No Foot Pain for Me

Everywhere I turn I'm confronted by runners in pain or injured. Yesterday in the office it was a knee. Saturday on the run it was shin pain. The weekend before it was a guy who was running in Newton for years and thought switching to a poorly created shoe that put him at a 13mm offset would be a good idea. The week before that it was three women running with pain and using Hoka running shoes to minimize the pain. 

There is stretching you should be doing but there is also self massage. Self massage has saved my legs and in my work below is what I've found to be the most important. 

 Today I'm going to focus on Foot and Achilles pain. What I have found is most of the pain is coming from tightness in the lower leg. To make sure I get at the tightness I use a Lacrosse Ball and a foam roller.

 One area that gets little love in stretching and standard self massage work is the Achilles itself. Walking, running, twisting all puts the Achilles under pressure. Too much and the area around it will get ultra tight. So using the ball I find the tight bits and then:

 I mash them. I roll up and down the groove between the muscle and the tendon and find the tight spots. The first time you do this you might cry but it gets easier the more often you do it.

 I also do the lateral side of the leg in the same place. You can do this at night and if you are really tight try it before you run. You will notice the difference.

I also use the ball to get to the top of calf and the hamstring attachment. Put the ball behind your knee, Use your hands to pull the shin in towards your butt. Move the ball around feeling for the tight spots. Believe me you have tight spots here and this hurts. Your legs will thank you when you are done.

 With the foam roller I roll my shins out using my body weight for the mash. If the last two didin't make you cry this one will. This is great because you can roll from the top of your foot all the way to your knee finding any part of that leg that is tight. Yes the picture is upside down but I think you understand. Put the roller on the floor. Put your shin on the roller with your bodyweight on top and roll.

I credit all of this the MobiltyWOD There is  a great deal more to this but for Running this is what I know works.

Now if you break your hand and can't run then hit the bike. This is Marco at 6:15am Monday morning hammering out. When the cast comes off there will be 2 or 3 track meets remaining in the season. Guess who wants to race them?

It's a good life….