I am enjoying a therapeutic foot massage as I write this blog post.
Plantar Fasciitis Relief
Hiking your favorite trail can be so relaxing and enjoyable… unless you have plantar fasciitis or some other foot ailment. Then hiking becomes a pain in the foot. In fact, plantar fasciitis can completely end your hiking and trail running career or hobby. As a result, an entire industry of foot pain relief products are available in stores and online. Most of these products provide some relief for some people. Of course it greatly depends on how long you’ve had foot pain, what is causing the foot pain and other factors such as age, intensity of exercise and physical shape of the individual.
Options for Relieving Foot Pain
Foot pain remedies abound on the internet and in various specialty stores. These remedies include:
- orthotics – provide foot support but are often expensive
FootLog on carpet & linoleum
- physical therapy – great for ongoing treatment but also expensive
- cold therapy – bags of ice or frozen bottles of ice can be helpful, but not always available or convenient
- stretching devices – often worn at night, these boots or socks are helpful for some people, but can be uncomfortable and cause foot cramping
- foot rolling devices – basically these devices provide a foot massage that is convenient, inexpensive and quite therapeutic. Most of the foot roller devices are made of hard plastic. Some can be placed in the freezer so the benefits of cold are combined with the benefits of a therapeutic pressure massage. In most cases, the devices are only good for massaging one foot at a time and do not work well on hard surfaces such as linoleum, tile or hardwood floors. Which brings us to…
Footlog Foot Massager Product Review
The FootLog foot massager provides the benefits of the foot rolling devices listed above with some added bonuses. I found the FootLog to be incredibly convenient, comfortable, and effective. The list of
FootLog benefits include:
It is relatively inexpensive.- It allows the user to massage both feet at once.
- It can easily and conveniently be used on all types of floor surfaces, both hard
- and soft.
- The texture and shape of the FootLog provides just the right amount of stimulation to the foot without being painful. Some of the products have sharp, rigid prongs while the FootLog has soft, flexible nobs that provide just the right amount of stimulation.
- The FootLog does not require batteries.
- The FootLog is easy to clean, store and care for.
Foot pain can be anywhere from a mild inconvenience to a debilitating injury that ends or severely limits your ability to enjoy hiking and running. Whether or not you have a specific foot ailment the FootLog is nice to keep around the house. After a long trail run or path hike, FootLog offers simple relief for your aching feet. You can even use the FootLog while writing a Trailsnet blog post. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.
What works best for you when you get sore feet? Feel free to leave a comment below.
1 comments
With many different shoes for many different activities, and insoles all trying to support your feet, you are left wondering how else can I support my feet? I think the better question should be different. Mid-foot support, heel support. What all this support is doing is restricting movement of your feet. The more support elements you pack into your footwear, the more restricted your foot will become. Without freedom to move, bend, stretch, your feet will fell as though they were tightly bound for long hours. Feet are designed to move and flex and bend, and stretch a lot. Prevent them and they will hurt you. There is another culprit, the walking surfaces indoors and outdoors. They are all as flat as a tabletop. Again, our feet are designed to walk on the forest floor, uncleared, unpaved forest floor. Or on top of rocks near the source of water. All these natural irregularities in the ground provide your foot with plenty of opportunities to bend and stretch, and flex. With the shoes on, on top of flat walking surfaces, your feet will hurt even if you wear golden boots and gold socks and insoles. This rolling massaging bar with bumps is a good start, but it’s only good in theory. In practice you cannot stand on it with your full body weight because it will be too painful. Rolling it while sitting, does you nothing since the bumps don’t go deep enough into the tissue of the muscles to produce therapeutic outcome. If you search nestoiter-gravity on Amazon, you will get an idea how little protrusion feet can take and how far apart it has to be in order to get deep into the muscle tissues. For more info drop me a line as I am running out of space here