Gregory Stern is passionate about movement and helping others on their health journeys. His own struggles with a chronic foot injury led him to dive deep into understanding his body and finding solutions. With a background in Physiology, Kinesiology, and Physical Therapy, Greg has spent thousands of hours learning from various sources to develop a comprehensive approach to pain management and movement improvement. Through his company, From the Ground Up, Greg aims to guide others on their path to self-discovery and optimal health, helping them not only recover from injuries but also thrive in their everyday lives.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Gregory Stern about if better feet are bad for business.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How the proper understanding of pronation can lead to improved body alignment, muscle activation, and reduced injury risk.
– Why educating and empowering individuals on foot health can help them improve mobility and overall body functionality.
– How focusing on alignment and muscle engagement while running is essential for peak performance.
– Why arm movement and scapular mobility play a crucial role in maintaining balance and preventing shoulder pain while running.
– How retraining the body through extremes in motion can improve physical function and alleviate pain.
Connect with Gregory:
Guest Contact Info
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@groundupphysio
Facebook
facebook.com/groundupphysio
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/greg-stern-6027b31b5
Links Mentioned:
groundupphysio.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
When you discover the importance of foot health, foot strength, basically what your feet do to your body and what happens if you don’t let your feet do their job, it can really change your life for the better. But if you’re a professional, it can mess you up, and we’re going to find out more about that in just a few moments on this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs that are your foundation.
We also break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat-out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or play or do yoga or CrossFit, whatever you like to do, and to do those things enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. Did I say enjoyably? It’s a trick question. You know I did. Because if you’re not having a good time, you’re not going to keep up whatever it is you’re doing anyway, so make sure you’re having fun and that’s what we’re here to do. I’m Steven Sashen from Xeroshoes.com. I’m now the chief barefoot officer. That’s my new title. Not going to talk about that though. And we call this The MOVEMENT Movement because we’re creating a movement, more about that in a second, about natural movement. Letting your body do what it’s made to do and not getting in the way and interfering, even though we sometimes think that modern technology is better than just what human beings have been doing since the beginning of human beings. Not always the case.
So to make this movement move is really simple. You can help. You don’t have to do anything special. It’s just what you already know how to do. Go check out our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Nothing you need to do to join, but that’s where you’ll find out previous episodes, you’ll find those, you’ll find out how you can subscribe to hear about upcoming episodes. You will find all the different places you can get the podcast if you’re not getting it at your favorite podcast or whatever thing now. And the gist is, when you can, give us a thumbs up, give us a five-star review. Share this with your friends. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right. That’s all the intro stuff. Let us have some fun. Hey, Greg, do me a favor. Tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Greg Stern:
Yeah, absolutely. My name is Greg Stern. I am the owner of From the Ground Up Physiotherapy, and you actually stole my title a little bit. I’m the CFO, the chief foot officer here in Montreal. That’s it. And I help people get to the root cause of their pain so that they can get back to doing the things they love. So this all started with my own personal story as I feel like it does for so many and, as you were mentioning, this idea of navigation through professional pursuits. I’m 30 years old right now, but 10 years ago, I had a very innocent ankle sprain playing flag football that decided not to heal properly. Up to that point, I had lots and lots of acute injuries. I was the rambunctious kid, always getting into trouble, climbing up trees, breaking my nose, breaking my foot, always getting into trouble. But those injuries always seem to get better.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, as we could discuss how injuries could happen for you if you decide to view them that way, I ended up spraining my ankle and it just never healed properly. So I was dealing with chronic pain for about five years in my foot. Two and a half years into that journey, I ended up getting surgery, actually. I had accessory navicular, so it was an extra piece of bone. But essentially, through that process… My father’s an emergency physician and my mom is a physical therapist herself, they had suggested I go to see physio. So I went from one physio to the next, doing all the things, being super diligent with the homework they were giving me, and nothing was really working. So I was pretty depressed at that point because I couldn’t do the things I love to do anymore. Every time I would try a bout of activity, my whole body would ache. My feet were crying for help. And it was a long journey. I could fast-forward the whole thing. But-
Steven Sashen:
No, no. Don’t. I mean, I want to hear some of the other interventions that you attempted. And of course, I’ll prompt you for what can follow that is having two parents who were medical people, I can only guess that as you got to what will be the end of that journey, in the beginning of a new journey, they had some opinions. So-
Greg Stern:
Oh, yeah. 100%. 100%. Yes. I was thinking my whole life that I would be a doctor. I’m super interested in the body and in sciences overall. And I studied health science through CEGEP, which is actually pre-college here in Quebec, in Montreal. And I was thinking about going to medicine, I had done volunteering opportunities, but I was always super into fitness as well. And my decision to say, “Oh, actually, I want to go into physiotherapy,” was met with a no, and, “What do you mean no?”
And it was a very tough navigation because, at that point, all I could think about was getting out of pain and no longer did medicine attract me because I’m pinging with pain 24/7. And it wasn’t a pain that was horrible, horrible. But it was constant, the moment I woke up and to the moment I would go to bed, there’s this buzzing reminder of this nagging injury that just didn’t want to get better. And I had to stand on my own two feet, I’m like, “No, this is what I’m doing.” And now, 10 years later, as I own my own clinic, it’s met with-
Steven Sashen:
We’ll get there. We’ll get there. So backing up a half a step, so during that time… And let’s just do this one. Before you found an obvious solution, because we know where this story is going, again, what were some of the other interventions that you tried that were ineffectual?
