27. Body Part Solutions

So we're going to be talking about body part specialization, weak body parts. I shared in the latest chat the framework that I've been putting together around feet. And I think that this, you know, this having a go to system for each body part is a really, really powerful thing. We're looking at it through the lens of the, the levels. If you look in, inside new athlete in the follow along section, everything go like level 0 to level 5, same as in the leaderboard scores. Everything goes from level zero to level five. Welcome, Mike. So level level zero is like the, the level that would be great if your mother is able to hit or your father or you know, maybe what you're aiming for in your 60s or 70s or at 80 or something like that. Like the level zero is meant to be something that you can get someone, anyone to within three months. Ideally that, that kind of thing. Like, but the level one is already a level that I expect coaches to get to. And it's like if it's something completely new, it's probably going to take a little bit of work to get to level ones on anything on the leaderboards or to be able to do the follow alongs. And then level two is good. Level three is like pretty exceptional for a coach. And that's really where, you know, that's where I want to get the community to, is like I want to get a lot of people to that level three in a lot of different areas. Level four and five is like becoming a specialist. Level five is usually like the world record or close to the world record record. It's basically like if you really want to specialize in this and you want to set a new standard for mankind, then level five is where it's at for those leaderboards. Obviously follow alongs at that level are not going to be as easy to make or to find people to make. But it's also like setting the aspiration of new athletes like that top standard. So that then applies also to body parts because you don't need as much function in an area for it just to be okay to walk around. So level zero for feet, it doesn't, it doesn't need to be as strong, as aggressive as level one and level two. Same sort of thing with lower backs. The debate about is the McGill stuff good enough for lower backs? And you know, River's done a lot of lower back work. He's got a good system around that. Diving into the, what's it called again?

The foundation training?

Yeah, foundation training system. And there's like that and that Was developed by a surfer. Right. It's sort of for the.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chiropractor initially, but he's a big surfer and it's gotten quite big I think in the jiu jitsu community as well.

Yeah, yeah. So the level of function of to be able to just do your daily activities is you don't need to push as far with your preparations if you want to surf and you want to be making like dramatic turns. So I think that's a, that's an important thing to look at as well. If you're thinking about like, is McGill full of or do we need to be doing something else? It's like both. And like he's mostly dealing with people who've got chronic back pain that is debilitating and they can't get out of bed and they're got surgery or going to get surgery and just locking everything down and creating more stability can help, you know, for those people. And that's why that is there in the system. And it's going to help to activate muscles around there. The long duration thing. So it kind of fits with our blood flow ideas and short long range type stuff. Like there's a place for it, but it might not get you back to being able to do backflips. Okay. Like it's probably not good to go from McGill, big three. Okay, everything's fine. And then now I'm going to go to Backflips or now I'm going to go play golf with Mike. Like it's not going to be a good transition to jump from one to the next. So we need to have these, you know, like, what is this body part capable of? This is probably the biggest idea in this section is like, what is the body part meant to do? Like if there's, if there is a designer of the human body or, or if you just look at other species and think, what is this thing built like this for? What is it meant to do? And moving towards that as like the central premise. Because sometimes rehab can get really abstract or sometimes key functions are missed. I think the shoulder is a really good one to look at with this. Like, what is the shoulder actually meant to do? Yes. I asked this to coaches. Like I'm throwing it out to you guys in the chat on mute. Maybe you know what my perspective is on it now. Maybe you don't, depending on how long you've been hanging around. But when you think about shoulder rehab in our networks, like the Poliquin lens, the ATG lens is like work all the Little muscles work the back of the shoulder. Rear delts are often weak. Trap three is often weak. Rotator cuffs often weak. And if you do, if you work on those things, the shoulder will get better. And that that's true for a lot of athletes in a short term sense. And it's true that often those areas get weak in weight trained individuals, which is who Charles was dealing with. But what is a shoulder actually meant to do? My shoulders went to shit training weights and doing all that stuff to shit in the sense that I couldn't do monkey bars. I couldn't throw a ball as hard as I want. I couldn't really feel that confident about doing like acrobatic stuff and landing on my hands like for a back handspring or back bridge. I was still concerned about dislocating my shoulders, snatching and stuff like that as well. Not that stuff just wasn't getting me to where I wanted to go. So what is a shoulder? What is a shoulder meant to do? Let's just throw out some functions of like what's a shoulder designed for? Throwing is a good one. Yeah. Breakeation. Any variation around the hang and moving in the hang. We've got a similar shoulder to a monkey in that in some ways. But the design for throwing is a key difference. What else? Yeah, the support side of things as well. If you look at how it all starts for us, if you look at the apes as well, they're walking on the hands a lot. So that supporting side. So for me, if I'm looking at helping someone with their shoulder, I'm thinking first about supports and I'm thinking about gentle like the earliest level of brachiation is best to be upside down like with the hands by the sides. So any shoulder stuff to begin with, hands by the sides is generally going to be well tolerated because you're not taking the. That's where the arm is sitting all day. It's where its natural position is. So supporting on the dip bars and hanging inverted with the arms by the side is like a decent place to start. If someone's got messed up shoulders, slight movements out of that position. Also like hanging onto dumbbells is pretty much the same as you know like farmers carries and things like that. Same as hanging upside down. It's pretty easier way to do it as well. But then making like just very small movements from there long duration carries and holds can can be a great place to start. Doesn't mean the other stuff isn't good. It just. For me it's not level zero. It's not like what you're going to do straight out of surgery. If you can, you can generally do these other things, like very, very early on after causing some kind of trauma there. So then for the. The feet is the one that I've given a bit of an example. Around the feet are the most complex structure. They're capable of the most. They have the most nerve endings apart from the brain. So if you think about it historically, like, for. For our ancestors, our feet had to be the smartest part of the body, which is quite funny because Charles always said, like, train the lower body stupid. Train the upper body smart. And he used a lot of variation upper body, and he didn't use much variation lower body, squats, calf raises, hamstrings. But the feet have to be smart. And for the athletes that he's working with, they already had smart feet, otherwise they wouldn't have been athletes or they were doing dumb sports in a way, like for a track athlete. The thing is, we've got all these flat environments now, so our feet have been dumbed down. I heard someone say recently that our brain would only be half the size that it is if we evolved on flat surfaces. Like, it's that big a thing that we're meant to be walking on. Bumpy stuff. And you think about it like in the past, you needed to be able to sprint through on uneven ground, like through whatever terrain. It was going to be forest, there's going to be some stones, there's going to be some wood on the ground, and you needed to be able to move through that terrain, up and down hills, uneven surfaces. Like it was a big survival hunting thing. Like you, you sort of think of. When I think of hunter gatherers and survival, sometimes you think of like the African plains. But most of our ancestors weren't in the African plains. They were in woodlands. And, you know, it wasn't all just flat grass. Even if you go into cow paddocks now, they call a soccer field, you call it a cow paddock is like a slang in Australia because it's like bumpy. So everything is bumpy in. In the real world. So we needed these super smart, sharp feet that were able to adjust. And we needed all of the joints in the foot to be working. We needed to be able to make those micro adjustments. So it makes sense for the foot that you don't only want to be thinking about getting it strong, you need to think about the real structure, like the real function of the foot, and you want it to be strong in all Directions in the Marinovic system. They use the super cat machine a lot. Some people say is a good. But they, they, you know, usually if this was feet and bottom of the feet, they also pushed it up this way as well. And you know, Ido Portal has done some work of sort of encouraging the. On the outsides of the feet and like these other lines of force into the structures. It makes sense that those bones are going to become stronger, the joint connective tissues are going to become stronger. So I'm just giving some general context for our discussion here of like how we build out body part solutions. If we can first sort of look through that lens of what is the thing designed for. And then like the Poliquin esque approach of like a linear version of which lines of force pull between the bones. Like origin insertion. When you cut away everything and you, and you and you pull on that thing, which way does the joint go? There's value in that and it does, it does work to an extent. But then all the big movements are all curved movements. And so that's why we have the range as the first piece of fixing the body. And then we have the elastics and then we have patterns. So the reason we have the rain stuff is, is great for remodeling the muscles, bigger muscles. And it's going to have some help. It's going to, you know, have value for the tendons and fascia as well. But the elastics force is always going to be much higher. I asked that this week in the. I saw my IG the other day pull up the picture here. The. So we need to, we need to look through the lens of elastics as well. See if I can find it here. Just the force, the force velocity curve. If I pull it up on the. All right. Manual might have there for us. Oh, there's his feet. Is that your foot? His foot is that. Have you seen the Amazonian feet? Maybe someone's to pull that one up. Yeah, we can copy and paste images into the chat here. One second.

