You’ve probably heard about knee valgus, aka “knock knees“, i.e knees caving inward towards big toes.
I don’t like the word “normal”…
Valgus refers to the tibia (shin bone) leaning inward towards the big toe. See pic on the far right, above.
If you had my education, the thought of letting your knees go valgus makes you throw up in your mouth a bit. Even the word “valgus” kinda sounds gross, doesn’t it??
Most of us have been indoctrinated with the belief that valgus is bad, and causes knee pain, and you’re not going to biomechanical heaven if your knees go in (because biomechanics are a moral issue, didn’t you know?).
While there is truth that valgus knees may not be optimal for an individual, it is not an inherently “bad” movement, and there is a time and place we need it. Like, when our knees bend while we walk (more on that coming up).
But what about someone stuck in knee VARUS?
A knee that pushes out (varus) at the wrong time, place, and magnitude can be just as problematic as a knee that leans in. So this blog post is dedicated to my journey restoring healthy knee valgus into my life.
Why so much focus on preventing knee valgus?
When I was in my early twenties, a young and naiive personal trainer learning about exercise technique, I thought letting your knee go inward was BAD.
I remember consciously walking up stairs pushing my knees out. This made me feel morally superior to all the knee-valgusing, biomechanically not “woke” gym-goers who were obviously going to ruin their knees, and their lives.
Well… I’ve changed my mind about that.
Because I have a right knee stuck with a varus angle that is giving me trouble, and I’ve found some useful movements to *gasp* help it go into valgus.
But first…
What should your knees be doing, ideally, when you walk?
Here’s the ideal mechanical relationship we should see in gait (normal walking) at your knees:
Knee bends (flexion) = tibia rotates in towards big toe (goes toward valgus from upright)
Knee straightens (extension)= tibia returns back upright (moves toward varus from valgus)
Think of it like a pendulum going from one end of the spectrum to the other: Varus–> center –> valgus –> center–> varus, and on and on and on…
And if you have a minute, behold the fascinating phenomenon of pendulum synchronization
At the risk of going too far down a biomechanical rabbit-hole, if you just want to move and feel better without hurting your brain about it, here’s the kneed to know (see what I did there??):
If your knee bends and goes valgus, but then stays that way when you extend it again, no bueno.
However, a knee that doesn’t get into valgus when you bend it, i.e. stays in varus, is also no beuno.
Below is a video of me walking on June 8th, 2022. Watch my right tibia. Can you see how it stays more varus than my left? That’s the side I have hip, SIJ, and foot issues.
Now, in the spirit of movement detectivery, we ought to assess what actually happens when YOU bend and straighten your knees.
World’s simplest knee assessment
You can easily assess whether your knees are going into varus or valgus with a simple lunge test. Try it out, it will take you 1 min:
So… What did you observe about your lunge assesment?
Does one, or both knees push out over your pinky toe (varus)? Then you might like to show your knees an experience of valgus.
Does one, or both knees collapse wayyy inward, and you feel wobbly, and the outside edge of your foot lifts off the floor? That may be too much valgus, and that’s not the topic of today’s exploration.
In a perfect world, we’re looking to see the tip of your knee cap point in towards yoru big toe, but the tibia remain relatively vertical, not push out, not way in, when you bend your knee.
In fact, the knee tipping inward we want to see ought to be more by virtue of the ribia rotating inwards, like a barber pole, not like the leaning otwer of Pisa falling over.
If you had one or both knees pushing OUT into varus, check out the next three videos. They may help you explore some new, exciting valgusing.
Reclaim your valgus
DISCALIMER: The following three videos show what I’ve personally been working on to intentionally, and gently, give my right knee the experience of valgus again. They may or may not feel right for You. If anything feels unsafe or incorrect for you, please don’t force your body to do these movements.
STEP 1: Gently guide the knee into valgus and flexion, non-weightbearing
STEP 2: Start to weightbear into leg with valgus
STEP 3: Fully weightbearing on a healthy valgus knee
As always, we want to introduce new movement, like knee valgus, respectfully, not forcefuly pushing our knees in at 11/10 intensity. I’m using about 10% total body effort.
Give these assessments and movements a go if it feels right for your body, and let me know what you experience š
I originally posted these videos on my Instagram page. I know… social media is the devil. But I sometimes post things there when I’ve discovered something useful in my biomechanical detectivery that I feel worth sharing, in the chance it may be of some small benefit to you as well š Find me on IG @monvolkmar
Want to learn more about knees (and your whole body) in gait?
If you enjoy my style of biomechanical exploration, I invite you to dive in deeper in my online course Liberated Body.
This is a 4 lesson movement workshop that guides you through how your body moves, and helps you identify and restore the joint motions your body is missing from your gait cycle that could be keeping you from moving, performing and feeling your best.
On day 2 (foot day) we talk more about how the knees should ideally move in harmony with the feet, i.e.- The importance of being able to pronate and supinate well.
Is your back issue coming from your foot? Or is your foot issue coming from your back? Ain’t no way to know until we assess! This blog post is dedicated to investigating this chicken-or-egg question.
Scroll down a little more to join me in a fantastic biomechanical nerd-out š
This blog post is for you if you currently have a stiff spine, stiff foot, long time back issue, old foot injury, all of the above, or are just curious about how to get your body moving more efficiently by learning about the movement relationship between your feet and spine.
You are more than the sum of your parts
I know you know this already, but it cannot be repeated enough: The body is a beautifully connected whole system, and should be considered for the whole that it is, not reduced to individual parts operating in isolation from each other.Ā
One of my online students (a musician) recently wrote to me about how useful it has been, through doing my sessions regularly, to become more aware of all the various connections between her body parts in motion.
Like understanding that if you canāt move your big toe THIS way, then your hip is going to be restricted going THAT way, and maybe that’s why your left shoulder feels janky.Ā
Janky: Junk + cranky. Technical term (which I stole from a client of mine, in reference to her janky shoulder).Ā
I love discovering connections in the body, too.Ā It really lights me up because it always leads to better flowing movement and less pain. This is the magic we tap into in studying Anatomy in Motion: How everything needs to coordinate with everything else for ideal gait.
But its not magic. Its biomechanics.
In the words of my wonderful mentor Gary Ward, creator of Anatomy in Motion: “Look for things that don’t move that give permission for other things to.”
That adds an additional layer of nuance to the stretch and strengthen conversation, doesn’t it??
And on this note, Iād like to share with you a series of video clips from my most recent Movement Deep Dive session: Foot-Spine Connections.Ā
As the name alludes to, this session’s investigative mission is to learn if there is a discombobulated relationship between the movement of your feet and spine that could be keeping your body stuck moving inefficeintly through each footstep, with discomfort or whatever jankiness youāre aware of in your body.
Understanding this foot-spine connection is extremely useful when we are working on helping our bodies move and feel better with less pain, because it helps us to become aware of how the causative root of a foot issue could be your spine, or visa versa.
This helps us to make better informed choices about what we can focus on in our movement practices, instead of just trying random stuff and hoping for the best.
And so on that note, please enjoy these 4 snippets from the Foot-Jaw Connections Movement Deep Dive.Ā
I hope youāll be able to learn a little about how your feet and spine are moving, and how to restore ideal mechanics between the two structures to put more flow in each footstep.Ā
Foot-Jaw Connections
So, how did stuff go? Did you discover anything new and useful?Ā I’d love to hear how this little bit of movement detectivery went for you. Please write me a comment below if you’d like to share.
Obviously there is more to explore than this… But I hope to inspire you to use this way of thinking in all your movement endeavours. Think outside the box. Think of your body as more than the sum of it’s parts. Just… Think ;).
In the full session, we also explore new ways of moving that connect your feet and spine with each other to restore a more harmonious, flowing relationship. But I canāt share EVERYTHING for free, because this is capitalist America.Ā
If you’d like to see the full 50ish minute movement deep dive session and participate along, you can find it listed HERE, along with some other faves, for $20 each.
Have you heard of the “Leaning Tower of South Padre”?
Ocean Tower.It’s not a happy story.
Officially named Ocean Tower, the unfortunate story of this premium condo building can teach us a lot about having a sustainable movement practice. Like, one that doesn’t lead to self-destruction and cost millions of dollars.
Ocean Tower was supposed to be awesome. 31 stories high. A sweet view of the Gulf of Mexico. Complete with gym, pool, and spa. Each unit would sell for ~$2 million USD. Except for one teenie tniy issue…
The foundation was shite.
In 2008, two years after constructions began, the building started to sink and lean. The whole thing shifted more than a foot. The official explanation was that the parking garage and the tower were mistakenly built connected, forcing the weight down upon the garage instead of on the towerās core walls. There was also something not quite right with the soil quality.
In 2009, Ocean Tower was demolished because fixing the foundation would have been too costly.
Many of us are like Ocean Tower.
