Connecting the Feet/Ankles with Compound Lifts + Advanced Elaborations (Part 2)
Continuations from last week's post - my thoughts on what to take from various foot/ankle "philosophies" + further exercises for training foot/ankle in conjunction with the rest of the body
This post is a continuation from last week’s, so I recommend you read the intro post to training the feet/ankles first. This week will elaborate on some topics + help you augment or incorporate some exercises that will train the foot/ankle for strength in compound movements with the rest of the body.
Contents:
GOATA method explained
Disagreements
Current Research
Positive Takeaways
Connecting the feet to the upper leg and hip
Exercise Modifications to incorporate the feet into compound lifts
Closing Thoughts
We mentioned in the last post how your feet are your base and everything in your body is stacked on top of it. In this post we will continue talking about it foot training philosophies. I will go over the “GOATA method” system which is a somewhat popular and give some of my elaborated thoughts on it. We will also talk about running form. Martial arts movement, and exercises that will involve the feet in broader movements and strengthen the lower leg complex using more compound movements.
This post is covering broader ancillary subjects related to the last one but it is worth educating yourself on as I think having a good understanding and emphasis of your lower leg complex pays dividends in the long term with regard to athletic training.
GOATA Explained
You may have seen me mention the GOATA method on Twitter, as well as share a few of their methods in our last post on training the ankle complex. This section will describe a brief rundown of what the GOATA philosophy is, based on the content that “GLS systems” shares.
“GOATA” claims based on video footage observation on thousands of athletes that the foot-ankle complex and the bones stacked on top of it operate off of a few particular movement patterns that are integral to basic locomotion. The foot posture criteria they look for are:
The inside ankle bone must be higher than the outer ankle bone
Your center of weight must be on the outside edge and corner of the foot (pinky toe end of the foot instead of the ball of the foot)
The heel must be “turned out”
When running the knee must be 22.5° turned out from where the toes are pointing
The foot and leg must “spiral“ off of this pinky corner of the foot when moving
You can go to their website or YouTube channel and see what this all looks like for yourself but here are some diagrams they share.
*This green circle is what they mean when they reference the “outside edge/corner of the foot”.
GOATA coaches claim this is our natural state of movement and that not adhering to all of these criteria *will* result in loss of joint health & injury. They also claim very strongly that any methods of training that do not load this particular movement pattern will corrupt your ability to move naturally and will lead to loss of performance and eventually joint health.
In our last post, I shared a few concepts from them because I find a couple of their ideas to be worthwhile or at least a good enough explanation for something that is useful for us to utilize in our health practice and training. However, I do not advocate for their system as a whole. (My issues with their “research”, marketing and service to fitness culture won’t be discussed here - I will only speak on the method.)
In the next section, I will dissect my immediate problems with their philosophy and training application then will clarify the purpose of any positive takeaways I have from their content.
Problems
Your foot and ankle do not ALWAYS need to be in that “inside ankle bone high, outside edge, heel out”, etc position. What is important is being able to *access* that position and be strong in it – which many people are not. However, the idea that your foot/ankle, which is one of the most mobile and malleable parts of the body due to it having the most bones and connective tissue comprising it, must operate from a single. rigid position is obviously untrue. The reason your feet can even access other postures that GOATA considers “wrong” is because it is meant to be able to move in those positions. That is why the foot is built the way it is and not made up of a single bone and rigid socket like many other body parts are.
I do not believe that all of your weight should be on the outside corner of the foot. I do believe being able to access and have strength in this position is good and can be valuable, (demonstrated why below) however, when they describe “locomotive motions” I think it is also exaggerated how much the outside corner of the foot contributes in terms of loadbearing. Again, the foot & ankle need to be strong in a variety of positions, but as general practice, I think having a more even distribution of weight along the entire forefoot when moving is often good practice. (See picture below) Yes, it’s true that many people place too much weight on the inside edge of the big toe and ball of the foot and so developing the outside edge can help balance this out – but this does not mean that when running the big toe + ball of the foot should be limited.
I also believe that the emphasis on the outside edge diminishes the force and coordination that you would normally produce with the big toe. It can be useful to have the entire foot be strong but to deliberately avoid utilizing the strongest toe in the foot will diminish your strength. This is especially true because the big toe is also reported to be integral in activating the glutes in motion.
*This (above) is more ideal when sprinting/jumping than being overly collapsed on the “inside edge” (as shown in red) AND being completely weighted on the pinky toe (“outside edge”).
Not every athletic action will come from the “heel turning out and the knees spiraling around the ankle”. Like every other problem listed, the ability and strength to perform these actions effectively is good. However, the idea that any action or training exercise that does not satisfy all of the above criteria is bad or has “no translation to performance” is completely incorrect. (See my twitter arguments for GOATA coaches claiming this) This philosophy excludes traditional squats, lunges, split squats, and even upper body exercises unless they are performed loaded over the outside edge of the foot. This limits your capacity to produce max force and thus illicit strength & hypertrophy adaptations. Observe their exercise setups and while *some* have value (more in the next section) they WILL NEVER elicit the same strength/muscle that full ROM + heavy traditional exercises do. Their message is to load the “GOATA“ running pattern with weight and all other exercises beyond that are deemed useless. This is obviously untrue and creates a system where athletes avoid things with time tested, proven results to focus only on one thing that has more limited use (which is “strength on the outside edge”)
Injury can never be predicted 100% and the reality is that no trainer, no matter what they say, can predicts such things with perfect accuracy. Yes, we have predictors that give us good ideas of what to look out for they are useful. At the same time, training, sports and life have some factors that we cannot realistically always see coming in practice. To inform someone wrongly that they will be injured from training traditionally and will never be injured if they stick to only this movement pattern is wrong. (Again, I will not go down the road here on how this is a frustrating, deceptive marketing tactic)
GOATA promoting the abandonment of every non-GOATA exercise is justified by saying that non-GOATA exercises train you into an “injury-causing” + “ineffective” pattern implies that any engagement whatsoever with something outside of their philosophy will degrade it so much that their training methods cannot outweigh that stimulus, and this results in its practitioners abandoning other proven training methods. Even if you were to completely adopt their view on ideal movement mechanics when running, I believe you could absolutely do so while also squatting and dead lifting traditionally with no issues.