Now.

I wish that was my foot, but yeah, I'm working to get the full functional foot again. Yeah, the, the, the question is what. What kind of feed are we talking about? Because I hardly know any people who have really natural feet that can do what, what on foot actually can do.

Yeah.

Because if, if I, I have one athlete, his foot is almost like comparable to his hand. He can grip with his feet like, like a monkey. It's unreal.

Yeah.

I've been watching some children recently. There was a German family of four children that just came here recently and they were playing in the gym and all over the mats and throwing themselves into flips and ropes. I was just watching how good the feet were on this. The boy is about 12 years old and just, yeah, super natural. Hasn't worn shoes too much, played outside a lot. I, I can pick up tennis balls. I've been able to pick it up like between the big toe and the second toe. I learned it as a trick. I don't know. There's some athlete that could do it. I think the quarterback for the Green Bay packers or something. But then I've started to do it like in between the. Just with the other toes as well. I can definitely feel my feet getting a lot smarter. The pipes were a huge thing that Marinovic used and it was a big fan of working balance really hard. But we probably also need to get more uneven surfaces. There's those like kind of like rock climbing pads for feet. These now as well. Like that kind of stuff. It makes sense to. That we need to get more uneven with, with Eden, I'm. We set stuff up in the gym and one of the things is like to have lots of different surfaces. So there's like a really squishy surface and then a less squishy one and then a hard one. I think that's also part of the intelligence of what's going on there, of dealing with the tension of the surface. But yeah, put there in the chat the picture of the force velocity curve, right. So the highest force stuff according to this is maximal strength, where that, that's where the most forces produce. And then as we increase velocity, we. There's nothing to push against. So it starts being less, less force. This is how we think about it. But then when something's moving very fast and it hits something that isn't moving, extreme forces are produced. So the highest force is going to be the impulse of the speed stuff where in maximal strength we can maybe hope to get to three times body weight. Back squat at the most, that's on two legs. But in sprinting or with triple jump, the forces are much, much higher than what we get. So I don't know if it's deliberately like missed from this diagram and equation, but this, all this stuff all comes from the Russians. And the Russians were all about the plyometrics. They were all about like that peak of force loading. And the guys who are doing good stuff with elastic training now, the Marinovic students, Jay Schroeder, like they're based, they're basically Saying like, yeah, this is what the Russians did. They learned from the Russians. It's what Louis Simmons said. Louis Simmons had the elastic approach to powerlifting. Everyone see that image what I'm talking about? What, what are your thoughts on that manual?

I mean to me that, that's one of the great mistakes in, in. Yeah. In this biomechanics because like they, I, I remember when I was at university, we talked a lot about the force velocity. If you, and then you'd say okay, is like this old discussion what's weight training for children? But if you see what children do when they jump and run, that's where the high forces happen. And that's, I mean except for the, for the loading of the spine, there's, I mean the natural movements are such, of such high demand that the like. But in, in sports we always look at the right portion of this curve, which is. Yeah. And, and if you think about it, where happens adaptation people. And, and I noticed that when I started last, last year I started sprint, sprinting and jumping again. And this makes the biggest difference. And it, I can also see what it does metabolically what happens with my kind of body temperature when I do a couple of sprints. That's, that's not. I, I mean I have to do really hard strength training to get the same effect. And that happens just by, by a few seconds. It's really amazing. That's why I think we, we totally underestimate that stuff. And that now that's coming back and more and more people realize. I think there's also a strong connection to the whole fascial fascia training and stuff. I think there's probably some mechanisms overlapping, but if you train that you have a lot of benefit. But it took me years to realize that we probably overdoing the right side of the force velocity curve. And then another thought that I had in training. We had a season when a German soccer club. Yeah. Really destroyed everyone else. And I, I heard the SNC coach talking about their concept and what they, what they would do in that season was they trained very much in one or on this left side of the force velocity curve. And then I thought, well, in one way that's probably smart, but I would never do like train athletes just in one small particular way because at that time I thought if you gonna keep training like that, there's probably. They get too specific and even you also have movements that are not always high intensity. It's, it's not everything is in that segment. And that really high injury rate coming and That I think with a lot of concepts, if they concentrate or focus just on one thing only and don't like half the other sides, I believe that that's not very smart. So it's probably useful to like look at the whole curve and have everything included. But the. We are probably under stressing the left side at the moment. Or a lot of people are.

When you're saying like they're not doing enough maximal strength.

No. Is it. They were going like on this like really small segment. They were only doing like only working on, on high speed stuff. And you, you can do that with let's say track and field athletes. But like with the soccer player, he has a lot of different demands. He's not only at this really high speed level. And at some point you, you have to also like cover different strength abilities that, that might not always be on high speed.

Yeah.

Also for the nervous system. Yeah. Because a soccer player, his goal is not all the time to move at high speed.

No.

So yeah, that's kind of the point of talking about the force velocity curve here is thinking about the quality of the white tissue and developing stronger bones, ligaments, tendons, meniscus and fascia as well. Clearly the muscles aren't able to. The muscles aren't able to produce that kind of force for sustained periods. They play a role in that instantaneous super high force that we're talking about, but they're not able to sustain those kind of forces. So we have to consider that within the, the rehab as well. I think doing long range training does wonders for the quality of the connective tissue and for the tendons and you know, short range to get rid of the pain. And then long range and extreme long range, it has helped a lot of people get back to elastics and being able to go and practice their dunks without doing a lot of low intensity plyometric work. But most of the effective systems and like it just, it seems like a risk to me to make that jump and I was never able really to make that jump with ATG to go from being this muscle bound, muscle dominant athlete to then being able to go and do bounds and, and dunk practice without getting sore. Like it just without, you know, blowing up my tenants basically mostly my Achilles, like my, my. But my knee tendons were fine. So to be fair, like it worked for my knees. I think the Achilles responds so much to elastic force and it makes sense. I really don't know if you can rehabilitate Achilles. Well with range training, it seems like most of the other Tendons respond. I don't know if anyone else has an opinion or thoughts around that, if they've had it themselves or, or train other people with Achilles stuff, but it sort of comes back.

I mean if you look, if you look at modern protocols for tendons, I just have two athletes like Batman players. The one one has a patella tendon tendinopathy and the other one has a Achilles tent tendinopathy. And it's, I mean you like there's different reasons to, to do different stuff. Like in rehab they need. What helps a lot in the beginning is these long term isometrics to kind of get this slack out of the tendon. And then you, you need these. What helps is this high, high intensity isometrics. To also to get the slack out of the tenon and then to use the pain down regulation and, and then at some point you need these. Yeah. These short and hard ground contacts. That's where you get them. That's when you kind of these isometrics prepare the tissue and then you need the central nervous system and really use that and like get the, the central nervous system in, in shape that you get the right timing and everything matches up.

Yeah. And they're going to be the highest forces you think? We think of isometrics as being super high force, but the highest forces are going to be when you start doing hops and you know, bounding and these things like the peak forces are going to be much higher. Yeah.

And then I mean there's like in these isometrics you gotta think it's an enormous like working of the tendon because if, like, because in isometrics the angle of the joint keeps, stays the same, but muscles are actually moving a lot. That's a misconception. If we think okay, muscle length stays the same. No, it doesn't. And the tendon has to work a lot on that. And that's how you build up the tendon with these isos. It's I think for restructuring. That's pretty good. But then when you have a healthy tendon then you need these really high intensity jumps and drop jumps, depth jumps, shock stuff that I mean that's basically the tenant training.

