By Dr. Sarang Desai — Fellowship-Trained Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Surgeon Sports Medicine | McKinney and Flower Mound, Texas If you play or coach on turf, you've probably heard players say "turf beats up your body." As a foot and ankle surgeon who takes care of athletes, here's the honest version of what the research shows. Overall injury rates on modern turf and grass are pretty similar. But when you zoom in on the foot and ankle specifically, the picture changes: artificia

By Dr. Sarang Desai — Fellowship-Trained Orthopedic Foot and Ankle SurgeonSports Medicine | McKinney and Flower Mound, Texas The Short Answer If you have deep pain at the very back of your heel — right where the Achilles tendon meets the bone — that hurts most with the first steps in the morning, gets worse going uphill or on stairs, and makes the back of a stiff dress shoe unbearable, you likely have insertional Achilles tendinopathy. Here's the most important thing I tell p