Reddit reviews North American Healthcare Foot Rocker Blue -Optimal Foot Position for Flexibility, Plantar Fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, and other Chronic Conditions

tl;dr - be smart, gets lots of opinions, read up, listen to your body, don't let the problems compound, don't let silly small issues distract you.

Honestly, I find that plantar fasciitis is a rather mysterious injury. So many people have all this authoritive sounding advice, but from what I've gathered, causes and solutions vary quite a bit.

What seems universally applicable, though, is that you need to stretch. All the time. I use a Foot Rocker that I stand on at work all day long. I have a standing desk (well, I and three other coworkers each have this thing on top of a regular desk and use it for my monitors, keyboard and mouse), and I stand on the foot rocker as much as possible, one foot on top of it, the other underneath pulling up to stretch until I can really feel it.

I keep a Lacrosse ball in the freezer, then stand on it to break up any knotted tissue or whatever the heck it does.

I've used KT tape, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's effective (the tape isn't all too cheap, if you get into it, you'd want to buy in bulk somewhere). However, I do feel that when I run without it, the pain flares up quite a bit. Not while running, afterwards (or next day).

The foot specialist I saw got me a night splint, but I found it to be utter crap. It's cumbersome, it's not effective, and half the time I wake up in the morning without wearing, because I likely tore it off in my sleep (because it's really uncomfortable).

I'd imagine (I haven't used it) that this thing works better, because it actually pulls your toes up in the front and really stretches your plantar fascia.

One of the girls I run with said they make a sock to wear at night, so I bought it. It's called the Strassburg Sock, and I actually really like it. I've used it on and off for the last 2 or so months, and it does help.

The last month I've run in custom orthotics (they scan in your feet and create custom moulds), and they seem to help as well. I tried reading up on how and why, and although I can't find the link right now, interestingly enough, an article mentioned that in a high percentage of cases it works, but we don't exactly know why. I'm a software engineer. I want to know and address root causes, not applying band-aid after band-aid down the pipeline that incorrectly and often less effectively patches or just masks the problem. But I guess "we just don't really know", which explains all those elusively vague answers that I'm getting in my own research.

Do plenty of research, read up on stuff. You'll see all kinds of advice. Some is good, some is irrelevant. You'll hear everything from "just dont run for a while" to "you might need surgery for bone spurs and/or months of recovery."

I've had plantar fasciitis twice:

1. I only started running last year. Religiously. Kicked it off with a 5K race at 28:00 min and was quite unhappy with that. Ran my ass off, battled finding the right shoe so I could run more than 4 miles without blistering up, but eventually my wide, high arch, pronounced heel found something that worked. Discovered forefoot running (it's amazing, like running on springs!), overdid it on the first go, and bam, plantar fasciitis, right foot. It was insanely bad. Super swollen, I thought I shattered my heel. I took two weeks off, and continued to take small breaks, but essentially ran through it after that. It was gone after 2-1/2 months. Mostly because it was just a simple inflammation; I overdid it, the plantar fascia was damaged from overstressing it, I let it heal, done. case closed. I ran the same 5K event a year later and had a time of 20:43 min.
   
2. I added P90X and weights this year (January). In mid-March or so, I got plantar fasciitis in my left foot. But it didn't just hit me. It slowly faded in over a week or three. I've been battling it ever since and actually run very little compared to what I normally put in. The doctor mentioned it's (in part) because I have a high arch, and my foot doesn't 'roll off' as easily. Kind of makes sense I guess, I'm not very flexible anyway, my muscles and ligaments are like piano strings. Anyway, so after that consultation with the recommendation that I don't run I did the only logical thing: I ran a half marathon and made a conscious effort to roll off more on the outside of my feet. It worked kind of, because it didn't flare up nearly as much as I thought it would/should (I ran 13.8 miles, normally I can feel it after a 5K), on the other hand, the next day my patella tendon hurt. Runner's knee, maybe? FML. The pain slowly faded away. Stretching and putting weight on my foot no longer hurts, but pushing right into the hot spot with my thumb is still noticable. I do, however, have a Spartan Beast coming up in October, and I needed to step it up. So, last ditch effort (ha) and i'm just running through all these silly ailments.
   
