There are many different versions of the “squat” that take demand certain mechanics or take advantage of specific foot positions.
Below is a brainstorm of some things I can think of in terms of why certain positions are used, desired, or should be avoided.

Toes Straight
1.  FMS Deep Squat
–This is movement-evaluative squat, not necessarily one that would be be regularly exercised.  If you are actually correcting the squat in the rare occasions of 13 with a 1 on the squat or 19 or 20 with a 1 or 2 on the squat, then again the toes would be straight.  The big piece here in terms of keeping toes straight is to appraise relative hip internal rotation.  It is not a measure of internal rotation per se, but if you can keep your toes straight, the tone of hip flexors and/or stiffness in the posterior capsule is graded by the foot position that would challenge those limitations.  If you can keep toes straight, the Screen suggests that internal rotation is adequate.  However, if toes can stay straight in the 2 position, it does not necessarily mean the issue lies in the hip.  It can still be anything or anywhere.

Toes straight means Toes straight.

2.  Competition Squat
–Louie has talked about this, but I have never actually seen someone employ a powerlifting competition squat with toes straight.  If you can make depth and tension out against a straight foot, in theory, the passive tension of the capsule might give you some “free” stiffness in and out of the hole.  I can never feel it, and inherently, the knees collapse.  It makes sense in terms of the hip stiffness, but I don’t think it’s a viable option especially if you are wider than shoulders, not to mention clipping into FAI in the hole as well.

Toes Out
1.  Slacks hip flexors allowing for more relative stability of the pelvis.  As the Rectus Femoris (AIIS) and TFL and Sartorius (ASIS) become toned or even just in their quality resting tension with toes straight, their vector(s) to the fixed point of the lateral calcaneus is to pull the pelvis into an anterior tilt.  This approximation posteriorly, which feels like a hard arch, can likely cut a squat early from negative proprioception in the spine and/or unable to stay big against the anterior weight.  Letting the toes go out, anywhere from 20 degrees to 90 degrees, changes the line of pull of these muscles out of the sagittal plane, thus making the spine easier to centrate in a squatting pattern.

Getting these guys out of the way can make life a lot easier at the moment.

2.  The toes out position puts the ADDuctors on a line of pull that allows them act as sagittal plane hip extenders.  It’s fairly simple biomechanics.  Better line of pull = more force into returning out of the hip hinge.

Kinesiology says I'm a hip ADDuctor. Real life says I'm a hip extender. Winner: Toes Out.

3.  Partially for the spinal and hip implications of 1. and 2., slight toes out is not coincidentally the centrated position of the hip joint.  Centration is the position of the joint where there is maximal bony congruency around the joint as well as equal co-contraction of agonists and antagonists.  This anatomical visual is the basis of stereotypical postures in developmental kinesiology and is believed to yield full-body neurological strength and stability.  When 1 joint is “in place,” the rest of the body will ultimately follow.

4.  Please keep in mind that while there are advantages to handling load with toes out, it must be an option to be out there.  A loss of hip internal rotation may allow for force the toes to go out, but if there is a hallowing of the lateral glutes, this is the loss of centration in the hip joint that will also be forced.  The hallowing will be an indication that the deep stabilizers of the hips are not functioning as stabilizers.  This is an example of a high threshold strategy where the global muscles are contracting before the local muscles in the default pattern.  Toes out are okay, but it must be an option and still have the proper postural stereotype.

5.  Retroverted hips make it okay.  This bony structural change is typically a result of position during fetal development or an imbalance during early stages of development.  Retroversion creates a normal centration of the femoral head in the acetabulum, however, it is connected via a femoral neck that leads to a femur that is rotated externally.  Depending on the degree of retroversion, toes straight will be closer to slight toes out for some people.  Others will get to centration with excessive toes out.  The Craig’s Test is one fair measure of retroversion or anteversion.  It is also worth noting that some resources describe ante- and retroversion as the opposite of each other.  These are benign conditions overall, but they do lead us to stop looking to increase hip rotation when it’s a bony reason that’s preventing it.

