Welcome to the movement movement. The podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember your body was meant to move. Now here's your host, Stephen Sashin.
Over the years, I spent thousands of dollars on orthotics and inserts, putting my shoes to try to make my feet feel better, to make it more comfortable for me to walk and run, take stress off my ankles, my knees, my hip, my back. Did they work? Let's find out. Welcome to the movement movement podcast.
The podcast we want to know the truth about how to have a happy, healthy, strong body. You'll let your body do what it likes to do best, and that is move, bend, inflex and move and feel. We're going to be exploring and breaking through some of the mythology and propaganda and sometimes outright lies that people tell you, and learn what it really takes to be able to walk, to run, to hike, to swim, to move, to do whatever you like to do, enjoy and safely and healthily and have more fun. I'm Stephen Sashin, the CEO from Zero Shoes.
It's a pleasure to have you here for the movement podcast, and we call it the movement movement because we are trying to create a movement. Get a collection of human beings who understand that natural movement is, well frankly, the better, obvious, healthy choice. In the same way, people currently think of natural food. So we're happy to have you here.
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I don't need to tell you. So, what I already say, I'm Stephen Sashin, CEO of Zero Shoes. If not, my apologies. No.
And I'm not here to try and sell you our products, although I will tell you they are awesome because my wife and I started Zero Shoes based on this whole natural movement idea. We understand that feet in particular are made to bend and move and flex and feel. And if you don't use them, you lose them. If you use them, they can be strongly healthy for your whole life.
If you put them in something that doesn't let them work, they become weir. We like to call those kind of things foot coffins. And I say that for a specific reason. I actually said it before it was part of my actual life.
My father spent his life in shoes and big thick pair of shoes. And eventually when he was 80, he was shuffling, shuffling, shuffling. Trips fell down, broke his hip and died two weeks later. I would like to prevent that.
I want people to be able to enjoy their bodies for as long as humanly possible. And that's why we're here. And that's why I hope you join the movement movement. So let's talk more thought.
Shall we? This is a multi-billion dollar industry where you will go to a doctor or a chiropractor or sometimes just to Walmart or wherever. And you'll find either custom made insults that you put in your shoes or just a pad of insults that you put in your shoes that are custom made. I'm going to tell you, one of the most brilliant marketing things I've ever seen in my entire life is the Dr.
Scholz, what's the word I'm looking for, kiosks. They have in a lot of stores where you step on the thing and it analyzes your feet and tells you which Dr. Scholz's insult is perfect for you. That's not the cool part.
The cool part is this one little thing that does. After you step on it shows you whether you're high-arch or low-arch, where you're applying force in the ground and then it doesn't analysis and there's a pause and it says, I can't remember exactly how it says it, but something along the lines of, you know, please wait while we calculate which Dr. Scholz product is right for you. It's a computer.
It doesn't need time to calculate this. It knows instantly which one's going to recommend to you, but it makes it think. It's thinking about you. Oh my God.
It does this incredible thing in your brain where you go, wow, it's really going to be personalized just for me. That's incredible. Meanwhile, there's only like 12 different possible things that I can give you and trust me, there's more than 12 different kinds of people on the planet. So I've been told.
So anyway, completely brilliant, totally not marketing. But here's the practice relationship. There is an article in The New Times and you can find the article and my comments about this article. If you go to, well, I haven't read it, I'm going to have to put a link here.
If you go to zero shoes.com, exerosues.com slash orthotic, O-R-T-H-I-T-I-C, orthotic. You're going to find references to an article written by one of my favorite science writers, not just because I think she has the greatest name of all time because she's brilliant. My name is Gina Colotta and Gina did an article that was in your Times about orthotics and basically was looking at all the research about whether they work, whether in fact getting either a custom made in Seoul designed specifically for your foot or just going to the store and getting whatever you can find that feels comfy in your shoe, whether that's actually good for you. Spoiler alert.
No. So all that money that I spent over those years that never ultimately worked for me, I kept thinking, you know, there was something wrong with me or maybe I just needed a different insult or a different kind of insert or a different kind of shoe. It never really worked for me and I kept like trying and trying and trying for years. There was times where I was spending 500 bucks a year trying new insoles.
Now, there's two amazing things. I'd spend a little bit of time in the lab of Dr. Bill Sands. He was a former head of biomechanics and engineering, I think, for the US Olympic Committee.
And what Bill would do in your in his lab is he would film you at 500 frames a second, super high speed, super slow motion. While you ran on his treadmill, he would film you from back and from the side, from about, you know, to chest down. So you really see everything that's happening in your body, not just what was happening in your ankles and maybe your knees, but like your whole body. And he would start you in your favorite pair of shoes and then he would put you barefoot on his treadmill against spoiler alert.