   The main thing is to listen to your body. Don't just blindly ignore problems, but don't feel like you can't do anything either. Plantar fasciitis is an inflammation. Generally that also means that you've probably torn some kind of tissue, there, so that needs to heal, but the question is still why you did that? There are all kinds of schools of thought on that out there. From tight calf muscles to neck problems (yes, really, similar to how a tail bone injury could affect shoulder pain, seems weird, but the body does seem to want to balance things out one way or another).

This is called plantar fasciitis, and I got rid of it in 4 days in the following way:

Training Muay Thai 6x/week, I developed it on my left foot and suffered from the pain for 3 weeks until I realized the problem and began treating it. I was getting irritated from not being able to train and the stabbing pain when I decided to tough it out and train anyway.

It comes about due to tight calf muscles and the plantar fascia ligament that runs accross the bottom of your foot compensating for the lack of mobility.

It's relatively easy to fix with the right therapy. Use this 3x a day to get an amazing stretch on your calves:
North American Healthcare Foot Rocker
http://amzn.com/B002PT52WK
Use a timer and alternate stretching each calf for 30sec until they have been stretched 3x each.

If you can get ahold of one of these, it'll speed up the process a lot:
Porcupine Massage Ball
http://amzn.com/B000KS9Z8K

What you do is sit on a chair and place your bare foot on top of it and roll it around until you feel a tender spot. Once you find it, press down real hard on it. It hurts, but in a good way. What this is doing is dispersing scar tissue that has built up around the inflamed ligament and it'll speed up healing like a motherfucker.

You might wanna get some sole inserts for your shoes with good arch support, and avoid wearing older shoes.

Before training, stretch your calves with the foot rocker. If you have liniment oil or any type of muscle rub, give your calves a really fast-speed rubdown to warm them up.

I also like to use bandage wrap on my feet for arch support, especially on my main pivot foot. I find that the slip on ones commonly used have little to no arch support.
I use the following method:
http://youtu.be/dGD0JChXM78
Not to mention the fact that I totally get a psychological boost because they make me feel like Sagat from Street Fighter. "Tiger!"

Stay strong, man. I hope this helps!

Have you tried using a foot rocker? It's a great way to stretch your calves, and it worked well for my achilles issues.

Also, do you do any strength training? Adding some calf workouts (once the pain has subsided) could also prevent the injury from reoccurring.

You should probably be stretching out those calf muscles before you go running. I've seen two podiatrists and a PT and all of them say that I have really tight calf muscles and need to stretch them out. One even recommended a brace you wear at night that pulls your foot in towards your leg to keep it stretched. As a result I use a foot rocker and the stick before I run or swim. I also have a foam roller but don't use that on my calf muscles as it doesn't penetrate as deep as the stick. You may also want to look into more arch support if you have flat arches and inner shin pain. And finally I started doing strength routines before and after running. Go check out strengthrunning.com there are lots and lots of helpful articles on there. I do these lunges listed here and a lot of the post workouts too on the following pages.

I get this occasionally and it is always form related, usually about a few miles into a run. Slow down, evaluate what your feet are actually doing and adjust accordingly. For me that generally means pointing my toes out so I distribute the weight on the ball of my foot differently when I land.

As far as stretches go, use stairs or a ledge to do heel drops or buy one of these

If it is an achilles issue, I recommend a foot rocker for stretching. It worked miracles for my achilles pain.

I found one of the foot rockers at Goodwill. I use it when I wake up and go to bed. I’m still healling, but I think it’s helping.
foot rocker

Well I used to not work out much at all, but I got so out of shape (obviously) So now I make sure I at least walk my granma's dog every day :) This would be nice to use while I do work on my computer! work out all day, twerk out all night.

Thanks for the contest!

I have superfeet for all of my shoes. I use 800 mg of tylenol twice a day ( dr's orders) . I stretch on stairs and I have this: http://www.amazon.com/North-American-Healthcare-Foot-Rocker/dp/B002PT52WK/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i

My favorite tool though - a frozen water bottle that I roll under my foot for half an hour every night when I get home from work. I also have some $15 a pair socks called Feetures - awesome support socks for running. I am almost ready to start again - I can feel them getting better.