How can someone who not only makes orthotics basically for a living but teaches other people how to do that have a change of heart and become the preeminent expert in minimalist footwear and natural movement? You're about to find out 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, strong body starting with a feet first since those are your foundation and on this podcast You know we get rid of the mythology the propaganda sometimes the outright lies that people tell you about what it takes to run walk dance play Hike whatever it is you like to do enjoyably and more effortlessly. I'm Stephen Sashan I'm your host for the movement movement podcast. I don't know why I say that you want to go again But more importantly if you like what we're doing, you know the drill subscribe like share review go to www.ww.jw.org Join the movement movement.com to find out all the places where we are and all the places you can interact with us and if you have any questions or Suggestions or complaints or just want to share a poem or pay Palme some money you can send that all to move at join the movement movement.com.
So let's jump in I want to introduce you my dear friend Irene Davis actually it's more fun to say Harvard's Dr. Irene Davis But you know when I say that I have to clarify or I have to add you weren't always at Harvard You started out at my sister's on the modern of the University of Delaware where she was a fighting blue hen Yes, I think the only mascot less intimidating than the Montgomery County Community College slightly annoyed ferret But and right now you are not at Harvard. You are doing something really wonderful. You're vacationing.
So thanks for taking the time to chat No worries. It's happy to be here and how else would you like to introduce yourself? I hate introling people because it always sounds too ridiculous So if you're on an elevator and someone says what do you do what do you tell them? Hmm?
I told them that I am I was first a physical therapist And I'm always a physical therapist, but I'm also a biomedicalist. So if you put physical therapist to buy mekins together I'm a clinical by a machinist. Okay, that works that works. That works.
Yeah, that's a good one Actually before we jump into things I always like to start this podcast since it's about movement and about creating the whole Well, the movement movement is because we're trying to make natural movement the obvious better healthy choice the way natural food is and So we always like to start with something movement. Would you give anything you want to share with humans? Sure, one of the things I like to think about this is called active standing And so if you are standing you can either stand very slouched or relaxed Which is what most people do or you can actively stand and once you start to actively stand you actually that starts to become your habitual standing pattern or posture So it's something that you have to sort of think about in the beginning But then you eventually have virtually adopted what active standing is is you stand Obviously you're standing your feet from straight ahead and the first thing that I think about is doming my feet So for those people don't know what doming is you press your toes you straighten your toes Stiffen your toes press them down into the ground and then pull the ball of your foot back towards your heel So you're basically shortening your foot sometimes called short foot exercise and contracting those muscles of your arch So you start there and then you talk your butt in a little bit to get a neutral pelvis you tighten your abdominals You pull your shoulders back a little bit slide your head back a little bit and then stand there And it's a very different stand if you take that stance and then relax everything You'll see the kind of your your habitual stance posture So what everybody just start thinking about incorporating active stance into their day And I want to add the first instruction take off your shoes Yeah, and I also want to add that I read the framing that you have in the camera isn't part because since you are at the beach It just looks like you're doing this so I naked which I think is awesome, but No, which right now, you know, you're framed here, which is great. It's sort of a Proof that you are not naked that is my kind of thing So I only have one question that I plan to ask you and it's one that I know the answer to because you and I talked about before But it's one of my favorite stories and that is what was your moment of awakening from being someone who was showing physical therapists How to post people's foot put them in orthotics to what you're doing now Which could not be more diametrically opposed to where that all began No, there wasn't a moment Stephen It was really an evolution of thought and I really encourage people to keep their minds open because sometimes the truth that you have today Is not the truth you're gonna have in five years from now and the truth five years ago is not the truth of today And you know, we have new information we gain new perspectives And you know, I think what happened is I had started doing my work in Understanding impacts and I was looking at strike patterns thinking that for for striking was sort of the unicorn You know, only small percentage people do it But understanding just the differences between refered striking and forward striking understanding also the relationship between the impacts that you have As a river striker and different injuries and that's kind of how I started my my careers started out looking at impacts and to interview stress fractures and then kind of continued into other injuries like plantar fasciitis and Patellofameral pain syndrome some of the really common injuries that runners sustain and then also this is kind of at the time It was sort of the time that born to run came out and Chris McDougal came to visit our lab I didn't know he was writing a book at the time So this was before born to run came out and he wanted me to look at his ground reaction forces when he ran barefoot And with shoes and started making me think about barefoot, you know running and what an article come up Gosh, and I think in the 80s and looking at barefoot running I never really paid much attention to it But then when we start talking about this and he'd been you know down with the time of Tamara He was talking about how these individuals tend to run on the ball of the feet And so you know now I'm thinking okay, I did this work in forefoot striking forefoot striking has less impacts barefoot runners typically run forefoot striking and less impacts seem to be less injurious and You know and then I kind of connected with the end Lieberman and he gave me an evolutionary biologist kind of perspective Which was me and I start thinking about that and you know Maybe this is really the way we adapted to run and so it really was a slow process I honestly probably over the course of five years three to five years of thinking about it and sort of coming to it There was a study that came out in 2010 a series of studies by by Joe Knappick in which he was looking at different shoes and Looking at the motion control shoe the cushioning shoe, you know questioning sort of whether these shoes actually prevent injury So what he did is he took half his recruits and they did this in the army of the Marines and maybe the Air Force and they Combined it all in one big meta-analysis And so there was something like eight thousand altogether half of them were prescribed to shoe based on their foot type So if they had a high archer rigid foot They got the cushions cushions shoe if they had a flat sort of hyper mobile foot They got the motion control shoe and then if they had a neutral foot they got the neutral shoe Right and then the other half all got the neutral shoe So and what he did is he followed them for not exactly sure how I can't remember how long but maybe through their their recruit training And found that there's no difference in injuries between those who were prescribed footwear based on their foot type That made me question because I was teaching scores of physical therapists this sort of approach to to to to to to to footwear and after seeing that I thought you know this is the you know there's eight thousand subjects in the studying still not finding anything Maybe we should question this paradigm.