Greg Stern:
Well, typically, as many people have encountered sight of pain equals sight of problem the way that most physios and chiros and osteos think about the body. So it was just a lot of hands-on therapy to the calf, to the foot, mobilization, the banded elastic drills, calf raises, calf stretching, towel curls, all these things that don’t really cut it. And then when they don’t cut it, orthotics. Then I was in big orthopedic shoes, walking around with these heavy-cushioned shoes. And that was the main things that I was given no matter the professional I was going to. And when that wasn’t starting to work, I was already starting to look at surgical options, and they were looking at CT scans and MRIs and looking at what was the problem, and what they saw was there was micro motion of the tendon pulling on the bone that wasn’t a solid connection.
Now I can’t say for sure, now, given the knowledge I have, whether or not I could have helped it versus back then it was just what needed to happen. But essentially, the moment I woke up after surgery, I thought all my problems would be over. And then as I start walking on my body, hello, hip pain, hello, back pain. And now I’m even more broken down than before and more depressed than before. And it was obviously super challenging at that point to know what direction is next because I just got the surgery and thought that would be the solution to my problem. And I ended up getting an athletic therapist that started training me more and started connecting my body a bit more. And that helped. But again, I think it was the transition… Well, I would say I also then try to transition to natural footwear too fast and aggressively and that just further exacerbated. So I had to really hit a real rock bottom before I could start making my way back out.
Steven Sashen:
So then that rock bottom, what… I mean, we’re going to get to the part where, obviously, you had a… What’s the word? A road to Damascus moment. So what led to that and what was that? And then, of course, what followed that?
Greg Stern:
Well, perhaps you know the company, The Foot Collective, they’re a big-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, sure.
Greg Stern:
… company. So I’m quite friendly with the guys there. I actually gave a physiotherapy workshop to a bunch of the therapists there two weekends ago in Ottawa, which is very cool because that was the origins of my stories. They were the first ones I started to hear talking about it. And one of the physios there had recommended I go into shoes, but actually midway through my physiotherapy degree, I actually took a year off. And because my family’s ties to real estate, I ended up going to real estate for a year just thinking, because during my time in physio, what I was being met with is mentors that were just saying hands-on therapy is the key to everything. And I was like, “Did I just sign up for this? This is not what I thought physiotherapy could be.”
But I had been following Kelly Starrett back in the day and I was very like, “All right, physiotherapy is all about giving personal responsibility to your clients,” but that’s not what I was being met with in my schooling. It was really this isolated approach that was super tunnel-visioned and so focused on hands-on and not movements. And I got this opportunity and while in New York City living there, I decided I go to Vivobarefoot shoes at the time and walking on concrete like that with a shoe that a foot was already half dead because it wasn’t working properly. I gave myself double plantar fasciitis in the process. So it was quite a down moment. But what really started getting me out of that actually was a podcast from this guy named Dr. Chatterjee who introduced Gary Ward from Anatomy in Motion. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of him before. But he was all into pronation, which I had been trying to avoid for years.
And the concept, I don’t have to perhaps educate you, but obviously your audience may or may not be familiar, but foot flattening is the key to a happy foot. The idea that our feet are meant to be trampolines that spread out, absorb impact. And when I started to teach my foot to flatten, that was when my feet started to respond and I could start to utilize my feet connected to my calf, connected to my knee, my hip, and to start to teach all the parts to work together. And then I just got more obsessed, diving down more rabbit holes and just spending all my time in my basement just doing slow movements. The university degree honestly was just self-exploration of the different continued education that was available for me to explore.
Steven Sashen:
Well, first of all, brilliant. Secondly, I want to highlight this, because I like it, and I wish I had my foot skeleton with me-
Greg Stern:
Oh, I got one.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we moved into a new office and it disappeared. So you can show for people who are watching, you can show… I mean, so let’s back up or do a little mild tangent. It’s not that pronation has gotten a bad rap, it’s that pronation has been given a rap at all. And it really came from, from what I can see, what are now the big shoe companies, made an elevated heel shoe where you end up landing on your heel, and your heel’s a ball, by the time your foot comes down, it’s unstable. And they came to this conclusion, “Oh, my gosh. Now we need motion control because your foot’s unstable,” not having the idea, “Oh, we made your foot unstable.” And so this idea that pronation is bad came from that and it’s become pervasive. Everyone thinks pronation is a horrible thing.
My favorite thing is there’s a footwear guy… Oh, gosh. It’s so embarrassing. I’m really bad with names in general. And this guy’s name always falls out of my head. So it’ll pop into my brain within five minutes. Anyway, big deal, big deal foot dude, let’s just leave it at that for now, who was Mr. Anti-pronation until a number of years ago when he completely made a 180. And everyone said, “Why have you changed your mind?” He goes, “The research.” The research shows there’s no correlation between pronation and any injury. And more, the things that are supposed to stop pronation rarely do because of the amount of force you’re putting into the ground and what they’re using to control that. Or if they do, they’re creating other problems by immobilizing your foot.
Anyway, that’s my rant about that. But if you show on your little foot skeleton, what happens when a foot contacts the ground, because just when you said that the foot flattens, to be clear, it’s not like it necessarily completely does that, although it can because you’ll never have that much ankle flexion. But regardless, you do have this arch thing in your foot that, under load, when it starts to flatten, actually gets stronger and utilizes the muscles, ligaments, and tendons as natural springs and shock absorbers and sends messages… I’m just saying what you would say if I didn’t shut up, but also-
Greg Stern:
No, no, no. 100%.