Yeah. So the final thoughts here and I want to open up for discussion about specific body parts or issues that you might be having or clients are having or an area that you want to build a product around. The patterns is then the integration of that. And I think this trend is going to continue. The more hate videos that come out about functional patterns, the more sure I am that the, you know, ancestral biomechanics is going to continue to be a big part of athletic training work. Naughty. They're funny characters. The go to guys, they're all funny characters. But I don't see it going away. I think it's going to keep getting bigger to look at the integration and the more robotic movement becomes of the average person and people who go to the gym a lot, the more value there's going to be in, in those movements looking at things through those lenses and perspectives of rotational and that integrated things. So that I think that's, that's then a lens to look at for any body part. And the last one I wanted to touch on is like the differential loading. I finally saw an example. Wolfgang has an example. Wolfgang Schulhorn has an example in that presentation that he posted in the biomechanics chat. The discussion the woman put out. This is the end of perfect biomechanics. It's come up in the telegram there a couple of times. If I can put the link up, if no one's got it there, but if you've seen it, you can put the link. But it actually shows differential bench press. And it's the first time I've seen like Wolfgang share an example of what he's actually talking about. And I really did it for the first time today. I've thought about it many times over the years that like why do we aim for this perfect form when sports does happen in perfect form and we're always loading to, to different positions. But I did some presses today and like deliberately let it go off balance, deliberately off gripping, gripping in the middle. I did 40 kilos, I did 20 sets of two with 40 kilos. But I did different grips. It's super wide grip that was really hard on stabilizing the shoulders that that differential loading is. I think I, I think it's going to be a big thing. I think it's going to be a big thing in the, especially in the rehabilitation world. It's already something that physios sort of intuitively do. Physical therapists, they, they like to have some chaos and they like to have some different types of movement. But yeah, this is, this is another thing to consider of like rather than looking for perfect repetitions, look for different repetitions for the learning component because we learn from difference and it's better to be able to produce force in more different positions. It's also been shown that they were getting the same amount of strength gains using 60% with differential loading as using 80% with conventional loading, so you can use significantly less load if you're using differential to still get significant strain results. But you're also going to get more robust tissues that can deal with different lines of force, and you're going to get skill in those other areas as well. So that's, I think, something that's going to continue to become bigger. I can see the ecological stuff and the constraints LED approach. I think it's getting more mainstream. I see it coming up more. It's coming from lots of different angles, like, it's starting to go mainstream. But I really think the differential way of looking at it is more valuable than the constraints LED approach. It's got a lot more freedom in it, and it's more to the heart of the matter of we learn by difference. But, yeah, looking at it more from the structural effects, when we're talking about this body part, both are important. We want the body part to be smart, and we want it to be able to deal with force from many different angles. So this is kind of the introduction. If there's questions or specific parts you want to discuss, we'll do a few minutes in here together and then we'll go to the breakout room so we can kind of lock in thoughts for today and big ideas in smaller groups, if that's cool. So what's the body part that's on your mind? What's the question that's on your mind going through this? Don't talk at once. Here we go. Augusta.

Yeah. The body part I'm most struggling with since. Since I know myself, is shoulders, but they're very functional. Thing is, I don't know if it's part of my bone structure, but, you know, when you do a handstand, you cannot get off the banana shape. It seems my. My shoulders back are, like, very stiff in the. Like, it's very difficult for me to put my shoulders, like. Like far behind without the scapula being so appearing in the back. You know what I mean? So, like, the pullover. I've done a lot of pullover, but it doesn't fix the fact that my chest can be very open, for example, in a bridge. And it limits me in a lot of stuff. So I'm looking for. I think it's. Yeah, solution. Not quick, but, yeah, an effective solution to open that area because there are a lot of standards in new athletes that I might get if I break that limitation.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's a great ability to have to really feel comfortable with lockout overhead. A lot of athletes don't Feel comfortable locking out overhead even if they're really strong. Pressing bench press maybe they can press a lot of weight overhead, but usually they can't hold it over their head after they've pressed it. If they haven't done weightlifting, if they don't do handstands. Most athletes are incredibly weak relative to their other movements in that locked out overhead position. And then the back bridge, you know, forget it. The back bridge is, is the, the next level of that which all wrestlers have. Every wrestler is, is able to, to back bridge and they can usually back handspring and all those kinds of movements as well. So. Yeah, this has also been a weakness for me. Augusto. I used to feel like I was going to dislocate my shoulders with the snatch. I had a, a subluxation a few times. My brother surgeries reconstruction. So I was always a bit scared that I had shoulders like him, which I probably think I, I did.

But where do you, where do you think the limitation comes from? In. Yeah, in this back area like this. From the, from the interior chain. What, what should I do to like have that ability that the shoulder can go, you know? Yeah, really, really, Really. I mean, I, I don't know if I'm interested in like. I love to do a bridge and all the, the stuff, but it's mostly because when I do like ground floor or whatever, it's a new athlete. It might bring me a new creativity to the movement and improvisation and, and that.

Yeah, yeah. I really like where river's going with it of like the handstands, but really like allowing yourself to go the other way. Instead of the banana, use the wall so that you're getting some leverage to really open the shoulders. It's a pretty intense way, but you're, you're pretty fit and strong. So I think you should be good with it. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's, I think it's too like, I'm still. I'm dealing with this as well, trying to get a little bit better range on my handstands. But I, I think it has to do with when your lumbar spine is flexed like with a tuck handstand, but your thoracic spine is having to extend, which is what getting hands overhead when you're, when you're, when you're extended through the whole spine, like in a bridge or pull over or whatever. It's. It just isolates. I think it's mostly low traps, honestly. Low traps. A little bit of maybe the lat that stabilized the scapula and that kind of Depressed position where it's depressed but also rotated. But, but yeah, I think Lauren, he's really great with the handstands. He, he led me to doing a handstand, but with the hips at 90 where your feet are against the wall. So your feet are against the wall and then your torso's vertical. That one really works it. But if it kind of works different parts of the core where if you go tuck handstand in your feet or shins are against the wall, then it's like your lumbar's flexed but you're maybe activating your core slightly less. So you can really isolate the, the, all the shoulder muscles to get that, get that range. But then also combining that with making sure you're really pushing away from the floor and not kind of relaxing into the shoulders at all. But yeah, that one, that one's a killer. I think if you work on that one and get it up to like a 30 or 60 second hold, just really stacked.

So what's the, what's the drill you're saying? Can you repeat?

Yeah, I'll share, I'll share YouTube. I think the movement FAQs or whatever. That guy Daniel has a really good video on the tucked. Tucked handstand against the wall.

Yeah, that's amazing because, you know, for having an animal flow, you have to have a tag handstand. It's a master. And I get it like five seconds only because I'm strong. I am enough strong to do it. But my, my head game, I'm not in a straight line and so I follow, I can sustain it if I can consciously, but not comfortably. So yeah, send me that because I need, definitely need to master that movement.

Yeah, the, the crossbench pullover is, is also like, it's the most obvious answer for this, but it has helped a lot of people to open up that, that position and then, and then you can basically do what River's talking about and what the cross bench pullover does, but just in, in seated, like actually arching into. So you put the bar overhead and then let it, let it arch just with the like 20 kilo bars already pretty aggressive with that. Even like 5 and 10 kilo bars can be really nice if you've got a bar that you can grip. Neutral grip. Yeah. When you, when you've got some weight in your hands, then you kind of, once you get a little bit forward, it sort of forces the, the bow into the, and it can be really nice into the thoracic spine and you don't have to use Much weight to be able to get like. And you see the guys who are really mobile, good hand balances, like they can really lean into that position. You can also do it like the hanging version as well with like the rings or a low bar, like bar rack into the front like this. Those ones like laying down on the ground with the, with the full.

Oh yeah, like this. With something in my back.

The other way on the, on your front like this? Yeah, yeah. And the, and the bars like up, around waist high. So you're kind of like Superman.

Ah, okay.

Yeah.

It's, Is it normal that really, it really hurts? Because I mean it really hurts. I, I, I started like almost crying with that kind of movement this and I sweat a lot and I don't know if it's, is my body supposed to do it? I don't know. I really, it's a lot of pain but I'll try it out.

