♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Shrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course.
- Today, Mr. Brad,
we're gonna talk about simple stretching
for plantar fasciitis plus a bonus.
We're always trying to deliver more, Brad.
- Right, it's always good practice
to give a little more than you, right.
- Right, you said you would.
- Yeah, exactly.
So we're gonna-
- That's a lesson to learn in life, by the way.
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because this is the saddest tale of all.
Brad and I, as children,
we're not liked, bullied, picked on,
and we're trying to turn things around
so that we feel better about ourselves now.
- Yeah, we're gonna get in trouble
for that someday. (chuckling)
- I know.
All right, so Brad,
what are we talking about here?
What is plantar fasciitis?
- Plantar fasciitis.
Okay, so this is something I would say,
a majority of the people experience sometime
during their life (cross-talking).
- [Bob] Yeah, it's pretty prevalent.
- [Brad] Right, and there's some theories on why,
I'm not gonna get into that.
But, in the cases of plantar,
it means the bottom plantar fascia,
is the bottom of the foot,
the fascia tissues that...
If you look at my foot
I've taken the Liberty to color them
with black lines that represents (cross-talking).
- [Bob] I was worried that was mold from your foot.
Or a fungus or something that you developed.
- [Brad] Oh, no. I took a shower this morning.
And so it goes from actually from the toes
it's just not from the fore foot to the heel.
It's from the toes all the way down to the heel.
Now you can see, I have a red mark right here.
That is a very common symptom point of pain.
You know, if you push on there,
usually that's one of the hot spots.
- [Bob] That's quite often the tender spot.
- [Brad] But that's not the spot
you always wanna focus on,
but it is a common symptom.
And then if you look at the line I drew on my foot,
I didn't stop at the heel.
It goes around the heel
and all the way up into the calf muscle.
- [Bob] It's connecting into other stuff
through the fascia.
It's not all one piece,
but it becomes kind almost one unit.
- [Brad] Right, precisely, Bob.
And that's why we got simple stretching
as a title of this video.
And, and we're not just gonna stretch the plantar fascia,
we're gonna actually stretch the whole unit
and get the calf muscle as well.
- [Bob] See, the idea is quite often
that fascia got tore,
maybe some micro tears in it.
And as it's healing, we wanna stretch it
so that it stays stretched out
and it stays lengthened as stronger
in a lengthened position.
- Right. So once it's healed, it's not tight.
And then you can get back to your recent activities
at the same level you were before,
which reminds me, by the way,
I am kind of dedicating this video,
not just to all the plantar fasciitis victims,
but Trey, who happens to (cross-talking)
from Milwaukee,
Milwaukee School of Engineering.
He's in college and he is competing,
running faster than you can imagine.
And he has this.
So Trey, I want you to pay attention, do this.
You're going to get better.
- You forgot to mention something though.
Trey dates your daughter.
- Oh, that's true.
That is very true.
- Trey, if he hasn't said it already,
you'd be a gentleman.
- (chuckling) There's no problem.
- He's a good man.
Okay, good to hear that.
- I have no concerns.
I'm proud to have him dating my daughter.
But anyways, let's get back to the stretching, Bob.
So how are we gonna stretch it
so we get the whole unit from the toe to the knee?
Okay? - Right.
- So here we go.
We're gonna start out with the calf muscle,
large muscle,
there's a couple of three muscles
that we're really getting at,
two of them in particular.
It's not important that we name him now
but a simple way to do it.
And a lot of people do it
is the simple wall stretch
where we go like this.
- So you're stretching the one,
he's not stretching...
Which one are you stretching, Brad?
- Right now I'm doing the gastroc
because my knee is straight.
- Yeah, what I'm saying is,
Brad, you're not stretching
the one that's bare-skinned right now.
- No, I'm doing this way.
- He's stretching the one in the back.
- I don't like to do the stretch bare-footed.
I would prefer you do this with a shoe on,
although you can do a bare-footed.
