The Real Role Of Fascia & How To Train It w/ Danny Foley (SSOF Ep 144)

Danny Foley0:43

Didn't really plan that very well. But we kind of got our footing and started to get into some cool things down there. And then as of most recently, I've had the distinct privilege of linking up with some really great people in Southern California, San Diego area.

Had the opportunity to do the combine thing with less earlier this year and that was kind of the catalyst to just pick up and move out here. We had some good things going in Texas but nothing that really grounded me. So we took that as an opportunity and here we are.

James de Lacey3:11

I love that. I love that. Moving around for different opportunities, applying your trade. And you mentioned about what you learned there with restorative strength training, I guess, versus more of a traditional approach. Do you want to maybe go into that a little bit?

Danny Foley3:26

Yeah, for sure. So, with the special operations community, special forces, it's very obvious what their physical demands are and they in every conceivable way need to be high performers.

You have to have high aerobic capacity, you have to have a robust anaerobic capacity, you have to have strength and muscular endurance, but then you also have to be powerful and explosive, a lot of dexterity, a lot of different demands.

So, with our work, we were basically just kind of a private sector adjunct facility that worked as an extension of what they had going on on a day-to-day. And so really we ended up kind of cultivating this niche that was much more focused on injury and pain management.

So for lack of better terms, some return to duty cases. We would have individuals that were a little bit more senior in their career. They'd been in for 10, 15, 20 years and had all kinds of bumps and bruises and nicks and whatnot.

And our job was simple. It was, we need to help them kind of recover and repair from these specific injuries and these pain complexes. But at the same time, we needed to do it in a sense that was also contributing to their greater goal, which was high and elite performance.

So, it was very evident with this group pretty quickly that bench squat dead, 531, it just wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to be conducive to that population. So, we really kind of stripped down the model and some of the contemporary ways of going about strength and conditioning and just kind of looked at it as, how can we assimilate these types of things with this same type of stress and stimulus, but then do so in a manner that also doesn't compound their injury or their pain complexes.

And so, the term that we kind of came up with was restorative based strength training. And I think the one distinction that I'll add to that too is when you think about the rehabilitative side of things, the restorative side of things, our contemporary belief is that it's risk averse and it's clamshells and minibands and all this super isolated slow controlled stuff and it's not.

We push, we pull, we lunge, we hinge, we try to load as much as we can. But we're just doing so with different parameters or different applications or different ways of going about it.

James de Lacey6:04

So by different parameters and it's more an exercise selection thing. So instead of squat bench dead, you might be doing some more single leg work or other exercises that aren't going to flare up issues. Is that kind of a very crude summary?

Danny Foley6:04

So yeah, for sure man. I mean the first thing is you actually alluded to it is the positions that we are loading from. So we had the belief and I still maintain almost all of the same philosophy that the bilateral compressive loading isn't exactly great for people with histories of back pain or slap tears or whatever the case may be.

But if we put them in a kickstand, a split stance or a single leg position, it's not the movement that's improper or incorrect, it's the way in which the movement is being applied. So similarly, the majority of people I even still work with to this day, putting a barbell on the spine just isn't a great idea in most cases.

But that doesn't mean we don't need to load heavy or we don't want to expose them to high force. So maybe instead of a back rack, we work off a Burgener. We did a lot of work with the hex bar. So it was a lot of hex bar work, not a lot of squat work.

We would utilize pit shark or belt squatting to really try to drive the load application. And then the skill application came more through the again like the zercher loading, split squatting, and the hex bar variations. So you're able to do this in a way where you are stressing the body, you are putting them through high stimulus, high load.

We are trying to do things from a performance lens, but we are just doing so in a way that's going to be more conducive to the mechanics of their body and their injury patterns.

James de Lacey7:41

Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect because it's looking at finding the right tool for whatever the stimulus adaptation you want and not being married to the power lifts like many people are.

But is that time is that when you started to maybe deep dive down into fascia and some of the things that were done there? When did that start to, I guess, worm its way into maybe some of your training philosophy or at least some of your training thoughts?