Yeah, I wouldn't push through a lot of pain. I look for, look for variations that don't hurt too much. It's probably another call to go more into the stretch strength stuff because this is really more on the, on that side of things rather than like just rebuilding basic function. But one of the big ideas in the strength strength that I think is underutilized is like giant sets. So using lots of different movements, five to 10 movements that go to that same area, like 10 repetitions or like 20 seconds and then move to the next one and keep going around and don't try and push anything too much but you just keep hitting different lines of force and different positions. I think that's a really effective way to, to also find the movements that feel good for you and that you feel like you're getting something out of. Like rather than trying to force it too much. Like do that after everything's really warm. That would be the way I would look at it as well.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. I'll trade them out. I'll show some progress on it.

Welcome. Yeah, if anyone's got anything specific they want to ask me, then they can stay and ask. Otherwise there's the, the breakout rooms are open there so you can discuss it together. The specific areas or your big take homes from the discussion Today. We're going to get your teacher more, more golf Mike if he got it before he moved on. Chat.

How's it going, Keegan? Do we go in the breakout room right now?

You can. Yeah, yeah. I was just saying if anyone has anything they really want to ask me, they can stay and Ask. Otherwise, there should be an invitation there to go in the breakout. And.

I've just.

Tried the coiling for the first time in the past week or two, and it's been pretty significant for me. Like, for back stuff, I feel like it's. It might be the last piece to the puzzle. Like, I had 80, 90% of things figured out, but I would still get some lingering lat tightness. Sometimes it would go a little bit lower, maybe Ql especially right side. And I hadn't. That was kind of the only thing I was yet to figure out. And then as soon as I tried some of the coiling stuff, it was almost instant, like a noticeable reduction in that tightness just from a couple sets. I tried them in a. In a split squat position and feels really good. So I'm just trying to explore that more.

Amazing. Yeah. Have you. Have you done much just, like, rotational stuff, like the road flow and.

Like.

The figure eight of the trunk?

Yeah. And it feels really good. I was feeling like there was kind of one spot in particular on my left side that just remained stuck and the rope flow wouldn't get to it. Like, it was almost like it loosened everything else up, but it wasn't enough to get that.

Yeah.

And as soon as I did the coiling, it seemed to hit it.

Yeah. That's interesting. When. When I started trying to coil last year, my. My back was still too sensitive, and it was just like I. I kind of just jammed it up straight away, like getting too much into the sides.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's. That's really cool to hear that. It's. And have you been doing Ql raises as well?

Yeah, QL stuff has always been funny for me. Which ones are you referring to?

Like in the 45 degree back extension, sideways.

Yeah.

So those.

I haven't tried them in a couple months, but they were always. They were actually too much for me in the past. Like, do even one set and then I'd be sore as after.

Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of me as well. And I think the coils sort of fit in that as well. But I started just doing isometrics in the. In the side position on the five. Yeah.

Okay.

And then from the isometrics, that sort of built the base to be able to get a bit more range and just started doing a bit more range. And now. Now I'm tolerating them where last year I pinched it a couple times, like, trying to. Trying to do the full range, and it was like some kind of pinch, and there was like week or two to settle down, like. Yeah, yeah, but it's.

I'll try that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good way to start. Like just pretty much isometric, but that's the other. It's good. Good to hear with the coils. Send me a video next time you do them to film some.

Yeah, yeah, I'll keep messing around with it.

There's the thing with the coil as well, of like that the opposite hips meant to come forward. So it's. It's like. Because they're meant to be like, to throw, you know, like, they're kind of like. So it's the opposite hip. Muchi was explaining to me because he just had a week with work and. And he like, his, his understanding of the coil changed quite a bit. Yeah.

Well, that lecture you sent me with. Forget his name. But the, the spinal engine Talk from like 20 years ago or whatever or something. Yeah, it was awesome like you said. Yeah, it was good though.

Yeah.

Learned a lot. Yeah. It's like a whole new. Another path that I need to explore.

Yeah, it's just like Polyquin was smart as and it, like, it works, but at the same time it's. It's. It doesn't mean it's a complete truth. Like, that's. I'm not saying I have a complete truth with what I'm delivering here, but I know it's a bigger framework than, you know, what I've been educated on in the past and. Yeah, it just gives you more potential solutions and it's not. It's not too hard to have an understanding in them. So. Yeah.

All right, I'll hit up the breakout room.

Cool, cool. I'll jump in too.

And there's. There's lots, lots to learn.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't mean to. It certainly wasn't a call out by any means.

No, no, no. You can even call me out. I mean, I could have responded. It's just that. Yeah, it's.

No, no, it's okay. Yeah, I know. I totally understand.

So what do you do at the moment?

Yeah, I work for a digital signature. So it's a technology company that I do sort of at the full time, 9 to 5. And I've had some success starting, you know, an in person coaching business. Basically everything that I learned from, you know, ATG has been applicable with the clientele that I've worked with in person. It's been pretty successful with the, you know, younger people and even some older clients that I've had. And I think even with myself. What's Been really nice about that is that I've been sort of been able to return to. You know, I don't think I came to ATG as maybe like the classical sort of broken person that maybe a lot of you know, people sort of found success through or you know, their stories are kind of typically tend to sound like. But, but boy, it just kind of made everything. I just kind of threw like a, a blanket of improved athleticism over everything that I was doing day to day. Whether it was just like long hikes, soccer and even coming back to golf. I kind of noticed. Man, this is such a different game as an athletic person in my late 30s than it, than it was as a 130 pound skinny 17 year old, you know. And I'm sure that the technology involved with a game after 15 years of not playing that has a huge impact on, you know, how far you can hit the ball. But you know, this is one of these things that I've noticed as I've come back.

I.

Big so freaking ability you know, because for soccer for, for whatever you want to do ground movement or animal flow or I don't know, whatever is. I think you will also agree that it's fundamentals, right?

For sure, for sure. What about you john? Noah? All right.

Yeah, so I, I kind of jumped in late today so not really sure about what the whole conversation was about. So if you can fill me in a little bit I might be able to. Good for you.

Likewise.

Yeah.

So Noah's was saying that we had to do a body part solutions and then it was over the next three months. What is the body part you're going to pick to I think level zero and work on and then what is the functions I think that you'd look to do.

And like what's the, what's, what's the body part used for? So like reverse engineering from.

Okay.

From its use from my understanding.

Yeah, I think for me it would be the feet probably toes. Feet just you know, work on better load bearing, you know, I guess application to sport, being able to you know, run, jump with, with much less breakdown longer periods. I guess the way I would do it is just do something small every day and, and just maybe add something to it like every you know, week or so and just start adding different functions like whether it be like toe flexion extension or maybe more long range isometric holds or maybe even like you know just start with the toes but then like go to the ankles and just keep adding stuff until it just feels seamless which, which is Easier for me said than done because I have a tendency to get too, too excited about new stuff and then I overdo it too early and then I just wind up like, you know, one step forward, two, two steps back.

Yeah.

So what do you think guys are the fit for? I mean it's a very simple question but what can good fits give to the rest of the body? Why should we do. Why should we have spend time like really working on our feet?

I think it's, it's the load bearing. Like, like I was saying, like if, if your feet are taken the majority of the load and they're strong then they're not going to defer like any, any pain or you know, discomfort up the chain and, and so, so like with the feet, Like if they're, if they're breaking down on you, then like.

Yeah. So to have a good.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, yeah, I was just to have a good foundation from the ground up. Right, you, you were saying that.

Yeah, pretty much.

And what others. Why should we have the, the, the fits? Why. You know that ancestral fit. What do you think that is? What do you think made the toes the natural feedback with the toes wide and strong. Why did nature produce that kind of feet? You think when have we lost. I know why we lost it but I'm trying to understand more the feed as to really put importance into my work on them because we tend to look maybe for more speed stuff or, and feet are overly neglected. At least I have to work on them. So I need to profound a purpose for them also.

For sure. And I think my understanding of that is that the feet need to be wider because naturally a more narrow based object is going to be less stable. And so like the wider of a platform you have to stand on then the, the more stable and less likely to be like toppled it will be. Does that answer your question? For from my perspective.

Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So this for me it hurts. You know this is, I think this is level 0, but it should be zero pain and I still have like pain through them. Just throwing ideas. I don't know if anyone want to come up with, with more ideas about the feet. And, and what should our standard be?

