Thought I would write down some of my own stupidity, in the hopes that there can be a few people who do not share in it.

It's been a long and horrible journey, and I still have a way to go, but I can confidently say I am on the mend. I have truly learned a lot about myself. Not just about the names of muscles, their biomechanics, but I really have seen how dysfunctional my own relationship with my body was.

I saw the same podiatrist that all of you have seen - probably a dozen times. The name was different, but the words were the same. Rest, ice, insoles, soft shoes, stretching, a tiny bit of strengthening. But nothing really changed. The tissue would heal, but the problem would always come back.

There were some dark days, and a lot of experimenting, but some things I have learned.

1. Muscles protect themselves with stiffness. It is their way of saying, "Hey, I have more load than I can handle given the range of motion you are requiring of me! I am going to stay tight until you stop being stupid and figure out what is going on!" Stretching has its place, but if we are using it to try and force muscles not to be tight, we are very much missing the point. Note that I am talking about static stretching. The kind of stretching that pounds a specific muscle because we think we know better. The odds are that our bodies are much much much smarter than any of us - including the doctors we see.

2. Inflammation = blood flow. And blood is what contains the stuff tissue needs to heal. Again, icing has its place, but to ice every time at the first sign of inflammation is preventing the body from healing. I found heat to be much more effective.

3. We can decrease load by reducing our activities, by strengthening the muscle under load, or by strengthening other bigger muscles that can take the load. I feel like the last one is the best.

4. The footwear most of us wear has royally messed up our feet and forced our joints and muscles and tendons to have to work together in very unnatural ways. We are propping them up, putting them at weird angles, pinching the toes together, putting 2-3 inches of foam under them, and this largely started in the last 50-60 years of the past hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Again, this all has its place, but I think often times, less is more when it comes to footwear and insoles. I am starting a very gradual move towards more minimalist barefoot-adjacent footwear.

5. Bodies need time to adapt. My body and I are a team. I am not pushing it to satisfy my own ego. I think very carefully about what it needs, try things, and then see what happens. Exercise is a way for my body and me to communicate. I ask it to start adapting with load, and it tells me to decrease load with pain.

6. The place pain is manifested is usually not the place where the dysfunction lies.

Anyways, all that said ... what fixed it for me was strengthening my hamstrings and glutes and hips. And not just any strengthening, but strengthening through range of motion. It was absolutely astonishing how fast the pain went away once I did things that took load off the tissues I was feeling pain in.

While I think that hamstrings/glutes/hips is a big cause of PF, I also think that almost everyone has a unique set of factors that cause their PF to be overloaded. Generally though, I think our bodies need fewer things like insoles, and more strength through range of motion.

Take care and good luck!