Welcome to Past Your Prime – the podcast for active adults balancing training, rehab, family, and real life.

In each episode, hosts Craig Smith and Alex Keicher dive into real-world strategies for overcoming injuries, staying strong, and living pain-free — even when life gets chaotic.

💡 Learn more, access resources, and join our community: 👉 pastyourprime.com

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📲 Alex – @spikerkeicher

📲 Craig – @craigsmithPT

Episode SummaryIn Episode 17 of the Past Your Prime Podcast, Craig and Alex tackle the follow-up to last week’s deep dive on heel pain misdiagnosis. This time, it’s all about treatment—and how to fix stubborn heel pain that hasn’t responded to classic plantar fasciitis protocols.

The culprit?

In many cases, it’s not your plantar fascia at all—it’s the flexor digitorum brevis (FDB), a deep foot muscle that’s often overloaded, underdiagnosed, and completely mistreated.

Craig walks through the full clinical breakdown of how to test, confirm, and treat FDB-related heel pain using the Four Diagnostic Pillars and a blend of home strategies, rehab techniques, and intelligent load management.

They cover:

• 🔎 How to know if it’s not plantar fasciitis

• 📊 The 4 Diagnostic Pillars: Structural, Functional, Treatment Response, Trigger Management

• 🦶 The “FDB Compression Test” and other in-clinic diagnosis tools

• 🎯 Why balance training is more important than arch support

• 🩹 How and when to use Modified Low-Dye taping (with video guide)

• 👣 Foot as a spring: What it means for rehab and performance

• 🏋️‍♂️ Specific exercises to rebuild your foot’s core: toe yoga, toe taps, and more

• 🧠 How compensation patterns (like toe-digging) silently ruin recovery

• 👟 Why your shoes, floor, and even sleeping position might be setting you back

• 🚨 What not to do: Golf balls, massage guns, and over-taping

If your foot still hurts and nothing is working, this episode lays out exactly what to test and how to treat it—even if you’ve been told it’s “just plantar fasciitis.”

📍 Visit PastYourPrime.com for the full blog post, exercise videos, and Craig’s taping tutorial.

🧠 Heads up: We get into the weeds on biomechanics, rehab load progression, and how not to wreck your foot while trying to heal it.