How to Fix your Foot Pain Today | Foot and Ankle Pain Explained

Are you suffering from foot pain?

Foot pain can be a very frustrating injury to deal with. Why? Because it’s our relationship with the ground.

We are bipedal creatures, we walk upright, and our feet are on the ground all the time.

Now, if you’re dealing with foot pain, this, amongst so many other things, are being mismanaged.

Why?

Because you go to your primary care, you go to somebody who’s talking about foot pain; they’re going to send you to a podiatrist.

While there are many great podiatrists out there, the recommendation for foot pain is orthotics or some sort of more supportive shoe without even understanding or doing an evaluation on whether that person would even need supported shoes.

Similar to how an x-ray and an MRI is overused for lower back pain, we’re looking at scans the feet and arches.

To simply think that’s enough, that is just the wrong solution.

You have to understand because this is our contact with the ground, we have weaker feet than normal.

We’re in shoes that are too small, we’re in high heels, we’re in the stiff soles that don’t allow our feet to actually function as feet, and they become weaker.

When they become weaker, they’re not able to sustain a load of our body weight, not to mention that a third of us are overweight to an obesity level.

So, if you’re dealing with foot pain, in this blog, we’re going to share a couple of the ways that we test, evaluate, and assess here at Live Loud Chiropractic:

• What’s going on in the feet to determine is it actually a support issue?
• Is it actually a mobility issue
• Is it actually a strength issue
• and they’re going to give you a couple of solutions that will help you determine what you need to do

A couple of typical foot pain issues:

• Achilles Tendinitis (heel pain)
• Plantar Fasciitis
• Toe Pain
  • What we commonly see here at Live Loud is big toe pain
  • Potential Bunions

Keep reading or watch the video as we’ll address how we look at foot structure and function and a few things that can help you NOW.

Just like with everything else, load progression has to be the forefront of this, especially when you’re talking about plantar fasciitis, and or some sort of Achilles tendonitis or Achilles pain.

This is a true story based on me, I wanted to start running, and I was doing a particular challenge of which I was running 45 minutes a day. I had not ran in years and I decided to start running 45 minutes a day, about four miles a day.

After one week, I had extensive tendinitis issues, not because something was wrong with my tendons, I just asked them to do more than what they were capable of.

Simply put, I started to regress and went back to walking and some other forms to let that calm down, and then restructured my running back appropriately, thus not having any more issues.

So, you have to have that conversation of understanding what’s realistic to expect, based on the condition of your anatomy and your physiology.

Now that being said, one of the big issues that we see with feet is the shoes that you’re wearing. More often than not, our shoes are too small for our feet, especially where the toe box is, and then they taper forward.

What happens with that is you change the structure of how the foot should function when it’s weight-bearing. So, we have to look at shoes, not that I want you to go buy a whole new wardrobe, but understand that this is directly affecting how your foot functions.

Now, even more importantly, your feet are what’s connecting you to the ground. Naturally, we ebb and flow and sway, giving you good contact to the ground, this improves your proprioceptive input of where you are in space, thus improving function in the knees and the hips and everywhere else.

So, if you’re not having good contact with the ground, whether through poor feet or not understanding how your feet work, this could be part of what’s causing even issues upstream.

Now, we have already addressed some of the foot issues with our knee pain exercise or knee video, as well as our hip video. Because what you have to understand, especially when we’re talking about squats, is that the positioning of your feet will change the angle of your knee and the internal or external rotation of your hip.

So simply changing your foot patterning while doing certain exercises can also help you better stack the structures above, leading to better improvement in those movements as well. When we’re talking about feet, it’s not just about the foot pain, but we’re seeing how it affects other things up and down the chain.

Squat

We’re going to have you go hip width apart and feet straight. From this perspective we can the toes are on the ground and if you have a good arch. Paying attention to if the arch is collapsing or not.

As we narrow the squat we’re looking to see if the toes start to flare up a bit, or if you’re not able to go as deep.

What we want to see is that you are anchored, your feet don’t move, your knees track well, over toes, and you’re getting a lot more depth and range of motion out of the hips.

Sometimes, it isn’t a foot pain issue, because you often have the necessary range of motion and control. It can be a technique issue. For this instance, just widening your squat stance might give you the range of motion and control you needed!

Step Forward

Now we’ll have you put your feet together and do a lunge pattern. You can step back or forwards.

Here we are looking at how the front foot is controlled. Not only that, we watch on the back side tow extension, which is critical.

Next, drop down on to her knee. We call this a tall kneeling position. Tall kneeling position is important to determine if you have the necessary toe extension.

Lastly, we’ll expand upon this and ask you to sit butt towards your heels. This puts a little more pressure. If we’re seeing sensitivity in the toes in this position, we know that we’re lacking extension.

Why is this important?

Well, you need great toe extension because the majority of your propulsion comes off your bigger toe when you’re running, and walking.

Now, this is just a few of the functional assessments that we do for feet and foot pain here at Live Loud Chiropractic.

One of the issues that we see with the foot is we’re actually lacking rear foot inversion and eversion. We need that calcaneus and subtalar joint to rock back and forth.

One thing you can do is build your arch. Watch how your ankle shifts side to side. In this rocking motion, what we’re creating is better inversion and eversion. Now, this helps you gain more proprioception.

If you were to stand on your, left foot, bringing your right foot up, you can see how that ankle has to rock back and forth. So, this helps you with balance and control you need inversion and eversion of the ankle.

If you are lacking great toe extension, we would essentially give you a tall kneeling type of movement to help train and then some sort of a lunging pattern to help improve.

From an aerial view, what we’re looking for is do you have the ability to widen the toe box.

Shoes play a huge role in shaping our feet. Often, they put more pressure on the first metatarsal phalangeal joint. This is how Bunions are often created.

We need the ability to spread out our feet. If your shoes don’t allow you to do this, then you’re scrunched in right so you need a wide toe box to be able to better function.

One of the easiest remedies for feet is rolling them out.

We get so caught up and tight shoes and just so much movement that our feet do not get a lot of love.

So, one thing that everyone should and could be doing is simply rolling out with a lacrosse balls. You need something that allows you to dig into a lot of the intricate muscles of the foot that oftentimes get very neglected.

Alright, so I hope that was helpful again, when we’re dealing with the feet, because we have so much time on them, you really have to look at the loading progressions to better understand what’s the actual cause.

More times than not, we’re actually not doing enough for our feet from a very direct, intentional perspective. And then we just go out and run or walk a lot and then expect it to do what we want.

So, by simply taking one step back and addressing a lot of these issues, you’re able to go three, four-fold forward, because you’ve set yourself up for success. And you set your foundation (pun intended) to be adequate enough to be able to handle everything that you throw at it.

If you’ve been dealing with foot pain, ankle pain, Achilles issues, plantar fasciitis, and especially big toe pain, and you’re tired of it, and you want to deal with it, please reach out to us! We’ll be able to set you up with a proper evaluation and assessment to determine what areas of the foot are actually tight.

Then what needs to be mobilized and what areas actually might be weak that need to be strengthened or improve its stability.

Let’s get you back to all the activities whether that’s pickleball, tennis, volleyball, or even just simple things such as running and walking! So, if you’re tired of this foot pain, and you want to get some answers, please come in and see us here at Live Loud Chiropractic in Lafayette, CO.

We’d love to help you out so that you can live a loud, adventurous life.