Maybe everyone should be a neutral shoe So that was kind of my first kind of thought about footwear But then when I started looking at you know how footwear affects foot strike It started making me question even neutral footwear because footwear basically if you put a conca cushion on a hunk of rubber underneath the heel People are gonna land on it. So I'm making notes because there's a couple things you brought up that I definitely want to bring up But okay, got it keep going all right So for those who you know if you put a hunk cushion on a hunk of rubber underneath the heel people are gonna land on that heel Why is a good question? But I think in part if you land on your heel people tend to stride out for giving you can go faster in a sense I mean there's there's there's a there's a payoff for that But there's also cost and that you get it So so yeah, so that's what made me start to question footwear So and then footwear and foot strike we can we can go into that maybe a little bit later But there's definitely an interaction between the two it's funny to say that because so you and I last year where the American College of Sports Medicines annual conference and both the guys from Brooks and Adidas started their presentation by Let's use the phrase in quotes quoting Beno Nigg researcher from Canada by saying that everyone has a preferred movement pattern and footwear It doesn't matter and I I was biting my tongue because there was not an opportunity for me to counter that What I think I might have said is I was in the lab with Bill Sands who formed head of a Bible County for the Olympic Committee where what he would do when you got in his lab is he would have you wear your favorite pair shoes and then go barefoot and then try on every other pair of shoes that you brought in with you and Film you on his giant treadmill to go up to 30 miles an hour at 500 frames a second And what he saw was the exact opposite that every different shoe you wore changed your gate unless you were like a super super elite athlete Or you could pretty much put cinder blocks on their feet. Nothing changed So I was amazed that that's what they started with that idea that footwear didn't matter Yeah, and footwear matters a lot and then similarly I actually so it seems like one of my I was gonna say jobs are not sure which it is is to annoy the CEOs of major footwear brands And I had a conversation with the CEO from Brooks who they have their run signature program Where you know they put little dots around your knees and watch you squat and then have you run in socks?
This is important thing They don't want you to think you can do this barefoot in socks on a treadmill And then they somehow come up with some conclusion about which brook shoe you're supposed to wear And I just asked Jim the simple question Well, where's the evidence that improves performance or reduces injury and that was the end of the conversation? There is none I wanted to pick up on when you're coming about how footwear doesn't matter not not you think that but other people think that you know What made me really really believe that is when I came up to to found the Swatting National Running Center We've now seen over 700 patients and every single patient has come through our center I watch them in slow motion run close up of their foot right backside it barefoot in their shoes Which is 95% are in traditional shoes and in a pair of minimal shoes and and what I see is what really convinced me that Footwear really matters. I mean the changes it's not always I mean in the change no but Significant Significantly in the majority of people what were changes the way they yeah when I was in bills lab We we did a little pilot study where cuz we were what he saw when I was running just in our original sample Which was just you know piece of rubber scrap to your foot which we still sell? He noticed that my running was basically the same when I was in nose compared to when I was barefoot So we did a little pilot study We brought in people and we had them run either barefoot all four of these conditions barefoot in a pair of sandals I made for them in a pair of five fingers because we got people who all owned five thing actually no we even brought some I don't think People owned them or whatever their regular shoe was I don't know why that's for that's a weird way to do for there And what we what we saw was two things that were really interesting Actually three one was that like you said almost everybody when they switch a barefoot or in our sandals gate changed in really really positive ways for 90% of the people the second thing is that and was very consistent the second thing was that when Some people who were accomplished barefoot runners when they were running barefoot they look great and when they put on the pair The five fingers let alone their minimal shoes.
