This article is intended to be an update on the Reconstituting Proprioception Training article I did a few years back for Simplifaster. As always, information updates and understanding evolves-including my own. That article is still a great place to start conceptually, but the applied side needs an update. This piece will attempt to surf a few waves, serving more as an applied mini guide to help get you going, as well as to organize/systematize your thinking around including proprioception work in your training.
Additionally, it should be noted that EVERYTHING we’re doing is proprioception-from strength work to reactive surface training. You’re always feeding the brain information. Obviously, there’s different places we can take this on the applied side-vision training, PNF stretching, and beyond.
In this context, we’re choosing to focus on proprioception training as it relates to neuromuscular and neuromyofascial activation (corrective, movement prep), ground or surface-based intervention (reactive surface training), general sensory feedback, and relaxation. Or how to properly integrate proprioception work via ground-based/foot development, perturbations, and reactive surface constraints. We’ll leave things like integrated kinetic neurology, general sensorimotor competency facilitation as it relates to movement prep, trunk integration + for another day.
Not All Proprioception Training Is Good, But Don’t Throw The Baby Out With The Bathwater
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
In the future, I hope I don’t have to start every proprioception statement with a caveat, but here we are. Many people have been-consciously or unconsciously-influenced by visions of fail highlight (lowlight?) reels of people heavy back squatting on BOSU balls, balancing on one leg on a yoga ball while pressing a kettlebell, and…you get the idea.
The reality is that people will always find ways to mess around and it’s not just exclusive to reactive surface training. How many videos have we seen of people doing circus tricks with cable machines? How many times have we seen people overload barbells dangling with tons of excess weight, only to collapse? And yet-no one disowns cable machines or free weights…but curiously they do for proprioception training.
Regardless, let’s get away from that idea of “instability training”-if for no other reason than subconscious associations-and start to move towards what proprioception is genuinely
useful for-stability, mobility, muscle & fascia activation, CNS-activating, reflex-sharpening, control of your body in space (kinesthetic awareness), relaxation (both autonomically & in the working tissues), and the combined sensory integration that improves strength, agility, speed, power, and injury resilience.
All of these things aside, let’s get into how you can begin to apply sound proprioception concepts into your training program.
Start Simple-Go Barefoot
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There are a number of reasons you want to start training barefoot-the first is that it helps build the smaller muscles of the foot, ankle, and lower leg that get detrained due to excess time spent in shoes (particularly the cushy shoes basketball players & athletes tend to wear).
Secondly, it helps improve your foot’s-and by proxy the rest of your body’s-ability to deal with ground reaction forces. As Physical Therapist Gary Gray says, all athletes have to deal with gravity, mass, momentum, and ground reaction forces as they navigate their environment in three dimensional space.
Like Canadian Professor Serge Gracovetsky untangled in his book The Spinal Engine Theory, the original actor of all of your movement takes place in the trunk-or core. This energy is then sent down into the ground as you move and a number of factors-including the way your foot interacts with the ground & maps these forces-determines how this energy is converted.
Ideally, this energy is then dispersed throughout the chain if you’ve truly developed the muscles & fascia of your trunk, as well as the biomotor abilities for economy of motion.
However, if your feet cannot map force properly, this energy can get routed in excess to specific joints or tissues-your lower back, knee joint & ankle joint being a few common examples. The net result is usually sub-par performance and injury-it’s only a matter of time before these things haunt most athletes.
This is why-in my own practice-we borrow the concepts put forth by Todd Wright-Assistant Coach & Vice President of Player Performance for the Los Angeles Clippers (formerly with the Philadelphia 76ers and University of Texas) for developing the trunk by combining both groundwork (inc. crawling & training the core on the ground) and standing progressively in what’s known as Vertical Core Training.
Circling back to the original point, there are a number of factors for this that span structural repositioning (hardware) as well as neurological (software)-including the aforementioned strengthening of lower leg-foot-ankle complex musculature, as well as the sensory information your foot takes in to provide information about your body’s place in space and time.
Keep in mind that doing some training with shoes is important, too-that’s what you’ll be playing in, walking in most of the time and is also a proprioceptive map we want to build.
But you get the idea…spend more time around your house and training without shoes. It’s foundational-and it’s free.
Sound Methods Over Novelty-Proprioception For “Activation” Work
As with a lot of fitness words that lack a unifying language, “activation” is probably better coined as developing sensorimotor competencies. In this context, proprioception work can be included as an extension of your corrective exercise and movement prep for neuromuscular and neuromyofascial facilitation.
This slots into our ACTIVATION – ABSORPTION (CONVERSION) – PROPULSION training model. If you don’t have the right tissues online, you’re not going to be able to absorb & convert force properly. If you can’t absorb & convert force properly, you’re not gonna be able to maximally express force. Simple.