Danny Foley8:18

So, there was a specific case and I've told this story a number of times, but there was a guy that I had while I was still at VHP who unfortunately had been, he had just been diagnosed with some form of very rare like deep thoracic cancer and he was still operational.

So, he was trying to stay active and effectively they had to break his sternum. They had to cut through the pec, lats, everything on the right side of his body to get in there and get that thing out of there.

So when he came to me, it was very evident, asymmetry and everything. So, I was like, okay, obviously, bench squat dead is not going to be applicable for this dude. So, I went home and did some homework and a couple of the first things that I came across were Anatomy Trains from Tom Myers, offset loading and then some of the work by the STECCO organization who were working out of Spain and

It just captivated me. Like most, I had heard the term fascia. I had seen some things on it here and there, but I didn't really dive too deep into it. But this kind of forced me into it, and it just really started to kind of help me make sense of things.

So I mentioned it in the opening, but I was a terrible student, man. I didn't do well in undergrad at all. And it never really sparked a lot of interest for me. I'm like, how can something so sophisticated and amazing be so boring in these lectures? I can't even bear to listen to this.

And when I started looking at it through this fascial perspective, I'm like, "Okay, this is cool. This makes sense." And now I'm thinking about this dude who's got this deep internal cancer and he just had this massive surgery and he does all these crazy things, and how can we really load the body to help kind of, for lack of better terms, repair the situation that he's in?

And lo and behold, we had six weeks together. It was massively successful. He put on 11 pounds of muscle, dropped six pounds of fat. Asymmetries cleaned up. We had added quite a bit of girth on the one side.

And the thing that I'll never forget him saying is, once we finished up, he said, "I, for the first time in over a year, I feel like myself again. I can, I feel like I'm back in my body." And that was a really powerful thing to hear from somebody at that point.

And we had so much success with that that we basically went back and audited the entire program and we kind of stripped it down and then rebuilt it as what I would say is a fascially driven strength training program.

James de Lacey11:10

Nice. So what does that mean? What does that mean? What is a fascially driven strength training program then versus just a maybe a traditional run-of-the-mill strength training?

Danny Foley11:10

So it picks up right off of what we were just talking about a second ago with restorative base strength training. The way in which we're loading, the positions that we're loading from, the types of resistance that are used, foot positions and pressures, and then really just looking at it as, as opposed to just seeing force overload or higher velocity as being the only ways that we can really progress things, that there's just a wider spectrum of ways to go about that.

So one of the things that we, or I've really emphasized over the years, is improving the ability to tolerate variability. And if we think about the special operations community, I don't think that there's anything that's more fitting for what their demands are because it truly is anything. Anything can be the demand. It's the most extremes in all directions.

So we looked at it as, within this performance setting, we have a couple of primary pillars, a couple of primary things that we're going to work off of. Because again, like similar to the restorative points on the restorative concepts, it's the same thing here with the fascial stuff, right?

Like fascial based loading does not mean we are adverse to strength training. It doesn't mean that we don't load the body and we do everything on a Bosu ball. It's absolutely garbage. Really what it means is that we're changing our philosophy more than we are our practice.

So the way in which I look at the body might be a little bit different. And if I look at the body a little bit differently and I understand the adaptations a little bit differently, then maybe the way in which that gets expressed or applied become a little bit different.

So again, the kind of one of the driving heuristics behind this is we want to think about loading from foot to fingertip. Everything is a part of the movement, everything is a factor. And instead of seeing it as being this reductionist view of we have three cardinal planes that we move from, we have as many planes as we can create that we can move from. And so whether it's a lunge or whether it's a press pattern or whether it's a landmine variation, we just essentially want to try to traverse across these different planes as best as we can.

James de Lacey13:17

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Gotcha. That makes sense. Actually reminded me by saying that, feet to fingertips. Jimmy Radcliffe has an old Oregon football translation. Very similar saying from toes to fingertips with a lot of different movements. So you got to spur something there.

