When people experience pain in the lower halves of their bodies, it is typically due to low performance, poor mobility, and injuries because their feet constantly collapse. Coming from a guy who rolled his ankles every three months, I learned the hard way—having collapsed feet in an extremely rotational and explosive sport, baseball, doesn’t end well. Each step was a ticking time bomb, potentially rolling my ankle and setting me back another month. For football players with collapsed feet, contact and even non-contact injuries occur more frequently. Very rarely can you watch a football game without seeing an injury. A lifetime of consistent collapse between the feet sets the rest of your body at tremendous risk. For example: your problem with your right shoulder could be directly related to your right foot. And so, at G8way Max, we start with the feet.
Coach Jacob here and a cool fact about me is that I am a triplet. I have two brothers, and because all three of us are the same age, our athleticism, stature, and mentality are easily comparable. From birth, my brothers and I were always together, forced to wear the same clothes and do the same activities and performance training. Because we lived life together, shared similar interests, and did similar activities, it was easy to monitor our daily habits; more specifically, our bad habits that we were forming. Unfortunately, through assessing old family pictures, I lost my natural/innate movement several years before my brothers. My feet started pointing out, and the inner edge of my foot would collapse lower and lower to the ground while my brothers kept straight feet. And when I was sixteen, I sought some of the best medical experts in the country to help improve my physical performance in sports, athleticism, and mobility. They told me that I was lodged at the bottom of the womb before birth, supporting my triplet brothers above me. This was true. They said to me that no matter how hard I worked on hip mobility, I would possibly never get to the elite hip mobility or flexibility you would find in gymnasts. They said this was because I was born on the bottom, forcing my hips to be stuck externally. Once again, they were right. I never gained elite hip mobility and my hip internal rotation stayed the same, even when I worked only on internal rotation stretches. I would commit to an hour and a half of daily stretching with no off days for years. I’ve tried numerous fitness methods, stretches, exercises, performance training techniques, medical techniques, and all kinds of massage therapies and recoveries. Nothing worked for me permanently. That was my reality, until I found the movement system, or what is better known as: authentic natural movement.
About five years ago, I fortunately stumbled across a few truth-seekers who helped guide my initial direction in the “movement world.” They sparked my passion for healing others through movement because they first healed me. I learned that my efforts to improve my hip mobility and athleticism, while decreasing my injury setbacks were never enough. This is because I had collapsed feet and didn’t release energy correctly from leg to leg. It was interesting to say the least. I had been searching for all these years, and no one I had come across coached about energy transfer or dissecting the body’s specific anatomical shapes. They told me that with every step I took, I was stressing my connective tissue since my hips didn’t release energy the right way with the proper shape. They also explained to me stretching is temporary and has limits, but correcting my dysfunctional movement back to a natural and innate tendency would make my hip tightness disappear permanently. I was encouraged that the first solution to fix my restricted and painful hips was to correct my feet. It was crazy because I had never heard anyone talk this way before!
I started doing “rockers” and exercises sitting on the ground in the seiza position, or kneeling position. Very slowly and gradually I noticed my hip mobility improving. I had no mobility in this position, which for people who have poor ankle and hip access, the rocker position is always uncomfortable and challenging at first. After more time in the seiza position with the exercises given to me, I began to unlock more access in my hips and ankles. I improved my walking patterns to release energy efficiently, taking the stress away from my hip flexors. I used slant boards routinely to fix my collapsed feet. The slant boards quickly changed my feet back to a natural structure with high arches. After five months of training and even without completely correcting my body to its natural movement pattern, I returned to the medical professionals that diagnosed me when I was sixteen. I then took their analytical assessment of mobility access, strength, and kinetic dysfunctions and marked a perfect score. It was the same test I had taken before when I was sixteen. And to my astonishment, one of the medical professionals said, “we have never had anyone score a perfect score.” That’s just a glimpse into my journey to healing my body and now at G8way Max, I can return the favor. You don’t have to spend tons of money on medical professionals. Instead, talk to a G8way Max Coach and learn how to maximize your movement potential today.