Have you put a cushion below, below your bum. So in between and your, and your feet. Or like even on a chair, not a chair. Like blocks. Yeah, yeah.

Like that, right?

Yeah, yeah. Is that better?

Ah yeah.

Even if you had like multiple yoga blocks.

Sorry, between.

If you had multiple like yoga blocks, like between. I can't like between, between the floor and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that? Yeah, like that.

Yeah.

Take more weight off or like assisted, I guess.

Okay. Yeah, I like this one. Yeah, I, I think this one's not good. Yeah, this one works. That's good. I feel much more mobile when I have good fits. I do a lot of ground movement and, and flow. So having good feel really helps acceleration. I don't know, maybe level one. What do you think level one could be for fits? I think this is the purpose of the conversation.

Right.

So what.

Yeah, I was just going to say, like when you say level one or you talking about like our level one standard.

Yeah, like it was in the other room. They talked about like building from the ground up. Everybody part solutions. So we're talking about fit here and we need, like to discuss a little bit around what, what are the, the different standards for. For what fits can do for us?

Right.

So, yeah, just describing.

Sure. So, yeah, I was kind of, I was thinking from a different level perspective, like, of what the feet can actually do, like, like I was thinking more of a training perspective rather than a ability perspective, if that makes sense. So I was thinking like, just being able to like individually move the toes, maybe that's a good place to start to actually be able to not just like move the big toe and then the rest of the toes as like two separate motions, but actually be able.

To.

Pick and choose. Maybe that's a, that's a good. I don't know, maybe that's training and standard.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It's, it's not common to move whatever you want there. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. What else?

I like what, what Keegan's been introducing with the toes on the, on the scale. See how much load bearing the toes can handle on their own. I've been doing a little bit of that myself. I've got, I think just over quarter body weight. So.

What exercise is that?

So you stand on like a bathroom weight scale, but, but you only put pressure with one, with one foot and you only let the toes do the work and you try to see how much weight you can, how much force you can put into the scale, but you don't let the ball of your feet, Foot. Feet touch only the toes.

Okay. Okay.

Only the toes.

Okay.

Have you played around with like the toe raises, like, like, say, say you assist yourself like with your hands somehow and then you just like you're doing like calf raises, but just with your toes.

Ah, that's interesting. Never done that.

Like, I think Keegan sent a video in when he's sitting doing it, maybe into the. One of the. One of the chats.

Yeah, I've not tried that yet. That's, that sounds interesting.

I went recently, I went like, you know, like I was doing a lot of calf raises on the slant board and like, I really, really like annoyed my like big toe and like the joint all in by it. So I've kind of just been like doing pretty gentle like blood flow stuff to it. And then also like my tibialis posterior. No, anterior tendon like all the way up the chain was just like pretty, pretty wrecked. But it's. I don't know, it's pretty crazy how like, you know how you're saying you get pretty excited sometimes. You get pretty excited about something and you go pretty hard. I've just done that with a lot of my body recently.

Yeah.

Have you found that the calf races in the slamboard help the, the big toe or have you? Because I sometimes find you, you do the, the power, you do it with the bones, right? Not, not, not, not with the big toe. What have you found there?

Yeah, I think it, like it annoyed. Annoyed. My. I think just I wasn't ready for it. I think I should have scaled up to it a bit slower. Yeah.

So.

What other parts of the body are you struggling with or are the main focus? Any ideas?

I think hips may be like one for me that just, I mean it's not, it's not like I don't know what to do for my hips, but it's just like sometimes I sit so much like working on the computer that my hips don't cooperate with me and I don't always make the time to. Mitigate that with work out. And I feel like a, a heavier focus on that area could make a difference for me.

Do you perform like any sports or specific sports or, or just the feeling of having good mobile hips?

I mean, it's both. But I do play some basketball.

Where do you feel the, the, you feel stiffness or you feel weakness or you feel lack of mobility? What do you feel there?

It's, it's more. I would say, I would say it's weakness and a little bit of pain like in, in the outside of my left hip, like unstable maybe, where I've just spent a lot less time training the hips than, than I used to. And yeah, I still move and everything. I'm what I would consider probably hyper mobile. I have very mobile hips, you know, and that's not really become a super big issue yet, but at the same time, like, you know, the absence of action taking is costing me.

What do you think is a good, a good starting point to start fixing that? In terms of what, what would you do in the, in the gym or on your exercise hour to, to give that part stability or, or.

Yeah, so knowing that, knowing that I'm hyper mobile for, for myself, that that means that I need some more muscle surrounding the joints to tighten things up and, and you know, I would say that would mean less long range movements and more short range and, and then some mid range strength exercises. Does that make sense? Well, it looks like we lost them.

Yeah, it makes sense. What about you, Mikolaj?

Is that how I say it?

Forgive me.

Yeah, for.

So I never had problem with, with my hips. So I don't know actually how to help you. But yeah, if it comes to me, like my trachic spine is kind of shitty and actually, I don't know why, because I can do actually everything without pain, like cleaning jerks and stuff like that. But on the other day, the next day, it's like so stiff. So with kind of rotation movements and stuff like that. And I now I started like when I was in Montenegro, Keegan showed me the flow rope and I was like, wow, that's much better. But, but then when I came to, to Poland and when I came back to Poland, looks like just came back with pain again. So it's like I don't know what's going on because I have good mobility. Like.

Jump back in there. Nikolai was just asking about some thoracic pain. It doesn't really have like a kyphotic. A lot of people with thoracic pain and more kyphotic. Like I've had a lot of issues with my thoracic and I'm, I've had that issue with the hunch from, from hockey. I still don't have the best upright posture, but do you have thoughts on the thoracic pain without really being a kyphotic thing? Manual, you were just. There was interesting discussion in the other group about the, the importance of the neck. And starting with the neck is the first thing if, if anything's up with the spine. Have you, have you had any issues with your neck or does your neck give you any trouble, Nicolo?

Yeah, I think so. Like, I did MRI one day and there is something, but it's just I don't feel any pain in my neck. So it's like, I don't know. I mean, on my thoracic spine I can feel like when I touch on the like 12 trucking spine like. And then I had to say it like the 12. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I can feel when I touch it. So it's like, so I do try like pull my pull of my skin as well and do some, some this kind of stuff. It helps a little bit, but it's, but it's still like, you know, I can do like cleans, I can do drugs and stuff and everything, but then on the next day is like so painful. But I don't feel pain during the, during the exercises.

Okay, where, where do you position the pain? Is it right on the back side or is it more feeling in the inside?

No, it's just on my skin actually.

On your skin?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when I do like extension, I don't feel actually yesterday I did try do the, the bridge as well. No pain like some rotation, no pain. Today behind the neck jerk. No pain. But I know that tomorrow I will feel pain. Yeah. And when I, when I touch like, like right here.

Yeah.

I can feel it. When I just want to push on the one. One way I can feel the pain. And it's the same pain. Yeah. I, I think that it, it can be connected with, with basketball. When I play basketball. Do you know when you do often stuff like when the other player just go and like boom. And you go on your, on your back.

Yeah.

And I think it's, it's going to be connected. But yeah.

I mean what I, if you have in this spine area, what I would always look at is your breathing. Because if like the breathing is connected to the, to your ribs and if the ribs that go into the spine don't move properly or get kind of like stuck, then, then you get these things. That's why what you could do in the morning is you're. Do you know your infrasternal angle? You're probably a narrow. Do you know what that is?

No, no, I do understand. I do not understand.

Like I. I'd guess you're an arrow. So you probably. If you do breathing exercises lying on your back and then you kind of expand your, your ribs.

Yeah.

So I do, I do try this. That's why actually why I start my meditation as well. And this kind of like, you know, different breathing like on the top with lungs. With my ribs as well, like with the ribs cage. And I do this a lot and it doesn't help.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I try a lot of things.

Okay. It's a little tricky, but maybe one day we make a Call and we make a zoom call and I'll let you try some stuff. We might find out where that comes from.

That would be perfect.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when I was in montenegro, when keegan. The flow rope, I was like, okay, it feels much better. The pain and then. So, like, it's weird. Yeah, it's. It's really hard.

And then the thing you always got to think about it with things like that is like your systemic inflammation.

What.

