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For at least the first six months of my plantar fasciitis recovery, I could not understand where the pain was coming from. I treated my toes, arches, and heels with all the exercises I could find but I was not getting anywhere.
Finally after sifting through most of the low-quality information online, I found a proper explanation of what I was going through and the source of my pain was identified; it was the calves all along.
I found tons of information telling me that my calves must be tight if I haven’t been maintaining them and I thought to myself, no way! I’m flexible compared to all the other guys I know. I was still practicing taekwondo around this time so I was constantly stretching. No way could I be so tight that I made myself more prone to injury.
Boy, was I wrong.
They weren’t talking about propping your foot up against a wall and doing that half-assed calf stretch that we all do when it feels tight. They were talking about myofascial release for your calves to loosen up your muscle and fascia.
If you look above at the featured image of this post (thumbnail), you’ll see some dark bruising on the lower outside of my calf muscles. To my surprise, this was from doing some targeted foam rolling where I really focused on the tightest spots in my lower legs.
That stuff has been tightening up probably for years without you knowing it if you’re an active person like me. Let me explain how your tight calves got you a bad case of plantar fasciitis because this one is usually not explained very well.
Assuming you have not been actively breaking up the adhesions that can form in your calves, that stuff has been accumulating for a long time while you are continuing to be active (and that’s what contributes to it).
The gastrocnemius (big calf muscle) controls the ankle and decides whether or not it is able to operate at a full range of motion. Hence when your calves are very tight, your ankle range of motion becomes increasingly limited.
When you’re missing range of motion in the ankle, your body will compensate by adjusting to an open-foot position. Just like it sounds, all the activity you will do now is with open feet, therefore open knees and collapsed ankles.
Once you’re at this point, it’s only a matter of time before more injuries and pain take place. With collapsed ankles you’re going to overpronate constantly, inevitably leading to heel and achilles pain, or more specifically plantar fasciitis and achilles tendonitis. It just becomes one big, compounded mess and it’s ugly.
This is why you’re going to treat your calves and subsequently treat the rest of these ugly symptoms.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense why our calves are so tight. The shoes we wear are awful for our feet and calves, we fail to take proper care of them other than our lazy stretching, and they are responsible for several thousand loads per calf every day!
Plus, think of all the different movements your calves undergo: walking, running, jumping, climbing, squatting, etc. It’s a lot to ask when they’re not getting taken care of afterwards.
To illustrate how you can start using myofascial release on your calves to work out all those tight knots, I found a video from Dr. Kelly Starrett who demonstrates how to use a foam roller and lacrosse ball to effectively break up old adhesions. The techniques he uses in the video are what I also use to loosen up my calves on a daily basis.
Dr. Starrett showcases a ton of targeted release techniques just like this one in his book, “Becoming a Supple Leopard“. I have been reaping the rewards from his book for a couple months now by reclaiming mobility I had lost and getting out of pain that I didn’t know was reversible.
So the overall point here is, the calf dictates the mobility of our ankle so it’s crucial to look further up the leg from where your symptoms are. It’s also important to keep in mind that whatever method of myofascial release you choose to try needs to be targeted.
What I mean by that is we’re not just rolling over the calves quickly to get it done. The point is to move slowly with as much pressure as you can handle and stop to focus on tender spots when you come across them. If it sounds a little brutal, it certainly can be if you want it to.
What you use to roll over your calves is your choice. I do recommend starting with a foam roller though because your muscles very well could be sore afterwards even if it didn’t seem like an intense session.
As you progress with this technique, you can use harder objects like a rolling pin or a massage ball, lacrosse ball, golf ball, whatever. You can also just put more force onto the affected leg like having someone else press it down or throw a bag of dog food over it to focus the pressure more.
Just like a stretch, you’re trying to hold the pressure onto those tight spots for as long as you can (5-10 second duration if this is all new to you, 15-25 seconds if you have done it before).
My advice: assume that you are more of a rookie than you think. I ended up with bruising for a couple weeks just from using my foam roller effectively. After some initial concern, I found that this was not totally unnatural and it was actually just some solid evidence that this was working.
I can wholeheartedly say that these muscle release techniques along with switching all my shoes to minimalist shoes have made all of the noticeable difference in my recovery. They are the reason that I am now jogging without being in pain and doing as much walking as I want (this was not possible a couple months ago).
I use this technique six out of seven days of the week because it literally changes the quality of my days if I’m able to move more freely. This will be part of my daily routine for a long time as I’ve seen the swelling of my foot, heel pain, and pronation lessen in a short period of time since being introduced to this technique.
P.S. It happened again…. no complaints here though. My legs haven’t felt this good in over a year.
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