Today’s episode features kinesiologist Zig Zeigler. Zig is an expert specializing in kinesiotherapy, sports performance, post rehab conditioning, and corrective exercise with over 27 years of experience. In his career, Zig has assisted many thousands of athletes, including some of the world’s best in professional sport.
Zig is currently the host of The RunRite Challenge on airing every Saturday morning 7:00 am- 8:00am MST on ESPN Radio-Denver. He also competed collegiately in Track and Field earning All American honors in the Long Lump, 400M Hurdles and 110M Hurdles. You can find his “non-orthotics” on barefootscienceusa.com and his personal website, fitnessfromthegroundup.com .
If you haven’t guessed it by listening to this podcast thus far the feet are absolutely critical in nearly every aspect of athletic performance.
When it comes to training the feet, Zig is one of the leading experts in the world, especially in connecting foot training to athletic performance. As is a trend on this show, I enjoy steering towards this topic since it is both critical to performance, and also not talked about nearly enough. Ever since I read an article Zig wrote on not squatting through the heels, I’ve had my own interest sparked on how the foot impacts our experience of resistance training and beyond.
Today’s episode draws strong links between the foot and biomechanics, and we also dig into Zig’s favorite strength and sensory modalities to restore foot function to its optimal state. This is an absolute must-listen for any coach, trainer and athlete, as there is so much that we just cannot make up for properly if our feet are not working correctly.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- What sparked Zig’s interest in the foot and related training concepts
- The most important processes in how the foot strikes and absorbs the ground
- What quantifies a good ground-strike in running
- Zig’s take on applied foot strength training for athletic performance
- Why just training barefoot isn’t enough to optimize your foot function and performance
- Coaching cues for the feet in sprinting that are well intentioned, but don’t really work
- Wbat good and bad proprioception training for the feet is and how to train it
Zig Ziegler Quotes
“The feet are the most neglected, yet truly the most important part of the body when it comes to our training programs, because without them we have to find ways to compensate and work around them”
“People are being told, “you need Orthotics, and you are going to need them for the rest of your life””
“Heel striking, excessive forefoot training, all of these issues, as you work your way up the chain, it leads to patellar tendonitis in the knee or jumpers knee, or runners knee, patella-femoral syndrome, hip pain discomfort, even IT band issues are related to weaknesses and dysfunction in the feet themselves”
“The first joint that should be absorbing, storing and releasing pressure back up the entire chain is the big toe on both feet.”
“The most important arch is the transverse arch… it is the arch that connects all the toes together. All of the muscles of the feet are triggered when that arch is activated”
“9.9 out of 10 individuals are not using their feet properly, their weight is back on their heels…. most people have a collapsed medial arch or tightness on top of their foot”
“One way to test whether or not your foot has strength is try to curl your toes while in plantar flexion (and see if it cramps or not)”
“What you do (with your feet) when you are standing still is what you are going to do when you start running”
“(In single leg stance) I look for the foot pronating and with that pronation is there any internal tibial rotation, which will give me a couple of indications is that there is some weakness on the medial side, all the way to the big toe, and all along the transverse arch, and there will be some resulting tightness on the lateral part of the ankle.”
“If you try to do a calf raise while you are balancing, you are going to fall to your weak spot…. If the heel goes to the inside, that’s a weak spot”
“I typically say, do towel (toe) curls in plantar flexion”
“What going into any degree of plantar flexion does is it reduces rotation between the ankle and the lower leg”
“Once you complete linear athletic movement, rotation has to occur”
“(Regarding toe pressure into the ground) the toes are long still, not curled under”
“We are taking a weak, dysfunctional foot and putting it in a high tech shoe and expecting the shoe to do all the work for us”
“If you are on an unstable surface, you take away the proprioception of the foot and you shift it up into the ankle or your lower leg”
“Get onto sand… or something with nubs or ridges like acupuncture or acupressure”
“The first thing we got to do when we are talking about dorsiflexion is make sure that it is true dorsiflexion and not dorsiflexion with tibial rotation”
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