I think I hit on something good

Been doing at home PT exercises following the Rathleff Protocol, using toe spacers, sleeping with a splint, and doing my best to do some intrinsic muscle work. I'm about 5 weeks in and haven't seen a whole lot of improvement. I don't expect to though.

This morning pain/discomfort was more like a 5/10 because I played softball last night and probably overdid it. I wanted to experiment with load tolerance, to see how my foot would react. My heel has been uncomfortable all day until...

I hit on something. I was in the shower and was trying really hard to dome my arch, or in other words, flex my arch and contract it. It's really hard to explain how to do it, but think of pulling your toes towards your heel and/or pressing your big toe into the ground really hard and pulling the midfoot upward. Again it's hard.

However, after a 30 second hold my pain disappeared. Gone. This reminds me of the analgesic effect you get when doing an iso hold on a patellar tendon w/tendinopathy.

I'm not claiming I invented something, but in 5 weeks of PT I haven't been able to get my heel pain to disappear until now.