Foot Training, Back Pain Myths & Why Birddogs Are Bullsh*t w/ David Grey (SSOF Ep 112)

James de Lacey2:26

Really well as well is people who have a very long strength sports or strength training background. Say, they, for example, I did many years of just pure Olympic weightlifting. And people who come from some of these backgrounds, the stiffness you get, the adaptation you get from that is being more stiff.

And then you start to do some of these things where you're moving the pelvis with the knees up and down and holding that bridge on the foam roll and things, that shit's hard. And it's stuff that you that you don't address or do in training because it's just not part of, you don't need it to be to perform well in those sports. But then obviously when you come into things like combat sports, these are the things you probably need.

So I guess regarding some of the movements in there, I guess how did you come across the pelvis? You addressed a lot of different things in there. Why are those things addressed in that program and maybe not some other things?

David Grey3:18

Yeah, I just think, I have, I kind of like anatomy and biomechanics and I just like looking at the joints and seeing what joints can do or should be able to do. Like the potential at the joints. So you can't move your knee like you can move your shoulder. That's not just because, that's because of the structure of the joint, how it was designed if you want to use that word.

So if your shoulder has potential to do all of these movements, then personally I would like my shoulder to be able to do all those movements. It doesn't mean, and I don't want people to get mistaken, meaning very, very large movements as in be like a yogi or a contortionist where you make a humongous movement like the splits or something like that. You don't necessarily need to be able to do that. Maybe you want to be able to do that, which is also fine.

But at least, hopefully, you can go into, for your hip, flexion and extension and abduction and adduction and internal and external rotation. You can actually move somewhat in each direction that the hip could move in. And that's basically how some of those mobility type of movements are developed. It's just looking at the potential there.

And then it's also looking at, okay, there's many ways we can do this, but what's the way that makes the movement the most, gives people the most chance of being most accurate with the movement? Because there's many ways you can trick yourself into thinking you're moving that area. You can move, trying to move your hip and you move your spine more, or you hike up or you do lots of different things.

So the movements are not just like, okay, this is a mobility exercise. It's also trying to think, okay, how can we make people be much more accurate with moving the thing they're trying to move, which is ultimately the goal, and much less having things like different substitutions at different joints or different compensations or strategies or whatever word you want to put on it.

So I think a lot of that just comes from anatomy and also working with clients and being like, okay, all of these movements people always mess these up versus these movements. It seems to work a bit better, especially when you write a generic program like that where you're not going to be coaching someone. You have to choose the ones that are difficult but people are going to hopefully be successful with.

James de Lacey5:39

Yeah, I think one of the, for the listeners just to give an idea, one of the ones I quite enjoyed was you're lying on your back, your feet are against the wall, you have 90° knee angle, your feet flat against the wall, foam roller between your knees, and then you're moving your knees one above each other. So you're rolling the foam roller essentially back and forth, and that's moving your pelvis essentially forward and back. And the same thing, I think you had external rotation one in that position too.

Those are really, really nice. And obviously with the foam roller, that kind of gives you that feedback to do it right as well, rather than having the coach there or you potentially screwing it up.

David Grey6:04

Yeah, exactly. And it looks simple a lot of the time. It looks, it looks less, it looks much more, it's, it's not something you'd see on Instagram and be like, okay, this is going to go viral, right?

But having said that, we've had thousands of people with a lot of hip problems do simple movements like those and it clears it up. Not everyone, but a lot of people, a lot of people. And that's been very interesting. It's been like a little bit of a research project for me in a very non-scientific way to see the amount of people that messaged me saying my groin problems are gone, my hip tightness is gone.

And these are people that are already very active and have done a lot of stretching for years and a lot of different movements for years. And we can't, I can't say exactly why it's that stuff works a lot of the time or so much of the time. But I can say I think it's because it focuses you and gets you into such accurate movement. It gives you no choice but either, in that movement that you're describing, either you don't move the foam roller at all, which means your pelvis isn't moving, or you do move it, which means your pelvis kind of is moving quite nicely.

And a lot of people go from not being able to do it at all to being able to do a little bit to being able to do a lot more. And it seems to correlate with them, their hips feeling better as they do that.