They often started over striding and heels striking But here's the kicker they didn't know they were doing it and that was because they were wearing one of those shoes that had more padding Than the others because they were made for running big air quotes And then there was oh and the third thing was the people who didn't have a automatic gate change in some way to something Where when I say better what I mean was getting their feet underneath their center of mass landing for foot or midfoot in that case It just not you know pawing at the ground just things are kind of seemingly obvious at this point at that time This is 2010 ish were sort of radical it took very very simple cues to get them to do something different where they suddenly felt better It was just kind of giving them the idea that they could do something different instead of trying to run the same way And they did it was it was really spectacular to see and what cracked me up of course is how surprised everybody else was Yeah, you know you mentioned midfoot striking and it is something I want to bring up because I knew you would yeah Just it's kind of like partial minimal shoes minimal shoes and traditional shoes I'm gonna pause you there because this is something I kind of know if you know that I do this So you I know you break things down into traditional shoes partial minimal shoes I'm gonna ask you to find that versus minimalist and I say that when you say that you're just being politically correct And I redefine it as minimalist fake minimalist and normal Studies have been done in the partial minimal shoes show that people run pretty similar to that when they run the traditional shoes It's not until you get to true minimal shoes. It really starts to see changes Yeah, and I used to think part in the beginning thought well This is a nice compromise but like people like compromise They don't like to be in the edge they like to be in the middle I mean people do like to find something in the middle But part of that is when the whole minimalist thing kicked in the first response from big shoe companies was don't do this You're gonna kill yourself and you're gonna get Ebola and you're gonna step on hyperdermagnals and the turtles will die and dolphins will come Beaching into your house whatever was and then by the end of 2010 They're all coming out with partial minimal issues and saying that those products give you the same benefits being barefoot not even compared to other you know real minimalist products and And then the companies that weren't willing to go there I mean a dentist is the one that pops in my mind first and foremost like oh here's a whole transition program Go from here to here to here, you know lower lower lower and everyone's going well Yeah, that makes sense unless you think about it when it makes no sense So yeah, the the idea of partial minimalist is definitely or fake minimalist is definitely catering to people thinking that you know Maybe I can't make it such a radical change right away, which is ludicrous. I mean you can't make a radical change right away I don't think that's ludicrous. I think you do need to gradually transition Yes, but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean you have to train you know gradually drop the height of your shoes You have to make a graduate transition your moves until you don't into your minimal shoes So obviously we do try to transition people really slowly that means the dosage that you get as well as building the capacity because It doesn't body differently.
It loads the calf differently. It loads the arch differently So I do think it's smart to you know to transition But we don't do it that way we don't go from a thick we do the other way But I started the conversation with talk about midfoot Yeah, that was another compromise that I was thought was the way to go and I actually before really studying it said okay We put strecking is a nice compromise. You don't have to work on your calf so much It doesn't look half much, but you don't get the impacts well once we start looking at our data And we have data from the ground reaction force data as well as to be a shock And what I found is that when you look at table shock or load rates which are an indication of We've shown to be related to injury. So it's how fast your body's being loaded They tend to be higher in your foot strikers who have an impact week those load rates are actually not statistically different between Riffit Strikers The foot strikers look like they're a little bit odd But they're not at all significantly different and the same with to be a shock They're similar to Riffit Strikers.
These are people who are visual Midfoot strikers and this is what I think we have to do is we have to study people in their habitual states taking someone and making them a Forefoot or a midfoot striker or whatever taking a forfeit making it's not gonna be their habitual state and This is an argument that I've had with Roger Krom here at CU where he takes people and has them switch to something barefoot And shows hey their video to max is you know worse like well? Yeah, they're doing something brand new they don't know how to do it so I love Roger love him I think he's awesome, but I've had that same conversation with him It's you know, he's done a stride length and oxygen consumption I've asked him that question too said once somebody is accommodated it's different right then that might be there you may shift I similarly like Roger very much and we see each other at track meets every summer and I made that comment I've also said look when you're studying barefoot compared to whatever you're bringing in people that you're calling a college barefoot runners I know all the barefoot runners in town I'm one of those barefoot runners in town and nobody that I know has been in your lab for the studies So I don't know who you're studying I suspect I know who he's studying and it's people who do some training on grass in bare feet which is just not the same One of his studies was actually took a treadmill where he put 10 millimeters of foam that he'd gotten from Nike on it Which was interesting of course that no Nike shoe has 10 millimeters of foam for one and the other was again It was I don't know what it was but the whole reason for doing that or one of the reasons for doing that was looking at VO2 max as a as an analog for performance There's an analog for efficiency and I thought that was an interesting bit of hand waving because no one in the barefoot world ever claimed That if you run in bare feet, it's more energetically efficient And of course more nor is there any correlation between VO2 max and performance because if there was we were to see who had the biggest We had to see who had to get to max that day and give them a trophy So, you know, there's ways around that so I thought that was very interesting and look I'm not trying to rush her under the bus when I say this but over a beer I said to him we know that studies or the meta-analysis of studies of pharmaceutical drugs show that if the pharmaceutical company is paying for The results tend to air in their favor more often than if it's an independent study and said, you know, your lab is Nike sponsored So don't you think there's anything in there that might be problematic and I'm not surprised that he said no And I don't know that there is but you know, it gives me some pause. Yeah, it's hard because you know when someone wants to fund your lab Right that's why that but it's it also does it gives an apparent conflict of interest I mean I trust Roger. I think he's very is a lot of integrity But yeah, I find it difficult I've tried not to to take but wear money for that reason unless I offer so for example our Boston Marathon study We went to every footwear company everyone and the only people that were willing to support it and the study wasn't about footwear It's about running out by and what was my room so vibrant did support one of those studies But you know we offered it to Adidas.
