So what if rolling is just walking and Finkel is Einhorn? Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right. Very solid weekend. Hope you guys had a great one too. Time's a waste in and so we're going to dig right into today's Q&A. This comes from Mihail. Mihail has a rolling question and then it's a coincidence. Had a mentorship call this morning that was also deep into the rolling patterns as well. And so this will be kind of fun. Mehal says, I've been trying to figure out the difference between the three types of rolling patterns. Lower body initiates with the upper body follows, the upper body initiates with the lower body follows and where the trunk is kept stable and the whole body moves as a unit. And so what Mehal's trying to do, he's trying to differentiate this in regards to the type of activities that they might be related to. So he says, well, you know, if we want to improve rotational movements with the lower body initiates, he might relate that to punching or golf. The second type might be kicking, and then where we're braced, it's where we're trying to manipulate the pressures in the ribcage. And I think that we can actually make this even simpler than that. But I love the fact that you're identifying the difference in the rolling patterns themselves because there is a difference. Now, let's just talk about this grossly first as to why we want to use these rolling activities in the first place. First and foremost is we get favorable shape changes that we can't necessarily get when we're working against gravity. And so let's say, for instance, that I have a wide infrastructural angle individual, they don't turn well, they have a lot of superficial compressive strategies, and I'm trying to get the anterior posterior expansion back to allow some element of turning. And so what this does do, Because I've reduced gravity, I've reduced the active compressive strategy, and I can promote some of that expansion and turning. Now, one of the things you want to try to consider here is that when we do sideline activities in these pseudo-static positions, that all we're doing is sort of a partial rolling activity to begin with. So we're taking advantage of gravity to promote this shape change. And while it appears that these things are static, what we're actually doing is we're actually producing the ability to roll. And what you're going to see here in just a minute as a rolling is actually walking. So we're actually promoting the ability to make these turns and produce a normal movement capability against gravity.

So what we want to think about then is once we can capture the expansion, once we can capture the ability to turn, is that we're going to just bring people up from the ground and then that's how we can sort of progress the programming. Now the one constraint that we have, again, to our advantage is as we have the floor available to us and so the floor is actually going to provide us an element of a compressive strategy which allows us to shape change without having to promote more active strategy so that is one consistent constraint and we're going to take advantage of that and so assuming normal movement capabilities Most of our rolling is going to be initiated similarly. So we have to have a shape change to initiate the roll. And it's actually going to look like we're going to roll in the opposite direction when we first create the shape change. But because we don't have active muscle compression on the one side, we're actually going to fall in the direction that we're going to roll. So that gives us a little bit of an advantage there. where things get really interesting is when we start them to get over towards the side. And so this is where we're going to see the differentiation between initiating with the upper extremity versus initiating with the lower extremity. So the simplest way to look at this is, again, we look at this as a gate pattern. So if we have a lower extremity lead, this is going to move us towards early propulsion because what we're going to do is we're going to create a yielding action on the upside posterior aspect of the axial skeleton. So we're creating a delay in the axial skeleton. So again, so if you look at the photo here, we got a left posterior expansion and we're going to lead ourselves from an externally rotated orientation into an internally rotated orientation towards maximum propulsion. So if I'm lacking Propulsion or internal rotation, then I'm probably going to initiate the rolling activities with my lower extremity lead. Again, I'm trying to create the delay strategy on this upside. Obviously, I'm creating an overcoming action on the downside, so don't forget about that. Now, if I'm going to go with an upper extremity lead, now we're talking about a late propulsive strategy. So what we're creating here is an overcoming action to advance one side of the axial skeleton forward. And so if I'm moving from say maximum propulsion, from interrotation to extrotation, then this is going to be the strategy that I'm going to use because I'm lacking the ability to move through this middle through the max propulsive actions to get to the end so I can get to late, late propulsion.