But okay, but let's strip it back even further now and we'll go into more practical details after that. But let's just start like, what even is fascia? So that's probably a good question to cover, huh?

Danny Foley14:53

So fascia is a global connective tissue. It is universal throughout the body, but it's not necessarily unified throughout the body. So what I mean by that is from the epicranial fascia that encompasses the skull down all the way through to the plantar fascia at the base of the foot, we essentially have one continuous global connective tissue system.

Connective tissue, whether we're talking about fascia, tendons, ligaments, collagen or others, all essentially have the same main properties, the same main components. So we're thinking about collagen, we're thinking about water, and then we're thinking about elastin fibers. Then there's some other stuff that's kind of mixed in there.

With the fascial tissue specifically, based on the part of the body or the proximity of the body and then what the mechanical and movement demands are of the individual, we'll have different tensile densities or tensioning of the fascia depending on where we look.

So again, for instance, the fascia of the IT band versus the abdominal fascia are going to have different tensile properties, different ratios of collagen, water, and elastin fibers. But even with that, it's still all one interconnected system.

So within that, we then have these primary myofascial lines and they'll often be referred to as slings or chains. I use the term myofascial lines. And with these five primary lines, we're effectively looking at anterior, lateral, posterior, spiral, and then the intrinsic line.

So what these effectively represent are the areas that are most commonly or frequently stressed throughout the body that create a greater densification or deposition of fascial tissue or of collagen that creates a more tactile and structural band of connective tissue.

So if we think about just the basics of locomotion, walking, moving, and then we apply that to Davis's law for connective tissue remodeling, effectively where the stress is applied and the direction in which the stress is applied is where the collagen is going to remodel.

So if we walk and we move in this locomotive pattern and we're bipedal organisms, these kind of crossbody patterns, front side, backside, our lateral stabilizers, our spiral line kind of being the most encompassing, these are just the areas that are most commonly stressed through our day-to-day activities. So that creates these denser bands of connective tissue that we now have termed or seen to be as myofascial lines.

James de Lacey17:33

Gotcha. So we have an understanding of kind of what the fascia is and some of the different structures. Let's maybe go into some of the, I'm just trying to think of where to say it. Okay, let's start with training.

You talked a little bit about remodeling the collagen and I'm assuming that's one of the adaptations you kind of look at when, I guess you could say, in a fascial training system. But let's maybe go into this further idea of kind of adaptations around fascia.

So I remember what was it, 10, 15, whatever years ago it was, when everyone used to roll the IT bands, right? And then it became, then everyone was like, stop rolling your IT bands, this and that, this and that. The force required to deform like the IT band or fascia far exceeds what you can apply through a foam roller. Then before it does deform, you're going to break your leg basically if you're going to apply that much pressure.

So I guess my question becomes, how trainable is it then to make these changes in fascia? What are we trying to do when we're say training a fascial system? And then what do we need to do to be able to stimulate this change, considering, hey, at least based on that research, you needed quite a bit of force for it to start to deform?

Danny Foley19:00

Yeah. So there's a couple of things there. All right, so let's start with the biggest rock. So the important kind of elephant in the room with this conversation is this concept of isolating fascia within the training setting. So whether we're talking about recovery, foam rolling, whatever, otherwise, you can't. It's not something that can be separated away from the MSK structures.

But I think about this very similarly to how we discuss energy systems, right? We can't isolate the aerobic system just as we can't isolate the anaerobic system. We know that we have multiple energy systems that are all working at all times, but it's just in different capacities or fluctuations depending on what the demand or the activity is.

So if we think about it as contractile tissue and connective tissue, can't separate either from the other, but based on the way in which we do things performance-wise or recovery-wise or restorative-wise, we're able to bias the inputs or the applications or the parameters at which we're doing things that will emphasize one versus the other.