We offered it to everybody went to all of them So in that case, it's a little bit different, but it is hard I mean I understand why people do it I mean Joe Handles had a lot of commercial support as well as well as Ben and the egg and all of those folks But it does it does give at least an apparent, you know, so the parent come up I mean we're concerned about that from our side Elena in particular what really wants to fund some studies assuming We have the cash to do that which right now our cash is going in inventory But it's something that if we raise an extra capital she wants to fund some studies and and I said it's inherently problematic because people are totally gonna say Well, you know, of course the show that whatever you're doing is better because you put up the money It's funny back up to the ACSM thing. This is something I quote often I don't remember I think it was the guys from Audi who said, you know Well, we say that we're all about reducing injury and improving performance We don't have any studies to show that because doing that would be very time consuming take a long time Cough a lot of money have a lot of confounds that would make the results sort of suspect and again It wasn't my position to say anything But my thought was dude if you can make a shoe Demostrally scientifically better than the guy sitting next to you and I was a guy from Brooks That's worth billions of dollars a year and you're saying you haven't done it because it's difficult I mean, you know, I know that there I've heard rumors of studies that have been done internally from larger companies where it did not Prove what they wanted to prove and those studies have not seen the light of day But I mean it couldn't be more clear that if a shoe was significantly demonstrably better People would be shouting that from the rooftops and there could not be more incentive for a lot of companies who have done that over the last 50 years and no one ever has and in large part because they're just reinventing the same broken wheel I was just at this big trade show in Germany I said somewhat a politically that because I kind of lost the urge to be politically correct or diplomatic I said if you walk around this hall and just swap the logos for most of the shoes you wouldn't be able to tell There's maybe one or two brands where we make a difference and even then you go. Okay, looks the same It's shocking. So actually I thought of one other thing that I want you to talk about that I'm from a previous conversation of ours early on when we first started chatting one of the things you said to me which was very Striking and frankly kind of both inspiring and sad at the same time and also riled me up You'll see where I'm going with this as soon as I tell you what it is was that one of your big hopes was that before you die People understand the impact of what you've been discovering and researching and studying and sharing with people I'm really curious what your thoughts are about why it's been first of all Why it is that we in the natural movement space need to prove anything because we're not the intervention the intervention is what's been happening for the last 50 years But but then why it's so shockingly difficult to get people to hear it understand it try it experience it etc when it is so Screamingly obvious.
So I don't think I exactly said what you said I'm telling it I'm telling it I guess what I really want to see is for us to revert back to allowing the feet to function more naturally in kids And then it becomes the norm that was part of it Now part of what you part the other thing that you said in that same conversation to the best extent of my memory Which I'm never claiming as accurate was yeah We just get kids to be doing this now in 20 years We wouldn't be treating adults for all the problems they have right now these conversations like there'd be Conversation right and I would be very interested to know what the injury patterns would be like You know we all can say what we think and we can hypothesize but we don't know But I did a search on the term running injury and the midline search from 1900 to 2000 Just a thing for the last hundred years. There was nothing in the literature I'm not saying there wasn't one study that didn't have running injury in its title But was still but there was not one study with running injury in its title until 1977 right not one and then afterwards There are thousands of thousands of them now from 1977 to present when did you fix this book come out 80? I think I was in high school and I graduated in 80 so like late 70s So probably somewhere right around them, but certainly not 77 is definitely not the time in which the running boom kicked off So it wasn't that you know so that predates that but that's really interesting very interesting and what that tells me So they're the very first running report injury report that I could find was 1971 a newly minted runners world put out a survey to its It's readership. Yeah last about injuries and they found that the people who reported injuries I mean other people that that replied I think it was something like 20 something percent I've gotten the I use knee injuries as an example and then they repeated it in 73 that 800 runners in 71 and then 73 They repeated two years later and I had 1600 runners and then the knee injuries increased and so you can start to see that things were increasing just from that early injury study But that wasn't published that was something that was the first published article You have to think that if injuries were happening a lot that they'd be in medical literature right I mean medical issues better off for a very long time.
Yeah people have been running marathons for a very long time now I don't think you can disassociate though the running boom with the footwear change I think I think they can't get together right there is a lot of your relationship there So more people were running right who were less fit but they weren't as confident as we are today No, because look the people I mean yes It was a boom, but it wasn't like it wasn't like you know the boom happened on day one It's only everybody started running just regardless of their physical State of physical fitness the first people to adopt it were the people who are already kind of hit to the idea be to begin with You didn't start seeing you know really overweight people getting into marathon still for a while Yeah on it But you know it's interesting because what happened is you had people who are not used to running running in flats And this is this comes from talking with Jeff Johnson who was one of the early he worked with Nike very early on he actually came up with a Nike name I believe and I had a conversation with me doesn't have email I think he has one of those phones on the