354: Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti on Foot Training, Pressure, and Collision Management in Athletic Movement

Today’s podcast features Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti. Adarian is a former college track coach, a multi-national movement consultant and educator. Adarian has been a huge mentor to me when it comes to the integrated workings of the body in a variety of sport and movement skills and has had many appearances on this show. Jenn Pilotti is a movement coach, author and educator who has been studying the principles of movement for over 2 decades. Jenn’s movement disciplines include running, dance, soft acrobatics, and aerial arts. Jenn regularly lectures and teaches workshops for movement educators and curious movers. She co-authored "Let Me Introduce You”, along with Adarian Barr. Training the feet is a lot more than going barefoot a little more often. In sport movement, and locomotion, we have collisions of the feet into the ground that need to be managed skillfully. There is nuance to the “force production” into the ground. Great athletes can manage collisions extremely well, in regards to the specific sport skills they are being called on. They also have the tissue adaptation that matches the pressure they need to output within movement. In today’s podcast, Adarian and Jenn discuss their process when it comes to the operation of the feet in locomotion, and important distinctions that need to be made on account of points of pressure within the foot. They chat on the differences between sprinting on account of collision management, as well as vibration, talk about the balance of sensory work and outputs in movement, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, LILA Exogen, and the Elastic Essentials Level II Seminar, July 14-15 in Cincinnati, Ohio For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:38 – How Jenn and Adarian got connected and Jenn’s early learnings from Adarian 8:05 – How Adarian’s process on the foot impacted Jenn, and how she integrated it into her running 14:04 – Looking at learning from the “hard” and “soft” side of movement, and how sensing the body fits in 17:26 – The origins of where Adarian started with his sensory approach to movement 27:46 – Principles of inputs and outputs as they relate to athletic movement 34:25 – Usage of the lateral aspect of the arch of the foot 38:19 – Pressure management and barefoot sprinting on a track 43:19 – How athletes manage shorter or longer collisions in their sport movement 50:30 – How to explore pressure as it relates to movement 58:01 – How to optimize and integrate foot pressure in the gym Quotes from Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti “I focused on keeping the pinkie toe long, and reaching it a little away from the foot; and it created a very different impact away from the ground… and I had like a 3 mile chunk where my mile splits were within 8 seconds of each other; and I’m not working any harder” “A lot of people just do and they don’t sense, or they just sense and they don’t do… we need both” “The body awareness you gain from the softer side just makes doing so much better” “Whenever I was drinking out of a glass (instead of a plastic cup) my hand doesn’t get tired; that started taking me down this whole feeling, sensing, imagining road” “In early track, I didn’t feel it. I might jump well, but I didn’t know why I jumped well. When I left Colorado I was struggling, because I was only jumping 51 feet, I left Colorado I spent a year training myself.. the first track meet I went to, boom 53 feet. What happened? Now, I can feel this. “You want to feel the impact as you run, take time to feel the impact so you can learn what to do with it. If you never learn to feel it, how can you even think about doing something with it” “Understanding how pressure relates to input was a light bulb moment for me” “If you understand pressure and how to direct pressure into the foot that’s on the ground, everything changes” “The input is the output” “It’s not the force you have to deal with, it’s the pressure” “If you run flat footed, it’s the same amount of force, but the pressure is different now” “You feel you are faster, something significant has changed, and I understood that it was how I was pressurizing my system and it started with my foot” “In ice skating you have to create enough pressure to turn ice into water” “With sprinting, because it’s such a short amount of time in contact with the ground, you can have unwanted vibrations, that’s not a good thing if you are a distance runner” “The easy thing to do (to integrate pressure) is to train your feet on firm surfaces… in a gym setting it’s easy to use soft surfaces; something like an Airex pad is going to teach your foot to respond slowly” “Your (foot) will work harder on the clay brick than the cement brick” “It’s a fine line, how can I push to the edge of elasticity and not break? If you look at Rojas in triple jump, she goes to the edge but stays elastic, she doesn’t go to plastic” “If you are training barefoot, remember how the foot is moving and working, because when you put your shoes on, you want the same thing” Show Notes Barefoot Sprinter (Rotation) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqGeGlvLJQW/ Training With Bricks (Increase Pressure in Feet) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpu24E_gBvO/ About Adarian Barr Adarian Barr is a track coach and inventor based out of Yuba City, California. His collegiate track and field coaching stops have included UW-Superior, Indiana State, UNC Pembroke, Yuba City Community College. He has invented 9 devices from footwear to sleds to exercise devices. Adarian is a USATF Level II coach in the sprints, jumps, hurdles and relays. He has a master’s degree in Physical Education. Adarian’s unique coaching style gets results, and his work on speed and biomechanics is being adapted by some of the top coaches in the nation. About Jenn Pilotti Jenn Pilotti has been studying the principles of movement since 2002. She holds a B.S. in exercise physiology, an M.S. in Human Movement, and has studied a number of movement disciplines, including dance, soft acrobatics, and aerial arts. While in graduate school, she became fascinated by the lack of research on endurance running (one of her favorite past times), and it wasn't until she met Adarian in 2020 that she began to finally understand the components that allow a person to run fast in a way that is energy efficient. Jenn also lectures on topics such as mindfulness for the Navy Senior Leadership Seminar and regularly lectures and teaches workshops movement educators and curious movers. She co-authored "Let Me Introduce You” with Adarian Barr, and is a student of movement, teaching and people, viewing movement as a form of expression and a source of intrigue.