Steven Sashen:
But you’re doing the visual part, I’m doing the audio part. I don’t know why. It also is sending messages, once your foot is engaged that way, up the chain to tell the rest of your body, your ankle, your knee, your hip, et cetera, how to function properly. Now, was that a good paraphrasing of what you discovered?
Greg Stern:
Yeah, 100%. I think the definition is very… Pronation equals three points of contact on the floor. The thing is when most people think of a foot collapsing, or pronation, they think of collapse, I.E., the pinky toe knuckle is lost and that’s no longer the definition of pronation is if the outside edge is lost. So I teach a lot of drills of how to pronate, so I get the hip to open up, I get the foot to flatten, but I put a wedge underneath the tripod of the foot. And if I could steal a wedge away, and it’s usually the outside part of the foot, therefore they’re going too fast too soon into the inside edge of the foot. And if they could delay that and learn to get the outer foot in contact as the arch goes down, then beautiful thing happens.
And they do five, six reps and they walk off and I say, “Well, so how does it feel like?” “Wow, my foot feels light. It feels springy.” It’s almost like a comedy skit for me whenever I teach someone how to pronate their foot, what their body response to. It’s very cool because for someone who has very high arch feet, they’re like, “I feel the ground more,” I’m like, “Well, let’s ask you a question. Would you rather have more of your foot on the ground or less of your foot on the ground?” Like, “Obviously, more of this sense of groundedness and connection.” Sometimes for people that actually have flat feet, it feels like their arch just got higher because when you stretch a muscle that’s already stretched, it actually responds by coiling back to the middle. So it’s very interesting. Depending on the person and depending on their patterns, they’ll just gain new awareness of parts of their feet that they never knew existed. So what everyone demonizes so bad is actually what creates so much beauty in the foot in the rehab process.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, many people have never watched slow motion video of a number of… Especially Kenyan marathoners, who they pronate… I mean, the inside ankle bone, just to say it without having to be technical for people, can sometimes be practically touching the ground. And people say, “Well, oh, they need to correct that.” It’s like, “No, that’s what’s making them run fast.”
But you highlighted the key difference. The key thing, and I originally learned this from Dr. Bill Sands, when he had a lab out in Colorado, and he used to be at the US Olympic Committee, and he said, “It’s not pronation. It’s hyper pronation. It’s happening too fast and out of control.” And out of control is a combination of just how things are lining up and whatever strength you have, but that’s the part that isn’t really called out or delineated, everyone goes, “Oh, pronation,” and then it’s a conversation-stopper. But I love this idea that you have of having something under the foot to give people that feedback of is this working or not, because that’s the only thing that changes movement patterns is having your brain go, “Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn’t realize that.”
Greg Stern:
And now just rep it out and just flood the brain with new feedback. And then also, obviously, tissue load is going to be different as well because what everyone is always focused on is straight knee movements. I’m obsessed with the idea of stacking someone’s body. So when you ask anyone to get into a split stance and say, “Bend your front knee,” what typically happens for most people is that the ribs almost go back and they end up loading their lower back. So what we want to do is get someone into position where they’re leaned and loaded forward. And the moment that they do that, one, their back is happy… It’s funny. I say, “To me, the soleus is the most important muscle in the human body.” The ability to get the rib cage in the head stacked on top of the middle of the foot, the midfoot is the key to unlocking everything. And once your calf kicks on, your back is safe.
So when it comes to picking something up, everyone says, “Bend your knees to pick something up.” So they do that on the start of the movement, but the moment they actually stand up from picking things up, their knee prematurely extends backwards, and then they finish through the lower back. And if they can maintain that knee forward for a little bit longer than the hip does the work, their calves get torched. So people always complain about like, “Oh, my God. My calves, crazy, are working super hard.” But typically speaking, when you go to therapy settings, it’s much more just straight calf raises, which is more the propulsive phase, but that’s not what people struggle with. It’s more that mid-stance, their body coming over the top of their foot and loading into that midfoot, and pronating is what’s people are missing.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and some of that comes from the thing that people have heard until Ben Patrick, who is now known as the Knees Over Toes Guy, decided to start correcting this, which is if you are going to be in a split stance, one foot in front of the other, and you’re going to do something, squatting down or something lunge-ish, people think they’re supposed to be upright and their knee isn’t supposed to get in front of their toe, which means you’re… Now, I have to say I have a personal connection to this, because two days ago was when I had my leg day. And my leg day workout was my front foot, when I do the split stance, is elevated, so it’s up maybe three inches, and my back foot is on a little wheelie thing so that I can’t actually use my back foot.
So if I do a lunge, basically, it’s a reverse lunge with my back foot going behind me. There’s nothing I can do to support myself because it’s on wheels. And when I do this, I’m leaning really far forward, keeping my back straight like you described. My knee is going as far as it needs to go. And I was just thinking this morning as I was walking my dog, “Holy crap, my hamstrings are torched, and my butt too.” And my back feels fine, which is good. I had a broken spine. So put it all together, people have this as close to upside down as they possibly could, which just blows my mind. And it was even worse when I did that work out. So it was one set of those, I’m holding 30 pounds, but I did a minute’s worth, and I’m going all the way down as far as you possibly can. And then my rest period was 10 seconds of being at the bottom and just bouncing a little bit-
Greg Stern:
Yep, I also do that.