So that's kind of the biggest point to get out of that. Now bringing it down to—excuse me, my dog is shedding like crazy. So the foam rolling application. So the misconception on this I believe is that we have looked at foam rolling and to include manual therapy in there as being a structural application and that we are using a foam roller, a lacrosse ball, a body temper or hands as creating structural changes to the tissue.

In your point, that's not happening. We're not making direct structural changes to tissue length. But I think we've been looking through the wrong lens. If we change the lens to mechanotransduction, which effectively is taking a biomechanical input to create a biochemical cascade, what we're really doing with foam rolling, SMR, tempering, and manual therapy is we are creating or we're promoting a better opportunity for adaptation.

So really it's a sensory motor input that is creating a proprioceptive acuity or a mechanotransductive alertness or process that is then giving an improved opportunity for load thereafter. So I use manual therapy in my practice routinely. It's fundamentally a part of what I do.

But you can sub this in with SMR or whatever. What we're doing is basically creating a sensory motor response that's then going to promote a fluid response that's then going to give us an improved physiological and mechanical environment to then go do something that's going to create adaptation.

If you foam roll or if you get a manual therapy session or you do body work or whatever it is and you do that as a standalone treatment, it's not going to be effective. It'll give you a transient feel-good window for probably 20 to 40 minutes and then everything's going to kind of revert back.

But if we do that and then we couple it with strength training, speed training, plyometrics, medballs, stretching, mobility, all the great things, I think we're getting an increased return on investment with those things by doing these SMR manual applications as a precession or as a potentiator.

James de Lacey22:32

Gotcha. That makes sense. Perfect. And then you obviously talked about biasing say more muscular work versus the connective tissue, kind of like on a spectrum like with energy systems. So maybe go into then how that looks, maybe some examples of how that looks within strength training. How are we biasing say connective tissue versus muscle?

Danny Foley22:48

So position is a part of this too. We talked about how these myofascial lines not only just run from head to toe, but also kind of cross the body and have this X patterning across the body.

So if we think about the compression-tension relationship both above and below and then front to back, when we have a bilateral stance, we're not really putting complete tension on one of the lines. So by going into a kickstand or a split stance, we're getting a better tensioning of for instance the anterior or the posterior line.

So I think from a mechanical standpoint, the positioning can make something more or less connective tissue or fascial focused than if we were in a bilateral compressive position. The second thing is the load type, right? So I use a lot of accommodating resistance for this reason.

The demand for constant eccentric velocity, the demand for the change in lever as we change the movement or we change the position. I think it's also accommodating load is also just a little bit more conducive for connective tissue by allowing us to kind of create a better pre-tensioning of the tissue. So we're not kind of getting that slacked position and then kind of yanking on the connective tissue.

James de Lacey24:15

You doing the accommodating loading through I guess from the some of these nontraditional lifts?

Danny Foley24:15

Well I mean it's just using band application or chain application. So again, like if, like so my prime, like if I had to give you like the best squat variation for fun, right, for conversational sake, I would use a zercher hold with a split squat position and I would use some static load with band accommodation, right?

That would be the best squat that anybody could do in my mind, barefoot, right? So it's again like this is a great example of where like trying to make something more fascially or connective tissue-driven doesn't mean we do a whole bunch of different and we do things that are completely outside of the box of contemporary strength training.

It just means that we're applying them in a slightly different manner. So rather than having a feet outside of shoulders, externally rotated foot position with powerlifting shoes on and a heavy barbell on the back doing a box squat, we're going to try to create that adaptation in a different manner, right?

And it just again like if I have access to a pitch shark, I'm going to get my force from the pitch shark and then I'm going to get my skill from the zercher split squat. So that's kind of my way of meeting the two ends.

The other key point on this too is the velocity with which we move. I think that we have been a little bit myopic or biased towards being overtly force-driven where really sport is a byproduct of speed and change of speed.

So caveat statement, it doesn't mean that we don't load heavy. It means that we load heavy probably a little less often than others and it's going to be done in a more select manner. We're really trying to focus on the velocity adaptations and then that variability point that I made earlier where we're creating some difference within the training setting as we go along.

