You know, if you have allergies, you go to an allergist, you know, if you have some, let's see, a good one, something going on with your nose or throat. Amazingly, you go to an ear and nose or throat, guys. So of course, if you have something wrong with your feet, you go to a podiatrist. What if that's the dumbest thing you could possibly do?
We're going to find out by talking to a podiatrist. So this is going to be a lot of fun on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting first as those things are your foundation. You know, we break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat out lies, you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or dance or to yoga or cross whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably and efficiently and effectively.
And did I say enjoyably? Great question. Because I know I did because that's the most important part. Look, if you're not having fun, do something different so you are because you're not going to keep it up anyway.
If you're not having a good time. I'm Stephen Sashan from zerushus.com, your host of the movement, movement podcast and we call it the movement movement because we, that includes you. It's easy. It's free.
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So let's get into it. Paul, it is a pleasure having you here. I know you heard my wacky intro. Why don't you tell people who you are and what you do?
Thanks, have me, mate. So I'm a through-idrous, like you mentioned. I've somehow coined the term the barefoot through-idrous many years ago and I've run with it. So essentially, yeah, I'm a through-idrous, specialised in barefoot rehab or getting people back to a, like a barefoot state, a natural state, in short.
And so Paul Thompson, you didn't even say that part. So Paul, people can probably tell from your accent you're from Texas. Is that correct? Did I get that right?
Texas? No, it's more different kind of South East Asia. It's Australia. Yeah.
So thank you for doing this. And what time is it where you are now? We're running it around. Hey, yeah.
Okay, not so bad. If you were getting up at four in the morning, I would thank you profusely. But 8 a.m, that's, I've been up for hours by that point. So, you know, the big question I want to ask is, talk to me about sort of traditional podiatric training.
What do people learn when they're becoming podiatrists about feet and more specifically about natural movement? Or is that just not even part of the curriculum? Yeah. So I did my uni training around 15 years ago, I want to say.
And back then, natural movement wasn't a thing. So podiatry training was we learned about the feet and some muscles in the feet, some bones in the feet. But I'm just thinking it's sort of like when you get on an airplane and they say, welcome to, you know, so-and-so to Los Angeles. You go, oh crap, I'm on the wrong plane.
I'm wondering if podiatry school was like, what are we talking about the feet? Oh my God, I thought this was going to be proctology school. So, finally enough, the first half year of the university degree, there was nothing to do with feet. It was how to talk to people, like things you can't say to a patient.
It was really broad, kind of like I walked into the first few classes and that's what I thought. I was like, am I the right school? What? When do we learn about feet?
Now I'm dying to know what things can you not say to a patient? It was probably change now. But then it was common sense stuff, you know, it was just how to literally, I think it was just that common sense of people that didn't have common sense of, you know, not calling people facts, not just using words like the political correct terms, you know, like you couldn't say you see the sort of pitch back. You can't say, well, you know, there could be some, I remember that as long time ago, but it was quite a funny semester, I must admit.
I clearly took a lot away from it. You know, it's funny you mentioned that though, so I got a degree in film and they make you take an acting class and the first semester of the acting class is mostly just embarrassing yourself in front of your classmates and the second semester is learning what not to say to actors, like don't say to an actor. Can you do that again, but be happier? Because that makes actors want to punch in the face.
So I guess, you know, beginning of podiatric training in film school, very similar learning what not to say to your clients. Well, I guess everyone's so scared of being sued or punched in the face that it gets asked to teach that now because maybe too many podiatrists are getting punched in the face. I don't know. I haven't looked into that, but yeah.
So then since they weren't talking teaching about natural movement, what were they teaching was all just, I mean, I can't even imagine what it was like and eventually we're obviously going to get to the transition from what you did to become now the barefoot podiatrist. So in Australia, podiatrists are slightly different to America. We're not surgeons. In America, we're more like physical therapists.
Our allied health is our terminology here. So podiatrists will have two main branches. There's the general kind of proprietary, like skin, nail kind of conditions that we treat, you know, don't tell anyone all the gunky stuff that people grow on their skin. So that's kind of a big part of it.
And then we do biomechanics. Now biomechanics is kind of the movement side of podiatrists, which is, you know, one of the most podiatrists probably get into podiatry, you know, when you do your sports podiatrists and do all the cool things you think is going to come along with that with sporting teams and the likes. Now, biomechanics training, you know, it was cool. We learned a lot about, we really got trained actually in biomechanics and how the body moves and, you know, how muscle was worked with joints and, you know, tendons and all that stuff, but all roads lead to an off-thletage.