James de Lacey7:53

You mentioned people doing a lot of different things. I mean, stretching is obviously seen as the panacea. And we've covered stretching a lot on the podcast with, you don't get any structural changes in the muscle and things. But I think on a recent Instagram reel, you're talking about knees over toes.

I want to take this controversial down a few different rabbit holes. And I've, we talked knees over toes in the podcast before about, it's obviously marketed very well. A lot of it is just kind of repackaged poin stuff from back in the day. I'd love, and I've seen a lot of people have different takes on, you know, the potential for injury running down some of these different, or at least potentially to make a lot of people's pain worse doing some of these exercises. Do you maybe just go through some of the thought processes?

David Grey8:43

I think it's all, the movements taken individually are good movements. Nice split squats, nice, I don't know, step ups and reverse, all that stuff. They're all great movements. We all probably use those type of movements in our programs.

I think there's no more potential for injury doing those than any other movement really. That just comes back to you being prepared for it. But I think the...

Potential for injury comes or aggravation comes or causing more pain comes when you just say these are the six movements that you need to do to get rid of your pain. And I think a lot of people then just follow those movements when there could be much smarter movements that they could be doing. So I don't think that their program causes more pain because of the movements they choose.

I think it causes more pain because of probably how it's marketed to people, which is not necessarily not necessarily knees over toes himself, but it seems like all of the coaches that have started to learn from that have made it worse and worse and worse and worse, which tends to happen as you scale.

I imagine it must be very difficult to control that, but you see a lot of weird content now about saying this is the one exercise that's going to fix your—like I saw a post the other day, like someone is doing a tibialis raise and they were saying this is going to fix your sciatica. And so that's probably not going to injure someone's back, but also it's very unlikely to fix someone's sciatica. So yeah, there's just a lot of weird, weird stuff.

James de Lacey9:46

Weird stuff. Good marketing though.

David Grey9:46

Oh, very. It does help a lot of people too because they're promoting movement. That's a great thing. But it's just quite dogmatic. I think that's the problem.

James de Lacey10:10

Yeah, that's always an issue when it becomes dogmatic. If you have knee pain do these, and it's kind of like okay, but what's the cause of the knee pain? How long's the knee pain been there? Do these movements hurt when you do it?

A lot of people probably be better off avoiding potentially these extreme knees over toes positions and maybe squatting more of like a box squat, maybe sitting back if they're going to do something like that potentially to kind of maybe strengthen the quads and not get into those pain ranges of motion.

David Grey10:40

Yep. Just lots of maybes.

James de Lacey10:40

Maybes. That's it.

David Grey10:40

Lots of maybes. And I see a lot of people with tendinopathy all of the time, loads and loads. And obviously they naturally gravitate towards that type of training because it's marketed and it can definitely help some people. But I think there's a much faster way to go about it because they—I think for example the knees over toes stuff will sacrifice load for range of motion, which isn't a bad thing at all.

It's a nice—you want to be able to get into deep knee flexion, get into full extension. But that can aggravate the hell out of a tendon if you're going into deep knee flexion, especially without much tension on the quads, and you're compressing the tendon all of the time. That can drive your knee berserk.

I know that because I had patellar tendinopathy for a long time. You'd actually be far better off getting on—for the most part getting on a leg extension working through mid-range and working on loading as heavy as you can tolerate. You can probably tolerate very, very heavy loads through a middle range of motion. And I would say that you can—most people can get much better much quicker with that approach than going for the flexion.

And interestingly enough, if you do that approach, you'll probably end up being able to access full knee flexion and extension anyway, not because you've driven your knee forward on every movement but because your pain is gone or your pain is much less and now you can get there. So just lots of maybes, which I think is important for us to keep in mind.

James de Lacey12:36

How would you take a similar approach for someone who maybe has some kind of—maybe elbow or bicep? I don't know all the tendons in there, but around the elbow, all those tendons in there. If you have tendon, is that the similar approach you would take? Maybe you'll do shorter range bicep curls as heavy as you can tolerate, or is it a different approach around those tendons?

David Grey13:02

It's different. It's a little bit different. But I think the principles still apply, especially for chronic tendinopathy—not always now, because there's so many things it could be to do with. It could be a nutritional thing, it can be a recovery. But I'm definitely generalizing, but tendons seem to enjoy heavy slow loads. So it doesn't necessarily need to be isometrics or eccentrics or concentrics—heavy slow loads.

