Today’s podcast features coach and consultant, Kyle Dobbs. Kyle is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting, and a personal trainer mentorship. Kyle has trained 15,000+ sessions and has experienced substantial success as a coach and educator. Kyle has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background which he integrates into his gym prescriptions to help athletes achieve their fullest movement, and transferable strength potential. He reaches thousands of coaches regularly through his Instagram account where he offers practical movement solutions in the gym to help people get stronger in context of how we are meant to move as humans.
One of the topics that I am most passionate about in training is in regards to why in the world athletes can increase their strength outputs in the gym, but become slower and lose elasticity in things such as jumping in the process. I tend to see athletic outcomes of barbell strength tools as a sliding scale of increased performance due to increased power outputs and increased tissue strength, and then potentially decreased performance due to the body adapting to the needs of moving a heavy external object, and being coached to do so in a way that works against the gait cycle. This topic of the gait cycle and squatting/lifting is what this show is all about.
In today’s episode, Kyle goes in-depth on all things squatting and the gait cycle, and offers real-world solutions to help athletes lift weights, as per the needs of one who needs to sprint, jump, cut and hit. Kyle also lays out helpful ideas on how to restore internal rotation abilities in those athletes in need of this vital element of movement. At the end of this show, you’ll know the crucial mechanical differences between back squatting and front squatting, powerlifting squats, and Olympic squats, that make a real difference on our biomechanics and transfer to athleticism.
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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Timestamps and Main Points
4:00 How doing manual labor and playing one’s sport through high school led Kyle to being more athletic than improving his squat and deadlift in college and becoming slower
7:00 How starting running again after spending years training primarily lifting and gym training has gone for Kyle, and what goes through Kyle’s mind in his run training
12:20 Thoracic dynamics, breathing and run performance concepts
24:15 Kyle’s evolution in the big axially loaded lifts, and their relationship to gait and reciprocal human movement
32:20 Internal and external femur rotation mechanics in squatting, and how hinging-squats have a negative effect on internal rotation capabilities for athletes
39:50 Distinguishing between “good” knees in, and “bad” knees in during a squat, based on adduction and internal rotation mechanics
46:30 Kyle’s taking on intentionally squeezing the glutes at the top of a squat
50:35 Reasons that you usually see Olympic lifters knees “clicking in” when coming up from the bottom of a squat, versus what you tend to see in a powerlifter
1:01:35 General principles in exercise selection and execution regarding squatting with athletes
1:04:50 Functional coaching points in unilateral training exercises
1:06:50 How to restore femoral internal rotation in athletes who are lacking it
“I’m someone who for the last 5 or 6 years has done almost exclusively weight training, so getting back into unilateral reciprocal and trying to find femur IR, has been fun”
“I think more about respiration (when running)”
“As someone who has been doing a lot of bilateral, kind of more supinated based lifting, it is hard for me to get “inside edge” without consciously thinking about it”
“What I get when I’m too (thoracically) extended, is I get a diaphragm that is more eccentrically oriented, and doesn’t really have as much of an ability to ascend and descend… I’m in more of this inhalation based pattern”
“When you prioritize muscular integration, you are almost always going to sacrifice respiration mechanics”
“Variability is not my friend (in the powerlifts)”
“If I’ve got somebody who has good elasticity and good work capacity, but they have a strength deficit, that’s where I might need some bilateral lifting, just to give them a global stimulus, and give them more hypertrophy or more tissue development”
“If I’ve got somebody who is extremely strong bilaterally, but they are short on coordination, work capacity and running well, then I need to get into more unilateral based work and need to get them balanced over one leg”
“The actual rotational requirements of the femur and requirements of adduction change when you’ve got two points of contact on the ground rather than one”
“When we run, we need forward translation of the knee. We need a knee that goes well over the toe, especially in late stance mechanics”
“If I have someone with the hips back and chest up, old school squatting method, I’m not really teaching anything that is going to transfer over to gait from a coordinatin based pattern”
“Me giving a powerlifter IR might give them too many degrees of freedom”
“External and internal rotation aren’t a destination within athletic movements, they are a means to get to a certain point”
“When we look at that hingy squat, that’s someone who is not able to access internal rotation very well”
“If someone goes back, instead of down in a squat, they are basically just circumventing the need to internally rotate by repositioning their pelvis”
“Power and max-load isn’t always the same thing”
“The biggest thing that I see with the knees going in on a squat, and when it is good, and when it is bad has more to do with your ability to rotate”
“If you are adducting a femur, but not internally rotating it, and not pronating at the foot, and you are just collapsing your arch, that’s a different story and that might be putting more stress on the knee”
“When you are front loaded in a squat or clean-catch, that allows for a full squat and vertical translation of the actual pelvis, because that load if shifting your rib cage back over your heels, instead of forward over your feet. The load becomes your new center of mass and your rib-cage wraps around that”
“Your ribcage is either falling forward or falling backwards when you are moving, it’s never truly stacked when you are moving”
“I want a more vertical torso angle (in squatting) so I can get more vertical translation of the knees and an angled shin… that is going to be closer to what running looks like (and I am not going to replicate running in a squat)”
“If I train a dynamic athlete, I am typically not going to back-load them unless their goal is to get as strong as possible”
“(On lunges or unilateral lifts) if I can get the sacrum lined up with the instep, that is going to allow the femur to internally rotate during flexion”
“Isometric split squats is how I line people up (in a straight line lunge for the purpose of restoring internal rotation)”
Show Notes
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9O8ESCgt7C/
Inline split squat for internal rotation restoration
About Kyle Dobbs
Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. Kyle has trained 15,000+ sessions, been a legitimate six-figure earner as a trainer, managed and developed multiple six-figure earners, and has experienced substantial success as a coach and educator. Kyle has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background which he integrates into his gym prescriptions to help athletes achieve their fullest movement, and transferable strength potential.
Transcripts:
Joel Smith:
Kyle you were mentioning before a little bit that, and I think we can both resonate with this is that we entered or what did you say? We left college as worse athletes than we entered. And I would say for me that was more probably in my later twenties when I started doing all the, the lifts as per technical specks, and squatting knees out and through the heels and stuff. But I resonate with that, man. So tell me a little bit more about that idea of you leaving college as a worse athlete, than you entered coming out of high school.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah, I think a few different things happened. I was a young athlete who just played sports all day. I grew up in the Midwest and did a lot of manual labor and kind of got strong swinging axes and pickaxes and shoveling and doing hauling hay and doing things like that. And then just playing my sport and being probably more of a lighter weight elastic based athlete. Like I went into college as a like 6’4″ 185 pound runner slash basketball player and graduated at 220 pounds with a much better squat and deadlift, but a lower vertical and as a slower athlete from the, from that standpoint and, and with a lot more just wear and tear on my body. I had some injuries throughout that process too, and spent more time in a training room than I ever really did on a court or a track, which is unfortunate. But I think that’s the story of a lot of strength coaches. And a lot of people that get into this industry is they kind of fall in love through the rehab and strength training process. And coming back from that end as their athletic dreams, kind of dissipate a little bit through that process, they kind of go into more of the strength and conditioning side or rehab side.
Joel Smith:
Did you go into college thinking you wanted to get into exercise and sport and all that, or was it, it was the injuries that got you there?