So we did one, maybe two could be wrong, but there was no more than two classes on exercises. And the lady who ran the exercise component, like Magic, she's like, she knew her stuff. And at the time, a lot of my peers, we kind of didn't take what she was saying seriously, because a lot of the other academics in the degree kind of almost put it down a bit, you know, not bad-mapping, but almost like, well, you know, it's with the nose, some of that stuff, but really his advice is going to be using to pick people. So it was kind of almost shut to the side a lot.
And it wasn't until years later, they actually reached out to her again and went, wow, like, thank you. Some of that stuff's actually clicked and I'm now down as a rabbit hole and trying to pretty much doing what you were telling us to do back then full time. Like what was her response? Because I can imagine one of two, well, I mean, I can imagine one would be, wow, because I was aware that, you know, people were completely dismissing what I was saying, but I knew that, you know, maybe one day or, I mean, sort of like I talked to Phil Maffetone, we don't know, he's a very well-known running coach, distance coach, and he's been talking about minerals for where in barefoot running since the 80s.
And when I became friendly with him 10, 12 years ago, I said, do you feel like vindicated that people caught up to you or mad that it took this long? He goes, that one. That's pretty much what she said. So it ended up getting me at this point, I was doing what I've been doing for a while, the barefoot stuff.
And it's actually going to be often teach at the uni, a couple of workshops, to kind of say what I was doing and try and get that message to some of the fourth year students that were about to graduate. And to answer your question of, has that curriculum changed and more natural movement now? It hasn't. So I went into to teach this workshop, so it's not their old day of teaching tutorials and workshops for those fourth years, running them through the basics of natural movement and why we need to look at other paradigms as well to fix the same problems and just kind of get it from a different angle.
And most of the questions, pretty much all of the questions were, well, how does this work with the research? There's something to do with an ortho. Like they really tried to pull me down. I mean, the fourth year students adapted to graduate.
And a lot of them bought in with a day where we're kind of opening up and saying that there was a merit in trying to fix the problem, not just the end of the problem, but that's four years of conditioning of putting every patient into a supportive shoe, essentially an ortho. And then getting them on that subscription for orthoics for their lifetime. I have a friend who was studying for physical therapists who, when they got into the section about feet called me and said, did you know the guy who came up with orthotics was a chiropractor who just made up the idea of positioning a foot in a particular way with no evidence behind it? And I said, in fact, I actually didn't know that one.
She goes, yeah, that's kind of shocking. Don't you think? Yes, it is. But what people realized is that you could sell this product year after year after year after year after year by doing so.
Do you think there were obviously people don't know the history of orthotics and the original idea actually was like a cast for your arm if you broke your arm, just a temporary measure to allow some tissue to heal, but not something you're supposed to wear all day every day. So that combination of not knowing the history of it and seeing the monetary potential, how much do you think that was just influencing the way people were thinking from day one? I've always said if we weren't allowed to prescribe orthotics, so my job was to say, yeah, you need an orthotic, you know, all right, prescription, but I make no money from that. Or I can we would see like a gazillion to the percent of like what's out there now, you know, it's almost like it's becoming industry.
And unfortunately, that's the world. You know, you go to an optometrist, they kind of want to sell you glasses because that tell you make their money. Yeah. You know, like, you know, the dentist, they kind of want to put you in braces or something like that.
It's kind of a broken system, I feel. And I know it's the way it works. And it's like, I'm not trying to change the world, but like it is a broken system. When you're going to the person who is trying to tell you you need something, but also takes the money from that.
It's not like you use car salesman, right? They got to tell you it's what you need that car and take the money. You know, they know when you drive the road, it's going to break down like here's the conflict. It's just people off.
So I like that you brought up the glasses analogy because I when I found out that I needed glasses, which I'm not wearing because I'm fine at computer distance, I had a friend who was an optometrist, or an ophthalmologist, a camera witch, doesn't matter. Anyway, and so I need a pair of glasses and I said, can you, you know, get me a deal on these frames? I'm looking for you. He goes, oh, yeah, absolutely.
You know, here's called my office and just tell them that just I sent you in just to give you our price. And so these frames I was looking at retail $500. Guess what the guess what his cost was and there's still profit built into that. Guess what his cost was on a $500 pair of glasses.
$250? $70. Oh, yeah. So let's piss people off on the orthotic side.
So the average orthotic cost X and what is it? It's sold to that patient for X. What's a practitioner chart are getting? So it's changing a lot currently, supposedly because of all the shortages in people and supplies and things, but anyway, you're not going to know in a normal world.
So roughly, let's say a cheap pair of orthotics in more rural. Well, let's go Sydney, Sydney prices up there looking around $800 for a pair of orthotics in Sydney. Oh my God. Okay.
