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What the Foot?: A Game-Changing Philosophy in Human Movement to Eliminate Pain and Maximise Human Potential
- GenresHealthNonfictionFitness
186 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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338 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 15, 2019
The book explains 5 'big rules' of motion. Gary aims to challenge the status quo with these rules to encourage people to adopt a more holistic approach to movement. He refers to his readers as 'fitness and therapy professionals'. This means he assumes you have some background in the topic. His ideas are refreshing and, even though they may sound a bit controversial at first, make sense within a more traditional approach as well.
I did have trouble getting into the book at first. Personally I don't like his writing style. It seems to me he still has some residual anger towards conventional methods and these little rants persist throughout the book which becomes quite tedious. He assumes that these 5 concepts are very difficult to grasp, or that the reader will have some resistance to them. This leads him to repeat himself. This might be true for some people but the nice thing about books is that you can just read it again if you feel the need.
The book is purely theoretical. There are no concrete suggestions for implementation of the 5 rules. As a 'fitness and therapy professional' this might be enough to send you in the right direction but it did leave me feeling unsatisfied.
Final verdict: the content of the 5 big rules is quite interesting and absolutely worth exploring. But due to the way it is written I'm bringing the score down to 3 out of 5. I would not recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have a background in fitness etc, but for those who do it could be very valuable.
I did have trouble getting into the book at first. Personally I don't like his writing style. It seems to me he still has some residual anger towards conventional methods and these little rants persist throughout the book which becomes quite tedious. He assumes that these 5 concepts are very difficult to grasp, or that the reader will have some resistance to them. This leads him to repeat himself. This might be true for some people but the nice thing about books is that you can just read it again if you feel the need.
The book is purely theoretical. There are no concrete suggestions for implementation of the 5 rules. As a 'fitness and therapy professional' this might be enough to send you in the right direction but it did leave me feeling unsatisfied.
Final verdict: the content of the 5 big rules is quite interesting and absolutely worth exploring. But due to the way it is written I'm bringing the score down to 3 out of 5. I would not recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have a background in fitness etc, but for those who do it could be very valuable.
October 8, 2025
What the Foot? by Gary Ward — A Review
I came across What the Foot? through a friend who swore it was a revolutionary take on human movement. He called it “a new language for biomechanics,” the kind of book that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about pain, posture, and performance. I’ll admit, that claim alone was enough to make me skeptical. In this field, “revolutionary” ideas are usually just old ones dressed up in new jargon. Still, I decided to give Gary Ward’s work a chance — partly because I respect anyone who’s willing to challenge orthodoxy, and partly because I’ve seen enough chronic pain cases to know that conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold up.
Ward opens with his story — how a ski instructor in the Alps ended up dismantling the foundations of modern physical therapy. The origin is almost cinematic: the guy’s out in the snow, realizing that everything he’s been taught about the body doesn’t explain what he’s seeing in movement. From there, he goes on a self-taught odyssey through anatomy, gait, and applied biomechanics. His central claim? The foot is the emperor of the body. Everything, he says, begins there. The way we load the foot, the way it reacts to gravity and ground, dictates what happens upstream — from ankle to pelvis to spine.
That’s a bold statement, especially since most PT frameworks put the core at the center of control. Ward flips that entirely. For him, the foot isn’t just a structural base; it’s the command center of movement, the root of dysfunction, and the key to resolving it.
Now, I’ll be honest — this is where I started to push back. The idea that one region “dictates” movement oversimplifies a system that’s far more integrated. The body doesn’t move because one joint acts and another reacts; it moves because the brain interprets sensory input and coordinates output in a continuous loop. To me, movement is orchestrated, not commanded — and the conductor sits in the nervous system.
If you want a metaphor, think of the body as an airplane. The brain is the pilot, but the plane — the joints, muscles, and fascia — constantly feeds the pilot information about wind, balance, and turbulence. The pilot steers based on that feedback. So while the foot gives the brain critical data about the environment, it’s still the brain that governs the motion. Ward’s framework focuses heavily on bottom-up mechanics, but I think it misses that the loop is never one-directional.