wall with a curly The sense of it and he told me about you know how they were he was running in in the 50s on plim sol She was like the just a rubber sole and can't keep on top and he said they had very few injuries very very anecdotal But he said what happened is when other people started running so people who were not used to running and they were getting Reports from these sports podiatrists that that they're having these injuries and they brought three very well-known sports podiatrists in that is Vixi Steve Sivatnik and Harry Hill have neck I think anyway, they they came in they said look You know we think that they're getting injuries from hitting too hard not enough cushioning and too much motion and also because they were used to Walking and shoes to walk into such a chill and so now they're putting a strain on their kiddies So what they did is rather than have runners adopt adapt to the shoe and the footwear that all the other runners were running in Which were basically minimal they started adapting the shoe to the person What's this idea this idea that did to the right that that you need to you know give them that relief and they kill These tennis and I've been elevated heel give them cushioning because they're you know There's that's a problem because they hadn't learned how to attenuate their logette give them motion control But what happened is the very the very Adaptations that they made actually I believe a further created problems Well, I agree B. You know you and I have another mutual friend Mike Frittan who says he was at a track meet I don't remember with how many of those three eyes and said so you know your idea has become ubiquitous And this is it's just this is footwear design now What do you think and the response was biggest mistake we ever made wow and you know the whole thing about heels back to the With her why it happens it's funny if you look at the not funny if you look at the videos that Lieberman brought back from Africa with A bit for runners and look at their foot strike pattern I mean their heel is like so close to the ground as it's coming through the swing phase and then at touchdown It's barely off the ground so if you just throw something that's more than a half an inch on their heel They're gonna hit their heel in front of their body because they are not unlike anyone else They're not gonna just change their movement patterns immediately So if they don't change their movement pattern right away They're gonna land on the heel and then they have that padding of course, you know Calcaneus heel bones of balls, so that's unstable So now you need motion control and if you're landing with your foot by the time your foot comes down It's totally flat your plan or fashion or in this weak position And so if you're gonna do anything to deal with that You're gonna put in quote art supports You don't need to use your arches put it all together and now you have something where you're preventing all sorts of everything Not letting the foot function in any way and what a shock that we're getting having problems I mean, it seems like this obvious evolution of errors. Yeah, so that's why it's hard for me to understand why people are so Doug in I mean, I know there's any other I think some of it similar and you know, I'm gonna sort of segue into something funny I got two notes of things I wanted to say but the first one I have to tell the story this way Or I have to set up this way or it's just too offensive So about 10 15 years ago one of my best friends calls me and he says, you know what your biggest problem is I said, this will be fun And he says your biggest problem is that you just tell people if they're factually incorrect or logically inconsistent or in some cognitive bias Or anything like that where they're not thinking clearly and you do that because you find it really interesting when people do that to you And you think they're gonna find it interesting and go oh, but mostly they think you're an asshole and I said oh my god I've literally never put it together like that before and he said see you just did it so which is true So in a similar vein, I'm gonna say I have a theory about what your biggest problem is and your biggest problem And this is and it's not that it's your biggest problem But I think this is an answer to the question why it's so hard is that Human beings when they come to a decision think they've done it rationally They think it makes sense and especially with all the marketing behind the footwear We're talking about they get a lot of evidence for that despite the fact that that footwear hasn't worked for them And they keep changing over and over and over and over and over and over and over I've referred to this as the boy who cried or the shoe company to try wolf The only difference being that we keep showing up to see if there's a wolf despite the fact that there never has been for 50 years But because they made this rational decision, it's also energy inefficient Evolutionarily and energy inefficient to make up new ideas to come up with alternatives and counterfactuals what you already believe and what? What you're often doing brilliantly I believe is presenting more rational information And it's there's a lot of psychological literature showing that when you present someone with information that conflicts with their existing belief It actually makes them dig in harder because it's just that's the way we're wired and it makes me wonder like what's the way around that and certainly My experience has been that experience is one way around that But I think there's got to be another way to encourage people to have the experience to begin with It's beyond giving them all the data that shows that what they're currently doing isn't gonna give them what they want I mean, how many studies have there been showing that highly cushioned maximalist shoes don't reduce impact loading forces And yet people still buy them thinking that it's gonna be cushy and make them feel better and and feel be better for their knees when we don't see that So this is I think this is the kind of conundrum that you may find yourself in is that you're you are Both creating and discovering and inspiring all of this information But information isn't gonna be the thing that makes a change.
Yeah And it's I mean I'm wired that way, you know, the you and me both evidence is my coin. It's my metric It's you know, so I keep thinking that if we can demonstrate that like when people run in minimal shoes It's been shown that the Achilles is stronger and stiffer. It's been shown that muscles are stronger Stronger feet are gonna be healthier for you. It makes sense to me, but I read don't I need our support Yeah, I know seriously that is don't you get that as the follow-up like but don't I need one of the arguments?
