357: Angus Bradley on “Knees Behind Toes” Training and the Gait Cycle in Physical Preparation

Today’s podcast features podcaster, and educator, and physical preparation coach, Angus Bradley. He coaches out of Sydney CBD, and co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar. Angus has a wide-spanning knowledge base from both in and outside of the strength and conditioning field, with a focus on inter-disciplinary over-arching principles. He works with a diverse crowd from strongman to surfing and everything in between, has been a 2x previous guest on this podcast, and runs regular mentorships for strength coaches and personal trainers. Part of the fun of running a podcast, and seeking education from a wide variety of coaches is the ability to create links and connections between different fields of thought. When we can observe multiple training camps saying similar things about the gait cycle, squatting, or breathing, we can level up our total coaching and training perspective. On today’s podcast, Angus talks about learning from fields outside of fitness, to become a better coach and overall student of life. He also talks about links within the field of fitness, such as the positional and rhythmic relationships between Olympic lifting and sprinting. A main talking point on today’s episode is Angus’s approach to training “early stance” in a physical development world where so much is devoted to training that ends up focusing more on “late stance” in the gym. Angus shares his thoughts on how he approaches late stance type training, how he uses more “mid-stance” to train the knee, and also gives his thoughts on how good Crossfit boxes get a lot of trainees stronger than many strength coaches would often like to believe. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs and the Elastic Essentials Online Course. 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. Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 3:20 – The importance of having hobbies outside of training, fitness and S&C 18:53 – The use of creativity and intuition in training vs. pre-planned, systemic stimuli 27:50 – Thoughts on “knees behind toes” type exercises, and their benefit in physical preparation 41:52 – The links between rhythm in weightlifting, and rhythm in sprint acceleration 51:31 – Thoughts on more dynamic versions of training early stance and associated negative shin angles 1:01:59 – Angus thoughts’ on pushing knees forwards into positive angles during training 1:11:33 – Angus’s take on some of the mechanisms by which good Crossfit boxes can elicit such substantial strength gains in their population, as well as the importance of doing larger overall GPP workloads Angus Bradley Quotes “If it’s a true principle, it’s something that applies to things outside of the fitness industry” “A lot of systems sort of have this transition from a scientific underpinning, and once we have useful heuristics, it turns into more of an art form” “That stereotypical prescription of 3x10, 4x8, I’ve been pulling back on, not going full Yessis 1x20, but doing things like 2x8, 2x12, 2x6, just two hard work sets. One thing we take for granted is just attention span” “Pretty much every sport at some point, you are going to have a big powerful negative shin angle” “Exposing both of those contexts (knees over and behind) toes in a loaded sense (is important)” “Yes, working negative and positive shin angles, I’ve created the perfect system” “It’s a relative negative shin angle, when people can plantarflex themselves into a squatty squat… otherwise it’s just a knee bend (if you dorsiflex yourself into the squat), that’s one of my take-aways from a gait-based approach to squatting” “Both of these systems that have essentially no relation to each other; this is what I like, getting around at all these fitness systems, and seeing what are the common threads here; there are a lot systems sort of preaching things that line up with triple extension, it’s not quite that, it’s proximal to distal extension, it’s delaying knee extension, or using the body as a whip” “That’s the missing link: timing and rhythm” “Weightlifters at the start of the second pull, look exactly like sprinters in mid-stance” “Reverse lunges, you can get great negative shin angles there” “Whenever I’m trying to play with the gait concept in an intricate sort of way, I’m typically doing stationary, especially if they can’t wrap their head around it” “(In RDL’s) it’s hard to get a true early stance, you will pronate; because you are pushing your thorax into the ground” “The way a lot of people train is chest up, shoulders back, everything is being driven forward… it’s not a bad thing a lot of athletic stuff happens on the toes, we’re just missing this entire other section (negative shin angles) here” “Adding in RDL’s as a secondary deadlift is a lot of fatigue you are generating in the program; I will never have RDL’s, Olympic lifts, and deadlifts in my program at the same time, it’s just too much” “I think the value in shoving your knees over your toes is in the mobility aspect” “If you have a look at any of those people in those really knee bendy, knees over toes moments, as soon as they apply force, their shin angle just flies back; and there is something to be said about extending that hip over a positive shin angle” “In my system, what knees over toes training is is midstance, trying to apply force, but maintain a positive shin angle” “I’m always looking for heaps of mid-stance in the weight-room, a bit of early stance” “Most of my late stance work is ballistic, or plyometric… I like my toe off to be fast, no matter how hard you want to extend, crack the whip fast” “People haven’t been encouraged like that (in a crossfit box)… you can go to your first cross-fit class, and people will be cheering for you… they get into it so much” “I think you can do more net training if you train more generally” Show Notes Marco P. White makes chicken broth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNzjQ1nuCAQ Split Squatting with Early, Mid and Late Stance Biases https://www.instagram.com/p/ClzYzRghNk7/ Tom Haviland https://www.instagram.com/tom_haviland/ About Angus Bradley Angus Bradley is a strength coach and podcast host from Sydney, Australia. He coaches out of Sydney CBD, and co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar. After focusing primarily on weightlifting for the first half of his career Angus finds himself spending as much time ‘outside of his lane’ as possible trying to identify the principles that transcend all human movement. He works with a diverse crowd from strongman to surfing and everything in between. Angus has been mentored by Jamie Smith from Melbourne Strength Culture, and formerly dropped out of his major in journalism to tour Australia with his band.