If I want to create a maximum propulsion or work through the middle propulsive phase of gait, then this is where I'm going to start to use a position that is going to bias me towards internal rotation. So we're going to initiate this a little bit differently. So we're going to make sure that we have hips and shoulders at approximately 90 degrees. So right in that sticking point area that if we were upright and working through a split squat or a squat this would be this orientation. So what we need to recognize is that if we walk faster or if we sprint or at peak forces of throwing or jumping or whatever it might be, this is going to be the strategy that we're going to use. So there's less differentiation in regards to the axial skeleton here. And so everything's going to sort of move as one large block. We still have yielding and overcoming actions. It's just that the orientation is a little bit different in regard to where that expansion strategy is going to take place. So if we're rolling in this internally rotated orientation, the expansion is going to be in the posterior lower aspect of the thorax, posterior lower aspect of the pelvis to help us initiate that roll. And so again, this might be something that would show up eventually in your programming as like a kettlebell arm bar. So ultimately we're going to superimpose some load on this. We're going to get a higher threshold of output and eventually this is going to create a little bit more of a stabilized orientation of the axial skeleton. I hope this helps you a little bit. Don't ever complicate this. Look at it as how you're going to initiate a gait pattern and I think you'll find a solution here. It'll also allow you to eliminate interference. As we're trying to capture certain movement capabilities, we don't want to create interference. Again, your rolls can be consistent with your intended outcomes. Again, hope that answers your question.

And so let's represent this with a little bit of a chessboard. The chessboards get kind of ugly under these circumstances because you see a loss of just about everything. So everything is going to be in deficit. So all of our ER measures are going to be in deficit. All of our IR measures are going to be in deficit. And so when we have the loss of ER, we have the loss of IR, we're typically going to see a knee under these circumstances that is sort of stuck in a screw-home position. So we've got that tibial femoral ER. They're going to have a relatively high arch with the traditionally referred to plantar flexed first ray. This is an anterior tilt of the pelvis. And as I said, it's a tibial femoral ER at the knee. But the thing we have to represent here is that we've got a distal femoral IR and a proximal tibial ER. So there's actually a twist in the bones here that we're going to deal with. And then we've got this foot that is also following the same representation, and it's trying to represent an early propulsive foot, but it cannot get that first metatarsal head down. So we're not even there yet. So we've got a foot that's still in a compensatory position under many of these circumstances. And so the foot position is going to be a big deal as we talk about this in our approach to recover. To reiterate, if we went proximal to distal, we've got ER at the hip, IR at the knee, ER at the knee, IR at the ankle, and then we've got the same representation in the foot. So we've got a rear foot in ER, we've got a forefoot in IR. That's the plantarflexed first ray. And so you'll see the big toe getting jammed into the ground so you get a nice little fat big toe without the metatarsal head on the ground. So the way we're going to address this, because we've got the anterior tilt of the pelvis, we want to recapture that first. Now we've got a secondary problem because we've got this foot position that's going to make it very very difficult for us to capture our typical position, say in a supine hip flexion, which is probably where we want to start with, because we have this pretty significant deficit in hip flexion. So if we try to move somebody to 90 degrees of hip flexion for anything, we're already pushing them into a compensatory strategy. So what we may need to do first is mobilize the foot. So go to the video on YouTube that I did to recapture this middle propulsive foot. So we need a foot that we can push against in internal rotation because right now you got a foot that cannot do that. So you might need to mobilize the foot. You may also need to mobilize the knee.

So we might need to do some proximal tibial internal rotation mobilization to try to recapture a better knee position. This makes one of your key performance indicators knee flexion. What we really want in knee flexion is heel to butt. We're not going to be satisfied with the traditional 135 degrees of what would be considered the norm. Heel to butt flexion is going to be your ideal situation. That'd be a supine measure, by the way. You'd measure that in supine. So again, you might need some help in regards to recapturing some of these initial positions because we have to have enough internal rotation in the system to even execute our exercises to create this posterior orientation. So consider that.