Steven Sashen:
… that three times. And then I wanted to die and switch legs. So anyway, now people can steal my workout and curse me forward afterwards. So this is all brilliant. I need to back up a little bit. You had this discovery, you started using your foot, what was what led you to then how you started changing your practice? And this is an appropriate time to tell people what the name of your practice is.
Greg Stern:
Yeah. So I’m shameful. I’m not even rocking it here-
Steven Sashen:
Not branding.
Greg Stern:
… but here, From the Ground Up Physiotherapy. So I got a foot in my logo over here. So obviously, everything stems from our foundation, and it’s very obvious to you and your audience, but unfortunately most people don’t even think about their feet as their foundation. It’s just this piece of meat that goes inside their shoes and they forget about them until the pain starts coming on, and then they start caring about it, and then the solutions, as we know, are very much pacified solutions that don’t empower the foot to actually work properly.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle.
Greg Stern:
Yes, exactly. And so that vicious cycle for me is, eventually, I started going away and my feet started working a little bit better. And I think sometimes it’s very appropriate though for people to transition to some mid-ground where there is a bit more cushioning. And I think that would’ve been a better solution for me from the standpoint of… It depends on the context of the ground that you’re walking on. New York City, unforgiving, to me, that was helpful. I ended up going into the Altra brand before, ended up going into more Xero, Vivo style.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to argue that point just for the following reason. So, Irene Davis, who’s now the president of the American College of Sports Medicine, she was at Harvard, now she’s at the University of Southern Florida, I think that’s it. And her research basically shows that almost any amount of cushioning, the problem is it cuts down the amount of feedback, that your brain is getting from your feet, enough that you’re not getting the feedback that would inspire a change in your gait pattern. And so my experience has been that going to something lower, lower with a little extra cushioning, it doesn’t really do anything. I just watch people doing the same thing, overstriding, heel striking, et cetera. So in my world, which is called my brain, it’s just start really, really small… Actually, I’ll say it a little differently. The challenge is that I think what the delimiting factor is not the surface that you’re on, but your natural propensity to learn new movement patterns based on feedback.
And everyone’s a little different that way. Some people, they literally can’t feel what’s going on and that’s a problem. And there’s things that you can do to correct that like just walking on mildly unpleasant surfaces barefoot and just waking up the nervous system again. Or some people, they think they’re doing one thing and they’re doing something else, and they just need some video feedback to go, “Yeah, you’re not doing what you think.” And then the third group, they just need a couple of cues. And then the fourth group, they’re naturals and you just need to slow them down because they’re going to have too much fun and do too much too soon. So my contention is that if you’re going to start with something other than a shoe, a quote, barefoot shoe, is literally barefoot, but just around the house, go get the mail down the block and back, something really, really simple because that’s going to do more for gait retraining than anything else and getting you aware of what’s going on.
Greg Stern:
I agree. I think one thing that is super helpful is during the transition process, to be doing certain exercise in tandem with that. And again, those have to be done specifically. Again, I’ve got an 85-year old into minimalist shoes, and I think it’s just a matter of helping that transition with additional things that will do the gait retraining as we’re discussing.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you read my mind because I was going to say you’ve already hinted at some things that you do with people about experiencing proper pronation and how they can feel that. So for the people who are listening/watching, toss out something they can do that’s either a diagnostic thing or one of those exercises you would recommend if someone is in the process of making that transition or thinking about it even.
Greg Stern:
Well, I think a very important thing is a classic knee-to-wall test just to see how it feels left versus right, and what’s the quality of that movement. Because when people just go for knee-to-wall, they think that they-
Steven Sashen:
Pause there and describe the test because most people don’t-
Greg Stern:
Yeah. So essentially, you’re going to stand relatively close to a wall and with the back leg very light, you’re going to push your front knee forward with a heavy heel so that you’re testing how far your knee could pass over your front foot. So the back leg, I really don’t want it to exist, so you can put your hands on the wall. You’re basically stretching out your calf. Now what is the quality of that movement and where does your knee tend to go? Because people have been ingrained that when they do that, they should push their knee outside so that the arch doesn’t go down.
So oftentimes, people experiencing pinching in the front of their ankle there as opposed to lengthening of their calf. So just learning that when you do that, you want to maintain your big toe knuckle, your little toe knuckle on your heel and driving your knee forward. And then what does that feel like for you? Does that feel like a calf stretch or are you feeling pinching? Because if you are feeling pinching, then you’re not getting any arch relaxation that we’re talking about. And then, obviously, I mean, we could either link… I could send over some videos that-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’d be great.
Greg Stern:
… the audience, because that’s something huge that I teach to my clients every day.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we’ll put some show notes.
Greg Stern:
And then also, just learning to stack the body in a way where you bend your front knee, hands on your belly, and you shift your weight forward to the point where your toe knuckles just slam into the ground in a sense that they’re going to all of a sudden feel very firm and your calf kicks on, your quad kicks on, and your butt kicks on just by virtue of you being stacked. And that’s the foundation of how I teach all my movements.
