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What Is The First Step In Healing Plantar Fasciitis

What Is The First Step In Healing Plantar Fasciitis

Posted by on Aug 30, 2021 | 0 comments


We had a request from Sue Diaz who is a former patient. She asked what you can do to heal plantar fasciitis at home, as well as how to do preventative maintenance. So today, what we want to do is kind of give you some pointers, so if you do have plantar fasciitis there’s stuff that you can start doing on your own at home. See if these tips will help you get rid of it or take care of it. If they don’t, then you may need to call us for further help, but certainly, the suggestions we’re going to give you can help a lot. And like I said, a lot of cases, it will take care of it for you.

So, first thing I want to tell you about plantar fasciitis, is typically as most people know, especially if they’ve got it, it’s heel pain and or bottom of the foot pain. It’s usually worse in the morning when you first get out of bed and put weight on it. Typically we sleep in a shortened position. So whenever our toes and feet are pointed, those tissues are shortened and they start healing in a shortened position. Then you get up and put weight on, or you’re maybe stretching, and that can cause pain. So a lot of times the use of the night splint, which is a little splint you put around your foot to hold your foot in a up position, has been shown to give you some good relief.

The big thing that Brian and I really promote as the number one thing you can do, you need to make sure you’re walking with your feet straight. Most people walk with their feet, turned out. They put the weight on the outside of their foot. Their arches collapse, their plantar fascia gets overused, and then it starts breaking down. So first line of defense always is start walking with your feet straight.

Now here’s where we differ from the main stream. What people are told a lot of times is never go barefoot again. Well, we don’t believe in that because our bodies were designed without shoes and they’re perfectly designed not to need shoes. So we’re big proponents of you need to learn to straighten your feet, correct your mechanics.

So primary goal, number one, start making sure your feet are straight. Spend more time barefoot and correct mechanics. Meaning when you walk, you land on your heel and you push off your big toe, not the little toe side.
So as much time as you can go barefoot, start doing that. If you’re not used to barefoot and you find that five minutes starts aggravating your feet, just because you’re not used to it, spend three or four minutes. Slowly build your time up to where then you can start handling more time. Your body has to adapt to that. But that’s going to be, the best start is feet straight, heel, big toe push off and use your big toe like you would a gun barrel. Point that big toe in a straight line towards the direction you’re walking.

So first line of defense is proper mechanics when walking, because none of the exercises and stretches that we’re going to give you will work if you don’t correct the mechanics first. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel as we release exercises that will help you. So if you have further questions, contact us at fitnessforlifept.com.

Mark And Minnesota Vikings Place Kicker, Riley Patterson

Mark And Minnesota Vikings Place Kicker, Riley Patterson

Posted by on Aug 2, 2021 | 0 comments


Hi, Mark and Brian here, still two wild and crazy therapists. And we have a special guest of honor today, Riley Patterson. He is the placekicker for the Minnesota Vikings, and he’s home on leave before he has to report back in training camp and he’s gracious enough to come to this clinic and work out to keep his training going. So we thought for all you fans out there of football, and you get a chance to hear from a real-life professional. So we’ll let Riley say a few words. So, take it away.

Hi, I’m Riley. I’m with the Vikings right now. I just finished four years at the University of Memphis. And previous to that, I was here at Edwardsville for four years. And during that time, I had the great opportunity of coming in here and fixing a back issue back in high school with Mark. And he fixed me right up. And I was able to go on and do a lot of good things after that. Things are going really well, getting stronger, just getting myself ready for this next season. And it’s been a really great time here. I had no choice but to go here. Everywhere else was completely full. So this was a last-choice situation, obviously.

Stay tuned as we get ready to show you some specialized exercises we have Riley doing to help him stay in shape and be prepared for the next season.

If you have further questions, or if you or a loved one are and athlete that needs training,  contact us at Fitness4LifePT.com.

What May Be Causing Your Knee Pain

What May Be Causing Your Knee Pain

Posted by on Jun 28, 2021 | 0 comments


What we want to talk about today is knee pain. What we see a lot of times, and what we want you to understand, is that where a person has symptoms does not necessarily mean that’s where the problem is.

I’m going to use the knee for example this month. Now in our clinic here, Brian and I, if we get knee pain, we very rarely treat the knee. Keep in mind –  this is if it’s a non-traumatic injury, but rather an overuse injury or people just start presenting with knee pain from running too much or doing something. What we typically get told is that the patient says “I have knee pain.” Doctor looks at the knee, says, “You need to strengthen your knee.” What we have found is, most people do not have a weak knee, it is the quadricep muscle not being used correctly for example. Where I’m going with this is, a lot of times, a knee problem is a hip or a foot and an ankle problem.