James de Lacey26:27

Gotcha. Okay, that's good. That's painting a good picture now and really starting to dive into I guess some of the more examples. I'm hoping the listeners should be able to kind of start to think about the different things you're doing there regarding I guess quote unquote more fascially biased kind of exercises and strength training at some point.

So we've talked about some of I guess the more traditionalish like zercher squats and things like that. At some point, how far—I don't know how to word this other than—okay, so you're aware of functional patterns, correct? I'm sure a lot of listeners are too. How far then does it go towards something like that in terms of I guess training for something that's fascially biased?

Danny Foley27:05

I don't know if I really look at anything like that. I'm a neogeneralist, man. I learn as much from elite sprinters and speed training as I do from PRI and FRC and functional patterns.

I study manual therapy as much as I study strength and conditioning or high performance training. And with my role as a performance therapist, my job is to really understand all of these different pillars and divisions or subfocus points of the human performance umbrella with a skill set or an application on managing pain and injury, preparing for training and recovering for training.

Right? So with all of that being said, I try to think about it as what are the things I can do within the constraints that I have, whether it be time, whether it be resources, whether it be working in a team setting as an adjunct position.

What are the things that I can do to provide for this athlete that are going to be the most effective in the most ethical manner, that provide the fastest return? So sometimes that means it's more table-based and it's more hands-on tissue-based.

Sometimes it means that we are doing more sprint work and more rudimentary plyo's and more medball throws. Sometimes it looks like more basic strength and conditioning. But I think that like with all things being equal, I think most people, most groups within this field do some things really, really well.

I think where they kind of get misled is that they start drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid and then they think that this is the only thing that can solve every problem. And I think that's a really short-sighted way of going about it.

So I try to pick and pull from these different people in these different organizations and just take what I think is valuable or meaningful and then understand that it's just a piece of the puzzle and we've got to look at this thing from multiple points of view.

James de Lacey29:25

Where would you start? So someone's listening to this, maybe they've been doing a lot of traditional strength training, maybe some kind of strength sports for a while, and maybe they're coming back into combat sports, or maybe they're just trying to be a little more athletic and kind of almost quote unquote undoing the years maybe of just heavy traditional strength training. Where would someone like that start with trying to implement some of this fascial-based training?

Danny Foley29:42

So the easiest things—all right so let's go real generic here. If you have an upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body split, go to total body every day. Every day is total body. We have a change or a different emphasis in what the training parameters are.

So in other words, high volume or high intensity or high velocity or whatever that may be. But we always want to see everything as being total body full kinetics. The second thing I would say is most people, again if we're especially if we're talking more like gen pop here, right, most people are doing too much lifting and not enough movement.

So, cut 25% of your lifting down and supplement that with skips, hops, jumps, throw a med ball, do some just different things, right? Do some different things. I think variability is highly underutilized.

If you're an Olympic weightlifter, you're a bodybuilder, you're a powerlifter, you have to do those things in the gym because you very clearly have to do those things in competition. So the demands are pretty clear-cut. But if we're talking about virtually anybody else outside of that, athlete or otherwise, we want to think about just being able to move in some different ways a little more frequently.

Then the third and final thing I'll say is get out of your shoes. Don't need to do specific foot drills. Don't need to do anything specific really at all. But I think about the primary sess or the primary block. So, when I'm doing my big lifts, when I'm doing my big movements, or if I am sprinting, we want to shoe up for those things.

When we get to the second and the third block of training and we're doing our accessory stuff, we're lunging, we're doing some auxiliary pressing or some landmine stuff or hinging, just be out of your shoes. It's the best thing that most people can do is just really getting stronger at the foot, improving foot intrinsics, improving the interfacing with the ground, creating a better proprioceptive alertness or acuity at the feet. That'll do a lot for people.

James de Lacey32:00

Awesome. I think it might be interesting even for myself as well just to visualize. You mentioned obviously just for the podcast the quote unquote best squat lift that'll be more fascially driven. Was that it? Do you have some examples maybe for bench press, deadlift, and any of the other main lifts?