So now you've set up your hook line, you drive your hook line activities, we're going to recapture even more of that posterior orientation of the pelvis, we're going to reduce the concentric orientation that was limiting our hip flexion measures. And so now we have bought ourselves some hip flexion, which is great because chances are we're going to be able to move somebody into half kneeling progressions and split stance variations because we need the knee flexion position to untwist the distal femur. So let's go back to old school physical therapy where all knee problems were blamed on a weak VMO. Well, they weren't exactly wrong. They just had the wrong concept in mind. Typically what you're going to have when you have these tibial femoral ER situations is that you've got a distal vastus lateralis that is concentrically oriented and you get a vastus medialis that is eccentrically oriented. And so that's why we've got this nice little twist going on because the VL is an internal rotator of that distal femur. VM is an external rotator muscle for the distal femur and that's what we got to recapture. So this is why we want to put people in right knee up, half kneeling activities. We're going to superimpose some rotational force onto that so we have to drive that external rotation moment a little bit harder but we're going to respect 90 degree angles so we're 90 degrees at the pelvis relative to the imaginary frontal plane to 90 degrees of hip flexion 90 degrees of knee flexion And we got to capture our foot cues. So again, we can't ignore the foot cues because again, we got to eliminate the tail wagging the dog concept. So once we do that, we can untwist the knee, use your KPI of your knee flexion as your indicator of recapturing the positions. But remember, you got a foot, you got a knee, and you've got pelvic orientation to deal with here in regards to the orientation of the knee itself. a little add-on FYI. If you're able to capture the knee position manually or through your other exercises, but you find that you're not getting those changes to stick, what you may need to do is add in some tibialis anterior retraining. So tibialis anterior tends to be eccentrically oriented when we have this tibial femoral ER situation. So we need to teach it to become more concentric as we flex the knee and extend the flex the ankle. And so we retrain this and this is going to help you manage that proximal tibial external rotation. So ways to measure your success in this circumstance. So do I get the heel to butt flexion KPI to return to what we would consider normal? Do I have a normal knee orientation or do I still have a tibial tubercle that's trying to twist hard into external rotation? So pay attention to that.

You see the little white arrow here in the picture. That literally is the tibial tubercle in its orientation of ER. I suggest you take some pictures to help you compare your befores and your afters in addition to your hip measures, your knee measures, and your foot orientation. So hopefully that guides you a little bit in regards to how you're gonna address some of these knee issues. So pelvic orientation, knee orientation, foot orientation. If you have any questions or concerns, send them to askbillhartman@gmail.com, askbillhartman@gmail.com, and I will see you guys tomorrow. If you can't run as fast or jump as high as you'd like to, blame your parents. Good morning. Happy Wednesday. I have neural coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right, Wednesday, tomorrow, 6 a.m. Thursday. Coffee and Coaches Conference call. Please join us. The last few calls have been outstanding. Big group last time. Looking forward to tomorrow morning already. All right, with that in mind, it's Wednesday, so it's always tight in the morning if we had to crank this one out. Okay. Let's go to the Q&A. This comes from Malty. I'm sorry, Malty. Malty was on the Coffee and Coaches conference call last week and she comes in with a question. She's a client that's a high-level field athlete who frequently suffers from hamstring strains and occasional hip flexor tightness. He's gone through a lot of PT with fairly inconsistent results. Is there anything I should be especially aware of in terms of his potential compensations? It seems like coaching a posterior tilt has just been beaten to death with this guy and has not much help. Okay, so we have to think about this for a second as to what being a field athlete entails. And I'm going to excuse me. I'm going to oversimplify this to a massive degree. We're talking about multifactorial issues here out the wazoo, but let's narrow this down. So I have a situation where I have to change direction, I have to accelerate, and then I have to achieve top speed. So we're going to talk about those three things. And so to do that, I have to be able to change the configuration of my pelvis to achieve these outcomes. And so let me grab the pelvis here. And so what I'm talking about is when we raise and lower the center of gravity, when we're changing direction or top speed, the pelvis actually has to change its configuration. So top speed configuration is actually going to be biased a little bit more towards what we would see in say like a narrow ISA type of thing; we're going to be biased a little bit towards that inhaled position. As I lower my center of gravity, I have to apply greater forces into the ground, I'm going to move towards that exhaled position. So my ability to move through these orientations

