Stretches and Exercises for Foot Pain

09/08/2022
Hazel Dillon
ankle pain, balance, Body Areas, Chiropractic, Dance, Exercise, Exercises, Feet, foot pain, health, Health Hacks, health tips, healthy, Holiday, Injury Prevention, Movement, pain, Running, Stretch, Stretches, tips, toe, toe curl, toe squeeze, toes, wellbeing, wellness
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We are now in the Summer Holidays and are blessed with beautiful weather! This may mean that a lot of us will be walking more. As a result, some people may be noticing some foot pain or discomfort due to this extra activity. Here are some stretches and exercises for foot pain that I have put together. These will strengthen your feet and help to keep them strong and reduce any foot pain you may be feeling.

Ball Rolling

Rolling the ball on the sole of your foot releases tension in the plantar fascia. The plantar fascia connects from your heel to your toes. Often people can experience pain in the bottom of their feet from excess use. This can include standing, walking or running, especially if footwear is not ideal for these activities.

The ball rolling will massage and stretch out the plantar fascia. That reduces tension and pain in the feet. If your feet are very sore, you can roll your feet with a frozen bottle of water. The cold also helps reduce any inflammation in the area which also reduces pain.

You can use as little or as much pressure as feels comfortable. The more you do the exercise, the less pain you’ll get from it. The ball I used in the picture is a spiky ball but anything that rolls is suitable to use.

Ball rolling to massage the Plantar Fascia.

Standing on Tiptoes

Going up to standing on tiptoes is a great way to strengthen the ankles and feet. Surprisingly, there is a right and a wrong way to do it as you can see from the picture. If you have very mobile ankles you don’t want to let the ankles roll out as you go higher. It is very important to keep the ankles straight whilst doing this stretch.

Make sure you do this somewhere you can stabilise so you don’t have to balance at the same time. Slowly go up as high as you can and then slowly go back down again. Do this 10 times. As you feel stronger you can hold at the top for longer.

Stand on tiptoes to strengthen ankles and feet.

Toe Curl

The toe curls will get all the small intrinsic muscles in your feet activated. The stretch will work to help strengthen the whole foot. Keep the toes over the edge of a large book or step. Then squeeze them down as if you are trying to clench it with your toes. Curl the toes 10 times and hold the squeeze for 5 seconds each time.

Big Toe Stretch

Keeping a wide range of motion in the big toe is important. The following exercise also has three stages and is designed to stretch and relieve pain in the toes from wearing tight shoes.

To do this exercise:

Sit up straight in a chair, with the feet flat on the floor.
Bring the left foot to rest on the right thigh.
Using the fingers, gently stretch the big toe up, down, and to the side.
Keep the big toe in each position for 5 seconds.
Repeat this 10 times before switching to the other foot.

Enjoy your summer holidays! If you need more help or advice or would like some more stretches and exercises for foot pain, then you can contact us here.