Kyle Dobbs:
I was actually a premed major. So I was a double major biology chemistry with a minor in physical science and figured out kind of between my sophomore junior year. So I didn’t want to go like the full med school route, but I was really interested in just anatomy physiology and kind of the way the body works and just stayed with it, but never went farther than that kind of decided I wanted to be more on the physical preparation side of things later on through like my junior and senior year as I was spending more time with the training staffs. And so there was definitely a transition there but I don’t have like an exercise science degree. Like that was all stuff that I learned. Post-College
Joel Smith:
Got it. And so, so you’re a runner and one of the things I think this kind of blends with what I was originally asking is you’ve gotten into running and sprinting again after I think quite a hiatus. And this is just what we’re going to talk about a lot today is you just tying things into the gait cycle and how we actually move as humans. And, and I’m curious, cause I, like I had said, in my mid-twenties I actually did do pretty well athletically in college just cause the lifts I was able to do just kind of, I didn’t know when coach me, I just did them, how my body wanted to move. And later doing everything technically out squatting through the heels, I started to see a lot of changes in like stride length and in those types of things for the worse. And so I’m curious how, how has running gone after all the time doing more of the lifting type work and also in light of all the things that you’ve tied in regarding doing it functionally well and like a human being should move and operate.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I mean, first off it’s been really fun I think that’s probably the most important thing to me because that’s, it really kind of takes me back to my background and as I was doing it, I had to, I had to get into it pretty slow, like with some graded exposure. And I definitely had to start working in a little bit different training, but COVID kind of gave me the excuse to kind of get back into it as I wasn’t able to get into the gym quite as much. That was kind of one of the only ways that I could really express power. I’ve got a couple of kettlebells at home and in a few just odd assortment of modalities that I could be using and then obviously my body weight, but I wasn’t really able to establish or exert force to the extent that I wanted to.
Kyle Dobbs:
And sprinting kind of gave me that. And it’s definitely been a learning experience to kind of get back into it. I’m somebody who for the last five or six years has done almost exclusively weight training. And I did quite a bit of rowing before that just indoor rowing. So like the past that has never been much of an issue for me, but just from a biomechanics standpoint, like a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing has been bilateral and quote unquote sagittal from that perspective. So getting back into unilateral movement, getting back into reciprocal movements and trying to find femur, IR and things of that nature from a gate perspective has been a challenge, but it’s been fun just kind of exploring those corners again and getting back used to it. And so far so good. Probably the biggest issue with me has just been I’m almost 225 pounds and when I was running competitively, I was 185. So my feet probably take the biggest wear and tear right now. So that’s really where I’ve had to kind of get back into it a little slower just from just a pure weight and impact perspective. Kind of build that back up a little bit.
Joel Smith:
I’m sure when you were running back in the day, I’m sure there wasn’t much, you were thinking of maybe a few cues your coach gave you, right? Like, so 20 years or however much longer beyond that, what are things that go through your mind now, now that so much about biomechanics and anatomy? What, what goes through your mind with what you’re trying to accomplish or what your body’s doing as you’re, you’re running and moving?
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I mean I try not to think too much when I’m actually running, I think more about respiration probably because I just, because my cardiovascular system is probably not where it should be right now, I tend to fall into like mouth breathing really early on and exertion and fatigue. So especially if I’m running like 400 repeats, it’s pretty much mouth breathing after the first hundred. If I’m doing something longer, I can handle a nasal breathing further from that respect and then kind of get a better respiration cycle. And for me, the biggest thing now is not falling into just like thoracic extension. That’s where I typically fall into. And I usually get a lot of compression from that perspective. And that’s kind of, for me, kind of inhibit my actual respiration inhalation cycles, which means I’m not also going to be able to expel CO2 quite as efficiently as I might be able to on something highly aerobic.
Kyle Dobbs:
The other side of things is just looking at like foot impact and trying to make sure that I’m actually getting into pronation and getting into, in step and pushing off big toe through kind of that late stance phase. So as someone who is been doing a lot of bilateral kind of more supinated based lifting, it’s hard for me to get like inside edge without consciously thinking about it now so I do drills from a training perspective or from a coordination perspective to kind of drive that. But we all know that a drill is one thing, but when you’re actually on a track running it’s going to be different and you need to be a little more reactive and a little more adaptive and try to get those things more on that kind of unconscious competence spectrum and not have to think about it that right now, I’m still conscious of it. We’ll put it that way.
Joel Smith:
Yeah. I definitely agree with the not overthinking part of it. Cause it is fun to notice it’s just especially having gone through this long enough but when you really, it comes time to put it down and I like the breathing being the highest order. That’s probably the easiest thing just to keep on the floor so to speak. So I do want to ask you about that. Cause a big topic or a big area we’re going to get into is the external and everything and lifting and bilateral lifting and, and how that fits with unilateral and alternating reciprocating human movement. But I’m curious, you said managing thoracic extension running. I just did a podcast on breathing with Leo Ryan. So I’m interested. So could you go into a little detail on that thoracic extension? What, how it works with running and what you’re trying to accomplish there?
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah, so when you’re going through respiration cycles, right, your rib cage is going to move, it’s going to compress and it’s going to expand and through inhalation and exhalation and that’s going to lead to diaphramic descension and ascension and pressure management on down to the pelvic floor, through the axial skeleton. And what I get when I’m too extended, as I’ve, I get a diaphragm that’s basically essentially oriented and doesn’t really have as much of an ability to ascend and descend. And I’m compressing my rib cage posteriorly through like those large lat muscles or trap muscles, right. It’s squeezing everything back to push my rib cage forward. So I’m in more of this inhalation based pattern, but just like when we talk about ranges of motion, other joints, right? If you’re in full hip extension, you can’t really extend farther, right? Like you’ve maxed that out, but you also lose the ability to kind of flex because you’re on that continuum.
Kyle Dobbs:
You’re so far to one end you’re skewed. So if I’m in that full extension based pattern, I’ve got kind of like this anterior tip of my actual cage. I’m also not able to really take good inhales from that perspective. So I’m ended up shortening up my respiration cycle. I’m not getting the full inhale and full exhale that I might need to fully get oxygen into my system and then spell CO2 out of my system because those things they’re going to work in tandem with one another. So you, you talk about aerobic athletes, if you’re not getting oxygen into your system that means you’re probably not getting oxygen dispersed into muscle tissue as well. Right. So that can affect lactate threshold that can affect a lot of things down the chain, just from a, from a muscular standpoint, from a performance at that point. So for me, one of the big things that I’m looking for is keeping my shoulders loose and being able to move my scapula’s on a rib cage, through protraction retraction, and as I’m going through flection and extension cycles, upper body, and being able to kind of get a little bit more posterior expansion through that inhalation of my rib cage to allow for like that kind of that neutral thoracic curve that we should have. Right. Rather than a big flat upper back that you see kind of in that extended pattern.
Joel Smith:
Interesting. Cause yeah, I was going to try to get into the details of what does it mean? Like what presents when you’re in thoracic extension? Cause I think we all familiar with lumbar extension anterior pelvic tilt, but sometimes I get a little, I I’ll admit it. I get to look confused. We start working up the chain and the S the thoracic and the cervical cause to me the big, easy one is just what’s the pelvis doing. So what does that, what does that presentation look like? And also say my mind is just often in sprinting where like, you look at your same bullet, you have some anterior tilt, you have the shoulders over the hips, you have, the ribs are forward, like Adarian Barr’s sternum forwards, foot forward for a sprinting posture. Just explain a little bit more what that thoracic extension looks like in light of we’d be at sprinting or distance running. I’m sure. I’m just curious what that means.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. So it’s actually exactly what you’re describing, where you’ve got a rib cage. That’s not necessarily over a pelvis, it’s more over a forefoot, right? So it’s forward in space and you are leading with the xiphoid and the sternum. And then because of that you’ve got a flatter upper back and then you’ve got more of a lumbar extension typically to go along with that, because the, essentially the anonymous of the pelvis, half the dip into an anterior toe to accommodate that movement of the spine. And that’s something you see again, presented in most power sports, right? We work with a lot of powerlifters and you see that with powerlifters as well. And you see that with sprinters. And that’s a question I get a lot of the time. And one of the biggest things that I always try to remind people with that is those are both highly anaerobic sports, right?