Regional maybe closer to, you know, five, six hundred cost on that could be anywhere from 200 to 300 depending on the lab views. Wow. And even that, I mean, I literally can't imagine how much money the lab is making. Well, the lab would be killing it.
Well, you know, like the materials aren't. Yeah. So, so here's the other thing, right? With orthotics, it just drives me nuts.
Old school orthotics, yes, I could see value in paying 500 bucks from orthotics. The handmade from go to work that, you know, you manually mold the cast to get that mold. The practitioner's kind of, you know, doing something to keep the right position and they know what they're trying to create. With their hands, that goes for a lab or, you know, old school that drives you to make it in house.
And it was all handmade these days. It's printed, most of them printed. Even though some labs that have a, it's scanned, you scan the foot. And when it goes to their lab, the computer system picks the closest template to that foot.
So it's not even 100% custom. It'll go well, that foot has, you know, this size and this width and that kind of deep of an arch from the sand. Our closest template to that is template C. This is printed out.
That's right. The cover on center to the project. But I just might have to make a few modifications in, you know, just grinding a few bits and pieces to make it feel more comfortable when it gets your foot. That's it.
So now, and these are really cranky with the right. You know, it's back in the day, I believe, I believe I thought he's had a place, you know, it's like saying plastic has to be around down to the place. Like, if you have a ninja foot, there are times structurally or whatever that can be a really good thing, you know, I still prescribe every now and then for so there's not patience. There is a fine place.
It's done well. Right. Now, as the righteous, we held, you know, a really good way doing it. We move the masters in, I thought it'd try it.
Since it's become this whole scan technology and just a scan of scan technology. I thought I slipped up that. I appreciate it. Since we started scanning the foot, it's now open the door to every now and then dog is trying to sell athletics.
I know, physio up north of us here, advertisers that, you know, while you're at a graduate, you can get his bowling house, one-stop shop, and we use the same technology, my foot, the local production does, and he's not lying. It's just like, he might have a different way of prescribing and maybe doesn't understand how the right to prescribe, but it's true. He's using the same software, the same scanning device, the same lab. So it's the same methodic.
He's charging a little bit less and incorporating that into some rehab with, you know, his physical therapy. And why wouldn't we go that? Right. I mean, like as a consumer, it sort of, so yeah, I feel like we've tried ourselves in the foot.
Yeah. Hence why, years ago, I started jumping into this barefoot thing and like it made more sense to me. I wanted to fix that. I wanted to get off that kind of bandwagon of fighting with other industries, with my own industry.
And were you concerned if you dropped the incessant prescription of orthotics that it was going to dramatically affect your income? Well, yeah. But even to the university, I didn't like the athletics. I did really kind of life-hate relationship with them.
I could see there was a time and place and I understood, you know, that through uni, there was this competition in house that used to take place amongst the students. It was kind of driven by one of the main lecturers who owns an orthotic lab. So all the athletics from the university went to his lab, right? He was one of the teachers at the uni.
Now we had to make one or two cares a year ourselves as part of our degree, like physically make them from scratch. The rest you could prescribe through the lab. So there was this kind of, you know, it wasn't an official award. It was a in-house kind of joke award that we would see who would make the most orthotics that year.
You know, it was the alfocic guru. And I said, like, I would prescribe my minimum that I had to do. And you know, people would go, why are you casting them up? Cast them up?
It was like the terms, I think, would task the foot to get them all for the orthotics. You know, why don't you cast them up? Why don't you need to? But you know, you know, next time I became this one of the in-house joke, which I didn't think was that funny years later, I'm running into people, you know, that's all they talked about.
I were turning over the actual amount of orthotics a week and, well, is that really that cool? Like I'm turning over the actual amount of patience a week and, you know, rehabilitating the actual amount of patience. That's a cool conversation rather than, you know, talking about how many devices you've prescribed. So that kind of turned me off a lot to begin with that whole competitive side of it.
It made it feel to me like I wasn't doing justice to the industry. And that's when I started looking into fixing myself and getting myself out of the orthotics I was in. Because that's the only way I could keep up my numbers with everyone else was to keep us running myself some. Because I felt bad giving them patience.
And when I started fixing myself, that's when I kind of stumbled across just a whole new world of information and mentors that are popping out of the woodwork that I started coming across. And my main one was the chiropractor actually, really got me looking at joint movement and then, you know, getting that foot moving and mobilizing again. And from there, I just couldn't look back. You know, I was kind of like, when you're eyes open, you're like, damn, like, you know, I can't sort of go back into that world.
So you have the money side of it, yes, it's a concern. But it's not why I went into video entry, you know? Well, it also occurs to me if you're not prescribing orthotics all the time. And if you are genuinely trying to rehabilitate someone, that's a whole different kind of business building that one has to do because you're not just in and keeping them in year after year with a new prescription every year.