What's your Omega 3 levels and stuff? That's. That's another thing what you described that I would look at at your systemic state, because it could be that you just have too much inflammation going on.

Okay. So I do supplement Omega 3 every day.

Yeah.

I do eat a lot of fishes as well. So, yeah, actually I eat really healthy. So, like no junk food at all.

To keep diving deeper. But yeah. Anything else? Big jump out at you from today's call. John was talking about working on his feet over the next few months, improving in that area, not overdoing it at the start. I've had some big sessions on my feet that have made them sore for a few days. Like sword. Yeah.

Just.

Just generally they feel like sore sometimes in between the, like displaying. I think it's like forging too much splaying or something between these knuckles in the feet. It's like some kind of weird thing. And you can definitely piss them off when you go too hard, which I never really experienced in that way in the past. But. Yeah.

What.

What else are people thinking about as like key areas to improve in the body area to improve.

We were talking about the neck.

Yeah.

And I think, yes, some people do it, but it's still underrepresented in a lot of programs. And also like the neck, if you look at neck movements, there's a lot of things that people can't do properly, like neck flexion, neck extension. If you, if you look at it, I'd say like most of my athletes can't move their neck properly in most directions, which is kind of unusual.

Would you say wrestlers function is like a.

They're usually pretty good.

That's. That's the benchmark. Like, that's what to aim for or who are the best neck athletes or what's. What's the highest level?

Yeah. Professional boxers usually have a pretty strong neck. Restless wrestlers have a strong neck. And all people that go into like BJJ people. Well, you get a. You get a strong neck there. At some point you have to.

Jose.

You get in weird positions as well.

Yeah. Jose was talking to me about like tensing your neck as if you're getting choked out like throughout the day just to like bring more awareness and more tone to that area. It seems like a reasonable place to start in. In like as a way to start bringing some more awareness and some conditioning to the area. What are your thoughts on like starting points? I know you're talking about the headstand side bends and stuff but it's probably not the.

No, that's not a good start for everybody. But what, what usually what I usually do with my athletes like you can start with with easy isometrics. And it's funny, I think no other body part reacts to isometer to like cell self hold isometrics like the neck because a lot of people has, have such a weak neck that this already makes them sore. And then the next thing like the next level is doing like if you do a classic like. Three point row or something. So and then you have these kinds of isometric positions as well for your neck or I do like, like this short levered side planks also on the neck. That's stuff you can start with and that's already pretty intensive but I think that's something you can start easily.

What are some of the levels that you've tried to get athletes to with that stuff in the past?

I mean my like with a lot of contact athletes also in team sports I try to neck bridges and then have, have them this walk around like the wrestlers do and, and you don't have to overdo it that much because it's so yeah, it's kind of aggressive training for, for the neck muscles because it's such a small muscle. Once you train that a little bit you have already huge, huge effects because a lot of people never have that in the programs.

Polon also spoke about it as being like a key area, but it wasn't. And like how, how it would carry over to gains in the rest of the body. But he, he didn't really program it much. Like you didn't see it in his programs that he would share or he didn't really. It wasn't part of the PICP 1 and 2. There was no neck training. It's. Yeah, it's something that I've been aware of but I've never really like done it consistently myself or with teams that I've worked with. I think rugby players often get a decent amount of it just from the wrestling and from the, the contact of the games as well. Like the, like the fact that they're always crashing into Each other. They're always getting those micro. Like they have to have a strong neck just by. It's always getting used in a like gentle car crash or a not so gentle car crash.

I mean there's a partial connection between the neck muscles between the neck extensors and the glutes, which I find pretty interesting. If you activate the, like the, the insertion of the neck extensors that will like light up your glutes. Like you, you can try that. If you like rub the insertions of the muscles that go into the head. Yeah. And then you do something that's like. Something like quartz. Afterwards you'll notice you get a. You gotta get a much better glute activation. And that's a developmental connection because like if, if babies learn to crawl, like when they crawl and then they push with the legs, they use their glute at the same time. They try to like with maximum intention, they lift their heads up. And that's why you get this strong connection between these neck extensors and the glutes. And that's also like in. It's part of rpr, like reflexive performance reset. The reset for the glutes is like behind the ears and pushing into that small hole and, and the insertion of the neck extensors and the sec. The second connection for the glutes just to add is the big toe. So if, if you do squats and you put really push the big toe hard into the ground, that. That will like also light up your glutes. Like it's a neural neuro enhancer. And that's because of the gate pattern and the running. If you push the big toe into the ground, it's connected to, to glute activation.

What do you think about like using the toes, pushing with the toes? Like the. Some people talk about just pushing through the ball of the foot. The Marinovic system put a lot of emphasis on using the toes and talked about like quadruple extension if you count like the big toe and the, the force of the toes. You can see Brian McGinty who was a student of the Myrnovic's, he did a, an assessment on Mark Bell and those guys. There's a video on YouTube and he assesses their ability to push with each, each individual. Well with the big toe and then the other toes. And you know, he's that like they really put an emphasis on like pushing through the toes. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean like I, I'm only familiar with the role of the big toe. I don't know enough about like the rest of the toes, but probably again if you, if you look at that brain perspective and like a human being, if you look at these feet like a photo I showed before, then they can use their toes like, like we can use our, our fingers. And then you, if you look at the power you have to feed with these thousands of, of nerve endings and if, if you push that, it's probably connected via nerve endings and via fascia. So I think it's two main systems that have a pretty strong connections to the rest of the body. Like there's also some research like people who have lower back pain. If you let them walk more barefoot and barefoot and backwards, then very often they get rid of their back pain because they get more information via their feet. And with this more information they, they can dampen down their low back pain information. It's. So it's. Some of the pain stuff we get is probably because the brain doesn't get enough information from the feet. And then yeah, it kind of misses out on like good ability to, to map out the, the body's areas. And that's like. I don't know who, which coach that said what, but one coach said like modern shoes are like sensory deprivation chambers. I think it was Mike Boyle one day. And I think that that's a big thing. We, we kind of shut down one of the most important areas in the body that give us information about our, about the area we live in, the area where we move in. Especially if you, if you think about people that at times where we didn't have artificial light, we were much more reliant on, on sensory information when we, when you move in the dark. So the connection to the environment is. Yeah was mainly our fellow even having.

Bare foot on flat surfaces though, it's still pretty dumb compared to nature. Right. When you've got little stones and big stones and twigs and leaves and mud and you're feeling all of these, it's such a more a richer sensory experience than just training. Barefoot is also sort of still potentially a lot less stimulating in that sense but, but still a step forward in a different step. I've been thinking about it quite a bit. Like with the handstands you progress pretty fast. I don't know if anyone else has played around with it, but if you're working on handstands, use different surfaces, use the soft blocks and then less soft blocks. And I've got like four or five different surfaces here in the gym that I can use in the concrete. And when you Work between those surfaces. Your handstands feel amazing. Like, it gets better fast in the feedback loop. I've been thinking about that also with the feet of like. Yeah, what, what's going on up the chain? When you keep changing what you're like doing like kind of parkour type stuff or just jumping between them, like playing with the children. It's, it's, it feels really good. Like there's something really good about you stand on this, on the Swiss ball and on the bossy ball, and then you stand on the, the spongy, the wrestling mats. And then I have a bouldering crash mat and then I have the soft blocks and then I have the weightlifting blocks and then the concrete. So there's all of these different surfaces and then we've got one of those domes as well. That's for the going on the skateboard type thing, which is a different feel again. And the pipes, like with the cork and. Yeah, just being on all those different surfaces all the time, there's something good, something nice about it and it sort of makes sense. If the handstands are doing something good up the chain, then maybe, like, I, I definitely feel way better. Like, so much better on my feet. That feeds into like, if I'm doing shadow boxing or soccer, like, I know I'm so much better on my feet as a result. Like, I don't know. You don't know exactly what, what's coming from where.

But.

Yeah, it's. That's one of my aims to go for foot program. For the next six months. I started doing like a. And I'm, I'm a little bit careful because, like, I don't know, 10 years ago I had a plantar fasciitis that was. And that took me eight months. That was really annoying. So I'm like, I know that you shouldn't overdo it, especially in the beginning because. Yeah, if you're not used to it, it's a pretty, yeah. Sensitive structure down there.