Kyle Dobbs:
Like respiration doesn’t necessarily matter that much in a 100 or even a 200. It doesn’t matter that much in a one RM squat or deadlift or bench press. So when you’re in that position, you’re basically looking at maximum muscular integration, right? Because you’re now constantly orientating the lats, right? Primarily from an upper body perspective, you’re shortening them at the lumbar spine and you’re them at thoracic and cervical spine through the last and the traps. And you’re able to now use them to propel yourself forward more powerfully. And when you prioritize muscular integration, you’re almost always going to sacrifice respiration mechanics. Like those two things are gonna kind of fall on the opposite end of the continuum typically. And when you maximize respiration mechanics, you’re going to probably sacrifice maximum muscular recruitment and power. And that’s okay. That’s the reason why, again, we’re not able to run a hundred pace four mile, right?
Kyle Dobbs:
Part of it is you can’t get air into your system. Part of it comes from fatigue based on that. So when I look at the posture that a hundred meter runner has gone to exhibit, it’s going to be different than what a half marathon or a marathon runner is going to exhibit. Like those are two different tasks that are going to completely just required different postures and positions and respiration needs from that perspective. So, yeah, I like when I’m looking at a sprinter and then when I’m looking at like a distance runner, I’m just seeing the self-organization that’s happening for two different tasks and neither one of them is wrong. Right. They’re just, they’re individuals that are completely trained for different outcomes at different energy system development, different muscular development. So it’s all purpose-driven when you look at it from that perspective and some of the systems that I work within everything needs to be neutral, quote unquote, and that works well for like gen pop people.
Kyle Dobbs:
But when you look at the specificity of athletics, you have to understand that if I go to a powerlifting meet or if I go to a track meet, and I see that all of these and coached athletes of all self-organized into the same, or very similar kind of postural positions and orientations, that’s probably beneficial for their sport. And me trying to change those things is probably going to decrease their actual performance. And I think that’s something that we always have to consider is if you’re not taking the actual task requirements into account, before you start applying, like quote unquote corrective exercise, or some of these other things you’re doing the athlete or the client, a huge injustice when it comes to that perspective, because they probably care more about outcomes than they do, like postural correction, especially in that moment. Yeah.
Joel Smith:
I’m glad I asked. Cause I think that’s an important distinguishing point. Cause then when I say running, you’re talking about running like almost more like an endurance or at least 400 up, right? Like you had mentioned this on a previous podcast, how, just what you said, like our bodies will form to the task. What if you’re an Olympic lifter you’re going to have a lot of anterior or you have a sprinter, anything that like, I’ve only been to three PRI clinics, but I remember they talked about like the go button. That’s like the anterior tilted extension. Like that’s your go button and that’s what those athletes are going to be in a lot of. And so it makes me thinking almost like anybody talk about how the F the effect one thing has on the other, what effect does squatting have on running and jumping or what effect does distance running have on those things?
Joel Smith:
And I kind of think too, yes, there’s muscle characteristics and whatever, but I also think based off what you’re saying and adjust in more podcasts, we talked about this and squatting and like what’s the infrastructure angle and pressure management. But I think if you did a lot of distance running in your sprinter, not only is it more slow twitch, but you might be falling into a posture potentially that is the breathing mechanics that are required, that it’s different than you go. I can’t speak for elite distance. Cause I think I probably am not aware enough. I haven’t looked at enough other their posture, but I know when I watched the average half marathon, you don’t see people at that test forward posture at all. You see them a little more punch and the people who are super grinders are really hunched forward. I mean, to the point where it’s not good for them, or it’s not probably it is, it is not good for them. So I just think that, yeah, that balance is interesting.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. When I look at like field sport athletes, right. That are, that are going to be more robustly based with short spurts of sprints and jumps and whatever, like you’ve got soccer players and basketball players and hockey, even like hockey and football athletes. So you’re, you’re going to see people like when you see people with that huge extended posture, and they’re just trying to get air in, through their mouth as much as possible. Like that’s somebody who’s almost gassed out. Like if I’m the athlete standing across from them on a field, like, I know this person’s about done because that’s, that’s basically the body’s last ditch effort to get as much oxygen into the system as they possibly can. ? So when I’m looking like for me, even if I’m running 400 repeats, like I did that this morning I’m still running those at probably like 80%, right.
Kyle Dobbs:
Because I’m actually trying to run those at like what a mile pace would be. So I’m not trying to break 50 necessarily on my four hundreds that I’m running for repeats. I’m trying to keep them all within like a one 10, because my goal is to run a four 45 mile, right? So I’m doing eight to 10 of those. And if I can maintain respiration mechanics and good inhalation and exhalation through that process, the longer that I can maintain aerobic capacity before I have to dip into anaerobic energy system usage, the better off I’m going to be in anything that’s going to be aerobically driven. Like I don’t want to get anaerobic fast or I’m not going to do well at whatever I’m trying to do. This filters into autonomics as well.
Kyle Dobbs:
Like I don’t want to be highly sympathetic. Like I don’t need to take a bunch of stimulants before I go run repeats and try to do something aerobic either. Cause I don’t want an elevated heart rate. I don’t want elevated blood pressure. I want those things to stay as low as possible for as long as possible and to be able to maximize my performance within those zones over time. Like I want to keep those things pretty steady, but increase outputs within them. And that’s kind of the goal is like that tempo training or, or even some of the longer runs that I might do if I’m just a sprinter right. Running it 70, 80% might not be that beneficial for me because I might not need a build up a ton of aerobic development. If my goal is a hundred meter runs, right.
Kyle Dobbs:
If I’m a power lifter, same thing. If I’m just trying to lift maximum load for one rep in three very specific positions, I can again, induce a huge amount of specificity within my training protocols there. And I don’t need a ton of variability and probably don’t want a ton of movement variability because I want to create as much stability within the lift as I possibly can by creating essentially biomechanical constraints through positions and orientations of bones. So variability is not my friend and like aerobic fitness outside of recovery purposes probably is pretty useless for me in that, from that perspective too. Yeah.
Joel Smith:
It’s, it’s interesting to think. And I just love how this really piggybacks off the last podcast I did cause breathing is not something that I really, I think I’ve paid enough due to in the 200 some episodes of this. So, so I’m glad you mentioned that it gives me a lot of things. Again, things to notice when I’m training, whether it’s a, if I’m just doing a recovery trail run versus a, a sprinting and just kind of noticing what your body wants to do and why it’s breathing a certain way. I love that. And then obviously the team sport athlete, the intermittent is the meeting in the middle of so many qualities too. And I think it is, I mean, I love good train to get faster. It’s a huge passion of mine, but I also love learning about what makes different athletes tick from a respiratory perspective. So you mentioned internal rotation of the femur and external rotation of the femur and squatting. I think this is a big topic that I really wanted to approach with you today. And so in how you’ve trained over the years, tell me a little bit and how you train athletes and clients. Tell me a little bit about your evolution of the big lifts, the squat, deadlifts, hacks, deadlifts, anything that involves that and how it fits with gait and running and reciprocal human movement.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I mean, again, I think I always have to start with the, the questions I’m always going to ask whenever any athlete for any sport is in front of me is what, what is their sport? What are the requirements of their sport? Like what physical qualities do they actually need? Are they running? Are they doing bilateral work energy system development, whatever, you know? And, and then I look at that person’s actual individual abilities respective to those tasks requirements. Right? And I look for the things they do really well. And then I look for the things that might be limiting their performance. And if I’ve got somebody who has good elasticity and, and good work capacity, but they have a strength deficit, right. That’s where I might need some, some bilateral lifting just to give them a global stimulants and give them more in hypertrophy or tissue development.
