Yeah, yeah bunions are a trendy topic and I’m cautiously hopping on the bandwagon to offer A perspective influenced by my training with Anatomy in Motion (fully disclosing my biases as an instructor).
Do I have anything new or groundbreaking to add to the bunion discussion? Nope.
Do I have any revolutionary evidence or new theories to prove the causative mechanism for bunion formation? Nope.
Do I really know anything? Not really.
Wish I knew who to credit this to…
In a perfect world, we’d want to understand what factors led to the bunion(s) forming in the first place… Shit footwear? “Genetics”? Repetitive poor movement of the body above? Previous injury? Probably a little bit of everything.
Regardless of the causal factors, it should be empowering to hear that there are some consistent mechanical findings that often go together with a bunion that you can start to address right away.
First, watch this:
As I describe in the above video, a common mechanical consistency with most buniony feet is that the joints posterior to the 1st MTPJ DO NOT GAP on the medial border of the foot and, instead, the big toe joint is doing allllll of the gapping (abduction). A good strategy would be to start to redistribute the gapping of the medial border across ALL joints, not just the one MTPJ.
I think some people call that load-sharing, a term most commonly used in reference to spine motion and can describe why some people have back pain.
Much like a spine with a hinge point at the thoracolumbar junction, through which all their extension is occurring, a foot with a “hinge point” at the 1st MTPJ, through which all their pronation is occurring can lead to a structural distortion over time that can become stiff and rigid and not super comfortable.
The intention of the exercise I demo in the video is to MINIMIZE the valgus/ABduction/ER/gapping (whatever you want to call it) motion of the big toe, and MAXIMIZE joint opening at the other joints on the medial border of your foot, encouraging healthy pronation mechanics with even joint motion distribution through the entire foot.
And if you understand that as a movement principle, you can get really creative with how you go about working with a bunion, or any part of the body.
What about toe spacers?
In the video, I am using the sock-between-the-toes technique in a way that is reminiscent of a toe spacer. But this is not meant to be a passive solution, like toe spacers often are portrayed as. The goal is use the sock as a tool to re-educate your foot to move differently. Not to hold all the toes apart 24/7 in hopes it will change foot mechanics. Like putting a book under your pillow hoping to learn passively in your sleep… I WISH it worked that way.
I’m sure there is a time and a place for toe spacers as a passive tool, but I’ve personally never recommended people to use them, nor have I ever used them myself (nor have I ever told anyone to STOP wearing toe spacers- Your feet, your choice). Except for a few times I painted my toe-nails…
I find the most repulsive thing about this photo to be the choice of polish colour. Bleh.
Here’s another creative set-up one of my clients came up with to redistribute her big toe’s excessive valgus to her forefoot and rearfoot:
The band is pulling her valgus big toe into ADduction (towards midline of the body), while she pronates her foot to encourage opening of the joints on the medial border of her foot without excessive big toe bunionization (that’s totally a word). The black AiM wedge is promoting inversion of her forefoot to further encourage healthy pronation mechanics.
Want to learn more?
If you are a manual therapy or movement practitioner and you’d like to learn more about foot mechanics in gait, I will be teaching an Anatomy in Motion Module 1 seminar on Sept 22-24 2023. If you are in the Greater Toronto Area, come nerd out!
This was a quick overview, not intended to be specific medical advice. If you are looking for help for your own body, it is important to receive individualized guidance for your body’s unique issues. Get a professional you trust to assess your unique needs, or get in touch if you’d like to work together to find movement-based solutions to help your body move and feel better.
Raise your hand if your neck and jaw feel fantastic right now (honestly, mine feels a little like s#!te). I am going to assume your hand is down…
I’d like to share a 9 minute movement exploration to help you find a little more space in your neck, reduce tension and gripping in your jaw, and stand with your head in a better alignment over your body. Instead of like this:
If you’re feelin’ shrimpy, clear a spot on the floor and follow along with me:
I use this exercise with my clients who have limited neck range of motion, compressed (retracted) jaws, jammed occiputs, and even migraines.
Who should do it?
Most humans who stand upright on two feet within Earth’s field of gravity will enjoy this exercise. Particularly if:
You have a forward head posture.
The muscles at the back of your neck and upper traps feel hard and constricted and tight.
Your jaw muscles always feel clenched and sore.
You grind your teeth at night.
You get muscle tension headaches.
You feel like your shoulders are always up to your ears.
You’re like me and all of your life stress manifests itself in your neck and jaw.
You’re like me and you’re constantly smiling in an attempt to overcome crippling social anxiety.
When to do it?