So that's a completely different way of thinking about how you're building a practice, I imagine. Yeah, and my, I guess my downside is I try and get realizations to this though. You know, I know some physical therapists like Lee that will do exercises, but it's almost like they try and keep people on that that wheel of keeping them as long as they can doing exercises in-house. For me, I really want to try and empower the individual and teach them how to do more of this stuff.
So I want to be as at least hands-on as I can with people, it's kind of how I approach rehabilitation. If we can, I'm obviously helping people do hands-on stuff, mobilizing food and strength-work and manual therapy where we need to. But my approach and my philosophy, I guess, is if we can empower that person to understand what's happening with their own body, then they can start looking after themselves and making better choices to fix their own feet or at least manage their own feet long term. They're not going to rely on me, which for the business point of view is probably terrible.
But it helps me sleep at night. Well, it makes you feel any better. We've had a number of people say the fact that you have a 5,000-mile soul warranty is really on your shoes. It's really stupid.
If you're placing shoes more often, I go, no, I want to have people have a better product and a better experience. So the same idea. I mean, I want to get back into your story about the transition, sort of what you discovered and what that transition was. But before we go there, I had two questions that popped into my mind.
One is, I imagine some people come to you and they really are looking to be taken care of rather than having to take responsibility for themselves. Do you encounter that? And if so, how do you handle that? I do.
So I think, no, I think I know, a lot of people are still with being conditioned. As humans in this society, we live in at this time on Earth to be looked after. If we feel sick, we get a doctor, we expect that doctor to give us something to make us better. He doesn't make us better, we go back and they give us something else.
We don't take any responsibility for our own health anymore. And that's not because of the doctor, that's everything. If you want to get sick, you join a gym, hoping that gym is going to make you sick. You can still take responsibility for the gym, but you want to make it.
We want that quick fix and hoping that that thing that we're purchasing is going to make us better in some way. So I get it every day. Like most people come in here wanting to know how I'm going to fix them. And, you know, through educating any kind of people on that vibe as well, talking to people how much they're going to do on their own.
I tend to find people that really don't want to take any responsibility, don't tend to hang around long. And not the bad way, they're not going to be very polite and in front of, we'll just say, look, I don't think this is for me. This is a bad foot kind of exercise approach. I really want to throw it at you, you know what I mean with it.
Or, you know, can you send me someone's way? If they're local, I still want to help people. They're local. Sometimes I'll just do that to help them get out of pain and get them back into life.
If they're not local, I get a lot of Zoom patients, then, you know, I'll try and solve someone locally for them to help with that. But you can only help someone who wants to be helped, you know, so I don't take it to hire anymore. It's just, you know, once you educate someone, I still feel like if you, like quite some of what happens, I've had people that have, you know, begged me for a thought because I just didn't have time to do exercises or whatever. Normally it's like two, three years later, I'll send them again.
I remember what you said, like these are the kind of worn out. Like, they're in the hat comfortable and kind of kind of wear. You're choosing them on wear and this and that. That's still an option to, you know, look at those exercises and normally by that stage, they're ready and actually go at it, health leather and do really well.
So I still feel like even the people that aren't quite ready at the time, just by sinking that seat in and educating a little bit, it's still there. And so most of them, at some point, be able to go, you know what, this method isn't working. I really want to try a different approach. And I'm seeing more and more of that now after using music, talking about this.
Well, I'm going to tell you where this is going. So the first thing I want to do next is hear about what it was like when you made this transition to what you're now, think of as the barefoot podiatrist, what that means. And then the second thing I'd like you to talk about, I know you can't prescribe just kind of a generic protocol. But if somebody were going to come see you, what are the kind of things that they end up doing or walking out, then having to do just so they get a sense of what's doable.
And I guess maybe there's a third thing, which is for people who are not seeing you privately yet, anything that you would recommend that people do to just kind of take this first step, pun intended, with natural movement and foot health. So that's your transition, what it's like when people come to see you and what you want to give someone the pun intended walk away with. I'll try to remember all three of those, by the way. Please, I've already forgotten.
I had to say all three of them otherwise I'd forget. So because that's where my brain works. Wait, I'm going to do you, patient, and call to action. All right.
Now I know what that means. Okay, you're first. So with the transition from you made just like how is that looked? Yeah.
No, like what happened? What did you do? What was the thing that was that kind of revelatory? I mean, like for Irene Davis, who we've talked with on the podcast and talked about, who was teaching people how to make orthotics, she was at the University of Delaware, and then suddenly realized, wait, you know, when people come in to see us as physical therapists, we want them to move as much as possible, pain free.
But then we're immobilizing their foot. Why? That doesn't make sense. And that led her to start investigating.
