Interview with Gary Ward: Why Glute Strengthening Doesn't Work, Pronation is the Highest Value Movement for the Body, and Injury Timelines are Crucial

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Oh boy, this interview was a long time coming- I am thrilled to have finally interviewed one of the most influential movement educators I’ve had the privilege to learn from on my own personal and professional journey, Gary Ward.

Gary is a movement educator and creator of Anatomy in Motion. Gary dedicated the past few decades of his life to understanding the truth of human movement- A boss level Movement Detective. Gary now teaches his model of closed chain joint mechanics online, in-person, and works with folks ranging from high level professional athletes to the average person recovering from a hip replacement.

Gary’s brain child, the Flow Motion Model of gait (FMM), has helped myself and countless other movement and therapy professionals understand how to more clearly observe and work with the human body in motion. The FMM started as a realization that when you change how the foot moves on the ground, it affects everything else in the body, and he would not stop until he’d mapped the movement of every bone, joint, and muscle in the body through the 0.6-0.8 seconds it takes to complete a footstep.

Now I have to state my personal bias- In 2021 I became an instructor for Anatomy in Motion. It is a huge part of the work that I do in my own private bodywork and movement coaching practice. Keep that in mind as you listen to our conversation.

In our conversation, Gary and I discuss:

* Gary’s journey from ski boot fitting to developing the Flow Motion Model

* How Gary set about developing the Flow Motion Model as a personal journey of movement exploration, and his belief that he could heal himself with movement.

* Why it is so important to make sense of someone’s injury history timeline to understand how to help them most efficiently with their chronic pain

* The paradigm shift in Gary’s thinking- Its not about strengthening and stretching, its about helping the body to unconsciously find its own best sense of centre by helping it access the movements it is missing.

* Why knees are so misunderstood in the evidence-based models of movement because it doesn’t account for the movement of the foot in the closed chain.

* How head positioning can be at the root of toe pain (and just mobilizing toes isn’t the solution)

* Debunking common misconceptions about navigating your own journey from chronic pain to well-being

* How using a force plate helped Gary develop his model of closed chain biomechanics

* Why foot pronation is one of the most high-value movement in the human body because of how it wakes up so much potential for the rest of the body.

And much more.

I really loved getting to speak with Gary. I hope you took away something useful for your own journey with your body!

Where to find Gary online:

The Finding Center Website: www.findingcentre.co.uk

Instagram: @garyward_aim

Substack: Gary Ward Gary’s What the Foot? book: What The Foot?

Where to learn more and take courses online: AiM Online Courses

Here’s a little more about Gary Ward:

Gary Ward has no qualifications and yet fancies his chances at taking down an established industry known for maintaining chronic pain and pushing people down the line towards surgical doom. Not standing for such a travesty he created weird jazz hand style moves that convince the brain anything is possible and moves away from pain and towards peak performance.

(Ok that bio was a piss-take… Because Gary doesn’t actually have a formal bio anywhere online and he gave me permission to copy/paste the above two paragraphs from a message he sent me when I asked him for a bio. Personally, I think it’s perfect. And actually, Gary has plenty of qualifications, but his best one is his Diploma of Real-Life Experience, decades of time in the trenches working with bodies and figuring things out through experimentation and consulting with many mentors along the way).