I get which is maybe not a bad argument is that having some padding in their shoes allows them to run farther and there may be some truth to this I'm not gonna argue that one but because there's Especially with ultra runners where by the time they're in the last part of the race You know their form has degraded to complete crap and they just need to do something to get through the rest of the race I'm all for it, but for the average recreational runner. It's like just you know do a mile less and be healthy Well, so this is it's because people I was telling you're out running your capacity your body has a capacity to cushion and to control You're right if you want to run farther than your body has ability has capacity for then maybe you need that crotch So to speak, you know, I mean there is a trade-off I think in terms of that and the people choose to do that fine with it But what trying to promote it if we got people and kids in minimal shoes and that's all they ever wore Yeah Have built over the years the capacity to be able to run longer distances are people play people are americans in minimum shoes With their foot yeah, not all people can and so that's that's the argument that I get and I say that I'm like if you want to run a marathon And you don't have the capacity to do it and then let's use and you probably should it's funny When I was in Germany one of the guys that I was on the panel with was from New Zealand And I brought up Arthur Lydiard who for people who don't know was the coach of New Zealand runners He was probably not successful coach in history especially to think about the population he was working with this tiny little country and the number of world champions and gold metal or Olympic medalists that he produced and there are a number of things that were interesting one is Arthur had people doing tons and tons of Mountain hill training in the shoes that he made for them, which were super thin sold You know, they look like mine frankly and even this guy from New Zealand who is now repping for a company that makes big big Patichuse was saying oh, yeah, that's what he did and it was great He believed that you know having foot strength is really important and and he's saying this while wearing a shoe that does the exact opposite What Lydiard did while talking about how great Lydiard's methods were and I heard a story that Lydiard and Bill Bowerman from Nike had like this knockdown dragout Argument about shoe design after Nike sort of doing the elevated heels and padding and Lydiard saying you're just gonna kill people and Bowerman saying that they're selling really well So, you know, it's but it is interesting the related to the phenomenon of people out running their capacity is oh wait Where'd that thought go? Oh is people using elite athletes as the example of what they should do And I keep saying, you know, you're not a hundred five pound Kenyan guy who runs a marathon into a five You're a 200 pound whatever guy who runs a 430 and so to think that what you're what he's doing on his feet is what you should be doing What you should be wearing is ridiculous and of course the other issue is that I mean so much changes when you're you know Running at speed people talk about who we've analyzed all this video data and look this guy's heel is touching the ground first when he runs like yeah Yeah, but he's running at basically 13 miles an hour and by the time he actually loads his foot It's a whole different story So yes his heel is like barely touching the round before he gets any loading and people just again So like you said people want a simple story and ironically I think we have the simplest story your feeders supposed to bend and move and flex and feel the world and that's what you should be doing I know, you know, the other thing I think we have to remember too is that if you follow like this whole mismatch of evolution and you believe that we Should move the way we're adapted to move we really weren't adapted I don't believe to run 26 miles relatively on a straight path on hard surfaces only I mean I think we were adapted run on hard surface surface variable surface right running back then what we adapted for was really stop and go Changing direction. Yeah, I think so maybe we're setting ourselves up in that way for injury and maybe repetitive use Maybe people need that footwear to be able to do that kind of running well I'm just I'm just yeah, that's interesting.
Well, what's intriguing to me about that is thinking about the fastest-running movement in running right now Is trail running and I think that that maybe because it just does have that more variability Yeah, that is helpful and feels good and is interesting and compelling and Yes, well, yeah, yeah And what's so funny? I went for a run up one of the mountains outside of Boulder with a woman a couple years ago Who I was in pair sandals and she was doing a barefoot barefoot and because she'd spent a lot of time practicing and got really good Not about what people think is that she has some massive Calices under her foot but she's got really good at mapping the terrain and running with the terrain and people looked at us Like we were the crazy ones and we were the ones that had this insane look on our face called smiling. Yeah, yeah It's fascinating. Here's another question that just popped in my head backing up to you after you do your elevator pitch I'm imagining that I'm not the only one who when I tell people what I'm doing They bring up the bebron lawsuit and as seemingly proof that this whole idea is ridiculous How do you respond when people toss that one in your direction?
So the first thing I tell them is that the bebron lawsuit was not about injury But it was about false advertising because bebron talked about how it's striking their feet There had been a study by with a Nike free showing that when you take away arch muscles got bigger and they were kind of I think Pity backing on that. Yeah, that's what they were sued on So that's the first thing I tell people but the other thing I tell people is if you went to the gym and lifted a hundred pounds The very first time it got injured. Do you think anyone would say don't ever go to the gym again? Or would they say don't do it that way and that's that's exactly what's happening You can't just take and put a pair of shoes on that now puts a greater demand on your foot the medial lower leg the posterior lower leg Primarily those are the areas get loaded the most and run your regular mods I think that you're gonna be able to do that.
It's like why not play set for tennis when you've never played You're gonna injure yourself. You're gonna be really sore or at worst you're gonna injure yourself right Yeah, I also add that the lawsuit was settled out of court Which means and for you know pennies on the dollar and I think that I've had this conversation with Tony post who had that was no longer CEO of the time and Tony says he wouldn't have settled the case because of that Nike free study and just you know I think there were some other dots that they connected I think you know it had shown that a shoe does not have our support results and and now there have been many more studies Right, right. Yeah, it was unfortunate, but it wasn't about injury Yeah, well, you know and back into what you just said about many studies and what I said earlier about the American College of sports medicine Think so the guys from Brooks and Adidas they both miss quote Ben O'Nig Oh, actually I don't know if I told you this I had to talk with Beno Sun Sandro And I was about to kind of read him the right act about this idea of preferred movement pattern and how it's just not the case When from what I've seen in the lab and what I see with the people who come where zero shoes and before I could finish the sentence He said what my dad was saying is that you have a preferred movement pattern is difficult to change assuming You're basically wearing the same kinds of shoes which every shoe is basically the same kind of shoe But he never said that if you switch something truly minimalist or barefoot you're gay It's gonna be the same it's definitely gonna change right away It's like there we go So but you know completely taken out of context But the reason that I bring that up is that when these guys said we don't have a whole lot of research to back up what we're claiming I had a slide It was just little brief screenshots from I think 40 different minimal studies and I just found by searching on PubMed for minimalist shoes And just you know one after another showing the benefits thereof or the simple thing It amazes me that we need to pull out studies that show if you use their feet they get stronger if you don't use them they get weaker That's the part is it seems so simple to me. Yeah, but you know I just think you're right I think people I think that they get kind of stuck in their dogma.