The plantar fascia must be so strong as well. Like.

Yeah.

It doesn't get spoken about too much, but it must, it must be a crazy strong piece of connective tissue to, to transfer force. It's dealing with. With so much.

But.

Yeah. Did you, did you. Were you doing the towel. Towel curls when you plan a fascia thing? Yeah, yeah. I've had it sometimes as well.

When I had that for eight months, I pretty much tried everything because that, that's really annoying. But that's why from that time, I remember a lot of foot exercises and Then I realized how bad our floors are. I mean, everything is just flat inside, outside. And then I, I remember the only time I was in China and we were traveling and we were at a place where, like I said, at night time there was no light and there was no, like. So we got picked up at the train station. And I mean, that was amazing experience to walk through the wood and there was no concrete floor, nothing even. And then you didn't see anything. And that's when you, you realize. Okay, that's where you have to. Yeah. Find. Find your way via your feet.

Were you doing the. Did you do so like the stretch of sitting on your feet with your toes bent under? I mean. Yeah, fully flexed like this. We're using that one.

Yeah, I'm. I'm pretty bad at that because, like, my right, my right Bigfoot was kind of a little athrosis. I. I'm training to get there back again and it's. I give myself a lot of time, so I'm. I think I'm gonna get there. But yeah, it's. That's one of my weak spots. Yeah. Yeah. And what I usually do, like, let's say I do some rotation drills on a. On a kaiser machine or something. Then I kneel down and I do it barefoot. And I. That's. That's where I try to get the position of my big toe into. And then like if you, let's say you have the pull from behind and you push, then I always try to get this feeling from the big toe through the glute to the, to the upper body, like in a position that when you kneel down that you kind of want to jump into a sprint.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had the plantar fasciitis. I had it when I was playing hockey, like 20 years ago. I had it for a while. It's really annoying. It's really painful, especially in the mornings.

But.

Every time I've had a bit of it come back, I've been able to get rid of it. Now doing a bunch of the short range and then stretching into the stretch as well. It seems like if both of those, if I hit both of those pretty hard, then it settles down. But.

Yeah. And what, What I take as a bench benchmark for with my athletes is that they can stand on a lacrosse ball, like single footed. If they can't do that, they, like in the beginning, everyone. You do it the first time with. People always think that's not possible. But once you can stand on, on a lacrosse ball, single footed Then also the, the structure is like flexible enough. Like I've, I, I have a lot of people who had this kind of starting plantar fasciitis and when I worked a lot on them standing on these lacrosse balls, that helped. And I'm not, I'm not 100% sure about the mechanism, but I think it's like you get. Because you get tension in the structure, but you get tension in very different positions compared to what they do on a daily basis. And I think that that helps also with plantar fasciitis.

Seems kind of like a localized stretching in a way. Yeah, I think that's what massage like Charlie Francis was huge on massage. It's, it seems to me like you kind of stretching on a micro level all along the muscle like where you choose to stretch those fibers when you, whether you. Yeah. Whichever techniques you're doing, you're pretty much always creating some sort of localized stretch. But yeah, like there's more to it I guess with the pressure is a different type of thing to just stretching from the ends.

But.

We just have them do that when they come to the gym or like are they doing a little bit of it each time they. Each gym session or what do you usually tell them if that's an issue?

It depends a little bit. I usually when I start with athletes because they have under trained feet, I have this like short, short programs of 15 minutes of feed training before every session. And they have like, they have these things where they learn like to con like also be being able to like lift single toes and get a lot of good information. Then these towel drills or. And then recently I'm using a lot of these like the merino rich, like the round. What's the word?

The little wobble boards. Like the mini wobble board discs?

No, the, like the round. The pipes. Pipes. Yeah.

Sorry.

I use a lot of pipes now and I mean there's so many different things. I, I mix it up a lot and then what, what I also do is like I let them, let them sit down and like spread their toes. So I let them like put their hands between their toes or give them toe spreaders at night sometimes if they have really bad feet. And yeah, just get, get more of this foot function back. And then of course like from a strength and conditioning standpoint, we do a lot of these isometric in different positions. And then you can like depending on where you, you can do that barefoot, sometimes you can start in your shoes. And. But, but this is also helping a lot to get. Yeah, the feet Strong.

What about prowler pushes? Are you. Have you used them for Achilles plantar fascia issues like the, it can be a good deep stretch. It's one that, that Ben Patrick often spoke about it as being valuable for that. I've seen it as well with the Achilles plantar fascia.

Yeah.

I mean I haven't been using that that much, but that's mainly because we. Yeah, there's not many sleds and stuff around most facilities here, so it's a little bit of a matter of availability. Availability.

Yeah.

I've started playing around with it more like pushing into the wall in that position. Just the last week I've been just thinking about it of like sort of. Yeah, not necessarily isometrics but like sort of using my arms a little bit to change the resistance and bending and. But thinking about that low acceleration position and yeah, put, put force into my feet and the calves, but also for the knees and like the, like the whole position feels like a good position to be using more.

Yeah, I mean I, with my young athletes, like sometimes in the preparation I let them do like lunch split stance as an isometric and then I let them like lift their heels off and hold that for, for around three minutes. And this is. Once they can do that, they also get, get pretty good strength in their feet as well because being able to do that for three minutes, if you, I mean that, that's a, for me a good tool if I work with larger groups and if I have a lot of athletes and then. But it's also has some good impact on their feet.

Anyone else want to add anything in here or questions?

I wonder like with the lacrosse ball, how. What, what size is that? I don't know what a lacrosse ball is.

Basically the same size as a tennis ball. It's just, I don't know, it has a special texture. It's. It's like a little soft, but it's, it's pretty much a hard ball and like for like facial work. Sometimes it's spot on because it, it. It's not as tough as a golf ball, so that's why I like it. But it's, it's. It pretty. You can pretty much hit one spot in, in the tissue and yeah, it's, it's worth actually getting. Getting a lacrosse ball because it's also, it's also a little bit sticky. So when you use it like if you push it on a spot and then you turn it, it kind of pulls the skin with it a little bit. And when you want to like do mobilization. And you also want to move the skin. That's a pretty. Pretty good tool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The stickiness I think I probably have. It's not a lacrosse ball, but it's like. It's sticky. It's, like, pretty hard. Yeah, yeah. It's like. Like a massage ball kind of thing. I use it all the time for.

Well, I think a lot of times it's the same thing. Now, the massage ball, that's like hard rubber. Yeah. So it's the same.

Yeah, I like that a lot. And also the kettlebell, like, just standing on a kettlebell, I've seen football entangle doing that. Like, that gives a lot of pressure kind of to the entire foot in a way where you don't really get it from anything else that is not, like, rounded and that kind of shape. Maybe pipes can be similar or like walking on a foam roller, but kettlebell is much, much more intense. And you're also balancing on.

On one leg, on the handle or on the below.

So you kind of slip in below the handle, and you stand on the big ball of. Of the kettlebell.

Oh, okay. Like with the kettle upright.

Yeah.

The ones you have in. In Montenegro there, like the. The big ones. Those ones?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. You haven't tried that. I'll. I'll have a go at it.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, yeah. Also, like, going thinner with the pipes is another way to get at this stuff. Like, I think Boyo posted the other day, with broomstick, like, the handles off the ATG box, like, the. That kind of thickness of wood is, like, going to be more intense than the pipes. If you're looking for the myofascial aspect, myofascial release, they're pretty intense. My feet are sore on those. On, like, broomstick or, like, a thinner pipe, they're fine. On the bigger round pipes or the bigger balls are okay, but then, like, smaller balls, it's pretty painful. So it's like the more trigger, like, the. The smaller the point of pressure, the more force it is. Yeah, yeah.

The defeat.

Soreness is something interesting. Ever since Montenegro, I've been continuing, obviously, to train the feet, and I. I feel. Yeah, I feel like they're constantly at the tipping point of soreness and not. No soreness. Recovering and being sore straight away again.

You feel. Benefit from it, though, where they're. When they're good and like, on the field.

Yeah.

When. When I'm warm, like, my feet feel really, really strong, like in plyometrics and. And all that. Amazing. Yeah.

