Today’s show is with coach and inventor Adarian Barr. Adarian has spent decades coaching in the college and private sector, and currently consults with a variety of coaches in multiple sports. Adarian has been a guest on this podcast many times, and has a unique, connected, and incredibly detailed perspective on the drivers of human movement.
One piece of movement that we haven’t made a theme for this show yet is getting into rotational, “tumbling” actions of joints. When we think of “rotational force” in movement, we often just think of “twisting in the weight room”, or training “transverse plane”. When it comes to “front to back” movements, it is common to simply think in terms of perpendicular forces in terms of movement. With perpendicular actions, think of a coach telling an athlete to stab or drive their shin straight down to the ground in acceleration, for example, or any coaching cue that has to do with “pushing the ground away”.
In any sport movement, however, the tumbling, or “pitching” motion of body segments (such as the shins) are going to be massively important when it comes to speed. It’s easy to load hundreds of pounds on a calf raise (a perpendicular force) but to be fast, think sprinting and throwing, rotation is inevitable, so it pays to be familiar with it to make better sense of movement coaching, and building better drills and constraints for athletes.
On today’s episode, Adarian will speak on perpendicular versus rotational aspects of movement, and what it means for exercises, especially common sprint drills. He’ll talk about the actions of the various lever systems in the body, and how to optimize the way we load these levers for a variety of movements (with sprinting as the primary example) as we use rotation to move with speed. Adarian will talk about the ideas of “big and small wheels” as well as how not to make the wheel action of limbs a square one, as well as other interesting universal movement concepts.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:20 – Looking at a “lever based approach” as opposed to a “force based” approach to biomechanics and movement 12:55 – The scope of true “perpendicular” movements in training, such as in-place pogo hops, in light of athletic movement that is rotational in nature 16:56 – A discussion on the hamstrings, and their role in rotational torque 22:01 – How to treat “perpendicular” oriented movements in regards to their transient, isometric nature 28:59 – The nature of the glutes and their rotational properties 30:55 – How to maximize “class 3” lever actions in the body as speed multipliers 33:30 – Squatty running and single leg bounding as rotational assessments and training paradigms 36:44 – Adarian’s take on upper body equivalents to folded running 46:13 – The principle of “big and small wheels” in movement, as well as why a circular wheel is superior to a square wheel 50:37 – How athletes will shift their “wheel size” when it comes to different athletic outcomes 55:44 – What is a “good” big wheel, and what things happening make a wheel “poor”, as well as how many sprint drills don’t actually train rotation 1:03.42 – A recap on the types of levers present in movement 1:05:20 – Looking at rotation and class 3 opportunities in the weight room 1:10:40 – What roller skating can teach us about levers and human movement“There is no way to move without a rotational component being added in there”
“Everything we do is rotational, but the math is hard”
“When we talk about sagittal, frontal and transverse plane, that is a location… a better term is pitch, yaw and roll”
“If you move in a strictly linear fashion, you had better be strong as @#$^”
“Levers don’t work well with just perpendicular input”
“I do need perpendicular, because if you put a wrench on the bolt, the perpendicular secures the wrench on the bolt… if I do perpendicular, that is a good setup to use the parallel”
“The closer you get to the fulcrum, the less effective the lever is”
“Class 3 levers work best as their shortest”
“Think about Nordic hamstrings… you are trying to strengthen something that is designed to multiply speed”
“Gravity helps you to create the perpendicular”
“You see this a lot of the time… people get to the toes, and they go up (using a class 1 lever poorly)”
“Gravity creates perpendicular, but the upper body can add on to that perpendicular”
“The scapulas can help you load the legs, which gives you a better rotationa component and can increase the output”
“At the point where the arm is the longest, the scapula is in a power component”
“If I’m going to start, I want a small wheel, I don’t want a big wheel, I want to spin the small wheel. But once I get going, I need a bigger wheel”
“That’s the big thing to look for is, am I bringing in a level I do not want at this point in time?”
“Dribbling doesn’t have a tumbling action, or a pitch action, or a shin angle change”
“Levers make assessments so easy; (in a straight leg bound) you got a leg swinging, no big deal until the leg hits the ground, but then you hit the ground and do a toe-raise up out of there”
“Class 1 levers (like a see-saw, or standing calf raise) are good at lifting you, but not good at moving you”
“Joints provide an end range for the rotation to stop”
“If I increase my end-range of the class 1, it is going to delay me to class 2, it is going to make me work harder because I messed up my natural end-range”
“Ankle pronation saves the body, because, as I’m coming down, if I didn’t have ankle pronation, the knee would take that”
“All they say is arms is counter-rotation, I need something to load these levers to keep me rotating… people just want to get the legs stronger and push harder, but the reason you are pushing harder is that there was no (input) from the arms in the first place”
Show Notes
Stilts Race (Notice the squatted nature of the athlete to optimize rotation)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYKLuIZMY4d/
About Adarian Barr
Adarian Barr is a track coach and inventor based out of Yuba City, California. His collegiate track and field coaching stops have included UW-Superior, Indiana State, UNC Pembroke, Yuba City Community College.
He has invented 9 devices from footwear to sleds to exercise devices. Adarian is a USATF Level II coach in the sprints, jumps, hurdles and relays. He has a master’s degree in Physical Education.
Adarian’s unique coaching style gets results, and his work on speed and biomechanics is being adapted by some of the top coaches in the nation.
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