Your experiences with early tibialis posterior tendinopathy

help--anyone? haha

I have had this problem several times in both legs and I am very flat footed. To fix the problem the following worked with me:

1. Very aggressive stretching of the calf muscles, especially the soleus muscle.

2. Deep friction massage of the tibialis posterior tendon.

3. Orthotics from a good podiatirst.

4. Using shoes with a reasonably firm midsole and without a large heel to toe drop.

If I was agressive early enough with the calf stretches and the friction massage the problem would usually go away within a week. It was not problem that I could run through.

Good luck.

I'm about 95% recovered from this now. I got my case from finishing out a hike after a high ankle sprain.

Had to take a couple weeks off, then slowly start running again, which hurt pretty badly for about 6 weeks. I'm 10 weeks out now and it generally doesn't hurt much, and doesn't affect my running as far as I can tell. It still doesn't feel very good if I randomly try to run a few steps, though.

Where is your posterior tib pain? I have also been diagnosed with PTT - my pain originates in the middle to distal third of my tibia. From what I understand, it can also manifest itself in the arch of the foot.

For myself, it has been a long battle with nearly constant tib soreness. I can take weeks off, and ease my way back into running only to have it come back again. I have found massage to be helpful. Maybe ask your doctor about eccentric exercises like these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgR8FXqcNmk

Thanks for the insights--my pain is mostly under the arch of my foot. Started after trail running in shoes with excessive support and cushioning. The new pain I have is over the top part of the foot, and I think it isn't another manifestation of the tp tendinopathy--just some dysfunctional mechanics in my foot after I tried compensating for the tendinopathy.

Your comments are encouraging, though...will keep on resting and then ramp up slowly.

ART and/or Graston. Final piece of the puzzle for me, along with stretching, eccentric exercises, foam rolling, and hip strengthening. The pain didn't totally go away till I had and few sessions of ART, though.

Had a nasty case of this on and off for nearly 5 years. Initially was an acute injury from an indoor track race and took about 3 months to calm down enough to run regularly. That foot's always been flatter than the other anyway so it was probably inevitable that it was going to happen at some point. Long story short, dealt with it via orthotics, shoe change, foot strengthening, massage, everything, but could never really string together too many hard days or workouts or pile on mileage without a flare up. Oddly enough I had a knee injury on the same side a few years later due to a really weak gluteus medius on that side, strengthened it like crazy without knowing that it would effect anything other than that knee, but came back from the knee stuff and never had a post tib (or knee) problem again regardless of mileage and intensity and don't even need orthotics anymore.