How I Was Able to Fix My Client’s Chronic Knee and Back Pain In Just TWO 1 Hour Sessions By Focusing On Her Feet.

You Heard Me Correctly. Not By Focusing On The Source of the Pain. By Starting At the Bottom.

Her feet were the #1 issue.

Bit of backstory on this client:

  • She worked a desk admin job most her life

  • She was prescribed insoles for her back pain 20 years ago

  • She had a nasty snowmobiling accident 3 years ago that required serious orthopedic surgery

  • She walks 10 km. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Religiously

That oughta paint a picture for ya, right?



Alright, so she actually comes to me for help with her extremely painful knees.

She says she can’t kneel, she can’t squat, she can hardly get up and down the stairs.

She later divulges that her back is a serious problem too, now that she’s sitting more as a result of her knees being so bad.

Sitting down for her job all day, she’s constantly distracted by back pain, reducing her productivity. 

So I poke and prod with questions to see if I can’t find anything else telling…

And low and behold, soon discover she suffers serious foot problems, above all else
(or would it be “below” in this case…. 🤔).

Always has.

20 years she’s had orthotic insoles.

I don’t like orthotic insoles. I don’t like them much at all.

“But they work, Coach Parkour Steve! My problems are fixed!”

Wrong. They are, at best, “temporarily fixed” by way of displacing the problem to somewhere else, and kicking the can down the line.

But that discussion is for another post!

Her feet don’t move, she says. 

“Don’t move?” I ask.

She shows me.

They don’t move. 

Limited dorsi flexion (pointing of the toes), and NO Plantar Flexion (toes to the sky).

Do this test for me right now, would you?

  1. Take your shoes/socks off

  2. Place your feet flat on the floor while sitting down on a chair

  3. Try to bring your toes off the ground while your heel and ball of the foot remain on the floor.

Not so hard, right? (I hope)

Well, she couldn’t do that at all. Not even a teensy lil’ bit.

So that became the focus of our first session we had booked. 

She couldn’t understand it, my focus on her feet.

“My feet just have bad circulation, and they’ve always been immobile as long as I can remember!”

We did the following exercises in our first 1 hour session: 

  1. Backwards walking on a flat, even surface, barefoot, emphasis on big toe touching the ground first, and pushing back with the toes on each step

  2. Tibialis raises (Tibialis is the muscle in the front of the shin)

  3. Full range straight leg calf raises pushing with the big toe (BOY her calves were tight!)

  4. Full range bent knee calf raises pushing with the big toe

  5. Patrick Step-ups (short range work for the knees)

  6. Single leg jefferson curls with intentional plantar flexion throughout (hamstrings we so tight she yelped on her first rep 😬)

  7. Isometric Couch Stretch, 20 second hold each side

Then we ran through steps 2-7 again 1 more time, making sure to take as much time as needed and go at her pace.

(we went over the 1 hour she purchased, but who cares💁‍♂️)

Results?

I asked her to do the same foot flexion test I asked you to do earlier in this article. 

Guess who’s toes wiggled for the first time in decades? 

HERS! WOOHOO!

What a rush! 1 session and already such massive progress!

It’s a similar feeling to when there’s a THICK layer of grime on a surface, and you run the cloth over it to unveil sparkling stainless steel in just 1 swipe.

(my wife would argue that all our surfaces look like that… always 🙄)

So the first session was a huge success. 

She messages me the next day that she had never felt so good and so sore at the same time in her life! 💪😂🤙

In our 2nd and final 1 hour session she booked, I pulled out a pair of new shoes for her to try on.

Xero Shoes - A brand I’m honoured to be affiliated with.
(Link for how to find out more about these life-changing shoes at the bottom!)

They’re a barefoot style shoe, with:

  • A wide toe-box meant to mimic the foot’s natural splay.

  • A thin sole to promote more natural foot muscle activation with each step; and

  • They’re extremely flexible to allow maximum dynamic freedom with your foot movement.

Her second sesh looked like this:

  1. Backwards walking, just as before, but in her barefoot shoes

  2. Tibialis raises, just as before

  3. Straight leg calves, just as before

    (Calves still tight, but notable range improvement)

  4. Bent knee calves, just as before

  5. Elevated, assisted split squats focusing on form, holding 5 sec at the bottom. This was to help her low back and knees now that the feet were unlocking.

  6. Standing Quadratus Lumborum crunches

    (QL is like the backstrap for humans; the muscles around the lower back)

  7. Elevated Pigeon Pose 20 seconds each side to target the glute medius and loosen the I.T. band for her outer knee pain

  8. Couch Stretch 20 seconds each side

Hey, Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom. (All you can eat soup/salad)

We did it. And here’s why I chose those exercises

In the first session,

We worked her feet to the bone with many different exercises to trigger some extra range.

Unlocked range = unlocked blood flow and adaptation.

Her feet were stiff, which meant every activity with her feet has a shortened range of motion, which is the cause of a lot of these problems!

  • The calf work was doubly important, because not only did it work the feet in the way we did it, the calves being tight and weak and imbalanced were a direct problem for her knees.

  • The Patrick Step-ups were for her knee pain.

  • Single leg jefferson curl was for her back, by targeting the hammies (which directly correlate with back pain)

  • The Couch Stretch was to lengthen her quads to reduce stress on the knees

  • Split squat was to lengthen and strengthen her hip flexors and knee range. Tight hip flexors cause back pain. It’s a serious problem.

  • QL Crunches were to offer some development in trying to balance out her back muscles and connective tissue. It ain’t much, but with only 2 sessions on the books, I had to make the most of every minute!

Unfortunately, that was the last session we ever had 😰

Financial and family issues arose that wouldn’t permit another session. 💁‍♂️

That’s life I guess. But she reached out months later with some very kind words, some of which included in this screen shot here: 

She was great.

I wish we could have continued our sessions together, or even done so online as I so often do now.


I know we’d have had continued success working together.

Any who. That’s all I got for this week.

Just wanted to share a physical example of the importance of working from the ground-up, even if the issue lies elsewhere. 

Treating this particular client of mine’s knee and back pain directly would have been a mistake. 

It’s a similar to when I was trying to teach broken, brittle, and stiff adults how to do parkour… 

It was a mistake. It was just a fast track to getting hurt. 

I had to address the underlying issue first, before getting to what they really wanted - 

  • to be as awesome as Coach Parkour Steve 💪😁🤙

If any of this sounds interesting to you,

If you’d like to know more about any of the exercises briefly mentioned,

If you’re interested in finding out what it would be like to work with me, 

Then book yourself an absolutely free 15-30 minute call with me here:
https://calendly.com/dynamicfreedomfitness/quick-call-w-parkour-steve

Or, if I’ve mentioned enough here and elsewhere to peak your interest,

And you want to start working with me right away, you can begin the application process through this link here and answer some questions before our 45 minute problem solving call:

Otherwise, stay tuned for more articles every Monday!

If you’re interested in getting yourself a pair of life-changing Xero Shoes, then buy yourself a pair online today using my link!
(They spot me a nifty 3% kickback if you do 😉)

Here to help,

Coach Parkour Steve

P.S. Social media handles down below.

Van-Life Adventures YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Viviennes_views

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Doggo Van-Life Adventures Insta - https://www.instagram.com/twigg_and_toby_on_tour/