Once you’re stacked, then we could do 3D movements, then we could do a chop, then we could pronate, then we could side bend, and rotate, and squat. Learning to get the calf involved in almost every single movement. Obviously, a bit more challenging to explain certain things, but learning to just jump in a way that when you jump from your right foot to your left foot, you’re able to land in a stacked position, and then freeze on a dime, and then you do that back and forth. We almost slow down the process of running where you could land in a stacked position, in a freeze position where your knee doesn’t budge. Because a lot of people, when they run, they’ve been told, “Land softly.” And by landing softly, they end up sinking and using much more of a muscular strategy. And we want to learn to be a lot more rigid and elastic when we run rather than running in a trotting way where the body loses height on each step.
Steven Sashen:
There’s so many things in there that you said that I totally love. So first of all, I want to highlight that when many people talk about stacking things, they literally do mean just one straight above the other, above the other, above the other. And you’re talking about something very different. You’re talking about a different alignment that’s engaged. So again, your knee is moving a little forward, you are leaning slightly forward from the hip. If you look from the foot to the knee to the hip to your body, it’s not quite Z-shaped… I’m trying to draw that.
Greg Stern:
No, I see just how you’re doing it. That’s exactly how I picture it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And then this whole idea about jumping from foot to foot in a way as a simulation of running, I love. Because running is just jumping from foot to foot. And my favorite thing about that idea of having someone just jump from foot to foot, and you don’t have to jump really far left to right-
Greg Stern:
Not at all.
Steven Sashen:
… just do it at all. Because what people will find naturally, they’re not going to be landing on their fucking heel. And, I mean, that’s the first thing. And I tried to say it without the F word, but I couldn’t. So it’s mind-blowing. I’ve been meaning to do this, I’m trying to find a phone book because they don’t have them anymore. Good Atlanta phone book, three inches high. And have someone just step off of that and you watch… Actually step off and immediately jump. And you watch, they land on the ball of their foot. They use their body properly. It’s like, “That’s how you’re supposed to run.” People go, “But that’s not what I’ve been told.” It’s like, “Yeah, by big companies who made shoes that make you land on your heel that mess you up.” So I love just that whole idea. And most importantly, this notion that this land softly and also run upright instead of having this little bit of lean forward from the ankles. These are just the wrong cues. And what you said, and it’s my favorite thing, when you’re running, you want to be a taut spring.
Greg Stern:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So this is a fun aside. When Usain Bolt went from being a 400-meter runner to a 100-meter runner, the big thing that his coach, Glenn Mills, had him do for a year was a lot of core strengthening stuff, not just abs but lower back as well, because he was loose. He was not a taut spring. And being a taut spring was part of… I’m not going to say entirely. There may be some other things that led to running a 9.58, but regardless, put that all together and that’s what made him fastest man in the world.
Greg Stern:
So on that topic, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with David Weck and BOSU Ball-
Steven Sashen:
You like me to show you the most recent text I got from David?
Greg Stern:
Yeah, so David is my pal. I’ve hung out with him a couple of times in San Diego. And obviously, his whole system is just like, “Let’s just take out all the slack in the system,” and getting to these coiling core positions, so I really got into WeckMethod stuff in the last two years. So for those that are not familiar, the idea again of when we think about running, often, people think of like, “All right, don’t cross midline, don’t let the head move really and just be a bit more rigid,” and you end up seeing these very robotic movements. But if you actually look at the animals and you look at the fastest human beings in the world, there’s the concept obviously of head over foot.
And so the idea of a side bend and a rotation while maintaining the body going forward in space, what we’re going to see is that we’re going to perfectly align our entire structure. We already talked about it from the side view standpoint of like, “All right, can we get that nice Z-shaped looking thing where the body’s stacked over the midfoot, but can we also get spine to start side bending and rotating and taking advantage of the spinal engine movement or figure of eight pattern?” And that’s led to me a massive push towards teaching people rope flow. I don’t know if you’ve ever dabbled around with that, but that is literally combining the principles of WeckMethod with what I’m teaching from a stack standpoint combined together to provide the best experience for my clients.
Steven Sashen:
Well, two things. A, I’m going to have you describe rope flow for people who don’t know it, but, B, my only argument with David about what you described is that when you’re watching sprinters, it’s a bit of a fake out. Because one of the reasons sprinters are exhibiting that head over foot thing to a certain extent is frankly because their legs have gotten so big that their stance, one foot to the other, it’s a good foot apart sometimes. And so they are literally bouncing left and right as they go down the track. Frankly, if you don’t have that much volume in your upper thighs, then you’re not going to have that same back and forth. And for sprinters in particular, the goal is to really have everything before because you’re only on the ground for eight one-hundredths of a second.
Greg Stern:
Well, I guess there’s going to be this slight-
Steven Sashen:
There’s a very slight head thing. Especially if you watch a lot of these guys in the start, they’re really going left to right in part because they want their legs to cycle faster during the first few steps. And it’s easier to do that if your legs are spread further apart than if they’re more aligned. And I only bring it up because I’m a sprinter of course, and it’s all about me, is that sprinting is a different animal. And you’re doing this weird thing for a very specific reason to get from here to there in a straight line crazy fast. So it doesn’t really count, frankly, but I like to bring it up for the fun of it.
Greg Stern:
Yeah, fair enough. I mean, just from the standpoint of just for the casual jogger to just include different inputs. Because I can mess around with… So coming back to rope flow for a second. Basically instead of jumping through a rope, you have a bit of… I have it over here, just a weighted rope that’s not too weighted, it’s just a little bit more feedback as we’ve talked about. And essentially, instead of jumping through it, I create figure of eight patterns where I’m keeping my hands close to my midline, but I’m learning to get this idea of a side bend and a rotation where one shoulder is going to be slightly lower than the other, and I’m going to tap into this rib, I’m going to lengthen my obliques and I’m going to pop to the next one.