Anytime!I personally like to do it as part of my morning movement practice and before and/or after I do any deliberate movement/exercise. You might like to use it to break up bouts of sitting so you don’t become a stagnant clump of spineneckjaw (how I feel right now). Or use it to relax anytime you notice tension building up.
I hope you enjoy this little movement exploration and found it useful for helping your neck and jaw (and life) feel more chill.
If anything about this movement feels uncomfortable or bad in your body, don’t force through it. Not everyone needs this exercise. If you have questions, please ask!
Want more help for your neck?
You may enjoy my Movement Deep Dive session: Check Your Neck.
Learn how your neck moves in relation to the rest of your body in gait.
Self- assess your neck
Explore movements that give your neck back it’s missing options for healthy ranges of motion.
And if you’d like more personalized guidance, shoot me an email or a DM on Instagram or Facebook, and we can talk about how to get your body feeling and moving better.
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 🙂
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 🙂 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 😉
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.
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 can’t 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.
Janky: Junk + cranky. Technical term (which I stole from a client of mine, in reference to her janky shoulder).
I love discovering connections in the body, too. 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, I’d like to share with you a series of video clips from my most recent Movement Deep Dive session: Foot-Spine Connections.
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 you’re 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.
I hope you’ll 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.
Foot-Jaw Connections
So, how did stuff go? Did you discover anything new and useful? 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 can’t share EVERYTHING for free, because this is capitalist America.
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 tower’s 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 🙂 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 😉
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 have…) to whether or not I wore shoes my body didn’t 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 🙂
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.
Fitness goals…The only good reason to have them is so you can stop having them.
Why not skip to the part where you just stop having goals?
Trust me. I’m a fitness professional 😉
This January, while everyone else is making resolutions, doing some version of a “kickstart-being-healthy-in-30-days-fitness-challenge”, would you like to join me in my Anti-Fitness Challenge?
Free yourself from the expectation of getting fitter and healthier. And discover the joy of honest movement. Free from “shoulds”, and “have-tos”, and “I’m-bad-if-I-don’ts”.
Reclaim permission to move without needing it to be intense exercise. Without needing to get something out of it.
Reclaim movement free from utilitarian function.
What would that feel like?
Welcome to anti-fitness livin’.
But without fitness goals won’t I become an unhealthy slob?
I’m not saying become a blob.
I’m inviting you to become more aware of your unconscious motives for exercise.
Having goals for your body can be useful in that they can set a direction. But what if you’re going the wrong direction? Are your fitness goals ones that You came to on your own, that are meaningful for You?
I’d much rather people have no clear goal at all than to have blindly adopted a goal that was someone elses’ idea.
Not goals you picked up from Mom. Or your evil ballet teacher. Or the bullies you thought were your friends in highschool. (Oops I’m talking about myself…)
Remember that the person pursuing the goal has more value than the goal itself. In the process of working towards the goal, the goal setter ought to exist. The goal shouldn’t stifle your existence.
It’s quite possible that most of your fitness goals got accidentally chosen for you, without you knowing it. Think about that…
Can you think of one goal you had/have for your body that came uniquely from You? Or has every goal you’ve had for what your body should be able to do, feel like, and look like come from an external source?
Your parents. Friends. Social media influencers who really do care about you living your best life (as long as you’re wearing their clothing line…).
Everyone’s got “fitness shoulds” they believe and preach. But shoulds and goals are not the same.
You should be X% bodyfat to be healthy.
You should work on mobility with this or that trendy stretching routine.
You should build muscle mass, especially your butt.
And you should wear a particular shoe (or no shoes) while doing it all…
How do you know these “should-ers” aren’t just propagating the fitness goals (i.e. shoulds) THEY originally bought into, which gave them a sense of control by manipulating one teeny variable in the ever-increasing entropy of existence?
If you’ve ever felt out of control because you gained 5 pounds and can’t bear to face the world out of fear of being judged as a failure, you know exactly what I mean.
This January 2022… Just. Stop. Fitness. Goals.
And discover who is this You that keeps making fitness goals?
Screw that “new year new you” crap. This year, remember You. The original You. Untarnished by the opinions of others.
Everyone is trying to convince everyone else to care about the things they care about, which might not actually be the thing You care about.
And then we feel bad for not caring about the things that we feel we’re expected to care about. And then we feel worse for failing to to accomplish goals we don’t actually care about. Ironic, isn’t it?
Just admit you don’t care.
In the words of my spirit animal, Richard Feynman:
“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you want to accomplish. The others’ expectation of you is their mistake, not your failing.”
What if every fitness goal we’ve ever had is based on a learned moral judgement that isn’t true? “If X is right and Y is wrong, I need to get to X because I don’t want to look wrong”. That says nothing about whether it is healthy for you.