Now, with a field athlete, though, you're going to have a bias that's going to tilt that pelvis forward. So we'll see this in a lot of explosive and really, really fast athletes. Because they have to apply so much force into the ground, because that's where your force production is going to be, right? So we have to capture as much internal rotation as I possibly can. So if I anteriorly orient my pelvis, I can push harder into the ground. So my change of direction is better. My acceleration is better. My top speed is better. And so again, so this is one of those situations where if I just try to drive somebody into this symmetrical posterior tilt in an attempt to alleviate some measure of the so-called hip flexor tightness, you're probably gonna fail because what you're gonna end up doing is you're gonna get this full posterior orientation of the pelvis as a single unit. So we're not gonna get relative position changes that we would wanna see in regards to our performance on the field. but you're going to see a lumbar flexion substitution and this full pelvis orientation. So what I would recommend under these circumstances when you're trying to make a favorable change in these field athletes is they use something that is asymmetrical. So you're also probably going to see a lot of compressive strategies. So they're going to get that posterior lower compression. These people have limited hip flexion. And so we can't move people into even a hook line position or something where the hips will be bent 90 degrees. So we're going to start with something that's a little bit more close to full extension. And so this is where your supine cross connects come into play. It's a great place to start. We can actually use the compensatory strategy to our advantage to recapture some of the internal rotation, a.k.a. hip extension by tradition. which will alleviate some of the the pelvic orientation issues that might be producing some of the hamstring issues as well as the hip flexor tightness and then we want to move you into something that would be more like the the prone propulsive strategies and then we're going to move this upward into a standing activity where we'll go through a whole progression of A-marches, A-skips, etc. to try to teach them how to control this orientation in a dynamic environment but Malte, what your question has led me to is let's look at some structural issues that we might be able to utilize to tweak training a little bit more where we can identify these performance-related biases by physical structure. So this is actually kind of interesting. I haven't really talked about this a whole lot. So what we want to do is we want to take a look at the entire configuration of the axial skeleton.

This is not about the archetypes per se. What this is going to be is a structural relationship in physical diameter of thorax to pelvis because we have certain advantages and disadvantages based on our structure, which is why I led in with this whole comment about blame your parents for everything because they're the ones that gave you give you your structure. So if we look at the differential between a thorax and the pelvis, what we have is fluid pressure and velocity mechanics in play here. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to break this up into three. I'll give you three representations. There's more than three. But again, I'm going to use these as something to sort of get us started on this level of discussion. So let's just say that I have a thorax that is narrower in circumference than the pelvis so we're going to call this a narrow to wide configuration. What happens internally with the internal mechanics is I have a gradient bias that is downward which means that it's easier for me to push my guts downward so there's a higher velocity that's driving me into the ground right away. And what this is going to do as an athlete is that it's going to increase the duration of my ground contact times. And so that means that I'm also going to have a lesser upward velocity. So I'm going to be a little bit more challenged in that regard. It doesn't mean it can't be fast. It doesn't mean I can't perform at very, very high levels. We're talking about biases here. But what it's going to do is it's going to give me better side to side agility. It's easy for me to move the internal forces from side to side. But it's going to steal my top speed because again, for top speed you've got to be able to throw the guts up into the air as you're bouncing across the ground. It's just harder to do in this configuration. But because my ground contact times are a little bit longer, I might have good acceleration. It steals my vertical jump a little bit. Which, again, I don't know how important that is when I'm a field athlete because, again, it just depends on what type of a position player that I'm going to be. Now if we looked at this kind of in the gym, it's like, let's just take a box squat. We're going to apply this box squat to everybody. How would I bias this box squat to enhance my ability to perform on the field? I'm going to use a reverse band box. What the reverse band is going to do is it's actually going to help me accelerate those guts upwards. It's going to train me to do that. And so there's a way that you can bias the training.

