Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40

Ep 67.2: MS/Decrease knee pain with toe taps

September 08, 2022 Courtney McManus
Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40
Ep 67.2: MS/Decrease knee pain with toe taps
Moving through Midlife
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Show Notes Transcript

Toe taps if you are dealing with knee pain might be the solution,  watch the video for full explanation. 
https://youtu.be/OgLY7gUhm0A

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It is always my goal to help you and your family move more. So every Thursday, I am dropping a movement snack into your ears to help you and your family move more. This month, we are practicing stacking our habits. And we're calling it stack your September. So each Thursday I'm providing you with a movement snack that you can practice in conjunction with something else that you are doing in your everyday life. So many moms are spending time standing around, whether you are standing around waiting for your children, whether you are standing in line somewhere, whether you are standing and watching a soccer game or something like that, there is a lot of standing, that is happening. And one area of the body that we tend to not focus on, which is truly a shame, and one that I have touched on often within my movement snacks, which dare I say, the reason I touch on it is because it's so important is our feet. But what we're not going to do, it's not going to be more intrinsic muscles within the feet, we're actually going to talk about the leg. So I had a client the other day mentioning knee pain. And this particular person, I would say, is very strong with their calf muscles. So if you think about yourself, do you have a strong calf muscle, many of us pay attention to our calves and we work our calves. But then there's an opposing muscle a muscle on the other side, that tends to be neglected. And this can cause knee pain, it can cause Shin pain, it can cause lack of ankle mobility, and ankle dorsiflexion. So being able to flex the foot. So that is where we're going to focus today. So this muscle is called the anterior tibialis. It is right outside the shins. So if you were to put your hand on your shin, and then move out away from the center of your body, it's that muscle right there. And it's an important muscle for flexing your foot and inverting your foot. So if you think windshield wiper in your feet, when your toe turns in, it helps to create that movement. Now, if you do that movement, so take your foot and think like windshield wiper, turn it in, if you don't feel a slight little muscle pop there at the top of the shin almost where the shin meets the knee, you know that shin bone meets the knee right to the outside. If you don't feel a little pop of the muscle, then I would say this is an exercise you need to practice more to work on strengthening that anterior tibialis. So what are we going to do, we're standing around a lot today, we're going to stack that habit with tapping our foot. Here's the key. When I work with clients that are weak in this muscle, it's going to be easier to do this while you're sitting down. So you can do this while you're sitting down and waiting maybe in your car, sitting down at the dinner table, things like that, you're just going to tap your foot. And just keep doing that until you feel the burn, you're gonna feel the burn. If you are standing, I want you to make sure that you're not moving at your hip because that is a common occurrence that I see is we will tend to kind of draw our bottom back and bend forward slightly at our waist at our hip to fire the hip flexor to help activate the leg lifting up. But that's not where the movement should be occurring. The movement should be occurring down below the knee. If you can work on strengthening that muscle, you will probably not deal with as many shin splints, you won't deal with as much knee pain. Unless the knee pain is coming from another area. I'm not going to get into that. But if you do have questions, feel free to reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk you through this help you through our posture program so that you can start to relieve some of the pain in your knee. But yeah, this is going to be an area that you can focus on I would not do too many of these in a day, it's a small muscle, it, you're going to feel the burn, you could probably do 20 of those taps right now. And you're going to start to feel the burn. So you know, go easy, don't overdo it, as with all exercises, and trying to incorporate this a little bit into your daily life, and see if it starts to help some of that knee pain that you might be dealing with, or decrease some of those shin splints, and maybe increase some of that mobility at the ankle. So let me know how this felt. And make sure to join us if you're interested in our daily movement snacks, you can join us I will put the link in the show notes where you can directly go, it's $5 a month or$50 for the year, that's going to give you access to a daily movement snack this month, it's going to be more movement based like we're doing. Other months, we have exercises and workouts for you to do. So feel free to join us over there. All exercises will take less than five minutes or be stacked into your daily life. And reach out to me as always with any questions you may have. I'm also going to leave a link here with a video that you can watch over on YouTube, kind of showing you exactly what this movement is to be able to help you as well. So I hope you all have a wonderful day. Make sure to keep moving and I will see you here next week. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you could do me a favor. If you like what you hear. Could you leave us a review or take a screenshot and share your favorite takeaway on social media. And make sure to tag us over at raising underscore healthy humans. Now go out and enjoy more movement throughout your day.