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Tibialis Anterior Isolated Activation (No Equipment)

Learn how to isolate and strengthen your Tibialis Anterior muscle with this no equipment video. Improve your foot strength and stability while preventing injury. Easily learn the proper technique and posture with these simple exercises.

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Transcript

00:05 - 00:07This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going to go over a
00:07 - 00:11variation of tibialis anterior activation that requires no equipment.
00:11 - 00:15Now this isn't my favorite variation, I prefer the previous video we showed
00:15 - 00:19where we had a monster band around a treatment table, or a monster band hooked
00:19 - 00:22to something heavy and you were in long sit on the floor. That external
00:22 - 00:27resistance becomes real handy and you can get that recruitment pattern of heel
00:27 - 00:33strike, but I understand that those monster bands can be hard to hook up if
00:33 - 00:36you don't have a treatment table, if you don't have something really heavy to
00:36 - 00:41hook up to, if you don't have room behind that heavy object to hook up to that you
00:41 - 00:46can actually get in long sit position, you're kind of out of luck. So this idea
00:46 - 00:50of having a variation where you don't need equipment, that becomes very handy
00:50 - 00:56for things like home exercise programs, for group exercise classes and for team
00:56 - 00:59training where you're trying to do a little movement prep. Obviously tibialis
00:59 - 01:03anterior activation is going to help get some inversion, help fight against pes-
01:03 - 01:07planus, or feet flat during an overhead squat assessment, which we know is going to
01:07 - 01:10be beneficial for all of our athletes. I'm going to have Melissa come in, she's
01:10 - 01:14going to help me demonstrate. Melissa does have a little lower extremity
01:14 - 01:20dysfunction. Alright, she definitely works with some stuff in her ankles and she
01:20 - 01:23can get a little flat-footed from her running and what-not. She's going to get in
01:23 - 01:27plank position on the wall here to start. it is important to kind of be leaning
01:27 - 01:32against the wall, we want stability. We don't want to make somebody have to try
01:32 - 01:36to balance or stabilize because I want to be able to focus on getting some
01:36 - 01:43activity in my tibialis anterior. Now the cueing is the same. I need her to dorsiflex
01:43 - 01:46and invert to get her tibialis anterior drive up, but I also need to
01:46 - 01:51her to reciprocally inhibit her overactive synergist, being her long toe
01:51 - 01:55extensors, especially her extensor digitorum longus which is not only in
01:55 - 02:00dorsiflexor, but an eva durand pronator of the foot. So it can really really
02:00 - 02:06contribute to that flat-footed-ness. So what she's going to do is she's going to
02:06 - 02:11try to get into as much dorsiflexion as she possibly can, by driving the this
02:11 - 02:17big toe knuckle right her first MTP up as high as she possibly can. That'll
02:17 - 02:20that'll get her thinking about dorsiflexion and inversion, and then
02:20 - 02:28she's going to curl her toes at the same time to try to shutdown extensor
02:28 - 02:32digitorum longus (EDL). Now you can see here Melissa is having a hard time with her
02:32 - 02:36dorsiflexion. So we're doing this barefooted only
02:36 - 02:41because we want you to be able to see her toes, but you could technically put
02:41 - 02:45something under her heels and have her put her shoes on as you probably
02:45 - 02:49would in a group environment anyway. What you put your heels on could just be a
02:49 - 02:52couple weight plates that are around. Alright and now she's going to have some
02:52 - 02:57room to actually get some dorsiflexion. A good thing for you guys to watch out for
02:57 - 03:02is if the person can't get their fifth metatarsal or the lateral side of their
03:02 - 03:05foot off the floor, they probably need a little heel rise to make this really
03:05 - 03:14effective. Now the reason this isn't my favorite variation is effectiveness on
03:14 - 03:19this exercise, actually getting some observable objective outcomes like let's
03:19 - 03:25say an improvement in dorsiflexion goniometry is 100% dependent on Melissa's
