Five Leading Causes of Plantar Fasciitis
By: Will Zolpe
Tags: Life Lessons, Shoes, Body, Health, Plantar Fasciitis

Five Leading Causes of Plantar Fasciitis

Prepare to be surprised

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

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I’ve noticed an incredible amount of confusion within the online plantar fasciitis (PF) community in addressing the pain points. My biggest pet peeve are all these “exercises” that will apparently “cure” your injury.

First of all, exercises and stretches are missing the mark in terms of getting yourself fully functional again. Especially because these are almost always strengthening exercises and light stretches that we would do to warm up for a workout.

PF comes about because of bad habits. These habits may cause you to be weak in an area like your foot arch, but that doesn’t mean you should do foot crunches every day for years so you can run again.

It means you need to identify why your foot arch is not able to gain strength (what’s holding it back?) because your arch should naturally be strong on its own.

There’s no “curing” PF. It’s the result of some tightness or misalignment within your body (the bad habits I was talking about). More to the point, something or things are the CAUSE and PF is the EFFECT.

You don’t want to tackle the symptom when you should tackle the source to stop all the symptoms. We can get rid of PF completely if we address these other already existing problems within the body.

Speaking of causes, let’s get into what is ACTUALLY causing your plantar fasciitis:

Traditional Footwear

The shoes we wear every single day, are literally the one and only real reason that plantar fasciitis even exists. It’s only recognized as a common problem in modern, developed countries like the U.S. If we lived most of our lives in our bare feet or at least in shoes that were made to serve our feet, we’d be much better off.

If you’d like to read the laundry list of specific problems with our shoes, please check out this article.

In the meantime, you can take a look at minimalist or barefoot style shoes which allow your toes to spread out, allow your calves and achilles to stretch, and overall allow your feet and ankles to get strong again on their own unlike in regular shoes. These have saved my feet from multiple ailments like PF and bunions.

Everything else in this list is a byproduct of our traditional shoes by the way….

Tight Calves

Yes, your calves are most likely the root cause of all the symptoms you are feeling in your feet and heels. Most notably the soleus, posterior tibialis, and gastrocnemius muscles which run along the inside of your shin bone from your knee to ankle, might be incredibly tight. These muscles are what give your foot arch support.

When they become too tight, they cause people to stand in an open-foot position which is exactly what it sounds like. This causes the ankles to collapse inward (over-pronation) and puts lots of stress on the tissues above the ankles. This is plantar fascia and heel pain central.

To give your foot, heel, and calf a nice stretch to alleviate plantar fasciitis, the foot rocker has proven to be very effective for many people. It can help improve flexibility in the lower leg muscles, strengthen your ankles, and reduce pain from injuries.

Heel-Striking

This is a byproduct of our shoes, as we would never heel-strike a hard surface in our bare feet because it hurts! Striking the ground heel first when we walk or run is detrimental for many reasons.

It increases the amount of time in a pronated position as we land and push off, which is how pain starts to arise. This leads to over-pronation, stress on the muscles in the lower leg, and the foot collapsing inward again.

Lack of Ankle Mobility

Most shoes have an elevated heel in them, whether you know it or not. We are told that it’s just for a little extra cushioning or shock absorption, but this is very bad for our feet ironically.

The raised heel makes our calves sit in a shortened position all the time, leading the muscles to get tighter. This turns the feet outward, making them prone to collapse inward and put stress on the lower leg leading to more heel and arch pain.

The ankle wants to stay mobile, so when it doesn’t have proper mobility, it will enable more pronation but this is not what we want.

Weak Toes

Another thing that our shoes don’t allow for us is the ability to use our toes to their full potential. The toes are needed for balance, agility, proprioception, and all the movement we undertake. All shoes are made with a narrow toe box unless you specifically buy wide toe box shoes.

The narrow toe box compresses our toes together and holds them in a position where they are not being used and are forced to stay smashed into a small space. We need the toes to spread out and build strength again.

The big toe is a major deciding factor in the height and strength of your foot arch, so when you can’t use your big toe, you can’t have a strong arch. This means your foot yet again becomes prone to collapsing inward and experiencing over-pronation because the big toe isn’t accessible to stop the natural pronation pattern.

To help offset some of these issues, I’ve been wearing toe spacers for a while now. They help spread the toes so they can relax after a long day and start getting stronger so they can become fully functional again.

Over-pronation

Over-pronation is when the ankle and foot collapse too much while moving. Pronation is a natural function, but when its excessive it can become very detrimental.

Notice how this is the result of all the other causes, the common denominator. But it is the reason we get the pain signals from our feet and heels. Over-pronation is ultimately what we’re trying to get rid of, but we need to address the previously mentioned causes first because they actually cause THIS cause.