So I write one training program for all my field athletes, but I can bias it directly for each individual athlete. So they benefit from this. So the reverse band is going to help me elevate the guts because that's my greatest challenge. Now if I go to a wide circumference in the thorax and a narrow circumference of the pelvis, now my gradient bias is upward. So this is gonna reduce my ground contact time, so it's gonna increase my upward velocity. So these are the people that tend to stand out as athletes because what this does is it does give me better top speed. I have a lesser acceleration, but because my top speed is so good, I tend to make up for the lack of acceleration. So these people look good under almost every circumstance. They don't have as great a change of direction like our person with the wider relative circumference of the pelvis. But once again, it's like they just make up for it with top speed. If I want to apply this in the gym and I'm writing my program and everybody's doing a box squat that day, I'm going to have this guy just do a regular good old box squat. The basic premise here is you've got somebody that has a configuration that makes them an outstanding athlete. By most people's perspective, just don't screw them up. So now let's take a look at somebody that is a wide circumference of the thorax and a wide circumference of the pelvis. Now in this situation, I have a relative similarity between the upper and lower part of the axial skeleton. So I don't have a gradient bias where I would see the velocity changes internally that I would see with the other two configurations. So what this means is that I got a guy that can probably produce a heck of a lot of force, but it takes him time to do so. So again, this guy is going to be a guy that is really good at moving other people around. He can produce a lot of force. He doesn't get moved around a lot in and of himself. But because he needs more time to produce the force, he's not the fastest guy on the field. He might be still a great athlete, but again, he's not going to have the greatest vertical jump. He's not going to have great top speed. He's not going to have great acceleration. But again, he's a great positional person. Under these circumstances, what I want to do is I want to teach this guy to throw his guts up as much as he possibly can. So if I take this guy into the gym, what I'm gonna do with this box squat under these circumstances is I'm gonna do a bandit squat because what I wanna do is I wanna teach him to create the rebound of the guts off that the pelvic outlet as much as possible to create as much force as I can in the shortest possible amount of time. And so hopefully that gives you an idea of how this structural stuff actually does influence the level of performance. And all we have to do is understand how these influences affect top speed, acceleration, changes of direction, and we can tweak programs to individualize it for their physical structure.

So if I take this guy into the gym, what I'm going to do with this box squat under these circumstances is I'm going to do a bandit squat because what I want to do is I want to teach him to create the rebound of the guts off the pelvic outlet as much as possible to create as much force as I can in the shortest possible amount of time. And so hopefully that gives you an idea of how this structural stuff actually does influence the level of performance. And all we have to do is understand how these influences affect top speed, acceleration, changes of direction, and we can tweak programs to individualize it for their physical structure. If you have any other questions, please send them to askbillhartman at gmail.com, askbillhartman at gmail.com. Tomorrow, Coffee and Coaches Conference call, and I will see you guys then at 6 a.m. See ya. Good morning. Happy Thursday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect.

When we're talking about the movement of the shoulder, I know we've talked about shoulder flexion. It goes from ER to IR to ER again. Does that same pattern hold when you're moving laterally? Like when you're raising your arm like this way? Like are you starting from ER to IR to ER again?

Yeah. So again, we're talking about shape change and space. But I can take away that space anytime you want just by shape. So there will always be transitions from ERs to IRs depending on where you are. So if you're doing a jerk, if you've got the bar overhead and a jerk, is the shoulder an ER or IR?

When you're overhead, your IR should be IR. But isn't that shoulder flexion? It is. Yeah, so this is the flexion plus.

Well, it's traditional and range shoulder flexion. But it is an IR position under those circumstances, isn't it? That's what's supposed to happen. See, that's the shape change that I'm talking about. It's like, so you can't say, oh, it goes, it goes, E-R-I-R, E-R, because it doesn't. It depends on the context. It depends on the shape change. So if you watch, if you take a freeze frame of an Olympic weight lifter in the profile view, side view, as they complete the jerk, their head is in front of their shoulder girdle. Right? Yeah. The weight is over the shoulder girdle and their sternum is expanded forward. Because if you don't do that, where does the bar go, Manuel? You probably lose it in front. Yes, exactly. Because there's nothing under the bar, right? So how do I create stuff under the bar? I take both scaps. I compress them against the posterior thorax. I shove you forward. I internally rotate. That's my force producing position, right? I'm producing force up into the barbell. So I'm turning inward. I'm eye-erring. My head's going to go forward because I'm compressing dorsal rostral. I am pushing the lower cervical spine forward and I'm pulling my head back in response to that, but I have to have the expansion anteriorly one because I need IR and I need space. I need an expansive thorax underneath the bar to stack the weight on top of. Otherwise, I can't do it. So again, it's like, when you say, is it the same? It's like, okay, what are we doing? What's the shape that we're creating? How much load is there? If I'm in a, you know what a T pushup is? It's like a, it's like a side plank where your, you know, arms are out to the sides and you're doing the, you know, like, like you go from push-up position and you rotate into the, to the side plank. It's like, how much expansion do you have there on that loaded side? Not very much because there's a lot of pressure there, which means I have to IR that, but if I'm laying on the table and I can expand, then maybe I have a little bit of ER there too, that's going to allow me to move into horizontal abduction. So that's why we can't, that's why I am so adamant about killing this arc concept, right? Which is probably my fault because I drew it on a white board, which is two dimensional. And so everybody says, oh, it's a flat plane and it's an arc. No, it's a space that moves depending on what shape you are.

