Today’s episode features Irish biomechanics specialist, David Grey.  David is highly integrative, and has been influenced by many of the top minds in the world as he creates solutions to get clients to fix their movement, get out of pain, and in turn run and perform better.

I’m not sure what got me turned onto David’s videos on Instagram (where I first found him), but as soon as I started watching them, I instantly realized that something special was happening based on these other guests I’ve had and what David was doing, and I could tell his work had many ties to previous guests such as Gary Ward and Adarian Barr.  David has been strongly influenced by Gary, as well as having learned under a number of great mentors in the world of movement, S&C, gymnastics, stretching & mobility, Chinese martial arts and biomechanics.

Today’s episode is all about pronation, the feet and an integrated view of biomechanics and muscle action.   David’s specialty is restoring pronation to the foot (and the body, since pronation is a full body action).  It was actually a video of Will Claye triple jumping that he commented on regarding the pronation that was happening that was the last straw in me knowing I had to get David on the show.

Once you understand pronation, it’s like you just took the red pill in the Matrix, and everything and every way you look at things like weightlifting and sprint drills all change.  On today’s show, we talk about the mechanics and restoration of pronation, toe gripping, training the hands, foot differentiation, co-contractions, and also David’s take on the “stable/mobile” joint idea.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.

 

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Key Points

What’s drew David’s interest to the foot, his background, and his mentors in the field

The dynamics of pronation, and how David observes this when athletes run and jump

The adverse effects of toe gripping in squatting and running

Methods to get pronation back in athletes

How to train the hands for better upstream performance

Foot differentiation and how the forefoot and rearfoot work in opposition

David’s take on stable-mobile joint paradigms

Co-contractions in athletic performance

David Grey Quotes

“Pronation is where all three arches of the foot are flattening to the floor at the same time.  Pronation is a full body movement”

“(Delayed knee extension) is a big thing”

“Knee extension is a supination movement”

“If the knee comes back too early, you can’t pronate, everyone out there is obsessed with extension, triple extension, and all I want to do with any lower limb injury with anyone is delay knee extension as long as possible”

“Your pronation is done once that knee has started to straighten”

“(Early) knee extension is putting the hip to end range very early, and gives the glute no room left to work”

“The glutes work from internally rotated to externally rotated; if you want (functional) glutes, stop going from neutral”

“There’s a mental block with people towards pronation”

“I have no problem with squatting or anything in the gym, but as soon as it messes up your biomechanics, you’re done”

“If you are squatting heavy, you don’t want to be pronating very much; you don’t want the knee coming miles inside, you want the bones stacked on top of each other.  That’s not pushing the knees miles out, that’s just being neutral”

“Gripping the ground with your toes it not a stable base, the head of your first metatarsal is off the floor”

“Toes are just a brake…. Gary (Ward) says the toes are like the last line of defense”

“People will be racing into the forefoot, and then their toes have to grip, they have no choice”

“Gripping that toes is not an arch, that’s just a sagittal plane movement,