This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going to go over a
variation of tibialis anterior activation that requires no equipment.
Now this isn't my favorite variation, I prefer the previous video we showed
where we had a monster band around a treatment table, or a monster band hooked
to something heavy and you were in long sit on the floor. That external
resistance becomes real handy and you can get that recruitment pattern of heel
strike, but I understand that those monster bands can be hard to hook up if
you don't have a treatment table, if you don't have something really heavy to
hook up to, if you don't have room behind that heavy object to hook up to that you
can actually get in long sit position, you're kind of out of luck. So this idea
of having a variation where you don't need equipment, that becomes very handy
for things like home exercise programs, for group exercise classes and for team
training where you're trying to do a little movement prep. Obviously tibialis
anterior activation is going to help get some inversion, help fight against pes-
planus, or feet flat during an overhead squat assessment, which we know is going to
be beneficial for all of our athletes. I'm going to have Melissa come in, she's
going to help me demonstrate. Melissa does have a little lower extremity
dysfunction. Alright, she definitely works with some stuff in her ankles and she
can get a little flat-footed from her running and what-not. She's going to get in
plank position on the wall here to start. it is important to kind of be leaning
against the wall, we want stability. We don't want to make somebody have to try
to balance or stabilize because I want to be able to focus on getting some
activity in my tibialis anterior. Now the cueing is the same. I need her to dorsiflex
and invert to get her tibialis anterior drive up, but I also need to
her to reciprocally inhibit her overactive synergist, being her long toe
extensors, especially her extensor digitorum longus which is not only in
dorsiflexor, but an eva durand pronator of the foot. So it can really really
contribute to that flat-footed-ness. So what she's going to do is she's going to
try to get into as much dorsiflexion as she possibly can, by driving the this
big toe knuckle right her first MTP up as high as she possibly can. That'll
that'll get her thinking about dorsiflexion and inversion, and then
she's going to curl her toes at the same time to try to shutdown extensor
digitorum longus (EDL). Now you can see here Melissa is having a hard time with her
dorsiflexion. So we're doing this barefooted only
because we want you to be able to see her toes, but you could technically put
something under her heels and have her put her shoes on as you probably
would in a group environment anyway. What you put your heels on could just be a
couple weight plates that are around. Alright and now she's going to have some
room to actually get some dorsiflexion. A good thing for you guys to watch out for
is if the person can't get their fifth metatarsal or the lateral side of their
foot off the floor, they probably need a little heel rise to make this really
effective. Now the reason this isn't my favorite variation is effectiveness on
this exercise, actually getting some observable objective outcomes like let's
say an improvement in dorsiflexion goniometry is 100% dependent on Melissa's
effort. So if she just goes through the motions and just flops
her foot up and then back down, show them that flop foot up back down, just flop
foot up back down, she just kind of does this thing then you're not you not
getting any results. But if she really really tries to get in as much
dorsiflexion as she possibly can and hold it with toes curled, I know she's
going to activate the heck out of her tibialis anterior, and the reason being
is she's working against her overactive calf complex. So as long as she puts
in effort, she really tries to get to the end of dorsiflexion, I know she's going
have to work against her own resistance here. How's that going? We
usually have to go a little drill-sergeant at this point -so up, hold
two three four, squeeze and back down. Right I'll do like two-four-two count
right and one of my favorite tempos for activation exercise -hold three four back
down, come on up. Let's go for some sexy shins because everybody wants sexy shins, back
down, up, hold. Now if she gets really good at this maybe I've had a couple
sessions with her, you have had a couple group training sessions where
everybody knows what they're doing, you can do both feet at once.
So we can dorsiflex on both sides once they get a handle on it,
kind of cut our time in half for this particular exercise. Hold, squeeze as hard
as you possibly can. Good up -two, three, four. I don't see the
lateral side of your foot high enough come on. I mean how are you going to have
sexy sexy shins if you don't, that's what everybody wants right I heard that sexy
shins were in this year. Alright back up good and then back down. Now the way
your ankles set up your tibia isn't at the end of your foot, so if you
dorsiflex it's not like this where your tibia wouldn't move, your
activity is actually a bit forward kind of in the middle-ish of your foot, the
middle third of your foot. So when you dorsiflex your calcaneus actually goes
down and you end up lifting up your whole body-weight, which means that if
you do one foot at a time it's actually really hard. Alright so I'm going to have
her lift this leg, you will be able to see the dorsiflexion and inversion on
this side as she struggles, which she is definitely struggling. Melissa you got to
work on this. Obviously this would be a little easier for her if we maybe did a
little bit more mobility work to start off with. We you know release her calf,
mobilize her ankle, stretch her calf and then do this stuff. But with that being
said you guys can see how this variation doesn't require much equipment. It's
fairly easy to coach right, you can just once they get foot up and in with toes
curled, you know you can kind of queue a bunch of people through that once, and
then the nice thing is that we can go straight into our reactive activation
which is that heel walk video I have up. Alright and we can even gamify that in
a group and do what we call penguin walk marathon, where you get heel walks
and you time it and see who can walk the longest. Alright so have a little fun
that way and it all starts of course with this,
and of course it took no equipment. Again it doesn't get the same effect that I
get out of something like the tibialis anterior activation that's resisted, but
it does get me some pretty good results. Obviously it comes in handy,
obviously for home exercises it's perfect, and I'd really like to see a
little bit more corrective exercise than our in our group environments. So if you
guys have any questions, if you have any comments please leave them in the box
below. I look forward to seeing a lot more of this out in the field and in
classes.