To Heel Strike or Not to Heel Strike....Is this really a question?

The "barefoot running movement" seemed to go as quickly as it came on.  Vibram Five Finger shoes were all the rage with many companies doing anything they could to get a shoe out there that mimicked the five finger barefoot shoe and cash in on the movement.  People bought these shoes and they were used from just walking around and daily work to going and trying to put all of your weekly mileage on.  This is where people ran into trouble and injury.  But first a little back ground.

Wearing basically any shoe on a daily basis is like wearing a miniature high heel (even the guys).  There is so much elevation and cushion in the back of your shoe with the heel protection and cushion that it is raising your calcaneus significantly higher than it needs to be (we are talking mm or a cm here) and shortens the entire heel cord which results in changes in your entire posterior chain.  Now this change starts early. As Kelly Starrett has mentioned it, most kids run completely natural up until 1st grade when all the sudden it changes and they are in bigger, cushioned shoes and they begin to heel strike and walk around in these shoes.  This is the start of a long process of being in cushioned shoes for most of your life.

So what's wrong with heel striking?  If you picture running as almost low amplitude-high paced jumping you can start to see why heel striking could be so terrible for you.  Your goal with running should be to spend as little time on the ground with each step as possible and use the dynamic ability of your body (i.e. your muscles) to propel you forward.  When we heel strike we are slamming our heel/foot into the ground and increasing our ground time.  When we do this we take all the brunt of that force through the static tissue of our body (i.e. our bones) and we end up with "shin splints" and progress on to joint damage or stress fractures.  The amount of force your body must endure when running is at least 4x your body weight and if you aren't using your dynamic structures you're just asking for injury.

The good news is fixing can be easy.  All it takes is practice and re-learning to run.  Running is a skill just like anything else we learn to do so take the time to practice.  First thing is get a pair of shoes that will allow your heel cord to be at its normal length all day.  A shoe with no more than a 4mm drop (heel to toe) is ideal, the flatter the better.  These shoes will also make running on your "forefoot" feel much easier when a big cushioned heel isn't in your way.

See more below:

Hamstrings: Tight vs. Taut

This post is tag along to a couple of the more recent ones that I have put up about the sitting and out lifestyle is wrecking our hips and in turn causing a lot of problems along the way.  I want to go a little bit more in depth about how sitting in this flexed hip position can cause low back pain and also really focus on why it makes your hamstring feel like they are always "tight".

Your pelvis controls so much of the motion and is such a connection point for you body that the slightest changes in its position can cause massive impact on the rest of your body.  Due to our seated position for a lot of our lives the powerful hip flexors (psoas, illiacus, rectus femoris) adapt to become short due to their constant shortened position with sitting.  Psoas attaches to the lumbar spine and if it becomes overly short will pull the lumbar spine into a further lordotic curve causing the pelvis to follow it and rotate in the anterior direction.  Iliacus also plays a roll in this with its attachment to the pelvis.

The result of this anterior tilt to your pelvis is a chain of reactions that can cause you to have pain and problems throughout your lower back and your upper legs.  Your spinal erector muscles get put into a shortened position and haver to take the brunt of an extra load and the insertion point of your hamstrings now moves higher.  This is where the "tight" vs. "taut" argument comes into play.  Most people have heard the story of how if your hamstrings are tight it is a main cause of low back pain and that we need to get your hamstrings loosened up. While this could be a cause I argue it is rarely the issue.  We have more athletes and athletic people coming in with tight hamstrings and what is the first thing we want to do with them or they want done?  STRETCH the hamstrings.  This is all well and good but if the hamstrings are already pulled into a taught position all the stretching in the world won't help them.

When we sit or ischial tuberosity (insertion of the hamstrings) moves superior from it's natural position and pulls the hamstrings into a minor stretch.  This then translates to standing up if we are extremely tight in the anterior hip.  Nothing changes in position of the pelvis, just the position of our body.  Our body is an amazing adapter to whatever position or stress we constantly put it into.

How to help fix it below:

Marc Pro: Non Fatiguing Active Recovery

As I'm about to have the opportunity to use a couple of these Marc Pro machines I thought I would bring out a couple of videos by Gary Reinl and his thought process on active recovery and how his machine helps with a "non-fatiguing" muscle activation and it's ability to enhance recovery.


Please leave feedback and what your thoughts are on the use of this product.

I look forward to experimenting with this piece of equipment and seeing what the results and benefits might be.

-Fix it early, fix it often.

Also below please check out his information on why he thinks we shouldn't be icing and how it can negatively effect the recovery process.

Finding Flow: The Rise of Superman

Ever been in that state of mind where it seems like nothing can slow you down?  Maybe it was in a sport where everything seemed to "click".  You couldn't miss a shot, you knew what was going to happen before it happened and your reacted without a conscious thought.  It might have been at work or on any project where it didn't seem like work and thoughts and ideas flowed effortlessly from your mind and everything seemed natural.

