Do you battle with pain under your foot/feet when you start running? Does it start to improve as you go? This is a good sign. The most likely issue is related to your plantar fascia. On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast hear why and what you can try do to help with it.

Transcript

Welcome onto this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast. I’m Brad Brown, Lindsey Parry joins us once again and a question in from Eric Lucas. Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like answered, the website to get to, coachparry.com. If it’s something that’s really pressing that you need an answer to right now, really consider joining the Coach Parry online community, you get access to Lindsey Parry through the Coach Parry private online community, VIP Facebook group, the works. Just go to coachparry.com/join.

Lindsey, Eric’s question is interesting. He says it feels like his feet are almost bruised when he runs shortly after sleeping. He says there’s no visible discolouration, his shoes have about 600km, he’s 80kg, he’s running between 70-80km a week. He says it improves after walking and stretching, is this something that’s common? I’ve never heard of it, how about you?

Lindsey Parry: Look, people experience sensations differently. Just the fact that he’s feeling it particularly after waking and the fact that it eases off as he’s running tells you that it’s probably not something in the fatty padding or in the bone. It’s most likely something in the plantar fascia and it’s a form of plantar fasciitis.

The fact that it is easing up when he’s running on it, that’s a fairly good sign. Of course, if it got better with exercise and then later on in the run it starts to get particularly sore, then we have to watch out for things like stress fracture. Because that would be a fairly common symptom for a stress fracture, so just be aware of that.

Ways to help ease a plantar fascia injury

My gut is telling me to lean more towards something similar to, or a similar mechanism to plantar fasciitis. So I would roll that plantar fasciitis gently with ice, like freeze a bottle of water. Just gently roll that and then get a golf/cricket ball and actually massage under those feet.

Then also do some strengthening exercises by putting down a towel underneath your feet on a tiled floor. Then use your toes to pull that towel and crunch it up under your feet. So you’re almost doing like bicep curls with your toes to strengthen that plantar fascia.

Certainly, if it doesn’t improve with doing these things, I would go off and see a sports doctor and make sure that it isn’t more serious. But it’s a reasonably good sign that it’s easing up with exercise, but obviously the other thing to keep track of is over time. Does it get more and more sore each morning at the start, because then we do know that it’s getting worse and worse. It needs to be dealt with before it becomes a major/chronic injury.

BB: Brilliant, Eric, thank you for being in touch, Lindsey, thank you for your time once again. Don’t forget, if you’d like to be part of the Coach Parry online community; coachparry.com/join is where you can get all the details and you can win yourself a lifetime membership too. All you have to do is go to coachparry.com/win and that’s where you can get all those details. Until next time, from myself Brad Brown and Lindsey Parry, it’s cheers.