SPEAKER_02 0:00–2:50
Let's rethink the performance foot. Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neuro coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right, almost as perfect as the Intensive 12 went this weekend. It was fabulous. Had a great group of people in there. The neural coffee was flowing. Questions were great. The model evolved. We talked about things that we'd never talked about before at any previous Intensive, so that was really, really cool. I am looking forward to Intensive 13 so much. I think we had about five weeks. We're about five weeks out from that. So again, looking forward to that. We'll probably get one done in August. I'll let you guys know about the dates on that one. Quick housekeeping. IFAS University. We have a Q&A call on Zoom at 1pm Eastern Standard Time. So don't forget about that. If you are not signed up for IFAS University, I suggest you do it very, very quickly so you can join us on that call. So over the weekend, obviously very busy with the intensive, dug into the Q&A email and there was a foot question in there and we talked about feet over the weekend. So I thought it'd be really cool to do an encore presentation of the performance foot video that we did way back in November. Very, very useful in regards to perspective and some really good information to sort of get you to look at feet just a little bit differently. So we're gonna cut away to that here in just a second. If you would like to participate in a 15 minute consultation or you have a question, go to askbillhartman at gmail.com and leave me a question there or put 15 minute consultation in the subject line and we'll arrange a call at our mutual convenience. Everybody have an outstanding Monday. We will cut away to the performance foot video here in just a second and I will see you tomorrow with a little bit of perspective on the performance related foot because I think it's still a little bit of a challenge for people because of some of the biases that have been created over time and some of the perspectives as to what constitutes a good performance foot versus one that is interference. And so I want us to look at this thing differently. Now, let me preface everything that I'm about to say is that performance is multifactorial. There are so many potential influences here. It's not just a foot thing. The foot is one part, but we're gonna talk about it in isolation to give you a little bit of perspective. So the things that you also probably need to consider is like, okay, what kind of an archetype are we dealing with? What are some of the proportional issues in physical structure. So the size of your thorax relative to the size of your pelvis is an influence in performance. Your proportions as far as you know the length of your axial skeleton to the length of the appendicular skeleton is an influence. Your force-to-weight ratio etc etc etc. So so again let's let's keep this in perspective, okay? The first thing we want to do then is we want to review a little bit about the simplified foot model. So we're going to go through the phases of this foot position. So our traditional heel rocker would represent this early propulsive phase. So as I bring the medial calcaneus to the ground and I get the forefoot to the ground and the toes are extended, the tibia is still behind the foot. So this is an ER position. So I still have an arch and I've got an ER tibia relative to the foot. And so that's my early propulsive foot. As I move through middle, this is where the arch is going to move down towards the ground. So this is your traditional pronation. This is tibial interrotation. So this is a lower arch. Now, here's the key element of this that I want you to understand is that the maximum force into the ground is that maximum pronation. And where that is, max propulsion is just as that medial calcaneus re-brakes from the ground and so this is actually a low position of the arch because right after that I'm going to get a bunch of concentric orientation on the plantar aspect of the foot. This is what they traditionally call that windlass effect and I'm going to crank that sucker back into an externally rotated position right and that is traditionally considered this high propulsive foot with the force application came just prior to that. And so this is the demonstration of what happens after that force production. And so when we talk about a performance related foot, this is why we're going to see lower arches on a lot of these really, really high performance. And so people look at these feet, and they go, oh, these are really crappy feet because pronation has always been described as this accommodative foot position, which is not untrue. But the highest force production also happens in maximum pronation. So that's where our max propulsion is. So when we look at feet like this, it can be a little confusing as to why we would see these low arches. But what they're actually doing is it's a time saver that allows these athletes to get to maximum propulsion much faster than what we would consider our non-athletic population. So that's what they're representing. Now, we've got some subtle differences between these low arched feet as well that we can talk about. If we have someone that is closer to maximum propulsion than, say, another athlete, what you're typically going to see under these circumstances is you'll see, if we were to make a comparison in performance, we would see a better broad