This is called the state of "flow" or being in the "zone".  In the book Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler dives deep into this state of flow and discusses where it comes from, how it might be achieved and how some of the greatest human feats every wouldn't have been possible without achieving this flow state.

These flow states occur with a coupling of brain waves, theta and at point of "aha" gamma waves.  There are many ways you might be able to achieve these brain waves and reach a state of flow.  Mediation is one and is talked about consistently from the bio-hackers and Mr. Dave Asprey.  Mr. Asprey also discusses the use of gamma wave generating machines that you actually attach to the side of your head to help your brain achieve a flow state more easily.

In the book Rise of Superman they look at mainly action sports athletes and the amazing things they accomplish such as jumping the great wall of China on a skateboard not once but six times (5 with throwing in a 360) which is impressive enough but what is even more amazing is that the last five times were done with a broken leg, swollen ankle and a torn ACL.  The man completing these jumps felt none of that pain and was so intently focused on the task at hand that he just reacted and didn't feel the pain.


Continued Below:

Minding Your Mitochondria

Dr. Terry Wahls has one of the more incredible stories that I have seen about the power of self-research, self-testing and fixing yourself as a result of what you've done.  Dr. Wahls was diagnosed

with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and it quickly took over control of her body and confined her to a wheel chair.  Through plenty of research and completely changing her diet over the course of about a year she was able to completely change her life and regain the ability to run and ride her bike and in essence take her life back.

The diet she talks about and prescribes is simple and I know made me want to eat better.  There are so many things we can control in our life if we are dedicated to that cause.  I took this as a great way to look at things on a preventative side and do what I can to get ahead of these things that might cause me harm in the future and doing what I can to not wait until that tipping point when things go extremely wrong.  Hope you enjoyed the video.

Reversing the Effects of Sitting and the Wrecking of Your Hips

By: Joel Luedke


I put a post out a week or so ago with a video from Kelly Starrett describing what the effects of sitting were doing to wreck your hips.  The chronic and constant shortening of your hip flexors and having your glutes "turned-off" from not needing to use them in a seated position gets you into a bad spot for trying to maintain good posture.  Here we will talk about some fixes for this problem.

First one.  If at all possible get a standing desk for where you spend a great amount of your time working.  Whether it be at home or at work do what you can to figure how to implement one of these desks.  They can get expensive or you can make one yourself for about $150 from Wal-Mart by buying a standard desk and then raising it up on a couple end tables (my preferred method for mine at home).

If the standing desk isn't feasible or within the budget then you need to get yourself up and moving as much as possible.  This needs to be done at much as every 15 minutes.  This presents a problem in getting any work done so the standing desk is your best option but this is also a decent alternative.  The third video below talks about a standing desk but also talks about how you need focus on your standing and posture.  You can use these same principles to stand up and RESET yourself and work on holding that position when you sit back down.

The first one and half suggestions are the big changes that can make a huge difference in moving towards preventing your hips from being wrecked by sitting.  Now, for the how do we go and fix and correct the issues that have been built up over the years.

The image above provides basic mobility exercises that are good for your general overall body mobility.  The ones to focus on for fixing your wrecked hips are numbers 1, 3, 6.  The second video below gives you a great explanation of how to do exercise number 6 or the "couch stretch."  These mobilizations can by done throughout the day or as Kelly talks about in the video at home during commercial breaks.

The main take home points of all this is the need to consciously work on making sure you don't get short and tight through your anterior hips and it comes from putting in the work to make these changes.  The more you can stand the less you get put into terrible positions of hip flexion to allow that shortening to occur.  If you consciously engage your glutes when you're standing it will help your posture and use those strong muscles to keep you up right.  An added benefit to the standing is the extra calories you will unknowingly burn due to just being upright all day and using muscles that you don't use throughout most of the day.

Fix it early and fix it often.

Check out Kelly Starrett's Videos Below

Get Your Skin Gliding & Fix Some Problems

This is something I hadn't ever thought of but the basics behind it make perfect sense.  Tight and tacked down tissues are a multi-faceted issue.  The idea is that your skin should be able to "glide" over your tissues underneath.  One way to address this is to focus on hydration and allowing your tissue to have enough "suppleness" to them that they are able to move freely.

What Kelly Starrett uses in the video below is trying to "tack" down the tissue and then "twist" in order to help free up those tissues and allow that ease of movement again.  He continues to describe some of the biomechanics of movements of the ankle and how something as small and simple as these tacked down tissues can continue make you movement slightly off and over the long-course of your movement cause you tremendous problems.

Fix it early and fix it often.