And that led her to becoming the number one researcher in minimalist footwear in the world. What was, you know, I guess the easiest way to put it is what's your version of that story? So for me, I was actually, like I said, for years and years, you know, I had a ACL torn news guys were a snowboarding thing that happened. I was not talking about that story at Raw.
Because I tried snowboarding when there was no snow and that didn't work ever well. Yeah. So I had an issue, constantly with my Achilles and my plantar fascia forever, you know, all my kids were the kids and my knees were the app and my eyes were the bright reds, started back in that road and shoe reps in every other way, giving your shoes. That's what I did to try and get us to sell their shoes, which is fine.
But I tried everything and just I was always in pain. I was never comfortable and it wasn't until my eldest son had been born and wherever in Hawaii, I was walking on the beach with him, you know, hitting my arm and I just started getting at pain in my foot again. I remember sort of looking out in here, I mean, my beautiful spots in the world, you know, with this brand new little baby thinking that I'd be just great dad, I'd be chasing his kid in a few years and here I was with a sore heel as a provider, which is kind of like feeling and at that point, it's like something needs to change. Like your thotties, the shoes hadn't worked.
Like I'm missing something here, like half an hour, even fix my own feet. When I'm up at the right, just like here, I am trying to help other people's feet day in day, I was the same issue and I went down to his rabbit hole then researching, reading, and just trying different things myself. I was just patient zero just the first I tried minimal shoes to me, which back then, I think I started with night three was like the first time I was obviously no. Not even a middle shoe, but that's the way it was positioned.
It was more minimal than what was around it from here. I mean, flexible. Yeah, it was a smaller drop as well. Yeah, a little bit.
I mean, it's not a big flared heel, but I remember when I got up here, those it was just miraculous how much I could feel because the solar calculated more. That was really cool, but it was still pretty built up and all the rest. But that one thing of just having more, especially laterally, more flexibility laterally, was I remember really walking down the street and being kind of amazed by that. Well, it's the same.
So it didn't fix my feet, definitely. But that feeling of what the shoe moves, how I like my surfs, as I'm always on the big, therefore, I like that feeling and my feet moving, it's just it was causing a lot of pain before. So that kind of just got me interested in what is this kind of flexible night that they're playing with. There must be something behind this if not knowing down this road at that point.
So I thought, and the more I dug it, I realized, yeah, well, I'd have been walking my foot up. There's all these joints in there and joints are meant to move. Half the muscles in my feet were weak as all hell. And I'd never really use them.
My balance was shocking. You know, here in like a like 20s early 30s surface, no border. Am I balanced after like, how does that happen? And the more I just dug into things, I started asking questions, if I knew and they put me under someone else and it just kind of took years and years, but eventually my knee pain went away.
My and wasn't that wrong, actually, but my knee pain went away. My knee started moving like it used to my balance improved. My foot pain disappeared and I was able to run around like with my child at the time, a lot more freely and happily. And it just I couldn't go back.
So it was just this whirlwind of learning and then patients asking me like, what I was doing, all these different shoes I was wearing and whatever. And then I wanted to post stuff about it. So at the time Instagram was a platform and Facebook that I was kind of just on the product stuff. And I just had a posting stuff on the clinic page for patients.
So they were like, I was like, you know, I didn't really have any fancy software at the time. So that was the way me just going, look, you know, I'll put some of these online. Just jump on this page and have a look and you can do these exercises. You know, that's what I want you to do.
And you kind of started to grow and people in my industry started to get wind of what I was talking about. Anti-authority and pro-exercise. And I got smashed. I had one of the biggest athletic labs in Australia, Ringi, and pretty much like, something I didn't shut my career down.
I had people from the board also, I mean, to watch what I was saying, that I, you know, there's people from the top of the grocery board seeing what I'm doing and talking about and that I could do in breach of, you know, certain things. Like, and at that point, I was going to remember that, I'm getting smashed. So this is, I was getting really worried, you know, here I am, my little business and, yeah, I'd be writing out. It was just kind of a little, kind of, I mean, my little band, we're just doing our thing.
I was just posting some stuff that I'd wave in. It was nothing too out there. And here I am getting pumped. And I thought at that moment, well, I either, you know, stepped back and just kind of not put this out there, which I almost did.
And I thought, well, if I'm pissing people off, but they shouldn't be worried about me. Like, I was no one, I am no one, you know, like, I'm a little podiatrist here with no followers. Like, what are they worried about? And then just got my back up and I went harder and posted more and started speaking more public, like public speaking, out of dance.
And eventually a lot of the naysayers kind of just, you know, fell off. But this kind of tribes started to follow and it's kind of growing to where it is now. It's a point that I did get to speak at the beginning, you know, I've spoken lots of different events through the most thing around 700 people at this moment, as well as a event, Danny Melbourne a few years ago. Like, I'm glad I took that plunge.
