Plantar fasciitis can be a really frustrating injury to deal with, especially when it begins to affect your exercise routine or if it flares up when you're training for a fitness event.

Here are some tips to help you understand this common injury, and what's involved with treatment and prevention.

LEARN MORE:

• What is plantar fasciitis?
• Common causes of plantar fasciitis
• Treatment of plantar fasciitis
• How to prevent plantar fasciitis

What is plantar fasciitis?

Fascia is a type of connective tissue that can be found throughout your body, surrounding your muscles, nerves and blood vessels. Anything injury with 'itis' on the end of its name is to do with inflammation, so plantar fasciitis is inflammation of the fascia under your foot. More specifically, it's a thick band connecting your toes to the bone of your heel, supporting your movement and providing shock absorption.

Plantar fasciitis feels like sharp pain in the bottom of your foot, in the soft tissue of the arch close to the heel. It will often feel better when you're up and moving about, but feel worse first thing when you get out of bed in the morning and just after exercising.

Common causes of plantar fasciitis

Plantar fasciitis can develop for a range of reasons. When it comes to exercise training, this injury is often caused by a specific task that places a lot of stress on your heel such as running or aerobics. Another common cause is having high arches, flat feet or a particular way of moving (such as heel strike which is often caused by a long stride).

As plantar fasciitis is in the foot and we spend a lot of our time moving about during our day on our feet, it can be difficult to avoid re-triggering this inflammation, and this can make it tricky to heal. This is why plantar fasciitis can continue to worsen over time and become difficult to fix if not addressed early on.

Treatment of plantar fasciitis

Your first port of call should be a physiotherapist as they will be able to make sure you're dealing with plantar fasciitis and not a bone fracture in your foot or other injury.

It can be helpful to remember that this is an inflammation injury, so once you experience symptoms of plantar fasciitis the first step in treatment will typically be to reduce the inflammation. You can do this by:

• If you can link the injury to a specific activity, stop doing what's causing it and allow your body to rest and recover.
• Roll out the underside of your foot with a cold or frozen water bottle by firmly pressing your foot down on it. Roll backwards and forwards in the soft arch of the foot leading right into the edge of your heel.
• Alternatively, you could put your foot in cold water or apply an icepack.

Next, we want to try and release tension in this band of fascia, to do that:

• Use a tennis ball, golf ball, lacrosse ball or similar to roll out the underside of the foot in the same place described for the cold water bottle. Press your foot down firmly into it.
• You can stretch it. Stand facing a wall, put your foot up against it, keeping your heel on the ground and placing the ball of the foot and toes on the wall, then lean into it.

The specific movement that helps is drawing your toes up towards your shin to stretch along the bottom of the foot.

For more severe plantar fasciitis that lasts longer than a few weeks, things such as orthotics, anti-inflammatories and taping may help. This may escalate to shock-wave therapy, cortisone injections, or even in some cases surgery. There are also special socks you can get to wear at night to help stretch the foot while you are asleep and potentially alleviate the soreness you can experience in the morning after getting out of bed.

How to prevent plantar fasciitis

If your training involves a lot of repetitive foot movement, make sure you have a good regular recovery routine in place. This could include stretching, yoga and underfoot ball rolling.

What footwear are you wearing? Having shoes with good support can make a difference - and not just your trainers, but the shoes you wear during the day too. Bare feet, jandals and thin-soled shoes such as ballet slippers may worsen it. Orthotics may help if your feet need extra support.

REFERENCES

• Mayo Clinic. Plantar Fasciitis. Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/plantar-fasciitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354846.

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