Tibialis Anterior Reactive Activation

Tibialis Anterior Reactive Activation is a stretching and strengthening exercise for the tibialis anterior muscle. This exercise focuses on increasing strength and flexibility of the muscle to improve its ability to generate force needed for activities such as running, walking, and jumping. Through a series of dynamic stretches, it helps to reduce the likelihood of injury, activates and strengthens the muscle, and reduces pain and discomfort associated with the muscle.

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and
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we're talking about reactive integration.
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So, we're going to assume at this point you've done your assessment for corrective
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exercise, you've done all of your release techniques, your stretching techniques, your
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mobilization techniques, and your self-administered, or if you're a PT, or manual release.
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We've done our isolated activation, our core support, and now we're going to work
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on the timing of those muscles firing that are weak.
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That's where reactive integration comes in.
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These exercises focus on the ability to eccentrically decelerate and stabilize.
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So, the one we're going to work on today is, tibialis anterior.
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I'm going to share with you, kind of a funny technique, that works really, really
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well.
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I'm going to have Laura come out, and help me demonstrate.
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So, if you guys remember, the tibialis anterior does inversion, and dorsiflexion.
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The overactive synergists are extensor hallucis longus, and extensor digitorum longus.
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The way we're going to get the overactive synergists out of the way, is we're just going to curl the toes.
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We're going to add all of that up: we get dorsiflexion, inversion,
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alright so we're going to lift our foot up, turn it in a little bit, and
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then I'm going to have her curl her toes down, which is probably hard as it is.
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To give you guys a little idea of what the tibialis anterior does in function of gate
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is, as you heel strike, it's your tibialis anterior that pulls your foot up
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and gives you that nice, smooth heel to toe roll over as you walk.
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People who have weak tibialis anterior, sometimes you can see on the treadmill where
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they get their heels to hit, but then their foot just
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flops down. Now, to make this into an activation exercise,
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or reactive activation exercise, by having her do heel walks.
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So everytime your heels press the floor, your tibialis anterior is going
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to pull up really hard to work on that eccentric deceleration.
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So I'm going to have you pull up and in, curl your toes, and do the same thing on the other side,
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and walk around a little bit.
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Usually I have people do between 30 and 50 reps, or do a couple of laps for me, until
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they feel it burning in their shins.
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People will probably puff a little bit, it's okay,
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I just tell people that all of the cool kids are doing it.
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And guys, try it, it absolutely works.
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A quick little routine you could put this into, somebody's complaining about foot pain,
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ankle pain, shin splints, try: rolling their calves, stretching their calves, doing the
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tibialis anterior activation, and then these heel walks, and then have them get onto the treadmill.
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Try it. I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.