They really do it's like it's it's the way that they think and it's hard to think differently That's why I try to tell young scientists to keep your mind open because I was the person that made every orthotic You know when I was at the University of Delaware. I was a person who was in the clinic doing footer I taught it in the curriculum. I taught people motion control cushion I taught all that and I believe it but one I started to think a little bit differently and I start putting things together and reading different things might it Maybe think differently and you've got to be open to new ideas like I went back up to the first part of that So how did you learn those things to begin with from someone else who taught me who you know was basically? It was actually someone that I worked with it and did my PhD with it was really very much a foot person came from a really strong Hospital that worked on feet was more diabetic feet But but had done a lot with orthotics and and it's kind of what you taught.
I was taught some of it in school I think it was from my peers and when I was taught in school I think I just you know you kind of get that mindset So that's why it's important that we get this back into the schools You know again I want to follow it back in time so they learned it from someone So you know the question is when because what I I don't know if this is true But there's two components one just for footwear in general We know that what's called the modern athletic shoe is a relatively new phenomenon But now but you know now it's been 50 years and so we're past two generations So parents are teaching to their kids before they ever even walk into a shoe store So the shoe companies don't need to do any of the heavy lifting anymore They can just say hey don't you want to be like this guy They don't need to justify any of their designs although they try to now they do they have them running up in the shoe store With really very little experience. Yeah running and get pull out a shoe I think that's where it's coming from a lot of those coming from that the running shoe stores and marketing well Well in the marketing because someone because you know much well Yeah, but I think about I don't know about the history of orthoses But my hunch is that whoever came up with the idea of putting an orthotic in a shoe and posting me to the large and doing whatever else They need to do especially for runners Then realize that this is a way for practitioners to make a bunch of cash and created a basically a marketing plan That once that initial push was done the rest of it Just rolled and if people look back and found that initial event and saw that one that might be a way of snapping people out of a bit of a 50 Year old trance or maybe not I mean I sometimes half a jokingly say it's a shame that we're doesn't kill people because if they if shoes kill people Then we'd have a tobacco situation on our hands where there'd be a lot of incentive to do something about it's like that's shoes Yeah, it's interesting I do think there's been a change in the podiatric world because I hear more and more pediatrists say these shouldn't be permanent Right to me. That's a big change huge win. Yeah, I mean we're thought it's for like three different pairs of people's shoes You need them in all of them, right?
And honestly it was not for money at all because as a PT we never charge the same as a podiatrist did And we didn't make a lot of money. I really believed it And I'm gonna take a higher road. I mean a higher road I like to see the good people and I think a lot of the fact that I know really believe that these really help Oh, no, I agree with that completely I don't think that anyone's doing it explicitly for the money I think that they are doing it because they believe that it's useful the money doesn't hurt the money locks in that belief and But it's sort of like I was I remember when I first got back in a sprinting 12 years ago or so I went to someone because of some problem I was having and he suggested that I wear an orthotic I said I'm a sprinter you're gonna put me in a three-quarter orthotic I'm never on that part of my foot How's it ever gonna apply any forces to change anything and you watch this guy's brain explode? I mean he spent like five minutes trying to figure out tell me why it would still be useful And then you kind of realize he was at the end of his rope and had nowhere to go This was before I knew any of this it was just it seemed really obvious that I was gonna be on my toes And the orthotic did not go to my toes and that was funny one That's go to your metatarsal head so and it is supporting your arc So that when you land on the ball your foot you do bring your heel down and you do get some support from that orthotic as even as a Forefoot striker never it's actually I never felt it.
There's a company that makes makes up a somewhat concave or convex depending on which way you're looking at it What's a carbon fiber insert that they say improves performance? And you know you get more spring out blah blah blah and I put it on I ran with it I try to feel a thing because I'm never I'm never loading it in a way that it's gonna do whatever it's supposed to do afterwards And besides it's physics you're not gonna get more energy out than you put into it But I mean I literally didn't feel a thing and I like switch I put one in one shoe and nothing the other and switched them and I put it but I did everything I could think of to see if I could feel anything And just got nowhere. Yeah, yeah, I tell people I think that it's important to support the arch if you have some kind of active Plinter fashion I just you support any body part when it's injured. Yeah, right And but then you need to slowly remove that so that you can get that strength back just like you would with a back race and neck race So shoulder brace any up getting a cast off your arm That's the analogy I use if you your arms in a can ask you take it out as a trophy Do you have two choices keep it in a sling for the rest of your life or use it again?
And then it'll be fine. So what are you taking a look at now? What's coming up in the wonderful world of Irene Davis research? So we have a lot of things going on but not all but where so we're just getting the study off the ground looking at basketball players and Looking at how they land and looking at TV Shock in basketball players and how that changes throughout the games throughout the season how it relates to injury how fatigue affects how they land I'm how sleep affects how they land.
