Fixing Your Feet: Injury Prevention and Treatment for Athletes

by John Vonhof, Tonya Olson

Overview

Get the book that covers what you need to know about foot care, including footwear, prevention, and treatment.

Hiking, backpacking, running, walking, and other athletic endeavors, your feet take a beating with every step. Don’t wait until foot pain inhibits your speed, strength, and style. Learn the basics—along with the finer points—of foot care before pain becomes a problem. Foot expert and ultrarunner John Vonhof and physical therapist Tonya Olson share how the interplay of anatomy, biomechanics, and footwear can lead to happy (or hurting!) feet. Fixing Your Feet covers all that you need to know to care for your feet, right now and hundreds of miles down the road!

Inside You’ll Find

• Tried-and-true methods of foot care from numerous experts
• Tips and anecdotes about recovery and training
• Information about hundreds of foot-care products for nearly every foot ailment
• High-interest topics such as “Barefoot & Minimalist Footwear,” “Blister Prevention,” and “Providing Foot Care for Athletes”
• Discussions of individual foot care and team care

“From heels to toes, products to pathology, resources to rehabilitation, this book has it all. An essential guide.”
—Runner’s World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643590646
Publisher:	Wilderness Press
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	855,268
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John Vonhof brings a varied background and extensive experience to Fixing Your Feet. It is the synthesis of more than 35 years of experience as a runner, hiker, and medical professional, and a never-ending quest to learn more about foot care to help athletes in extreme events. His popular website is dedicated to providing articles, resources, links, and a blog about foot care, and it serves to inform and educate athletes about all that’s new in foot care and to provide foot-care advice. Other medical professionals recognize John’s expertise too. In 2009, he was the lead author of a chapter on foot injuries in the textbook Expedition and Wilderness Medicine (Cambridge University Press). Over the years, John has provided volunteer medical aid at numerous sporting events around the world, patching feet, training medical staff and interested athletes, and providing advice to thousands of athletes. His expertise has taken him to Chile, Costa Rica, Brazil, British Columbia, Canada, and many states to help on medical teams. He continues to be sought out for his expertise and experience in providing answers to foot-care questions, especially for multi-day events. A runner since 1982, John discovered trail running and ultras in 1984. He has completed more than 20 ultras: 50Ks, 50-milers, 100-milers, 24-hour runs, and a 72-hour run. He ran the difficult Western States 100-mile Endurance Run three times and the Santa Rosa 24-Hour and 12-Hour Track Runs 12 times. In 1987, with fellow runner Will Uher, John fast-packed the 211-mile John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada in 8.5 days, carrying a 30-pound pack. He still runs and rides his road bike. In 1992, John changed careers, becoming a paramedic, orthopedic technician, and emergency room technician. In 2013, he retired from a position as a prehospital care coordinator at an emergency medical services agency in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Tonya Olson started her lifelong interest in foot care by riding and training horses, where she learned first-hand the truth behind the “no hoof, no horse” adage. She brings a comprehensive understanding of foot care from her experience as a runner on roads and trails, from short to ultra-distances. Her training as a physical therapist provides an understanding of wound care, physics, biomechanics, and the complexity of factors that contribute to foot issues and injuries. Over the years, she has worked with countless runners to help them succeed in the sports they love. Ten years of living in the Pacific Northwest, running trails and working with ultra-runners, fueled her passion for working with endurance athletes of all kinds. Working with John Vonhof at the Western States 100 Endurance Run for more than 10 years has fostered a mentorship, friendship, and further development of her foot-care expertise. Tonya lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, where she runs Centaur Rehab, LLC, her own physical therapy practice. She is also adjunct faculty in the two-year hybrid DPT program at South College in Knoxville, Tennessee, and is pursuing a Doctorate in Education at the University of Saint Augustine for Health Sciences.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 20: Blisters

An Overview of Blister Care

Over the years, blister care has changed, from simple to more complex. On the following pages, the different levels of blister care are explained. It’s important to understand that you can patch a blister perfectly and do all the right things, but you must also stop whatever caused the blister to start with. Maybe it’s reducing shear, adding an ENGO patch to your insole, removing pressure—any of the blister-causing factors described in Chapter 9: Blister Prevention: The New Paradigm.