Kyle Dobbs:
Right. And the, the ability to express power, if I’ve got somebody who is extremely strong bilaterally, but they’re short on coordination, they’re short on work capacity and they have trouble just running well, then I need to probably get into more unilateral based work and start getting them balanced over one leg rather than over two. And because when we look at like what happens with a lot of our bilateral lifters, you’ve got a pelvis now sitting between two femurs rather than being over a femur. So the, the actual rotational requirements of the femur and the, the requirements for adduction change significantly when you’ve got two points of contact on the ground rather than one. And what you’re looking at is you’ve got everything kind of going from end to end to like more of an external rotation and abduction scenario where knees are going out rather than knees are going forward.
Kyle Dobbs:
But when we run, we need forward translation to the knee, right? Like we need dorsiflex, and we need a forward chin angle. We need a knee that goes well over a toe, especially in late stance mechanics. so those things, if I’ve got somebody who’s squatting a ton, but they’re not doing, but everything’s kind of vertical shin and hips back and chest up kind of the old school squatting method, not really teaching anything, that’s going to carry over that much to gate from a coordination based pattern. I might be developing tissue. And again, even maybe neuromuscular work, I might be getting hypertrophy out of that. But if I’m not getting the actual and movement requirements that they’re going to need for forward propulsion and running, then I’m not doing them much justice when it comes to their actual sport.
Kyle Dobbs:
If for requires that if I’ve got a powerlifter where again, everything’s going to be bilateral and everything’s going to be a little more sagittal. Yeah. Me giving them a ton. Yeah. IRR might actually give them too many degrees of freedom, right. Because they actually, we force everything out to create essentially a bony constraint between the femur, the Aztecs and the actual, like anonymous of the pelvis. And they go to end range and work through that pattern as a constraint they create their own. And that allows for a ton of inter joint stability with a really heavy load on their back. And that’s a safer position for a lot of them. Then within a squat, then letting them go through like a full propulsion cycle that we would maybe with an athlete based school. We’re, we’re a little narrower stance. We start out in full extension with a little bit of external rotation as we go through mid-propulsion and more flection, we get more internal rotation abduction of the femurs potentially. And then when we get into late propulsion and, or it’s actually early propulsion, but that full flection of the hips and the knees in that okay. The ass to grass model, we’re kind of back and more of an external rotation and abducted femur. And then we’re cycling back through on the way up again. And that’s essentially were just creating external rotation to create external internal rotation to create more external rotation. And that’s just re rotation beginning rotation for torque production during extension. Yeah.
Joel Smith:
That being said, I have two questions for you. First is you mentioned early, mid and late propulsion. So do those fit in a squat? Like, is that all based on the descent there? Can you tell me the points in a squat and let’s just say asked to grasp for just so everyone’s on the same page. Cause for whatever people’s internet police, squat depth. I don’t care about that, but just, let’s just say it’s that I like half squats and leave it there. But this red ass to grass squat, what where those things happen.
Kyle Dobbs:
So if we’re talking about like a full, full squat, you’re actually in late propulsion starting. So if we start from the base of the squat, you’re going to be an early propulsion through mid through late kind of like you wouldn’t like that. Right. So when you’re in that deep squat, you’re an early, you have more of a poster really tilted pelvis, right? You’ve got more external rotation and abduction of the femurs. And then as you go through up into more extension, you’re going to have a little bit more of an anteriorly tilted pelvis. You’re going to get a little more internal rotation of the femurs. And then you’re going to pop back into full extension where your postcode, pelvic tilted. And you’re again, externally rotated from that perspective too. So those things kind of happen in synchronicity through that full extension of the squat.
Kyle Dobbs:
And this is something that I know you’ve talked know, David. And we talked about them a little bit before the, before the, we started recording too. But one of the biggest things that I try to work on with people is understanding that external rotation and internal rotation aren’t necessarily a destination within dynamic moment. It’s a means to get to certain points. And if you can’t externally rotate, you can’t internally rotate. And if you can’t internally rotate, you can’t externally rotate. These two things have to happen reciprocally of one another and lead to one another throughout the motion of that squat. So
Joel Smith:
You wouldn’t coach a squat saying, I want you to like internally actually wrote to it. Would that be an in the map at all? Or is it that just a byproduct, you set them up the way you want, there’s a certain goal in mind. And then like, how does that, how does that work then within the way that you’re coaching those moves?
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. From a coaching perspective we’re always just kind of watch them squat first, right. And, and see if they are faulting into or missing one of those components within a full squad. And, and we see this a lot with like the quote unquote hinged squat, where people never actually get into that early propulsion cycle and their hips go back rather than down. So there’s a horizontal translation of the pelvis rather than a vertical translation. So they can force external rotation all the way through. And because they have a hard time internally rotating a theme, or they’re not getting through mid-propulsion down into early propulsion. And again, because of that, you get of things going up and down the chain, right? Like you end up with a more vertical shin, less Dorsey flection of the ankle, more super nation at the foot.
Kyle Dobbs:
And then from an upper body perspective, you end up with a, more of a pitch forward, right? Just, and a lot of that’s just physics and dealing with bar placement. If a bar is on your back and you’re putting a hips back, your chest has to go forward because it’s going to remain over the midfoot. And if you look at morphology longer femurs are going to be hips going farther back, shorter femurs. It’s not going to be as drastic. So height plays a little bit of a role in this as well. But for the most part, when we look at that squat like that, somebody who’s not able to access IR very well. So instead of getting their femurs in, they just shoved their pelvis farther back in space and recruit different musculature to finish the task or accomplish a task.
Joel Smith:
So really when we say the typical, I hope this becomes atypical for athletes. It’s when we do the comment. Okay. Just sit back. Do you want to test up, sit back, knees out that essentially. I mean, it’s so it’s just, it’s driving even more ER and less IR. So that’s, I guess one, one big thing. Right. But then obviously that being probably pretty negative for anyone who wants to be elastic in their sport and access internal rotation and inside edge of the foot. But what’s happening again with the state, the phases, like the early mid and late phase? You said you’re missing one.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. So they’re not getting basically what would be mid stance skate, right. They’re not getting the pronation of the foot. They’re not getting internal rotation of the femur and tibia, and they’re not getting any kind of abduction that you would have. And again, the adduction isn’t drastic. It’s just literally having engaged. It’s a pelvis it’s shifting over a tibia, right. So you’re, so you’re not lopsided. And when people can’t do this, you see like exaggerated swing phases, right. You’ll see people who can’t get into their left side. So they have a big swing phase on their left side and they kind of stay on their right hip over that right foot the entire time. And their stance phase on the left side is very short. It’s almost like they’re trying to get back to the right foot as quickly as they possibly can. If you think about runners or just people walking up and down the street.