But what if trying to be “right” and “healthy” is making you unhealthy and sad?
What if my “healthy” decision is actually your “wrong” decision? What if my “wrong” decision is the best thing YOUcould ever do for yourself?
For example, I read a book recently that advised to eat a lot more vegetables (among other things). I already eat a lot of vegetables. But I started believing I needed more instead of asking if it was true. It kind of hurt my guts, but I kept going with it. I got more and more obsessive and orthorexic. I started avoiding social situations in which I couldn’t follow the author’s specific (unreasonable) guidelines, because I bought into his version of “healthy”.
But for someone else, getting a little more interested in eating vegetables might be the switch they need.
Can you see how we just can’t compare ourselves with eachother?
No one can tell you what is best for you. We have to figure out our unique version of health, fitness, and whatever else, or we can get swept away in the flood of shoulds and expectations and comparison.
What hidden motives lurk in your background?
The first point in the Anti-Fitness challenge is to consider that every fitness goal you think You came up with on your own might actually something you picked up (like that particular virus that shall not be named).
The second point is to look into whether your fitness goals actually have nothing to do with fitness, but you’re telling yourself, and everyone else that they are?
That’s called confabulation. And we’re all doing it.
I’ll illlustrate this fitness-confabulation-theory using myself as an example (I’ve been an expert confabulator all my life).
Until age 25, I don’t think I made one single self-aware, self-sovereign choice for what to do with my body. (I’m still not sure I’m able to think for myself, but I’m working on it.)
Here’s a short list of the things I did and the hidden motives I had for them:
When I was a wee lass, my parents put me into gymanstics, soccer, swimming, dance. None of it was my original choice. In the end I stuck with dance, but not because I loved it. I wanted to quit when I was 14. I stuck with it because I felt guilty about being a quitter. (that said, I do appreciate and feel very fortunate for being exposed to a variety of movement forms. Thanks, for realz, mom and dad.)
Then, in highscool, I felt pressure to join the curling team because on of my best friends was the skip (look it up) and I wanted to be worthy to be her friend. And I feared that any time I spent not around her was time she would forget about me and make other friends, and I would be all alone… Ahh teenage angst. So I pretended to like curling, but it wasn’t MY self-sovereign choice. It was a choice based on fear of abandonment and moulding mysefling into who I thought she wanted me to be..
I picked up guitar (a thing you do with your body, even if not “exercise”) because I wanted to look cool. People who play guitar are cool, right? It wasn’t MY choice. I picked up the belief that being cool is important. But I actually found the lessons stressful because I didn’t deep down want to play guitar. The body positioning also flared up shoulder pain. So why would I keep doing something stressful and painful? Looking cool is important. Obviously.
I joined the weightlifting club in grade 9 because I felt I had something to prove. I wanted to be “different”. Turns out weightlifting is actually pretty boring and no one cares.
I joined the cross-country running club because there were some popular people in the club and I thought I could be popular, too, by association (but I didn’t inherently enjoy runnning. I’m no Helen Hall…).
Later in university, I started running againto prevent myself from getting fat. Running what I used to was to make up for all the crap I was eating, to calm my anxiety about being “too fat” to be a dancer.
Then I started high intensity interval training (HIIT) when running didn’t “work”, because I read in a book that “women should do treadmill sprints, not lift weights, to achieve their best physique, because squats and deadlifts build too much unsightly muscle bulk”. The book was written by a man… So I adopted some random man’s expectation for what I should look like and do with my body. And then I pulled my hamstring. Doh.
After university, after quitting dance, I started powerlifting because I wanted to be perceived as someone powerful and capable of success to compensate for years of feeling weak, and “failing” at my dance career. It had nothing to do with “fitness”.
Then when I started learning about corrective exercise for pain, I naiively bought into everything I was told would “fix” my pain: You need to stabilize your core. You need stronger glutes. You need to stretch your hip flexors. I did it blindly and rationalized it was working (even though I still felt shitty). I became an advocate for neutral spine and glute activation drills, but in reality I was trying to find a sense of control.
Worse, I wanted to convince everyone else to care about being in control, too. Because that made me feel more in control when everyone adhered to my definition of control and life could be predictable and stable.
Kind of like being in prison…
Guilt. Worthiness. Needing to look a particular way… Do any of those sound like joyful reasons to move?
Not ONE single thing on this list is something I did for ME, uninfluenced.
Not one thing was for the joy of movement. Or was linked to something that genuinely fulfilled me. It was all about meeting expectations. Control. Appearences.
This is NOT the kind of state one ought to be making goals from.
