<p>I’m the OP. It has been several months and for all practical purposes I consider myself cured of PF. Since others are battling this issue, and have been for long periods of time I thought I’d update this thread with my success story.</p>
<p>It all began with a broken toe, which over the course of many months ‘took out’ my calf muscle on the same leg and eventually impinged on the freedom of movement in my opposite hip. The PF crept in somewhere during the process.</p>
<p>Although I was familiar with foam rollers and they were in several areas of my gym, I hadn’t really applied them to this problem. On a gut hunch I started rolling my calfs after each workout. At first it was so painful that my grunts and groans caused worried looks on the others in the room with me. Both of my calfs ‘crunched’ when rolled both in direction of the muscle and when cross fibering - rolling up and down while at the same time rotating the calf back and forth. It sounded and felt like rolling over a bunch of small sacks of rocks in several spots. After a few sessions of working on just the calfs I progressed to the hamstrings and the illiotibial band on the outside of each upper leg. I found more spots which were extremely painful. I proceeded to the glut area and again found spots which were locked, painful and knotty.</p>
<p>The first improvement I noticed was that the calfs were not as tight first thing in the morning, but the arch/heel still hurt. Then the pain in the opposite hip began residing. It no longer took 6 steps each time I got out of a chair for the hip to reset itself. The heel/arch pain began subsiding a few weeks after I started rolling all the different areas. The burning and pulling in the foot which happened first thing in the morning and whenever I sat for a longer period of time during the day was the first to go. Then I found I could use the treadmill for short periods of time without a relapse the next day.</p>
<p>I’m wearing arch supports (the kind Costco sells) as well as a 2mm heel lift in one shoe. I am completely pain free. I continue my rolling - keep a roller in front of the TV and use it every night - in addition to the use at the gym.</p>
<p>Don’t know if this will work for anyone else…but it is such a blessing to be pain free that I wanted to pass along my personal success story.</p>