Daily Maestroism

DM #60

Friday, July 22nd, 2016

DM #60: I realize not everyone who follows me wears lifters or even knows what they are. BUT, if you’re a practitioner, there’s a good chance that your patients do, so keep reading. As for the rest of you, knowledge is power, so you keep reading too ?

Olympic lifting shoes have a heel (generally around 3/4 of an inch) to allow us more ‘relative’ dorsiflexion. In order to squat properly and maintain an upright torso, we must have sufficient ankle dorsiflexion (the ability to close down the angle between our shin and the top of our foot). When we lack this ankle mobility, as we try to squat, we can’t lean our tibia forward over our foot, which means we can’t shift our weight forward. If the butt (and weight) stay backwards, we are forced to counterbalance by leaning our trunk forward, or else we will fall backwards.

Elevating the heels enables us to more easily shift our weight forward and maintain an upright torso. The upright torso allows the barbell to remain in the most centered and balanced position over the foot/base of support, which is imperative for a successful lift.

Given this, it’s tempting for athletes with crappy ankle mobility (aka most people) to throw on lifters for every single movement to compensate for their dysfunction. This is a huge mistake. In doing so they’re once again stacking performance on disfunction. Wearing lifters in this fashion is simply a bandaid fix that will come back to bite you in the ? once you try to perform functional squatting tasks without them on. Yes, you might be able to lift more weight, but you’re loading a system that isn’t moving properly. Cue injury.

Long story short, earn the right to wear lifters. Go work on your mobility.
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