♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical Therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- And we are the most famous Physical Therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're going to talk about three simple
foot strengthening exercises to increase your arch
and hopefully reduce pain.
Now this is more help prevent pain, I want to state that,
rather than really reduce pain to some extent.
- I've got a couple questions about this,
but we better take care of business first.
- We'll go on, yeah.
You may have heard that running shoes, by the way,
are responsible for weakening your feet.
- Sure.
- And we'll talk more about that, yeah.
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- Say no more, Bob.
- Some.
Alright, yeah, there's a big controversy about this.
I don't even know if it's controversial, is that, you know,
since, as a society, we started wearing shoes
with a lot more cushion, that it's actually weakening
our feet, and it makes sense.
- Yeah, the cushion and just a lot of support, you know,
they've got names for it, and can, you know, just feel it
on this particular shoe, how much support is in the arch.
- And Brad and I were just talking about this,
and that's kind of putting forth a movement towards
what they call a minimalist shoe.
A shoe that has a lot less arch, and again
something like that, you don't want to do, just,
in my mind, cold-turkey.
You want to make sure you have enough range of motion
and stretching before you're going to do that.
- Right, yeah, and it all has to do with the barefoot
movement and the toes.
Have you ever seen the shoes where you put your toes in?
- Yes, yes.
- They're cute.
- So anyway, let's get this back to me now.
- Oh yeah (laughs).
- Two years ago, I started wearing a really
thick sole slipper at night.
And I'd walk around the house and
I was noticing a couple months ago that my
balance was really getting bad.
Like I came out of the bathroom at a restaurant,
and I went like this.
My wife goes "what's wrong with you?".
- Well, how many did you have?
- No, I hadn't had any!
(laughs)
So, again, I'm really tall and I have high arches
and you know, I have kind of small feet for my height.
So I don't have a lot of base anyway.
So I was like, what's going on?
So I really started thinking, you know, is it my feet?
So I started walking around the house barefoot
or with stocking feet.
- Sure.
- Within a week I noticed my balance was
drastically improved.
- So all those muscles in your feet, it proved
a point that strengthening your foot and ankles
is a big part of health.
- It's an important thing, and I know a lot of runners
even that want to do that,
one little more thing that might help them
with their running.
- Right, there you go.
- So that's the first thing.
Now this is not, warning, I want to make sure
this is very clear.
- What?
- If you have plantar fasciitis, or some heel pain,
I don't want you walking around barefoot right now.
You want to wait 'til the pain is gone,
then you might try it, just to start strengthening
the foot gradually.
- Sure.
- But we actually recommend that you wear shoes
all the time when you have plantar fasciitis.
In fact, we want you to put them on before you
even get out of bed.
The other thing is, when you're walking barefoot,
you want to try to spread the forces out
between the heel and the forefoot.
So you don't want to be walking like this
and hit the heel first like this,
and I've been working on this,
where I hit heel and forefoot at the same time.
And that puts a lot less stress on the plantar fascia.
- Right.
And if you're on a hard floor like this,
you can feel that heel, that calcaneus bone
impact on the hard floor.
- You know, as you get older, the fat pad on your heel
gets thinner and won't tolerate as much.
So you want to make sure you are spreading the forces out.
- Sure.
- Alright, we're going to go to exercise number two now,
this is.
- What was exercise number one?
- Walking barefoot.
- Oh, yes.
- That's an easy one to do.
Barefoot, or I should say stocking footed.
Because you don't want to pick up things from the floor,
you know.
(laughs)
Well there's a lot of crap on the floor.
(laughs)
- Bob, it's a family show!
We got in trouble last week for that.
- That's right.
Okay, doming, this is invented by Vladimir Janda.
He's a Czechoslovakian, or was,
quite a well-known doctor, in our field actually.
- Sure. Right.
- So what he recommends is, and I'm going to show you,
I've got a couple lines here to help you understand
what we're doing here.
So I have a line drawn on my metatarsal here, head,
and I have a line drawn on the floor.
So doming is, what you're going to do is,
slide this metatarsal back and form a dome.
So you can see how I slid it back,
and it's back from the line.
I'm feeling strengthening going on in that area.
Contraction going on in there.
- [Brad] You want to keep the heel stationary,
and just get that, so these muscles have to,
all those little intrinsic muscles in your feet.
It's kind of a hard thing to,
you've really got to concentrate.
- [Bob] I don't want you really grabbing,
I don't want you grasping into the wood,
you know, or into the floor.
Because then you're using extrinsic muscles,
it's hard to explain, but you want to stick
to the intrinsic muscles, so you're going to
work back and forth like this.
Now you can start by sitting, and doing this.
And eventually, you can do this inside your shoe.
Or you can do it while you're just sitting in a chair.
You doing it right now, Brad?
- [Brad] It is one of those things you've got to work on,
yeah.
- [Bob] And the eventually you get to the point
where you actually, you know, you'll do it with both feet.
And then eventually, you can get to the point where
you're standing, you've probably got to hold on
to something, and do it on one foot.
- [Brad] Well, you do.
- [Bob] What do you mean?
- [Brad] Well, your balance issue.
- [Bob] Oh, yeah that's right!
(laughs)
Brad's got good balance.
- If you're doing this at work,
and you're really thinking about it,
and people are kind of wondering,
'cause you're focusing on down there,
like maybe you have to go to the bathroom.
- What are you doing? Right!
Exactly! What's going on with you?
Alright, you show number three, zig zags.
- Oh, this is, I just had a woman,
she had balance problems, she was 60 years old,
active 60 years old, likes to hike a lot.
And her balance was off, 'cause she injured herself.
And we were working on how to work her balance,
and I said "well, do the ziggy zaggies!".
She looked at me like you're nuts.
(laughs)
- What's nice about these, you're getting ankle and foot.
- Right, right, so I had her do this.
This is the ziggy zaggy.
Now you have to do it with shoes on,
I have rubber, like a running or walking shoe
works good, not a leather shoe.
And on a smooth floor.
You could do it on carpet, but this works better.
And you simply just do this.
It's kind of like one of those dance moves.
What was that one from?
- Charleston?
- Yeah!
I said do this and she did this.
And she could do it.
Now I said do this with your good leg,
the one that wasn't injured, and she needed,
like I'm going to use something.
- A support?
- Yes, and she did this, and I said, you know,
go two feet.
- You can go along a countertop too.
- Yes, whatever you've got to hold onto.
And now I said, do it with your sore leg,
and she couldn't do it.
- Sure.
- She could, but it was much harder.
Now I said, now start to do it with both feet,
and then do it with your weak one,
until the weak one gets as strong as the other one.
And your balance will be evened out
and that will make a big difference.
- Much, much better.
- So, that's just an example of how it works
in the real world.
- Alright, let me again, alert you to the fact though,
that I do not want you walking if you have a sore foot.
- Yeah.
- Barefoot or stocking foot.
- Right, yeah, so this is.
- You want to be safe, this is strengthening your foot,
after the pain is gone.
- Right.
- So, alright, thanks for watching, folks.