The tibialis raise is a calf raise in reverse: lean back against a wall with your heels out in front and your legs straight, lift your toes toward your shins, lower them. Nothing else moves.
No single person can be credited with it. Its popularity is generally attributed to Ben Patrick, the Kneesovertoesguy; Patrick says coaches such as Charles Poliquin trained the muscle before him. Brolic lists the wall version as Tibialis Raise (Bodyweight), with “Toe Raise” and “Wall Tibialis Raise” as aliases, and has a separate Tibialis Raise (Machine) entry.
Muscles worked
Brolic tags one primary muscle, the tibialis anterior, the largest of the four muscles in the front compartment of the lower leg. Its main jobs are dorsiflexion, pulling the foot up toward the shin, and turning the sole inward. The other three, the long toe extensors and the fibularis tertius, dorsiflex with it.
Dorsiflexors respond to training: in one randomized trial, four weeks on a dynamometer raised strength in healthy adults. That trial did not use the tibialis raise; we found none that has.
Set up at the wall
Stand with your back to a wall and walk your heels forward. Hinge Health and Damhoff put the feet about a foot out; StrengthLog says 20 to 30 cm; Patrick says one to two feet.
Lean back with straight legs. Hinge Health, StrengthLog and Damhoff rest the back on the wall. Patrick puts only his hips and lower back against it, upper back off and knees locked, as Tim Ferriss describes it back to him.
Shoes or bare feet. Damhoff prefers shoes but suggests bare feet if pivoting on your heels is hard.
Distance sets the difficulty. Hinge Health, Damhoff and Patrick agree: farther from the wall is harder, closer is easier. Hinge Health’s reason is a bigger range. Measure a distance you can finish a set at and keep it until easy.
Perform the raise
Lift your toes as high as you can, heels on the ground and knees straight, as StrengthLog puts it.
Hold, then lower under control. Patrick’s cue is flex, hold, go down; StrengthLog lowers in a controlled manner.
Count only clean reps. Patrick’s ATG Zero routine asks for 20 and expects them to be hard; treat that as a starting point. When the toes stop reaching the first rep’s height, or the knees bend, the set is over; next time move the feet closer. If two feet are too much, Hinge Health’s easier version lifts one foot at a time.
Loaded versions, each its own exercise
- Tib bar. A plate-loaded bar your feet slide into; ATG has you sit on a bench, feet in, legs straight, bar hanging off the end. Patrick says he did not invent it: he credits bodybuilder Bob Gajda’s DARD and says the name “tib bar” was his suggestion.
- Machine. A seated, plate-loaded lever; Hammer Strength says small plates are enough for most users. John Meadows, of the Meadows row, called it his favourite and noted that most gyms no longer have one.
- Kettlebell or band. Damhoff hangs a kettlebell on one foot while seated on a bench, steadying the thigh with his hands, or loops a band over a shoe so it grips.
- Step. Meadows hangs the toes off a step’s edge and, unloaded, suggests sets of 25 to 30.
Each loads the muscle differently, so the numbers do not convert, and nothing establishes that one builds more muscle or strength than another.
Logging
Brolic logs Tibialis Raise (Bodyweight) in reps, with no load field. Foot distance is the load, so write it beside the reps, with whether you lifted one foot or two: twenty reps at 30 cm and twenty at 45 cm are not the same set. Log machine work under Tibialis Raise (Machine), and give tib bar, kettlebell and band sets their own names and weights. The free workout log has room for those notes, and the weekly set tally shows what your lower legs already get.
Common questions
Does it prevent shin splints or protect the knees? Those claims travel with it, but we found no trial that tests the tibialis raise for either. A 2013 systematic review of treatments for medial tibial stress syndrome, the usual meaning of shin splints, found strengthening exercises unproven; a 2025 review of prevention trials supported neuromuscular training programmes and overpronation insoles. Neither abstract names this exercise. This guide treats it as strength work, not treatment.
Do I need to train it at all? StrengthLog’s view is that it generally does not need separate work but can help people with unstable feet or in running and jumping sports; Patrick lists it as an optional step in ATG Zero. Both are opinions.
The front of my shin hurts. Pain during a set is not a cue to push through. Shorten the range, move closer to the wall, or stop.
Sources and method
- Elite Performance Institute: Anterior Tibialis Raise — Brian Damhoff, DC: distance, legs, footwear, kettlebell, band; from its captions.
- Hinge Health: Tibialis Raises (2024) — wall setup and its two modifications.
- StrengthLog: Tibialis Raise — distance, heels down, controlled lowering, who needs it.
- Tim Ferriss Show #835 transcript (2025) — Patrick on Poliquin, Bob Gajda’s DARD, the “tib bar” name and the wall setup.
- The Kneesovertoesguy: ATG Zero — Patrick’s wall version from about 15:30; automatic captions.
- CrossFit Federal Hill: Tibialis Raise — credits Patrick with popularising it; automatic captions.
- ATG: Tib Bar 2.0 and John Meadows: Tibia Raises — the bar on a bench; machine, step and band; automatic captions.
- Hammer Strength: Tibia Dorsi-Flexion — the machine and plate guidance.
- StatPearls: Tibialis Anterior and Leg Anterior Compartment — muscle actions; abstracts only.
- Manca (2015), Winters (2013) and Marques (2025) — the dorsiflexor trial and the shin-splint reviews; abstracts only.
- Brolic catalog version 2026-09-22.1 — names, aliases, logging mode and muscle tag.
Distances and rep counts are starting points drawn from the sources cited, not optima established by a trial. A PubMed search for “tibialis raise” on October 5, 2026 found no study of the exercise.