To his credit, Ward isn’t blind to this. His “joint acts, muscle reacts” rule — one of his Big Five principles — seems to acknowledge a sort of sequencing rather than causation. But even there, I find it too linear. Movement isn’t a domino effect; it’s a push–pull conversation, more like a wave or a Tai Chi flow. Muscles and joints don’t take turns; they negotiate. If the muscles overcompensate (too much push), you get compression. If they underperform (too much pull), you get instability. Either way, dysfunction isn’t born from one side dictating; it’s born from the imbalance of dialogue.
Ward’s greatest contribution — and what I genuinely respect — is how he forces you to reconsider the foot’s role as a sensory organ. He reminds us that the foot isn’t just a mechanical lever; it’s a complex data hub with 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than a hundred soft-tissue structures constantly sending feedback to the brain. When he maps this through his gait cycle model, it makes intuitive sense. You start to see how a collapsed arch might cascade into a twisted pelvis, or how compensatory hip rotation could trace back to poor pronation control.
This is where Ward shines. His insights on gait and fascia are sharp, and his criticism of the “one-size-fits-all” PT approach — where everyone gets the same glute-activation drills regardless of cause — is both accurate and overdue. His rants (the famous “Ten Rants”) against the industry’s reductionism are, frankly, spot-on. He’s right to challenge a profession that’s more focused on isolated muscles than integrated motion.
But then the book drifts. Somewhere between the philosophy and the case studies, What the Foot? starts to read less like a manual and more like a marketing prelude to Ward’s AIM course. The tone shifts from “here’s how the body works” to “here’s why you should come study with me.” That would be fine if the material stood entirely on its own — but it doesn’t. You finish the book with more intrigue than tools.
The part that bothered me most was Ward’s claim that some patients who’d been in pain for twenty years walked out pain-free after a single 60-minute session. He presents it as proof of his method’s effectiveness — and maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. I’m not questioning the man’s integrity, but logically, that raises a flag. If you can fix two decades of pain in an hour, why do you need follow-up sessions? Why, in his own case studies, do clients require four sessions to “recenter” before returning pain-free to skiing? If four sessions can undo what years of dysfunction built, why do professional athletes still go through months of preseason conditioning?
These contradictions make What the Foot? feel, at times, too anecdotal, too confident, and too commercial. There’s a fine line between a new philosophy and a branded system, and Ward occasionally crosses it.
That said, the man has earned his reputation for a reason. His biomechanical reasoning is sophisticated, and his ability to translate movement into patterns of cause and effect is compelling. His core message — that movement diversity is medicine — is absolutely true. We need more of that thinking, especially in a culture obsessed with symmetry, repetition, and “neutral spines.” Ward’s insistence that unconventional movement re-teaches the body how to move might be the single most valuable takeaway in the entire book. Watch a dancer, a martial artist, or a gymnast, and you’ll see that truth in motion: equilibrium is born not from rigidity but from variability.
So, yes, What the Foot? has its flaws — it oversells, it oversimplifies, and it sometimes feels like an advertisement wrapped in theory — but it also challenges the stagnant logic of modern PT. It makes you think. It makes you question. And in a field that too often rewards compliance over curiosity, that’s no small achievement.
For me, it’s a solid 4 out of 5. I’d recommend it to anyone in physical therapy, sports science, or even personal training — not because it gives you ready-made answers, but because it forces you to interrogate your assumptions. You may not buy everything Ward sells, but you’ll come out seeing the foot, and maybe the body, with a little more respect than before.