Here is an example of us wanting to use a reactive surface in the right context.
There’s a lot more going on under the hood than meets the eye here, but thankfully the implementation is simple for athletes and coaches.
First-given that safety is a concern because of past instability failures-note that we’re reinforcing a positive, biomechanically-sound posture.
You can see the feet are slightly pigeon-toed, reinforcing a more neutral non-valgus position. Furthermore, the slight rotation and chest elevation of the upper body into the lead leg mimics action seen in the gait cycle, and also links the chain from head to toe for better upper body-lower body interaction. Next up, the positioning and depth also gives us major back chain activation, as well as helping the athlete access their pelvis in a meaningful way for more hip and glute inclusiveness. This is further supported by the lead leg bowing out with internal rotation of the back leg starting at the hip.
We’re also achieving improved body control, a higher level of CNS activation here which has been observed in a lab setting as well as improving reflex arcs and some anticipatory neural behavior needed for appropriate muscular protective co-contractions around joints, shortening any electromechanical delays between muscle “systems”/groups, plus. More on that a bit later, though. Additionally, not only can we stimulate some of the larger muscle, fascia groups, but we’re also able to stimulate the smaller, deeper intrinsic muscles of the body, particularly in the lower leg/ankle/foot and the trunk/core to have a more full deck of cards online when the athlete competes.
Now you tell me…does that at all resemble all the instability fail videos we’ve seen in the past? It’s not the what-it’s the how. It’s not that proprioception training is not a good idea-on the contrary-it’s how it’s applied that makes it good or not. The same way we can coach a deadlift the wrong way or the right way.
Some of that is also what equipment was available to us. The reality is every single proprioceptive device of the past had the potential to create positive positions or negative ones and were essentially the flip phones. The piece of equipment used here-Waff-actually features a central spine for stability-and thus reinforcement of good positions-as well as a more reactive surface around that. The net effect is a safe, much more effective balance of stability and mobility. This helps us reinforce good positions during dynamic stabilization drills such as this.
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Positional Ownership
Even so-as trainer Paul Fabritz of PJF Performance brought up in the last article-we have plenty of evidence from decades before that proprioception training reduces injury. Many examples exist-including a meta analysis on a multitude of studies-supporting the fact that even the proprioception training of the past (using a range of old school, varying quality devices and no guarantee of consideration for position) improved injury reduction rate by approximately 45% while including it with strength training reduced injuries by approximately 69%.
Imagine what you could accomplish with more guidance on application, including the concept of position, and better equipment.
No or Minimal Equipment Needed-Floating Heel Work & Hard Surfaces
Many have made the case that you need all of your training to be on a hard surface for foot interaction and power production. I look at this situation as a both rather than the limited either or mentality.
You can use the reactive surfaces as seen above and couple that with 99% of your training being on a hard surface for best practice. The above helps with body control, appropriate activations, contractions & relaxations, as well as challenges the nervous system’s tendency to stagnate in training. You can think of that as something of a software update you then have the luxury of showing up in the rest of your training-sprinting, plyos & agility, strength, gameplay, and beyond.
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Floating heel on slant board or ground
Here we’re chasing neurobiomechanical goals of structural repositioning using some PRI concepts, combined with some of the above proprioceptive neuormuscular & neuromyofascial facilitation, as well as genuine strengthening of “deeper” (previously dormant or semi-dormant) muscles of the body on a stable surface.
The floating heel helps reinforce force mapping on the foot (biasing the outside edge) while strengthening the foot, ankle, and lower leg complex in a position relevant to sport.
Certain cues of tensioning throughout the body are given to reinforce musculofascial tensioning throughout the body, as well.
As an aside, some of these concepts are what EvoSport was chasing with their long duration isometric holds.
Some iteration of the above should be considered a prerequisite option for improving position within movement in running gait and in change of direction maneuvers.
One of my goals is to always make things accessible to all people in all places. Slant boards, PVC pipes, balance discs, and Waffs are all highly cost-effective & last forever, but you can use no equipment for a lot of this work, too.
There are options here for arch and foot strengthening. Marv Marinovich liked to use a blend of all of these things-including PVC pipes-quite a bit. Nick Curson of Speed of Sport (and later Chong Xie) also introduced me to the concept of towel curls for foot strengthening, as well as for developing the fascia of the feet and back chain up to the glutes.
Keep in mind with all this stuff that it’s akin to not driving a car on flat tires. Like Marv used to say, “the foot is the only part of you attached to the ground when you play. Why wouldn’t you train it?”
Intermediate & Advanced Progressions
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Large metal balance discs, small balance discs.
Occasionally including disc exercises as athletes progress is an option that accomplishes both a reactive surface and something hard to push off of.
These exercises-if positioned correctly-also help the body self-organize, channel/direct force from the forefoot (as smaller discs include built-in floating heel) and sets off the proper positioning for propulsive activities.
