Firstly, you don’t have to be a Tradie to wear steel cap boots. We treat heaps of folks who need them for work.

Steel cap boots are heavy. The heavier the boot, the more it acts like a weighted pendulum as you walk. Just like the old “Grandfather’s Clock”.

Your muscles need to work hard to walk in these boots and this is where we come in. While you need your boots and we don’t recommend you stop wearing them; we know how to strengthen your feet and legs to help you stay at work for longer with less aches and pain.

We’ve asked around… The Nurses we’ve asked on average run / walk fast or are at least fair dinkum (with little sit down breaks) for up to 20km per day.

NOTE TO NURSES: You must change your shoes at least every 6 months. They have done plenty of distance and the shoes don’t have much cushion or support anymore. Come and see us in preparation for your next pair of shoes. We are well connected with local shoe stores who stock shoes perfect for running all day, black, leather and uniform ready.

Nurses suffer a lot of heel pain. Some have knee pain, but mostly have heel pain. Something else to consider is “postural fatigue”. Being upright for long periods of time means the legs naturally swell. This causes pressure on muscles, tendons to name a few and the end result is pain! We stock decent compression socks to help with this and can highly recommend anyone (we need to check suitability first) on their feet all day wear them.

This is fairly common! Sometimes, runners need a break. They are always in a hurry too, that’s why the run! There is no walking for a runner.

The worst thing a runner can hear is “stop”. We agree. There has only been a handful of runners we have advised to stop. 

All runners need to do is be mindful on when they have pain or stop their runs with a bad recovery and simply halve it. So if the runner has pain on a 10km run at 8km, the runner needs to half that pain point. So for the next 2 weeks, they only do 4km runs. It a test of mental toughness for them to only do 4km daily. With a little patience, they’ll be back to running their 10km pain free with little change.

RUNNING CLINICS: Yes, we will teach anyone how to run with Olympic efficiency. Dr Renea Reich is the Head Coach for Toowoomba Central Little Athletes and is very well versed is going right back to the basics and consolidating good foundations. Just for the record, everyone goes “back to the basics”…

We are flat out with children who have growing pains, need to keep going with their sport and can’t have much time off.

Orthotics tend to be the best treatment for growing pains. The good news is if it’s true growing pains, the painful joints tend calm down in 2-4 years. This is why an orthotic is a good idea, 2- 4 years is a long time. We have found orthotics reduce the stress of the growing stage to manageable levels and help keep the children on the field.

We have plenty of patients who compete at a high level and we understand what it takes with time lines and performance to keep them at the top of their game.

Are you fat? Could do with some shredding? Well, you’re with over half of the country! Firstly, go easy on yourself. There is probably more layers to your life restricting decent and consistent exercise.

The NUMBER 1 REASON keeping people from exercise (that we hear) is heel pain. Heel pain can stop anyone from walking or running as far or as intensely as they want to.

We’re here to help. We can identify quickly what is stopping you and help reduce those stresses on your body to get you back to exercise. 

Shoes are a big deal too. If you’re thinking of starting at the gym, park run or anything really, come and see us. A decent shoe prescription does matter. For example, if you are going bush walking and do it regularly, we’ll most likely recommend a trail running shoe, not a normal shoe or a hiking boot. There is more to the prescriptions, but this will give you an idea.

You need an orthotic. The gumboots are heavy and flat and you’re on your feet for at least 8 hrs per day. This is probably the only type of work where the option is to highly recommended an orthotic.

Schlepping around the garden for an hour on the weekend is different from working and standing in one spot for hours a day, day in day out and over many years.

All factory workers we’ve seen have at least tried some off the shelf orthotics from the chemist to improve comfort. 

Let’s talk Park Run. We love Park Run. It’s a 5km run, every Saturday morning, everywhere is the world and it’s FREE.

To go from the couch to 5km takes a little patience and time. We can help you with goal setting and where you are at right now. We actually enjoy talking about goals and where you want to be a why. We like your travel and event stories too!

5km is a great distance. You can be fit from a 5km run, it’s how you use that 5km distance to get fit is where we come in.

Some injuries do arise during the transition from the couch to crushing your 5km. We just want you to know how and when to train to minimise your down time should you have an injury along the way.

BIG TIP: It starts with shoes. We can prescribe you shoes just for you. While we’ve got you, we can work out any risk factors you may have and minimise them. We’ll even ear bash you about how awesome you are and how awesome running is and send you on your merry way with memorable user friendly advice to get you started!

MYTH BUSTER: Bunions aren’t a Granny condition. We can see them as early as 7 years old. People tend not to know what they are until we point them out on their child when they come and see us for something else.

Bunions are the bony bits on the inside of the big toe. When the middle of the foot is unstable, the fore foot (front of the foot where the toes are) widens to become more stable. This is how bunions are formed.

To help reduce bunions or slow their progression we work on reducing the instability in the midfoot which in turn reduces the pressure on the big toe (bunion).

Shoes do stir up bunions. The online and easy advice is to reduce the pressure on the big toe. This is simply done with wearing thongs. There is a lot more to the shoe prescription and every foot is different. Thongs don’t put any pressure on the inside of the big toe. We sell orthotic thongs for $35…. just saying.

Dancers of all modalities are amazing athletes.  They are the easiest and hardest patients to treat because they are committed and the “show must go on”.

There is a fine balance between treating, achieving pain reduction, increasing foot function and keeping them on the stage. No one wants an understudy to take over!

Pointe shoes and their application are the most complex. The foot must be in a pronated (flattened) position to stop sickling.  Our focus for the dancer is to keep their feet as fit and strong as possible during the outside use of the pointe shoes to be able to better cope with pointe shoe training and performance.

Modifying Tap, Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop, Jiffies, and Ballet shoes are straight forward.

ARE YOU THIS PARENT? Child has been complaining of foot, heel, knee or hip pain for ages and now it’s affecting their sport and here you are. It’s common! Don’t feel bad. Bring them in and we can start now.

HEARD OF “SEVERS”? Severs Disease (no one likes the “disease word”) is a common growth plate irritation that tends to occur during the ages of about 7-13 years. We treat a lot of heel pain in children.

There are plenty of ways to start treatment. Right now, you can have your child start stretching, in particular the hamstring. We hear too much focus on the heel itself and the condition does not get better with this treatment. It does make sense to start there, but the root cause tends to be higher up the leg. If your child can’t touch their toes, they need to see us. We can start simple and easy manipulation techniques to help release the hamstrings.

Severs is the most common. There are heaps of growing pains we can deal with too.

It’s very likely knee pain isn’t coming from the knee bones. Hamstrings tend to be the culprit! Unless you have had a new knee, we’ll start with gentle manipulations to help mobilise the hamstring. 

Knee pain (besides the hamstring) can start at the feet. People with flat feet tend to have more inside knee pain. People with high arches tend to have outside knee pain.

We can start your rehabilitation straight away.