I think you just get-
- So he's stretching the hind leg right now.
- Right, here, let me expose it back.
- Yeah, there we go.
- So we're getting that, right there.
- And he needs to keep the heel down.
If your heel comes up,
you're not really stretching it.
And you're stretching it both with the leg straight
and the leg bent, right?
- Yeah, and then I'm gonna do it leg bent.
Then the heel does kind of come up
and you get the stretch deeper in the soleus muscle.
Here we're getting the gastroc,
and then the soleus and I like the whole,
you can hold that up to 30 seconds
or you can do the on/off
where you go pressure on,
pressure off.
And do that 5-10 times.
Now, so that's gonna get this part
from the here to here.
The other really nice way.
If you happen to have an incline board to stretch,
that I feel is superior to the wall stretch.
You can just relax more with it
and this, you pretty much,
I really feel you should have a shoe on for this, for sure.
And here, I (indistinct)
the knee straight, soleus.
- [Bob] And you can see his full weight is on there.
There's no weight on this one.
So gives it a good stretch.
- There we go.
And you might as well stretch both legs.
Do the other one so you help prevent any potential
for that one to get plantar fasciitis.
So that takes care from here to here.
Now we want to get from here to here,
but I think, would you agree, Bob?
We don't ever wanna just focus here to here.
We want to think it's from here-
- All the way into the toes.
- To the toe.
- Yeah, get them all right away.
- Now, this one, probably with the shoe off
is more effective.
I call it the figure-four stretch
because I'm stretching in a figure of four,
'cause this would be seated.
This would be seated figure-four,
that's therapy talk,
at least my therapy talk. - Yeah, in your world.
- (chuckling) In my world.
- In Brad's world.
- Yeah. What happens there?
So you're not just gonna pull here,
we're gonna wrap around the toe,
and you can see I'm gonna extend,
not just the great toe,
although I'm gonna focus on that,
but get all the toes
and get that stretch in here and pull that up.
- [Bob] What's nice about this one
is that I coach my patients to do this
right away in the morning
before they get outta bed.
Because one of the things about plantar fasciitis is
it's healing all night long,
and then you step on it
and quite often, you break open what was healing.
- And it is painful. - It's painful.
So you wanna stretch before you even get outta bed,
and then you wanna put shoes on
before you even step on it.
- So in bed you still do do the figure-four,
where you can go just like this.
And you can stretch while you're in bed
waking up and have it be part of your ritual.
- Then put your shoes on.
The other thing, time of day, Brad,
that I have people do it
is if they've been sitting a while.
I'll often say before you can get up and start walking,
go ahead and give yourself a stretch.
Maybe slip that shoe off
and clear out the office and then, (chuckling)
and give it a stretch.
But it's really important.
I mean, what's to like about this stretch,
you can do it.
You can do it six/seven times a day,
for 30 seconds to a minute.
- Yep. So again, you can hold it for that 30 seconds
or if you wanna stretch on and off
what works better for you.
- And the studies have shown
that that stretching alone
eventually takes away the problem.
It's important to get that great toe, the big toe,
to go with it.
Now in a seated position or kneeling position,
I'm gonna do this with the shoe on.
You can do this and this,
uses your body weight.
And it gets that toe.
And I'm racking my hips over
and using my body weight.
Now you wanna use this with good control.
- [Bob] Do you have your shoe on or not?
- Yeah. And we can do it this way
so you can see it better too.
That's why we're-
- I was gonna say that's one,
you would probably want your shoe on again,
wouldn't you Brad?
- Yeah. I would say you can do it either way,
like on this, on hard floor with my shoe on.
If I got some carpeting,
I'll probably do it with may do it with my shoe off.
But you'll know,
you'll get the feeling of that stretch.
- The stretching really is the key part to the treatment.
But in addition to that
should we give them a couple bonuses?
- Yeah. Let's let's get into the bonus area.
- Probably the massage.