How’s YOUR foundation?
Hello, I am the Leaning Tower of Monika (by Lake Ontario). Built in 1989 on a shoddy foundation that began to sink and shift significantly enough to require a massive, costly overhaul by 2012.
Fortunately unlike Ocean Tower, I don’t have to abandon the project and self-destruct. I can focus on rebuilding the foundation I never had.
And so can you. And I will argue that this is where most of us don’t spend enough timewhen we have problems with pain and performance.
What do I mean by foundation?
Check out this quick excerpt from my latest Liberated Body (part 2!) workshop:
Your foundation is made up of the most basic building blocks of movement we humans can do- must be able to do, for higher level activities. The individual joint motions that, when combined correctly, become the raw material for all other movement patterns.
How well-built is your foundation? Are you missing any building blocks?
I had some foundational issues from the start:
I didn’t crawl (mom says I just wiggled “like a seal”)
I stood up and walked before 12 months
I hit my head a few times when I was very young
And those are only the things I KNOW about.
No crawling means my hip joints didn’t get to properly develop. In my infant body’s perception, I had a clump of feet-legs-pelvis-spine that couldn’t differentiate (kind of like Ocean Tower’s garage, mistakenly connected to the building’s core).
Standing up before 12 months isn’t an achievement. I didn’t “beat” the other babies in the standing race. Standing early is like ignoring Ocean Tower’s foundation problem, but saying, “fuck it, we can skip a few steps and get this tower up on time, it’ll probably be ok”.
Wrong.
And interestingly, skipping steps to get things done as fast as possible is kind of how I’ve lived my whole life. But that’s a tangent I won’t go down.
Are you searching for solutions for body problems, but feel like something’s missing? It might be something in your foundation, so basic it’s been overlooked.
Functional movement, strength training, and other modalities to educate our bodies how to “move better” and get out of pain might initially feel good. But for life-long sustainability, we need to know if we are missing any of our fundamental movement building blocks.
We all are. It’s just a matter of which ones.
Your Most Basic Movement Building Blocks
Do you like this drawing I made?
Excellent art by me š I drew this for my Liberated Body workshop participants last week
The lower two tiers are where I LOVE to play.
The building blocks: Primary motor responses (infant reflexes) and adult joint mechanics (upright gait).
When we get the foundation set right, everything above can fall into place with minimal effort.
Foundation level 1: Primary motor responses in utero
We start building our foundation from the moment we are a wee blob of cells implanted to mom’s uterine wall. Possibly even before that. And we don’t get much say in how this plays out.
In our cozy watery environment, we spend 9 months moving and developing our most basic joint motions. And it’s not random.
These building-blocks of movement are reflexive, pre-installed in our genetic code, and they serve to awaken the higher level “motor programming” needed for us to perform more advanced (but still basic) movements as infants, immediately after we are rudely evacuated into the “real”, air-based, gravity-ruled world.
But things can go wrong in utero.
You can be stuck onto the uterine wall weirdly.
Maybe there was a “kink” in your notochord.
Another rabbit-hole…
Mom could have been really stressed, or sick, and it affected you.
Maybe you had a twin and one of you crowded the other, and maybe your right arm didn’t get to move as freely as your beloved sibling’s did because it was smushed against mom’s liver. That jerk. He became a baseball pro, and you failed gym class.
And then perhaps when you made your grand entrance into air-world it didn’t go so smoothly.
Maybe you were flipped upside-down. Your head got stuck under mom’s ribcage. They had to do a C-section. They tried to pull you out by your butt, but your head was reallllly stuck under there. So they had to pull harder and harder. Then you came out with a loud POP as your skull finally was liberated. How stressful! Good thing you can’t remember (imagine that happening to you as an adult…).
The above two stories are actually clients I’ve worked with. But their stories were unconsidered as being relevant to their problems with pain, posture, and performance.
Consider the movements we do in utero as building the first layer of our foundation. We have little control of this, so don’t dwell on it too much.
Just be aware that these foundational movements matter because they prepare us for the next phase: The primary motor responses we develop as infants for the next 3 years of life that helps us to develop our brains and bodies in tandem.
Foundation level 2: Infant reflexes
Between 0-3 years of age we develop the building-blocks for upright biomechanics: Walking. These are our primary, or infant reflexes.
There is a reflex hard-wired in our DNA to help us wiggle and bend and twist our spines to get down the birth canal (assuming we had that luxury).
To unfurl our spine from the comfort of the fetal position (assuming we spent enough time in fetal position in the first place).
To turn our heads, extend our arms and legs, discover we have a right and left side of our bodies.
To turn over on our bellies and learn to extend our spine and head up against gravity. What IS this gravity thing and why is it so damn heavy??
To push and pull with our arms and legs against the floor and develop our wee little hip joints (unless you’re me).
To discover we have this awesome things called a big toe, and we can push it into the floor to propel ourselves forward through space.
These events happen in a stereotypical way based on genetic programming that is similar for all humans.
And eventually we get enough building blocks in place, stacked together in the correct order, to stand up and start to walk.
But not all of us are so lucky, and going back to this level to give back the movements we are missing can be incredibly powerful.
Foundation level three: Upright gait mechanics.
This is where, with gravity, we shape our muscles and bones by standing upright and bearing weight on two ludicrously tiny balancing blobs called feet.
In the gravitational field, we learn to flex and extend, rotate, and side-bend our hips, spine, arms, etc. And its not about strength- Its about discovering how our joints articulate when upright, loaded by our bodyweight, intending to move forward through space.
Its not a conscious process. Its more like a discovery of our musculoskeletal system and exploring what it can do.
However, even if we’re missing foundational building blocks, most of us still stand up and walk, and play, and exercise. And then we have accidents, injuries, and do things that distort how we’re able to move. As we age, entrpopy increases, and more building blocks go missing or put in the wrong place.
Where are the gaps in your movement foundation?
Our foundation for all movement is built on unconscious motor programming. And each level contributes to the next. And we shouldn’t skip any steps, but most of us do.
And good thing its an unconsious process. Imagine having to decide for yourself at one year old the “best” way to develop your body to walk? Imagine a one year old with the blueprint for Ocean Tower… Yikes.
You are probably missing a few important building blocks. How do we find which ones are missing and get them back? It will be super specific to your unique experience. This is why I am always hesitatnt to give specific exercises in these blog posts. Get assessed, don’t guess.
But you can consider questions like:
Did you crawl?
Did you stand up before 12 months old?
Did you have an interesting or challenging birth experience? (as the birther, or the birthee)
Did you have a stay in the NICU, pinned down with machines and tubes that kept you alive, but prevented movement?
Did you start a highly skilled movement form before 3 years old? (like all you dancers who started ballet when you were 2, I’m looking at YOU)
Did you have an injury or accident, especially before age 7, but at any age, that caused you to be immobilized, or altered how you moved, for a period of time? Like a broken arm or ankle, head accident, or illness.
Every insult to the body will cause a change somewhere. And if you change one thing, everything else has to change to accommdate that. That’s balance. Its not ideal, but it is “functional”.
We can get our foundation back by re-educating our bodies and moving with awareness, with a little guidance from someone you trust.
Awareness is hard
Knowing what your body can’t do is hard, but cause you don’t know about it yet… If you were already conscious of what you can’t do you probably wouldn’t have any problems.
The more I explore movement, the more I realize that the most value comes from re-visting the basics in more depth. Smaller, softer, subtler, more refined. Not bigger, harder, with more muscular effort and control.
When we move big and effortfully, we only reinforce what we can already do. This is why skipping ahead to strength training when things feel “off” or painful doesn’t solve an issue long term. It will not be sustainable unless your foundation is addressed.
Don’t be Ocean Tower.
Heavy deadlifts didn’t restore my shaky foundation. That only perpetuated my structure to lean and shift, like Ocean Tower, the taller it got, the shiftier it got.
When you can identify what’s missing from your foundation, and give those elements back, all your favourite higher level movements and activities become more natural and effortless, because more of your body is accessible to you.
And then, like me, you might realize that you don’t actually want to powerlift, because that “solution” was a lot of effort and kind of boring anyway. We get to ask the question, “Now that I have a foundation, what do I actually want to do with it?“. Your journey will be your own, and it may not be what you think.
And if any of that resonates with you, and you’re trying to “fix” your basic movement limitations with higher level activities, I encourage you to take a few steps back and see what could be missing from your foundation.
How to start rebuilding your foundation
Curious about what exactly I mean by “building blocks” of movement?
As I already mentioned, this will be a unique journey. You may wish to find a movement/therapy professional to assess and guide you through it.
As a general jumping off point, Gary Ward has created a few excellent online courses that may be of interest to investigate your upright joint mechanics and find what’s missing: Wake Your Body Up, and Wake Your Feet Up.
My workshop, Liberated Body, also helps you identify missing joint motions and coordinations that we need for upright gait (I teach it both online and in-person).
