By Mary Gallagher, with Kenny Hall, fitness trainerMy workouts with Kenny have helped me in so many ways. I just wanted to share with you another helpful insight about an often neglected muscle that is surprisingly important to our riding and horsemanship. A simple thing like limited range of motion or weakness in a particular area can impact our communication with our horse.
In these photos, I am demonstrating an exercise that Kenny designed to strengthen the tibialis anterior muscle, which is critical to ankle dorsiflection. In layman's terms, this is the muscle in the front of your shin, which pulls your foot up. By design, it is much weaker than your calf muscles, which support the whole weight of your body.
This exercise is going to help me lower my center of gravity because although I want my heels down when I ride, I do not want to push on my stirrup to achieve that. The way to keep the stirrup light on the foot is not to push the heels down, but rather to raise the toe. Keeping my leg flexible and free to have a conversation with my horse is what I ultimately want.
The tibialis anterior muscle can be surprisingly weak, so we want to strengthen it gradually. Start with five reps with each foot, and see how you feel after about 30 minutes. Overdoing this exercise on this particular muscle is a very bad idea; take it easy and listen to your body.
Step One: Leaning against a wall, stand on an exercise band. Lift foot, ankle pointed slightly down, until you feel resistance.
Step Two: Flex your ankle upwards, hold for count of three, then relax. Repeat five times or as you can tolerate. Do NOT overdo.
Kenny also suggests a second, complementary exercise:
"Along with the dorsiflexion exercise, you should also stretch your calf muscle, which is a commonly tight muscle, by bringing your toe up on a wall with your heel down on the ground. Lean into the stretch with a straight leg, hold for 20 seconds, and then slightly bend your knee and hold for another 20 seconds. These two exercises together will strengthen the weak muscle while lengthening a tight muscle to improve your lower leg strength and stability.
Seemingly small changes like this can make a meaningful difference in our riding. Thanks again Kenny! Thanks also to Dr. Kip Tulin for additional insight!
Kenny and I will continue to collaborate and present core exercises and fitness tips each month. We also welcome folks to join us in either morning fitness class! More details below.
You can reach Kenny at: kenny.anytimefitness@gmail.com
(Originally published March 2014)
