In the previous blog, we talked about plantar fasciitis and 4 Quick Solutions to reduce the pain. If you haven’t read it, click here for more information.
While these strategies will assist with reduction in pain, as we mentioned before, there are other aspects of the hip, knee, ankle and foot that need to be looked at to reduce the chances of a flare up.
Today, we present to you 4 causes that you haven’t considered.
1) Hip stability: In the presence of weak hip muscles, a classical sign is the presence of knee collapse towards the opposite leg. When this knee collapse occurs, the foot will often excessively flatten, which translates to more stress over the plantar fascia.
Here is one movement you can perform to see if you have this issue:
2) Ankle Stability: If you’ve ever sprained your ankle before, then you will certainly want to check out whether you can pass this test. Having sufficient ankle control and stability will affect how much stress gets translated to the plantar fascia. In this test, your ankle balance will be assessed first with your eye opened, followed by your eyes closed. This is a preliminary test that needs to be passed before higher complex tests are performed.
3) Ankle Mobility: Once again, if you’ve ever sprained your ankle, then you will certainly want to check out whether you can pass this test.
#1 – Knee to wall Test – How far can you pull your foot back, while being able to bring your knee towards the wall without lifting your heel off the ground? Ideal range of motion is 5 inches.
4) Shin Bone (Tibia) Mobility: In the presence of decreased tibia mobility, the ankle will have less range of motion resulting in compensation through the foot and leading to increased stress through the plantar fascia.
Seated Tibia Internal Rotation Test: In the test below, you want to turn your foot in as far as possible towards the other leg without lifting any part of your foot off the ground. You should be able to rotate it at minimum 20 degrees.
So there you have it, 4 causes you may not have considered that could be contributing to your plantar fasciitis. In the next blog, we will talk about some corrective exercises that will help jump start solving the issues noted above.
Looking at the big picture, these are only a few of the tests that we perform to rule in/out contributor factors to plantar fasciitis. If you’re not recovering from your injury as quickly as you want to, you may need further professional help to guide you in the right direction. If you have any questions or concerns on what that may look like, give us a call and we’ll be glad to walk you through our process of getting you back to where you belong!
Author: Zachary Hum MScPT BAKin