You wanna show the massage?
- Yep. With massage,
you definitely have to have a shoe off.
- [Bob] Yeah. Good point.
- Yeah. So here we got that fascia.
You're gonna go in that figure-four position,
and if you can get someone else
to do this for you, great.
- [Bob] Good luck to you.
- Yeah, good luck.
But you're gonna get in here.
The fibers go this way.
We're gonna do a cross-fiber massage.
The forces are going this direction
and you're not just gonna go in
and on top of the skin,
you're gonna push in deep
and you're gonna work back and forth
and you can do some crosses like this,
or work the thumbs together.
And you're gonna work this until your thumbs get tired.
And even then,
it could be longer than that
but that's always a limiting factor for everyone.
And there's usually that hotspot there,
you can work on that,
but only if after 20/30 seconds, it starts to feel better.
If it just continues to be an irritant
then stay away from that.
- [Bob] Yeah, work around it.
- Yep, precisely, Bob.
And you can work it all over
and then give some stretches to that,
get that toe extension.
Now, the other thing, if you happen to have,
and I know this is a symptom
(indistinct) is out of bed in the morning hurts.
So you can do the stretching
or we can go to this night splint
and splint that foot up in a neutral position.
So as it heals, it's in the lengthen position
and it's much more tolerable in the morning.
- Yeah. Good point, Brad.
We did a video actually reviewing three different splints.
We like this one.
I like the other one too, the sock one.
This one was called,
I wanna make sure I got it right, Brad.
It's the BraceAbility,
I'll put a link down below.
Sleeping Stretch Boost. (chuckling)
BraceAbility Sleeping Stretch Boot-
- [Brad] For plantar fasciitis.
- [Bob] Yeah. So you wanna go ahead and describe it, Brad?
- [Brad] Yeah. So this one,
the nice thing about this one,
we talk about getting the toes up.
It has a actual wedge shape.
- [Bob] And they said that adds another five degrees.
- [Brad] And you get that under your big toe.
Now Bob, the thing that works out nice
is once you get it strapped on,
it's all easy, quick disconnect this.
- [Bob] Yeah. You just adjust these.
So they're nice and snug against your leg.
- [Brad] Yep. So there,
and you do a little bit of this.
Bob's already adjusted it for himself
but show them this, Bob,
'cause this is the part that-
- [Bob] This is the key part.
- [Brad] It's easier to do it for it by yourself.
- [Bob] Yeah. So you don't
wanna bring the foot up a little bit
to a comfortable level though yet.
And you may not know what that is,
but you see I can just pull on this,
and I secure them
and now my foot is a little dorsal flexed.
And the key with this though
is again, is it has to be comfortable.
I know my wife wore one of these boots,
in the middle of night she's readjusting it.
- [Brad] You could hear Velcro. (chuckling)
- [Bob] Yeah, because it was too tight
and it was keeping her awake.
And so you need to find that perfect level
where it stretches it
but yet it won't keep you awake at night.
- [Brad] It's like that sweet spot.
- [Bob] That sweet spot.
That's the word I was looking for.
- [Brad] So, and your wife had tremendous success with,
this was like the key to her success, wasn't it?
- Yeah, this was,
I mean, it was amazing.
The turnaround with it.
I won't say that's gonna happen for everybody
'cause it certainly won't.
But it was really strange
how well it worked for her
'cause we had been doing all these other things
and it gotten slightly better.
But with this, it was like
within two days, it was shocking.
- I think one of the keys with plantar
is don't let it get too bad with debilitating it.
Once you feel it,
you gotta nip it in a bud.
Not in the butt, but the bud.
That's like when the tree blossoms,
you get the bud off-
- I got it, Brad,
you don't need to explain to it.
- It took me a while to figure that out.
But anyways, it's all part of
getting things better in our life.
So Trey, good luck with this
and I'll expect to see
an incredible 1,500 meter run this weekend.
- Cool, see you later.