Today’s episode features biomechanist and foot expert, Gary Ward. Gary is the author of the book “What the Foot” inventor of the “Flow Motion Model”, and gives his “Anatomy in Motion” clinics throughout the world. He is a leading thinker in human movement and mechanics, and is a master of getting people to function better through giving them back their joint movement and sensation. Gary was a guest back on podcast #98 where he went in depth on the importance of proper pronation and how to teach it along with many other concepts on foot health and performance.
The foot (and human body in general) is an incredibly complex structure, and often times we reduce our understanding of it down to “just stretch this muscle and strengthen this other one”, or “let’s try to point those feet or knees in a particular direction that we deem correct”. At the end of the day, the body is always doing the best that it can, given the sensory information that it has. When we lack sensory information, we will have trouble moving our joints and bones properly, and things tend to go downhill from there. Gary helps us to holistically understand the way the body works based on its own incredible ability to interpret information and heal itself.
For today’s episode, Gary and I talk about some performance-driven issues and aspects of foot training. We start out with a chat about those athletes who tend to walk with the toes “turned out” and if this is something that should be labeled as “dysfunctional” and in need of correction. We also cover thoughts on athletes with high arches, and elements that are interfering with their ability to flatten the arch and pronate. We also get into instructing athletes in single leg stance drills and how this relates to the concept of “finding center” (and how the use of wedges, paper or even blocks of cheese can help fill in sensory gaps in stance). Finally, we cover the idea of pronation versus over-pronation, and how the oppositional action of the foot is an important consideration in the ability to “put on the accelerator without the brake” in movement and gait.
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
- Thoughts on athletes whose feet are pointing outwards (duck foot)
- What does dysfunction really mean? Gary’s take on the idea of “dysfunction” and how to interpret it instead
- How to help athletes with high arches pronate correctly
- Gary’s thoughts on “finding center” and what stability really means
- How to instruct athletes who are performing single leg stance drills
- Pronation versus “over-pronation” in athletes
“I never really view anything as a problem, I view things as information”
“I’m not a big fan of the word dysfunction, because it becomes something you want to fix, rather than something you want to understand”
“If you turn your feet out, what you notice is that your foot will pronate”
“The vast majority of muscles in the foot are supinators”
“It’s impossible to externally rotate a femur on a pronating foot”
“A foot that’s turned out will have a rotational influence on the pelvis”
“When I see someone with their foot turned out, rather than think I need to turn that in and be the correction, the information I am getting from that person is that they are turning that foot out to generate that pronation”
“What’s always been exciting to me is to see unconscious change… the more you try the less you get. You have to get the environment right”
“You don’t want to fight (the body) because we know that fight creates conflict… you need to remove the obstacles and encourage things to do the thing they are meant to do”
“I say that joints give muscles something to do”
“Most people’s feet end up very limited in movement”
“Why do people turn their feet out, they are trying to generate more movement than they have”
“The reason your dorsiflexion is not great is because you can’t lower your arch”
“When high arch people attempt to pronate, what you’ll notice is that they’ll lose the 5th metatarsal head (ball of the pinky toe)”
“The brain will always find a tripod, if you can’t get weight on the first metatarsal head, then you’ll have it in the second”
“If you reach down and have a feel for hard skin, and it’s under the 2nd and 3rd metatarsal head, then that is probably where your tripod is, 2nd and 3rd metatarsal head and the calcaneus”
“We’ll place the wedges to meet the floating metatarsal head bones if you like…. You’ve created the conditions for pronation”
“The higher the arch, the stiffer the bones and the more contracted the tissue under the foot”
“One of the key aspects of the foot is that there is opposition between forefoot and rearfoot structures”
“The spine is the same as the foot, we have to get articulation in every bone of it” (if don’t cut)
“The more we explore the extreme possibilities in our movement, the more we load the tissue. The more we give tissue something to do, the more that tissue can react, and when tissue on both sides has an equal reaction to movement, then you can stand in a rested, centered position”
“An over-pronating foot is an everting foot, we need to make sure there is opposition between the forefoot and the rearfoot in three dimensions” (you are not overpronating as long as you have opposition)
About Gary Ward
Gary Ward is the author of “What the Foot” and founder of “Anatomy in Motion”. He is known for bringing individuals out of pain when all other options had failed. A former ski-boot fitter, Gary is known for solving unsolvable pain in minutes, not months. His passion for the foot hugely influenced his interpretation of human movement. Increasingly sought after by all types of practitioners in the fitness and therapy industry, he teaches an evolution that start with the foot and results in whole body integrated movement solutions.
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