Are you struggling with plantar fasciitis, tarsal tunnel syndrome, peroneal tendonitis, shin splints, or sprained ankles? Learning great strengthening exercises for your feet, especially focusing on the smaller muscles in your feet, helps you in your recovery of any foot problems you might be struggling with. Also, if you’ve spent any time on crutches or in a boot, you can often see the muscle shrinkage this can cause and it takes some work to get those muscles back to peak performance. This video demonstrates some great exercises that can help!
Keep in mind, when you are doing these strengthening exercises for your feet, not only are you regaining strength, but you are also increasing blood flow, delivering oxygen and nutrients for recovery. Additionally, you are washing out swelling and irritants that are contributing to pain.
It’s important that you do these exercises in a way that doesn’t recreate any pain you are working to recover from. So start small if you need to, creating more movement as you are comfortable.
These exercises are good to start with as they don’t require much weight bearing, making them less likely to aggravate any problems you are struggling with. It’s important for full recovery to progress these exercises into weight bearing and resistance training to safely return to activity and prevent recurrence.
If you’d like some help working through an appropriate exercise progression or would like to learn other strategies that can help with your foot or ankle pain, give me a call! I’d love to help!