And so underhand pattern, if the rope is swinging away from you, is more about a gait pattern. If I go overhand and it starts to look more like fighting or kayaking. And you could just mess around with… As you’re running, if you just want to be casual with it, you notice that the more you get the upper body fluid and moving, again, you don’t have to exaggerate, but you could, just have fun with the way that you’re running, you’ll notice that you end up landing. When I do that leaping drill that we talked about a few minutes ago, but just people just landing… If their head stays inside, when you take one leg off the floor, you’re more likely to topple over. So naturally, if I’m standing here and I take one leg off, well, my center mass needs to shift over to be more stacked over here. So that’s this idea of the head over foot and this adding in a bit of this arm movement creates this more fluid motion when you’re running instead of those that keep their arms stiff.
And so a lot of people that end up running with elbows and hands as opposed to the shoulder blades moving fluidly. And that’s what I tend to find with a lot of shoulder pain patients in general is that they just move through their humerus bone, their arm bone, instead of allowing the scapula, the shoulder blades, to move fluidly on their rib cage. And the moment I teach them how to do that, their shoulder pain goes away.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and this is backing up to sprinting. This is an interesting thing. Because for proper sprinting, there is this upper body thing happening.
Greg Stern:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Because for as much as your legs are doing the heavy lifting, if you will, for your leg to come out in front of you properly, because sprinting is all about what’s referred to as front side mechanics more than anything else, your opposite arm has to be able to go back behind you well. Now you’re trying to keep the amount of motion in your arms contained because the more range of motion your arms have, the longer it takes for them to move through a cycle and your legs will then follow. So there’s this interesting balance where the upper body is still doing this… It’s not a figure eight per se, but it is doing this oscillating motion. It’s not staying rigid and straight like you see with a bunch of runners because that’s the only way to do it.
And this also relates to our friend, Danny Dreyer from ChiRunning, where the idea being that if you are using your hips properly also… The image that he used that he gave me years ago, I think before he even created ChiRunning, is if you imagine putting a shirt on a hanger and you just start twisting the hanger back and forth, you’ll see there’s a spot in the middle, basically the middle of the back that stays stable and things rotate above and below that in opposite directions. And that’s what your body does if you’re running properly and David’s just adding a little bit of an additional plane of movement possibly.
Greg Stern:
Yeah. Yeah, I guess the side bend is what a lot of people tend to miss. So here, obviously always about rotational training, but rotation happens with the side bend as well. And I think with these principles, it’s like give your brain the extremes so that when you do running, you’re not actually going as intensely is that, but if you could find the extremes, the brain finds its center. That’s the whole idea of Anatomy in Motion as well is like, “All right. With respect to just… You’re existing in such a small range of motion with your foot or with your hip, and the more you could flood your brain with extremes, it will find its center.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, and this is an interesting thing because, again, and I’ve done this with people, especially if they’re overstriding, I’ll suggest that they do it more and exaggerate it. Because we do get into these patterns, and once we’ve habituated a pattern, we don’t know what we are or aren’t doing. And my first barefoot run was literally doing exactly what you described. I was so entranced with the feeling of my feet on the ground. It’s like, “What can I do differently to see how this works? I want to see if this is for real or not,” was actually what I was thinking. And so I would exaggerate things in both directions. I’d make my stride really long, I’d make my stride really short. I’d pick up my cadence without running any faster, or I’d run faster with a slower cadence. I mean, anything I could think of, just push the edges of how this movement pattern could work just to see what I discovered.
And another thing I’ll do with some people, I’ll have them stand in front of me, we’re facing each other and I put my hands on their shoulders and have them lean into me. And I’ll step way back until they’re at a 45 degree angle and I’ll go, “Okay, I’m going to run backwards. You run forward.” And I put enough pressure that they have to be at that angle just to have your feet behind you when you’re running, which is a massive exaggeration, but that’s the only way to wake up your brain it seems.
Greg Stern:
Yeah. Well, it’s exactly the same thing as that stack that we’re talking about. I had a client say to me, “I always have back pain,” but he said, “When I drag my dead deer after hunting, I don’t have back pain. I don’t understand.” Because it’s behind him, and so therefore he has to lean forward, and all of a sudden, his posterior chain kicks on. So just getting… It’s actually still snowing in Montreal. Yesterday was beautiful and now it’s snowing again. Yes, it’s the end of April-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, if it makes you feel any better, we had six inches of snow on Saturday. On Sunday, it was 65 degrees.
Greg Stern:
Yeah, it’s wild. So it’s the same thing that’s volatile. But anyway, I digress. It’s more about like, “Okay,” I always tell people, “Well, if your car is stuck in the snow and you got to push it, what are you going to do? You’re going to stand upright with your rib cage back or you’re going to learn to lean forward?” So much of it, when it comes back to the rehab world, we think about individual muscles instead of just like, “What is your center of mass doing?” And if we could just arrange your center of mass slightly differently, all of a sudden, the whole chain will start working. But we’re so hyper-obsessed about, to be honest, the this or that, everyone’s find their new favorite muscle of the day, but it’s like, “All right, let’s just learn to organize your body a little bit better, and everything starts to work in unison and we don’t have to overthink about each fiber of our being.”
Steven Sashen:
It’s so funny you say this. I was thinking about this a lot in the last few days. So do you know the writer David Sedaris?