LB Part one is all about the level of gait mechanics: How should our bodies ideally organize for effortless, efficient gait?
LB Part two is a level deeper: How to explore the building blocks that preceeded upright gait- the primary motor responses, and then put those together in a meaningful way for effortless, efficient gait?
Liberated Body is available anytime as a home-study workshop. Part two must be done live, because I customize it to the individuals in the group, and work with you one on one to restore your foundation.
CONCLUSIONS?
Don’t be like Ocean Tower.
Its never too late to build your foundation.
I didn’t get mine right the first time, and exploring my missing building blocks continues to be an enriching part of my daily movement practice, and my life.
One of the most frequently asked question I get from clients and random folks on the internet is, “What kind of shoes do you think are the best?”. (obviously the ones that are 300 f#@*!&g dollars).
First, you don’t want to wear the shoes that I think are the best, because you’re not me.
Second, “best” is going to be different for everyone.
Third, no one can tell you flat out what is “best” for you, in any area of life, but also with shoes. Getting guidance is good, blindly following shoe advice is bad, and having a system to learn how to choose for yourself is the best.
And I have to confess that at the time of writing this, I am experiencing pain in my right foot such that I have to wear squishy slippers to not be in agony. Me forcing myself to go barefoot around the house won’t “Strengthen” my foot and eliminate the pain. Its a little more nuanced than that.
But, this isn’t about me. This is about you becoming a person who can think better about shoe choices.
So, are you wondering about what to look for in a shoe? Are you wearing minimalist shoes when it might not be in your best interest? Are your shoes keeping you stuck in pain or moving inefficiently? Read on.
Are you looking to join a barefoot shoe cult to justify your beliefs? Wrong blog post.
Are Your Shoes Working For You?
Two summers ago, I did my first ever online Movement Nerd Hangout called Are Your Shoes Working For You?, in which I presented a simple system to test the impact different shoes can have on your individual movement options.
A sneaky screenshot from one of the participants. Apparently my feet cannot pronate in my hiking boots. Sheeit!
Assuming the universal goal is “I want my body to feel WONDERFUL”, there are definitely a few key things to keep in mind when selecting a shoe.
First, check out this snippet from the shoe hangout in which I discuss the 5 things I look for in a shoe (and the whole hangout session is almost 90 minutes of shoe/foot/body detectivery, if you have the time for that).
5 Things I Look For In A Shoe
In summary:
Your feet need to be able to pronate and supinate in the shoes.
Try to choose soles that are as thin/flexible as possible but as thick/supportive as necessary.
Toe box should wide enough to accomdate the foot’s natural spreading in pronation,
Your body mechanics should not be negatively impacted by your shoes (this is where the Does My Body Like My Shoes? system comes in handy)
You must like how they look. Seriously. Live life in style š
The Does My Body Like My Shoes? System
Going back to point 4 above, how do we know if your body mechanics (and thus gait) are being negatively affected by your shoes?
I’ve got a super simple 3 step system you can try right now, based on the assessing motions your body needs to be able to access while you walk (Anatomy in Motion style). I actually stole this from Gary Ward. All credit to him.
Step 1: Do the movement self-assessments and get your barefoot baseline data on how your body can move.
Step 2: Put on a pair of shoes and see if your movement assessments change- better or worse- compared to your baseline.
Step 3: Categorize your shoes based on whether they mess with your body or not and choose accordingly to your goals.
You can do this with your orthotics as well to check if they are (or ever even were…) helping you.
At first I dismissed this system because it seemed too simple. But when has over-complicating things ever helped?
Want to try it? Grab a few pairs of shoes, and check out this snippet from a little later in the shoe hangout as I take the participants through the system.
The Does My Body Like My Shoes? system (patent pending… JK share this with all your friends and spread the love)
I also made a super handy workbook you can use to collect your data and categorize your shoes.Download it here.
I definitely learned something new about how my shoes are impacting my body.
For example, I learned that my favourite hiking boots actually restrict my ribcage and neck range of motion, but improve movement at my hips. And my Vivo Barefoot shoes improve movement at my ribcage and neck.
This information is useful for me to have so that I can track weird neck and ribcage symptoms (of which I haveā¦) to whether or not I wore shoes my body didnāt like and failed to unwind with some self-care afterwards.
Knowledge is power, guys!
Of course there are other things to consider. Like if you have a dropped metatarsal head. Or a neuralgia. Or a bone that sticks out more on one side and rubs. Or an open flesh wound. But this is a nice starting point.
But the most important thing has nothing to do with the shoes you’re wearing…
Because if your body can’t move well, there’s not a shoe in the world that can teach your body to move differently. Only You can. And it helps to know if your shoes are in support of that trajectory, or against it. (And by “support” I don’t mean orthotics, in case that wasn’t clear…)
In addition to using my ultra-sophisticated shoe-choosing system, it is important to:
Have strategies to proactively make your body robust to any shoe you choose, and
Help you unwind after wearing crappy shoes.
That’s called “doing the work”.
Doc Martens, Chuck Taylors, and Vivos… All impact my body mechanics differently, and my work is to get my body to a state of unfuckwithableness to all shoes
Don’t outsource your personal power to the Shoe People
Repeat after me:
From this day forth, I am an empowered shoe-wearer. I solemly pledge to do the work necessary to become more resilient to all shoes. I will not blame my shoes for my body’s issues. I will then make informed decisions about my shoes from a place of logical reasoning.
Deal? And be OK that this might take a while. I’m not sure how long it will take me to figure out why my right foot hurts, but I’m committed to the process, and until I feel ready, imma keep wearing my slippers.
And now, because I know you’re still going to ask about minimalist footwear…
I want to tell a story about a client of mine (who will remain anonymous).
She is one of those barefoot idealists. I’m all for barefoot/minimalist shoes… I just wish my body could tolerate them.
And I wish her body could, too. But she’s in a bit of denial about that.
She had a pretty gnarly ankle injury when she was young, and when I assessed her, that poor foot was holding a dramatically caved in (pronated) posture, and could not supinate (create arch).
She had tried switching to minimalist shoes because she read it was the magic fix for all foot problems. I’m sure you’ve heard that rhetoric, too.
She also became one of the loudest proponents for minimalist shoes, going as far as to be a retailer of a prominent barefoot shoe company and posting videos of her doing barefoot running and hiking on her social media.
Thing is, she still had ankle problems.
After 4 sessions, we saw some nice changes in her ankle, but she asked me, “Do you think I should stop wearing minimalist shoes? Are they holding me back? Because… sometimes I think they are, but I love the idea of being barefoot”.
And my honest reply was, “Yeah they might be preventing you from making progress, and the only way to find out is to try not wearing them for a while and see what happens”.
Do you think she stopped wearing them? No…
Note that loving the IDEA of something doesn’t mean that it is something you should or can do. I love the idea of being able to eat 15 cookies everyday without consequences. But I can’t. Because that would be ignoring facts.
I haven’t seen her since, so I don’t know if she’s still having the same trouble with her body.
But what I’d like your to appreciate is that sometimes our bodies are NOT robust enough to tolerate minimlaist shoes, but maybe one day they could be.
When I tried to wear barefoot shoes, I quickly noticed that my right leg could tolerate them, but after 20 minutes of walking, all my left leg symptoms flared up.
All that to say, beware the loudest preaching people on social media, because what worked for them might not actually be working for them. OR they have some financial/emotional investment and aren’t being honest with themselves. Also, they are not you.
On the flip side, I have had a client switch from wearing heels everyday at work to rocking Vibram Five-Fingers, and noticed a huge reduction in her plantar fasciitis.
You can also check out an Instagram post recently by my pal from the UK, Helen Hall, in which she did some objective(ish) testing of how different pairs of SOCKS influenced her running mechanics , using her fancy shmancy force-plate/treadmill 3D analysis set up.
So I’ll leave you to make your own informed choices.
How to become robust to every shoe?
Ongoing commitment to getting your body moving more efficiently, and not just your feet. Because your feet have a movement relationship to every other part of your body, and without that relational harmony, a localized foot-centric exercise might not have the desired global effect.
And you’re in luck, because helping people (and their feet) move more efficiently is what I’ve dedicated my life to š
A good place to start is my 4 session online workshop, Liberated Body.
I created Liberated Body to help you get to the source of your body’s problems so you can move and feel better (and wear all the crappy shoes you want).
I guide you through a step by step process to identify your body’s restrictions and give you back the movements it is currently missing.
You can participate anytime, at your own pace. Go HERE to register for the home-study (which I also help you through along the way in real time from the comfort of my couch. Thanks internet!).
Conclusions?
Just three.
Be honest with yourself.
Don’t believe what people say on social media about what you should do with your feet/shoes/life
Do the work to make your body robust to all shoes and make more informed choices.
