The other day in the Foot Awareness we talked about being aware what our feet are doing. Faults such as walking “duck footed” or having a collapsed arch (AKA “navicular drop”) is is important for running economy, but also lifting technique. Either way it’s important because if the mechanics aren’t efficient, then more energy is consumed to accomplish the same task. Solid mechanics will utilize less energy, therefore you can run faster or lift more weight with the same energy and effort.

If you have either of the above problems, then the first thing to do is learn awareness of what is wrong and what is right. If your toes are habitually rotated out, then make it a point to walk and stand with them forward. If your toes have been habitually pointed out, then it’s likely that the arch is habitually collapsed. While standing with your toes pointed forward, shift your weight from your normal collapsed position (which is the inside of the foot) to the outside of the foot. Take note of where your knee shifts to when you do this (it will externally rotate slightly). Use this video as a guide if you’re confused. This new position is your habitual goal. To help learn it, do a set of at least 20 contractions shifting your weight from the inside to the outside of the foot. This will use tire some of the muscles in the foot and shank to help learn positional awareness.

Now that you are aware of this new position, you need to walk on it. Make it a point to walk with the toes forward and on the outside of your foot. It will feel very funny and you’ll find that you often forget to do it. For example, my right foot (the problematic one) will revert back to its collapsed position when I take a piss. After several weeks of paying attention to keeping the force application on the outside of my foot, I’ve shifted my focus to the distal end of the metatarsals of the “middle” and “ring” toes — it’s the lateral portion of the ball of the foot. This maintains the proper arch and knee position, but it’s overly emphasizing the lateral portion of the foot.

The first set of drills I want to bring to your attention are Russ Ebbets foot drills. These simple, non-equipment drills take about four minutes to complete. In the article, Russ has this to say:

Done daily these six drills will eliminate shin splints, Achilles’ tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, lessen the chance of a severe ankle sprain and virtually all knee problems. The famous Rice Study done in the early 90s found that 79% of running injuries are from the knee down. One of the reasons I had successful teams is that my athletes made it to the competition day healthy and ready to compete. Season after season was completed with virtually no injuries.

Intriguing. I’ve started doing these drills every day and can definitely understand their utility. Whether you want or need to run, sprint, ruck, or move on your feet, they can help. You’ll feel various parts of your lower leg working that typically don’t get any specific work, and some of the drills will even have an effect all the way up through the hips. The six drills are based on three variations of movement: lateral change in the ankle (inversion/eversion), rotation of the hip (external/internal rotation), and frontal action of the hip (plantar/dorsi flexion).


The first drill focuses on inversion and eversion. Be sure to walk with a controlled “heel to toe” when doing all of these drills as it will have more of an effect on the muscles of the foot compared to stepping down with a flat foot. The eversion drill will probably show you how bad your eversion mobility is; a lack of eversion will make it difficult to shove the knees out. If you’ve ever noticed that shoving your knees out lifts the inside of your foot off the ground, then you probably need to improve your lateral ankle mobility.


These two drills will force stretching and contraction in the hip. You’ll feel like an idiot doing it, but you’ll also feel work throughout your hips. Remember to maintain the “heel to toe” walk.


I didn’t feel much when I did the “walking backwards on the toes” drill, although it helped warm-up my calf and achilles. However the dorsi-flexion “walking on the heels” will force contraction in the tibialis anterior, or the front of the shin.

Keep in mind that these drills aren’t a quick fix to any foot or ankle issues. They should be utilized daily to gradually improve the lower leg structures, but they can be used as a warm-up for running or sprinting. They will help improve the awareness of the foot’s articulation with the ground which will only improve mechanical efficiency in locomotion.

All of the attention spent on changing walking gait and doing these easy exercises may produce some soreness in the arch or lower leg. In future posts we’ll get into more drills, exercises, and mobility, but in the mean time just work a lacrosse ball over your arch to alleviate some tension.

Happy PR Friday
Post your weekly PR’s or training updates to the comments. Be on the lookout for a nice Christmas post this weekend. Happy Festivus in the mean time!

Kyle S. asks on the Facebook Fan Page:
What are some cues I should keep in mind for teaching my wife (or anyone) to high bar squat? I’ve looked on YouTube but I never know who is full of shit.

Dear Kyle,

I briefly answered this in the wall thread, but figured it would be good for others to hear too. Irre-fucking-gardless of type of squat, the knees need to be shoved out. This will prevent hip impingement — a pinching of the femur and the ASIS (hip bone) that can prevent full ROM, prevent the lumbar from maintaining extension, and can pinch tissues like skin, fat, tendons, or muscles. There’s no point in explaining it further when a comprehensive article has already been written. So “knees out” is an important cue for any squatting, including the high bar squat.

The chest also needs to be up so that the thoracic spine is held in extension from the time the bar is un-racked until it is re-racked. I’ve been meaning to do a post on this for a while, because I see a lot of you fucking it up. Think “chest into chin”, which is the cue that means, “pull your chest up as high as you can, as if you were going to try and touch your chin without actually lowering the chin”.

The eyes need to be forward. Some look up, but this puts the cervical spine in extension and I’m not a fan of that. Eyes straight ahead will help maintain proper positioning throughout the entire spine.

Those last two things (the chest and eyes) are passive cues — the lifter shouldn’t have to think about them at all because they should be automatic every time. Assuming “knees out”, “chest to chin”, and the eye positioning is all correct (or at least the passive cues are automatic), then “heels” can be cued. That’s the cue to imply “drive the heels out of the bottom” in order to prevent any forward torso inclination during the ascent as a result of shifting the weight to the balls of the feet.

And for fuck’s sake, if you’re trying to high bar squat without weightlifting shoes then that’s the first thing to correct. Here’s the gear post.

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Here are some vids to entertain you before tomorrow’s Q&A post.

This is a great vid of Donny Shankle lifting. He jerks from blocks all the way up to 225kg, then hang clean and jerks up to 200kg (the latter is a PR). Then there’s some good fun after all that — watch until the end.

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My mate in Australia, Shannon Green (owner of Warrior Performance – website and Facebook fan page), competes in strongman with his mates Stuart and Shane. They are all great guys. Shannon is a real sharp guy and has spent a lot of time studying many different aspects of physical performance. He has made, collected, or bought the majority of the implements he would need for strongman training, and I asked him to throw together some information on how to train for it.

Check out this video from when Tom and I visited Shannon’s training dungeon.

This first post pertains to what strongman is and what some basic requirements are. A second post will put it all together into a programming template.
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Movement on Earth is dependent on articulation with the ground. Human locomotion occurs because our body applies force with the feet into the ground and all motion, athletics, and training are dependent on how efficiently this occurs. Despite fast improvements in performance in recent history, there has been an equal increase in dysfunction in the average body.

Duck Footed
I’ve always hated when people walk duck footed because it looks lazy, unnatural, and inefficient. I’ve noticed that I see it a lot in people who don’t have an athletic background. Dancers often do it because they are taught to be externally rotated in the hip constantly. It often results in collapsing the arch via ‘navicular drop’– the navicular is just a bone behind the base of the big toe on the inside of the foot and this term merely means it has dropped to the floor because of a lack of an arch (see picture below). Going barefoot or wearing flip flops a lot can also cause arch issues. Walking duck footed, or externally rotated in the hip, can also result in excessive loading of the hips instead of distributing the load evenly throughout the entire leg, hip, and trunk.


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