Flat Foot
1.  No arch = less power.  I know a lot of people think they have flat feet, but this can be trained in a number of different ways both through training and manual therapy.  Many years ago, I was chatting with a podiatrist who became increasingly annoying, and I got out of the conversation telling him not to send me anybody with flat feet because after I’m done with them, they won’t need your little orthotics anymore.
The foot should have a tripod base of support via the sesamoid of the big toe, the MT head of the 5th toe, and the lateral heal.  The heel is the rear wheel drive, as Pavel would describe, and the front portion is the front wheel drive.  All wheels interacting with the ground = more more.  If the body of the vehicle is bottomed out on the ground, aka a fallen arch, there is minimized drive.
The arch is obligatory.  There are some people that are structurally flat, but this is terribly rare.  It’s also terrible for your squat or closed chain force production, but you did it to yourself during development.

Patrick Ward showing an example of taking advantage of and driving the short foot.

2.  Orthotics giving you a stiff post as an arch may work, or it may not work.  If you have an arch in the open-chain, or it can be achieved with passive overpressure mean there is an arch available in that foot.  Training it reflexively with tension and reaction with the floor will bring out that arch and a whole gang of tension and strength into the lift.  If you need orthotics to stay out of pain, that’s a different story, but can they be regressed in their stiffness or maybe use something like Barefoot Science that has a built in regression and forcing the arch via a reaction, not just giving you one like in most orthotics.

3.  The short foot is the ideal centrated posture of the midfoot along with close to zero degrees of dorsiflexion.  However, like other stability positions like packing the neck, bracing the abdominals, or squeezing the glutes, the desired position can be achieved through feed-forward mechanisms or just along the chain of a feed-back mechanism.  It is useful to force the short foot as if holding a melon under your foot, but it is only to gain a “feel” for the position and the tripod.  Ideally the short foot with the arch should be gained naturally without demanding it.  It will actually feel quite different.

On the list of all-time fraudulent exercises like push-up plus and ball squats.

Toes Curled
1.  Make no mistake about it.  In a static position, closed loop environment, curling the toes into gripping the floor will increase tension as we have learned from Pavel and Stuart McGill’s Superstiffness principles.
Toes curled is also a sympathetic reaction to threat.  Toes curled inhibits the ideal tripod as well, and while there is stiffness and tension with toes curled, it is at the expense of multiple mid-foot muscles being inhibited.
My thought is that the toes curled is an e-brake on the system, and while static tension is measured, I think posterior chain is inhibited without the toe pads gaining proprioception and a signal that the body is ready to propel.
I’m sure many a stud will suggest, just like the packed neck message, that they have had “success” with curling the toes despite the logic and soft science I am suggesting, but also like the packed neck, I think curling the toes is an e-brake that is easy to drive through.
Try shortening the foot with toes curled and without toes curled.  There should be an appreciable difference in the activation of the deep foot flexors.  I think this is something we want in attempting to translate force from the ground up through the chain.  Curling the toes limits that with the approximation and alteration of the tripod.
Just something to think about, but I don’t really want to argue.

Funny, she didn't look Druish.

In most, if not all, medical evaluation rubrics, it is taught that the subjective is the most important part of the evaluation.
Becoming ingratiated into the movement-based approach over the last several years, I have found this to be not nearly as true as some suggest.
In fact, I’ve come to think that at times it is the least important piece of the evaluation, or perhaps better to suggest the most misleading in terms of clinical decision making.
I mean how many times does the person with knee pain tell you that their hip is all jacked up but doesn’t hurt, and that’s where they need coaching?  Or I’m still waiting for the runner to come in and tell me their Superficial Back Line is linking their neck to their plantar fascia.
The subjective is a crucial portion of the evaluation, but not necessarily for me to decide how to help or train the individual.

One of the more legitimate and respected editorial pieces on Regional Interdependence in the literature.

Sometimes there are things other than the need for terminal knee extension in here.

Far more than the patient or client’s impression on their condition, which is honestly just based on their non-expert perception, I am much more interested in what they want out of the training exchange.  Training and rehab are in the service profession, so in the end, I see my role of the coach or clinician to provide what the person wants.  Some of us are more privileged to not have to deal with individuals that think they know how to get what they want, but in the end, I think it’s our job to provide results.  I have been lucky in my career that when someone tells me, “I know my body,” I also know that when it’s 4th and 8, the right move is to punt the individual right out the door.

I hate people that don't punt on 4th down, but I don't hate punting patients.

