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