Hi, I’m Michelle. Today, I’m going to teach you four great little stretches to help you relieve
muscle tightness that contributes to plantar fasciitis. These exercises involve you wearing
shoes, you're going to need to have a firm lastness shoe like a jogger and being near a
wall. So our first stretch involves you getting your heel really close to the wall and your toe
up right against the wall. So get your heel in as close as you can, so that you're stretching the
muscles down through the calf and into the arch of your foot. That includes the plantar fascia. So
bring your body now up, bring your hips close, and if you can, bring your pelvis forward or your hips
close to the wall, and come up on the back toe to increase that stretch. Some of you will need to
start with the foot down flat, but to increase the stretch, come in close and hold it. Now, push down
through your heel, and make sure that your knee is straight to get that deep stretch into your calf
and you might even feel it into the arch of your foot. Hold it there, try to relax your breathing,
and ideally you're holding that stretch for 30 seconds at a time. And let's take it back down.
Now, the second stretch is a variation of that stretch. We're going to bring the heel in close
to the wall, but turn the toe outwards. All right. So the toes turned out. Now,
keeping the legs straight, turn your body around, I’m going to come up on the back toe to increase
the stretch, turn your body right around to the other side. Now, this is how you stretch the
outside part of that calf, so we're being really specific while we're stretching in the calf,
outside part of the calf and the arch turn your body away, push down through your heel,
and hold that stretch. Now, I can feel a strong stretch through the outside part
of my calf muscle going right down into the heel, and releasing slowly. Remember,
these stretches shouldn't cause you any discomfort, just a feeling of stretching is
enough. If you're feeling that the stretches are too intense, back them off a little bit.
Other side, this time turn the toe inwards, so stretching the inside part of the calf, so the toe
turns inwards. Again, this time bringing your hips forward towards the wall, keep your knees straight
and turn your body around. I’m turning around to face you now, with my toe turned inwards. Again,
keeping the legs straight, pushing down through the heel, maintaining that stretch,
relax your breathing, keep holding the stretch, keep holding, relaxing the breathing,
and coming down out of the stretch. So depending on where, which part of the calf is the tightest,
you'll feel the most stretch, it might be the outside part of the calf or the inside part.
The final stretch is more for the Achilles tendon, and down deep into the calf, getting right down
and close to the heel. Again, take your heel in as close to the wall as you can, bring your body up,
and now bend that knee in towards the wall, and I can feel a really strong stretch down into my
Achilles tendon, and that's continuous through that plantar fascia that runs up underneath the
arch of the foot and into the ball of the foot. Again, pushing down, push your knee forwards
as close to the wall as you can. Keep pushing and holding and ease off slowly. Now, ideally,
you'd be holding each of those stretches for at least 30 seconds, maybe more if you've got the
time to, and repeating them a couple of times each, maybe two or three times throughout the
day. When you start out, start out really gently, because the muscles are likely to be really tight,
so just start gently and do what feels comfortable. Some people find that they
stretch best when their muscles are already warm, so you might have been for a five-minute walk,
and then do your stretches after that. So I hope those stretches help you out, and to review what
we've just done, we did the heel-in, the leg-up with the heels straight, we turned the toes out,
then we turned the toes in, and then we bent the knee forward. So go about your stretches,
and I hope those exercises help you address calf muscle tightness that's contributing to
tight plantar fascia and plantar fasciitis. For more exercises, feel welcome to visit me
at pelvicexercises.com.au. You look forward to exercising with you again soon. Bye for now.