You go to the gym five times a week. You have a great routine. You hit the weights Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while doing some kind of cardio on Tuesdays and Thursday. You're absolutely killing it in the gym, when suddenly, you wake up Friday morning and you feel this incredibly sharp pain in your foot.

You know what this is. It's happened to you before. Although, the last time this happened, you missed your workout. Good thing it's a Friday right? Saturday and Sundays are your rest days so you figure, "meh. I'll just hit it hard when I head back on Monday. No sense in worrying about it now. I'll just have a three day rest period." I'm here to tell you NOT to do that.

You don't want to stall your own progress just because you have heel spur pain. The proper way to deal with the pain is to not give up on your own goals. It's understandable that the last thing you want to do is go to the gym to exercise when you're in pain. Forget about the pain for a second and listen up.

By staying sedentary, you actually prolong and worsen plantar fasciitis (the scientific term for heel spurs). By moving the foot you increase blood flow which shuttles nutrients and healing agents to that area. Now, there are some exercises that you should definitely stay away from.

Any exercise that involve the feet in any high impact way is not a viable choice. Continuous pounding of the foot, like in running and jogging on the treadmill, increases and exacerbates the trauma to your foot. Don't worry, I don't mean trauma in the kind of way that involves you having to sit four hours in the emergency room.

I'm simply referring to choosing low impact exercises. For your cardio days, choose the elliptical machine or the recumbent bike. Both remove the repetitive trauma that's caused by running or jogging. For lift days, instead of skipping out, switch up your routine and perform an upper body push-pull routine.

An upper body push-pull routine will still give the necessary shock to your body's metabolism to help you burn fat, and stimulate muscle. Not to mention, if you've been doing your current routine for a while, your body has most likely adapted to it. Switching up the routine will shock your body into responding much better to the exercises.

So.. should you exercise with heel spurs? Absolutely! There is no reason why you shouldn't. With any kind of injury, you should consult your doctor. However, if you know it's just your heel spurs acting up, then just go for it and be careful. Exercise will help with increasing the flexibility of the feet, which in turn will help more blood flow to the area and cause it to heal faster.

Unfortunately with heel spurs, you have to be tenacious in the how you take care of them. You'll need proper techniques to effectively and naturally get rid of them. Increasing blood flow is just one effective way of alleviating yourself of heel spur pain. A long term treatment plan is necessary so that you can continue your physically active life, pain free.