The first post in this series asked if a pigeon toe was friend or foe. It is certainly a strategy, an adaptation that has a purpose. For me, my half with the pigeon toe also carried my biggest problems, particularly… Read more ›
Part 1 of this series explained how knee should not be used as a load-bearing joint. Part 2 showed how pressuring the knee can help build safety, alignment, and desired force at the desired time. This third and final segment… Read more ›
In part 1, I suggested that using the knee as gas instead of brakes could help free up the knee for motion and elicit the hips and ankle-foot as stabilizers. For folks with chronic pain, however, their nervous system likely… Read more ›
There are three hinges on the feature photo door. It’s a strong front door, solid and meant to take some battering. The cheaper, lighter, all-have-problems-closing-and-opening doors inside the house have only two hinges. Weight-load divided by two, or weight-load divided… Read more ›
Torsion. We all have it: a particular line of twist running through our carriage, gripping us in a certain way and keeping us upright. Each fold and joint tells its story, whether you realize it or not. It’s how we… Read more ›
This piece serves as the follow up to How To Push Down. When we are talking about compression, we are also talking about tension. It is the interaction of these two push-pulls that creates suspension. Otherwise everything would collapse. … Read more ›
This post serves as a follow up to: A Path Towards Harm. Otherwise titled: The things I did wrong when I didn’t pay attention or have compassionate patience. The tag to this blog used to read, “fix yourself.” But… Read more ›
This post serves as a companion piece to A Non-Central Axis. Where it showed you ways to identify a shifted midline, the following hopes to show how pulling to the right or left affects performance. The first thing to… Read more ›
Slings. I’ve heard them referred to often, but never quite knew what they were or why they were important. I understood that they were anatomically determined lines within the body, but in a structure that is fully connected, it didn’t… Read more ›
This is the second post taken from the mind of Nicole Uno. It is a continuation of the first, explaining Rotational Organization. For the most part, we are floating. Skating and tip-toeing off the ground because we can. We have… Read more ›
The following is part two of my course notes and findings from Stress, Movement, and Pain. As practitioners seeking to help bio-psycho-social organisms, we have to be able to read, analyze, and gather information from all three dimensions. The… Read more ›
When assessing the lower leg, it has become common place to examine the foot. The pliable and separable toes receive much of the attention. The heel, strange and seemingly uninteresting, gets neglected. Considering the calcaneous is a starting point… Read more ›
Joint ‘popping’ is a curious thing. It alarms without hurting. Especially when you realize it wasn’t there before. You notice something is different when you do that particular thing in that particular way. The different becomes ‘less than’ when… Read more ›
In a top floor studio space that felt more like a cozy attic, I had a revelation. A soft-spoken yet commanding gal led me into my own body with an almost story-time cadence and tone. Knowing I was new, she… Read more ›
Hip extension is a vital movement to both health and performance. Wellness wise, hips that can extend, coupled with an unstuck spine and pelvis that can naturally posteriorly tilt, means you likely don’t suffer from back pain. Power and speed… Read more ›
The vast majority of movements happen going forward. We reach, walk, look, and move toward what’s in front of us. Then we sit by pushing our butt backward. This front-to-back plane of motion (or stillness) is where we reside. Our… Read more ›
Pelvic motion and knee flexion influence hip rotation. Structures above and below a joint have a direct impact on the way it functions. For the hip, its surrounding articulations are the knee and the pelvis. Stiffness or motion in… Read more ›
The pelvis speaks volumes. The position in which you hold it dictates whether or not you can use your abs, release your hip flexors, and/or likely have symptoms of back pain. It’s the first thing I check with new clients… Read more ›
We tend to move in ingrained patterns, within the same degrees and utilizing the same amount of space. Thinking bigger about what a joint is capable of doing allows us to use it in ways we don’t, which often aligns… Read more ›
Thirteen years ago, I had ACL reconstruction surgery using a hamstring graft. My tissues have long since ‘healed’, but the overall function still lacks behind my non-injured leg. Full flexion remains it’s biggest weakness. Here’s snapshot of the discrepancy in… Read more ›
featured photo credit: morphopedics.wikidot.com Stiff hips cause pain, injury, and lackluster performance. A freely rotating hip is likely to flex, extend, abduct, and adduct with ease. Restrictions with any of these movements can often be traced back to restrictions in… Read more ›
featured photo credit: @movnat instagram (Carlos Condit) The ground is a safe, secure place. It is not something to be avoided or stepped lightly onto. It can easily absorb our falls and placements and pressures. If we become afraid… Read more ›
The one flaw in the Functional Range Conditioning system is its heavy use of acronyms. It has created a culture of separation, utilizing a language only understood within the context of the FRC group. Starting with CARs and developing into the… Read more ›
Controlled Articular Rotations (CARs) are the entrance point to Dr. Andreo Spina’s Functional Range Conditioning system: They are meant to: 1. assess joint health (particularly the function of the deep joint capsule) 2. maintain outer… Read more ›
If you’re stuck in a movement plateau, changing the direction in which you impart force into a joint will often translate into greater mobility. The body reacts in function what is demanded of it by stress. Andreo Spina describes this… Read more ›
The shoulder and hip are ball-and-socket joints. Their usage, however, often gets thrown off by the hinge joints separating the thick and double bones that make up our limbs. The knees and elbows tend do most of the grunt work… Read more ›
In part one of this series, we tried to resolve hamstring tightness by adjusting the pelvis and degree of flexion in the hips. The goal was to get the leg straight with varying closeness of the thigh to the chest. This… Read more ›
Chronically tight muscles don’t get resolved from mere stretching. Most often, there’s a positional issue at the attachments keeping the muscle in a lengthened position. For the hamstrings, look at the pelvis. If it’s stuck in anterior tilt, like many of… Read more ›
I was fortunate enough a few weeks back to watch a presentation put on by Jim Ratcliffe. Obsessed with speed and acceleration, he has made Oregon athletes some of the fastest and most successful around. Quite possibly the most energetic… Read more ›
The half-kneel is a position built for practicing stability. Sometimes called a 90/90 (because both the front and the hind legs should be be creating perfect, half-square angles), it is meant to take the stiff, overly eager hips out of… Read more ›
The hip tightness that plagues all of the human movement goes well beyond the flexors. The rotators deserve just as much credit for impeding butt-to-ground closeness in squats and lunges. Of all the muscles listed below, only the glute med,… Read more ›
I love the 90/90 position. What makes is to great is that the front leg is flexed and externally rotated, while the back is internally rotated and more extended. We’re asking our hips to do two different things as… Read more ›
Humans should be able to squat. DEEP. Real deep. Unlike the hinge that moves the hips back and forth, the squat drops the hips up and down. All the way through toddlerhood being able to graze the ankles with the… Read more ›
90% of the people I see at the clinic cannot hip hinge. When I ask them to try and touch their toes, this is what I get: Successful, right? Well… This is what I hope to get (sans cat photo… Read more ›
The knees are a STABLE joint. I know what you’re thinking, “the knees move so how can they be stable?” Well, they are a hinge joint, meaning the simply flex (bend) and extend (straighten) in one plane of motion. If… Read more ›