Our guest for today’s show is Katie St. Clair.  Katie is a strength and conditioning coach out of Charleston, SC who has been training general population and athletes for over 20 years, and is the creator of the Empowered Performance Program. She is passionate about helping everyone reclaim movement and find joy and reduction of pain using sound biomechanical principles alongside proper breathing.  Katie has embarked on a journey of learning and combining that knowledge with her love of athletic movement, as well as her passion for empowering female movement professionals, with the intent to elevate the entire industry standard.

In my last few years as a coach, I’ve become more and more aware of the underlying physical and structural characteristics of athletes that work to determine biomechanics that show up when they perform various sporting skills.  I’ve really enjoyed having a variety of coaches on this show who have gone in detail on the biomechanics of the human body, (the pelvis, ribcage, breathing, etc.) and then have linked that up with what we might see in athletic movement, such as sprinting and jumping to name a few.

Katie is an expert in human performance, and the fine details of human movement.  On today’s show, she takes us on an approach to forward pelvic tilt, breathing mechanics, abdominal function, the feet, proper squatting, plyometrics and more that comes from a perspective of the underlying function of the human body.  Katie helps us understand the “inside” mechanisms that are so often leading to compromised movement seen on the “outside”.

So often we have athletes who just can’t seem to “find” the right joint motions in their movement, and this is when we need to have the ability to go a level deeper in our coaching, or our ability to know when to “refer out” to experts better able to cater to those areas.  The more you know from “the inside out”, the greater the bandwidth of athletes you can serve in your efforts.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly



View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.



Timestamps and Main Points

4:45 – What led Katie into working in fitness and performance

10:15 – Katie’s “inside out” view, of helping athletes acquire better technique via changes on the level of the thorax, pelvis and rib-cage

15:45 – The art of coaching humans in a manner that helps them self-organize and learn to move effectively

18:45 – How being biased, or stuck, in anterior tilt impacts one’s ability to move, and how to help athletes get out of that position

25:45 – How to use inhalation and exhalation to neurologically reinforce supination/ER and pronation/IR

42:15 – General primers on how to start working with breathing and breath for clients

45:50 – Ideas on how compression can drive expansion on the opposite side of the body, and ideas on “functional” abdominal muscles

49:50 – Katie’s view on building strength at length with the abdominal wall

55:50 – Why some athletes (particularly female swimmers) often have a lot of spinal extension patterning in a pushup movement, and then what to do about it (if it is even a big deal in that group)

1:00.05 – Hypermobility as systemic laxity, versus adaptations that can lead to acquired hypermobility in the limbs via proximal stiffness

1:05.35 – The dichotomy between accessing the heels, and then moving into the forefoot in the process of squatting

1:14.50 – Dynamics of “no-toes” squatting and what it can do for athletes, and how it zeros in on the mid-foot

1:17.50 – The balance between being able to keep the heel down and pronate, and then get off the heel to make the foot a second class lever, in squatting and even in running/jumping

1:29.50 – How to help people who struggle to yield to gravity be able to do so, and achieve better glute activation in the process