I’ve had a flare up of plantar fasciitis in the past few weeks and I’m finally getting to the point where I’ve decided I need to make changes to my exercise routine to help it heal. Based off of what I’ve read in some of BM’s articles, I’m going with a 2-3 times / week exposure to find my “entry point” for rehabilitation. Here’s the rough plan I’m thinking:
Tue / Thur / Sat - CrossFit or similar exercise, swapping out / scaling exercises that may aggravate, e.g. rowing instead of running
Mon / Wed / Fri - Go for a walk in the mornings but other than that no intense exercise.
Does that sound reasonable as a way to recover? I feel like I’m wanting to have a little more cardio somehow on the M / W / F rest days but I don’t want to push too hard either. Your thoughts, experience, and wisdom here would be greatly appreciated!
Hey Alex! It’s hard to provide more specific recommendations without knowing your full training history, but this sounds like a reasonable starting point for Tue/Thu/Sat. If you are having symptoms with running, you could also consider reducing pacing, reducing overall volume, and/or adding some walk/run intervals. If symptoms are significant, it’s reasonable to take a step back from running entirely for a short period of time to let symptoms calm down; however, there are also ways to still run if your symptoms are occurring at a particular pace or mileage. You could also consider adding in some exercises specific to that area like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pso8Zt9litQ. Place the towel roll under your toes if you are able to tolerate. I’d advocate for doing these at least 3x/week for about 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps with emphasis on slow controlled eccentric (lowering). Hope this helps! If you’d like to talk about your situation more specially, I think a remote consult would be helpful.
Hi Hannah! Thank you for the awesome response! I really appreciate the specific recommendations and the video. I have been doing a similar tippy toe exercise as part of my running warm ups although to be honest I’ve probably been rushing through it a bit and not taking my time lowering down as you recommended. The symptoms aren’t terrible and I’m also experimenting with doing self-massage following a trigger point therapy book which seems to be helping. I will also consider a remote consult if things don’t start looking up though. Thanks!
No problem! You can also load that exercise with dumbbells as it becomes easier, ideally, this would be at RPE 7-8.
We don’t have any evidence to suggest that self-massage and/or trigger point therapy alters tissue structure and improves performance. If it’s something that you enjoy and feels good, you can do it, but it’s not something that we would recommend.
If you would like more guidance in the future, myself or another member of our pain and rehab rehab team would be happy to consult with you and provide you with rehab based programming!