In this video, professional basketball player Elijah Bryant shares his personal battle with plantar fasciitis and outlines a comprehensive foot‑health regimen designed for athletes. He explains how custom insoles, proper shoe rotation, and toe‑spreading devices (Yoga Toes, toe spacers) address structural issues, especially for flat‑footed players. Bryant demonstrates a series of exercises targeting the calf, tibialis anterior, big toe, and surrounding kinetic chain—including calf stretches on a board, toe‑strengthening with a ball, tibialis raises, hip‑flexor holds, and clamshells—detailing sets, reps, and duration. He emphasizes the importance of hydration for fascia health, noting that well‑hydrated plantar fascia is more mobile and less prone to injury. Throughout, he intersperses commentary on an ongoing game against a Bosnian team, using the match as a backdrop to stress the need for foot resilience. He promises a PDF of the full routine and concludes with a reminder that consistent foot care, combined with proper nutrition and rest, is essential for peak performance on the court.
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What's the number one thing you do for your feet to take care of your feet? Lay down.
Lay down. Show me your best move.
Best move?
Delicacy. Delicacy. Yeah. Travel.
Your feet aren't necessarily just your support, they're the base of your overall performance.
On the court.
And in this video, I'm going to give you exercises and tools that I use to strengthen your feet and build foundation that is unbreakable. Unfortunately for me, I learned this the hard way. I had plantar fasciitis, which, if you know or if you don't know, it's one of the worst injuries to have as a basketball player because it's not something that tells you like exactly a timeline or how to fix it. It just lingers, and you can kind of play but you can't play. You feel okay but you're not really okay. I heard Slugas talk about this in a podcast interview, is that when he was in Fenerbahçe, he thought that he could play, and the team was forcing him to play, but he didn't know what was wrong with his foot, and it was something that really hindered his performance on the court.
Ah, that nap was unbeatable.
So one of the first things I suggest as a basketball player is getting custom insoles that are appropriate to your feet, and it's not something that is going to replace your exercises and strengthen your feet, but it's something that can support it throughout a long season, along with shoes. If you notice in shoes, as you wear them, there's creases in them, meaning the foam has been compromised. So you can't wear the same shoes for the whole year because eventually, if the foam's not taking the compression, then your muscles are.
And if your muscles aren't strong enough, then something's going to be compromised.
So these are the first two things that you want to kind of address if you're having foot problems. Another tool that I use are yoga toes to keep my toes spread apart. So when we're in shoes, our toes are like this. I'm in basketball shoes, I'm in tennis shoes all day, which doesn't allow the foot to function correctly and actually inhibits some muscles. So yoga toes allow my feet to be spread out like they're supposed to. And then adding some sandals like this, UFO sandals, that have an arch built in, so supporting my arch. Because at the end of the day, I personally have flat feet, so I need some support, but I also need to strengthen my arch as well.
