Foot and Ankle

Please dress appropriately for your physiotherapy appointment. Wear shoes and socks that are easy to take off, and consider wearing or bringing your usual footwear, work shoes, or running shoes. 

We work closely with our orthopaedic consultants and their teams to help individuals with foot and ankle problems as part of their non-operative management pathway or, following surgery, as part of their post-operative management.

Common Problems 

Arthritis UK has general information about foot and ankle pain - click here

  • Fractures - can be treated with or without surgery, both may benefit from physiotherapy rehabilitation. 
  • Heel pain - Has several possible causes, and is discussed in another NHS page - click here 
  • Ligament Injuries - ligaments connect bone to bone and provide stability to joints. They can be stretched or damaged during a trauma, and physiotherapy is important to restore normal movement and walking, promote healing, strengthen muscles, and restore balance and control.  
  • Tendinopathies – refers to problems affecting a tendon, which is connective tissue between a muscle and bone that helps to transfer load. The Achilles tendon is well known at the back of your calf. 

Contributing Factors to Foot & Ankle Pain

A major part of your physiotherapy treatment for your foot and ankle is addressing modifiable contributing factors. These are the things that can be changed or affected by treatment.  

Here common modifiable contributing factors 

  • Muscle Strength - Stronger muscles can improve your control and endurance, and help support your joints. 
  • Flexibility - Stiff joints or tight muscles can lead to pressure on sensitive structures or make it hard for muscles to work properly. There are 26 bones and 33 joints in each foot working together with the ankle, knee, and hip, and back to help your legs move. 
  • Motor control and patterning - Your balance and patterns while moving are affected by nerve receptors in your foot and ankle muscles and joints, as well as many small (intrinsic) foot muscles. 
  • Weight - Your feet and ankles bear the full weight of your body while standing, with even greater compressive forces happening during walking or impact activities. 
  • Footwear - Support and comfort is important for your feet and ankles as well as the rest of your body. There is no single shoe that is best for everyone, but the topic is discussed in this article by Arthritis UK here. 
  • Loading -  Overdoing things can make certain problems worse. Consider the balance between capacity (what your body can handle) and load (what you are actually doing). Capacity can be improved in many ways, including addressing the factors listed above. Load should be modified to best match your current capacity. This can be unpredictable, and often takes some trial and error.

Non-Modifiable risk factors are things that we cannot change. It is still important to be aware of them, but they are usually not able to be addressed in physiotherapy. This include age, genetic history, anatomy and alignment of your bones, and previous injuries or traumas.