For nearly a week now I've been nearly completely incapacitated by Plantar Fasciitis. The common name for this is "Heel Spurs," but in reality the formation of heel spurs can be a result of plantar fasciitis.

From About.com:
"The condition is diagnosed with the classic symptoms of pain well localized
over an area of the bottom of the foot near the heel. Often the pain is most
severe when you first stand on the foot in the morning. The condition is
sometimes, but not always, associated with a sudden gain of weight.

In many cases the pain will gradually subside throughout the day as normal
activities stretch the plantar fascia, the ligament that, when there is
inflammation present, causes the condition of plantar fasciitis."

In my case, the pain has remained pretty much constant each day, and my normal activities have been reduced to mincing around on the balls of my feet to keep pressure off my heels. This also helps to stretch the ligament and that eases the pain somewhat. An added bonus is that I constantly look like I've just shit my pants.

It took me several days to figure out what I'd done to piss my heels off so much. I just got a new table, so I'm playing a lot, but no more than I've played almost every day for the past 9 months. Making room for the new table also involved some demolition work, so I suspected for a short time that carrying around rocks and a sledge hammer may have caused the inflammation, but the demolition work was done weeks ago, and I had no symptoms until early this week. I have not experienced any recent weight gains so that wasn't the problem either.

Last night I got some new inserts for my shoes, and since they cushion my heels very well I went down to shoot some pool. That's where I figured out what was causing my problem.

My new table is larger than my old one, and features much tighter pockets. I found that to maintain the same accuracy I was forced to change my head's position relative to my cue. I needed to have my head lower and farther back.

The problem was in the way I was making this adjustment. Instead of stepping into the shot from farther back to begin with, I was assuming my normal stance, then rocking backwards until my head was in the new, more accurate, position. Basically I was shifting my weight from being evenly distributed across my feet to being almost all on my heels.

I normally play pool 6-8 hours every day, and having that weight on my heels for that much time is, I'm convinced, what caused my condition.

I've got a few more days of taking it easy to look forward to, but the pain is lessening, and I'm confident that I'll be back to normal within a week. You can bet I'll be more careful about settling into my stance from now on. I'm too young to have what's commonly a condition for middle-aged men.

I suppose the point to this is that balance when shooting is very important, not only to provide a stable base from which to swing the cue, but also to prevent painful conditions such as plantar faciitis.

Left untreated, plantar fasciitis can lead to the formation of bone spurs, and the treatment for those is normally surgery to remove the spurs. Doesn't sound like fun to me.