Welcome to my blog! My name is Geoff. I have always been a sporty kind of chap. I love to go long distance running and I also play football and rugby. One day after a long run, I had a terrible pain in my foot. I thought I had just been overdoing it a little bit, so I decided to rest up. A week later, it was no better. I was still in a lot of pain and had to drop out of a couple of football matches. My doctor sent me to see a podiatrist who examined my foot and explained I had damaged a ligament. The podiatrist helped me to get back to full health. I decided to start this blog to explain the importance of good foot care.
If you consider yourself to be an avid sportsperson, then you understand how important it is to maintain good health and follow best practices. It doesn't matter what sport you engage in; you must always ensure that you follow the rules and only work with the right equipment if you are to avoid the potential for injury and fully enjoy your pastime. If in recent times you have been encountering some problems related to your feet, you will want to get some expert advice to find out what's wrong. Consequently, you may be thinking about speaking with a sports podiatrist, but as you've never done this before, what should you expect?
Consultation
A sports podiatrist fully understands how to help you avoid sporting injuries related to your feet and how to treat any existing issue for the future. They understand how much force may be applied to the foot in a highly active pastime and can help you to manage those forces more effectively.
Comprehensive Foot Exam
In order for your podiatrist to make some headway, they will need to conduct a comprehensive foot exam. They need to know about your prior history and may need to start off with a lot of tests.
The foot is a very complex part of the human body and will rely on individual parts working in tandem. Consequently, if your problem appears to be quite significant, don't be surprised if they ask for X-rays and other analyses to help get to the bottom of the problem.
Shoe Analysis
When you visit, make sure that you take your running shoes to the evaluation. There are, of course, many different types of shoes in the marketplace, and some of them are better engineered than others. One pair of shoes may work perfectly well for one individual and be entirely problematic for another, so the podiatrist will need to evaluate your shoes as well.
In fact, a practice known as pressure mapping may be used to help determine exactly how the foot interacts with a specific shoe from a kinetic and anatomic perspective.
Orthotic Choice
Next, the expert will determine whether you need a custom orthotic or whether the one that is already fitted to your shoe could be causing issues. Sometimes the manufacturer may add material to help make the design work, and this additional padding may be counterproductive in your case.
Choosing the Expert
These are just some of the stages involved in a comprehensive podiatric exam. If you want to get the most out of your sporting endeavour, make sure that you find someone who is highly experienced in this field to help you.
Share