I reserve the right to every once in a while talk about something other than nutrition. Especially when it’s a concept I need some help on.
I’ll give you the background.
Two weeks ago I was at a DVD photo shoot with Craig Ballantyne and John Barban, running through a bunch of great body weight exercises with our athletes for an upcoming grrlathlete project.
About half way into the shoot Craig had the athletes do a bunch of “siff” squat and lunge variations. These are variations where you perform a normal squat or lunge, but you stay on the balls of your feet through out the exercise.
I didn’t think much of it until the other day when John and I were at a meeting with a good friend of ours who is a bio-mechanist. During our conversation, we started talking about running and jogging, and our bio-mechanist friend mentioned the incredible stress that is placed on your spine during a typical heel strike (think about how your heel hits the ground first when you are running – that’s a heel strike).
Then today, I was at my Krav Maga class, and I couldn’t help but notice that when you are sparring, and moving around, you are always on the balls of your feet!
So this all started me thinking, if almost all athletic activity involves us being on the balls of our feet, why do we train flat footed when we are working out?
Now, my main “thing” is nutrition – It’s what I know best. I love working out, and exercise science, but for questions like this I always go to the experts…
So hopefully I can get Craig, John and a couple of other people to chime in here and give us their thoughts…
BP