What I want to address this month in our videos is a couple of different things to look at that could be causing the knee pain. The knee is just stuck in a middle, okay? It’s like a car on the railroad tracks. The knee can only go where your hip or your foot and ankle will let it go. It’s kind of stuck, but it can take the brunt of it simply because it’s not being controlled by those other two structures.

We’re going to talk about that, give you a few suggestions on that this month. If you have further questions, contact us Fitness4LifePT.com.

Ways To Get Active Again

Ways To Get Active Again

Posted by on Jun 2, 2021 | 0 comments


So what I’m going to talk about today is ways to get active. People have been sitting around too much. People haven’t been done anything. A lot of times, their excuse is, “Well, I can’t go to a gym. I don’t have the equipment.” That’s not an excuse, okay? There’s always things that you can do. One of our favorite types of exercise is a single-leg work. So many people neglect the single-leg exercises a lot. Everybody likes to do some type of squat, which is great, but if you can’t control a single leg, you’re going to have trouble controlling your walking for any distance. You’re going to have trouble running. You could have trouble stair climbing because those are all single-leg activities. So you have to be good on a single leg.

Another reason to focus on single leg exercises is you can hide a lot on two legs that you can’t get away with on one. So one leg can be doing more of the work, which means the other one isn’t working as hard, but you don’t pick that up necessarily when you’re doing two-legged exercises. I’m not saying is that two-leg exercises are bad. They are great, but you need to have focus on one leg too. That’s where you separate out and you can tell just how good you are.

So what we want to do with our videos this month is give you some exercises for single-leg that you could do. And all it requires is a step or going to the bottom of your step. Everybody has a step somewhere in your house typically. So you’d need no equipment for it. So this is what we’re going to show you is some different ways to work a single leg in your home without any equipment. So there’s no excuse for you not to do it. It doesn’t take a lot of time. So if you have further questions, contact us at fitness4lifept.com.

The Importance of Shoulder Mobility

The Importance of Shoulder Mobility

Posted by on Apr 12, 2021 | 0 comments


Hi, Mark and Brian here at Fitness For Life, and what we want to talk about is shoulder mobility, stability and strength.

What happens a lot of times now, especially during these times of people working at home, spending a lot of time sitting, a lot of time at computers, a lot of times they get so involved in their work they aren’t moving hardly at all. Muscles get tight, joints gets stiff, muscles get weak. People are starting to lose range of motion, simply because they’re not using their muscles or joints like they’re supposed to, or like they normally would.

One big key to help maintain your health is shoulder mobility. We need the shoulders for reaching, for grabbing, for driving. Basically anything you do, you’re going to use your arms. So we want to keep them loose. A lot of people are having shoulder pain, neck pain, neck issues, simply from sitting at their computers, being on your cell phones with their head down, or just not moving enough.

So what we want is not just flexibility, so not just stretching the muscle, we also want stability. You want to strive for control over that joint and that muscle, and build strength from there so that the muscle can control the range of motion.

What we would like to show you today are three good shoulder movements that you could do at home. These do not take long, just a few minutes to do. But if you do them spread out throughout the day, as you take a break from your work at your computer, that can go a long way towards helping your shoulders, helping your neck, helping your posture, and just general feeling good all over. If you have further questions, contact us at fitness4lifept.com.

What Is The Most Important Exercise You Could Do?

What Is The Most Important Exercise You Could Do?

Posted by on Mar 15, 2021 | 0 comments

We’re going to interview Brian today. So Brian, if somebody asked you, what is the best exercise, what would you say?

Squatting or sleeping. One of those two. Yeah.

All right. So if you look on the internet or if you read magazines or anything, everybody has an opinion on what is the best exercise out there. 

So what is the best exercise out there? Brian picked one that a lot of people would answer is correct. Some people would say dead lifts. My answer to this though, is I think the best exercise, and this is just my opinion, is the exercise that you’ll do. So if you won’t do it, it doesn’t matter how good people say it is because you’re not going to get any benefit from it anyway. People always come in here and ask us, what’s the best exercise? What should I do? My answer is, what will you do? Riding a bike. People like that. But if you won’t ride it, it’s not going to be a good for you. The next person it may be.

So what we’re going to talk about this week is taking a particular exercise and showing you the best way to do it. But there’s different ways to do it. So you’re going to pick an exercise and bottom line is you do an exercise, or exercises, that you’ll stay with and do.

Because more important than the exercise you pick is the consistency of doing it. So this means staying with something over and over. Not just doing something one time or taking somebody’s advice and saying, well, a squat is the best exercise and then you do it three times and then you never do it again. Be consistent. Pick something that you’ll do. To me, that’s the best exercise you can do.

The exercise we will focus on in our next group of videos will be talking about three different ways of working the glute muscles, specifically the muscles on the side of the glute, which are responsible for keeping you stable when you walk. So we’re going to talk about what research has shown to be three of the better exercises for those. If you have further questions, contact us at fitnessforlifept.com. Also make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page so you don’t miss a thing.