Kyle Dobbs:
And when you look at that from a squat perspective, if somebody’s in has trouble getting into early propulsion to that full depth and they go back and set it down, they’re basically just circumventing the need to internally rotate by repositioning their pelvis. So instead of moving their femurs, they’re just moving their pelvis back and kind of again, decreasing their need for any type of like posterior pelvic tilt during that range of motion. So they’re never getting into early. They’re basically just going from late to mid to late, but they’re not internally rotating at med. They’re not going through that full cycle.
Joel Smith:
Yeah, totally makes sense. Why I’ve heard sprint coaches say that that type of squatting can decrease stride length. Cause you’re, you’re not like you’re not, you’re not entirely rotating. How are you going to like have a long stride? And then I just think it’s funny, like you mentioned, like the swing phase, like what happens to a lot of people like college sprinters, like let’s go do deep squats and hips back and then teach. Don’t tell people to lift their knees up and you have this, this weird, this weird running stride that doesn’t really replicate a lot of our elastic natures it’s, I think at some math, a lot of athletes intuitively work around that they squat in a way that probably reciprocates how they operate in those types of things.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah, I think it’s funny. I mean, we were talking about athletes self-organizing and your experience and gyms as opposed to mine being coached into more of that like power lifting style squad early on in my athletic career is when you watch a lot of athletes squat, and just on coach, you get a lot of forefoot, you get needs going forward, you get a little bit more vertical towards, so, and are they as strong as a powerlifter? No, but that’s not the goal for them. Right. That’s not what they’re actually trying to do. They’re trying to produce power and power and max load. Isn’t always the same thing. if I’m a, if I’m a power lifter doing a one RM, or if I’m in a meet and I’ve got a four second concentric on my, on my squat, like there’s no velocity there. I’m just grinding out. There’s no elasticity going on. ? So if you’re looking at like an athlete, you’re not going to be max loading, you’re going to be focusing more on velocity and power production there. And that squats gonna probably look very different from a biomechanical perspective as well, especially if you’re trying to match gait. If you’re trying to get more of a shin angle, if you’re trying to get knees over toes a little more, you will sacrifice overall strength for more power and velocity perspective.
Joel Smith:
You were talking to our referring to our little talk before this. And I was mentioning, yeah, when I was in high school, I just squatted, no one was telling me what to do. I just put a bar on my back and started dropping. And I remember, I don’t know why I remember this stuff. Like this is just stuff that sits around floating in my head for whatever reason. It was just a heavier squat day. And I think we did like the Husker power program, but I of course modified it. Cause I didn’t want to squat heavy twice a week and deadlift heavy twice a week. I just was like, this is too much. I’m sitting here. Like I didn’t tell my coach, I wasn’t going to do it. I mean, our star point guard would literally, he hated squatting and he was like five, nine and could dunk.
Joel Smith:
And he would like have just, just a one 35 on his back and be looking over at the coach to see that he wasn’t looking at this just to be like 10 quarter squats and put the bar back. But I, I remember I was like a heavier day, went in the bar. It was only like two 55 for five reps. I weighed like one 70, one 75. I was never a great squatter, but I remember my knees coming in like a TA, like probably almost touching each other to hit like those last few reps under extreme, like for my body considered extreme blood for a lot of people to be toothpick. The, but the funny thing is, is that that whole fall, cause I had never really deep squatted a lot until that fall. My, I had knee issues. I know Jake Tura is, has gone into a lot of like this type of idea, but like I and I guarantee my knees are going over my toes too, for that stuff.
Joel Smith:
Like I didn’t, I just dropped down and did whatever my body did, but my Nia, she was pretty much completely cleared up over the course of two to three months. And that was squatting with the knees, like going in and, and I, there was no I felt like I was, I was super elastic. I had to really well that year I was really fast, long jumped. Well, and then college, I, no one again, no one was really coaching me. Just what felt good. I think I had heard more things of what you’re supposed to do, but what just felt good was just loading up the forefoot still. And it wasn’t till I got to my mid-twenties, that’s like knees out through the heels. And then my stride, like my High Jump approach went from 70 feet to 66. I’m like, why is this happening? So anyway, sorry was a lot. It just, I like that story. So I felt like I should tell it as a prelude.
Kyle Dobbs:
Well, and that’s actually, I mean, that’s something that we talk a lot about people with as far as like the, the quote unquote the valgus monster the, the V word that everybody in the industry is absolutely terrified with. And the, the biggest thing that I see with the knees going in on a squat like that and, and when it’s good and when it’s quote unquote bad really has more to do with your ability to rotate, right? So if you’re ad ducting a femur and internally rotating it and pronating at the foot, it’s probably a perfectly safe position, but if you’re abducting a femur, but you’re not internally rotating it and you’re not pronating at the foot and you’re just collapsing your arch, that’s a different story. Right now, we have abduction with that rotation that might be putting more stress on a knee, right.
Kyle Dobbs:
That might be something that’s more of a, of a risky movement. And when you look at like really good jumpers, like, I mean, I was watching I forgot the athlete’s name, but he had, he literally did a 48 inch standing jump, right. And he went into internal rotation abduction on both the concentrate and the deceleration on landing. Nobody’s correcting that guy, but he’s combining the adduction flection and turn a rotation as a means to get external rotation, abduction, and extension to produce power. And when we combine rotation with extension, we produce torque and what, what a lot of the coaches now are trying to do with like that or not now so much, but five, 10 years ago with that kind of butt back, vertical shin, no rotation is there.
Kyle Dobbs:
They’re essentially turning rotational joints at the ball and socket into knees, right. Or into elbows, right. And just extensors and flexors. And that completely just decreases the overall function of what a ball and socket joint is able to do. And it’s always, it’s always baffled me that we can throw a baseball and combined internal rotation and external rotation, all of these things, and nobody says anything, but for some reason, a femur is never allowed to internally rotate. And if it does, you need to correct it right away. Even if the person has no pain or no performance drop-off.
Joel Smith:
Yeah. We don’t coach bench presses, that’s it. I’d never, for some reason, I’ve never thought about that. Like ball and socket hinge, joint like rotation, but it’s like the style that we coach bench presses. I mean, we don’t want people like with T shape, which is funny, cause that is 90 degrees, like, I guess, but we don’t like, have everyone like jamming their elbows into the ribs and saying don’t deviate from this position or something. what I’m saying? I think because it maybe, maybe it’s because the soldiers will blow up easier to like injury wise or I don’t know it’s I mean, it’s such a, it’s an interesting thing, man. I was going to say to I, a question I had was, okay, so you, you said that they, I are so that they can have more, ER, rain.
Joel Smith:
So it’s almost like, cause I always thought of the IRS, like loading the spring like, and maybe it is that too but like it’s also like someone who doesn’t have a lot of internal, external rotation range in the fear, just period. I just, for whatever reason, injury, they’ve been taught a certain way there, they’re just not very mobile. Like they’re, they’re just going to have a reduced power potential probably no matter what out of the glutes, they, you just don’t have range there. So that’s kinda what you were saying before. Like you have to have that intellectual range to be to prime the spring.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I mean the really, the only fundamental trait that you have to have that’s necessary for external rotation is internal rotation. Like you have to come from somewhere because being in an externally rotated position, does it mean you’re actually facilitating the movement of external rotation? Right. And I think that’s where a lot of people kind of get confused with those terms is they’ll say like, Oh, like I’m in a fully abducted and I’m externally rotating. It’s like, no, you’re just externally rotated. Right? Like you’re in the state, but you’re not actually ER, through that range of motion at all, because you can’t IR enough to come from somewhere. And when you’re in that, that’s where I think from the load and explode perspective, like I think that’s dead on, right? Like you have to be able to flex to extend. You have to be able to add up to abduct and you have to be able to internally rotate to externally rotate. And when you look at the combination of flection, adduction, internal rotation, that’s typically like a deceleration or a loading phase of any type of movement. And when you look at like the concentrate or propulsion part of the, of the movement, you look at external rotation, extension and abduction, typically from the femur
Joel Smith:
As you’re a little bit like you were saying, like, you have to like people who try to force it. It’s like, look, I’m externally rotated, sorry, I’m making like pictures of my hands. Even though I can see this, but like my thumbs are out to the side. Like this is how I think, I guess. And so if my femurs are out, I’m externally rotated, but because there was no internal rotation to proceed, it there’s no polarity and therefore energy cannot flow between the polarities. So, but I was thinking it was something funny that I see. I’m sure I don’t feel bad saying this cause I’m sure you agree with me. Like I’m not throwing something out there. I’m going to get burned. But like you see like the athletes who finish a squat with a tuck, like they squeeze their ass at the top. Like that, like as if they’re gonna it’s like the same thing, right?