Greg Stern:
I do not.
Steven Sashen:
Doesn’t matter. Anyway, American guy, but he’s been living in Paris… Or in France, I’m not sure if he’s in Paris. And he commented on a talk show that I saw him on recently that his French friends accuse him of walking like an American, and he said, “What is that?” And they said, “You throw your legs in front of you.” If you’re wearing a shoe with an elevated heel and it tips you forward, tips your center forward and you adjust by leaning back somewhere to be more upright, you can’t actually extend your leg behind you. You can’t actually get hip extension. So you have to throw your leg forward.
So if you put your feet flat on the ground, I realized the only thing you need to do to learn to put your foot or to use your leg properly is lean forward a tiny, tiny bit from your ankles, an inch or two. And it’ll feel a little bit like you’re falling forward, because you are. And if you do it just a little bit, that little bit of falling is going to trigger all the right movement patterns. And, I mean, there’s more to it than that. You can do things working on the hip extension. But even with the hip extension, the thing that’s making it work is that tiny bit of moving your center of mass an inch or so in front of you while maintaining proper posture.
Greg Stern:
An interesting thing about proper posture, because I always find the word posture a dirty word, and I want to-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. As I was saying it, I didn’t like it, but that’s-
Greg Stern:
That’s okay. That’s okay. But it is interesting because one of the things I do teach to my clients, I actually teach my clients often how to slouch. Let me go into that for a second here. Because when we hear the words posture, immediately just start seeing someone puff their chest up and squeeze their shoulders back, in what mom and dad in society think about this aesthetically pleasing posture. But what I’ll often cue people to do, so if everyone is listening to this right now, basically you squeeze your hands together really, really hard. And we squeeze, squeeze and we squeeze. And now I ask you, “If I asked to do that for the next 12 hours, would your hands be happy?” I don’t think so.
Steven Sashen:
Well, no, because I wouldn’t be able to eat.
Greg Stern:
Yeah, exactly. So the thing is, when people think about posture, they often extend from their lower back, and so they’re really just cranking away into that low back. And if we look at people in India or China or Africa, most people that are 80 years old, I visited 10 years ago in India, are very happy to be in a deep squat position. But you’ll notice the spine in that position is much more relaxed and rounded. But then all of a sudden, we sit in a chair and we think we need to be here. There’s nothing wrong with sitting, and sighing, and allowing the ribs to come down the shoulders to be more forward because being more relaxed while you’re sitting, there’s nothing inherently wrong. If I listen in and I’m intent about this conversation, I can lean forward almost from my hip here, but I’m not cranking and almost falling back to my low back. And that’s what happens with so many people, even when they’re picking things up.
If you think about a strong man picking up a 300-pound stone, he or she has his back in a full flex position. It’s just their knee position stays forward as they pick it up and their hip extends. So whether the back is straight or round is not necessarily the key point. It’s more about what’s happening below in the hip, knee, and foot that I care more about. So I teach people actually a slouchy split squat where they keep their knee forward, and all of a sudden, their back feels great and their leg starts convulsing. So every day in my clinic, I have people whose nervous system starts to shake crazy because I’m putting their bodies in positions that they haven’t been in for years, and I’m forcing them to go into… Eventually they could go back straighter, whatever that means, but for the time being, I almost want to exaggerate, again, an extreme of using a spinal flexion strategy, and then driving through their legs, and all of a sudden, amazing things start to happen because we’re going away from what they’re so habituated to use.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that inspires me to ask this. So we gave people the knee wall test. Is there anything else that you can think of, something for people to experience if they’re in a position where they could do that? Something just that would give them a little like, “Ooh,” and a little more understanding of what you’re doing if somebody walked into your clinic, basically?
Greg Stern:
Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the first drills that I show someone is basically instead of a classic glute bridge, I’m going to put their feet on a foam roller, but with the midfoot and forefoot on while they spike their heels or lift their heels. And key being when they’re in that glute bridge position, most people push through their heels and really lift through their lower back. And when they’re doing that, they’re basically using their lower backs to lift them up. But instead of doing that, I put the foam roller under the front of their feet and they lift up their heels. And now I say, “Drive up through your feet, but lift up a millimeter off the ground,” and all of a sudden, they’re going to feel their hamstrings and their calves work like crazy. And if they’re brave enough, they’ll drive one knee towards their chest and they’re basically doing a single leg, a hamstring bridge or a calf bridge, because everyone wants to feel the glute pump.
We’re so obsessed with this idea of feel your glutes, but why are we trying to feel our glutes without the rest of the chain? So I want someone to feel their foot, their calf, their hamstring, and their glute working together while staying very minimally off the ground so they’re not using their lower back, so we could start to utilize that whole chain. Because when we’re hip extending in general, when we push off to the foot, we’re not pushing through the heel, we push off to the forefoot. So that’s how we want to train hip extension. So that’s a great drill, again, lying under your back, just a foam roller under your feet, put it relatively far away from your… At least 90-degree angle and drive up through the balls of your feet, and all of a sudden, you’re going to feel a completely different sensation and people’s calves and hamstrings really start to cramp up, which is great because I want the whole chain connected better.