Lastly, as coach Joel Smith points out-the discs-particularly the larger ones-really challenge & strengthen the muscles of the lower leg/ankle/foot complex.
I would consider these more intermediate and advanced progression options for athletes of a higher training age and/or athletic ability.
Dynamic Stabilizations
Another advanced progression with both performance & rehab applications. Although most of the above can be considered some iteration of a dynamic stabilization, in this context we mean a more challenging version designed to really hone in on the absorption & conversion phase of the activation – absorption – propulsion training model.
Another layer to this is that just because you’ve improved someone’s range of motion, mobility, and force absorption capabilities in simple, slow, controlled environments doesn’t mean you’ve improved how they manage forces in complex environments.
A fully stable, controlled, “expected” environment-without unpredictable loads, perturbations, and changing surface interactions acting on your system can make it easier to induce temporary changes in muscle, myofascial activity that may not show up in a dynamic environment.
How about when we begin to move in complex (actual sporting) environments, which makes up the majority of our real world movement experiences?
Will the intervention always hold in the athlete so it shows up real time? That’s a question we should be asking to bridge the gap between our movement therapy, corrective work and performance.
Ideally, we can improve mobility and movement prep within a controlled environment and then progress these concepts both from a sensory, kinetic, and kinematic perspective to do right by our athletes.
In order to accomplish this, we must be able to appreciate these changes in the context of unique individual factors like the variable (and fixed) loads, angles/force vectors, velocities, movement patterns, and overall unique environment where the movement is taking place.
In doing our needs analysis for program design, we can then work backwards to attempt to reverse engineer these traits to meet the demands.
Here I’m demoing how we can challenge the athlete’s force absorption capabilities through reactive landings.
In order to appreciate this, it’s important to know some basic applied neurology. According to the doctors of Integrated Kinetic Neurology, “the vestibular systems feedforward or anticipatory effect on muscle tone is critical for force dampening,” and they note it’s critical we integrate feedforward (anticipatory) & feedback (reactive) control mechanisms to maintain stable and controlled motion.
During the higher speeds seen in sports, we bias towards anticipatory control as the speed of feedback is oft too slow to support. Applied neurologists, Dr. Ryan Foley and Dr. Kyle Paxton point out, “imagine you’re doing an altitude drop off a box-when you step off and are falling towards the ground your vestibular system picks up on that relative motion and in anticipation of a collision with the ground sends an estimate of anticipatory muscle tone into the limbs [editor’s note: and hopefully the whole chain] to prepare it.”
This anticipatory control then stacks with our proprioceptive feedback of our environment to auto-correct the estimate for our most accurate stabilizing response.
Given this, it becomes easy to understand how we can begin to consider the vestibular system’s role in movements that demand force as well as energy conversion, such as change of direction maneuvers, plyometrics, and beyond for all sports.
As Gautier mentioned in the Simplifaster article, his athletes note that even though the ground is stable, the environment in which they play is anything but. By including an organized, sequenced progression of proprioception work-with both stable & reactive surfaces as part of a larger program with standbys of strength, corrective exercise, plyometrics, dynamic exercises-we can drive health and performance outcomes.
Self-Organization & More Dynamic Stabilization
Although we need traditional progressive overload as a guidepost, Frans Bosch and an increasing number of people have been woke to the fact that you can progress exercises with other types of constraints other than purely load. So don’t be afraid of a little novelty as long as it’s guiding you towards where you want to be and isn’t just stuck in there like a Cirque de Soleil exercise.
As Coach Bosch notes in his various works, such as Anatomy of Agility and Strength Training & Coordination, we can provide loaded cues to help athletes better self-organize in space. The aforementioned Todd Wright also notes that these loaded cues not only help improve biomotor abilities & biomechanics, but are especially useful at helping athletes navigate their space through transformation zones-or moving from one position to another.
These transformation zones as coined by Gary Gray of the Gray Institute help us translate energy and slot into the absorption/conversion phase while loaded movement can actually help with each phase of our Activation – Absorption – Propulsion Neurobiomechanical Model of locomotion.
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The added loaded, chaotic stimulus provides a high speed eccentric overload that the athlete then needs to reverse to improve reversal strength, which is to say force conversion in both the stretch shortening cycle, change of direction maneuvers, and general locomotion. The chaotic nature of the water overlaps with principals of oscillating kinetic energy training (LINK my article) to recruit previously dormant tissues for more strength in motion. Furthermore, the loaded concept itself-if well positioned-helps provide a kinesthetic cue that helps link the chain during activity.
We use loaded motion throughout training ages and phases as it’s something that can be progressed within itself.