I know I haven't talked about who we're playing today, but I'll get to that in a second because like I said before, insoles and shoes are are a big component to protecting your feet so you don't compromise your muscles. And also, another few things that are very important in terms of exercises and modalities: toe spacers, foot wedges, stretching your calves, mini bands to work your toe. I'll show a few exercises here of some stuff that I do, and I'll provide like a PDF or something that gives you the exercises to strengthen your feet. A lot of it's to do with your calf muscles, your big toe strength. This tibialis, and from tibialis raises. Everything's on the kinetic chain. So I think I've shown this one before, but one of the big components is you want to sit right here and push on this and hold this for about 2 minutes on each foot. And obviously you can take this and roll and work the kinks out in your feet as you hear some cracking, working the fascia out. But there is one specific thing that I'm going to share at the end of the video that is a very big key component to keeping your feet healthy. Typically what I'm going to do, I guess, when I'm working on my foot strength, my foot health, is I'm going to start with the calf stretch, but I have a board actually that I brought. So if you don't have a board, you can just stretch your calf. You know how to stretch your calf. So I travel with this board because keeping my calves stretched out is a big component. I'm going to sit like this for around 2 minutes, just stretching my calf out both sides, 2 minutes both sides. Then once I get that stretched out, I'm going to take the ball like I showed you before and stretch it with my big toe. And then I'm going to start doing some strengthening stuff. So I'm going to start with like this and the stretch, and I'm going to go 25 of these. And after I finish 25, I'm going to go bent like this for 25. I'm going to do 2 sets of that. And also like to understand that if you're dealing with foot pain, understand that everything is connected. So while I'm doing that, I'm going to do stuff as well like hip flexor activation, clamshells. So like stuff like this, hip flexor holds. You go up, hold, go up, hold. If you strengthen everything, everything's going to help. Clamshells standing up, boom. Boom, boom, boom. So for number-wise, I do 2 sets of everything to wake the body up in the morning. So let's say I do 12 each side, and same thing for the clamshells. Then the other exercise you want to do is the tibialis raise. So you're going to lean against the wall and lift your heels up to work that muscle right in here. And there's other ways you can do that too. I've shown you guys before, you can do it by putting a kettlebell and stretching that out, stretching it, working it up and down. If you do those, I promise you all the exercises I provide in the PDF, your foot pain will be elite and go away, promise. So when it comes to Dubai, we're playing a very elite team. Obviously they're dealing with a lot of injuries. I know Musa's not out. Avramović, who's my favorite EuroLeague player, non-American, I would say, um, just because his hustle and he always plays hard. He has this one clip of when they were playing USA in the Olympics. He hit a shot on Steph, or Steph hit a shot on him, he gave him a high five or something like that. He just seemed like a good teammate. Anyways, they have, uh, Bacon, Petrushev. I played with Petrushev, so it's not going to be an easy, easy win. And yes, we're playing Dubai, Bosnia. I've never been to Bosnia, but obviously the goal is to get the win, and then we head to Israel for a cup game. In these games that a lot of players are missing from their main roster, they are very dangerous games because players play with ultra confidence knowing their leash is longer in this game, meaning coach can't take them out and sub them in for someone else because there is no one else, you know. So you have to come very focused and very locked in and understand that the team's gonna play hard regardless of who's on the floor. It's 5 versus 5. And then in terms of with your foot health, is all those exercises are good, but if you don't do this one thing that I'll share with you at the end of the video, it's useless.
Nap time.
So I know we talked about it before, but beats are great for if you increasing blood flow, which— if you increase your blood flow, then you can get more oxygen and get metabolic waste out faster. Now I'm going to eat my banana.
Easy digestible carbs. With a wide open look at a wing 3, he's not going to miss that. Jones, is he inbound? Oh, that was a freebie, a freebie!
Elijah Bryant sneaking in under the rim.
Bryant, Odiarsi with him, and Odiarsi will throw it down. Bryant usually gets the job done from the line.
I mean, the shots are coming in from here, there, and everywhere.
Right out of luck.
Bryant, Bryant, Bryant will pop shot.
Bryant will drain it. Well, the threes are coming in bunches here.
Oh, passing is Out of this world, and Elijah Bryant says yes!
Well, and there may be more coming. There is. Got to convert this, got to convert it, but they don't.
3 triples knocked down by Elijah Bryant as well.
It's been explosive. 7 rebounds as well, and a 20-point game. Elijah Bryant. Finally, it is over.
As I promised, I'm going to give you the number one tool to make sure your foot health is 100% so you can be on the court, and that is hydration. Your feet have a bunch of fascia, and specifically your plantar fascia, and when it gets tight, it's easy to be torn. But when it's hydrated, it's more mobile and it can move around, and Not only is your foot made of a bunch of fascia, but your whole body is. So make sure you are hydrated because your body is made up of 20 to 30% of fascia. We won the game, super good, but there's always growth mindset and stuff to learn from. Two things I did well and one thing I could work on. I hit some shots, I rebounded well, but the one thing I need to work on is make all my free throws. As always, faith plus consistency.
