One Paleo Toe in the Canadian Olympic Lifting Grave by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

Wow, what an interesting week for me at Gloves Boxing Club, and it all started with Batman!

After sitting through 2hrs 40mins of special affects and my senses becoming over stimulated beyond belief, who should be waiting to greet me at the office? Nope not the Joker, but it may as well have been...It was the female Canadian Olympic lifting coach.

I had been looking forward to this moment for quite some time, thinking that I might be inspired and have the chance to trade some knowledge with an actual Olympic coach. To make me even more excited, there had also been some talk of a possible foot in the door with NIKE!

The meeting didn’t take long...and by not long, I mean the time it took for me to agree for the coach to look at my Olympic lift and for me to repay her with the kind offer of a barefoot session. As soon as I mentioned “barefoot” the room went dead and the only lifting I got to see was from her Canadian brow! Had I known this was going to be smugly shrugged off with “I don’t think so” I would have spent more time digesting the Dark Knight Rises.

Arguments in bare feet

The most amazing thing about the coach's visit was the unwillingness to accept anything beyond her own knowledge/experiences. We basically got to a point in a discussion where the temperature rose uncomfortably and unfortunately, acceptance did not rise with the challenge. Instead a huge wall built, one that seemed too high to hurdle.

The zoo foot: image of a "shod"
foot from a 1905 study

To start with the mention of barefoot provoked a bizarre reaction that it was only about feet and how if you have a misshapen zoo foot with a short Achilles heel then you can’t barefoot run. Not a mention of why the Achilles might be short or how it became misshapen. Yes - one could say because of the title Barefoot running, an uneducated coach might be forgiven for making that statement. But for someone that had been apparently working with the guys at Nike on the Nike free shoe, it's inexcusable to have no understanding that the shape of the foot and the load of the foot are bi-products of a compromised organism.

When I first mention that posture is at the top of the hierarchy in movement and say "surely you must understand that from an Olympic lifting perspective", I get hit with a big fat "No it's all about your feet."

To which I reply, "Your base of support is important, but if all your segments are out then this is going to alter the areas of your feet you choose to load thus affecting the resulting technique."

This gets rubbished by another "Nope it's all to do with the feet," and "We are never going to agree on this."

Morton's Toe

I begin to explain that feet - of course - play a role in this, in that it is a relationship between posture and the foot. Seated posture affects our upright posture and our natural bipedal state. Dudley Morton in 1936 introduced us to Morton's toe: a great discovery that essentially helps us understand that the human foot has a loading element and a balance element. The big toe and ball of foot are there to deal with the load whilst the lateral part of the foot is there to take care of balance. 

Image of habitually bare feet taken
from a study performed almost 100years ago,
published 1905 in the American Journal of Orthopedic Surgery

It is important as a skilled biped to not mix the two - unskilled bipeds are primates, they are quadrupeds and gain support from the outside  of their feet. They don't recognise their big toe as we recognise ours. The big toe of the primate is medial (towards the midline of the body). As an unskilled biped we too will spend time supporting from the outside of our feet. This is called supra-nation: when in locomotion, this creates supranation then pronation. The more this occurs the less support I can find from my big toe and over time my foot mechanics will change. Combine this with modern zoo footwear and hey presto - the zoo foot!

Most clients I see have the first signs of bunion growth, but why?

The bunion is essentially the unskilled biped looking for the gorilla toe and the role of devolution having its way.

If I lock my foot in a shoe, that shoe will mould my foot. It will change the shape of my foot, until it no longer looks or operates in a way a natural foot should. If I then sit down all day and get locked in the hip or the thoracic spine, my segments will no longer be aligned. The more my head drops forward of my hip, the more my foot will land ahead of me, changing my loading time. This will result in my base of support changing to one that would better suit the quadrupedal posture of a primate.

This is why footwear is not the answer, it is simply a piece of the puzzle. This is also why I founded PilatesRunning, because we can coach in movements that return you back to being and operating as nature intended - an upright biped.

Despite what the conventional model tells us, foot mechanics and posture can be corrected

We can change and with that change we can Barefoot walk, Barefoot run, Barefoot lift, Barefoot swim, Barefoot carry, Barefoot throw, Barefoot jump, Barefoot climb, Barefoot defend and Barefoot quarapedal move to our heart's content. All of the above are skills, but skills that have to be coached.

So to all those budding new Olympians and for the Canadian Olympic lifting team: with the correct posture and the realignment of the all important Paleo Toe, you too can be a barefoot athlete!

Zoe Smith and female Olympic lifting by Tony Riddle A.K.A @theprepdoctor

Abbye Stockton (1917-2006),
professional strongwoman
who trained Marilyn Monroe.
Could lift more weight than most men.

 by Tony Riddle, Gloves Club founder

To those not in the know, Olympic lifting requires a huge amount of skill - skill that is often overlooked as “just lifting a weight above your head”.

The power needed in the two main lifts – the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk – require explosive action in the legs, bum and arms from a deep squat position. This is no sport for posers, nor does it require the focus on crazy reps and little technique like a Cross Fit round. It demands flexibility, technique, coordination, strength and fluidity - a great all round athletic discipline, one that is not to be confused with bodybuilding. In my opinion body building creates false tempos, faulty movement patterns and excessive levers to develop inefficient and injury prone athletes.

Zoe Smith, recently selected to represent Great Britain in Olympic lifting, has certainly put the hours in and has already been involved in many a photo shoot for sponsors. She's also been subjected to a barrage of abuse from cyber bullies, calling her a "butch dyke" that looks like man, and that she'll never get a boyfriend. Nothing could be further from the truth, and she’s trying to raise the profile of the sport by changing the perception of the sport that it is something only men should be doing, or that women who do it are somehow not feminine. She added: "We're getting weightlifting out there and drawing attention to the fact that we're not all actually big. We're making it a normal sport rather the manly thing as people often perceive it.”

Chemical cost = metabolic cost = burn fat, burn and hey presto, strong is the new skinny!

It didn't exactly do
Marilyn Monroe any harm!

For those that have any misconceptions, Olympic lifting is a great athletic conditioning sport; it's great for the all important athletic figure, hitting all the areas that women spend hours trying to tone in the latest glorified Bums and Tums class, or on the latest fad diet. It won’t “bulk” you up, or make you look like a man.

As there is a huge chemical cost in lifting that weight at such great speed and accuracy, it’s the best way to target your legs and bum in a way an aerobics class could only ever dream to do!

So come on ladies. Support Zoe Smith and all the other women getting into lifting, and while you’re at it, why not give it a try yourselves. If it’s good enough for Marilyn Monroe, it's good enough for you….