Rolling and crawling are currently some of the hottest trends in fitness and corrective exercise programming.   From Animal Flow to Original, health and fitness professionals are exploring the power of primal movement patterning for correcting movement dysfunction and achieving optimal function.

We actually happened to just do a webinar on this exact topic with Stop Chasing Pain’s Dr Perry Nickelston which we encourage you to catch the archived version on the EBFA YouTube Channel HERE!

Why rolling and crawling are such powerful stabilization techniques is that they bring us back to our neurodevelopmental origins.   Back when we were first introducing our nervous system to the demands of movement – millions of neuromuscular pathways were being developed.

These neurological pathways soon become the joint stability and coordination needed to sit upright, resist gravity and ultimately put one foot in front of the other.

What movement specialists are starting to realize is that by bringing it back down to the ground and reducing the demands of gravity, clients and patients are better able to restore stabilization patterns.

Test Your Primal Stability 

One example of crawling stability is the quadruped position.  In Animal Flow they call this position The Beast.

Begin on your hands and knees with your shoulders directly over your wrists, hips over knees, neutral spine and feet flexed.

After creating proper alignment on these 6 points of contacts, engage the deep abdominals and lift the knees 1 cm off of the ground.   Immediately you should start to feel all your stabilizers engage.

Richard Scrivener of Animal Flow recommends holding this 4 point Beast for 45 seconds to test stability.

From Primal to Bipedal 

Despite the current popularity in rolling and crawling I think that it is important for movement specialists to remember that we are still bipedal animals and that simply training primal patterns is not enough to restore the demands of bipedal locomotion.

One of the biggest differences between primal movements and bipedal movements is the degree of impact forces encountered with every step that we take.   When walking each time our foot contacts the ground we are encountering 1 -1.5 x our body weight in impact forces that are entered at a rate of < 50 milliseconds.

To effectively and efficiently load these impacts forces over and over (sometimes over 10,000 times a day!) requires fast and accurate stability.

Now although we were training stability in our primal patterning that stability was not at the rate nor was it specific to the demands of bipedal foot contact.

Foot to Core Sequencing 

This is where foot to core sequencing comes into our programming.

I refer the foot to core sequencing we use in the Barefoot Training Specialist® Certification as the critical step in locking in stability.

Why do we want to lock in our stability with foot to core sequencing?

Here are a couple powerful reasons:

1.  The foot is the only contact point between the body and the ground which means this complex structure is the neurological gateway between impact forces and stabilization.
2. Fascial sequencing exists via the Deep Front Line connecting the plantar foot with the deep hip and pelvic floor.   Studies have shown that by training the foot to core sequencing you can begin to establish feed forward, pre-activation sequences to enable faster foot to core stability
3. Thousands of small nerve proprioceptors on the bottom of the foot detect the vibrations of impact forces making the bare foot the gateway to understanding how hard we are striking the ground and how quickly our foot to core sequencing needs to occur

Training Foot to Core Sequencing

The simplest exercise to train foot to core sequencing is via an exercise called short foot.  For those who follow my work probably new I was going to say this!

A few tips with cueing and integrating short foot.

1.  Start with pelvic floor activation and identification if the client or patient is unfamiliar with how to engage these muscles.   Video on pelvic floor activation is HERE
2. Stand up and find short foot.  In those clients familiar with short foot immediately begin to cue that they start with the pelvic floor engagement then add in short foot The video on how to do short foot is HERE
3. Begin to coordinate the breathe with short foot / pelvic floor sequencing ensuring that the engagement happens on the exhalation.   I prefer the breathe to be relaxed and not forced exhalation but natural deep breathing that involves the entire thoracic cavity with lateral ribcage expansion.
4. Begin to integrate foot to core sequencing in single leg exercises such as those listed HERE

Want to learn more about the benefits of foot to core sequencing and the Barefoot Training Specialist Certification please visit http://www.ebfafitness.com

Finally – as always – stay barefoot strong!

Dr Emily