And, you know, as much as people didn't want to put this information out there, it felt right and it felt like I needed to do so. That's how it grew. And now that's what I did. I love it.
And so when someone comes to see you, this is the second part, what's that experience like? What do you do to kind of evaluate what's going on? What's the conversation like about the introduction of natural movement and exercises ranked rather than getting posted within orthotic? So I get two types of patients generally, either people that know what I'm about and are already all for it.
They've seen it online. A lot of those people have already bounced around, you know, multiple podiatrists, physical therapists, potentially chiropractors. They've had a lot of different treatments and they used to scan into them. They tried everything.
What am I going to do? You know, like, what else can I possibly do? Or I get people to just have no idea. They're here because they've got the source for it.
And they go to podiatrists and I find they're actually hard because you need to educate and really explain what's going on. The people that get it and have tried everything, they want that fixed. Yeah. Now, often when people come with pain, they're kind of surprised when I'm not that interested in the pain.
You know, they want to talk about the pain forever. Like, that's cool. Like, we can do that a name if you want. But I want to say how you're moving.
So we do a full functional assessment. I want to say how that person's moving, what they're doing with the rest of their body, the hips are moving, you know, just lots of different movements stepping up, stepping down, squatting, lunging, single leg, you know, partial squats. Lots of different movements depending on their age and ability. But I want to say as many movements as I can to work out where the breakdown, whether this function is in these movement patterns.
Now, what I've found is a lot of these injuries I see that are chronic, they're not because you've done something silly and injured. You know, you're tricking on a gut, you know, you're spraying drinker, like that's a different sort of treatment, right? These ones that are, these foot pains, these knee pains, these back pain, that have been there for years and nothing seems to work, that's blind mechanics. That's the way you're not moving or lowering that tissue incorrectly.
And it gets sore, it gets burned out and sore. So I assess how people move and then generally once I've done all that, it starts to make sense to them. When I start saying things like, you know, your foot's doing this, you're not doing this when you're walking, which is loading this tissue, it is now the breaking point, which is why you've got pain. But I consider it in tricking pain all day, like you've had for the last, you know, six, 12 months at other places, we're not going to get anywhere.
We need to change how you move. And that normally clicks and they kind of get that and can see, you know, it's common sense why you see it. And from there, we'll either do manual therapy to work on some of the pain because if they're in pain, it can be hard to sometimes fix movement anyway. But a lot of the stuff I do is exercise based, but it's neuromaskular exercise based.
So not so much strengthening or flexibility, even though there is some of that in there, it's more drills to try and get the brain to use those patterns again. So you're kind of getting, you know, it's like you have a really strong voice that the hand doesn't work. You're not picking anything up. So it's getting that hand and that arm, especially work together again, getting brain to know when to grip, when to let go.
So you can actually pick up a bag or whatever. The foot's the same. We want those muscles, tenders, ligaments, nerves to start feeling again, to start getting some input for the brain to actually start lighting up those areas. But in a sequence that works together, it's not just on and kind of like jam on and every time another problem, it comes on and off and moves and adapts to the terrain under people.
So it's a really simple type of movement, but it works. Once that brain connects, then it becomes more subconscious pattern. I love that you use the word brain a hundred times because this is the thing that people forget, is that's the thing that's controlling the movement, but there's also a feedback loop from the muscular skeletal system. And you got to make one of them shift and the other is going to kind of go, oh, so the relationship between this.
I remember the first time I met a guy named Thomas Hannah, who he brought Feldenkrais work to America and had a session with him. And he got my body to move, basically my arm had been kind of locked in place, gymnastics injuries. And he got my arm to move in a way that hadn't moved in years, somewhat passively, but I could feel my brain going, oh, that, oh, right, I forgot I could do that. And that was what that was all needed.
Yeah, and that's the problem, right? Like, when I started my own personal rehab kind of mission, for me, it was all that strength and mobility, right? It was like, I don't know if it's stronger than my mobile, like, why would not be right? You know, that's kind of personal training 101.
Yeah. And, you know, it helped, it definitely helped, but it didn't change how I moved, it didn't change how I walked. And it wasn't until I put the ego outside, when right, I'm not going to try and get stronger, or go to maximum range of motion without control. And then I learned how to control these movements within the range I've got, and then increase that range with control.
Because most of the issues I see, it's people in positions without control, right? That's when we get hurt. You know, this whole over-pronation thing. Is there such things over-pronation?