After last week’s free Movement Nerd Hangout:Get Your Shoulders Off Your Ears, I experienced an unexpected and pleasant shift in how my creaky ol’ neck felt. So today I’d like to share a snippet from the session with the exercise I’m curretnly obsessed with, in the hopes it is helpful for you, too.
99.9999999% (not an actual statistic, don’t call the fact-police) of folks I’ve worked with need this movement at some point of another (but be fore-warned: Some people DON’T need more neck decompression! So if it feels bad in any way, please desist).
First, why should you care about neck compression/decompression? Specifically, compression of the occipital-atlantal joint (OA joint). Check out this quick intro snippet from the hangout that explains in a nutshell:
Ok, so OA joint compression can make your neck not feel awesome, limit range of motion (think, shoulder-checking whist driving), and isn’t very aesthetically pleasing (not that that really matters). Other considerations:
Blood supply, and therefore oxygen, gets to your brain through there
Spinal cord passes right through the occiput’s foramen magnum (“big hole”)
Cranial nerves pass through there, too (compression of which can make you feel all sorts of “off”)
Headaches- muscular tenstion and pressure-related can stem from OA compression
Reduced pumping of cerebrospinal fluid (which has ramifications for the health of your nervous system)
Some may experience depression (in my Upledger Craniosacral Therpay training we were taught that OA compression is a component of some presentations of depression that don’t have a clear root in chemical imbalance or trauma)
Via whole body movement connections, restriction at the neck can impact on EVERYTHING else: Feet, knee, hips, back, shoudlers…
The space between the occipital bone and the arch of atlas is what we’re looking to open up
The next snippet is from the part of the hangout in which the audio quality went to shit.
Fear not. I’ve made subtitles and some sketchy video edits that I hope are helpful for you to follow the instructions effectively to participate along!
Give my current exercise obsession, supine neck decompression, a go:
This movement is inspired by the work of Svetlanta Masgutova, through the training I have been doing in her MNRI curriculum (Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Reflex Integration). The intention of this exercise is to decompress and elongate the back of the neck with an extension through the spine.
Did you try it??? Go do it now before reading more š
But now this brings us to a wee little problem. This is an example of looking at one part of the body in isolation.
Isolation and integration: When does neck decompression happen in connection with the rest of your body?
There is a specific time and place for every single joint motion.
The next step we need is to integrate WHEN and HOW this motion of neck decompression fits in with every other body part. So you’re doing the “right” motion, but are you doing it at the right place and time for your body to move most efficiently?
For example… Can you answer these questions about how your neck and your body should ideally move together?
What does the rest of your spine do when your neck decompresses? (flex or extend?)
What do both your feet do when your neck decompresses? (pronate or supinate?)
When you bend your knees,what is themost efficient thing for your neck structures to do? (compress or decompress?)
Understanding these connections between your neck and other distal parts of the body are what help us take an isolated neck exercise, and use it as a whole body learning experience.
The problem is, our bodies might have gotten so far off course that its a challenge to know what is “right” and “wrong”. Where’s North and South on the map? Wait… Where’d my map go!?
Well, I happen to teach a handy map of the human body in motion in my Liberated Body workshop (you’ll be able to answer all three questions above after lesson two and feel the benefit of a more coordinated, connected body).
Having a map of how the whole body moves, as an interdependent system, is what helped me get my body out of pain. I wish the same for you. That’s why I put Liberated Body together. And you can do it online with me without having to brush your teeth.
So if you’re keen to learn more about whole body movement beyond this one little part of your neck (and how this one little part of your neck has HUGE influence on the rest of your body), sign up for my upcoming workshop Nov 17th.
But even if you don’t join in the movement goodness, give this neck thang a try. Maybe commit to practicing everyday, and see how it feels for your whole body. I’d love to hear what you observe š
A FINAL THING TO REMEMBER… This disclaimer about the neck decompression exercise:
There’s a lot of important tubes and structures (nerves, blood vessels, lymph, etc) housed in your neck. Be gentle. Don’t force things. Harder is NOT better. Go small and smooth and quietly. Use only 20% of your total strength. Use the effort you’d use to pat a kitten. If something feels bad, don’t continue. If things hurt, get help from a professional. It is IMPOSSIBLE to know if this exercise will be useful for you through the screen, and I am NOT a medical professional telling you that you MUST do this exercise to fix your neck problems. I cannot give you specific medical advice. My intention is to share a movement that may inspire you to take better care of your body and find new ways of moving it. I am not claiming this WILL FIX YOUR NECK. Just to be clear… š Use your common sense, and do this at your own discretion.
So, your trainer/physio just told you you have an anterior pelvic tilt that needs to be corrected because it’s bad. OMG. You’re doomed! Right? Or… Maybe not? Is an anterior pelvic tilt actually bad? And posterior tilt good?
On the left: Anterior pelvic tilt (tailbone lifts up) On the right: Posterior pelvic tilt (tailbone tucks down)
Repeat this as your mantra: There’s no such thing as an inherently good or bad movement.
Have you ever been told that you have the dreaded “anterior pelvic tilt”? And it’s the cause of all your body’s problems? I have. And I believed it, too.
Most of us have been taught that some movements are universally “bad” and we need to fix them. Anterior pelvic tilt is nothing more than three words describing a movement a healthy body should be able to do, not a life sentence to pain, misery, and moral judgement.
Don’t listen to Dr. Google
I did a Google search for the neutral term “anterior pelvic tilt” and the first result tells me it’s something I should care about correcting! WHAT??! What if I didn’t even know what a pelvis is, and now the first thing I’ve learned is that mine might be wrong…
Just check out these results from the frist page of Google:
If you’re a pilates teacher no doubt this was drilled into you
Just a sampling of fix-yer-dang-pelvis-AT fear-mongernig from first page of Google
Contrary to what you may read from Dr. Google about fixing your pelvis AT, any movement we avoid (deliberately or unconsciously) will limit us. Labelling movements as “bad” and avoiding them, our bodies will, ironically, become less free, less efficient, less flowing (and less fun!).
Pelvis anterior tilt is but one example. Another one is foot pronation. So is shoulder blade (scapula) protraction.
I, Monika (trust me, I’m a movement proefessional), hereby give you permission to do all of those things with your body, not that you need permission. In fact, I ask people to reclaim these “bad” movements in my Liberated Body Workshop.
Does an pelvis anterior tilt need correcting?
Now you know: No. Your body needs to be able to do an anterior tilt well, and do it with every step you take.
And there’s more to an anterior tilt of the pelvis is more than jamming your tailbone up to the ceiling. If it hurts your lower back to do an anterior tilt, you’re probably doing it wrong. Don’t avoid it, learn how to do one well.
Why?
You need an anterior tilt to load your extensor chain (glutes and hamstrings).
You need an anterior tilt to absorb shock through your hips and spine with each foot step.
And, you even need your pelvis to do an anterior tilt well if you want your jaw to be able to decompress. (Do you wear a night guard for bruxism? Hmm, maybe you’d like to assess your pelvic tilting as part of a hoistic strategy?)
The idea we need to “correct” a pelvis anterior tilt because it is bad and causes back pain is just an idea that is based on an incomplete, compartmentalized understanding of the body in motion. We can do better.
The truth? We need to be able to do an anterior tilt WELL just as we need to be able to do it’s opposite- posterior tilt, well. BOTH matter for the health of your hips, spine, and well, your whole body (and your life).
Think of it this way: If you could only choose to turn left or turn right for the rest of your life, which direction would you choose? Is one better than the other? Or would you like to do both? If Zoolander taught us one thing, it’s the pain of living a life with only the option to go right.
“I’m not an ambituner… I can’t turn left”
Case Study
A few days ago I worked with a client with lower back pain. He is a former high level curler š„. His back pain feels worse when he does a pelvis anterior tilt.
Traditional thinking would have us believe that we should avoid anterior tilting his pelvis like the plague and get him to squeeze his butt and tuck it under, right??
Not so fast…
As you’ll see in the video below, he actually has HUGE amounts of pelvis tuck-ability (posterior tilt). Wayyy too much. And you’ll hopefully see how it is dragging his spine backwards behind his feet and into a ton of flexion.
I’d also like you to observe how his pelvis anterior tilt pushes his whole torso forward, like a tree tipping over, putting his head well in front of his feet. This is the movement that is flagging up his back pain because he is shearing forward from one segment in his lumbar spine, instead of evenly articulating across all joints to make a healthy extension.
Check out the analysis I did below: Pelvis tilts BC (Before Cogs)
https://youtu.be/5rlDViqaTtM
If you’ve been studying the newly released Anatomy in Motion online course from Gary Ward and co.: Closed chain upper body biomechanics in motion, then in the first chpater you will have learned that for healthy spine motion in upright gait we’d like to see your head stacked on top of your pelvis when it moves into AT and PT. Not swaying you forward and back like bamboo in the wind.
