it
you go over the area that is painful and you actually
could break up the scar tissue that might be
forming to help it heal in a strength way.
But you can also use the massage gun on the calf.
- Yes.
- It will also, you're going to find tender spots.
And those are the ones where you focus on because that's the
parts that are really tight in the calf.
- A little hint with the massage gun.
If you notice with mine, I got the bigger gun.
If I go straight in, it's too aggressive on this area.
So I angle it and then I can get a better massage.
And I may go across the fibers.
I may give it a little extra benefits.
And boy, if you notice,
I'm actually doing range of motion on my ankles while I
massage the muscles.
And I think we can give the credit to that to Kelly Starrit?
- Yep. Different types of heads.
Like this one's a real smooth and glides along
really easily. He's got the circular head
and I also want to show you, it's got five speeds here.
So I gotta go through all five- is, we got the bullet head.
Ooh.
- Now, what did I do with it?
- Oh, Bob, you lost it.
- Well, the bullet had looks like this.
- It's in the case, Bob.
- Oh, I thought I took it out.
- Oh, you did? Don't worry. You know, the aging process
is not good for our memories or something like that.
- The bullet. Now this is very aggressive.
It's actually the one I use on my calf
because my calf can tolerate it,
but I don't know if you'd be able to do it on the bottom-
- I don't even like to use it on my calf.
I'm not as tough as Bob or I don't use it as much.
I don't know.
- All right. Well, by the way-
- Oh yeah, let's get on it.
- This week's giveaway is a boo-yah stick-
- Boo-yah!
- wonderful device for shoulders problems
and balance issues, all sorts of things.
Just go to Bob and brad.com go to the giveaway section.
We're always giving something away, go to Facebook.
It'll be pinned at the top of the page,
Bob and Brad Facebook.
- I'm showing all the options they can do
with the booyah stick, Bob. And the final one-
- Aren't you aren't you something, Brad?
Okay. We'll leave it at that.
- Be careful.
- Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)