Introduction to Foot Injury Prevention and Intervention
Most of us do not place foot injury prevention as a priority, even if it’s simple ankle stability exercises to maximise lower limb strength or interventions to prevent lower back pain. This is despite foot injury prevention being more preferable than an injury that may require months of rehabilitation! At The Foot Practice, our podiatrist can provide you with evidence-based recommendations to prevent troublesome injuries from getting in the way of living your daily life.
What Causes Foot Injuries?
There are two types of factors that contribute to lower leg, limb or foot injuries:
- Extrinsic Risk Factors. Risks that exist outside your body – like playing intense sports, engaging in physical activities like dance, your shoe type, or current injury treatment like orthotics, ankle tapes, or braces
- Intrinsic Risk Factors. Risks that exist within your body – your age, sex, muscle strength, posture, lower-body alignment, foot shape, or even previous injuries
The Foot Practice podiatrists will consider both these factors when crafting a tailored treatment for you.
How Can Foot Injuries Be Prevented?
The Foot Practice offers various treatment recommendations to help with injury prevention.
Our team will assess your foot and determine what future injuries your foot type is prone to. For example, if you have flat feet, our podiatrist will recommend orthotic therapy to help correct the lack of support in the soles of your feet. Orthotics are a custom-made insole designed to offload pressure on certain areas of the foot, and in this case, will provide ample arch support to the foot until the arch strengthens.
Our podiatrist can also conduct advanced biomechanical 3D Gait Analysis. Sensors will be attached to your body while you move on a treadmill. With our unique technology, we can observe body misalignments to identify biomechanical issues in the body as a result of foot conditions. Orthotic therapy may be a recommendation to correct your gait. Our podiatrist will recommend exercises to strengthen your muscles, balance and mobility if you are prone to certain types of or if you have persistent chronic injuries. These exercises will strengthen the foot to prevent injuries, or enhance sports performance.
How Can Exercises Help With Foot Injury Prevention?
Different physical activities lead to different types of injuries. If you are a triathlete or simply a daily runner, our podiatrist will provide a different set of exercises as opposed to those for a dancer for foot injury prevention.
At The Foot Practice, we care about giving you specialised treatment to suit your needs. Our podiatrist will consider both extrinsic and intrinsic risk factors to provide exercises to help prevent future injuries.
Across most physical activities, ankle stability is vital to prevent foot injuries. Your ankle requires strength, mobility, and flexibility to function properly without injury. If you are prone to a certain kind of ankle injury, such as Achilles tendonitis, our podiatrist will know which exercises to guide in the prevention of future injury. If you tend to often roll your ankle, our podiatrist may provide you with eversion or inversion exercises to increase the lateral flexibility of your foot.
The exercises from our podiatrist are also critical to ensure proper healing. Loss of mobility is also often experienced in injured areas due to inactivity and scarring. If you are already injured, you want to make sure that injury does not accumulate into a devastating chronic injury and pain. Our podiatrist will provide you with specific exercises to maintain and increase mobility after a foot injury, which is essential in preventing recurring injuries.
If you want to prevent injuries or ensure you are on the right path to healing, make an appointment with The Foot Practice today for all your foot injury prevention needs.