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Get Your Movement Nutrition in with Banana Pancakes

Writer's picture: Dave HedgesDave Hedges

Yeah sorry, this isn’t a recipe post…. The lead image will make sense as you read on.

Possibly…..

But lets begin.

Last Friday’s pot on Pronation got a lot of people talking, which is great

My fellow Anatomy in Motion practitioners all loved the post, of course.

But those who haven’ been down the rabbit hole of human movement exploration that is Gary Ward’s  Anatomy in Motion Flow Motion Model, lets clear up a few things.

When you get diagnosed” as an “over pronator” It doesn’t mean much as they’re most likely not looking at the whole picture.

So today I’m going to (hopefully) introduce you to the full movement potential of your foot and ankle complex.

Lets start with the animation I shared on Friday again showing how the bones move in the foot as it goes from pronation (pancake) to Supination (banana)


Now, I invite you to slip off your shoes and socks, stand up and place your bare foot flat on the floor. If you shift all your weight onto that foot, does it pancake out? Do the arches flatten making the foot get wider, longer and closer to the floor?

As you unweight it, does it spring back?

Or how about this, stand with all you weight on that bare foot. Lets say for example it’s your right foot. Now keep that right foot weighted, and the leg straight, turn towards your right. Look around, how far round can you look keeping the foot in contact with the floor and the knee straight?

Look at your foot, has it been pulled up into an arch? Is it now banana shaped?

Now, move between the two extremes.

If we’re on our right foot, then you’ve just turned clockwise to look around. Now go anti clockwise, bend the knee and sink into the foot, imagine screwing down into the ground.

Go back and forth between the two opposites, going from banana to pancake and back again. Rotating clockwise and anti clockwise, rising tall as you turn clockwise into the banana, sinking as you screw down from into the pancake. It looks like this:


If you struggle with any part of this, and it’s very likely you will, don’t panic. Just play. And feel free to hold onto a wall or something for balance.

You may, and I mean MAY, feel odd stretches, interesting muscle twitches, and a warming up of the whole leg, possibly the whole body.

Or you may feel nothing.

As your foot moves from banana (sup) to pancake (pro) you are massaging all the muscles in the foot, ankle, lower leg and upwards.

An interesting experiment for you to try is to perform a few reps of your chosen exercise, a squat, a deadlift, a kettlebell swing or a few meters of running. Then do the Banana-Pancake drill for half a dozen reps, then repeat the exercise. Was there a difference? If so, was the difference good, bad or indifferent?

Let me know in the comments

Looking forwards to hearing from you

Dave Hedges www.Wg-Fit.com

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