Like, look at some of the islanders, they've got the flight of speed in the world, and they don't get injured. You know, they only have people who might have flat feet and are full of pain. It's how much control you've got in those positions, same as if you show it out, right? You get people that can get in these crazy weird positions, for one person, they can control that movement, they've got the strength, the mobility, but they control the motor control to maintain that position safely, and they're fine.
When else gets in that position, blows the whole shoulder around, and they're in surgery or something, you know. So for me now, I realize the control piece is a huge, huge part of what we need to do to rehabilitate people. And that's where things like your shoes play a huge role. It lets people start to control those movements.
Like, yes, there's proprioception and strengthening, and all these great things that we do need for helping movement. But it allows the brain to start using its own infrastructure to control that movement, not just thrown into these whipping effects with those big, chunky heels or motion control. We don't want to control motion, but we do. But not from the external device.
You want to be able to do that from within. But like you mentioned before, it starts with the brain. The brain doesn't know how to control those movements, but going to get into it. So that's the perfect segue for if we want to give people an experience, something to try, something to play with on their own, as we kind of wrap up our conversation, what would you like to give them as something to take away?
I know I'm putting on the spot. Yeah, look at that. Because there's a lot of variables based on people's actions. And it will, it occurs me.
I'm not even necessarily suggesting, I mean, when I thought to ask the question, I was thinking what movement thing might we want to share. I'm willing to go somewhere else where the thing to do would be read the following paper, read the following book, talk to the following person. I mean, wherever you can think to go for what a step might be for someone. I think next step is, and it depends on your journey as well.
You know, like if you hadn't been out of a traditional shoot, like that's where you're still at, then you want to take it a little bit easier. You know, it can be as simple as getting your old shoes off, getting for a walk on the grass. But simple things to reconnect versus going to feet. Like typically in a console, working on my way, someone, I'm working on foot, hip and breath as a connection page, which I get all three working together for the most part, plus other things, but that's not just key points that I tend to try and get that control over.
So you could start with your feet with simple things like toe yoga, you know, veto up little toes down, veto back down little toes up and switching. If you've been in, I mean, if you're a bear footer, then that's fully only quite easy. If you've been out of shoes and your feet have more of that connection, but some of it's not very much connections at feet, that simple act of just trying to control movement of the toes again can be huge. Like people freak out that they can't do that and they can use their hands.
They've got to just get that motion going again. Short foot is another exercise. It's got quite a bit of research behind it as to whether it helps functionally or not. Who knows that it is definitely another one.
But just start seeing that connection piece of trying to get your brain to use some of these muscles without load is literally just trying to get your foot to contract. So you're kind of squeezing the metatarsals of the ball your foot back towards your heel, after that, some of those intrinsic that can be a nice one to start with as well. But otherwise, you know, if you're more progressed in your journey, single leg work, like walking running like there's a lot of movement we do that we're on one leg. Yeah.
And for a lot of people, we don't have stability and control on one leg. So what's the single leg work on balance names, balance pads on the flat ground? Take away the ego. I find a lot of people, especially around here, a lot of surfers, they want to get on the Bose ball and stand there and you know, they're doing these crazy movements and it's like, oh, that's really impressive.
Can you stand on the leg on the ground for me? They're like, oh, yeah, sure. And they can't. It's like, well, you've trained yourself to stand on these weird objects, which is great.
But we still live on this flat, conquering world now that we need to be stable. So lots of single leg work, but with good alignment through your foot ankle, knee tracking over your foot where possible, and trying to use your foot and hit muscles to control and stabilize that movement, not walking the knee out or, you know, I'll present the back to try and get balanced. Do you want to be balanced with control through the foot and the hip? I think that's a great thing to get people to think of is if you are trying to balance like just standing on one foot to pay attention to what the hip is doing, pay attention to what the glutes are doing rather than just focus on the foot.
Because it's easy to think that balances all on the foot. But obviously there's other components to it. Do you know about the old man test? No.
So the old man test I saw on TikTok in the like first time I ever got on TikTok, you put a pair of shoes and pair of socks down in front of you, stand on one foot and while standing on one foot, they sock and then shoe on obviously the other foot and then switch feet and then put on the shoe and sock or a sock and shoe. So if you look on Facebook or Instagram, you'll see, so I put on a shoe and a sock and then I took off the shoe and the sock and then I did it again blindfolded. Yeah. Now I'm hopping around a little bit.
I wasn't obviously a stable, but you know, I pull it off, I'm shoe and sock blindfolded. And it's pretty funny because the first time I put on the sock and I kind of had to hop around and when I went to grab the shoe, I put the wrong shoe and put that on my foot and it's like, the hell? That feels weird. Oh, okay, I got it.
So I haven't seen anyone else do it blindfolded. I was hoping it was going to get more attention. But it is a challenge there. It is a challenge.