Steven Sashen:
That’s great. Hey, you reminded me of something I wanted to bring up. This is definitely tangential, but here we go. So you mentioned the sole is being such an important, and there was a bit of research that came out… I can’t track time very well. So let’s just say in the past, and not that long ago, where some scientists had put electro stimulators on people’s lower leg so that the soleus would contract, and just over and over and over for hours a day, six hours a day. And one thing they found is the soleus never got sore, never had a problem, could keep going forever, and it made them burn calories like there was no tomorrow. And so the reason I’m bringing it up is it’s very interesting muscle for that reason. It’ll just keep going and going and going. It’s the Energizer Bunny of your muscles.
Greg Stern:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
But then people were saying, “Oh, I guess all you need to do is just do calf raises while you’re sitting down.” It’s like, “No. That was electrically stimulating a muscle beyond what you could naturally do on your own for hours and hours a day.” And there’s literally people who made, God knows how much money, selling little courses, “Oh, just do calf raises and lose weight.” It’s like, “Ugh. I just want to punch myself in the face.”
Greg Stern:
I think the isometrics are so important that are so overlooked. So we’re talking about just that position of being in a foam roller on your back, that’s an iso. The same thing of learning to be stacked, and then pressurizing through the knuckles of the foot, the metatarsal has, and finding your calf in a position like that. And even coming to the point where your heel just comes a millimeter off the ground again, that, all of a sudden, starts to create the shakes in people because they’re just not used to being in these positions. And then that starts to become something more habitual. So isometrics are really, really important for giving you information, and then you could start getting creative and just reaching in different planes of motion.
Steven Sashen:
Well, again, maybe… I don’t know if ironically is the right word for this, but there was a study that came out recently showing just doing an isometric wall sit, just back against the wall, slide down until your thigh is at 90 degrees, is parallel to the ground, and your lower legs are perpendicular to the ground. And doing that for two minutes a day, and by the way, you’ll not be able to do two minutes at one time when you’re starting this, and your legs will shake and you’ll fall down if you go as hard as you can. But doing that dramatically lowered blood pressure for people, which was fascinating.
Greg Stern:
Very cool.
Steven Sashen:
We have to start bringing this to… I don’t want to say a close, but we got to wind it up just because of reality. So if people want to find out more about what you’re up to so they can experience this more, because this is just totally, totally dreamy, how can they do that?
Greg Stern:
Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously, through all the socials, on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, I’m @groundupphysio. So the whole idea of Ground Up and physio… It’s funny, in the States, they call it physical therapy for whatever reason. In Canada, it’s geotherapy, not sure why. But Ground Up Physio is where they could find me. And I also have an online program that’s available for people that’s a foot pain program, a back pain program where I’m basically teaching the exact same exercises that I teach to my clients here in my clinic that empowers them to utilize their whole body. Very simple things that they could do in the comfort of their own home that doesn’t really require any equipment, but it’s all about reteaching these stack positions, learning to utilize your body more effectively so everything shows up to the party.
So many times, when people have knee pain, their knee’s just getting overloaded, and they’ll go to a doctor and the doctor will say, “Well, you have X-itis.” It’s like, “I need to give someone a name of what they have.” This part just works too much and the other parts are working a little too little and let’s just redistribute forces. So that’s what it is, is a simple program that people could do. Again, they could find that through all the links in my bios and all the different channels that are available.
Steven Sashen:
A, that’s delightful. B, you made me think of a story. When I got back into sprinting 17 years ago, I was having a bunch of knee pain on my right side, and I went to a doctor. And after the third or fourth session with him, that did nothing, he said, “Well, you have patellar tendinitis.” And I said, “Yeah, I told you that when I walked in the door four sessions ago. I just didn’t say it in Latin,” and he got really mad at me. But I didn’t care because he clearly didn’t know what was going on. Never asked me how I was running, never looked at how I was running, just was paying attention to the knee, which was useless at that time because it was not caused by my knee. So-
Greg Stern:
Just a couple questions deeper is where we have to go with people. It’s just like, “How are you running? How much are you running?” Just go dive into deeper and then-
Steven Sashen:
They’re not going to go there because they don’t know anything about analyzing gait properly. So they’re not going to go to a point where it’s clear that they’re out of their depth. And if you say, “I’ve been running and,” and they don’t know how to look at you running in slow motion… Well, look at you in slow motion, running, not running in slow motion, and know what proper running mechanics are… “It’s good. That’s a good slow motion run.” Then there’s nothing they can offer you. And this is the challenge. So anyway, Greg, this has been a total, total pleasure. And for everyone else, I do hope you go check out Ground Up Physio. And, yeah. It’s physiotherapists in Britain, too, and I think most of Europe, if they’re going to speak English, that’s what they say. I don’t know how we… Well, we drop the U in things. We don’t use millimeters down here. No one knows what a millimeter is-
Greg Stern:
Yeah, that’s true. I’ve been using metric terms, I apologize, for the audience.
Steven Sashen:
There’s an old spoof radio thing. They did a spoof weather forecast. It was something like, “It’s 6:48 AM right now, which is 933 Celsius.” And that was a perfect American thing of not knowing how Celsius works. Anyway, so, everyone else, go check out what Greg’s up to. I think you’re going to really, really enjoy it. And reminder, go check out www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find previous episodes. Other places you can find the podcast if you care about finding other places, you can find us… All of our social media accounts where you can track us on social, watch the video of this or see us on Facebook and everywhere else that you can find us. And again, most importantly, give us a good five-star review and a thumbs up, hit the bell icon on YouTube to get notified about new episodes, spread the word. And most importantly, just go out, have fun, and live life feet-first.