Positive Takeaways
I do believe that there is some merit to their training instinct that favor “forward intent“ using a landmine. I think there is value in training movement patterns under load on the balls of the feet - producing force in a more horizontal pattern. (see exercises in later section)
I also believe that their emphasis on strengthening the feet using isometric holds for the foot ankle complex is also useful (see last post and below) – again I think that creating torque off of the outside edge of the foot is just one thing that you benefit from doing. I agree that *excessive* pronation or “duck footedness” and centering weight off of the inside edge of the foot can be so common that an athlete completely depends on it - and that training the outside edge position can be beneficial. However, I also want to emphasize that the foot moving in other positions also serve beneficial functions. Being able to both fully rotate and produce force from the outside of the foot helps generate force in some rotational/lateral sport actions. See this thread piece on George St. Pierre lacking rotation off his back leg because he could only push off his big toe and thus couldn’t rotate the foot-hip around on his punches.
My very inspiration for my philosophy an attitude on training was George St. Pierre Even as a kid, I noticed a peculiarity with the way he would throw his right cross which did not rotate properly and dragged behind him(section below elaborates further)
I think their promotion of using a sled for strength work is also beneficial and something I use with myself and my athletes and when appropriate as well.
I believe there is value in incorporating compound exercises that also work the foot/ankle complex as well - usually this should be done with secondary/accessory movements however and not as your heaviest lifts. (Could limit force production through larger joints)
Lastly it is beneficial in my experience do use some of their resting postures as shown in the last sub stack where I think many people step in or stress their ankles in other seated positions. Because it is likely true that many trainees are weak off of their outside edge of the foot, so they avoid this position and often using those resting postures can help stretch and access those mobility requirements more easily.
Research on Other “Foot Postures” & Individualized Considerations
The foot is meant to be able to access different movements - just like we want the rest of the body to do so. I advocate training the rest of the body through a full range of motion because by doing so you are strong and capable of accessing different positions & applying force from that angle safely and impressively. We want the same thing at the foot because the foot is extremely malleable and in many ways is the most dynamic body part in the way that it moves. With over 26 bones and a massive variety in connective tendons and micro-positional adaptations it can make due to this - the foot is MEANT to be dynamic as a flexible and adaptable base of support for the rest of the body.
This study below links knee pain + a lack of strength in absorbing forces from those who had a more “normal” foot posture vs those who had greater foot pronation. This means that athletes who were slightly more able to pronate (middle foot in picture below) were less likely to suffer from knee pain during play. This is one indicator that individual foot structure (like the rest of our body) is a factor in how we address the feet when trying plyometrics, especially.
STUDY: de Groot, R., Malliaras, P., Munteanu, S., Payne, C., Morrissey, D., & Maffulli, N. (2012). Foot posture and patellar tendon pain amount adult volleyball players. Clinical journal of sport medicine: official journal of the Canadian academy of sport medicine, 22(2), 157-159.
*NOTE: This does not mean that a chronically pronated foot is always good it simply means the ability to safely and soundly pronate is useful. The theme of this post is to have the foot be strong in *any position* as well as not be “stuck” in any one position. The KEY to feet enhancing your performance is that they have *dynamic mobility and are strong EVERYWHERE*. If your ankle is chronically looking like the foot to the right AND it struggles to hold itself in other positions, then that is a sign of an area that needs work. This also technically applies to the left side diagram though it is less common those with that structure have particularly weak ankles.
Training the Foot/Ankle with Compound Exercises
Last week, we covered isolation exercises which you should incorporate and get started with as they will not interfere with your broader training very much. Here I will provide more compound exercises that I think possess value in strengthening the body & lower leg using compound exercises. This provides higher output benefits that come with having a heavier resistance for the body to produce force toward without having to keep the heels on the ground. This allows the body to develop the ability to translate force off the balls of the feet well when programmed correctly.
No, I don’t think these exercises are superior to general traditional compound exercises, as I think they do not allow you to produce as high of a force output and I also don’t think they will directly train the foot in as targeted away as the previous weeks exercises – but incorporating one or two of these in some doses is useful for bridging gaps in strength coordination. Do not replace the previously mentioned strength work or foot isolation work with this but certainly use it to increase your “physical literacy” (ability to overcome different dynamic physical challenges) and athletic related force outputs that you can generate.
Co-contractions
The underlying concept here is training “co-contractions”. This means to develop the ability to coordinate force with a certain pattern between muscles together. Often it means once muscle is doing something “other” than what the “co-contracting” muscle is. In this case, we are training the foot/ankle/calf to contract isometrically or alongside the leg as it extends or absorbs force. This is essentially what we do in almost every sport action (Ie running, jumping, punching or any grappling on the feet, etc).
Starting with Bodyweight Isometrics
Isometric training will have its own post soon but I recommend trying out some further isometrics like these that have been shared in the last post and here:
Isometrics like this help build connective tissue strength and resiliency in active positions and can both aid performance and health/recovery. Accumulate 2-5 minutes total in each of these. Hold for as long as you can for it to be challenging but try to accumulate that total amount of time each day (2-5min). Isometrics are extremely low impact so they can be done every day if you like.