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 ›
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 ›
Part One looks at identifying each leg and how each prioritizes a different foot arch. Directional Bias: Perpendicular vs. Parallel. Up leg works the foward and back (parallel to ground). Down leg works the up and down (perpendicular… Read more ›
While walking through the streets of Europe last Spring, Adarian Barr wondered why his feet felt so good. He traced it back to the cobblestones. The lift, the variability, the multiple points of potential folding. This was the impetus behind… Read more ›
Flexion and extension. Compression and Suspension. There are pairs that govern movement, both globally and locally. The system and its parts act to pull apart and come together. Posture, moving fast, and any sort of training or exercise is versed… 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 ›
My left leg has some problems. I could fill in the whys with any number of stories — the many ankle sprains during my athletic career, the torn and hamstring-repaired ACL, the pigeon toe I gave myself because of a… 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 ›
Some context. I have been learning to be sensitive to signals of and mitigate pain for about a decade now. My training revolves around feeling things out, noticing any off-ness, spending some time and attention there, and finishing the session… 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 ›
A quick conceptual piece from the mind of Nicole Uno. Like many sensational metaphors she offers me, I cannot quite make sense of things until I feel it’s application and usefulness. Instead of trying to force the issue, I typically… Read more ›
A PE teacher on one side of the country texts her trainer pal on the other. “I was thinking of getting this textbook for my weightlifting class.” “Why do you need a textbook?” “So I have something to reference… Read more ›
For a long time, I believed that extension was the working opposite of flexion. They felt as contrary as they looked. Folding forward was natural and effortless. Folding back was a resistance to that ease. The struggle was a lesson… Read more ›
The low gait might be the truest test of healthy knees. It requires full flexion under full bodyweight while pulling the center of mass. A single knee is responsible for stabilizing load while the feet and ankles pivot and reposition.… 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 ›
For about two months, I’ve had some chronic discomfort in my left knee. On a scale of 1-10, with ’10’ being agony and ‘1’ being noticeable/annoying, it oscillates between 1 and 4. Though this might be thought of as acceptable… Read more ›
feature photo credit: Dr. Andreo Spina Tibial rotation is necessary for keeping the knees in line with the ankles during a deep squat. It also greatly influences walking gait and joints of the knee, hip, ankle, and foot. Issue… Read more ›
Front squatting demands much more torso control than back squatting. Your abs hold up the weight, not your back. The front squat trains the core in a way that directly transfers into other movements. 1. Bar should be set collar bone… Read more ›
What is Movement Based Training?A systematic approach to mastering movement. It is an attempt to restore full functional movement capacity of the human body. All you need is some space (and preferably a cushioned floor). Who Came Up With… 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 ›