Joel Smith:
Like you didn’t set it up. Or I think because the low bar back squat made me think about that, but it’s almost like it’s a thing now because maybe we’re in the more of the hip thruster era of, of sorts. And, and that the, that, although the hip thrust, you do have a load and explode, but it’s like at the top of a squat, you’re just squeezing your ass. But without, I don’t know, I just think that’s funny. Like what do you think? Cause you sure you see people do that. I think it’s interesting.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. It’s like that lasts like 5% of the extension, right. Arm of the hip extension on the squad and it’s just very exaggerated. I, you do see it a lot and yeah. I mean, it’s so much just doing it to do it right. Because at that point, depending on what your load is, right. If you’re back-loaded, if you’re front-loaded, the load is still going to be fairly vertically positioned over your toes at full extension. So you’re not actually moving it very much, right. From that perspective, just based on the extension arms and the levers at work. So that’s more so like that’s some wishes over coaching for me. Like when I see that it’s like, somebody has told that person to like fully lock out their hips at a squat or or at a dead lift potential, you see them power lifting a lot because you have to get full lockout for the lift to count. And that might’ve been where it originated with athletes as well as because if they don’t fully lock out their hips like that, it’s not lift. Right. Like they’re not going to get white lights at that point. So, but it’s usually just very exaggerated. It almost just seems like, okay, the lifts over. And then it’s like, Oh yeah, I forgot to squeeze my ass. Then they just like squeeze everything forward really quick. Like it’s not even part of the actual lift itself.
Joel Smith:
Yeah. It’s like you said, like there’s still a little range of motion available to like, just like ERI are you have a certain amount of range. It’s like anterior posterior, a certain amount of range. And it’s like, by the time you’re at the top, it’d be like doing an arm curl again, me visual. But like my, where my hand is already almost touching my shoulder and doing like a, like a,
Kyle Dobbs:
A little pump that,
Joel Smith:
Yeah, just, just a little pump, just a one inch pump at the end. It’s not cause like that big chance to really, I had this like almost realization as I was doing, I do Hill workouts on Wednesday, Wednesdays and I had this I’m almost epiphany I almost all my good thoughts happen in the middle of a workout. And it was like, it was like the whole purpose of this, everything my body is doing in the air is to set up the glute to hit as hard as possible at the exact right spot. I was like, that is and have a good foot hip connection. Like if I like everything I’m doing my body’s doing the twisting manipulating. It’s just like, I’m a basketball player and I’m setting up, I’m giving trying to get to the perfect assist to the glute every time. And that’s that doesn’t happen at the top. It happens at this like peak point of flexion and rotation, but it’s like that kind of hit I saw is interesting.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. Ideally the day things that go in my mind. I, yeah. I mean, it could be a whole other podcast to just talk about how movement stimulates the brain. I think, I feel like I do all of my best thinking typically like on my morning walks or when I’m running or even when I’m lifting, that’s usually when I write like Instagram posts and my notes when I’m resting between sets. But, but yeah, like that whole early phase of gait right early stance phase is really just super nation into external rotation, into hip succession. And then you’re at that full kind of glute contractal. And then as you go through mid-phase, you’re allowing for an East centric or stretch reflex of the glute and internal rotation of the femur. And then as you go back in the late phase, you’re using that stress reflex to get more external rotation and extension again and that’s, that’s the muscular component of kind of what’s happening with the bones is it’s not always you have reciprocal mood like muscles working, but you also have stretch reflexes and East centric and concentrate, orientations and muscles that are taking place through that, through that process.
Kyle Dobbs:
And it’s not like when you go through mid-stance or glute stops working and like the hip flexor and quad takes over, it’s like, no, it’s actually essentially lengthening and creating a stretch so that it could contract again through late stance phase and push you off forward into like the next step.
Joel Smith:
Yeah. So that does bring me to something that I, I probably been wanting to ask you this, like this whole talk and that’s with the whole, like ever since Pat Davidson wrote that and he’s in for the win. And I think the prime thing place, you see that as Olympic lifters versus that as you mentioned, like the powerlifter and they’re creating a different paradigm. So what, and we would all probably classify at least in terms of being explosive for the most part, although you get Fred Hatfield with his 48 inch jump off the thing, but generally I think we’d say Olympic lifters are more explosive for the most part and what, and you see their knees are often doing that little click in off the bottom versus so anyways, what what’s going on there in terms of your thoughts on the differences between Olympic lifters, squat and a powerlifter squat and that translation.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I mean the, the biggest thing that you have to consider is load placement, right? Like you’ve got a back-loaded athlete versus front loaded athlete. And when you’re an Olympic lifter and you’re front loaded and you’re handling that weight and that that clean or that rack position that allows for a full squat and vertical translation of the actual pelvis, because that load is now shifting your rib cage back over your heels rather than forward over your feet. Right? So the, the load becomes your new center of mass and your rib cage wraps around that rather than being shoved in forward. So now you’ve got this essentially counterweight, right, where you’ve got a heavy load sitting on your clavicle or wherever you’re holding it. And you’re able to get into full depth squat. And when you’re able to get a pelvis down vertically, you’re able to get knees forward, right?
Kyle Dobbs:
Because your, your femurs don’t match. We changed. They have to go somewhere. So the Beamers aren’t going back, or the hips aren’t going back, the knees have to go forward. You have to be able to facilitate more dorsiflexion at the ankle. And that allows those athletes to then utilize the full propulsion arc from early to mid to late propulsion. So they go through that almost wave or cycle of rotation to create better extension. So when they’re in that deep, early propulsion, you’ll see me out. But yeah, as soon as they try to get up into extension, the knees usually dive in, right. And that’s doing a couple of things from a muscular standpoint as well. Like it’s creating that stretch reflex of the glutes, right? So you’re stretching the glute through abduction and I are there so that you can externally rotate through extension. And you’re also leveraging like the VMO and the medial quads and the adductor Magnus for better extension mechanics throughout by repositioning a femur.
Kyle Dobbs:
And I think that’s the other part of like a big squat that nobody talks about is we talk about the glutes. We talk about the quads and a little bit about the hamstrings, but the adductor Magnus is also huge muscle. When you, I look at a lot of athletes and that’s, and it’s a pro it’s, it’s not your primary hip extender as far as like the glue complex, but it does a lot of hip extension and manipulation of the femur through that as well, especially when you’re on one leg, when you’re in a deep squat, it’s also part of what’s drawing the knees or the femurs and through mid-propulsion, and then allowing them to then go back out through late propulsion and full extension. So it’s also working when you have a powerlifter, you’ve got a backload. So the rib cage is going farther over the toes.
