Today’s show brings back guests Kyle Dobbs and David Grey for an epic meeting of two biomechanical minds.  I’ve learned a lot from both Kyle and David on and off of this podcast.  Both David and Kyle’s prior episodes have been in our all-time top-listened shows, and I’m excited to get them together for a show.

Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship.  He a leading expert in integrating complex movement principles into physical training methods for multiple human disciplines.   David Grey is a biomechanics specialist based in Waterford, Ireland.  He is the creator of the “Lower Body Basics” programs, and has learned under a number of great mentors in the world of movement, S&C, gymnastics, mobility, martial arts, and biomechanics.

One element of human performance I’m always looking to become better versed in is breathing, posture, pressure dynamics and how these elements impact our movement and performance potential.  From lifting, to running, to changing direction explosively, how we “stack” and align our pressure centers and body structures makes a big impact on how well we can perform those skills and be free of injury.

On today’s podcast, Kyle and David go in depth on rib cage dynamics, breathing and pressure management in context of crawling and running.  We’ll also touch on posture, training the frontal plane, and finish with some talk on the feet, plantar fasciitis, and thoughts on coaching preferential foot pressures in movement.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.

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Timestamps and Main Points

6:05 How Kyle and David look to explain and sequence breathing work within the course of a session

15:05  Ways to observe groups in crawling and locomotion exercises, and how to observe links between those movements and rib cage and breath action

23:50 How Kyle and David address the reciprocal action of the ribs seen in locomotion in breathing and breath work

32:35 What you might see in a crawl or squat that shows that an athlete is compressed, as well as compensation patterns that lead to stiff lumbar spine actions

39:55 How a “ribs first” mentality is critical when it comes to posture and spinal alignment

45:55 Discussing the frontal plane in athletic movement and how muscular strategy switches to respiratory strategy as one moves from lifting to sprinting to distance running

55:25 Training the breath in various exercises outside of ground-based positions

1:06:25 Advice and ideas on dealing with plantar fasciitis in athletes, as well as dynamics of calcaneal motion and how it fits with the rest of the kinetic chain

1:15:25 Thoughts on preferential pressures on different portions of the foot for athletic movements

“I will ask my clients to do a toe touch, squat, range of motion, and then we’ll try a positional breathing drill that makes sense in my mind, and if we re-test, it should be better… if it’s not better we are doing the wrong thing” Grey

“Your body, from an autonomic position, is going to prioritize breathing over everything else” Dobbs

“If you are already in an extended position, and posteriorly compressed in that position, then you don’t have any more extension to actually be able to leverage, so we talk about getting more of a neutral posture, more flexion so that you actually have a larger bandwidth to drive extension when needed” Dobbs

“When you look at a 90/90 breathing position, you flip it over and put someone in a crawling position, and it’s basically a 90/90 with a reach up into the sky” Grey

“If we can get the rib cage moving, and get people to feel their body and be aware of their body, the breathing can be the result of that sometimes” Grey