Motivated by studies of novel strong dynamics as a fundamental mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, I present lattice investigations of the non-perturbative dynamics of gauge theories, developing clean numerical signatures of near-conformalality. I will then discuss SU(2) gauge theory with two and with one flavour of fermions transforming in the adjoint representation. The former case provides a template for studying near-conformal behaviour with lattice methods. Applying efficient techniques developed in this theory to the case of the single flavour, I show that the latter has a non-trivial infrared behaviour, providing evidence of near-conformal dynamics with a large anomalous dimension.