And we'll start at your connection to the ground where all force is absorbed from and pushed out from. The reason I can say that fascia is the way Nature intended us to move is because you can see in newborn babies that their feet display signs of what we'll call fascial tensioning.

Nature is very smart and designed our bodies to be able to mold and adapt to whatever your needs be. Just the way that your foot can soften and weaken from lack of use and modern shoes, it can grow and develop when you give it positive stimulus.

Now often I'm sure you hear of how stiff and tight most people are. Everyone says you need to stretch, get flexible, and do mobility drills.

What if I told you that really the answer was to increase tension? What if I said ankle stiffness, not mobility was the key for elite athleticism?

You see most people have very low fascial tension which means that muscles and joints have to come in and attempt to absorb the force that the fascial system is supposed to. The muscles react by stiffening up and joints get "wear and tear" where cartilage gets worn down over the years.

You can think of the fascial system like a rubber band. If it is too loose, it's useless. Throughout this process of building Peak Harmony, you will be raising the set point of your fascial tension. This means how much fascial tension you are capable of applying today will be far lower than what you'll be able to do in a few months time, with equal effort.

These means through intention and very specific exercises we can mold the feet and develop an elite level fascia ability like the Natural. The key is after tempering the feet, you develop a fascial connection from your feet, up your posterior chain, to the glutes, and eventually through the abs and the rest of the upper body.

This is what we would call becoming glute-dominant rather than a quad dominance which comes from a lack of a fascial connection and the muscles being forced to takeover and compensate. The muscles taking over is the route to joint pain and eventually surgery. When you have the unconscious connection from your feet to your glutes (which are 75% fascial inserts), all the pain and problems of common people go away.

Contact Point

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Now modern foot experts view the foot as a tripod with there being three points of contact. This is largely due to how modern shoes have morphed our feet, scrunching up the metatarsals and weakening the arch and toes. Dysfunction being normalized...

In reality, elite athletes have a central point of contact on the ball of the foot. This lines up with our understanding of physics in which greater force can be applied through a smaller surface area illustrated by the thumbtack below. It is the same reason why a sword is sharp...

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This singular point of contact allows the foot and ankle to operate as a stiff lever applying force on each step. It is pure efficiency that nature created. Over this process, depending on your current contact point, we will be morphing the feet so the contact point shifts to the middle of the BOF.

If you have calluses on the outsides of your big toe then it is likely your contact point needs some work. This involves getting the big toe joint up and allowing the metatarsals to spread out so the prominent area of the BOF shifts to the center. Toe spreaders can be useful for this and are best worn overnight.

In Level 2 of Peak Harmony training, you'll be building ankle stiffness which helps create this stiff level in the foot so that the heel is not weight-bearing at all or as much and is not the point of contact.

Toe Retraction

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Now sadly we also see many foot "experts" recommending the toes to splay or lengthen during movement. The curled toes of elite athletes says otherwise (plus all the calluses on tops of their toes). This indicates the toes are retracted and rubbing against the top of the shoe inside top athletes...

When you are running and playing football, the balls of your feet will form a landing pad at the central area of the BOF.

Your toes retracting help expand the surface area of your landing pad and provide a bit more tension for the feet to lock up. This is the reason why that joint exists.

Signs of Fascial Tensioning

Below we can see Messi, Neymar, and David Beckham

Inspect their feet closely.

1. First look at the 5 tendons going up their foot from their toes. they are extremely prominent. These are the extensor tendons.

2. Next look at the Anterior Tibialis Tendon popping out of Neymar's ankle.

3. Messi and Beckham's toes are extremely molded almost permanently retracted

All these signs are adaptations that nature designed to allow the foot to better operate based on what we humans needed (Running, jumping, etc). The foot acts as the external indicator of fascial ability because otherwise, the foot would never develop those features if there weren't fascial tension.

The foot molds in these ways to be able to spread the force up your body. A key component of this is what we'll call ankle stiffness. Without necessary ankle stiffness, the foot and ankle will be unable to hold enough fascial tension to engage the rest of the fascial chain up the body.

If you look at an average person's feet, it is unlikely you will see any of these signs. That is why we can say the elite athlete is literally built different. They have the fascial molding and connections while the average person does not. Of course, all of this is hidden under the skin and in the brain. The feet allow you a look inside.

How to Unlock Your Root

Please refer to the Intro to Peak Harmony Training for more detail.

First: Learn to Retract Your Toes

Retract the toes by the middle toe joint. Many of you might not have this function at first but it'll come.

You can use the below video to help you at first.

Second: Puff Out Your Chest

Here you want push out the central area of your ball of the foot so it is the central area of force distribution. You can think about the pulling back the 1st and 5th metatarsal heads.

Third: Hold Tension

Think about making your ankle stiff so no one could grab your foot and move it around. Similar to how you would make your hand firm and stiff in a karate chop technique.

All of that should make the Anterior Tibialis Tendon (ATT) prominent and the ankle become rigid and stiff. Below is ATT circled in red.

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Retract the toes, puff out the BOF, and hold tension. Eventually this will create connections all throughout the body like a giant spider web both able to absorb large amounts of force and cohesively operate as an integrated unit.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

- Bruce Lee

Going Slower to Move Forward

The only way to rewire the brain and body is to slow down so you can break up old neurological recruitment patterns and rewrite them. This is essentially one step back two steps forward. This is why I always harp on those trainers who just think "move fast, be fast". This works out for a elite Natural with no underlying problems, but anyone else needs to change their body from within to get change on the outside (function vs form).

This is why Tai Chi is comprised of such slow movements. It's not that they can't go fast. They're going slow on purpose to help target the smoothness of the fascia. Get better at moving slower to get better at activating fascia so that then you can build on the right foundations and get faster and stronger from there.

Further Learning

https://news.yale.edu/2020/02/26/overlooked-arch-foot-key-its-evolution-and-function

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