Discover effective solutions for runners suffering from big toe pain with our expert treatment and recovery tips. At Norton Physical Therapy and Performance, we specialize in diagnosing and treating conditions like turf toe, hallux limitus/rigidus, bunions, and sesamoiditis. Get back to pain-free running and achieve your training and racing goals with our professional care and ongoing support.
In our practice, we work mostly with people who have back pain, knee pain, and shoulder pain. Many of these folks have seen the best doctors in town. They’ve gotten the MRI’s. They have received diagnoses like "bone on bone" "arthritis" or "full thickness tendon tears." They may have even seen the pictures of the joints on MRI and know something looks different. Alas, this leads to much worry and concern they are broken.
When the environment and the schedules change, having a plan to keep up exercise and your physical therapy routine is important. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, would say, “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” And system #1 is to have a plan or to put something on a schedule to make sure it gets done!
There are two cohorts of individuals to whom this applies. The first are those who take the wait and see approach to their pain. They hope their issues go away in time with rest. They may try an exercise or stretch yet mostly proceed without changing any routines that led to the pain. Rest is not rehab. Rest is rust.
Every fall, unfortunately, runners of all levels are increasing their training to prepare for high school or college cross country or a fall full or half marathon. More miles as run and more fast workouts are attempted (hopefully completed)! If a runner has not prepared their bones or muscles with months of base phase running and lots of strength and conditioning, the training proves too much and likely results in dreaded shin splints.
“My hamstrings are soooooo tight. I should stretch more”, said every client I have worked with the past 14 years.
What does tightness mean to you? To most, it means something is inflexible and needs to be stretched.
This statement often gets reported when we ask someone to touch their toes. In this situation, a client will bend forward, keep their knees straight and reach their hands to the floor. I often giggle (on the inside, of course- professionalism!) when a client can put their palms to the floor exclaims, “I’m sooooo tight.”
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