jump than vertical jump. So it doesn't mean they're bad vertical jumpers, it just means that as a representation of where they perform the best, they are better at horizontal projection because they are so much closer to maximum propulsion than another athlete would be. And so they'll have the quicker first step. They'll have great acceleration. But what you're going to measure, to throw them on the table, they're going to be biased more towards external rotation. So remember, as I break that foot, I get this concentric orientation that's going to move me quicker towards the ER. So what happens is they have a reduced yielding strategy, which again, that dampens their ability to produce a vertical jump, but it also improves their horizontal projection. They're going to have limited hip flexion. They'll probably have a limited straight leg raise, et cetera, that's associated with this extra rotation bias and a reduced yielding strategy. If I move you back just slightly from max propulsion, I have now just increased the amount of time that you have between where you are as a representation of your center of gravity and maximum propulsion. So in doing so now, I've actually increased the time that you have to produce a yielding strategy. These are the people that will have a better vertical jump than broad jump as a representation. But they're going to be a little bit slower in regards to change of direction. But they're going to have better top speed because their vertical projections are better. They're going to have slightly less external rotation bias. So they're going to have a little bit more of an internal rotation capability than, say, our guys that are better horizontal projectors. And so they'll have a little bit better hip flexion, a little bit better straight leg raise. So if we look at a couple representations of feet, I'll try to show you the subtle little difference. So what we have right there is a pair of feet that can run a 4-4-40. So he is very, very good at acceleration. He is very, very good at change of direction. So this is a Division I football player, and he played four years of high level Division I football. This other representation right here it looks very very similar but this is a better vertical jumper than a horizontal projector and so this is actually a very very high level basketball player and so he's got a better vertical jump than horizontal projection and and so again subtle differences as to how close these guys are to to their maximum propulsion phase. Now, let me show you another pair of feet that don't jump very well and not very fast, but also on a very high level basketball player. So this individual has a much higher arch. He has positioned much more into an earlier phase, so he's a little bit slower. He doesn't jump as high and he's not as fast. It doesn't mean that he can't play high level basketball. It just means that he's going to rely on other things. This person also happens to be exceptionally tall. And so again, we have all of these representations. So again, everything's multifactorial from a performance perspective. There are many different ways that these people can perform. But what we want to start to think about is like, okay, I have these different feet. They're going to be better at different things. And it is one element that supports this high level of performance. Now, let's take this into the clinic. So I can take these same concepts and I can start to look at my, quote unquote, normal people from a very, very similar perspective. So when I see a pair of feet that might be more pronated, so the arch is lower to the ground, I might have this person that is struggling with gravity. And so they're in a situation where they're constantly producing a higher force into the ground because they're just not managing gravity as well. He will have the compensatory strategies that we'll typically see. He'll have a lot of concentric muscle orientation, and therefore a lot of limitations in range of motion. Under those circumstances, we probably want to move him away from maximum propulsion to give him the capacity to move through his extra rotation to intro rotation strategies, and this allows him to move away from the ground to reduce the concentric orientation and then restore a lot more of the active range of motion that he's missing. So again, it's just a matter of perspective of what we're looking at, but feet are always a great representation of this. They're very confirming as far as some of your measures that you're going to find up the chain, so to speak. So some of your top-down influences are going to be represented in the feet. If you can't manage this from a top-down influence, then it may be it is time to do something about this at the foot. So maybe this is your manual therapies for the foot. Maybe this is selecting activities that are specifically designed to improve the representation of sensation from the ground up. Maybe this is the person that you put in an orthotic as a solution to give them the capacity of adaptability. Performance is an intentional reduction of adaptability to create a higher level of output. Whereas when we're trying to make people more adaptable, such as the rehab situation, now we need to take away some of that reduction in adaptability, restore it to give them the ability to rest, reduce concentric orientation and then restore ranges of motion.
performance footfoot mechanicspronationpropulsionadaptability