About 90% of people instantly had better form just from running barefoot. You can never try it before because they were just naturally using the spring like mechanism of their body, the springs and shock absorbers called muscles, legaments, and tendons. And frankly, because running the same way you do in regular running shoes, you do a barefoot that hurts and so your brain is not stupid and it will quickly figure out a way to not hurt while still doing this thing called running. But ignoring that for a moment, he would then have you try on every other pair of shoes that you have.
And it was incredible. For most people, except for like really high caliber runners, even in fact, typically, swimmers and middle-distance runners are even more than long-distance runners. Every shoe you put on was different, changed your date in a different way. Again, for the super professional runners, you could practice with bricks on their feet and it didn't make a difference.
But for most runners, different shoe, different gate pattern. Now, I turned the bill after he showed me that. I went, that means that you would really need a different orthotic made for each shoe that you have and then you'd have to reevaluate them as the shoe continued to break down because the phone was changing or the rubber was changing or whatever else was changing in the shoe. And he just looked at it and clearly that's not the way they make these things.
Most orthotics, they either do something where you're walking across some platform where it shows something about how you walk, barefoot, or you're just putting your foot in a mold so you see what your foot is like. And then they make the orthotic based on an idea of what's the optimal position for your foot to be in. Where'd that come from? And more importantly, how is that relevant?
As your foot is moving versus when you have a stiff orthotic in there? Hmm, it's the easy answer. In fact, I had a guy who tried to make an orthotic for me. I'm a sprinter and he said, oh, you need an orthotic.
He wanted to make me a three-quarter length orthotic. It only went down just lately past my arch and stopped before the ball of my foot. And I said, but when I'm sprinting, I'm never on that part of my foot. I'm only on the ball of my foot.
So what effect is it going to have to support my arch if there's nothing supporting it in the front? I mean, it's just a thing in the back that's never being loaded. And he just kind of thought for a second. Well, I think it should help.
Okay, I think I'm 5'10, but I'm actually only 5'5. So it really didn't make a difference. That was actually the beginning of my wake-up call about orthotics. But just start to think about this naturally.
Actually, before you think about it logically and there's some common sense I want to tell you, sorry, a physical therapist that I know, actually someone who's teaching physical therapists, who one day had this sudden little empathy. And it went like this, people come into my clinic injured. And what I try to get them to do is I try to get them moving as quickly as possible, as safely as possible, and as quickly as possible. But movement is the most important thing, except for their feet.
I'm putting an orthotic in their shoe, which prevents their foot from moving naturally. Why would I do that? And this person eventually has become someone who's big proponent of natural movement and the true minimalist footwear. But that realization is one that you should and could have as well.
Think of it this way. And if you get something injured, there are definitely times where you need to take pressure off of it and not use it. You want to give it time for the tissue or the bones, whatever was injured to rest, relaxing with hair. But as soon as possible, you want to start moving with them.
But with orthotics, they're saying, oh no, no, no, no, no. You've got some massive functional problem that you're going to need to wear this thing for the rest of your life and not let your foot move naturally for the rest of your life. Does that make any sense? I mean, if you went to a doctor and said, you know, my neck is bothering me, and the doctor says, well, interesting, then your neck is going to get your shoulder and your shoulder is going to get your elbow.
Your elbow is going to get to do your wrist. But I'm deading the neck pain is actually coming from your wrist. So I'm going to put a cast on your wrist so you can't use that for the rest of your life. And that should make your neck pain go away.
If you, if that happened to you, you would have that guy's license suspended. But when you go into a chiropractor, doctor's office and say, that means a back pain, the guy says, or woman says, you know, all that stuff starts with your feet. And so we're going to rearrange the way your feet move, but basically make it so they can't move naturally. And that should be helpful.
And we're just going to have to not use your feet naturally for the rest of your life. Because my gut, feet are clearly not meant to be used, right? Oh, what? It's insane.
In fact, I'm going to show you my favorite example about the confusion around feet and why you really don't need orthotics. I'm going to have to move the microphone out of the way, slightly out of the way, and slide something in, move the camera back and down. And what I have here is a wooden arch, just five trapezoidal pieces of wood that are forming an arch. An arch is the most stable architectural structure there is.
When you find nature, it's also incredibly stable. You can push on it almost as hard as you want. And in fact, the harder you push, the stronger it gets. If you want to make an arch break, you support it from the bottom.
Same thing in your feet. There are three arches in your feet. And if you support them, they get weaker. Weir is never better.
