Today’s episode features strength coach and biomechanics educator, Katie St. Clair.  Katie been training general population and athletes for over 20 years, and is the creator of the Empowered Performance Program.  She is one of my go-to sources of knowledge for all things biomechanics, and the finer details of human movement.  She previously appeared on episode 279 of the podcast, speaking on biomechanical facets of running, lifting and athletic movement.

Humans explore movement in a variety of ways as they grow from youth to adulthood.  We skip, run, sprint, throw, bend and twist with substantial variability, all through the medium of self-learning.  For some reason, as soon as weight lifting enters the picture, variation tends to go by the wayside, and a rigid bilateral (or even unilateral) method of moving that is pasted onto all athletes, is applied.  Human beings are complex, we differ from one another, not only in our builds and structures, but also in how our bodies have compensated and compressed in particular ways over time.  In this sense, our weightlifting programs should offer at least some room for each individual to learn more about the nuances of how each lift might be set up, or tweaked, in a manner the athlete could be optimally responsive to.

On today’s show, Katie goes in detail on staggered-stance squatting and deadlifting, and how it can be leveraged based on the asymmetrical nature of an athlete’s body.  She also gets into detail on single leg lifting, and how turning into, or away from the leg being worked can emphasize various elements of the exercise.  She finishes by touching on hinging, posterior compression, and the link between high, rigid foot arches and what is happening upstream in the body.  Throughout the conversation, Katie highlights how each of these lifting variations can be utilized to bring the athletic body into greater balance, where needed.

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Timestamps and Main Points:

4:22 – The ideology behind staggered stance squatting, and how it can fit with athlete’s natural asymmetry

10:35 – What types of individuals would be the best candidates to give a left leg back, staggered squat to, in training

15:35 – The role of biofeedback in exploring squat and deadlift stance

25:00 – Thoughts on doing the stagger in a squat or deadlift one way, vs. both ways with athletes

31:06 – How to set athletes up, in a high-performance training program, to help them learn more about how their bodies work in a manner that will help them for a lifetime

44:11 – Single leg squat training with a turn at the top of the bottom to bias various elements of the gait cycle

48:30 – How to improve one’s pistol squatting on the left leg if an individual lacks the ability to internally rotate their left hip

58:25 – Katie’s thoughts on narrow and wide ISA’s, and how to look at deadlifting and hinging from that perspective

1:10:49 – Where to start with someone with high arches, or “banana feet”, and how the pelvic floor plays into that

1:21:38 – Using the pigeon stretch for clients with posterior compression in wide ISA’s vs. narrow ISA’s

“Because of our natural asymmetry and organ position, the pelvis starts to turn to the right”

“There are so many ways that the body is clever about maintaining that forward motion”

“I used to do drills where I would reset my pelvis more back to the left, to get myself in a good position, and then go squat, but it still didn’t feel right….(but instead) In adding load and pulling my left foot back and sensing the outside of my left heel and inside of my right heel; just that little tiny maneuver,