Today’s episode features Irish biomechanics specialist, David Grey. David is highly integrative, and has been influenced by many of the top minds in the world as he creates solutions to get clients to fix their movement, get out of pain, and in turn run and perform better.
I’m not sure what got me turned onto David’s videos on Instagram (where I first found him), but as soon as I started watching them, I instantly realized that something special was happening based on these other guests I’ve had and what David was doing, and I could tell his work had many ties to previous guests such as Gary Ward and Adarian Barr. David has been strongly influenced by Gary, as well as having learned under a number of great mentors in the world of movement, S&C, gymnastics, stretching & mobility, Chinese martial arts and biomechanics.
Today’s episode is all about pronation, the feet and an integrated view of biomechanics and muscle action. David’s specialty is restoring pronation to the foot (and the body, since pronation is a full body action). It was actually a video of Will Claye triple jumping that he commented on regarding the pronation that was happening that was the last straw in me knowing I had to get David on the show.
Once you understand pronation, it’s like you just took the red pill in the Matrix, and everything and every way you look at things like weightlifting and sprint drills all change. On today’s show, we talk about the mechanics and restoration of pronation, toe gripping, training the hands, foot differentiation, co-contractions, and also David’s take on the “stable/mobile” joint idea.
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
- What’s drew David’s interest to the foot, his background, and his mentors in the field
- The dynamics of pronation, and how David observes this when athletes run and jump
- The adverse effects of toe gripping in squatting and running
- Methods to get pronation back in athletes
- How to train the hands for better upstream performance
- Foot differentiation and how the forefoot and rearfoot work in opposition
- David’s take on stable-mobile joint paradigms
- Co-contractions in athletic performance
David Grey Quotes
“Pronation is where all three arches of the foot are flattening to the floor at the same time. Pronation is a full body movement”
“(Delayed knee extension) is a big thing”
“Knee extension is a supination movement”
“If the knee comes back too early, you can’t pronate, everyone out there is obsessed with extension, triple extension, and all I want to do with any lower limb injury with anyone is delay knee extension as long as possible”
“Your pronation is done once that knee has started to straighten”
“(Early) knee extension is putting the hip to end range very early, and gives the glute no room left to work”
“The glutes work from internally rotated to externally rotated; if you want (functional) glutes, stop going from neutral”
“There’s a mental block with people towards pronation”
“I have no problem with squatting or anything in the gym, but as soon as it messes up your biomechanics, you’re done”
“If you are squatting heavy, you don’t want to be pronating very much; you don’t want the knee coming miles inside, you want the bones stacked on top of each other. That’s not pushing the knees miles out, that’s just being neutral”
“Gripping the ground with your toes it not a stable base, the head of your first metatarsal is off the floor”
“Toes are just a brake…. Gary (Ward) says the toes are like the last line of defense”
“People will be racing into the forefoot, and then their toes have to grip, they have no choice”
“Gripping that toes is not an arch, that’s just a sagittal plane movement, and that is not anything that replicates what happens with the foot and gait”
“Pronation is the thing that’s almost always missing (in an athlete)”
“With my athletes I’m trying to delay knee extension (through pronation) but I’m not telling them to do anything when they run”
“I see a correlation that the more you’ve done in the gym (unless you keep sprinting and moving), the worse your biomechanics are”
“The easiest way (to get pronation back) is to stop pushing through your heels”
“Everyone wants to be on the heel of the hand, but nobody can get into the ball of the knuckles”
“To get the medial arch to lengthen and flatten, we need the rearfoot to internally rotate while the forefoot externally rotates, and that’s what creates the length along the arch”
“As the heel is plantar flexion, we need the heel to do a relative dorsiflexion”
Show Notes
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzY3-WWhcBg/
Will Claye Triple Jump (Excellent Pronation)
About David Grey
David is a Biomechanics Specialist based in Waterford Ireland. He helps athlete athletes and every day people with Injury, Pain, Rehabilitation and Performance.
David assesses his clients in depth and breaks their gait cycle down into incredible detail to help restore the movement(s) that they are missing or are struggling to access. A lot of his work begins with training the foot to re-experience the movements that it should be accessing during every single footstep. He believes that certain movements are ingrained into our DNA and that we can expect to see huge positive changes in pain and performance when we give the brain the opportunity to re-experience these movements.
He has learned under a number of great mentors in the world Movement, S&C, Gymnastics, Stretching & Mobility, Chinese Martial Arts and Biomechanics. He is greatly influenced by the work of Gary Ward, the creator of “Anatomy in Motion.
Webiste: https://davidgreyrehab.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw3pEtC1AbTe3hZ3l6YsyBQ
Intagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidgreyrehab/
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