3 Exercises to Correct Foot Drop

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to my channel. In today's video, we're looking at a condition called drop foot, which is essentially weakness of one of the muscles on your lower leg. It's the muscle called tibialis anterior, which is our main dorsiflexor of our ankle. So if we look down at the ankle, basically tibialis anterior is this big muscle that's on the front of the shin. You can see when I lift my foot up here, it contracts. So it's this muscle, that's the muscle right there, and then its tendon goes down and hooks right here on the top of the foot. So what happens in this condition of drop foot, basically people aren't able to lift their foot up like this which can have negative implications in things like walking mainly. When we take a step with our foot, as our foot swings, we have to be able to use that tibialis anterior muscle to pick our foot up or else it would catch on the ground and they call that foot drag. So if our foot catches, we're more likely to trip. So basically we need that muscle to lift the foot so we don't catch there. Also, when we set our foot down on the ground as we're taking a step, this tibialis anterior muscle contracts and slows our foot down as we take a step. Otherwise we'd hit the ground and it would just flop and they call that foot slap. So all of these types of signs and symptoms are related to this issue of foot drop and tibialis anterior muscle weakness. Now this can happen if you have a disc herniation in your low back, an injury to your low back that hurts the L4 or L5 nerve roots. It could happen if you hurt the peroneal nerve or deep fibular nerve which is down on the side of the knee. Sometimes people have injuries to the nerve here, maybe sitting with their leg crossed for too long and they get hit here, things like that. Those can all be issues that can cause drop foot. Also other things like multiple sclerosis, strokes, diseases of the central nervous system. So in most cases it's gonna be a nerve injury whether it's at the low back or down the leg. So if you're noticing drop foot symptoms, weakness in the tibialis anterior muscle or maybe even just have shin splints on the front of your shin, the exercise we're gonna show today will help with all those issues. Before I jump into the exercises, it's really important that you know if you have severe foot drop, these exercises are probably gonna be too challenging for you. The first one might be an option but in the physical therapy clinic when people come in with more severe foot drop, we use electrical stimulation where we put pads, electrical pads on the tibialis anterior muscle which can help it turn on and activate and helps with strengthening in the beginning of rehab. So if you can't do any of these exercises, I'd strongly consider that you go see a physical therapist and implement electrical stimulation in the beginning of your rehab process. So for this first exercise, we're gonna look at an isometric contraction of tibialis anterior. Basically what you're gonna do, I've got kind of a strap here that I'm gonna use. It's got loops in it that I can hook around my foot. The hardest part of the movement that we're doing is lifting the foot off the ground. If someone has foot drop and that muscle's paralyzed, it's gonna be almost impossible to lift their foot off the ground. So what we're gonna do is hook a strap around the front of the foot and what you're gonna do is use your arms. If your foot's paralyzed, you're gonna use your arms to lift your foot and then you're gonna take tension off of the strap and perform an isometric contraction like this. So if I took the strap off, I would just be holding my foot there and if you have severe weakness, it's probably slowly gonna wanna lower, but that's okay. As it gets fatigued, you'll have a hard time holding it. So then you would slide the strap back on and again, if it's paralyzed, you're not gonna be able to lift your foot. To help, maybe you can lift it a little bit. You're gonna pull up and then just take tension off the strap and then hold it as long as you can and again, as it gets tired, you can slowly lower it through that isometric contraction. Then use your arms to perform the concentric portion. Take tension off the strap. Hold it as long as you can and then slowly lower. So it's sort of an isometric contraction. We're holding it. That's the isometric part and then an eccentric contraction where it's on the way down. So again, this first part is the hardest. If you can do that, that's great, but some people won't be able to so you just wanna try this other part. Hold it and then slowly lower. With these exercises, normally with resistance exercises, we'd say three sets of 10 to 15 repetitions, but when you have paralysis of a muscle, you're just gonna do as many as you can. It might only be, it could only be three or four repetitions. So just do your best. Do what you can and over time, that muscle should get stronger. So that's our first one, an isometric contraction with leading into an eccentric lowering of the foot. For this second exercise, we're moving on in terms of the challenge to the muscle. Now we're gonna do the complete movement. So again, that first one might be where you just have to stay for a while until the muscle gets stronger. As you get to a point where you can perform the first portion of the movement, we're gonna do an elevated toe tap here. So I have my heel on an elevated surface because I want to train the muscle through my joints available range of motion, which means I need it to drop down here into plantar flexion because this muscle is gonna lift me all the way from down there up into dorsiflexion past horizontal. So with this step, I can create sort of a deficit where the ankle can go through full range of motion. So I'm essentially just doing sort of a toe tap motion and working that, really isolating and working tibialis anterior. So again, this is more of a resistance training type of exercise, especially when there's some paralysis or weakness in the muscle. Try to go for three or four sets of as many reps as you can do until it gets tired. If you have a true foot drop, it'll eventually hit a point after just a few reps, usually where it'll get pretty fatigued and you won't be able to lift it as high. So just do as many as you can. And this will be our second exercise. If the first one was easy for you, you don't need the assistance of the strap, then you can go right to this elevated heel or toe tap. This is our last and final exercise. We're basically gonna add resistance to that last movement. So if you had an ankle weight or something like that, you could just stay in that last position. I'm gonna perform this exercise with a band. So I've got a loop band here, which works well for this. If my right ankle is the one with the foot drop, I've got the band secured so that it's anchored sort of around my left foot and my left leg is straight. What I'm gonna do here is kind of lean back and support underneath my hamstring here on my right leg. And then, so the band is on tension here, you can see. I'm gonna let my foot slowly lower into plantar flexion and then pull it back up. So I'm essentially just doing that same movement from exercise two, it's just that now I've added resistance to it. So you're just, this one is really the truest resistance training exercise of the three. So again, shoot for three sets, somewhere around 10 to 15 repetitions. Just basically go until you're tired. So for people with foot drop, 10 to 15 reps is gonna be really challenging. So again, just do what you can. That muscle's gonna fatigue early in the beginning of rehab and you're just looking to build strength and endurance over time. But this is our last one. So it's a banded ankle dorsiflexion to really strengthen tibialis anterior. As that muscle gets stronger, you'll notice less foot drop issues when you're walking and doing other things in life. Okay, you guys, so those are our three exercises. If you have any questions, put them in the comment section and I will get back to you. All right, see you next time, bye.