So herein lies the first question I ask every person I see for the first time.  I ask, “So, how can I help you?  What’s going on that I can help with?”
I have to know what they want in the end.  The details will sort themselves out, but we need to know where the end of the tunnel is before deciding on the best route to get to the tunnel, through the tunnel, and doing it all safely and efficiently.
This is the most important piece of the subjective for me.  I need the person to know that I care about what they want……….even if I really don’t care how they want to get there.

Obviously we are going to go through having the individual describe their pain, what makes it worse or better, how long it’s been going on, etc.  If it’s training, what have they done in the past, what they enjoy doing, is there a definable event or season we are training for.
The pain stuff is more in the common sense piece for the medical evaluation, and the definable event piece is more useful in terms of periodization for the most efficient route of training.
But whether it’s training or rehab, I will likely always ask the following questions…..
1.  So even if you think it’s totally unrelated to what we just talked about with your <painful segment or goals>, do have any (other) current injuries or aches and pains anywhere?
–We’ll run through the whole body, and they ask, it’s a simple response.  Everything’s connected, and everything matters.
If there is a history of a recurrent ankle sprains, is it a surprise that the person is looking for help with knee pain?  And do we not automatically need to also start thinking about intervening with the ipsilateral hip?  And if we’re training, are we not already expecting to see asymmetries in the FMS?
The goal here is to start to either open the curtain to a regionally interdependent approach where rehabilitation of a non-painful area may be the answer and/or that training isn’t chest and tri’s on the finest selectorized machines money can buy.
I think this also separates the clinician from others that the person has worked with.  I think people like “whole body.”  They like “holistic” maybe without saying that word.  They understand that the body compensates in other areas, even though particularly in rehab, most physicians, PTs, and chiros, both don’t know and don’t care about regional interdependence.

Don't talk to me about your low back pain and not talk about your head and t-spine entering the room 5 seconds before the rest of your body.

2.  Do you think you have good balance?
–We’re going after 2 things here.  If they say they have good balance, and they don’t, I’ve found it makes the client a little more deferred and open-minded to training in ways they haven’t done or seen before.
The other route is simply that folks that do admit they don’t have good balance are usually very receptive to understanding that mobility in distant areas is important.  Everybody seems to find balance of value.

3.  Do you think you have good flexibility?
–Same thing as balance.  In mentioning something that you know the person values, I think it further supports the “they know you care” value to the subjective evaluation.  If the person knows you care about them having things they don’t currently have, they will go to work for you.

Are you flexible? Do you have good balance? Do you train on machines or do crunches?

4.  Tell me how you train.  Practice.
–I want to know what I’m up against here.  How much undoing of garbage do we have to do, not just in the body, but in their mind.
I’ve said many times, I ain’t half bad at convincing other people I’m right.  But I am not very good at convincing other people they’re wrong.

5.  Do you have any medical situations that impact training hard?  Social/life situations?
–Certainly finding out about having to take insulin at certain times of the day before training would be a good thing.  But beyond the impactful medical stuff, respecting non-physical stressors is an enormous part of the training picture.

Ultimate Stress Analysis.

To bottom line it, the goals of the subjective for me are 1) the person has my confidence, 2) the person knows I care about them, and 3) the evaluation and training process may not be what they think.

Over the last I’d say 12-18 months, one of the biggest impact/change/addition to my thinking of training is the tri-planar movement approach that I have learned from Todd Wright and T4TG.Without a lot of song and dance, here’s why I think the 87.5% of the system that I use works and has had so much traction in the movement, medball, and metabolic training that I now believe in and use for myself and for others. Notice I don’t believe in everything. I think there’s some pieces that just go too far in terms of duplicating inefficient movement in training just because it happens in “function” or real-life daily or athletic situations. I think that’s a huge mistake.

So there is a strong lesson that always prevails that we can accept or reject bits and pieces of excellent messages and still strongly honor the overall intent. There’s some level of backhandedness to this line of thought, but the fact of the matter is that I was incredibly moved by the learning and acceptance of what I was shown. The T4TG mentorship in Austin is something everyone should attend.



1. The stuff is downright athletic.
The very first time I was coached in the matrix patterns, I was in Austin for a Physical Medicine conference, and I was training in khakis and a polo shirt. The line I remember the most was Todd saying, “Charlie moves well for a big guy.” Add that to the list of the many things Todd is correct about. I do move well…………in my lower half at least.
Another line that I remember the most was at one point when I stopped or finished one of the drills. I stood like Sonic the Hedgehog for a moment, and I was like, “This is teaching athleticism.”

