Today’s episode features biomechanist and foot expert, Gary Ward.  Gary is the author of the book “What the Foot” inventor of the “Flow Motion Model”, and gives his “Anatomy in Motion” clinics throughout the world.  He is a leading thinker in human movement and mechanics, and is a master of getting people to function better through giving them back their joint movement and sensation.  Gary was a guest back on podcast #98 where he went in depth on the importance of proper pronation and how to teach it along with many other concepts on foot health and performance.

The foot (and human body in general) is an incredibly complex structure, and often times we reduce our understanding of it down to “just stretch this muscle and strengthen this other one”, or “let’s try to point those feet or knees in a particular direction that we deem correct”.  At the end of the day, the body is always doing the best that it can, given the sensory information that it has.  When we lack sensory information, we will have trouble moving our joints and bones properly, and things tend to go downhill from there.  Gary helps us to holistically understand the way the body works based on its own incredible ability to interpret information and heal itself.

For today’s episode, Gary and I talk about some performance-driven issues and aspects of foot training.  We start out with a chat about those athletes who tend to walk with the toes “turned out” and if this is something that should be labeled as “dysfunctional” and in need of correction.  We also cover thoughts on athletes with high arches, and elements that are interfering with their ability to flatten the arch and pronate.  We also get into instructing athletes in single leg stance drills and how this relates to the concept of “finding center” (and how the use of wedges, paper or even blocks of cheese can help fill in sensory gaps in stance).  Finally, we cover the idea of pronation versus over-pronation, and how the oppositional action of the foot is an important consideration in the ability to “put on the accelerator without the brake” in movement and gait.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.

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Key Points

Thoughts on athletes whose feet are pointing outwards (duck foot)
What does dysfunction really mean? Gary’s take on the idea of “dysfunction” and how to interpret it instead
How to help athletes with high arches pronate correctly
Gary’s thoughts on “finding center” and what stability really means
How to instruct athletes who are performing single leg stance drills
Pronation versus “over-pronation” in athletes

 
“I never really view anything as a problem, I view things as information”

“I’m not a big fan of the word dysfunction, because it becomes something you want to fix, rather than something you want to understand”

“If you turn your feet out, what you notice is that your foot will pronate”

“The vast majority of muscles in the foot are supinators”

“It’s impossible to externally rotate a femur on a pronating foot”

“A foot that’s turned out will have a rotational influence on the pelvis”

“When I see someone with their foot turned out, rather than think I need to turn that in and be the correction, the information I am getting from that person is that they are turning that foot out to generate that pronation”

“What’s always been exciting to me is to see unconscious change… the more you try the less you get.  You have to get the environment right”

“You don’t want to fight (the body) because we know that fight creates conflict… you need to remove the obstacles and encourage things to do the thing they are meant to do”

“I say that joints give muscles something to do”

“Most people’s feet end up very limited in movement”