Danny Foley32:15

For bench press, that's an exercise I really just don't prescribe at all for anybody. If people like to bench, go ahead and get after it. But I do a lot of floor pressing. So I do a lot of floor pressing with dumbbells or bridge pressing. So just using dumbbells instead of a barbell.

Really the answer though is to get involved with the landmine. Do a lot more landmine pressing. That's probably my primary press variation that I'll program for all the reasons that are mentioned. It's total body, you're vertically oriented, we're thinking from foot to fingertip. I also like how it's not a constrained path of motion.

So, especially for people who have had some shoulder injuries or surgeries, it tends to just be a lot more friendly even with a push press or a push jerk with the barbell. That can be a little bit constraining for people with shoulder pathology. So, the landmine kind of fits in that middle ground.

For deadlifting, I deadlift every week. I deadlift with probably every athlete I work with in some capacity. I just use a hex bar and I do it from a kickstand position. So, a kickstand just being a short split. You kind of align the back toe to the front heel. Feet are going to be about hip width apart. Back heel is going to stay off the ground. And we just use a hex bar.

I just, again, I don't think a conventional deadlift setup is a very good option for most people. And if you don't compete in powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting, then you don't have any cardinal rule that you have to pull a straight bar from the floor. So if you do that, you like it, it works well for you, keep getting after it. But I think that the hex bar is a good alternative for a lot of people.

And then instead of doing a conventional deadlift, I just do an RDL. And it's the same thing. I do an RDL from a kickstand or a single leg position. So that would probably be my answer there.

James de Lacey34:07

And then so you're doing a lot of your pressing with the landmine basically, landmine and dumbbells for a lot of your pressing then. And then I'm assuming same for I guess any kind of back work like rows and pull-ups and things like that. You're doing similar lot of rows or dumbbells, single arm kind of work.

Danny Foley34:20

Yeah. A lot of cable stuff. If you have access to a Kaiser, Kaisers are great. I think the rows are probably the most apples to apples out of the things that we're covering here. Kettlebell, dumbbell, barbell, landmine, whatever you got. Yeah. All that's fair game.

James de Lacey34:48

Perfect. With I guess with specific sports, it's just say a lot of listeners are combat athletes. Is there I want to say is there room, but how much does specificity say maybe play a role or not? Is everything kind of under the umbrella of this is your general preparation. So, we're just trying to get you moving better, developing these qualities, or is there some kind of specific component that maybe happens depending on the athlete and their sport?

Danny Foley35:09

I mean, I think about, if I'm understanding you correctly here, I think everything is specific to the individual.

James de Lacey35:28

I should frame it specific to the sport, specific to the sport itself. For example, let's just say sprinters, they might be doing something that's relevant to, more big example, I mean heavy sled sprinting would be a specific example but even for fighters might be like medicine ball punch throws as a random example. So I guess how much does specificity play a role in the training program versus we're just going after these different adaptations and I don't care too much about if the exercise quote unquote maybe transfers better to that specific skill if that makes sense. I don't know if I—

Danny Foley36:07

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Transferability is a tricky one, right? And I think this is another one that over the years we've seen some peaks and valleys on it. There's been big waves of everything was driven through this lens of transferability and then we all kind of sat back and looked at it like, well, kind of everything is or isn't transferable from that regard. So we pulled back on it. So, I think that's a slippery slope and one that we can look at from a couple of different points of view.

But to that end, what are the main pillars or the big rocks that make something specific to sport? It's the energy systems that are involved, the planes of motion that they move through, the positions that they move from, the velocities that they experience, and the directions of applied force.

So when we think about it in the training setting, I think we've all kind of gotten to this point of having reasonable universal agreement of, okay, there are some things that don't need to necessarily be specific to the sport as much as they need to be specific to the individual adaptations of just being stronger, faster, more robust, more powerful, more pliable, whatever it may be.