03:25 - 03:30effort. So if she just goes through the motions and just flops
03:30 - 03:33her foot up and then back down, show them that flop foot up back down, just flop
03:33 - 03:37foot up back down, she just kind of does this thing then you're not you not
03:37 - 03:44getting any results. But if she really really tries to get in as much
03:44 - 03:49dorsiflexion as she possibly can and hold it with toes curled, I know she's
03:49 - 03:54going to activate the heck out of her tibialis anterior, and the reason being
03:54 - 04:01is she's working against her overactive calf complex. So as long as she puts
04:01 - 04:06in effort, she really tries to get to the end of dorsiflexion, I know she's going
04:06 - 04:12have to work against her own resistance here. How's that going? We
04:12 - 04:16usually have to go a little drill-sergeant at this point -so up, hold
04:16 - 04:22two three four, squeeze and back down. Right I'll do like two-four-two count
04:22 - 04:29right and one of my favorite tempos for activation exercise -hold three four back
04:29 - 04:36down, come on up. Let's go for some sexy shins because everybody wants sexy shins, back
04:36 - 04:42down, up, hold. Now if she gets really good at this maybe I've had a couple
04:42 - 04:45sessions with her, you have had a couple group training sessions where
04:45 - 04:47everybody knows what they're doing, you can do both feet at once.
04:47 - 04:52So we can dorsiflex on both sides once they get a handle on it,
04:52 - 04:57kind of cut our time in half for this particular exercise. Hold, squeeze as hard
04:57 - 05:04as you possibly can. Good up -two, three, four. I don't see the
05:04 - 05:08lateral side of your foot high enough come on. I mean how are you going to have
05:08 - 05:14sexy sexy shins if you don't, that's what everybody wants right I heard that sexy
05:14 - 05:19shins were in this year. Alright back up good and then back down. Now the way
05:19 - 05:24your ankles set up your tibia isn't at the end of your foot, so if you
05:24 - 05:28dorsiflex it's not like this where your tibia wouldn't move, your
05:28 - 05:32activity is actually a bit forward kind of in the middle-ish of your foot, the
05:32 - 05:35middle third of your foot. So when you dorsiflex your calcaneus actually goes
05:35 - 05:40down and you end up lifting up your whole body-weight, which means that if
05:40 - 05:45you do one foot at a time it's actually really hard. Alright so I'm going to have
05:45 - 05:48her lift this leg, you will be able to see the dorsiflexion and inversion on
05:48 - 05:54this side as she struggles, which she is definitely struggling. Melissa you got to
05:54 - 05:58work on this. Obviously this would be a little easier for her if we maybe did a
05:58 - 06:04little bit more mobility work to start off with. We you know release her calf,
06:04 - 06:10mobilize her ankle, stretch her calf and then do this stuff. But with that being
06:10 - 06:13said you guys can see how this variation doesn't require much equipment. It's
06:13 - 06:18fairly easy to coach right, you can just once they get foot up and in with toes
06:18 - 06:22curled, you know you can kind of queue a bunch of people through that once, and
06:22 - 06:26then the nice thing is that we can go straight into our reactive activation
06:26 - 06:30which is that heel walk video I have up. Alright and we can even gamify that in
06:30 - 06:36a group and do what we call penguin walk marathon, where you get heel walks
06:36 - 06:41and you time it and see who can walk the longest. Alright so have a little fun
06:41 - 06:44that way and it all starts of course with this,
06:44 - 06:50and of course it took no equipment. Again it doesn't get the same effect that I
06:50 - 06:55get out of something like the tibialis anterior activation that's resisted, but
06:55 - 07:00it does get me some pretty good results. Obviously it comes in handy,
07:00 - 07:05obviously for home exercises it's perfect, and I'd really like to see a
07:05 - 07:09little bit more corrective exercise than our in our group environments. So if you
07:09 - 07:12guys have any questions, if you have any comments please leave them in the box
07:12 - 07:17below. I look forward to seeing a lot more of this out in the field and in
07:17 - 07:19classes.

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