We call that stacked up pelvis on ribcage on skull organization on-axis. I also like to call it a shishkabob. Your spine is the stick. Mmm… Kebab…
In my clients’ case, his entire torso is being pushed forward by a pelvis anterior tilt, which shows us a few important things:
a) This person is not able to access an actual pelvis anterior tilt (and therefore there’s nothing to “fix”, it’s a movement to re-discover!)
b) This person probably has a imitation in intervertebral articulation into spine extension, which is needed to keep his head over his pelvis (actual movement between each individual joint in the spine, instead of being a tree trunk) This is important for spine health. And for giving the abdominal muscles something to do. Want abs? Add being able to anterior tilt to your list.
Now check out THIS second video, which I took after doing 10 minutes of corrective exercise to help him and his body re-learn what both pelvis anterior and posterior tilts with proper spine articulation feel like.
Pelvis tilts AC (AFTER Cogs)
https://youtu.be/EbxkPxqsMmo
Can you observe the cleaner pelvis and spine articulation, and less forwards/backwards swaying of his whole torso? He also reports no more back discomfort. Booyah!
What did we do?
Cogs: Our favourite exercise in AiM world. Which I’ve written about before.
Check out THIS video of me doing some floor cogs for an example of what I took my client through (or learn more in day 1 of Liberated Body with me :)).
And I can’t say enough about the Upper Body Biomechanics in Motion course, which has an amazing section on cogs if you’re an uber nerd and want the technical details.
Such a good course! I’m biased and I strongly recommend š
Now, what is important to understand is that in the AFTER video, my client is not consciously trying to do “good” pelvis tilts because he now knows what it should look like.
I’m not saying, “Hey Bob, based on what I told you about pelvis motion, can you make that happen with your mind-power?”
I’m asking, “Hey Bob, show me what happens if you ask your body to tilt your pelvis both ways without over-thinking how you’re doing it”.
Can you appreciate the difference?
This is a representation of his body having better unconscious access to a new way of moving that takes LESS control, less forcing, less micromanaging, and less energy. More likely to happen naturally in each step.
What are the take-aways?
If anyone tells you that a movement is bad, don’t believe them. BUT, sometimes movements can become unhealthy- asymmetrical, excessive, too small, too slow, too fast, unorganized with the whole, etc- then we need to re-train the bdoy how to perform it, coordinated with the rest of the body.
Whhile a pelvis anterior tilt was a trigger for my client’s back pain, the “fix” wasn’t to eliminate pelvis anterior tilt from his life. The problem was that he couldn’t do one at all, and was shearing from his spine too much, instead.
Too much posterior tilt can be just as much of an issue as too much anterior tilt. My client in this post is is case in point.
We need our bodies to be able to access both posterior AND anterior tilts of the pelvis. Remember Zoolander.
The better we become at observing movement, the better was can get at finding solutions that help us reclaim our options for moving better.
So… how well can your pelvis move? š¤
Want to learn more?
Movement myths abound in the worlds of fitness and therapy.
Knowing what a human body should be able to do and having a safe, non-judgemental space to explore how your body moves so you can understand what healthy movement feels like for you is so important for getting out of pain and optimizing performance.
Want to learn more about optimizing how your body moves, based on gait and the teachings of Anatomy in Motion? This is the kind of things I help folks with in Movement Detective School .
If you’re ready to stop wasting time with generic exericses and stretches, and youāre serious about learning how to undo the patterns you have adopted over the years due to past activities, sports, repetitive postures, injuries, and accidents, I’d love to work together on that šŖ
I’ve dedicated the past 10 years of my life to learning how to get my body out of pain by exposing it to the truth of how our bodies move in gait, and I have so much about that process to share. Shoot me an email if you have any questions š
Fancy a little movement detectivery you can do for free, from the comfort of your own home?
Well, not completely free… You need the internet (and I don’t know about you, but my rates just went UP!). And you’ll have to stand up and use your brain and your muscles a bit, so it might not be as comfortable as sitting on your butt.
Regardless, if you have jaw issues, hip issues, or both issues, I think you’ll appreciate this little piece of biomechanical investigation. The video below is a simple way to test if your jaw’s resting position (which may be a lil’ off center), is messing with how your hips and pelvis are able to move.
Can you see how when I shift my jaw one way it makes things looks really discombobulated? What’s up with that huh?
The Jaw vs. Hips Test Explanation
In this video I’m testing if the resting position of my lower jaw (mandible) is impacting on my ability to hike my pelvis on either side (and thus adduct/abduct my hips- which needs to happen with every step we take for efficient gait).
Ideally, our pelvis hikes and drops with each foot step we take. We also want our bodies to move as evenly as possible on the right and left sides: Pelvis hike on the right should be pretty dang close to the hike on the left.
In this assessment, we’re looking clean and clear (and under control…) frontal plane motion, meaning purely up and down motion. Not a pelvis rotation. Not a pelvis thrust. Pelvis bones ought to move like elevators, not a washing machine.
In this assessment, pelvis hiking is accomplished by gently bending one knee to allow the opposite side of the pelvis to hike up on it’s own. I’m not trying to use my side-abs to pull my pelvis up with a muscular contraction. This is an assessment of how your pelvis reacts to a knee bend, NOT trying to see how high you can jam your iliac crest into your ear like it’s a contest.
Start by evaluating how each side hikes with your jaw doing it’s natural thang. Note any differences. This is your baseline.
Next, slide your jaw to the RIGHT (like a type-writer). Repeat your pelvis hikes. Notice if that changes anything. Better, same, or worse?
Lastly, slide your jaw to the LEFT. Repeat your pelvis hikes. Notice if that changes anything. More even right and left? Less even? Any discomfort?
Did one of those three jaw positions make your pelvis hikes more even? More comfortable? Worse? Or no difference?
The Results
If you are perceptive, you can probably see which jaw position helps my pelvis and hips achieve more balanced, clean motion.
(FYI my right and left sides are reveresd. My tattoo leg is my right leg…One of my online students actually remarked that it was great to have my right leg so clearly denoted because it helps her keep track of the rights and lefts in class! Yes… I got that tat for exactly that reason… ;))
Here’s the video again, to save you some scrolling:
Round 1: Jaw in it’s default resting position. My pelvis hikes look pretty even right and left, eh?
Round 2: Jaw shifted LEFT. When I hike left side up, I shift off of that leg. And when I hike right, I rotate towards the right instead of hiking. This is NOT clean motion, meaning I have poor access to both pelvis hikes.
Round 3: Jaw shifted RIGHT. This looks very similar to round 1, but in my body it feels smoother and happier.
So, if I had to pick one jaw position that promotes optimal hip motion, jaw shifted right is the winner.
Interpretating the Results
Okay, so what’s the point of this, and what, if any, useful information can we glean from it in the name of better, pain-free movement?
Jaw position is kind of a big deal.
Interestingly, our mandible’s position in our skull dictates a lot about how we’re able to move our hips and pelvis in gait (among other things… THAT’S a rabbit hole of a lifetime that will make you very disappointed in humanity and yet empowered to pay attention to your oral-facial health and tell everyone to shut their dang mouth while they breathe. But don’t get too high on that soapbox…).
We can consider the jaw to be a “leveller” of the body- A mid-line structure with a significant impact on whole body mechanics. What if your body took part of it’s cue for where its center is, based on where your jaw is? What if this had an impact on which phases of gait you can and can’t access (it does)?
So when you notice your jaw is “tight” or clicky or you clench it, know that this is not just a jaw problem- It’s a whole body problem.
What I haven’t mentioned yet is that my jaw’s default resting position is already shifted to the left.
So in round 1 of the test, my jaw is actually sitting slightly left of center. I think it’s been that way since I was at least 3 years old. Why do I think that? Because I have a photo of me on my third birthday in which my jaw looks like it’s pushed farther back on the left side.
Like this:
Its subtle, but can you see the left side of my jaw shoved back farther than on the right? Happy bday to me!
In round 2 of the test, when I slide my jaw to the left, my pelvis and hips have no clue how to move in the frontal plane! What’s going on here?
As mentioned earlier, hiking the pelvis needs to happen with each footstep. It’s part of our bodies’ shock-absorption mechanics that happens when our foot pronates on the ground, loading the lateral glutes medius and minimus (this is suspension phase of gait for the AiM folks, loading phase for the rest of y’all).
So too does the jaw have it’s own coordinated movement with the whole body in gait for optimal efficiency.
In gait, when the pelvis hikes on one side, the jaw actually needs to slide over and gap (teeth come apart) on that side as part of a whole body pattern for efficient movement.
In another moment in gait, when the right heel hits the ground (heel strike), the jaw actually shifts to the left. Interestingly, right heel strike is a phase in which I experience right hip and SIJ pain sometimes. In fact, right hip pain was the first chronic pain symptom I ever remember having.