You probably lose it in front.

Yes, exactly. Because there's nothing under the bar, right? So how do I create stuff under the bar? I take both scaps. I compress them against the posterior thorax. I shove you forward. I internally rotate. That's my force producing position, right? I'm producing force up into the barbell. So I'm turning inward. I'm internally rotating. My head's going to go forward because I'm compressing dorsal rostral. I am pushing the lower cervical spine forward and I'm pulling my head back in response to that, but I have to have the expansion anteriorly one because I need IR and I need space. I need an expansive thorax underneath the bar to stack the weight on top of. Otherwise, I can't do it. So again, it's like, when you say, is it the same? It's like, okay, what are we doing? What's the shape that we're creating? How much load is there? If I'm in a, you know what a T pushup is? It's like a, it's like a side plank where your, you know, arms are out to the sides and you're doing the, you know, like, like you go from push-up position and you rotate into the, to the side plank. It's like, how much expansion do you have there on that loaded side? Not very much because there's a lot of pressure there, which means I have to IR that, but if I'm laying on the table and I can expand, then maybe I have a little bit of ER there too, that's going to allow me to move into horizontal abduction. So that's why we can't, that's why I am so adamant about killing this arc concept, right? Which is probably my fault because I drew it on a white board, which is two dimensional. And so everybody says, oh, it's a flat plane and it's an arc. No, it's a space that moves depending on what shape you are.

Right, yeah, so I was just thinking, okay, if you're moving this way, then you'd expect to see the same pattern.

Yeah, it's like relatively speaking, you are correct that you're going to have these ER and IR spaces assuming you have the ability to change the shape. But if I alter the context of the activity, the minute I induce load into the situation where I am having to produce force, where I'm having to compress, my biases can change or they are reduced. The minute I put a bunch of load in your hands, my ER space starts to compress, which means that I will be biased towards internal rotation under most of those circumstances because I have to squeeze myself to produce that force.

You always say that to access internal rotation, you need external rotation, but if you compress a lot, you lose the external rotation bias and you get internal rotation. So how do you move under loads? If you lose that, if you need it to access this, like if I want to squat heavy, I still need external rotation, right? But if I load, I will lose my external rotation. So do you think that automatically when you want to do heavy things, you have to get substitutions? And you can't get, I don't know how if I express myself well.

So under certain circumstances, yes, there will be substitutions. We kind of just talked about it when we talk about, OK, so when you see somebody that does a traditional deadlift versus a sumo deadlift. The sumo positions the sockets outward to face out, which is a substitution for relative motion external rotation. That allows me to capture an internal rotation to produce force against the ground so I can lift the weight.

Yes.

That allows me to capture an internal rotation to produce force against the ground so I can lift the weight.

OK.

OK. But that's not relative motion. That is a compensation to allow me to do something in internal rotation that I don't have enough room for. You ever see somebody try to squat with a barbell and they can't break parallel and then you move their feet out and then they can break parallel? So all you did was you created a substitution for their lack of extra rotation. So you turn the system outward, not relative motion. Okay. It's a compensatory strategy. And now they have, they have an expanded field. So that's why I say it's a field. It's a space around you where extra rotation can exist. And then you can access the internal rotation that you need to lift the weight.

Yes.

So all you did was you created a substitution for their lack of extra rotation. So you turn the system outward, not relative motion. It's a compensatory strategy. And now they have an expanded field. So that's why I say it's a field. It's a space around you where extra rotation can exist. And then you can access the internal rotation that you need to lift the weight.

So, relative motions only happen in an unloaded environment.

I wouldn't say unloaded. I would say that there's a threshold that you would have to cross where you would start to lose it. If I pick up my pen, that's loaded, technically speaking, and it's a really extreme example. This doesn't stop my relative motion because the load doesn't challenge me. However, if my pen weighed 40 pounds, I might have to change my strategy.

And would your strengths influence that? I mean, if, for example, a male has a relative motion, it will need more weight before losing the relative motions.