This week’s installment of “plyo of the week” is not really a single plyometric exercise, but more an integrative concept that can be applied to any jump based situation (in this case, hurdle hops).
One very important concept I’ve learned from Adarian Barr, and that the martial arts world has known for a very long time, is that the hands will mirror the feet neurologically. You’ve probably seen videos of mine in the past where I had my pinkie finger sticking out in space, which was not intentional, but rather the result of pronation drills that Adarian was taking me through.
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Recently I had an idea after working with Adarian for a few months on having a “taco hand” that appeared when I would work the transverse arch of my foot. Basically (listening to podcast #147 is a huge help here) you’ll want to feel the area between your first and fifth metatarsal heads of the foot shorten, so that the middle toe area “domes” up, as the transverse arch activates.
When you can do this, you’ll find the hand does the same thing, in fact after having an awareness of this, I instantly realized that these variation of hand patterns would appear in elite track and field jumpers all of the time. Suddenly I realized why a 12 year old high jumper I worked with had to take an extra step before every takeoff…. just by looking at how she carried her hands and how that reflected what her feet were doing.
The great thing is that not only do the feet influence the hands, but the hands influence the feet! If you stick your pinkie finger out, you improve the pronation capacity of your foot. If you make a “taco hand” (see picture below) then your foot can follow suit.
In this variation of “taco hand” a 4oz Weck Method pulser is being used to help with the sensory aspect of the formation of the “arch” of the hand that links to the foot
In many cases, having external sensory stimuli can help us to operate more from our hind-brain and be more fluid, so I had a flash of intuition where I realized that David Weck’s pulsers could be a huge key to simply and effectively carrying this out. I grabbed his 4oz pulsers one day on the track, did some “taco hand” accelerations and it felt awesome! I also found that “taco hand” helped that high jumper get more stiffness out of the plant foot when needed, and not take an extra step in her takeoff. Incredible, simple, and the first lynchpin in the system that needed to be addressed; 5 years ago, I probably would have just placed a few cones around the middle of the pit to “force” an early takeoff, but that wouldn’t really fix the problem.
The next day I did some hurdle hops using the pulsers as a brace for “taco hand” and the quality of execution was a stark contrast to performing the hurdle hops with out them. The exercises this means can be used for is virtually infinite.
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If you want to learn more about “taco hand”, the transverse arch, building your sprint and jump models around foot action and impulse, and a heck of a lot more that has all been transformative to me as a coach, check out Rewire 2 coming up in a month with coach Adarian Barr in Santa Clara, CA on June 22-23. It’s definitely a “take the red pill” experience that is worth many times the price of admission. I hope to see you there!
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