Load it, do not just stretch it
48 sore heels, a rolled towel and the bottom stair.
|
Method of the week A Danish team took a rolled towel, a stair and 48 sore heels. Yesterday we called that band under your arch a rope, and said the trouble in it is wear rather than fire. Wear has a treatment, and rest is not it. You load the tissue on purpose, a little at a time, and let it build back. Michael Rathleff and colleagues in Aalborg put that idea in front of the stretch… and the result has two halves, as usual.
What they did 48 people with heel pain. Everyone got the same gel heel cups and the same sheet of advice, so that part was even. Then half got Monday's toe pull stretch. Hold 10, do it 10 times, three times a day. The other half got a heel raise, and the detail matters. Stand with the ball of one foot on the edge of a step. Roll a towel and tuck it under the toes so they are held bent up. That winds the rope tight, so the load runs through it. Rise up over 3 seconds. Hold at the top for 2. Lower over 3. Every other day, not daily. They started at 3 sets of 12. By week four it was 5 sets of 8, which is heavier work. And from week two they put books in a backpack and kept adding them. The towel is the part people skip, and here is the thinking behind it. It holds the toes bent right up at the top of the rise, which winds the band tight so the load runs through it and not just up the calf. That was the team's reasoning… and it is reasoning. Nobody measured the band with the towel and then without it. What happened at three months The strength group scored 29 points better on a foot questionnaire. The range around that number ran wide, from 6 to 52, so the size of it is loose. The direction is not. Three months earlier back on your feet is three months of your life. I do not treat that lightly. And it is worth saying what the score was. Not a scan, and not a doctor's opinion. It was a questionnaire about pain and about what people could do, which is the part that matters at the kitchen table. Now the other half Meanwhile the months rolled on. At six months the gap had closed. By twelve it was gone. And at a year the numbers leaned back the other way, slightly, toward the stretching group. Not far enough to call it a win for either side. 48 people is a small study. The authors noted the lack of a lasting effect and called for more work, which is a careful way of saying they do not know yet. How I read it Loading buys you a faster three months. It does not buy you a better year. If you are in the thick of it right now, a faster three months is worth having. But if you want one thing to do forever, the evidence will not pick for you. So I do both, and I am not embarrassed about it. The stretch sitting on the bed, the raise on the stair… neither one costs a dollar.
Sore the next day is normal with this one. Sharp pain during the raise is not, and it means you take weight out of the bag. I do mine on the bottom stair while the coffee drips.
Here is to a stronger heel, |