So this gets me thinking… How long has my jaw been messing with my hips? Has my resting-left jaw tendency predisposes me to having the hip problems that I did/still do? Have my hips really been on a path of destruction since I was three years old (or even earlier?). I don’t think this is random, or coincidence…
What do you do with this new data?
Let’s say you’re like me, and if you shift your jaw left your pelvis doesn’t know the meaning of “hike”.
Let’s look at the data:
Where’s my jaw at rest? Shifted left.
When I shift it MORE left (deeper into default) I can’t hike either side of my pelvis, when I shift it right, things improve.
Thus my jaw being positioned left is highly likely to be giving my hips and pelvis some grief
Solution? Getting my jaw to not be stuck to the left all the time and have a more centered default position would likely have a beneficial whole body effect.
The journey from here- what you decide to do, will vary based on the tools you have in your toolkit to reorganize your jaw. Manual therapy, movement re-training, goofy looking face stretches, all can be useful.
For the past 3 years I’ve been on a journey of levelling my jaw. It’s been a fascinating, enriching, and frustrating project.
Here are a few interesting things I’ve noted along the way that have helped me un-leftify my jaw, and significantly improve how my hips feel:
I prefer to unconsciously chew on the left side. It’s my happy place. I try not to always chew in my happy place.
When I am in social-anxiety-producing situations, I unconsiously clench my jaw and shift it to the left. It’s where my jaw goes when I’m trying to cope with stress. Now I’m at the point that I’m conscious of it happening. Sometimes I can even NOT DO IT.
Oral-facial integration techniques (a la MNRI) and craniosacral therapy have been super helpful for me. I can do these manual therapy techniques on myself because our faces are easily within hands-reach. Learning these two modalities have been game-changing.
Understanding how jaw motion couples with the rest of our bodies in gait, as per the Flow Motion Model taught by Gary Ward in his Anatomy in Motion courses has been crucial for me to use whole body movements to re-integrate my jaw with my body in a meaningful context, i.e. walking. Do you know what your jaw should be doing in three dimensions with a pelvis hike? Well mine isn’t doing the right thing! And reorganizing that has been key.
I used to get weird popping and ringing sensations in my left ear, especially under stress… Now they are almost gone, but come back when my jaw is more to the left (which happens when I’m under stress).
Making funny faces is an awesome and important part of changing the way you move š I mean, this is serious business, but that doesn’ t mean we can’t have some serious fun with it.
My invitation to you
Are you feeling like a Movement Detective? This is the kind of stuff I like to share with my students in my secret Movement Detective School. Oops, not so secret anymore…
Give this test a try and see if your jaw could be impacting the motion of your pelvis and hips.
It is quite likely you have one position in which your jaw discombobulates your hips.
Is that the same side you have a clicky, poppy jaw? Is that the same side you chew on primarily? Is that the same side you got smoked in the face by some aggressive jerk in a hockey match? Is that the same side you had a traumatic experience getting your wisdom teeth removed?
Let me know what you find. What if you could free your jaw, free your hips, and free your life? (you can!)
PS I share little videos like this from time to time on my Instagram page. I think social media sucks 90% of the time, but I like to use it to share the nerdy movement things that I do. Feel free to follow me @monvolkmar
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because some part of your body hurts, and it don’t make no sense.
I get it. I had(ve) mysterious symptoms that baffled and frustrated me for years. And then I was introduced to the concept of mass management, and things finally started making sense.
No, I’m not talking about weight management…
The Simpsons was my babysitter growing up…
Center of mass (CoM) management. Physics. Not physiology š Not that I’m an expert in either…
Your body has it’s own personal, unique, unconscious CoM management strategy. Understanding it is a powerful tool to help your body get well.
If you have a goal of moving with more ease and less pain, I hope today’s blog post will serve as a useful introduction to what CoM management is, and why it matters. Because whether you like it or not, you’re managing your mass right now, even if you’re sitting on your butt…
Further down in this post I have a video with a simple assessment you can follow along with to start making sense of your personal CoM management strategy in your own body. Or just skip ahead to it, whatever.
Ready?
What is center of mass?
Here’s the technical definition (which is not necessarily easy to grasp unless you enjoy physics, which I do NOT, thank you Mr. Smith for ruining it for me):
“The center of mass is the point on an object at which the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zeroāthe point about which objects rotate.“
Translation…?
Consider a sphere- Its CoM would be right smack in the middle. As the sphere rolls along the ground, the middle point (CoM) of the sphere doesn’t actually move relative to the edges of the sphere, but remains constant as the axis of rotation.
But bodies are not spheres. They are little more complex.
Bodies are way more cool (and complex) than spheres
Imagine if someone were to tie a rope around your wrist and dangle you from the ceiling. Then (after being let down for a break), you were dangled from your ankle from the same ceiling rig. The center of mass of your body would be consistently in the same loaction no matter which limb you were dangled from.
You can also imagine it as the central axis through your body while doing a cartwheel- An axis of rotation through which no actual motion occurs relative to your limbs.
So where exactly is this central point located in our bodies?
The location of the human body’s CoM is slightly different for each individual, depending on proportions. Some say it is roughly 10cm below your navel. I’ve read it to be anywhere between L3 and S2 vertebral segments. There seems to be a lack of concensus, and probably requires exact measurement for each individual.
But ain’t nobody got time for that.
So as a general estimate, if you were to put your finger somewhere between your belly button and pubic bone, and imagine a point at the depth your spine, that ought to be good enough.
What is CoM Management?
When you walk, your body has to transfer its entire weight from one foot to the other. I tihnk its pretty increadible that we even can do it without falling down. Silly bipeds. But somewhere in our evolution standing upright and growing our brains became more useful than being on four legs, so here we are. Every step a leap of faith.
The reason we don’t fall down is becaues we have specifically sequenced and timed body mechanics that help us manage the chaotic journey we call walking. A journey in which our CoM bravely shifts from right foot to left.
In gait, the center of mass of your body needs to get all the way from one foot to rest over top of the center of mass of the other foot.
The center of mass of the foot is the 2nd (or intermediate) cunieform.
Full weight-bearing on one leg happens when the CoM of our body sits directly over top of the CoM of our foot (2nd cuneiform).
This ideally needs to happens in the loading phase of gait (or suspension phase, in AiM terms). This is when the highest amount of force will enter that limb, which makes it a critical moment in time to have our body mechanics set up in an organized way to absorb the shock.
Except a lot of the times our bodies are not so organized…
Disorganized, distorted, off-center, our CoM makes a different sort of journey.
Maybe it doesn’t quite get over 2nd cuneiform. Maybe we find a strategy that puts extra strain on different parts of our bodies to compensate for that. Maybe we spend a higher percentage of time with our weight on one foot. Or more total mass on one leg than the other.
That is the essence of CoM management: The particular way your skeleton organizes the journey of getting it’s CoM over to the opposite foot, and back again.
You could think of it as your unique “swagger”.
Why care about CoM management?
If it is true that there is a particular set of mechanics with which we’d ideally like the body to use for optimal, flowing, efficient gait (and I believe that there is), the million dollar question is: How close to that “ideal” is your body currently able to use?
This is why I think taking a presonal interest in learning about movement mechanics is a critical tool for anyone interested in actually getting well. Most of us get busy fixing things before taking the time to understand the problem.
But rather than rant about that…
Using the lens of CoM management we get different information than assessing joint range of motion, “functional” movement patterns, and strength testing alone, such as:
Can your CoM move equally onto either foot, or is there a leg you don’t trust to weight bear into fully?
Why don’t you weight-bear fully into one leg? Do you avoid it due to a past injury or accident?
Which past injuries or accidents might be part of that strategy(ies) and need help now? Ankle sprain?
What problem areas today might actually have began as solutions for a past problem?
What body parts are you using to shift your CoM from right to left instead of actually getting your CoM to travel through space? Ribcage? Arms? Head?
Do you stand evenly on both feet at rest? If no, how could this be putting extra pressure, compression, or tension on some parts of your body more than others?
Admittedly, this is a qualitative study, not quantitative. But that doesn’t mean it is not useful, or can’t be reasonably objective. It just requires a different way of thinking.
Like, using your whole brain.
A whole brain approach
Assessing individual body parts’ movement capabilities is synonymous with our left brain hemisphere’s limited observational style- Looking at facts in isolation and disregarding their relationship to the whole.
As Iain McGilchrist has written about in his book The Master and his Emissary, there is much evidence to suggest that we are biased to process the world around us predominantly via our brain’s left-hemisphere, which limits us to a narrow, incomplete perception of reality, dominated by hyperrationality, an affinity for the familiar, and a tendency to deny when it is wrong.
Bodies are complex systems. To appreciate their magnificence, and the impossibility that we could ever fully understand their complexity is a function only our right brain is wired for: The ability to contemplate the unknowable and find delight in paradox and contradiction.