---
Appendix: The Ten Rants and Big Five Rules
Gary Ward’s Ten Rants (summarized):
1. The body is treated as isolated parts rather than an integrated system.
2. Therapists chase symptoms instead of root causes.
3. The “core” is over-glorified; movement is whole-body.
4. Orthotics and shoes often create more dysfunction than they solve.
5. Stretching and strengthening without understanding motion is meaningless.
6. Pain is an output, not a cause.
7. Posture is dynamic, not static.
8. Gait analysis is underused and misunderstood.
9. The nervous system’s role in movement is neglected.
10. True healing requires teaching the body to move again.
The Big Five Rules (with commentary):
1. Everything is connected. True — but sometimes framed too simplistically.
2. Joint acts, muscle reacts. Interesting metaphor, but as discussed, overly linear.
3. Motion is 3D. Completely valid and critical to modern PT thinking.
4. Change one thing, change everything. Accurate in principle, though difficult in practice.
5. Movement reveals dysfunction. Perhaps the most important of the five — movement always tells the truth.
---
Final Thought:
Gary Ward’s work is provocative not because he’s right about everything, but because he’s willing to question everything. And for that alone, What the Foot? deserves its place on any practitioner’s shelf — not as gospel, but as fuel for deeper thought
I came across What the Foot? through a friend who swore it was a revolutionary take on human movement. He called it “a new language for biomechanics,” the kind of book that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about pain, posture, and performance. I’ll admit, that claim alone was enough to make me skeptical. In this field, “revolutionary” ideas are usually just old ones dressed up in new jargon. Still, I decided to give Gary Ward’s work a chance — partly because I respect anyone who’s willing to challenge orthodoxy, and partly because I’ve seen enough chronic pain cases to know that conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold up.
Ward opens with his story — how a ski instructor in the Alps ended up dismantling the foundations of modern physical therapy. The origin is almost cinematic: the guy’s out in the snow, realizing that everything he’s been taught about the body doesn’t explain what he’s seeing in movement. From there, he goes on a self-taught odyssey through anatomy, gait, and applied biomechanics. His central claim? The foot is the emperor of the body. Everything, he says, begins there. The way we load the foot, the way it reacts to gravity and ground, dictates what happens upstream — from ankle to pelvis to spine.
That’s a bold statement, especially since most PT frameworks put the core at the center of control. Ward flips that entirely. For him, the foot isn’t just a structural base; it’s the command center of movement, the root of dysfunction, and the key to resolving it.
Now, I’ll be honest — this is where I started to push back. The idea that one region “dictates” movement oversimplifies a system that’s far more integrated. The body doesn’t move because one joint acts and another reacts; it moves because the brain interprets sensory input and coordinates output in a continuous loop. To me, movement is orchestrated, not commanded — and the conductor sits in the nervous system.
If you want a metaphor, think of the body as an airplane. The brain is the pilot, but the plane — the joints, muscles, and fascia — constantly feeds the pilot information about wind, balance, and turbulence. The pilot steers based on that feedback. So while the foot gives the brain critical data about the environment, it’s still the brain that governs the motion. Ward’s framework focuses heavily on bottom-up mechanics, but I think it misses that the loop is never one-directional.
To his credit, Ward isn’t blind to this. His “joint acts, muscle reacts” rule — one of his Big Five principles — seems to acknowledge a sort of sequencing rather than causation. But even there, I find it too linear. Movement isn’t a domino effect; it’s a push–pull conversation, more like a wave or a Tai Chi flow. Muscles and joints don’t take turns; they negotiate. If the muscles overcompensate (too much push), you get compression. If they underperform (too much pull), you get instability. Either way, dysfunction isn’t born from one side dictating; it’s born from the imbalance of dialogue.
Ward’s greatest contribution — and what I genuinely respect — is how he forces you to reconsider the foot’s role as a sensory organ. He reminds us that the foot isn’t just a mechanical lever; it’s a complex data hub with 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than a hundred soft-tissue structures constantly sending feedback to the brain. When he maps this through his gait cycle model, it makes intuitive sense. You start to see how a collapsed arch might cascade into a twisted pelvis, or how compensatory hip rotation could trace back to poor pronation control.