I may be able to do some things, but I'm no Clifton Harski swinging on vines and what not.


I felt the instructions with built in progressions that demanded the body to move athletically. I think most of us in some way would say you can’t really teach athleticism. I’m sure there’s pieces that we can all modulate, but at some point, there are physical gifts that make some of use better than others. I really think drilling this style of movement training can fill in some blanks. Drilling, like mindless repetitions, that also drives other pieces of the puzzle like mobility and stability and joint centration.
I see and feel real life positions that I think we are always caught in during movement; we just don’t rep them out or think about them all the time.
I just think if there is a way to somehow teach something like TO jumping backwards off 1 foot and catching a pass with 1 hand reaching 2 feet behind his body, this is it. If there is a way to teach stability outside of neutral of the mobile ankles, I think this is it.

Terrell Owens, Adirodack Wildcats, Summer 2003

2. It drives the Joint by Joint.
Due in no small part to watching the magic of DNS right in front of my face for the last few years, I would say we do not have body parts. We have a body.
We do not have body systems. We have a body.
Everything is connected. Physiological body systems are all interconnected, and even the slightest lack of integrity in any one joint can affect the nervous system at rest and the musculoskeletal system during movement. It all matters, all the time, whether we feel it or not. I think it all tracks back to the Autonomic Nervous System and measures of preparedness or recovery.
So when coached appropriately and not allowing huge momentum to take us out of the ideal joint positions of centration, these T4TG methods of movement all drive the joint by joint via the whole body’s linkage and patterns.
The more creative the variables are managed the more unique interactions all of the joints can sustain.
Now make no mistake about it. You can coach this stuff with momentum and loads that take your body into awful, terribly flexed, rotated, and sheared positions. This is a mistake.
What holds gravity to me is that when you develop deeper excursions of the ankles, hips, t-spine, and shoulders, the core will stabilize reflexively and allow for free and stable movement. The choices you make can drive the joint by joint for more mobility, stability, or more performance qualities. It just depends on you coach it. If you coach through the biomechanical stiffness that the Joint by Joint champions, you are feeding the entire body very valuable proprioception, and you’ll be doing in all 3 planes and with literally infinite combinations.
Forcing reactions of muscles is a very authentic approach to developing and harnessing movement. This approach gets that done with rehab and training goals.

I don't even know what this is showing. Well, I do, but I don't want to admit it.

3. Crossing midline
Good, bad, or indifferent, this triplanar approach to training has gotten a lot of traction over the last few decades, and many folks swear by it.
Well aside from the above 2 tenets above that lend to results, I think there is a more abstract tenet that is an enormous piece to success with these moves. Many of the movements in the frontal and transverse planes involve the arm or leg crossing midline, which has a far more powerful impact than the athleticism it demonstrates or its potential biomechanical integrity.
Please consider that upon birth, we actually have 2 separate brains, a right brain and left brain. The corpus collosum, in a lay way, is the bundle neural fibers that connect the right and left brains. We know that many nerve tracts cross in different parts of the brain or the spinal cord. Sometimes control from or injury to one side affects the other side. This neural bundle, the corpus collosum, does not fully develop and transmit signals until around 6 weeks of age. Until that point, we actually have 2 brains.
So what does all this have to do with crossing our legs in skipping sideways in a circle?

Well, for the same reason the Diagonal patterns of the PNF methods yield rehabilitation and corrective goals, when we cross a limb, I think the brain “lights up” if you will. Positive feedforward neural flow streams across the corpus collosum, and motor patterns are regained, improved, or reinforced. There is a real reason why movement improves, and people feel better with the atypical sagittal and transverse plane patterns. That reason is that we are using more mature or lesser used motor units, ones that cross the corpus collosum, ones that tell our brain that we should continue to move like that. The brain responds with what I believe to be decreased sympathetic or protective tone, and we move freely.
This is how some of PNF works; it’s part of why Indian Clubs work; it’s why correctly performed chops and lifts work; it’s why Turkish Getups work. Crossing midline is a powerful neurological tool, and moving often with this approach I think has wild neural uptake and benefit.

Most practical PNF book I've seen. And it has segmental rolling.

