Tibialis Raise: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Benefits

The tibialis anterior is the muscle nobody trains and everybody complains about. It runs down the outside of your shin bone, its job is to pull your foot up towards your knee, and it works flat out every single time your heel strikes the ground to stop your forefoot slapping down. Runners rack up thousands of those contractions a session and then wonder why their shins ache. A tibialis raise is the simplest possible fix: stand with your back to a wall, lift your toes, put them down, repeat until it burns.

How to do a tibialis raise

You need a wall and nothing else to start.

1. Set your position. Stand with your back and bum against a wall, then walk your feet forward so your heels sit roughly 30cm to 45cm from the skirting board. Feet hip-width apart, weight on your heels.
2. Lean back. Keep your shoulders in contact with the wall throughout. Your body should be a straight, slightly angled line rather than a slouch.
3. Lift your toes. Pull the fronts of your feet up towards your shins as far as they will go, keeping your heels planted. Aim to get your toes as high as possible without letting your knees bend to cheat.
4. Hold briefly. Pause for a second at the top and let the shin muscle actually contract rather than bouncing straight through.
5. Lower slowly. Take two to three seconds to bring your toes back down. Most of the benefit lives in this half of the rep, and most people rush it.
6. Progress the angle. As it gets easier, walk your feet further from the wall. Each extra few centimetres increases the leverage against you and makes the same rep considerably harder.

Muscles worked

• Tibialis anterior. The prime mover, and the reason you feel the burn along the outside of your shin. It dorsiflexes the ankle and helps control the foot as it lands.
• Extensor digitorum longus and extensor hallucis longus. These lift the toes and assist the tibialis anterior. They are why you should curl your toes up rather than just hinge at the ankle.
• Calves, working isometrically. Your soleus and gastrocnemius stabilise the ankle from behind while you lean back, which is why this pairs so naturally with calf raises at the other end of the movement.
• Core and glutes, lightly. Holding a leaning-back position asks a small amount of trunk and hip work to stop you sagging.

Two things are worth knowing if shin pain is what brought you here. A scoping review of medial tibial stress syndrome risk factors reported that affected athletes showed lower normalised peak torque in the dorsiflexors than unaffected ones. A separate case-control study of long-distance runners found structural and functional differences in the lower leg, including reduced maximal isometric strength of the tibialis anterior in symptomatic limbs. Neither study proves that weak shins cause the injury rather than resulting from it, and both sets of authors say so plainly. What they do establish is that the strength deficit is real and worth addressing.

Benefits

Fewer aching shins. Better dorsiflexor endurance means the muscle fatigues later in a run, and a fatigued tibialis anterior is what turns a comfortable 10k into a shin-splint conversation. The NHS advice on shin splints sensibly focuses on load management first, but strengthening is the part that stops you back here in three months.

Better control on landing. The muscle acts as a brake, lowering your forefoot after heel strike. Train it and your foot placement becomes quieter and more controlled, on trails as much as on pavement.

A deeper squat. Ankle dorsiflexion range limits how far your knee can travel over your toes, and stronger, better-controlled dorsiflexors help you keep your heels down at the bottom of a squat.

It takes 90 seconds. No kit, no setup, no gym. That is the honest reason to do it: the barrier is so low that you will actually keep doing it.

Common mistakes

Bending the knees. Letting your knees soften lets your hips do the work and takes the shin out of it. Keep your legs long.

Standing too close to the wall. Comfortable reps mean no adaptation. If you can rattle out 40 without a burn, move your feet forward.

Rushing the lowering. Dropping your toes back down under gravity removes the eccentric half of the exercise, which is the half that matters most for building endurance in a muscle like this.

Only lifting the ankle. Curl your toes up too. The long toe extensors are part of the group you are trying to train, and leaving them out shortens the range you get.

Training through sharp pain. A burn in the muscle belly is fine. Point tenderness along the inner edge of the tibia is not, and pushing through it turns a manageable irritation into a stress reaction.

Variations

• Weighted tibialis raise. Hold a dumbbell or a weight plate against your chest. The simplest way to add load once bodyweight reps get easy.
• Banded tibialis raise. Sit with your legs out straight, loop a resistance band around your forefoot and anchor it to something in front, then pull your toes back. Ideal at a desk or on holiday.
• Single-leg tibialis raise. Same wall position, one foot at a time. Doubles the load and exposes side-to-side differences you did not know you had.
• Tib bar raises. A weighted bar that hooks over your toes while you sit. The most loadable option by a distance, and worth it if you are serious about the muscle.
• Toe walks. Walk 20 metres on your heels with your toes lifted. Rough, effective, and a decent warm-up before a run.

Sets and reps

Two or three sets of 20 to 25 slow reps, three times a week, is the sensible starting dose. Rest 45 to 60 seconds between sets and let the burn subside before the next one.

Progress by moving your feet further from the wall first, then by adding weight, and only then by adding reps. Chasing 60 rep sets turns a strength exercise into a novelty. If shins are a recurring problem for you, pair this with seated calf raises so the back of the lower leg keeps pace, and read our guide to shin splints for the load management side that no amount of shin strength will substitute for.

Recommended reads

• Shin splints: causes and fixes
• Calf raises technique guide
• Seated calf raise guide
• Best resistance bands UK