Recover, Release & Deload
With all of this talk of activation and stimulation, it’s important to remember that proprioception-including something as simple as sitting on a proprioceptive pad or yoga ball-can help us engage the right muscles, improve posture, as well as relax muscle tone, and more. In this context, given that we have access to the Waff Max, we’re able to capture the above, promote pain relief, stress reduction, induce recovery-based brain wave activity similar to sensory deprivation float tanks, as well as provide systemic CNS relaxation to improve the stress load on all physiological systems.
Takeaways
So there you have it. We made it through an entire proprioception article without a yoga ball back squat or balance pad curls-who knew?
The central point I’m trying to drive in here is that sensory integration is key for performance as it’s involved in everything we do. And here’s the other thing-you’re already doing it. Strength training, corrective exercise, you name it-it’s ALL proprioception of some sort.
So why be allergic to integrating other elements of targeted sensory integration if it’s intentional, makes physiological & biomechanical sense, and helps us along our path of becoming stronger, faster, healthier, and more resilient?
We owe it to our athletes to hold no sacred cows and should be willing to remain as open minded as possible as long as we do so with educational support, intention, and purpose.
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Partial References
- Chesler AT, Szczot M, Bharucha-Goebel D, Čeko M, Donkervoort S, Laubacher C, Hayes LH, Alter K, Zampieri C, Stanley C, Innes AM, Mah JK, Grosmann CM, Bradley N, Nguyen D, Foley AR, Le Pichon CE, Bönnemann CG. The Role of PIEZO2 in Human Mechanosensation. N Engl J Med. 2016 Oct 6;375(14):1355-1364. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1602812. Epub 2016 Sep 21. PMID: 27653382; PMCID: PMC5911918.
- Lauersen JB, Bertelsen DM, Andersen LB. The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Br J Sports Med. 2014 Jun;48(11):871-7. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2013-092538. Epub 2013 Oct 7. PMID: 24100287.
- Riva D, Bianchi R, Rocca F, Mamo C. Proprioceptive Training and Injury Prevention in a Professional Men’s Basketball Team: A Six-Year Prospective Study. J Strength Cond Res. 2016 Feb;30(2):461-75. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001097. PMID: 26203850; PMCID: PMC4750505.
- Makhlouf I, Chaouachi A, Chaouachi M, Ben Othman A, Granacher U, Behm DG. Combination of Agility and Plyometric Training Provides Similar Training Benefits as Combined Balance and Plyometric Training in Young Soccer Players. Front Physiol. 2018 Nov 13;9:1611. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2018.01611. PMID: 30483158; PMCID: PMC6243212.
- Šimek, S., Milanović, D., i Jukić, I. (2007). ‘The effects of proprioceptive training on jumping and agility performance’, Kinesiology, 39.(2.), str. 131-141. Preuzeto s: https://hrcak.srce.hr/21949 (Datum pristupa: 23.02.2022.)
- Salaj, Sanja & Milanović, Dragan & Jukic, Igor. (2008). THE EFFECTS OF PROPRIOCEPTIVE TRAINING ON JUMPING AND AGILITY PERFORMANCE. Kinesiology (kinesiology.office@kif.hr); Vol.39 No.2. 32. 131-141.
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Equipment Used
- Slant Boards
- Towel
- Waff Mini Elite, Medium Elite and Max Elite: waffstudio.com
- For more proprioception exercises using a reactive surface, check out the FREE Waff app on Google Play or the app store or www.waffacademy.com
- Metal Balance Discs
- Aqua Bag
- PVC Pipe & Plastic Poles: Your locally-owned hardware store
About Matt Cooper
Matt Cooper (Coop) is a nutrition consultant, strength & conditioning coach, and human performance coach from California. Driven by an obsession to expand human performance, Coop spends his time researching, experimenting, doing nerdy things, and building better humans in general at Stand Out Performance (Fast Twitch LA) in Compton, California.
Coop works with athletes and individuals-from developmental to professional levels-remotely and in-person to optimize their health, performance, and fitness.
Coop translates research, experience, and human performance technology to design one stop shop services and programs that address relevant areas, including nutrition, health, training, sleep, mind/body integration, the nervous system, recovery, and beyond.
Coop’s own personal journey began in athletics and fitness-until poor health and mental states befell him at an early age- this lead to him becoming his own practitioner and fuels his current work, marrying functional medicine and human performance to help others become superhuman.
- Certified Nutrition Consultant
- Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS)
- NeuFit Electrotherapist
- Speed of Sport Affiliate; Certified Sport Performance Specialist
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Fast Twitch LA
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Black House MMA
- Consultant: The Third Wave
- Chief Scientific Officer, Ketone Score
- Over 1K Clients Helped (pro/developing athletes, individuals, businesses, addiction/trauma)
- Co-Author, The Ketogenic Diet: A Metabolic Manifesto For Dieter & Practitioner
- Communications; SSU
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