I don’t know about you, but I’m no longer comfortable making goals drenched in expectation.
Any goal set out of expectation or shame will eventually lead to duress. Injuries. Deep fatigue. Sadness and depression. A sense of being lost and confused…
And I am sharing this with you today because when I realized the extent to which I had given up my right to choose for my own body, and convinced myself so thoroughly that I even liked it that way, it came as a shock.
It felt… gross, to recognize that lack of self-respect. To realize that I couldn’t identify ONE thing I’d done with my body that was for Me, by Me.
The movement practice I developed based on AiM isn’t something I do to please anyone. Not as an exhibition to post about on social media. Not to control my weight. I do it because it makes my body feel good. It satisfies my soul’s curiosity for learning about movement and anatomy. I am genuinely a nerd about it.
In fact, in my early days of exploring AiM people said that what I’m doing is weird, and that I should stop.
One colleague actually went out of his way to sit me down privately and tell me that people don’t understand what I’m doing and it is off-putting so I should consider just doing what everyone else is doing in the gym, and stop doing this AiM stuff so that I’ll fit in.
And he claimed to be saying this because HE CARED ABOUT ME.
I don’t know what he actually cared about, but if he truly cared about Me– the being who wants to explore and learn- he wouldn’t have tried to place his goal of fitting in with everyone else onto me.
So you know what I said? Thank you and fuck that.
THAT’S when I knew I had found something that was mine to explore for Me.
And I’m not sharing this because I think YOU should do AiM, or care about moving efficiently. I’m not trying to sell you on any movement form or value system or eating more vegetables.
I’m trying to sell you on YOU.
That’s what the Anti-Fitness Challenge is all about.
How would you move if it wasn’t about exercise or fitness or how your body looks?
What fitness goals are leftover when you drop all expectations?
Do you have a hunch about what that might look like?
I once asked this question to a client and she started crying. The idea that movement could be something enjoyable, non-utlitarian, wasn’t something she’d felt since she was a kid. Me too…
I think rediscovering the joy of movement is something we are deep down longing for permission to do, but there’s so much fear that moving for the sake of moving is a waste of time. Why would you move if there was no external goal? If there’s nothing to get out of it?
Maybe because you love yourself. How about that part?
On that note, if it vibes with you, I invite you to my life’s mission: A commitment to an awareness of when I feel an outward expectation for what I should do with my body- How it “should” look, move, be. And just say… Fuck that.
Pause, and before going for that run, picking up that weight, kicking up into that handstand, ask:
Is this Meaningful?
Is this Enjoyable?
Is this Sustainable?
Is this Healthy?
And make a self-empowered choice for Me, by Me.
Just some thoughts today 🙂
The Anti-Fitness Challenge might be something I formally put together. But mostly, its for me. Because i need it. If you’d like to do it with me, shoot me an email and maybe I’ll put some structure to it. Could be fun? (probably not…)
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 😜 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
In my 3 Essential Tools resource (a must-read for budding Movement Detectives) I extolled the importance of continous learning. Education is truly one of the most valuable tools for helping our bodies move with more ease and less pain. If you don’t know what a healthy body should be able to move like, how are you going to get yours to move better??
Education comes in so many forms: Attending courses and workshops (online and in person), diploma and degree programs, working directly with mentors, doing independent research, and reading. If you’re me, lots and lots and lots of reading.
I confess… I have a reading problem.
Not that I can’t read well, but that I have a tendency to get so stuck into reading a book that I might shirk my more pressing life resonsibilities. This can get me into trouble when I actually have important shit that needs getting done. Adulting is hard sometimes…
That said, some books have literally changed the trajectory of my life.
Has that ever happened to you? After reading a book, something actually woke up in you that forever changed how you think and engage with life?
It’s rare… Most of the time, embrrassingly, I struggle to summarize just three key take-aways after finishing one chapter. Reading a LOT of books clearly doesn’t equate in me actually absorbing the content.
And then there are some books after which the trajectory of your life shifts a few degrees.
Have you heard of the 1 in 60 rule in aviation? It states that a one degree change in direction can result in a disproportionately large shift in final destination: Each degree off over a distance of 60 nautical miles translates to 1 nautical mile off course. Think about the crazy implication this has for where you might end up… A completely different city, or country, or even continent!
Some books push us that one degree (hopefully in a meaningful direction…). How amazing is that?
So I’ll stop blabbering now, and get to the point. I’d like to share five books that stand out in memory as having changed the trajectory of my life. I don’t expect that they’ll have the same life-changing effect on you, but one of these titles might lead you somewhere new that you wouldn’t have explored otherwise.