Only via our right hemisphere can we view our bodies’ state, not as a state- one that is static, but as dynamic. How we move is not reduced to a mere utility (left brain’s view), but has an intention within a bigger context.
Our right hemisphere understands that our bodies are much more than the sum of its individual parts’ discrete abilties, in isolation from one another. Each individual body parts’ isolated performance matters, but only has meaning in context with the body as a whole.
Relationships between parts matter to the right brain, not to the left, which wants only to isolate, categorize, measure, and judge.
Our right brain can ask why THAT particular mass management strategy? How is that currently serving me? When did that begin? The left brain can only interpret individual, static moments in time, zooming in, getting the details, but missing the big picture.
Probing curiously into the unknown (asking “why”) is the realm of the right hemishphere. Fixating on what we think we aleady know (“my trainer said my iliopsoas is the problem!”) is what the left brain does best.
Understanding CoM management demands a whole brain approach.
Despite structural or functional distortions and imbalances, our bodies WILL find a way to get us from one foot to the other.
It may not be perfect, but…
…whether you like it or not, shift happens
That’s a saying we have in the AiM community. It means that your body WILL find a way to shift it’s mass from one foot to the other (if you have two feet…). How efficiently your body is able to make that leap of faith, is the question.
Has your body been forced to to distort itself in a way that protects an old site of pain, keeping it safe, but creating weird movement habits in the process?
If we aren’t considering CoM management, we are likely to be providing only a temporary solution because we truly haven’t taken the time to consider WHY the body has chosen the mechanics it is using.
Is there a leg YOU don’t trust?
Enough philosophizing… This information is only useful if you can put it into practice.
You probably trust one leg more than the other. Want to find out which one?
The short video below will help you start thinking in terms of mass management. The goal is to see if your center of mass unconsciously reacts, in the appropriate direction, to you moving your spine from right to left:
a) Moves towards front leg b) Moves away from front leg c) Does nothing
Note, for the sake of simplicity, we will correlate your CoM with your pelvis, even though I know that’s not entirely accurate.
(This is a snippet from the Movement Deep Dive my all-access members are studying this month- A study of their frontal plane, i.e. side to side, hip/pelvis motion).
So… What did you find out about yourself? Is there a leg you don’t fully trust?
Why would you not trust a leg?
This is the question I leave you with.
Why would one lose the ability to fully commit to one leg? Or to put pressure only in one particular part of their foot?
Injuries. Accicents. Repetitive movements and postural habits. Things your mom told you. Trained movement skills, sports, etc.
What has your body been through? What needs attention now?
What if, like me, your body avoids one leg because of incomplete healing of an old (hamstring) injury? Unconsciously, I avoid committing to that leg. With each footstep, I reinforce a less efficient protective strategy to get from one foot to the other, which ends up making my neck sore.
Could this be keeping you stuck with limitations and pain that “stretching” and “strengthening” won’t help? Can you stretch out a CoM management problem?
Does your movement practice consider CoM management in your exercise selection?
These are the questions that I think are more useful than: Which exercise should I do? Or, how many reps? Or “what muscle should I blame?”
These are questions for your right hemisphere š
A final note: The goal of the video and the information in this post is not meant to “fix” your body. Simply provide an alternative way of thinking about why things feel the way they do. A tool to help you observe your body through the gestalt of your right hemisphere- More than the sum of it’s parts, but for the harmony with which those parts communicate.
All complaints the body makes stem from some kind of movement problem. Overuse, underuse, misuse, or disuse. And all movement problems will show up in gait. Gait won’t tell you what the problem is, but it will guide you where to look. And CoM management via gait analysis is an incredibly useful tool for making sense of it.
Oh, and if you’re not sure you can tell if there’s a leg you don’t trust, guess what… Sometimes it’s BOTH š
To learn more about CoM management, you may like to check out Liberated Body (a self-guided online workshop, avec moi)
What if going for a walk could be an opportunity for your neck to naturally “stretch” itself? Could you “walk your neck well”?
Neck motion in the gait cycle is pretty cool. It arises out of our need to keep our eyes level (not walk with a bobblehead).
In the 0.6-0.8 second journey from one foot to the other, your neck should be able to access every motion available to it, in all three dimensions, from one end of the spectrum to the other. Unless it can’t…
That means, in the space of just one footstep, your neck will (hopefully) get a full spectrum experience from:
– Flexion all the way to extension – Lateral flexion right all the way to to lateral flexion left – Rotation right to rotation left
But not like a bobblehead…
VID
The cool thing is neck motion happens by virtue of the skull itself staying STILL (eyes stay level so you can walk straight), and the rest of the body articulating underneath.
This is true of animals too. Check out this owl:
The next two video clips are a brief demo of how this works in the frontal (head tilts) and transverse plane (head roation).
How did those two movements go for you? Are you able you separate your skull from your ribcage with your eyes level? (and yes I am aware I did not make a sagittal plane video…)
I call it a “whole body neck stretch”, because it emulates how the muscles on one side of the neck would naturally lengthen (and the other shorten) with each footstep. Or, in the case of the transverse plane neck rotations, more like a torquing motion, like a towel wringing out.
But its more than “stretching”- It’s specific, sequenced joint motion our bodies crave in efficient gait, obtained via coordinated whole body movement. The by-product of which is that your neck joints and tissues actually move in a healthy way with each step.
What if, by practicing gait-based movements like this, you could walk your neck well? What if you started to notice you no longer need to deliberately stretch your neck? (unless you actually wanted to)
Let me know if you find this quick video useful.
These two clips are from a Movement Deep Dive session I filmed in May 2021 for my Liberated Body all-access students. The complete 60 min session explores this idea in three planes, integrated with the whole body, down to the feet, based on the teachings of Gary Ward’s Anatomy in Motion.
PS can you tell how differently my head tilts from one side to the other?? š
My body used to hurt a lot, every day, in a way that affected my basic daily life functions.
Simple things felt bad. Like wearing a backpack (arm goes numb). Walking (hips and spine hurt). Going up and down stairs (dreading the pain in my knee).
I consciously micromanaged every limb movement, carefully bracing my body in anticipation for the pain.
But when I was on stage, dancing, I didn’t feel anything (possibly due to the pain numbing effect of adrenaline and endorphins).
I thought that if I could just keep on ignoring the pain, life was ok. Tolerable. And I could probably keep this up for… ever??
But then things piled up and escalated. Fast.
My body started to hurt to the extent that I could no longer ignore it. Perhaps I had depleted my physiological ability to pump out the chemical stew of corticosteroids and other endogenous polypeptide analgesics I was relying on to keep myself numb.
Or maybe it was because I was so numb that when I finally sustained some actual soft tissue damage (a neck strain, then 3 back injuries, then a hamstring strain), it seemed to come out of nowhere.
Regardless of what tipping point Iād violated to accelerate my descent from one injurious event to the next in the span of just a few months, one thing became very clear: The way that I am existing is hurting me.
I was 21 years old, and I realized…
I am my body’s biggest problem
My body wasn’t the problem. I was the problem my body was having.
If you’re asleep at the wheel and you drive your car into the ditch, do you blame the car for hurting you in the crash? Maybe you should apologize to the carā¦
But thatās how I’d been inhabiting my body, and then I was kicking it for getting busted.
Inhabiting is too generous a word… More accurately, I was ignoring it. And then punishing it when it spoke back too noisily. “Stupid, annoying body. Just shut up, do what I say, and let me carry on with my path of self-destruction, damnit”.
My body was an “it”, too repellant to claim as “mine”. And I’d learned only to value it for what others praised it for.
I was letting other people make decisions for it. Caring about what it looked like and what pretty shapes I could make it do were my only measures of success and worth. But my body could never comply adequately with my wishes. I hated it and wished I could trade it in for a different model.
Makin’ shapes, age 21. Now, “making shapes” with bodies has a very different intention.
I was nothing but an ego puppeteering a Monika-shaped mass of flesh and bone. Where was I…? How did I not realize what was happening?
Because I wasnāt even there.
As a puppet- A surrogate body to play out the thoughts and opinions of others, I barely had a real existence.
I could blame the terrible “role models” from my dance training – teachers and peers- and their subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) forms of bullying. But I won’t. Because I went along with it. I let my puppet strings get pulled.
I could have said, “NO” (yes, all caps) when it was suggested that skipping meals was what smart dancers do to stay thin (and thinness was success). Had I drummed up the courage to protest, I could have stood up for every girl in my class who was in terror of being publicly fat-shamed (which was a real threat).
I could have refused to contort my body beyond its structural limits. But I chose to bend over backwards (literally).
And I might have questioned the statement, “To wake up every day in pain is what it means to be a dancer” (told to us by one ballet teacher with the intention to help us build character, I guess). So I developed a sense of pride in my muscle and joint pain, and didnāt know it wasnāt normal.
