Hey everybody, it's Doctor Jo. I've got wonder girl with me, and we're going to
show you some stretches and exercises for Turf Toe.
So let's get started.
So turf toe is basically when you spray the ligaments
in your big toe, and it's called turf toe because it happens a lot of times in
football players or soccer players who are playing on turf. Kind of stub your
toe and then you sprain those ligaments.
So let's start off um just propping your foot up so you have a little bit of room
at your heel... room room at your heel!
So you don't have to use a role, you can just put it off of the edge of a bed, or
if you're in a chair just prop it up on the other side or something like that,
but give yourself some room to move the foot around.
So this is gonna be a combination movement, you have to really
concentrate on it, and I have a hard time doing it, but i will say it as I go and
try and do it for you, but my toes are not as flexible as other people's toes.
So what you're going to do, is you're going to point your foot downwords. As
you point your foot downwords, you're going to flare your toes. So you're going
to point and flair. And then you're going to pull it up into that dorsiflexion, and as
you pull it up, you're going to curl your toes.
So it's down, flare. It feels so weird, and up curl. So hopefully you have a little
more movement in your toes than I do, but if you don't that's okay, you're just
trying to get the movement. As you can see not everybody's going to get a whole
lot of movement. So just start off with five to 10 of those since it feels very
weird, you don't want to do a whole lot. And then after it becomes easy you can
work your way up a little bit more than that.
So the next ones are going to be sitting in a chair. So now you're going to do a
towel stretch. It doesn't have to be big towel because you're really just
stretching those toes.
Make sure you put a lot of weight on your heel, a little bit of space up top
so you can grab onto the towel, and then just pull upwards. But you're basically
keeping this part of your foot down, and pulling your toes up. So just pull out
that way,
remember you don't want to go to pain because those ligaments already
sprained, you're just trying to stretch it back
out, get everything loose and backup. So hold it for about 30 seconds,
come back down, and do that three times. Just a nice stretch especially in that
big toe there. After you're done with the stretch,
you can leave the towel down, and then do toe crunches, or towel crunches. So
you're just basically trying to scrunch up the towel with your toes to make them
work and exercise in there. So as you can see, I'm not great at it. You don't have
to be wonderful at it, but you're just trying to scrunch it up and get that
movement in the toes. So, oh that's pretty good for me.
The next one is going to be doing some exercises with the resistance band.
So this time just put it around the big toe. And then give it a little bit of
tension, and then curl that toe down. The other times might go with it, that's
fine, but you're just getting that resistance. Really try to control it, you
can see that the coming up for me is a little bit difficult,
I don't have again a lot of control in my toes is some people do, but if you
feel like it's jumping back a lot,
take the tension off of the band just a little bit. And try to go down as far as
you can, and then control it coming back up. So we can just start off we may be 10
of these and then work your way up from there.
If that becomes easy and if you get to 20 to 25, then you can go more heavier
resistant band. The next one, I'm going to show you on this foot because you're
doing some arch work, going into what we call pronation and supination. So supination
is coming up and then pronation is going down.
So you want to kind of keep your toe down and your heel down and bring your
arch up like that. And then come down and flatten it as much as you can. So you're
just kind of rotating that foot up and coming back down. And those have a lot to
do with that big toe that first ray there,
those muscles, and tendons, and
ligaments. So that's just kind of stretching it out. So coming up into that
arch, and then flattening the arch down.
So again just starting off with 10 and kind of work your way up to their just a
little pause at end, two to three seconds, and then come back down and flatten it
back out.
Then if you have a massage ball like a lacrosse ball, a tennis ball, something
like that,
just set it on the ground and kind of roll it around on your toes. Just to kind
of stretch everything out.
You can even go into the arch here because most of the time if you've got
that turf toe,
you're going to have pain all the way down into the foot because those tendons
and muscles go all the way down and then come up the leg.
So you really want to kind of work that out as much as you can as well. Just you
can do 30 seconds and work your way up to about a minute with this one. And then
the last one is just going to be spreading the toes out. Almost like when
you do your fingers and spread out like this.
So just keeping your heel down you can bring your foot up just a little bit so
your toes have some room for movement, and then just try and spread them out as
much as you can. You can see again, mine don't do a whole lot, the pinky goes more, but
trying to go as much you can. So relax and then spreading as much as you can, and
then come back in.
So again just start off with about five of these, hold it for about three to five
seconds, and then relax.
So those are your stretches and exercises for turf toe.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section. If you'd like check out
some other videos go to AskDoctorJo.com
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