Kyle Dobbs:
Like if you see a powerlifter right before they squat, right, they’re standing there fully wracked. And like you see them almost leaning forward with their chest really out their scapulas are squeezed back together as far as they can, so they can get their arms around a bar. So their lats are super concentrically oriented and shortened. And typically they’re already at a little bit of hip flection or a little bit of lordotic curve of their lumbar spine. And because of the loading scheme, they were to do sit down vertical outside of like a few morphological outliers. They would literally fall backwards on their butts. Like they wouldn’t be able to write, so they have to shoot their hips back in order to keep the actual bar bell or the new center of mass, the load over their midfoot. And because their hips are going back, their knees aren’t going forward. So they’re keeping a more vertical shin. They’re not dorsiflexing at the ankle very much at all. They’re not really going into pronation of the foot because that’s where they’re staying. Supinated typically are rolled out and they don’t need to access internal rotation of the femurs or abduction because they found a way around it. They can just force out and basically turn their hips and knees into solely extensors and flexors at that point. Would you say that
Joel Smith:
The vertical… like I think about the linchpins, like what’s that linchpin at the top that screwed everything else up, would you say it’s that the vertical shin in squatting, that probably is the worst thing that cascades that screw up for athletic movement? Or would you say, what would you say
Kyle Dobbs:
Is the biggest it’s, it’s super interesting. Cause when I look at reference points for athletes, I look at the axial skeleton, right. because you have a center of mass and response, the response to gravity, right? So your rib cage is either falling forward or falling backwards. Typically, whenever you’re moving, it’s, it’s never truly stacked as much as we want it to be potentially. And then you have ground contact with the foot and then you have the relation of the rib cage to the foot. So if the rib cage is forward of the foot, you’re, you’re going to if, if you’re depending on how much your knee is flexed, you’re either going to be able to dorsiflex or you’re not. So I almost look at the rib cage, contributing more to like what the foot in the ankle are doing than almost anything else.
Kyle Dobbs:
And you can see when I’m in an midstream, when I’m running, if I’m doing gait related activities, my feet are almost always in front of my rib cage, right? The only exception to that is toe push off. And that’s when I’m actually plant are flexed. I’m not Dorsey flex, right? I’m in full extension and super nation. So if my rib cage is over my foot standing, I’m not going to be able to dorsiflex and get a vertical shin because I’m going to fall forward. I have to be able to throw that other leg out in front of me. And if I’m walking that’s okay. Cause walking requires less, less Dorsey flection than running typically. But if I’m squatting and I’m bilateral, I have to shift everything backwards in my rib cage is actually going to dictate what my shin and ankle are typically going to do because of my relation with space and gravity and how that center of mass is now reacting to gravity.
Kyle Dobbs:
And that’s why even a front-loaded squad is going to look and appear differently than a back-loaded squat. If I try it like vice versa, if I try to do a hinged front-loaded squat, I’m just going to dump the load. I can’t hold it. Or I’m going to be like, if I’m in a safety bar, squat scenario, I’m going to pitch all the way forward and I’m, I turn it into a good morning. Right? So those relationships, the rib cage, the foot, the center of mass, the foot, like those things are definitely gonna matter in both, but it’s going to be a little bit different from a gate perspective to a squat perspective, simply because I’ve got one leg going forward.
Joel Smith:
So I kind of jumped in there cause I was getting really excited about something from a gate and jumping and running perspective, as I think about, I mean the only time, you always want the peak, whether it’s acceleration or top end, that like the peak load of the, the moment should happen when the feet are under the hips though, they’re going to strike in front. So you don’t fall on your face. It’s sundry, especially at top end speed. You have to, the Fest come down in front a little bit. But I was just thinking about just generally running and generally, especially jumping cause the feet have to come down even further in front of you to create the lever to go upwards. And so if I’m always squatting, cause I had never thought about this or the relation of ribs and feet and squatting or anything in the weight room. And it’s like, if I am always doing stuff, if I was always squatting where my rib kids goes in front of my foot, and then I’m trying to jump where my rib cage is like way behind my plant foot, that could be a major screw up. Cause I just, I just think of all the ways, cause there’s always more than one thing it’s not just joint specificity for sure. But also the, I mean that is joint specificity it’s whereas the ribs and everything. So I find that really interesting.
Kyle Dobbs:
And, and I think that’s where like the coordination of movement comes in and I was actually thinking about this today while I was running. But when you look at like a back squat where you’ve got a pelvis position behind a foot, like that’s going to be a super East centric orientation of like the hamstring and the glutes. Whereas when you’re in early phase gate, like early stance phase, and you’re making that heel contact and you’ve got a pelvis way behind a foot, you’re actually in more of a concert centric orientation of the glue. And you’re pulling through concentrically through your hamstring to get your pelvis back over the foot and forward of the foot. So we’ve got a similar biomechanical position, but we’ve got different orientations of the actual gluten hamstring. We’re using the different ways because we’re trying to establish vertical propulsion instead of forward propulsion.
Kyle Dobbs:
And we’re using muscles differently from that standpoint, because we’re coming from a different place when you’re running or jumping. We talked about this a little bit, like if I’m a basketball player and I’m sprinting down the court on a fast break, I’m not going to gather myself, sit back and then try to dunk, right? Like I’m not like that. That’s not going to make sense in any way and if I’m running, it’s kinda the same way. Like I’m never moving backwards. Everything’s always coming from backwards to forwards. But when I squat, I’m pushing my hips backwards to push them forward again. And when you look at how the coordination of that works from a gate or running perspective, there’s not really a good match, like happening there just in muscular function, essentially. And concentrically okay.
Joel Smith:
So you were saying, like the centric and constant orientation of things. Cause I think some people might, have a squat and they draw a line with the angles and say, look, this is the same. But what you’re saying is a squat, which is vertically loaded and a running, which is a horizontal outcome that the it’s actually a opposite orientation of the way like the glutes are loaded at that particular point in time in a squat, it would be East centric. And in the running at that point in time, it would be a concentrate. So it’s opposite sitting, hips back, I’m…
Kyle Dobbs:
Pulling my hips forward is it’s going to be a two D two different muscle actions from a coordination perspective. Wow.
Joel Smith:
That’s interesting. Lots of stuff I haven’t thought of. I love this. So this is going to make my, my next question. A very interesting one so out okay. In light of athletics. So maybe, I mean, let’s just say it’s like a football or basketball player. Someone who’s got to do a lot of things move different ways. I’m sure there’s different. Like you said, are they a bilateral unilateral? Are they actually rotated all these presentations, but what are some just what are some general principles with, with squat selection in working with an athlete? Who’s goal is not squat weight it’s to be better at their sport.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I’m typically always, probably going to front load those athletes. So I can be a little bit more vertical. And again, I, when I say vertical, it’s a continuum. Like I don’t need them to be perfectly vertical, but I also don’t want their, their chest to be touching their thighs right. At the bottom of a squat. So they’re going to be more like that 45 to 60 degree angle or whatever that looks like. And that allows me to now again, get the knees forward because I wanted more vertical torso angles so I can get a more so I can get more forward translation to the actual knees and more dorsiflection, and more in a more angled shin. That’s the main reason why I want vertical pelvis for, for an athlete, because that’s going to be closer to what running looks like, and I’m not going to replicate running with the squat.