No one's taking me up on it. With the blindfolding. So that's what I was just saying about being on single leg. Yeah.
So once you get stable on single leg and you might have the arms kind of, you know, the upper body kind of trying to do things to stabilize you, once you can be stable, do things like eventually blindfold yourself will close your eyes, but even just turning your head to the left, you know, slowly. Yeah. Right. Why are you on my leg up, down, moving one hand up.
Yeah, that's great. Right. Because walking, we're not balanced still walking with our arms kind of like out to the side trying to stabilize us. We need to be able to balance on my leg and be stable while also mobile on the other side.
So when walking, we need stability and mobility, which is why people struggle at walking when there's a dysfunction, because our brain's trying to do two things. We're swinging arm for kind of rotation, kind of balance. You might be looking into someone's talk to us in a certain direction or looking up because something's dropped on our head or something. I don't know.
But being stable on my leg, while being able to move, you have a body, breathe well, good posture, that's one of the next progression. And those simple things that have such a profound effect on your other training, you know, gym training, running, whatever you should be doing. All kind of work on that scale as well. Do you know, do you know, Jim Clapping?
From the guy, this slack block that we sell on our site, have you seen it? No. Oh, you'll have to get you on slack block. Basically, it's like, it's some of that, you know, like a aerofoam stuff with it.
You have to go look at it. Just look up slack block on our website. Yeah. And what he does, first of all, see, he has a lot of things we were just talking about.
But one of them, he'll have you balance on the slack block on one foot, and then he'll throw things at you to catch them and he'll look at it. Just use your peripheral vision, just catch any words with golfers. And just doing that with their peripheral vision, suddenly their golf swing improves. And they're like, what just happened?
He goes, everything just got more integrated from you having to do these multiple things at one time. And that's going to translate to your golf swing. And they're like, but another thing with my golf swing. Right.
It's huge. Yeah. This stuff is like, I ran a workshop a couple of years ago before I got over in the Atlanta people in a room. Yeah.
And I ran a senior's workshop, right? Just seeing at the time in the general practice we had here, like just a lot more falls, you know, I was just kind of seeing these people hearing a falls. I thought I wanted to just try something. So I ran this little workshop here.
We had about 10 people in the first batch go through. And these people were arranged from 70 to 90, you know, one of these ladies was on a walking frame. Like, we came in for this first session. I had this, you know, planned that.
Yeah. Normally do for people like, it's really intense. And I was like, okay, I really didn't think, you know, I was going to get that kind of hatred. But that's fine.
So I changed it all up. And we did just simple, simple things just like to tell you, you know, like we're just saying, like working on single way balance, holding on. You know, by the end of this, I think we did five weeks from memory, just 40 minutes sessions, each week just going through simple drills by the fifth week. I remember that lady on the walking frame was balancing without the walking frame.
She did a lap up and down my clinic, without the walking frame. And was like, I feel like I keep using it. I'm like, you know, like, but he was insane. Blooming away, but just when you're talking about it, we're just doing things like, you know, I had to stand on my leg and just reach and they were possible back and forth with each other like tennis.
Well, simple things like that. It was fun as well. Like I mentioned, it's fun. And it was just blooming away how it changed all of these people was great.
It's a huge one. And I'm very misunderstood. I mean, I can't, I'm always amazed when I see some elderly person who has balance issues and a doctor recommends a thicker shoe. I was like, I need more motion control.
No, no, no, that's a whole thing. Well, I know that you got to go. I've used your time. I really appreciate it.
How can people find out more about you and what you're doing and get in touch with you? I'm going to be talking about social medias, the best with the right, that's on Instagram and Facebook. Otherwise, my website is the best with movement.com.au. I'm.au.
Keep that that. Yes, enough to calm. Paul, this has been a total pleasure. I'm looking forward to when people are traveling around the world more and we get to see each other live in person where you'll discover I'm much taller on video than I am in real life.
I'm not sure. Perfect. I actually was funny to say that I have one friend. We've never seen each other in person.
We've known each other for 20 years. And it wasn't until like two years ago where we both discovered where the same height. And it was like, oh my God, I never met. I've neither of us ever thought of that.
I was like, wow, I pictured you as taller than me. Me too. Perfect. Anyway, well, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. And for everyone else. Thank you.
Once again, head over to Natalie Paul site. But if you want to find out more about what's happening with the movement movement, that's www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You'll find previous episodes, all the places you can find the podcast, all of our social media channels, et cetera. And if you have any questions or suggestions, anyone you think we should have a conversation with including people who might think I have my head totally at my butt and I'm diagnosed with the case of cranial reorientation syndrome.
I'm happy to have that conversation hasn't happened yet, but it would be super fun if I did.