And that's why we, again, if whether you're someone like myself that does this through more variable positioning and more variable loading or you're more conventional 531, we all squat, we all press, we all pull, we all throw, we all hinge, we all lunge, right?

So, those are kind of mainstays across all of these different things. But the specificity for me is really again always driven by the individual. So with my work being largely driven by pain injury and performance impairments or plateaus, my job is really focused around this person does these particular things in this sport. They had this injury that has caused these things. So, how do I take those two and bring them together and then that produces what the programming is or what the planning is?

So, it's probably a shitty answer in a really long-winded way of saying we address what the main rocks are of the sport. If you're a track athlete and you run the 100 meter dash and you run the 200 meter dash, pretty clearcut what those KPIs are. If you had a knee injury or you had a shoulder injury or you have a chronic foot problem, what are the consequences of those things mechanically, pathologically, and otherwise? And then what are the ways that we can bridge the gap between those two things?

James de Lacey38:53

Gotcha. Had a question in the live chat here asking if you could please expand on the practical application of the Zercher hold split squat variation. I don't know if maybe more detail on how it's performed or maybe when and why.

Danny Foley39:16

So, let's just let's break it down. So again, I preface this by saying that the vast majority of athletes that I work with have an injury, right? I'm a return to play specialist. I'm injury focused. And whether we're talking about a shoulder injury, a back injury, or a knee injury, compressive loading tends to not be very conducive while we're going through this return to play process.

So, the back position, the back, the posterior hold, with a straight bar often isn't a good choice. Now, let me mention this, too. I love the safety bar. I love the Hatfield setup. So, I if I am going to do a heavy squat variation, I will definitely lead with that.

But getting back to the zera position. So the zera hold is like where you take the barbell and you hold it in the elbow crease here and it's kind of positioned right at the mid thoracic area. And the reason why I like that so much is because this kind of forces kinetic integration above and below the hip.

So we are more engaged on the anterior side of the body on the upper half. And then with regards to the foot positioning, rather than being in a bilateral stance, I'm just going to work it from a split stance. And that's, again, that's just a principle of mine.

So, for me, there's virtually the same skill acquisition, maybe arguably a little bit more, with a zera split squat than we're going to see with a bilateral back squat position. We are getting the opportunity to load heavy relatively and we're doing so in a way that is more mechanically conducive to this concept of total body integration as opposed to just having compressive load.

James de Lacey41:25

But is there a point where you're adding some kind of rotation to that to almost lengthen some of those myofascial lines or anything like that or is it just staying in that split squat and being in that zera position?

Danny Foley41:25

Man. A rotational zera squat that I'm actually kind of embarrassed I haven't played around with that more. That sounds sexy. I might need to play around with that a little bit.

What I will do right on cue is I will use the safety bar with rotational lunges for sure. I do do that quite a bit that that's going to be light load, even just having just an empty safety bar. Safety bars are typically 65 pounds. Not sure what that is in kilos off top, but about 65 pounds, so a decent amount of load. And you're able to kind of anchor into the safety bar.

So, I do like that for rotational lunge patterns. I'll add it to a little bit of like a low box step up. Lateral lunge with some rotation towards that flexed leg. That's a really good variation.

James de Lacey42:20

Yeah, I like those. I like that idea with the safety bar, too. I've got a safety bar in the garage as well. So, I might have to play around with some of the rotation because obviously when people think maybe single leg work rotation, I think kind of like medicine balls, right? Like medicine ball lunge and twist, as the main one most people do. But with the safety bar, that's going to be another level to have to stop that thing from rotating as well.

Danny Foley42:46

Yeah, that one's tough.

James de Lacey42:46

I think what might be interesting as well, I know it's going to be dependent on the athlete, etc., maybe like what a full training day looks like. Even just kind of like a templated look of how the sequencing of the different exercises you're doing, what you're typically doing I guess exercise order-wise as a template just to give people an idea of how this kind of looks versus what a traditional strength training program looks that might just be like squat, leg press, leg extension kind of thing.