From the perspective of runners and hikers, the goal of blister treatment is to make the foot comfortable because often running or hiking must continue. Bryan P. Bergeron, MD, identifies four therapeutic goals of blister management. He recommends that all blister treatments be considered with these four goals in mind:

• avoiding infection,
• minimizing pain and discomfort,
• stopping further blister enlargement, and
• maximizing recovery.

Keeping these four goals in minds, let’s take a look at eight subtopics about blister care. All four goals are covered in the eight topics.

Draining Blisters There are many ways to drain a blister and a variety of instruments to do so. You should know where to make holes in the blister and how to keep blisters from refilling.

Preventing Infection Understanding the best ways to prevent and treat possible infections is important. You’ll learn the signs and symptoms of an infection and what to do if one develops.

General Blister Care is the most basic level of care. It typically involves a moleskin donut to fit around the blister. It’s old-school but still is popular and effective if done right.

Advanced Blister Patching comes next and gets into more advanced types of blister patching. This section looks at blister patches, skin preparation, and dealing with torn blister skin.

Extreme Blister Patching is not for the faint-hearted. We look at several methods to seal the blister. We also look at injecting different substances to help dry out the skin, using syringes and needles, and deep blisters under calluses.

Beyond Blisters takes a look at even more advanced methods of dressing open blisters. These methods typically use products associated with wound care.

Fixing Blisters, Their Way or Yours is important to read because you need to be informed about blister care options. If you know how to patch blisters, you are in a better position to manage your care than if you have to rely on the skills and products of whatever aid station personnel have.

Post-Event Blister Care is about what to do after your race or event is over. It’s vital to know how to dress your blisters so they start healing.

So now, with a basic understanding of these eight blister care options, let’s look at them one-by-one....

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Getting the Most out of Fixing Your Feet

The Best of 25 Years of Foot Care

Part One: Foot Basics

Part Two: Footwear Basics

Part Three: Prevention

Part Four: Treatments

Part Five: Sources and Resources

Index

About the Authors

Editorial Reviews

From heels to toes, products to pathology, resources to rehabilitation, this book has it all. An essential guide.”
—Runner’s World

“After more than 25 years of treating feet and reading about treating feet, I’ve found nothing, absolutely nothing, as helpful as Fixing Your Feet.”
—Buck Tilton, MS, cofounder of the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS

“As a veteran of more than 80 marathons, as well as ultramarathons up to 100 miles, and being a podiatrist for 18 years, I thought I knew it all. John’s comprehensive approach of asking the so-called medical experts, as well as the real experts out in the trenches, for their tried-and-true advice will bring you more value for your endurance event than a podiatry degree ever will.”
—Bill Johncock, DPM; Fellow, American Academy of Sports Medicine; Board Certified, American Board of Pediatric Surgery

“Just about everything I have learned and passed on about working on endurance athletes’ and soldiers’ feet I have learned from watching John completely and patiently repair blistered feet that I would have considered candidates for amputation.”
—Anthony C. “Woofie” Humpage, CSCS, FMS, USA Triathlon Certified Coach, Badwater Ultramarathon medical team, Developer of SELECTED! (a program for US Army Special Forces)

“This is it: the best book ever written on foot care. Everyone who has been bothered by foot problems or wants to prevent them should own this book.”
—Bill Trolan, MD, author of the Blister Fighter Guide, medical consultant to adventure racing teams

“I frequently recommend the book: Fixing Your Feet.”
—Dr. Jeffrey Armstrong, podiatric surgeon, in House Calls Magazine

From the Publisher