- All right, as a therapist and working with people for
many years, I have found, and I think any therapist would agree, as we age, it gets more difficult to walk. Aches and pains, limping comes in, and it actually leads to falls. So this challenge is going to be faced and we're going to show you options to eliminate this problem
with our lifestyle. - And in this video, we're
gonna show you an exercise to help improve your walking,
balance, and leg strength. - By the end of this video, you're not only gonna understand
why to do the exercise, but you'll be able to do the exercise and work on that walking pattern and become more graceful as you'd like. (upbeat music) - So the muscle we're gonna talk about is called the tibialis anterior, or, as Brad corrected
me, anterior tibialis. It means the same thing. It's this muscle here right
on the front of the shin bone. Do you wanna talk about
it a little bit, Brad? - Sure, if you put your fingers right here in that muscle belly and you pull your toes up like this, you will feel the muscle fibers contract, and as you go down, they relax. It's a very critical muscle. It's a part of walking, and that's how people
oftentimes stumble or fall, because this muscle is weak and the toes and our forefoot
is not being elevated. - In the next section, we're gonna talk about why it's important to strengthen this
muscle for your walking. - And how. - So the first reason you wanna strengthen your tibialis anterior is if you're the person
that commonly trips over your own feet or toes by not lifting your foot up
enough when you're walking. If the tibialis anterior is weak, this is commonly what
causes you to fall over. - Right, a couple examples of this are drop foot or slap foot. If you have a tendency to do foot slap, in other words, when you walk, your heel comes first as normal and then that forefoot
of the foot slaps down, you can actually hear it with people as they walk on a hard floor, this is gonna help eliminate
that problem as well. - And strengthening this muscle can help rapidly improve
your balance, stability, and your ability to move side to side without tripping over as well. - Right, it's amazing
what one muscle can do as far as improvement or making
your balance a little off. So one way or another,
we're correcting it. - Now, to strengthen the
tibialis anterior muscle, we have to bring your
toes up towards the ground while leaving your heels down. We're gonna do this against the wall. This is a little more advanced version. If you're too weak, we will
show a different version you can do seated right after this. So to perform this, you
need an open wall space. Get your back flat
against the wall like this and then slowly walk your feet out. The further your feet
are away from the wall, the more challenging this is gonna become. So to start, be closer to the wall. - Before we go any farther,
it's absolutely critical, I just thought of this now, make sure you have shoes on or your feet do not slip at all because once you bring your foot out, that could come out and then we'll have a problem with safety. So make sure that is very stable before you get started. - So once you feel secure here, you're gonna do toe raises and you're gonna go up
and down nice and slow. As you can see, my knees are
straight as I'm doing this. I do not have a bent knee. Nice posture against the wall. And you're gonna aim to do 25 reps and do three sets of that, but do it throughout the day. Now, if you're brand new to this, maybe start with five
to 10 reps the first day because you might have some
sore front shin muscles the next day when you wake up. - So Mike, are you saying
if this was too difficult, could we bring our feet in even closer? - [Mike] Yep, and then make
it a little bit easier. And if I go out farther like this, then I'm really gonna work that muscle a little bit more. It just kind of adds a
little more resistance without actually adding
weight to yourself. - You may wanna hold onto a stick or be by a wall or a
chair just for stability. Mainly it can make a big
difference in feeling comfortable while you're doing this. Look at those anterior tibs working. - And people often don't
strengthen this muscle group. So you might feel a little bit of a burn when you're first working it. Most people, when you walk, you work the other
muscle group, the calves. So this is gonna feel a little different if you're not used to it. - That's right. Don't overdo it. You don't want to be sore the next day. 10 repetitions, if you haven't done it, is probably be good for the first day. - So now we'll show a seated variation. - All right, now, if
you have severe weakness with your anterior tib and you're unable to lift that foot up even without resistance
in the seated position, this could be very likely
after a stroke or an injury, something of that nature, or maybe you've been sedentary for a while because of an illness and you're elderly. This can be extremely taxing. So what we're going to do, in a chair like this, a firm chair, not a lounge chair in, you know, the place where
you sit and watch TV, the living room. Things are going on up here. What you can do is take a cane and you're gonna pull up, actually help pull up the foot. Get a little stretch is okay. At this point, this is
called an eccentric exercise. We're gonna take the cane
away and hold that foot there. And you'll find if you're really weak, and that's not unusual, where, oh, it's even
hard to hold it there. So the first step is up. See if you can hold it for three seconds. One, two, three, and
then let it down slow. And it's important that
you let it down slow. That's where the eccentric comes in. You don't need to understand that. Just believe us 'cause it's been studied
a lot and it does help. So up, let it down slow, and do 10 repetitions like that. You know, do that three or four days, and hopefully within a week or so, you'll be able to pull
that up without the cane. You know your progress
is good at that point. And then work your 10 to
15 repetitions like that. And then you can go over to the wall after you get to that point. Usually one to two weeks,
you should be there. If it's longer, it's okay, particularly if you've had
some nerve damage or a stroke, then the progress will take longer. Okay, after you strengthen that muscle and you feel the difference in strength, it's really important
to monitor your walking or we call it gait in therapy. Actually look in a mirror if you can, if you have a hallway and you can look at a full-length mirror, and watch your feet and then think about pulling that foot up and bringing it down. If you watch it, that's
feedback into your mind and that will also stimulate
those muscle fibers to pull that ankle up and get back into a
normal walking pattern. As a matter of fact, I think some people are in such a habit, they have no idea that
they're dropping that foot until they stumble. But if you think about
it and do the exercises, it works out real strong and it's a definite win-win situation. Mike, you think anything about that? Am I doing okay? - I think you're doing okay, but if you'd like to watch another video about how to improve your walking, we'll link one down below
in the comments section that you can watch. - Very good. Good luck, everyone. (upbeat music)