Well of course this is at the top of my list. I don’t know who or where I would be right now had I not read this book. Is has had the largest impact on both my professional and personal philosophies for working with human bodies in motion, including my own.
WTF is a mind opening read that made me question the conventional fitness and therapy paradigms around stability and core training, foot mechanics, and the utility of stretching. Like the tagline says, “A game changing philosophy…”. This book also led me to take the plunge and take the six day Anatomy in Motion immersion course (7 times…) which at the time was a big financial investment. Now, I am working with Gary and Chris of AiM as both a mentee and mentor to help other AiM students learn more deeply.
Here’s a story I’ve never told here before: When I was 21 and getting hamstring rehab, my physiotherapist lent this book to me, and it was the inspiration to create a program to help banged-up dancers with back (and other) problems build strength and prevent injuries (The Dance Training Project).
This is the book that first got me interested in learning about my own body. Up until then I’d never given much thought to the notion that I could have any effect on changing my reality. This book inspired hope in me that, with this new information about how the spine works, I could take responsibility for my back problems and get myself well. Honestly, I haven’t referenced this book since I was 21, though I’m sure there are some excellent golden nuggets to review. But the biggest thing I got from this book was the sense of empowerment that came from learning something new about my body that I previously had zero awareness of: It woke up my inner Movement Detective.
This book denotes a major pivot in my life: The moment I learned what it meant to feel “good” after moving my body. I was 19 or 20 at the time, and decided on a whim to take a yoga class. It was the first time I actually breathed while moving- What a concept. It challenged my body in a whole new way comapared to my dance training. And after the class, something felt very different. I was used to feeling broken down after dance and exercise, but that day I left the studio feeling clear headed, calm, aligned, and “good”. I didn’t know what good actually felt like until then!
Intrigued, I went to a local indie bookstore, and this book jumped off the shelf at me. The first section the author’s story, his journey into yoga and meditation. I had never considered trying meditation before, and I gave some of his exercises a try. It was a gradual shift, but this was my initiation into observing my own thoughts, and that movement could feel restorative, not punishing. I began willingly observing myself. Slowly, I started to value awareness and self-inquiry. I don’t know if this book is anything special compared to other yoga books (haven’t read other yoga books), but it was the exact book I needed at that moment in time.
This lovely book gave me practical tools that helped me reduce my neuroticism to a level that made my life much less sufferable. In her book, Katie outlines “The Work”: A four-question process for investigating the sneaky beliefs and thoughts that are keeping us stuck in the same old cycles of emotional reactivity, and holding us back from evolving in all areas of life.
I remember the first time I used her framework I immediately felt as if a weight had been lifted. I realized for the first time the depth to which my unconscious belief-systems were ruling my every thought and decision, repearing the same behaviours over and over. I can’t recommend this book enough for anyone looking for a structured, systematic way of compassionate self-inquiry.
Amanda Palmer is a musician who began her performance career as a “living statue” street-performer (and made more money than she did at her “real job”). Her story has nothing to do with the body, but it heart-warmingly covers important themes common to all humanity: Defning your personal version of success and marrching to the beat of your own authentic drum. The courage it takes to risk being vulnerable. The value of human connection, and nurturing relationships (which I often still take for granted). The magic that can unfold when you put your trust in people and life and your intuition, even when things are uncertain. That sneaky little “fraud police” character within that can sabotage us from taking action towards our dreams. And so much more (in fact, after reading this book I was inspired to start writing my book Dance Stronger).
Disclaimer: These books probably will not change your life. Don’t get your hopes up 😉
I think books find their way into our hands at the exact time we need them, for eactly where we are in our lives at that moment, for the exact lessons we personally need to learn. Life works in mysterious, magical, and serendipitous ways.
It is 100% possible (more like, probable) that you could read one of the books and get absolutely nothing useful from it. Boring. A waste of time. And that’s ok 🙂
Anyway, I’d love to hear if you’ve read any of the books on my list, and then what the top five books are on YOUR life changer list 🙂 Because I can always use more book recos.
*BE AWARE: Some of the book links are Amazon Affiliate links, which means that if you click through and happen to purchase one of the books, I get a microscopic % of the profits. I’m not doing this because I’m a greedy-pants person, but because every litte bit helps support me spending hours of my time writing this blog. I am ever so grateful if you do wish to purchase one of these books, that you choose to go through one of my links, and help support me writing more for this blog (and simultaneously divert some $$ from Amazon into my pocket). Thank you! 🙂
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 😉 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 zero—the 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 😉
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 😉
To learn more about CoM management, you may like to check out Liberated Body (a self-guided online workshop, avec moi)