Danny Foley43:23

So I mean the honest answer man is I mentioned the role or the title I guess of what I've adopted over really the last year, year and a half is being a performance therapist primarily. So to be honest with you, the majority of my work is kind of this combination of like an extended pre-session or extended warm-up, mixed in with like some manual therapy concepts.

And with that application, I look at it as really we have a three-tier process of create, activate, and then integrate. So what I mean by that is with the create we're trying to create a sensory motor response typically through some application of manual therapy to create a good neurological environment, proprioceptive environment to then go to the activate pillar which is then typically going to either be long duration isometrics or kind of an intensive stretching protocol and then we use the activate to then prime the integrate which then becomes more of these fascial patterns.

So whether it's through kettlebell, medicine ball, viper, mobility stick, I mean, pick your tool. Where now we're trying to take this area that's in question. So if we have an athlete who's coming off of grade 2 hamstring, trying to think about kind of reintegrating the posterior myofascial line. So we'll just do different movement parameters that will emphasize that.

Now, with the strength training applications, that, again, man, it's a pretty similar structure. I work off of a three tier block. We have a primary block, a secondary block, and a tertiary block.

In that primary block, we're going to do some variation of squat, pull, press, clean, jerk, or snatch. We're normally going to pair that either with an isometric or some type of a plyo or projectile. So, some type of a throw depending on the phase of loading that we're in.

The secondary block is where we're going to kind of be in the middle. Some of these rotational safety bar lunges is probably where those are going to be most applied. But we'll do a lot of landmine work. We'll do a lot of auxiliary strength work. That's also where I like overcoming ISOs in that secondary block. So, I'm a big fan of like the Alex Natera protocols with the run-specific ISOs. I think those are really great.

And then in that third block, that's probably where it might get a little bit more, I hate the term, but non-conventional. But we're still doing the same. We're still lunging. We're still stepping up. We're still doing hinges. We're still doing rows and press accessories.

But instead of it being a dumbbell single arm incline press, maybe it's a single leg bridge with an opposite arm press. Instead of a bilateral barbell RDL, maybe it's a landmine single leg crossover RDL. Instead of a conventional dumbbell pullover, maybe we're doing it standing with a cable and kind of coming through with a forward step and just looking at it as a more total body integration.

But I can't reiterate it enough. It's all the same base principles. It's just applied slightly differently.

James de Lacey46:42

That's perfect. That's exactly what I was after with that question. So, but that was everything I have for you, Danny. That brings us close to the hour. Where can people find and follow you, keep up with what you're doing?

Danny Foley46:56

Yeah, man. So, we, our primary website is rudestrength.com. We've got Instagram. I think mine is Dan Mode or at Dan Mode Rude Rock, I believe. YouTube channel.

And then we're doing a lot of work. I'm very grateful for it. We're doing a lot of work with Altis over the years and we've got some cool things coming up with them. So a lot of stuff with Altis, do a lot of work with Simply Faster. We've got some things going with them, too. And then occasionally we'll have some stuff on Sportsmith. So, linked up through there as well.

But yeah, man. That's kind of the gist of it. And we try to keep up with everybody else in the social media demands now. So, probably the most easy access went through there.

James de Lacey47:43

Social media the past five plus years, the social media for just coaching and agencies is just it's gone bananas, man. Like it didn't used to be like this. It used to just be everyone was just coaching and maybe writing articles for all the different websites and sharing stuff through that and podcast. Now social media is just like it's another beast.

Danny Foley47:43

It's a necessary evil unfortunately.

James de Lacey47:43

Yep. It sure is. No, I'll link those up in the description for everyone who's listening. So you can check out Danny's work and his website and everything. But I appreciate you coming on and sharing everything.

Danny Foley48:20

Yeah, man. No, thank you for having me, James. I really appreciate it, man. And hopefully anybody who tunes in was able to get something out of that. But, always happy to answer any follow-up questions or whatnot if anybody wants to reach out.