Our guest today is Adarian Barr, athletic movement coach, inventor and performance consultant.  Adarian has been a mentor to me for almost 5 years, and opened up my eyes to the movement potential of the human body, how to observe it, and coach it more optimally.  He has been on this podcast for many prior episodes, and has recorded a number of webinars for Just Fly Sports.  The best way I can describe Adarian is that he just sees things that nobody else does in human movement, and creates a wonderful groundwork for us to creatively express those principles in our own training setups.

One of the biggest realizations, that I’m still regularly checking in on the implications of in my day to day coaching and athletic life, is how, when the joints and levers of the body are working optimally in “3D”, we tend to need much less barbell strength than we think we do to reach our highest speed performance potential.  Not only this, but when we only operate in “2D” and don’t use our levers well, we need more weight room strength to be better athletes in that 2D paradigm.

One thing that Adarian does not post about often is weightlifting.  Part of this is because the world of coaching is very hung up on “force” as a binary entity in human movement, and we need more education on joints and movement, rather than how to split hairs on lifting sets and reps.  Adarian’s eye for movement does go well into the weightlifting world, however, and was can learn a lot from his recent observation in the area.

On today’s podcast, we dive into the Olympic lifts in particular, and how they can either foster athleticism, or suppress it, based on the lever systems we use in the execution of the lift.  We get into this, and much more, such as the feet, torque, the drawbacks of hinging in the weight room, crawling, natural learning and much more in this in-depth episode.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.





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Timestamps and Main Points

6:00 The redundancy of “coaching up” natural-skill-based human strength movements

16:45 Adarian’s history with weightlifting as a football player and track and field athlete

24:50 Deconstructing the Olympic lifts in regards to what transfers to athletic speed and what does not

33:40 Good and poor “class 1” levers of the foot

41:25 Thoughts on the initial stages of the pull off the ground in athleticism

45:25 Using the hands more effectively to change the emphasis of exercise to the body

50:10 Full catches in the Olympic lifts, foot pressure and internal rotation, and how these can be optimized for athletic transfer

57:10 Why Adarian is not a fan of hinging from a foot loading perspective



“The feet are pointing out for a reason in (natural) squatting, because the calves are rotating them”

“A lot of people equate lifting to athletic ability, that the lift makes you athletic.  The biggest thing is when I see the levers…. Some people when they (Olypmic) lift to get strong, I see them shrug, then they do a plantar-flex, which is a class 1 lever, then they catch the bar.  That’s not going to transfer over (to athleticism) they are probably just going to get stronger”

“What do they say, look at the (lift) numbers he is doing that’s what made him fast.  No! He can do those (lift) numbers because he is fast!”

“I used to think (Olympic lifters) were bumping the bar with their hips.  What do you actually see? When they hit the bar with class 2 (foot position) it bumps them backwards (class 2 being advantageous for athleticism)”

“If the Achilles (tendon) isn’t working, you will be quad dominant or hamstring dominant”

“There are two “class 1” motions, there’s inversion/eversion, and there is plantarflexion dorsiflexion.  Those ones that use inversion/eversion are going to really do som...