And almost all circumstances strong is better than weak. You get strong by using things. You get weak from not using things. And orthotic is a great temporary solution.
If you read the article from zerochus.com slash orthotic, that was Gina Colada's New York Times piece talking about whether orthotics are good or not. She will tell you what I'm basically telling you now that what we see is that orthotics seem to work for some small percentage of population. We have no idea who those people are. You can't identify them in advance.
And a $500 custom made orthotic, no better or worse than a $25 doctor's show's insult. Although if you stand on the doctor's show's measuring thing, none of those are $25.00. But suffice it to say custom made versus off the shelf, no inherent difference in what does or doesn't work for people. But the more important thing from our perspective is which makes more sense to you.
Use your body the way it's designed to use. Keep it strong and healthy and happy so your feet can support you for the rest of your life. So your feet can actually bend and flex and move and feel, which means that if you don't let him do that, that function tries to go and you're angling and hitting your bat. If you let him do that, you can take a strain off those higher up joints.
Does that make more sense than putting something in a cast for the rest of your life? And what we affectionly refer to is foot coffins for the rest of your life? I think not. Let me know what you think.
You may have had great experience with robotics. More power to you. Oh wait, before I let you go, I'm going to give you my favorite robotics story. I was talking to a potential investor in our company and he said, you know, I can't invest in your company because we're actually already investing in something and we're going to have funds available.
But I couldn't invest any way because I can't wear your shoes. And I said, why? And he says, well, I've had plantar fasciitis for 20 years. And so I've had to wear robotics for all that time.
Now, we'll talk about plantar fasciitis in an upcoming episode. But I said to him, that's not possible. He can't have an inflammation for 20 years. He says, well, you know, actually it went away for about a year and a half.
I said, oh, well, so this is my point. You didn't even probably didn't have plantar fasciitis to begin with. You probably just had tight counts. And again, that's for another episode.
But I asked him, what's it like just walking across, you know, walking around your house barefoot? He goes, oh, oh, I can't do that. I have one floor. I was dumbstruck.
I said, hold on. You think it's okay that you can't even just walk barefoot in your house to go to the bathroom? That makes no sense. Look, I can tell you what happened.
20 years ago, you had a doctor who didn't know it better. Misdiagnosed you with plantar fasciitis. Knowing that he was going to make an extra $500 to $500 a year by giving you robotics to put in your shoes that made it so that you couldn't move your feet naturally. And they have gotten so weak over time that you can't even walk barefoot to the bathroom.
That's insane. I said, look, I could teach you some exercises that you could do. And we'll do those in a upcoming episode where you could probably be walking on barefoot on your hardwood floors within maybe six, eight weeks. And maybe six months later, I can have you literally running barefoot if you wanted to.
But you definitely don't need to be keeping your feet in a situation where you're not using them, which makes them weaker and weaker over time. And so that maybe one day what happened to my dad, he felt I broke a sip and died because he wasn't using his feet. We could prevent that, I think. And I said, and sadly, I know from the way you're looking at me that you're not taking this seriously because I look like this.
And I don't have a bunch of letters after my name and a white coat on my body. It's a shame because if you just did a little research you find out that natural movement could give you everything that you originally wanted. And unfortunately got diverted from when you spoke to someone who didn't understand that idea. As he thought that A, it was better to put your wrist in a can, to get rid of neck pain and never use your body naturally again than to actually learn to do what's natural.
It was one of the saddest conversations I ever had. And I hope that you don't end up being part of that same conversation, being on the other end of that conversation. I hope that you explore natural movement. That you take a look on this podcast and from other places you find ways that you can strengthen your feet, use your feet.
We're starting a lot with conversations about feet because feet are your foundation. As we expand in the movement podcast we're doing a whole lot of other things including how to get stronger by lifting lighter weights, countering two and exercises. The muscles that you probably need to use to run and walk better, that you've never done any exercises before, there's a whole lot of what we're going to talk about. And until then, I want you to just hope that you can start thinking about this whole idea of natural movement and let's engage in the conversation about whether that's right for you or right for everybody, I think it is.
So come to jointhemovementmovement.com. That'll point you to all the different places that you've been engaged with us on social media, etc. Subscribe and like and share to all those things that are possible. We are, as I said, creating a movement movement where people understand that natural movement is a better obvious healthy choice the way natural food currently is and we would love to have you in the movement.
If you want to be part of that tribe, please subscribe. See you soon. Live life. Keep first.
You've been listening to the Movement Movement Podcast with host Stephen Sashan. Remember to join the tribe and subscribe at jointhemovementmovementmovement.com.