Policing Gait on the Web

There is some decent information here but we do have some issues with this video. We were asked on our Facebook PAGE to talk about our thoughts on this piece.  We are not trying to criticize anyone, merely helping to keep the information accurate on the web:

1. They are promoting external rotation of the limb into the ground. They refer to this as “screwing” (as they put it) the foot into the ground. The issues here are that the foot supinates when you do this and when you do this too far you weight bear on the lateral foot and disengage the medial foot tripod. They do refer to limits on this but we need to heighten the awareness here. Someone with a forefoot valgus will go to far most likely, and someone with a forefoot varus will disengage the medial tripod quickly.  Most people will also disengage the FHB (flexor hallucis brevis) quickly during this “screwing” technique.  Furthermore, people can also become too dependent on their glutes to hold the “screwed” or supinated position and this is not a safe and reasonable way to support the limb and pelvic posturing. We see this as a very detrimental strategy when sustained PPT (Posterior Pelvic Tilt) is maintained during gait and stance.  There needs to be help from the lower abdominals and adductors as well.   Their “20%” torque is a nice mention and may help many to keep this moderate but this is really dependent on foot type and tibial torsion issues which are not discussed here. As always, not everything fixes everyone, and some things go against an admirable intention.  No digs against these nice fellas, we are just stating what we feel are critical facts not discussed. We watched part 2 and 3 in the hopes of hearing about these issues above, but they were not discussed. We wanted to comment on the videos but they have disabled the comments on youtube.

2. This posturing promotes knee hyperextension which is never good. Go ahead, try it yourself.  You cannot employ a whole lot of this external screwing during gait without changing the knee biomechanics into the hyperextension direction.  It is another reason we mention a caveat here.  If you try it, just pay close attention to what you are doing. You may try to get around the hyperextenion by dropping the pelvis anterior, disengaging your abdominals and changing hip and low back function. 

3. Merely doing what they propose here does not necessarily ramp up the intrinsic muscles of the feet (4:00 mark).  They can remain silent in this maneuver.  Keeping the toes pressed might be more productive to this end.

We watched part 2 and 3 of their Rebuilding the Foot youtube videos and frankly they just scare us a little (go ahead have a look yourself) so we will not comment on anything there. Although we strongly do not advise many of their recommendations in either part 2 or 3 for our clients you may find some stuff you like here … . . heck, who are we to say what you will be willing to try !

To each his own. We give these guys mad props for putting themselves on the net and trying to share their info.  It takes guts to put your stuff on the web, we hope they will enable the comments section so productive dialogues can ensue there in the future.

Shawn and Ivo