Today’s show brings back guests Kyle Dobbs and David Grey for an epic meeting of two biomechanical minds. I’ve learned a lot from both Kyle and David on and off of this podcast. Both David and Kyle’s prior episodes have been in our all-time top-listened shows, and I’m excited to get them together for a show.
Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. He a leading expert in integrating complex movement principles into physical training methods for multiple human disciplines. David Grey is a biomechanics specialist based in Waterford, Ireland. He is the creator of the “Lower Body Basics” programs, and has learned under a number of great mentors in the world of movement, S&C, gymnastics, mobility, martial arts, and biomechanics.
One element of human performance I’m always looking to become better versed in is breathing, posture, pressure dynamics and how these elements impact our movement and performance potential. From lifting, to running, to changing direction explosively, how we “stack” and align our pressure centers and body structures makes a big impact on how well we can perform those skills and be free of injury.
On today’s podcast, Kyle and David go in depth on rib cage dynamics, breathing and pressure management in context of crawling and running. We’ll also touch on posture, training the frontal plane, and finish with some talk on the feet, plantar fasciitis, and thoughts on coaching preferential foot pressures in movement.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.
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Timestamps and Main Points
6:05 How Kyle and David look to explain and sequence breathing work within the course of a session
15:05 Ways to observe groups in crawling and locomotion exercises, and how to observe links between those movements and rib cage and breath action
23:50 How Kyle and David address the reciprocal action of the ribs seen in locomotion in breathing and breath work
32:35 What you might see in a crawl or squat that shows that an athlete is compressed, as well as compensation patterns that lead to stiff lumbar spine actions
39:55 How a “ribs first” mentality is critical when it comes to posture and spinal alignment
45:55 Discussing the frontal plane in athletic movement and how muscular strategy switches to respiratory strategy as one moves from lifting to sprinting to distance running
55:25 Training the breath in various exercises outside of ground-based positions
1:06:25 Advice and ideas on dealing with plantar fasciitis in athletes, as well as dynamics of calcaneal motion and how it fits with the rest of the kinetic chain
1:15:25 Thoughts on preferential pressures on different portions of the foot for athletic movements
“I will ask my clients to do a toe touch, squat, range of motion, and then we’ll try a positional breathing drill that makes sense in my mind, and if we re-test, it should be better… if it’s not better we are doing the wrong thing” Grey
“Your body, from an autonomic position, is going to prioritize breathing over everything else” Dobbs
“If you are already in an extended position, and posteriorly compressed in that position, then you don’t have any more extension to actually be able to leverage, so we talk about getting more of a neutral posture, more flexion so that you actually have a larger bandwidth to drive extension when needed” Dobbs
“When you look at a 90/90 breathing position, you flip it over and put someone in a crawling position, and it’s basically a 90/90 with a reach up into the sky” Grey
“If we can get the rib cage moving, and get people to feel their body and be aware of their body, the breathing can be the result of that sometimes” Grey
“The amount of people I’ve had who have never taken a full exhale, ever, is pretty high” Dobbs
“If someone is exhibiting compression strategies, you are going to see it in all of their movements…. I can probably guess what their ISA is like from that, and what their gait looks like” Dobbs
“When you get a good eye, the table test is really more for the client than you” Grey
“If I cannot get expansion through the right side of my rib cage, I will not be able to get my weight over my right leg very well” Grey
“Just get them into positions, and get them to breath, and it will happen without those million, billion cues, you know?” Grey
“Driving air into the posterior thoracic, will allow for the rib cage to retract back over a pelvis, especially if we can find heels and a little bit of knee flexion, which will allow for a relative posterior tilt, which will get us back to neutral, and again, neutralize that lumbar spine back into its natural curvature” Dobbs
“People who can’t (use breath to drive movement into the ribs) they’ll fake it by just flexing and extending through some parts of their spine…. internal and external rotation of the ribs should drive movement into the spine, not the other way around… we use breath and ribs and position to drive movement into the spine” Grey
“(When working frontal plane) people take too wide and too long of stance usually, so they cannot get their center of mass over the foot, it falls between both legs” Grey
“If I want to drive frontal plane in terms of something that looks like running mechanics, from a weight room perspective, that front foot split squat that David is describing, load that ipsilaterally on the front leg and it is going to pull your pelvis over that foot” Dobbs
“If somebody is posteriorly compressed, front load them. If somebody has a hard time getting a pelvis and a rib cage over an instep, load them ipsilaterally on that side, it’ll drag em’ over there” Dobbs
“I can’t get frontal plane movement at the calcaneus if I can’t get sagittal plane movement first” Grey
“If we are treating (the foot) like a brick and we are trying to find the outside edge or inside edge on every single thing we do in isolation, we are not appreciating the dynamic nature of the foot” Dobbs
“Change of direction for me, when we get into speed of movement, which is about sagittal plane stiffness, which sounds funny, but if someone can’t get co-contractions around the knee joint, they are going to sink down into the movement too much” Grey
“Whenever we can bring in tasks when there is speed of movement involved, that’s the goal too” Grey
Show Notes:
Adductor Drawback Exercise
90 90 Breathing and Postural Work
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.
About David Grey
David is a Biomechanics Specialist based in Waterford Ireland. He helps athletes and everyday 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/
Booking: https://davidgreyrehab.setmore.com/david
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