Today’s episode features Justin Moore. Justin is the head performance coach at Parabolic Performance and Rehab in Montclair, New Jersey.
Justin has worked with athletes of all ages and abilities, from eight-years-old to professional football players in the National Football League (NFL) and Olympic-level Ice Skaters and Ice Dancers. He has been highly involved in the process of helping elite college football players prepare for the NFL Combine. Justin also has advanced knowledge of the concepts of PRI as well as Bill Hartman and other elite coaches, giving him a very thorough lens by which he observes the body in training. He has previously appeared on this podcast twice, on episodes 78 and 124.
An area of biomechanics and sports performance that is (thankfully) getting more attention is the internal rotation and “knees in” phenomenon that all of the great jumpers in the world utilize (albeit to varying degrees). If the knees don’t travel inwards in a reactive jump, then elastic energy transfer is lost and an athlete also loses the ability to create a strong triangle structure with their feet and legs.
The question with the “knees in” equation is “when does it become a problem”? A large amount of athletic performance programs will simply try to coach all athletes into a robotic motion where the knees don’t travel inwards at all in an attempt to avoid injury (and also assuming that the knees traveling inwards is the problem in all athletes) and in the process, rob them of elastic power. As with anything, there is a bandwidth, just like the concepts of pronation. Pronation is good, while being stuck in pronation is bad.
To fully understand when the natural and effective internal rotation and “knees in” can become an issue, Justin Moore gives us a thorough explanation, as well as many case study anecdotes. In this episode, Justin uses a lot of fluid dynamics examples, and takes a lot of work from Bill Hartman to explore deeply this corner of human performance. This episode is quite intensive and is one of those shows that you truly can study, since the material is quite foundational to the way we observe and train athletes.
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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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.Key Points
- Basic mechanics of why knees will rotate in during jumping and squatting from a perspective of pelvic mechanics and thorax hydraulics
- How to determine when “knees in” is potentially excessive or problematic and how to approach it
- Where to start: feet vs. the hips when there is knee pain in an athlete
- Use of the modified Ober’s test to assess adduction capability of the femur
- How pressurization of the trunk impacts an athlete’s ability to produce force versus having movement options
- How being internally or externally rotated in the femurs can impact standing versus multi-jump performance
“We see this (knees in strategy) from the best athletes in the world… when you look at the best lifters in the world, they all do it, when you look at the best jumpers in the world, they all do it”
“As I begin in a standing position, and I descend into a squat, I am going to be externally rotating, and I am going to be inhaling and expanding, and my pelvic floor is going to be descending. When I hit the sticking point, what I am going to see is a reversal of that. I am going to see internal rotation, I am going to see exhalation, compression, and ascension of the pelvic floor”
“The pelvic floor ascending is propulsion… it is shooting my guts back up into my thorax as I exhale”
“When I look at somebody who is jumping, I see an individual who is utilizing an internal rotation and adduction moment of the femurs in order to allow them to open the pelvic outlet which allows me to ascend the pelvic floor…. It is a propulsive strategy”
“When I have a femur go one way, and the tibia go the other, then I’m going to have the valgus moment that we always talk about”
“If I have excessive knees coming in for someone who can’t use a propulsive strategy, and can’t exhale effectively to ascend their pelvic floor without those knees literally knocking into each other, then that is a problem”
“What we need to appreciate is why (elite athletes) are using the knees in strategy, and as long as it’s within sustainable means and we are giving them enough variability in their skeleton in order to not become so rigid that health is compromised then it’s fine. But if someone has a history of knee joint problems, and chronic pain or current pain, and their training is restricted because they are limited in their respiratory variability, then we need to work on restoring that”
“More often than not we are going to see a “bottoms up” compensatory strategy”
“(I need to make sure that) I have control of the ischial tuberosity… or keep the relationship between my ischial tuberosities and my femur”
“My abs help to manage the guts, they help to push the fluid of the body straight down into the pelvic diaphragm which receives it”
“The first thing I’m going to look at is essentially the extension drop test or the modified Ober’s test…. If they can extend and adduct their femur, that shows me they have the relationship between the ischial tuberosity and the femur”
“I’m very good at creating a lot of high pressure internally in the system…. that makes me really good at high-pressure situations where I need to create a lot of force. That is not the best thing you want if you want to have movement options”
“I’m always going to come back to the respiratory cycle, the axial skeleton first, and lay the foundation for how a person is going to manage the internal forces of their body, and the external forces that are always acting on them, and then if there is still an issue once I have checked off that I have given them the ability to manage those things, then I work my way out from proximal to distal”
“You don’t see people who look like a pear in the NFL, you just don’t see that. Structure definitely matters”
“We are based on the movement of hydrostatic pressures, fluid dynamics, and the movement of gases… we are essentially a tensegrity structure, and we are a bag of fluid that is held together, but in many cases, these struts never actually touch, so fluid dynamics are incredibly important to how we move and navigate the environment”
“I may have the sensation of threat due to the decreased options I have and constantly overloading the same tissues”
About Justin Moore
Justin is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), Master Instructor, and Head Performance Coach at Parabolic Performance and Rehab. Justin has worked with athletes of all ages and abilities, from eight-years-old to professional football players in the National Football League (NFL) and Olympic-level Ice Skaters and Ice Dancers. He is best known for helping elite college football players prepare for the NFL Combine and for their Pro Days, specializing in improving speed, power, and sprinting mechanics.
After three ACL tears during his first three years of college football at Farleigh Dickinson University, Justin turned to strength training as a way to help him return to football bigger, stronger, and healthier than ever.
In the process, Justin developed a love for strength and conditioning and Olympic weightlifting. He spent countless hours watching videos, reading articles, and researching the work of the industry’s top coaches, lifters, and movement specialists. His own pursuits gave him a great baseline of knowledge from which to grow.
After graduating from FDU with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Justin chose to return to graduate school and study Sports Administration with a specialization in coaching and completed an internship with the strength and conditioning department at Seton Hall University. In his final year of grad school, Justin volunteered to intern at Parabolic Performance and Rehab and after two months of interning, he was offered a job.
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