4. Foot positions
Part of the messages that I’ve talked about in the past such as the Core Pendulum Theory and Joint Centration have a common foundation of appreciation. That foundation is the mechanoreceptors that lie in and around joints in muscles, tendons, ligaments, capsules, etc. are constantly having conversations with the brain. It’s like a monster GPS system that is always pinging back to the satellite non-stop. The satellite, the brain, then yields or pushes tone through the muscles of the body and grades levels of centration.
Well, each foot has 26 bones that are often bound into compensated, constricted, or even locked positions through all of our daily and athletic acitivies. When we can add positive input, good stresses of mobility and stability as referenced by the Joint by Joint, I think, similar to crossing midline, there is a wealth of neurological uptake.
When we move sideways, we add different exteroceptive input to the lateral heel, the 5th metatarsal, the cuboid. There is a new and different demand to stabilize the midfoot, especially if we are managing these movements in an unsupported shoe or barefoot. If the challenges are healthy, the relative slack and tension of the capsules and long flexor tendons not only drive athletic movement and biomechanics, but also feed the brain “candy” in terms of proprioceptive input.
Aside from the neural mechanism, the different transient positions of the foot will demand similarly unique transient patterns all the way through the body. I see this as ideal for open-loop movement training, static and dynamic, but there is a fine line that should not be crossed into strength training.  Don’t put the foot or any part of the body in dumb positions with load.
With this mechanical approach also comes risk of form closure/bony approximation for stability through the foot which then degenerates biomechancis, and reverses neural flow to high tone for protection and rejection. So there’s a ton of good things that moving in multi-planes can do for the foot, but it’s not a guarantee that it’s right most ideal input, and just bouncing around like a jumping bean may not be the best answer for movement skills.

They work because they let your foot act like a foot, not this forefoot striking business.

5. Metabolic Demands
My recent thinking of cardiovascular (probably not even the best word to describe it) training or conditioning really relies a lot on heart rate. Testing and then programming intensities that meet the appropriate heart rate demands forces proper variables including exercise selection. My article which was moved by reading Joel Jamieson’s book gives plenty of examples, but now with the literally infinite options that the T4TG program provides, you have even more.
Heart rate may not only graded by the movement and intensity, but also the mental challenge to organize the movement. That also is clearly a stress that has to be integrated. We can now perhaps get a higher or lower heart rate response with repetitive movement by asking for an atypical pattern or combining the different movements of the limbs or implements.
Creating that organization can be stressful and adapted for in a general way. There are going to be situations where we get more with less, and there will be situations where we can continue to push good movement variability as long as the skills being chosen are centrally located in the individual’s “movement box.” This may be a place where we get better at what we’re good at, and corrective stuff or warmup is where we get better at what we’re not good at.

6. Principle-Based Categories
The principles of moving in 3 planes can be applied to many of the stages of a functionally dense program. Legit strength training is not one of them. I almost think of the applications lending more towards specific and general stiffness changes and open-loop training such as locomotion, med ball throws, and movement- or landing-based plyometrics.
Static Mobility – Multi-planar positions using the floor to fix the lower half, and a bar or cage to fix the upper half. The off-arm, the neck, or breathing can be used to challenge the position. This is using an artificial fixed point to drive mobility.

Early extension and reverse spine on the left. I'm just saying.

Dynamic Mobility – One half is fixed, and the other half is moving through a plane.
General Warmup – Up and down, side to side, circles, squares, 8′s, T’s, game-specific patterning in all the different moves of walking, shuffling, skipping, and running
Airborne – All the combinations of squatting (off 2, land on 2), hopping (off 1, land on same), leaping (off 1, land on the other), jopping (off 1 or 2, landing on 2 or 1), combination of hurdles and boxes
Medball – Throwing with steps, lunges, airborne movements, and all combinations there of

7. It fits into the training system
In a full program of managing ideal human movement, improving specific or special patterns, and pushing general horsepower, using what many of us have learned from Todd, there is huge mileage in the 2nd category. There is also a very useful bridge between the general movements that are the basis for everything that comes above it. Looking at complex and dynamic or multi-planar movements without a general more static and ground-based appraisal is a terrible mistake because errors in the more mature patterns may or may not be from deficient base.
But this doesn’t devalue the huge money that is in training these movements in the full program. We have useful part to whole replication of terminal movements, enormous movement variability, neurological inputs, and it’s just straight fun.

Fun is fun.
Effective is effective.
Form is everything.
This is all why I think it works.