Have you had it sometimes where you wake up in the morning or if you've been sitting down for a fair while and then you get up like the.

Nah, not that I feared. I had, like, kind of plantar fas. Fasciitis kind of thing in. In England, actually. I think two weeks, you know, Montenegro event, two weeks after I had something where I felt a little bit of, like, a stinging thing in the heel for a bit, for, like, couple days. But I've done some stuff, and ever since then, it's. It's been good again.

But. Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely intense. Like, that's. I know that for. For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

I love.

When. When you're rolling with the lacrosse, are you also going on, like, the outside of the forward, Just the plant fascia?

Yeah, I mean, I. Yeah, I do outside and especially on the foot arch as well. The kind of. The really inside. I roll it all personally.

Yeah.

Yeah. You can also like, put it on the inside and then like, not fully standing on the ball, but then really, like. Like, if you want to push down the whole arch on the floor, and then you get. With the lacrosse ball, you can get some pretty good traction on. On the downside of the foot. Yeah, it's. I mean, like, I. I let my three sons, like, walk a lot barefoot from small childhood on, and they. I mean, they can do stuff I. I can't. They can walk on any floor. It just doesn't matter. And like, in. In the summer, like, my middle son, he walks barefoot everywhere. Like, people always look at me like I can't buy shoes for my son because he's.

It.

He doesn't mind. He can. He can run on any surface. And that's why if I look at my son's feet, like, they have such, like, they have large feet now, and they get broader because they. They walk so much barefoot. That's amazing.

They're gonna have an incredible base.

Yeah, hopefully. I mean, at some point. Yeah. It's a little bit difficult in our society to show up barefoot everywhere, but.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you don't have to go everywhere barefoot. You can have your intense periods and then I guess, like.

Yeah, but it's. It's interesting how, you know, it's just adaptation. Like, for me, it's really hard. I have to, like, retrain my feet, and I'm really. Yeah. Sensitive. Like, they run around during the whole summer barefoot, and I'm always slowest. Not because I am not fast enough, but just because I always say hit something that hurts my feet.

Yeah. The kids are Montenegro. Kadeem knows the. Well Mikola as well. The stones here are vicious. Like the, the stones that have been put down just to. So it's not mud everywhere. They're like big and sharp and like, as the summer goes on, I get more comfortable on them. But Maya and Manu, like, from the start, they're pretty fine on them. He didn't actually, like, the baby is like, doesn't love them as much. Like, he's not as he's hardly worn shooting his whole life so far. But he doesn't really like walking on the vicious stones. But I think it's probably like, not conditioned yet. Like the Myron Mono like, fine. They can kind of run on them where some of the guys can't even walk on them. He's look like they're going to cry when they're here.

That's probably. That's me. That's me. Like, my feet. Yeah, it just oversensitive, certainly in some.

Parts, but yeah, I wonder. I think it takes time for, for Eden to build up his base for that. He hasn't been walking for too long.

So I, I, I do barefoot in Poland, but when I came to Montenegro, it's like, I can see, like, my skin is different, you know, like, it's changed, like more harder. So the, the stones are not that painful as well.

Yeah, yeah. You need thick skin to. Yeah.

But when I tried the, the wooden, the, the wooden stuff at the gym.

You remember?

Yeah, yeah.

So like Paul, Paul was like, feel nothing. I was like, how, how I was like, just three, five seconds maybe. It was like so painful. He felt nothing.

Yeah.

Like the nail board things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's tell the other guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting.

All right.

Yeah. We keep working on the smart, the smarter, faster feet. Smarter, smarter feet that can endure the pain and also be elastic. All the performance, too.

Yeah.

What I noticed with my, with my daughter was like, she, she doesn't like socks. You know, she's like, oh, take it off.

She's.

She's always takes off.

Always.

Like, always. She doesn't like her shoes as well. So I'm like, okay, go barefoot. That's much better for you. Yeah, but that's what Manuel said. Like, the, the environment, the social stuff is. It's really hard to go barefoot somewhere.

Yeah. In Poland, people think you're a criminal if your child is not wearing shoes.

Yeah, exactly.

Germany, it's probably just, just 1% less. I did get stopped a few times. So I was going, like, walking to the shops, and we would walk, maybe a clock or.

Germany.

In Germany, I would go for big walks with. With my boy. Usually we'd have a soccer ball with us as well. And sometimes people would stop us to be like, no, he needs to be wearing shoes. And I just, like, I'm sorry, I speak German. And they'd be like, must put shoes. I know. That's okay. Just let me. Just leave me to it. There.

One.

One lady was so angry. She was, like, screaming at me for, like, two minutes because he's walking around bare feet, like in the middle of the summer as well. It wasn't cold. Like, yeah.

Yeah, It's. You know, we live in a little village, and we're the strange family, and everyone knows that, so it doesn't matter. Like, today I brought my little guy to kindergarten, and he. I mean, it's. It's getting pretty cold here. But he refuses to wear long, long pants, so he still got shorts.

Where do you live in.

In Germany? Yeah, it's. And it's. It's funny, like, in the kindergarten, they. They always look at me, and I said, you know him. You know how. How hard it is to argue with him. So he. He's gonna wear shorts probably the whole winter. I used to do the same. And. But. But I always think, you know, if. If you. A lot of stuff we learn when we grow up is just because other people tell us to and we don't. Like, it's never the question, do I actually need that? Yeah. Do I actually. Am I too cold? No. Most people wear clothes because someone told them to.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of fear. We put the fears of whatever our issues are, we put them on the children as well. Like, if grandma's immune system isn't strong anymore, then she's scared of everyone being like her. But it's different if. Same with physical weakness.

If.

If you have a sore back, then you just really don't want to get anyone else to do like. Like stone lifts or something because you're like, oh, I don't want to hurt them. That was with me with the rugby team. Like, I didn't want them to do any jumping or anything because my tenants were super sensitive. Sore knees and sore Achilles and stuff, so we didn't really jump. But now I realize, like, oh, they could have taken a lot more of that kind of work, most of them. But, yeah, we all. We all put the weaknesses on. Whatever our weaknesses are, we put them on everyone around us. Like, it's extra responsibility to improve ourselves. Yeah. Then we're less scared for everybody else. So yeah, I think it's good, good discussion. I think we should leave it there for now. But think about where you can leverage this knowledge of a specific body part. It can be a really good foundation for a business. Kadeem's done it really, really well with the knees. Like that's the whole business is based around the knees manual. Like doing something more with the neck could be really a great place to you know, push your public career and the prior private sector work forward that you can see it's something that you're passionate about that you've done quite a bit of work with.

Yeah, I mean I, I want to do something with the feed now because like in, in Germany, in the German language, like when I, when I tell people how important the feet are, young coaches always come to me and ask me but what do you do for feed training? Like, like this community, especially German speaking community, we have these people who like therapists who teach people how to walk barefoot and stuff. But they're in the SNC world. There's no one who teaches how to do, how to train feet, how to do proper feet foot training. And that's, that's one of the products I want to make available because I think ah, like a good program. There's nothing like it on the German market. Yeah, I see some stuff in the English speaking market but again that, that's something I definitely want to attack now.

Yeah, yeah. This is the, the food collective. They, the. They're Australians. They just went into the Green Bay packers in one of the other in Kansas City Chiefs or something like one of the NFL franchises. But yeah, this, I still think it's even in English. It's not, there's not too much obviously like Chongji is doing some stuff with the, the hyper arch and that but. But yeah, usually it's the same with everything. Like people fall in love with their own thing and then they're missing huge other parts of how it can be approached. We should mastermind on this. I've kind of outlined a foot product and yeah, I think it would be really cool to build out an ecosystem around that. I think it's a valuable thing. I can feel it in myself like having these feet be more stable. It's feeds everything up the chain better than it was. Always kind of on a hobbly one foot because I was scared of the Achilles and that foot, whole foot becomes deconditioned. It feels so much better to, to get it going again. A lot of people probably don't realize that they're also doing something similar to. Yeah. Just walking on wooden feet instead of something very sensitive and tuned. Yeah. We'll continue discussion. Thank you, gentlemen. Enjoy the rest.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome.