220: Kyle Dobbs on Redeeming Internal Rotation in the Gym for Elastic Athletic Performance | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s podcast features coach and consultant, Kyle Dobbs. Kyle is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting, and a personal trainer mentorship. Kyle has trained 15,000+ sessions and has experienced substantial success as a coach and educator. Kyle has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background which he integrates into his gym prescriptions to help athletes achieve their fullest movement, and transferable strength potential. He reaches thousands of coaches regularly through his Instagram account where he offers practical movement solutions in the gym to help people get stronger in context of how we are meant to move as humans. One of the topics that I am most passionate about in training is in regards to why in the world athletes can increase their strength outputs in the gym, but become slower and lose elasticity in things such as jumping in the process. I tend to see athletic outcomes of barbell strength tools as a sliding scale of increased performance due to increased power outputs and increased tissue strength, and then potentially decreased performance due to the body adapting to the needs of moving a heavy external object, and being coached to do so in a way that works against the gait cycle. This topic of the gait cycle and squatting/lifting is what this show is all about. In today’s episode, Kyle goes in-depth on all things squatting and the gait cycle, and offers real-world solutions to help athletes lift weights, as per the needs of one who needs to sprint, jump, cut and hit. Kyle also lays out helpful ideas on how to restore internal rotation abilities in those athletes in need of this vital element of movement. At the end of this show, you’ll know the crucial mechanical differences between back squatting and front squatting, powerlifting squats, and Olympic squats, that make a real difference on our biomechanics and transfer to athleticism. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:00 How doing manual labor and playing one’s sport through high school led Kyle to being more athletic than improving his squat and deadlift in college and becoming slower 7:00 How starting running again after spending years training primarily lifting and gym training has gone for Kyle, and what goes through Kyle’s mind in his run training 12:20 Thoracic dynamics, breathing and run performance concepts 24:15 Kyle’s evolution in the big axially loaded lifts, and their relationship to gait and reciprocal human movement 32:20 Internal and external femur rotation mechanics in squatting, and how hinging-squats have a negative effect on internal rotation capabilities for athletes 39:50 Distinguishing between “good” knees in, and “bad” knees in during a squat, based on adduction and internal rotation mechanics 46:30 Kyle’s taking on intentionally squeezing the glutes at the top of a squat 50:35 Reasons that you usually see Olympic lifters knees “clicking in” when coming up from the bottom of a squat, versus what you tend to see in a powerlifter 1:01:35 General principles in exercise selection and execution regarding squatting with athletes 1:04:50 Functional coaching points in unilateral training exercises 1:06:50 How to restore femoral internal rotation in athletes who are lacking it “I’m someone who for the last 5 or 6 years has done almost exclusively weight training, so getting back into unilateral reciprocal and trying to find femur IR, has been fun” “I think more about respiration (when running)” “As someone who has been doing a lot of bilateral, kind of more supinated based lifting, it is hard for me to get “inside edge” without consciously thinking about it” “What I get when I’m too (thoracically) extended, is I get a diaphragm that is more eccentrically oriented, and doesn’t really have as much of an ability to ascend and descend… I’m in more of this inhalation based pattern” “When you prioritize muscular integration, you are almost always going to sacrifice respiration mechanics” “Variability is not my friend (in the powerlifts)” “If I’ve got somebody who has good elasticity and good work capacity, but they have a strength deficit, that’s where I might need some bilateral lifting, just to give them a global stimulus, and give them more hypertrophy or more tissue development” “If I’ve got somebody who is extremely strong bilaterally, but they are short on coordination, work capacity and running well, then I need to get into more unilateral based work and need to get them balanced over one leg” “The actual rotational requirements of the femur and requirements of adduction change when you’ve got two points of contact on the ground rather than one” “When we run, we need forward translation of the knee. We need a knee that goes well over the toe, especially in late stance mechanics” “If I have someone with the hips back and chest up, old school squatting method, I’m not really teaching anything that is going to transfer over to gait from a coordinatin based pattern” “Me giving a powerlifter IR might give them too many degrees of freedom” “External and internal rotation aren’t a destination within athletic movements, they are a means to get to a certain point” “When we look at that hingy squat, that’s someone who is not able to access internal rotation very well” “If someone goes back, instead of down in a squat, they are basically just circumventing the need to internally rotate by repositioning their pelvis” “Power and max-load isn’t always the same thing” “The biggest thing that I see with the knees going in on a squat, and when it is good, and when it is bad has more to do with your ability to rotate” “If you are adducting a femur, but not internally rotating it, and not pronating at the foot, and you are just collapsing your arch, that’s a different story and that might be putting more stress on the knee” “When you are front loaded in a squat or clean-catch, that allows for a full squat and vertical translation of the actual pelvis, because that load if shifting your rib cage back over your heels, instead of forward over your feet. The load becomes your new center of mass and your rib-cage wraps around that” “Your ribcage is either falling forward or falling backwards when you are moving, it’s never truly stacked when you are moving” “I want a more vertical torso angle (in squatting) so I can get more vertical translation of the knees and an angled shin… that is going to be closer to what running looks like (and I am not going to replicate running in a squat)” “If I train a dynamic athlete, I am typically not going to back-load them unless their goal is to get as strong as possible” “(On lunges or unilateral lifts) if I can get the sacrum lined up with the instep, that is going to allow the femur to internally rotate during flexion” “Isometric split squats is how I line people up (in a straight line lunge for the purpose of restoring internal rotation)” Show Notes https://www.instagram.com/p/B9O8ESCgt7C/ Inline split squat for internal rotation restoration About Kyle Dobbs Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. Kyle has trained 15,000+ sessions, been a legitimate six-figure earner as a trainer, managed and developed multiple six-figure earners, and has experienced substantial success as a coach and educator. Kyle has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background which he integrates into his gym prescriptions to help athletes achieve their fullest movement, and transferable strength potential. Transcripts: Joel Smith: Kyle you were mentioning before a little bit that, and I think we can both resonate with this is that we entered or what did you say? We left college as worse athletes than we entered. And I would say for me that was more probably in my later twenties when I started doing all the, the lifts as per technical specks, and squatting knees out and through the heels and stuff. But I resonate with that, man. So tell me a little bit more about that idea of you leaving college as a worse athlete, than you entered coming out of high school. Kyle Dobbs: Yeah, I think a few different things happened. I was a young athlete who just played sports all day. I grew up in the Midwest and did a lot of manual labor and kind of got strong swinging axes and pickaxes and shoveling and doing hauling hay and doing things like that. And then just playing my sport and being probably more of a lighter weight elastic based athlete. Like I went into college as a like 6'4" 185 pound runner slash basketball player and graduated at 220 pounds with a much better squat and deadlift, but a lower vertical and as a slower athlete from the, from that standpoint and, and with a lot more just wear and tear on my body. I had some injuries throughout that process too, and spent more time in a training room than I ever really did on a court or a track, which is unfortunate. But I think that's the story of a lot of strength coaches. And a lot of people that get into this industry is they kind of fall in love through the rehab and strength training process. And coming back from that end as their athletic dreams, kind of dissipate a little bit through that process, they kind of go into more of the strength and conditioning side or rehab side. Joel Smith: Did you go into college thinking you wanted to get into exercise and sport and all that, or was it, it was the injuries that got you there? Kyle Dobbs: I was actually a premed major.