This is where Ward shines. His insights on gait and fascia are sharp, and his criticism of the “one-size-fits-all” PT approach — where everyone gets the same glute-activation drills regardless of cause — is both accurate and overdue. His rants (the famous “Ten Rants”) against the industry’s reductionism are, frankly, spot-on. He’s right to challenge a profession that’s more focused on isolated muscles than integrated motion.
But then the book drifts. Somewhere between the philosophy and the case studies, What the Foot? starts to read less like a manual and more like a marketing prelude to Ward’s AIM course. The tone shifts from “here’s how the body works” to “here’s why you should come study with me.” That would be fine if the material stood entirely on its own — but it doesn’t. You finish the book with more intrigue than tools.
The part that bothered me most was Ward’s claim that some patients who’d been in pain for twenty years walked out pain-free after a single 60-minute session. He presents it as proof of his method’s effectiveness — and maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. I’m not questioning the man’s integrity, but logically, that raises a flag. If you can fix two decades of pain in an hour, why do you need follow-up sessions? Why, in his own case studies, do clients require four sessions to “recenter” before returning pain-free to skiing? If four sessions can undo what years of dysfunction built, why do professional athletes still go through months of preseason conditioning?
These contradictions make What the Foot? feel, at times, too anecdotal, too confident, and too commercial. There’s a fine line between a new philosophy and a branded system, and Ward occasionally crosses it.
That said, the man has earned his reputation for a reason. His biomechanical reasoning is sophisticated, and his ability to translate movement into patterns of cause and effect is compelling. His core message — that movement diversity is medicine — is absolutely true. We need more of that thinking, especially in a culture obsessed with symmetry, repetition, and “neutral spines.” Ward’s insistence that unconventional movement re-teaches the body how to move might be the single most valuable takeaway in the entire book. Watch a dancer, a martial artist, or a gymnast, and you’ll see that truth in motion: equilibrium is born not from rigidity but from variability.
So, yes, What the Foot? has its flaws — it oversells, it oversimplifies, and it sometimes feels like an advertisement wrapped in theory — but it also challenges the stagnant logic of modern PT. It makes you think. It makes you question. And in a field that too often rewards compliance over curiosity, that’s no small achievement.
For me, it’s a solid 4 out of 5. I’d recommend it to anyone in physical therapy, sports science, or even personal training — not because it gives you ready-made answers, but because it forces you to interrogate your assumptions. You may not buy everything Ward sells, but you’ll come out seeing the foot, and maybe the body, with a little more respect than before.
---
Appendix: The Ten Rants and Big Five Rules
Gary Ward’s Ten Rants (summarized):
1. The body is treated as isolated parts rather than an integrated system.
2. Therapists chase symptoms instead of root causes.
3. The “core” is over-glorified; movement is whole-body.
4. Orthotics and shoes often create more dysfunction than they solve.
5. Stretching and strengthening without understanding motion is meaningless.
6. Pain is an output, not a cause.
7. Posture is dynamic, not static.
8. Gait analysis is underused and misunderstood.
9. The nervous system’s role in movement is neglected.
10. True healing requires teaching the body to move again.
The Big Five Rules (with commentary):
1. Everything is connected. True — but sometimes framed too simplistically.
2. Joint acts, muscle reacts. Interesting metaphor, but as discussed, overly linear.
3. Motion is 3D. Completely valid and critical to modern PT thinking.
4. Change one thing, change everything. Accurate in principle, though difficult in practice.
5. Movement reveals dysfunction. Perhaps the most important of the five — movement always tells the truth.
---
Final Thought:
Gary Ward’s work is provocative not because he’s right about everything, but because he’s willing to question everything. And for that alone, What the Foot? deserves its place on any practitioner’s shelf — not as gospel, but as fuel for deeper thought
September 8, 2020
Utter garbage and a huge rip off.
unfinished
August 7, 2025This book is written for professional body workers. It was a bit technical for me, so i only read snippets of it
December 22, 2025
Ako ste vec koristili online programe (kao sto sam ja) koje je kreirao Gary Ward nema potrebe da citate knjigu
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews