Leg nerves

The leg contains a great number of meridians all leading to the foot and to various organs. The Thrusting vessel for example shows this in terms of the key meridians and trigger points. Follow the links to all the other meridians to get more examples.

The diagram below shows the nerves in the leg.  They are from Gray’s anatomy and marked in yellow.

The whole system is too complex to describe here, but very briefly, the  nerves of the sacral plexus pass behind the hip joint to innervate the posterior part of the thigh, most of the lower leg, and the foot.

The sciatic nerve (L4-S3) is the largest and longest nerve in the human body and  leaves the pelvis through the greater sciatic foramen. In the posterior thigh if first gives off branches to the short head of the biceps femoris and then divides into the tibial (L4-S3) and common fibular nerves (L4-S2). The fibular nerve continues down on the medial side of biceps femoris, winds around the fibular neck and enters the front of the lower leg. There it divides into a deep and a superficial terminal branch. The superficial branch supplies the peroneus muscles and the deep branch enters the extensor compartment; both branches reaches into the dorsal foot.

In the thigh, the tibial nerve runs straight down the back of the leg, through the popliteal fossa to supply the ankle flexors on the back of the lower leg and then continues down to supply all the muscles in the sole of the foot.

Suffice to know that there are key nerves on the back of the leg, the front thigh, the inner thigh, and the ankles – all these may be trigger points.