Again and again, puppet-me consented to things that went against my well-being.
Had my brain been working, I might have inquired: Is striving to be this flexible useful? Do I even like how this feels? Is a human body set up to do this long-term without consequence? Is pain really normal and noble?
And so, as a result of my failure to consciously question my reality, I became this under-nourished, overworked, un-thinking puppet-thing that simply went along with what everyone else was doing.
And I was praised for it.
Over and over I received the reinforcement that the thinner I was, the better I was. Everytime I dropped some weight I got compliments on how my technique was improving. They even gave me money (a coincidentally timed scholarship for being āmost improvedā that year of university, directly following a period of weight loss). As if my dance technique was obscured by a thin layer of fat.
And in the process of trying to conform to their ideal of “success”, I stopped paying attention to Me.
My world was ruled by comparison and judgement. I was constantly seeking validation based on my body and my abilities, which became my sole identity. What more identity can a puppet have, other than it’s exterior, structural reality?
And then when I started getting hurt, I couldn’t fathom why…
Why am I getting injured?
WHY is different from HOW.
How has to do with the specific patterns of repetitive overuse and misuse leading to tissue damage. Why has to do with the manner in which I was existing that led to said repetitive patterns.
If one is completely conscious, aware, can one become injured? Unless by random accident?
Yes, I was a biomechanical mess, and I wasn’t eating much or sleeping much or drinking any water (I was on a mostly diet Coke diet). But who was doing that? Who was the one who could have been present to acknowledge the signs and signals (symptoms) that I wasn’t well?
There wasn’t even a witness for the car crash… No one else noticed, and I was asleep.
No option but to wake up
When I was 21 I finally drove my body into a ditch called hamstring strain. Metaphorically, it was like the last puppet string snapped, too. That injury ended my dance career, but it was a liberation from being a puppet, too.
That hamstring injury was like an invitation: “Monika, do you want to find a different way of Being? Do you want to dare to… exist? Do you want to remember who You are?”
A relief washed over me because I finally had permission to stop trying to prove to the world I was this thin, perfect, obedient body who could make pretty shapes.
One of the first thoughts post-puppet-Monika had was a confession: I never wanted to be a dancer anyway (to confess this out loud to another person took a few more years).
I knew this long before I turned into a puppet, but I’d forgotten. I knew it once when I was 14, and again when I was 18. Both times I pushed it down quickly before the thought became too uncomfortably alluring for my puppet master.
14-year old me (pre-puppet phase) had dared to question, “Are you still having fun dancing? Because you seem sad, Monika… Would you like to stop? Would you like to do something else?”
14ish is around the age one chooses whether a physical endeavour is something you want to dedicate your life to, or go the academic route. A dance career sounded like it would be fun… Ha. They (everyone I knew) believed in me and encouraged me. They told me I could make it. That I was talented and could be successful.
Isn’t it so great to be supported?
Not really. I was wrong to believe them instead of listening to Me.
I think I am 14 here. This smiley photo is deceiving. I was having a bad time.
The rationalizing animal
Robert A. Heinlein, American novelist and science fiction writer, once wrote, “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.ā Meaning we tend to make a choice first, and then rationalize why we made it afterwards (instead of the other way around).
The following describes my 14-year-old brainās, carefully rationalized justification for betraying myself and committing to puppetry:
First, I reasoned: “If I quit dancing now, I will let people down. People have invested a lot in me and believe in me. I have a duty to continue this path, because if I don’t, they will be hurt by my actions.”
Second, “The reason I’m not having fun is because I don’t fit in. If I can make myself fit in then I’ll be able to have fun”. (Unfortunately, “fitting in” meant worrying about my weight and caring about my looks, and being very, very judgemental to myself and everyone around me. It did not result in having more fun, only isolating myself.)
Third, and more unconsciously, I reasoned, “If I keep going this path, I don’t have to think for myself. I can pretend I have a destiny. Going along with the decisions and ideas of others is less effort than trying to figure out what I really want for myself”.
And now, the last puppet (ham)string cut loose, I set out to rescue my soul from corruption and heal my busted body. What else could I do?
Gait mechanics to the rescue
At first, I didn’t realize that I was my body’s problem, or that my injuries could be correlated to those three above rationalizations. So I went about trying to correct my body’s very wonky biomechanical foibles without considering anything beyond my meat-and-bones.
But at least I was no longer a puppet. I was giving bith to some kind of sovereign existence. A Me was born, and I was studying and thinking for myself for the first time.
In 2015, I found Anatomy in Motion (or it found me): A 6 day immersive course on gait mechanics taught by creator Gary Ward, and Chris (#Sritho) Sritharan. For the first time in my quest for a pain solution, I had a framework to understand the underlying mechanics for my injuries and symptoms. So naturally I took that 6 day course 7 times over the next 5 years.
November 2015, taking up the challenge of writing pronation and supination mechanics for the AiM class, with sweaty palms.
But the exercises and “better movement patterns” I learned werenāt what “healed” me. As I remember Gary Ward stating on one course, engaging with his work is like āputting the BIO back in biomechanicsā¦āĀ
Bio = Life.
When you start working with your own biomechanics in a dedicated way, you’ll soon realize that you aren’t just working with joint mechanics, you’re working with the mechanics of your life, the aggragate of which are represented in your physical structure, as it stands (and moves) right now.
That’s a really hard thing for a lot of people to appreciate until they are ready to see it.
Woven into the AiM teaching was the exact “new way of Being” I’d speculated about years earlier when I stopped dancing. What I really learned studying AiM was the antithesis of my dance training:
You are not a puppet. You are a Being in a process, and this is a process of willingly exposing yourself to the truth of your anatomy, in motion. This process is not about blindly accepting someone else’s ideology or beliefs. This is a process of seeking to understand the truth of human movement, for You, by You. This process demands that you honestly observe how far off your system has strayed from that truth. This is a process of deeply studying the mechanics of how you’ve arrived here, as you are, and by that, seeing what more you can become. You are this process of liberation. May you find the grace to love this process of seeking truth.
In fact, I remember chatting with Chris after I had just discovered something about my lumbar spine, and I said something like, “Wow I really love this!”, to which he replied, “And by ‘This’, do you mean ‘You”?”.
And like that, with every new part of my body I discovered couldn’t move, then reclaimed, got moving, and integrated, I little bit more of Me came into existence. And I loved it.
Many times this process was frustrating, confusing, and seemed to take a lot of effort for very little gain in joint motion. Sometimes pain got worse, then better, then worse again. But it was always educational, and by keeping with the process even when it sucked, I learned the discipline I needed to rescue Me back into existence.
Process, not puppet
Who we are is a process. Hopefully we are blessed to stumble into a process we love and can share with fellow travellers. This process (Me) was what I’d given up to be a pretty puppet.
And I think biomechanical exploration was the process I needed because it demands embodiment by default. You can’t just learn joint mechanics by thinking and conceptualizing them. To actually learn biomechanics, you have to put your bio through those mechanics.
When you move your body through an experiential learning process, You have to wake up to do it, deliberately. You can’t zone out, You have to exist.
If you want to know what hip extension is, for example, You have to get up and do hip extension. Go through the messy process of figuring out why your body can’t do it. Practice. Tinker. Explore. Study. Don’t quit. Keep with the process.
It took me three years to feel my hips extend. How many people do you know who have spent three years trying to do just one thing? Not even do it well. Justā¦ get one degree instead of 0.
Waking up the witness
Studying Anatomy in Motion showed me a way of experiencing my body that had nothing to do with aesthetics, recognition, and performance, but about witnessing my body, as objectively as possible.
I realized that re-learning movement required a gentler way than the aggressive manner I’d originally used to distort my skeleton (and life). One cannot learn anything in a state of stress. So I gradually learned to relax my system a little. And I saw how I needed to approach myself and my life in that gentler way, too.
The skills and characteristics I needed to develop to become a successful AiM student were the real benefit, not the biomechanical knowledge: How to pay deep attention to myself. How to inquire. How to learn. How to reason. How to appreciate that I am a process. How to trust that process. How to observe facts non-judgmentally.
The real knowledge I was after was: Who is this Being interacting with my body’s mechanics? Thatās something worth dedicating a life to.
If you can relate with my struggle to evolve forwards from being a pain-stricken puppet, I have no advice, other than figure out a way to stop being your body’s problem. How you do that, is up to you.
My invitation is to get curious and study. And I’m not saying study AiM specifically. Just study anything that wakes You up.
Study movement, and notice how You have to come into existence to learn. Don’t force it. Expose yourself to the truth of human movement, and let that wake up your Witness- The part of you who can learn and evolve. Find a tool for this that You love. Studying gait mechanics is my tool. What will yours be?
What will you use to help you put the bio back into your biomechanics? š
