Exercises can strengthen your leg muscles and help you maintain the range of motion in your knee and ankle. These exercises might improve gait problems associated with foot drop. Stretching exercises are particularly important to prevent the stiffness in the calf and heel. Nerve stimulation.
Heel Raises
This active foot drop exercise is the opposite of toe raises. Although this may not feel like it’s helping with foot drop, it will help train the surrounding muscles. To perform heel raises, start with your feet flat on the ground. Then, point your toes and lift your heels off the ground.
Foot Drop Exercises
- Towel Stretch. Sit on the floor with both legs straight out in front of you.
- Toe to Heel Rocks. Stand in front of a table, chair, wall, or another sturdy object you can hold onto for support.
- Marble Pickup. Sit in a chair with both feet flat on the floor.
- Ankle Dorsiflexion.
- Plantar Flexion.
- Ball Lift.
Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is used for treating foot drop by delivering electrical pulses to the anterior tibialis muscle during the swing phase of gait. This treatment requires that a patient can walk, which is mostly possible in the later phases of rehabilitation.
Can foot drop be corrected with exercise? – Related Questions
Foot drop will often go away completely. If the cause is more severe, such as stroke, you may not recover completely.
What is the main cause of foot drop?
The most common cause of foot drop is compression of a nerve in the leg that controls the muscles involved in lifting the foot. This nerve is called the peroneal nerve. A serious knee injury can lead to the nerve being compressed. It can also be injured during hip or knee replacement surgery, which may cause foot drop.
While you can’t reverse the damage from neuropathy, there are ways to help manage the condition, including:
- lowering your blood sugar.
- treating nerve pain.
- regularly checking your feet to make sure they are free of injury, wounds, or infection.
The amount of time it takes to recover from drop foot can vary depending on the specific cause and the severity of injury to the associated nerves. Nerve injury may only take around 3 months to recover while neuron loss caused by MS may take up to 12 months .
Foot drop can cause problems walking. Because you can’t raise the front of your foot, you need to raise your leg higher than normal to take a step to avoid dragging your toes or tripping. The foot may make a slapping noise as it hits the ground. This is called a steppage gait .
Foot Drop Recovery Signs
Increased dorsiflexion. Improved gait (walking pattern) and balance. Enhanced coordination in the calf, foot, and ankle. Decreased frequency of tripping or falling.
The main sign of foot drop is not being able to lift the front part of your foot.
Other warning signs of foot drop include:
- Dragging or scraping your toes on the ground when you walk.
- Loss of sensation on the top of your foot.
- Curled toes.
- Numbness in your lower leg.
- Feeling weak in your leg, ankle, or foot.
The most common treatment is to support the foot with light-weight leg braces and shoe inserts, called ankle-foot orthotics. Exercise therapy to strengthen the muscles and maintain joint motion also helps to improve gait.
And the higher up the nerve path the nerve is pinched or otherwise damaged, the longer the foot drop recovery time. Generally speaking, the nerves involved in foot drop heal at a rate of roughly 1/4” per month.
Start by trying to lift your toes and foot off the ground. If you can lift the foot off the ground – assist the foot through its full range of motion, bringing the toes up towards the shin. Try to hold it there. If not performed successfully, this is a positive sign for foot drop.
Foot drop also known as drop foot is not a disease, but rather a commonly encountered symptom of a neurological, anatomical, or muscular problem. Foot drop is inability to lift the forefoot due to the weakness of dorsiflexors of the foot.
Muscle weakness affects both ankle dorsiflexion (tibialis anterior), toe extension (e.g., extensor hallucis longus), and ankle evertors (peroneus longus and brevis).
Foot drop, or dropped foot, is a symptom of multiple sclerosis caused by weakness in the ankle or disruption in the nerve pathway between the legs and the brain. This disruption means it is difficult to lift the front of the foot to the correct angle during walking.