Kyle Dobbs:
I know that we can talk about anonymous moving reciprocally verse together. Like there’s a whole, there’s a whole range of things there, but if I can at least get a more, a more similar joint action happening at the pelvis, the knee and the foot in my mind that makes for better coordination for what they’re actually going to be doing when they’re running and jumping. Cause it’s the same thing. Jumping, when you watch athletes jumped dynamically, their knees go forward, their hips don’t go back typically, right? When, when they’re in actual sport, especially elastic athletes you typically see knees going forward. They’re on the balls of their feet and they’re driving that extension rather than their hips actually driving forward because, or their hips driving backwards. Cause that’s an East centric action. That’s typically deceleration or slowing down, right. Stopping a sprint or stopping a jump rather than actually like concentrically orientating for those things.
Kyle Dobbs:
So that’s, that’s what I’m going to look at. Like unilaterally, I’m going to be looking at a lot of the same things. I I might do things depending on where the, where they have trouble like floating the heel or elevating the heel or potentially even if they have a hard time in like early stance, elevating a forefoot for some people during like a hinge movement, just to again, get, be able to control a longer hamstring if they have a hard time controlling, like a stretched hamstring or an essentially orientated hamstring moving into concentrate orientation from early to mid phase. So there’s a lot of considerations there, but if I’m training a dynamic athlete, I’m probably not going to backload them, especially unless their goal is to just get as strong as possible. Like that would be the only real reason. And that’s typically not those that those we know that the strongest athlete, isn’t always the best performer. the, we, we’ve all seen the weight room heroes on various teams and they’re typically not the best players on the team either.
Joel Smith:
What was something you were talking about way back at the beginning that I want actually, I’m glad I saved the comment. Cause I, I was, I was going to get back to this one, as you’d mentioned, and in squatting bilaterally, your, your pelvis stays in the middle. I can’t, I mean, you could, I guess in an asymmetrical weird squat, you could put it over one or the other, if you would like loaded all the weight on one side or I don’t know. But anyway, so you’re talking about in, in unilateral stuff exercises. I think that the common thing that we do is we treat it just like a squat. It would say, Oh, rear foot Elliot split squat. And now everything is still, if you watch the pelvic or the pubic bone line, it would still be kind of right up down the middle. So when you do unilateral movement to help reciprocate gait a little better, are you, you’re trying to get them like zipper over the toe, are you trying to get them to push to that side?
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. So I’m going to get them in more of a, an inline stance or something closer to inline where my, my goal for most athletes on like a, a split squat variation, whether it’s a front foot elevated or rear foot elevated or walking lunge, whatever it may be is if I can get the sacrum lined up with the instep, like, I feel like that’s, that’s going to be a pretty good position for most people. Like if I can get that kind of big toe or the sacrum itself or the end step lined up with the sacrum and then have the actual, like sternum over the sacrum as well. If I can get those things lined up, that that’s going to allow the actual femur to internally rotate during a flection and get forward over the toe. And I’m probably going to be looking at a knee. That’s also kind of positioned over the big toe during the flection phase of that. And then when they extend their extending out of it, and that’s where the pelvis has got to shift more over because you’re accommodating swing phase on the other side to get the other leg out there.
Joel Smith:
Cool. That’s so that’s so for people that makes a lot of sense, cause I just think, yeah, we get so stuck in the, everything just straight up and down and it’s ed. So even for like walking lunges, you would do that too. So walk, so you’re walking, you’re just going to put that sacrum over the instep sacrum over the end step. That’s awesome. So that leads me to probably my last question for this show, but that, but cause I’m sure it’s very similar, but restoring internal rotation. So someone who just doesn’t have a lot of internal rotation range, like we were talking about the squatting and I was talking about, Oh yeah. When I was in high school, I put my knees in and it was great and it helped my knees. But like you said, some people just can’t, if they do the same thing I did or they tried to manufacture it, they’re going to probably pop their knee. It’s not going to be good. So what, what are some things that you do if someone presents and they just don’t have a lot of internal rotation? What are some reasons for that? Like movement wise, et cetera, pronation, and then what are some, some key things that you’re going to utilize to restore it?
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. I mean, there, there can be a lot of reasons and then probably a lot of combinations of reasons just relating to strength, coordination, just past training experience. Like there can be a lot of things that are happening there potentially. But from like restoring it, I probably just gonna look at positional constraints. Like one of the things that I typically will do with people to find quote unquote, to kind of find adductors and find medial hamstrings and kind of get that relationship going for the, for the actual femur on the pelvis is just putting them in that inline lunge position. Right. If you’re put in that position, your adductor will fire right away or you will fall over so I don’t even really coach it. I just put them in an inline lunch and I use, I actually use like the… you mentioned Jake earlier, like the isometric split squats.
Kyle Dobbs:
That’s how I lined people up. And they’ll typically find that adductor 5 to 10 seconds into holding that actual lunch. And it if I put somebody in the right position, the right muscles will typically integrate themselves and I don’t have to queue, okay, try to move your knee over or try to rotate a femur, add duct a femur. If you’re in line, you have to be in those positions. So I just put them in that position to tell them not to fall over and the right muscles, generally just kick in for that position to stabilize the body in space. And I don’t have to do much queuing. I can just ask them what they were feeling afterwards.
Joel Smith:
Cool. Yeah. I like that isometrics, I suppose, are a really good place to start for people who just if I don’t have a lot of IIR and I’m trying to do a squat or do anything with a big range, it’s probably your, body’s probably going to throw a lot of neuro roadblocks in pretty quick. Like that makes sense that the isometric
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah, well we’ll do the yielding first, then we’ll go into overcoming, then we’ll get into like standard dynamics and then once they kind of get through those three cycles are ready to just go train loaded at that.
Joel Smith:
Yeah. So, so I can say the secret exercise when I market this thought take just kidding. But if there was a secret exercise, it would be an isometric like split squat lungi variation where you are putting just the sacrum over the, in step and trying to have them draw connections from there.
Kyle Dobbs:
It’s a really easy way to find that that movement quality or that, that femur quality.
Joel Smith:
I love it. I will totally keep that in mind. That’s awesome. I’m glad, I’m glad I asked you that question here. Cause I’ll keep that with me, for sure. Cause I run into a lot of athletes who have those, those things going on and it’s easy for me. I think we always tend to, at least I do I weigh how I felt in the workout doing it with how, of course the athletes going to be this way. But I mean, I could do a squat and touch my knees together in front and no problem. So not everyone’s like me, which is fun. My son two. And he gets up like, like he’s sitting on the ground and he’s like fully internally rotated and is like theater outside. And he gets up like that. I’m like, you’re crazy.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. My kids, like we’ll be at the playground and they’ll jump off like a five foot playground equipment apparatus., and they’ll land in a full squat with their knees touching and then pop out of it into a full run? And I’m just, and again, kids are more elastic. I know that, but it also just, just goes to show you, like, we moved this way. Like we wouldn’t have ball and socket joints. If we weren’t supposed to facilitate rotation, like let the, let the structure of the actual joints tell you what they’re supposed to do. And I think when we try to change that, or we try to force things like force the knees out and only out, it’s just, it turns into kind of that like square peg round hole type thing where yeah, you can potentially do that, but you’re, you’re limiting your actual potential quite a bit from an athletic perspective. Probably. Yeah.
Joel Smith:
Percent man. I love it. Well, that’s awesome. Thank you so much. I think I should have probably only got through half the questions, but in my mind, I’m like, well, we’ll save them for I’m sure I can do a second show somewhere down the line. So I’ll save, I’ll save a bunch of them, but thank you so much, man. I learned a ton and really appreciate your time.
Kyle Dobbs:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It’s been fun.
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