Chong Xie is an author and inventor dedicated to understanding the foot and its role in sports performance. He wrote the book Secret of Athleticism and developed the Hyperarch Fascia Training System. Xie founded secret-of-athleticism.com, a website and discussion group dedicated to educating coaches and athletes about the foot, its relationship to athleticism, and best training practices.

Chong holds a computer science degree and has been working as a technical analyst in the software industry for more than 10 years. His interest in the topic began after he observed a large discrepancy in athletic performance among athletes, which he believed was directly related to the feet. Chong Xie practiced Wushu as a child in Beijing Sport University and is an avid researcher and student of Tai Chi. He holds a bachelor’s degree in science from Binghamton University. His work is endorsed by athletes such as Kadour Ziani and Marquise Goodwin.

Chong discusses the importance of maximizing ground contact stiffness, fascial tensioning, and upstream muscle activation of the foot. He gives insight into factors that many strength coaches don’t delve deeply enough into to make the biggest difference in performance. He also talks about his overall program, which has proven to increase vertical jump height in athletes.

In this podcast, Chong Xie and Joel discuss:

• Common features all feet have that can be developed to maximize performance.
• Weightlifting and its relationship to well-developed foot strength.
• The importance of a maximum facia-focused warm-up.
• Looking at training the body from a holistic approach, instead of a segmented one.
• Developing toe stiffness.
• The foot to glute connection and its importance in speed.

Podcast total run time is 59:32.

Keywords: fascia, vertical jump, foot training, holistic training