So the more range of motion you focus on, like oh I have to get into very, very end ranges all of the time, the more you are going to have to sacrifice some load to do that. Especially less so at the elbow, but still. If your focus is on I have to get that last millimeter of elbow flexion and supination and that last millimeter of extension and pronation, you could be sacrificing loads that you could use to actually strengthen the muscle. And that muscle will pull on the tendon more and start to cause hopefully positive adaptation.

So yes, for example, I actually had—I'm doing a little bit of Jiu-Jitsu, I'm terrible at it, but I had a guy who was pretty good in there recently. And we just had a chat before we got on the mat. I don't give anyone advice about anything, but he kind of cornered me a little bit, and he's a really nice guy.

But he just said he's had an elbow tendinopathy for two years or something. And he showed me the five or six stretches that the physio had given him. And I said, I'm not assessing you, I don't know anything, but if that was my elbow I'd stop stretching it and I'd start to do some curls. It's very, very simple.

And he came in—we met on the mats a week later—and he said I've been doing curls. I started with a can of beans at home, then I got a little weight, and then I just upped the weight a little bit from there. And he said my elbow pain is completely gone after something like 18 months of pain. And it's really important when I say that that I'm not promising anyone else listening that that's what will happen.

But that to me was just the most obvious thing in the world. Just start to load your muscles a little bit in a way that you can tolerate and just keep going from there. And that shouldn't be hard to get that advice. You should be getting that advice from people.

James de Lacey15:30

Well, let's keep going on this controversial road because we talk about advice. I titled this podcast about bird dogs are [expletive]. And it's because so my wife had a lower back injury with her lead up to the Olympics for Olympic weightlifting. So just to give some context, she's a 64 kg athlete. Could clean and jerk 120, front squat 141, back squat 150 kilos. And she goes into the physio for rehab for her back—little bit of manual therapy, which is all good.

But it's, basically do 3 by 10 bird dogs every day as a way—and it's kind of, you're thinking, she can handle hundreds of kilos on her back. She's pulling from the floor hundreds of kilos. And then these bodyweight bird dogs are somehow going to rebalance, restructure—I'm not even sure what the actual outcome that you're trying to achieve for something like that is.

But I'm just throwing this to you and your thoughts are, maybe the traditional physical therapy route and what's being thrown at athletes or active people as a way to work around or rehab injuries.

David Grey16:29

Yeah. Look, there's always a reason, a way to justify what you're doing. I'm a fan of good explanation. So if I had a chance with that physio and I said, what are you doing that movement—not in a way that I'm accusing them of anything, I'm just like can you explain your reasoning behind that—and if they had good solid reasoning, then I'd be happy with, I might be happy with that.

And maybe the reasoning could be, okay, we are trying to do some kind of anterior core strength work in a different position than weightlifting or something like that. Even though it's not very much a core exercise, but maybe that's the reason. Maybe we're trying to work on the kind of decoupling movement of the hips from the spine—so keep your spine relatively still and let's move your hips.

And that could be a good reason for it. But in general, I don't think people are doing it for—maybe it's for those reasons, but I just think it's not well thought out. And if we zoom out, it's just not a very good movement. It's not a very potent movement.

If I was looking at someone like that who's very, very strong, I'd be looking at okay, are you weak in certain areas? If so, I'm going to strengthen them, which I need a more potent movement, potent stimulus to do that. Are you just not moving in certain ways, which is often the case with weightlifters, powerlifters, any sportsperson, actually? There's just movements that they don't usually go into, which might be like tons and tons of flexion or tons of extension or lateral flexion or rotation or whatever—all of these are different combinations of these.

So I'd be starting to look at those type movements. I'd be starting to look at how do your hips move—maybe we can get a bit more out of your hips.

I would also be looking at your training schedule—are you just training too much, doing too much of this thing, not enough of this thing, blah blah blah? I'd be looking at your recovery or stress. And I just don't think that—I think for a lot of people—

Bird dogs and stuff like that works, especially for very strong people already. I think often they're used and the explanation as to why that worked is probably because you actually stopped training as hard for a little while. You backed off a little bit. And if you just went for a walk every day instead of doing that, it probably would have worked. You just needed to chill for a week or two weeks or whatever.

So it's a nice entry point. It's potentially a nice entry point to someone who's had a major back surgery and they need to just relearn their body again—like, here's your spine, here's your hip, and so on. But you see a lot of that stuff, and in isolation it's fine. Like, for one client, I picked that, I chose that exercise for this reason. It's fine. But when you see that across the industry and everyone with back pain has been given bird dogs, it becomes a bit of an issue. And you're like, what are we doing here?

James de Lacey19:45

I have no context for this one, but clamshells—they're the other culprit for, I guess you could say, over-prescription. What's your... no context, but just for the active individual, is this something that's going to potentially benefit someone to do? Is there any context that you would even prescribe something like that?

David Grey19:45

Yeah, the context—I have a client that's doing quite a bit of that stuff at the moment. He actually is a professional basketballer and he ruptured his Achilles, so he's in a boot. He can't load that limb, so he's doing loads of clamshells because he can't put his foot on the floor. So my other option is not to do anything for his hip. So he's doing clamshells, he's lying, he's doing straight leg lifts.

He's doing, within the gym, he's doing leg extensions, open chain. He's doing hamstring curls, he's able to do that in the boot. He's able to do some hip thrust movements where he could put a certain part of the boot down. He's doing the seated abductions and adductions on the machines where you push in and you push out. He's doing all of that stuff.

And even still, clamshell is the worst movement of all of those because it's the least load. And there's the least range of motion. I think the biggest problem there is the range of motion. You're taking the glute from a neutral position to kind of a short position, and we don't really train muscles—any other muscle—particularly in that way. If you wanted to, like you're saying with a bicep curl earlier, we would want to let the elbow extend a little bit if we're doing a bicep curl.

That's where you feel that bit of stretch, and then you come back out of there. Doesn't have to be fully, but if you just do a bicep curl from a 90-degree to a top range, you're not going to get any proper load through that muscle.

So the clamshell—the problem is, again, the explanation is usually "this will help your glutes activate." But your glutes are already activated unless you have some proper neurological deficit there or you've had a major injury. They can be useful post-op, definitely better than nothing. They can even be useful for anyone to just get a—if you want to drive a bit of feeling into that area.

Like, even if you're, let's say you were going to do an RDL and someone wasn't really aware of where their hip was, you could actually burn the crap out of that area with something like a clamshell so that they can feel their hip more and maybe they can move their hip more straight away afterwards.

But in terms of a training stimulus for the glutes, if your glutes aren't activated—which a lot of people say they aren't, that's why they prescribe those—that's definitely not going to be the thing that helps, because there's very little load there. So the range of motion is missing and the ability to actually load it is missing.

And then I guess the one last thing is when you start to see fighters, rugby players, powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters using that movement and using the same color band as the granny that just had her full knee replacement, that kind of makes you question, like again, what's the point of this?

James de Lacey22:59

It's often prescribed too, as "your glutes don't activate, that's why you have low back pain." That's kind of the three-up right there. It's kind of like, "You have lower back pain because you have a weak core, you can't activate your transverse abdominis, and your glutes don't turn on." It's kind of like, is that really the reason? And then you do these low-level things and that's supposed to fix the back pain.

I'd love to go into maybe some of that back pain discussion with you. Obviously it's a very multifactorial thing, we can't just nail down to anything like that. But just your general thoughts on low back pain and, I guess, the training that someone can—I mean, so multifactorial in general—but just the general thoughts around low back pain.

David Grey23:25

I guess more than any other part of the body—I would say definitely more than any other part of the body—the back is a sensitive area for us, maybe physically and emotionally. We prescribe a lot more meaning to having pain in our back than other areas in general. There's also a lot more stories told around back pain and back issues than any other area.

You'll hear, like, if I have a sore shoulder... if I told my granny I have a sore shoulder, she might not say "sore shoulders run in the family." But if you say you have a sore back, she'll say, "Well, sore bad backs run in the family." This is a generational thing. That is what people talk about with regards to back pain, but not really with regards to other areas.

You'll also see people be very protective of when they have a sore back. So they'll be afraid to bend over, and that's natural. That's often a smart pattern to choose. Your body is making you hesitant of doing that initially. Maybe it's a smart pattern, which is like, "I just hurt my back today, I don't want to bend over, or tomorrow I don't want to bend over." But when that carries over to six months later, "I'm not bending over to pick up a pen, I'm squatting down to pick up a pen instead of just rounding my back and picking up the pen," that can become a massive problem.

So there's a lot of cultural emotion, psychology around back pain and back issues that doesn't seem to be there for other issues. And it does make sense because your back is a very precious area, it's a very important part of real estate. But it can still be trained like other areas, it can still adapt, it can still heal. If someone hurts their back, the thought process is like, "This is me done, this can't heal." Your back can heal. The areas in your back can. You can make it stronger.

James de Lacey25:57

And that's probably—you probably will see a lot of fighters as well who have back problems. Especially Jiu-Jitsu.

David Grey25:57

Especially Jiu-Jitsu, because there's so much—because you're on your back and your side so much. You have to go into so much flexion and extension and twisting, and you have to use your back a lot. Because let's say someone has me in mount, base position, or in a side control position, and I need to try and do some kind of bridge to get out of there.

So much of that bridge comes from me needing to really just get into an aggressive extension from a flexed position. So it becomes a very important area, your body, to get strong. And you should, and it will get strong as you do those sports.

Like, any—if you look at people who are doing Jiu-Jitsu for a long time, they are very well-developed. They have very mobile backs and they are very well-developed backs. Maybe not—and actually, sometimes you look at their legs and their glutes and their quads and stuff, and they are not very well-developed at all. And it's because they spend so much time lying down and they use their back for so much. So maybe for those people, maybe it's not back training they need more of. Maybe it's more leg training or more whatever.

I don't know, but I tend to look at what people are missing. And if it's a big thing that's missing, I tend to kind of start there. And I think the back should be no different.

James de Lacey27:23

Does that mean that you tend to—you like to teach something like a Jefferson deadlift? For anyone listening, that's almost like a rounder back, extremely rounder back, flexed, I guess say, straight leg deadlift. Is that something that you would use then to help train the back, because you mentioned about moving in all the different movements?

David Grey27:47

Yeah, certainly. I certainly do use that some of the time, not all of the time. But I certainly do use it, and I do a lot of variations where we kind of roll down with our spine on more of a bent knee, because it makes it more spine and less kind of a hamstring stretch, if you get me. So I do a lot of bent knee versions. We kind of twist to the left and roll...

Down, we twist to the right and roll down, we load it. I do a lot of that stuff. I also love medicine ball throws where we're moving from an extended into a flex position, flexion and rotation. And I also like to do stuff with different levels of tension as well. So we do some of these movements super duper relaxed, we do some of them much more tense where we're lifting heavy loads, we do some of them where we're moving very fast loads, throwing and stuff like that.

I find that to be very beneficial. Even if, so let's say again going back to the Jiu-Jitsu example, okay, you're always in lots of spinal flexion. If you play guard a lot of the time you're going to be in tons of flexion. Probably your lumbar spine is going to be in tons of flexion. Doesn't mean I wouldn't train you in lumbar flexion because you already are there.

Maybe I'll just train you in a different type of way, so with more loads or less loads or more speed. Or maybe just way more relaxed, you just get a chance to sense different areas and move different parts of your spine.

So yeah, I think it's all on the table, it's all on the table. It's just about making smart choices.

James de Lacey29:12

Okay, perfect. I also want to dive into some foot training because I went down the rabbit hole a couple years ago, haven't really revisited too much. There's not too many resources actually on training the feet for athletic performance, which is unfortunate.

But I actually wanted to start this conversation around arched foot versus flat feet. I definitely have flat feet, and I think the message throughout the years has been flat feet is bad and you should have orthotics and all sorts of whatnot going on. I'd love to know your thoughts around flat feet versus arches and orthotics.

David Grey29:36

Yeah. So the research at least is starting to come out, or has been out probably for a while now, but it's been more developed, is generally speaking that there's no good foot, one good foot shape. Probably just like with regards to feet, you can also just think of probably posture. There's not necessarily one good posture.

The question is do you have control over your movement? So can you, for your spine, can you flex your back and extend your back? You need to be able to do a bit of both to varying degrees. So with the feet, it's okay, can you move your feet a little bit? Can you move your ankle a little bit in different directions? That's really it. It doesn't, that's honestly really it.

I've worked with some of the fastest sprinters in the history of the world ever, and many of the fastest people ever have quite flat feet. And these are people that their feet are striking the ground at velocities and at forces that basically no one else in the world is able to do, and their feet are quite flat. And this includes a lot of high level basketball players as well. You'll see a lot of very flat feet.

But flat doesn't mean floppy, which a lot of people think it is. It's just like a floppy fish on the end of your leg. You can see a very flat, very tense flat foot, which is often quite good for sports actually. You have a lot of tension in your feet when you whack the ground, when you hit the ground to jump or change direction. Your foot stiffens up in a good way and you're able to really strike the floor and pop off of that. You see a lot of flatter feet there in a lot of very good athletes.

So I think it doesn't matter too much about your foot shape. What matters is if you can get some movement there, and then are your feet strong? I've seen some incredibly high arched people and the foot seems strong. If you were to just grab it in your hand, you wouldn't be able to bend any of the bones there.

It just does not move. I don't think that's strong. I just think that's rigid. The same as someone in Jiu-Jitsu who's a plank of wood, that's not strong, that's just rigid. You actually have to be able to move your body and be strong in different positions, otherwise someone just tips you over.

So can it change shape and is it strong there, and can you actually just even access those positions? That I think that's what matters. And orthotics can be helpful for certain people. It can definitely help, not because you have flat feet it's helping, I think it's because it can just for the time being start to change how you pressurize the feet.

So let's say you have a very sensitive part of your foot and you always load that area a lot when you walk or run or jump or whatever. Potentially an orthotic can help. I don't prescribe that, but I think it can potentially help just because it can change how your foot loads, not because it's giving you back an arch. It's just pressurizing the feet in a slightly different way. So I don't think you actually need that though. I think you can most of the time just train your feet better, but that's also an option I guess.

James de Lacey33:35

So I guess arch training exercises then don't make any sense, and they're more just general foot strengthening exercises that someone might do?

David Grey33:35

Yeah, it's movement. It's movement. They make sense in terms of the explanation. You're learning to move your feet and you're strengthening your feet, and that makes sense. If that's a valuable thing for you as a person to focus on, if that's something you need, that definitely makes sense. We spend a lot of time doing that.

But I get a lot of people with foot issues. I get a lot of people with Achilles, calf, shin, knee issues. That definitely makes sense. I think having strong feet is really important. I think it's often undertrained. But it's just not, I do not care less about the shape that your foot presents in, other than I want to see it change shape a little bit from that shape to another shape basically. But not that much. Just is there some movement there?

James de Lacey34:01

I'd love to go into maybe a little foot training progression, maybe off the top of your head if you've got one. Just from level one, you start here, and this is kind of where you want to go from there, each step of the way.

David Grey34:29

Yep, yep. It depends what you need and what you're looking for. A very simple way of starting to train your feet, let's say you're in the gym, a simple way to start to train your feet a bit more is to start to take your heels off the floor more in some exercises.

So for example, in a Bulgarian split squat, we have a foot, ankle and Achilles program. We have a Bulgarian split squat where we go down, we take your heel off the floor of the front leg just a bit, not a lot. And we just drive down through the foot as hard as you can, through the forefoot, for three seconds at the bottom. And then you use that tension and that push to push you back up tall.

So as soon as you take the heel off the floor, you're forcing all of the toes, the arches, the ankle, the lower leg to get involved in the movement much more rather than when you have your heel down. Now when you do that, you might maybe sacrifice some stability, and with stability comes more load. So you might not be able to load your quads quite as much or your glutes quite as much. I still think you can load them a hell of a lot if you do it right, but you might sacrifice a little bit of that.

You're not going to maybe hit your one rep max squat, but you can get very close to that. But you just sacrifice a little bit of load for extra foot and ankle training. So that's a good option if you're someone that needs that. You can do that in loads of positions.

But one of the best ways to strengthen your feet and ankles is to do a little bit of jumping. It's such an easy win. If you think about a jump rope, a skipping rope or something like that that boxers do, every single time their foot hits the floor they're getting a nice load through their Achilles, their calves, their ankles, their feet. And that might seem like a very small amount of load, but if you're someone that hasn't jumped in a while, you haven't done any jumping, which is a lot of people, you can feel within 30 reps, 50 reps, 10 reps.

Hang on, I need to be careful here because that's all of your body weight coming down straight down onto maybe one foot. It can add up quite quickly.

So jumping is amazing. Different types of jumps, different types of skips, different types of pogos, different types of speeds where you sink down a little bit more, where you try and strike the floor much faster. That's my favorite way, but not everyone can start there. But that's definitely my favorite way. That's what the feet were designed for, to hit the floor and propel you back off again.

James de Lacey37:14

Something I started doing recently, because again, when you go through a big strength sports background and you just maybe lifting for strength and size, you don't do as much jumping, sprinting stuff as maybe when you're younger. Something I started doing recently is

Just holding a band and doing band-assisted single-leg pogos, because I found like my left side, I can't get off the floor quick enough. It's almost like since I'm bigger now and everything else, it's much harder, especially when you haven't done the stuff as you got bigger. So you got to basically just deload the body weight and then start trying to jump with the band and then kind of progress from there. So that's potentially something where someone could start too.

David Grey38:00

Exactly, yeah. The more muscle you have, the more body weight you have, the harder it gets. That can help you bench press more and squat more sometimes, but maybe you haven't done any jumping along the way, so you can get humbled quickly. But not to look at that as a bad thing, it's just another thing that needs a bit of attention, bit of training.

You just need to be slow with it in that case, because when you add a lot of force and a lot of speed together, things can go wrong, especially thing like tendons can not like it. So it's just something, but it doesn't mean you need to be scared of it, you just need to just be smart with it, that's all.

James de Lacey38:32

Do you recommend doing these in shoes or no shoes?

David Grey38:32

I prefer no shoes if it's an option, but I wouldn't let it hold me back if I was in a gym and I didn't want to take off my shoes or I wasn't allowed, or I was outside on concrete. I do some kind of pogo type of work probably five days a week with clients just because I'm showing them, I'm doing different positions. I could be barefoot, I could be in shoes. I prefer barefoot if I have the choice, but I don't think it matters that much. Don't let it hold you back.

James de Lacey39:00

Perfect. And what about specific toe training? Because we can train the feet and obviously the toes are involved in a lot of these things we're doing, but there's obviously toe curls where you're curling up like a towel, things like that. Is that anything you go down?

David Grey39:33

Only if I have someone with a toe problem, basically. That's almost it, to be honest. Maybe if they have a plantar fasciitis type of problem or something close to the toes. But in terms of a general training program, if you don't have a toe problem, your toes are fine, I don't think you need to do—I think you could waste a lot of time doing toe work. Unless for some reason you checked your toe and you can't lift your big toe or something, it just you can't lift it, or you can't—

James de Lacey40:04

You mean by keeping all your toes on the ground and only your big toe comes up?

David Grey40:04

No, that's more of a motor control thing. Let's just say you can't lift your toe, like all the toes or something.

James de Lacey40:04

Okay, that's kind of a party trick.

David Grey40:04

That's kind of a party trick. Can you lift your first toe, your second toe, all individual? I don't care about that. You can only do that if you practice that. Also, these amazing athletes that I'm talking about, the sprinters, the basketballers, they definitely cannot do that—no chance in hell that they can do that—and they can still jump higher and run faster than anyone else in the world.

So unless you have a toe problem, I don't think you need to do toe training unless you like it. Some people just enjoy that stuff.

James de Lacey40:56

Who enjoys training the toes? Toe day?

David Grey40:56

I do actually have a post on Instagram which is "Big Toe Day," but that was for a guy with a big toe problem. Oh man, yeah.

James de Lacey40:56

You see a lot of different stuff around the toe training and foot training. I actually did—I went through, was it Cal Dietz's and Chris Korfist's course a few years ago around the ankle rocker? And yeah, it was interesting going through that and kind of moving the feet, talking a lot of stuff you're talking here around, you know, the foot should be able to move, like if you manipulate the foot with your hands, it should—the bones should move past each other, all that kind of stuff. That was quite good.

I know one of my ankles is definitely stuck, like I literally cannot get more flexion because there's something that just stops it in the way. So it's like ankle rocker there probably doesn't quite work. But yeah, I like those ideas around foot training: just simple plyometric jumps, more floating heel or just heel off the ground strength training exercises. And you can just incorporate those in and basically improve your foot strength.

David Grey41:46

Yeah, they're easy to incorporate, they don't take that much extra time. And the cool thing is you're going to get a lot of good stuff along the way where you get your calves, you get your shin muscles, you get your feet, you get your ankles. Whereas the toe thing is you're just getting your toe—that's the only thing. So yeah, I do really like all that ankle stuff. I think that's very beneficial for a lot of people.

James de Lacey42:12

We actually mentioned about the tib raisers with the—obviously the tib raisers blowing up because of the knees over toes movement as well. Are tib raisers ever within a training program for you, or do they serve any kind of purpose for you?

David Grey42:37

No, almost never. If someone has a shin splint problem, a true shin splint problem, maybe I will put it in there for a couple of weeks or maybe longer, because I don't see any harm in it. They might get some kind of pump in that area, it might help them load that area. I don't see any harm in it.

It's just another fine movement that's like, okay, I can load the front of your shins. But again, it comes back to the explanations around—there's some weird stuff being said that the tibialis anterior is the most important muscle in your body, it helps your back pain, your knee pain. It doesn't even touch your knee, it doesn't touch your back.

So yeah, but even with shin splints, I help a lot of people with shin splint issues, ankle impingement type of issues, Achilles problems. And 98% of those people we never give a tib raise to. So yeah, I think look, they aren't probably doing any harm. If you threw it into your program and you enjoyed it, it wouldn't do any harm. It's not going to hurt you, or unlikely, unless you did something weird.

But you also, you have to look at bang for your buck as well. How much time do you have in your week? How many exercises do you actually want to do? And then you need to choose the most potent ones, the most important ones for you. And very rarely does that end up with me giving people loads of tib raises.

James de Lacey44:10

That's funny. Coaching how many years in professional sport, talking about how many others you've coached and stuff—the tib raise or the tibialis anterior was never mentioned once in my entire career coaching anything like that. Then suddenly, in the past few years, it's like all they talked about, all over the Internet. But coaches, it will never come up once. It won't come up once, but now—yeah, you know what, you know who it might be useful for is jiu-jitsu, because they have to—they're using so much hooking of their foot.

David Grey44:37

That's true, but on the flip side, they already usually very strong there. They're doing so much pulling back and lifting people, stuff like that. So they will have, and actually again, jiu-jitsu people will usually have very strong—not necessarily feet in terms of jumping or impact—but when they pull back, they'll be quite strong. When they press away, they'll be quite strong in those positions. Turning the feet, they'll be quite strong in those positions.

So potentially could see some value there in doing some of that, but that's maybe the only sport.

James de Lacey45:07

Perfect. I think that's everything I had for you. Ask David: where can people find and follow you and keep up with what you're doing?

David Grey45:40

I guess Instagram is probably the best place. My name is David Gray, G-R-E-Y, Rehab, on Instagram. And that's usually a good place because people can come and have a look and see some of my content and decide do they hate it or not, which maybe they will, maybe they won't.

And then we also have a podcast, which I've learned recently when you're on a podcast, you should plug your own podcast, because podcast listeners listen to other podcasts. So yeah, our podcast is called the David Gray Rehab Podcast. And I do a lot of guest—some guest episodes—but mostly kind of solo episodes where I just get asked a couple of questions and I just riff on them for a while, answer them for a while.

And it does pretty well, actually. People seem to enjoy it. It's quite lighthearted and just definitely built for coaches and therapists who are interested in just learning a little bit more. So those are the two main places, I think.

James de Lacey46:35

Perfect. I'll link those up in the description too, so make sure you check David on Instagram, check out his podcast as well, give that a listen. But I appreciate you coming on, David, and sharing some of your knowledge and your time.

David Grey46:35

Thanks so much, James. Really appreciate it. And I really enjoyed the chat and keep doing what you're doing.

James de Lacey46:35

Cheers.