Why I DON'T give towel scrunches to most of my patients with foot pain | PT for foot pain
If you’ve ever been to physical therapy for a foot or ankle injury, it’s very possible you’ve seen this exercise… but I actually don’t give this exercise to most of my patients with foot or ankle pain.
Towel scrunches emphasize flexion or curling of the toes, which is primarily performed by these two muscles - the “long toe flexors” which live up in the calf and have long tendons that run down the ankle and attach to the foot.
The thing is, we rarely see people who actually have difficulty accessing this motion of curling their toes up (unless they had surgery or were immobilized for a long time, which are some of the few cases where I may use this exercise). One thing that many people with foot injuries DO struggle with is using the “short foot” muscles aka the foot intrinsics - these are muscles that actually live in the foot, right underneath the plantar fascia. These muscles are helping me to lift my arch without scrunching up my toes.
While both the of these muscle groups are important during walking and running, the actual function of those long flexor muscles during gait is believed to be providing isometric and eccentric control, basically to help attenuate forces and stabilize as your foot lands and pushes off - NOT to curl the toes upward as you’re walking. Which is why towel scrunches just aren’t the most effective way of training our foot muscles for walking and running.
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All information, content, and material is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.