I have been seeing and hearing about what appears to be an increase in posterior tibial tendonitis in runners. It does make some sense due to the increasing trend to barefoot or minimalist running and the running forms that require a forefoot strike. All of these running techniques do increase the work that the posterior tibial muscle has to do, so no wonder there has been an increase in posterior tibial tendonitis. These running forms do however decrease the load on other muscles, so it’s a matter of assessing each individual runner to decide which tissues need to be offloaded. If you have a history of posterior tibial tendonitis you are better of heel striking in the long term.

Pain on the top of the foot (which is probably dorsal midfoot interosseous compression syndrome) is becoming seen more often due to the trend to barefoot and minimalist running. The constant load on the forefoot is causing a forefoot dorsiflexion moment that is greater than what the tissues can tolerate and the pain on the top of the foot develops as the dorsal jamming of the midfoot joints. The treatment of this pain on the top of the foot is to increase the plantarflexion moments which is done by using a running form that heel strikes, using a heel raise, using a foot orthotic that has design features to plantarflex the forefoot and using calf stretching.