Today’s podcast features Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti.  Adarian is a former college track coach, a multi-national movement consultant and educator.  Adarian has been a huge mentor to me when it comes to the integrated workings of the body in a variety of sport and movement skills and has had many appearances on this show.  Jenn Pilotti is a movement coach, author and educator who has been studying the principles of movement for over 2 decades.  Jenn’s movement disciplines include running, dance, soft acrobatics, and aerial arts. Jenn regularly lectures and teaches workshops for movement educators and curious movers. She co-authored "Let Me Introduce You”, along with Adarian Barr.

Training the feet is a lot more than going barefoot a little more often.  In sport movement, and locomotion, we have collisions of the feet into the ground that need to be managed skillfully.  There is nuance to the “force production” into the ground.  Great athletes can manage collisions extremely well, in regards to the specific sport skills they are being called on.  They also have the tissue adaptation that matches the pressure they need to output within movement.

In today’s podcast, Adarian and Jenn discuss their process when it comes to the operation of the feet in locomotion, and important distinctions that need to be made on account of points of pressure within the foot.  They chat on the differences between sprinting on account of collision management, as well as vibration, talk about the balance of sensory work and outputs in movement, and much more.

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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points
4:38 – How Jenn and Adarian got connected and Jenn’s early learnings from Adarian

8:05 – How Adarian’s process on the foot impacted Jenn, and how she integrated it into her running

14:04 – Looking at learning from the “hard” and “soft” side of movement, and how sensing the body fits in

17:26 – The origins of where Adarian started with his sensory approach to movement

27:46 – Principles of inputs and outputs as they relate to athletic movement

34:25 – Usage of the lateral aspect of the arch of the foot

38:19 – Pressure management and barefoot sprinting on a track

43:19 – How athletes manage shorter or longer collisions in their sport movement

50:30 – How to explore pressure as it relates to movement

58:01 – How to optimize and integrate foot pressure in the gym

Quotes from Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti

“I focused on keeping the pinkie toe long, and reaching it a little away from the foot; and it created a very different impact away from the ground… and I had like a 3 mile chunk where my mile splits were within 8 seconds of each other; and I’m not working any harder”

“A lot of people just do and they don’t sense, or they just sense and they don’t do… we need both”

“The body awareness you gain from the softer side just makes doing so much better”

“Whenever I was drinking out of a glass (instead of a plastic cup) my hand doesn’t get tired; that started taking me down this whole feeling, sensing, imagining road”

“In early track, I didn’t feel it.  I might jump well, but I didn’t know why I jumped well.  When I left Colorado I was struggling, because I was only jumping 51 feet, I left Colorado I spent a year training myself.. the first track meet I went to, boom 53 feet.  What happened? Now, I can feel this.

“You want to feel the impact as you run, take time to feel the impact so you can learn what to do with it.