So that's that's a big one that we've got so we you know We made a smooth called a demo basketball show I put it on a WNBA player who sent me two emails that were interesting the first was I couldn't spray my ankle and these if you paid me to and the second was you know There's times where I come down from trying to block a shot or rebounding or something and I'm landing on a heel and with nothing under my heel That's really a problem And so we're trying to find this interesting balance of giving them what they need for this specific use case without creating movement patterns that we that they believe and we believe are Going to be not beneficial and it's been an interesting thing trying to work that out Especially without a giant budget where we can just make a hundred pairs of shoes for trying for other people to try It leads me to another point a lot of people ask me the question Okay, so minimal shoes for running or for walking But what about for other sports and you know walking and running are things that we were adapted to do right? I did to ski for example Yeah, and we weren't adapted to ice skate and play hockey and so in the things that we weren't adapted to do We sometimes have to have things that help us to do those activities that we're going to do If you don't have a stiff, you know ankle boot and skiing it's gonna be very difficult, right? And so I could say with basketball Whereas walking and running you can do those barefoot. Yeah, you can argue though I mean there are people there are countries that play soccer barefoot.
Yeah, when we go to Italy the kids in the piazza are playing on a concrete Yeah, it's a barefoot playing soccer. Yep. Yeah at a young age So I think you probably could adapt to some of those things but that course involves running which is something we were adapted to Well, yeah And there are just these specific situations that happen in some of these sports where you need to adapt to that in some way But again, you don't want to encourage But you don't want to take that one adaptation or that one intervention and have that apply in such a way that it affects everything else And necessarily so that's my can't wait here. What happens with that?
What else is in the? I'm looking at differences between Orford striking and minimal shoes versus forefoot striking in traditional So this is something I don't know if we talked about this one This is something I started talking about recently when I just started noticing a couple of people running by me on the track who had Good for for strike patterns, but they were wearing shoes like this So they just don't get any of that Achilles spring action going on They're just it's like they're limiting what they can what their body can do for them And I don't know have people been talking about that we weren't looking at that in particular We did we published a study in MSSE a couple years back and a rice was the first author and we found that when you forfeit strike and appear of minimal shoes Versus traditional to the other way around when you heal strike in a pair of traditional shoes or forfeit strike in a pair of traditional shoes Your resultant load rate that means the combination vertical anti-prostere and the collateral is similar so interesting The result in load rate is the same and the reason for it is the vertical load rate is less Forfeq in a pair of traditional shoes, okay Here post your immediate lateral load rates are higher Sense higher impacts in the anterior posterior direction and the medial lateral direction so for human beings so basically So the anterior posterior forward and backward So I'm guessing that what you're seeing is just more breaking forces because they're overspiting and slamming the brakes and then of course All that motion control stuff. Yeah, and the medial lateral direction if you've had a flare right You know land more inverted or more on the outside of your foot and then you're kind of pushing this way Yeah, a larger lateral force that you're applying to the ground so you have a greater braking force Well braking load rate So that's the rate of loading right and that is an indication of impact and a greater laterally applied load So we also looked and found that people tend to planar flex more as well when they landed in a pair of Traditional shoes when you put them in a pair of minimal shoes for foot striking now You see a reduction in the total resultant for load rate right and you see reductions in each of the components So it's it just gives you that indication that if you're good And I tell people if you're gonna rear foot strike keep a hunk or rubber under your heel Right, I want to refit strike without that if you want to talk about that fine I'm okay with that if you're gonna forfeit strike We see so many people coming in like this when they land yeah Parachuteal shoes and too much planar flexion You're gonna if you really want to adopt a proper forfeit strike you have to do it in minimal shoes So this is that interaction of footwear and foot strike that I think is really important a lot of people miss agreed And well speaking of things that people miss what you just highlighted was load rate rather than just total result of load Yes, that's that's something that people totally miss in fact that conversation that lane is involved with now This is the thing that part of the conversation because it was inspired by Alex Hutchinson's not great article It was an outside about total load and not about load rate at all Can you talk about why those two things are distinctly and importantly different? I don't know that's what the article that Alex was talking about He was talking about different concept, but let me just talk about but but my point is that they never brought up anything Yeah, so if you look at a vertical ground reaction force in a runner who's a heel striker It looks like a glove actually right this one pack peak and then you have a propulsion peak, right?
And so what happens is this peak here is twice the impact peak and yet this peak here has at least in my readings in our Research never distinguished who gets injured who does not that's because if you look at the rate of loading this slope here Is much more gentle. It doesn't look like it by my hand than this low So it's that rate of loading and this has been shown in other studies by like I'm reading an animal studies very early on that if you give a Rapid tibia sub maximal impacts, but but their impacts right not enough to fracture with one blow So so that there's that's what I mean by that if you do that repeatedly then they end up getting a stress fracture They did follow that up with another study looking at cow joints and they started with a very rhythmic loading to the cow joint No damage at all then they started to interject these impacts right into and they had a very quick rapid cartilage wear So the human body doesn't like impacts in general We need to be all needs some loading for sure This has been done with children and get increasing their bones. I've been done with jumping which is a four-strike pattern So I think walking striking and jumping does give you that stimulation that you need But you know, I just think that there's there's a point I think Where you know you have too much low rate. Yeah Well, you definitely some because some amount of impact force is what inspires increased bone density and there's there's some There's value there.
There's something else that it does especially with jumping jumping increases nitric oxide production And so that's a really interesting one that very few people talk about I don't know what the real effect of that is But as someone I know there was some hospital where they had realized this and for people who were bedridden They had something that was just while they were lying their bed It was just tapping their feet basically because that motion increased nitric oxide which was helpful for them There's all it's so funny again There's all these things that just doing natural movement does that are valuable and we have to prove it I know you think about somebody jumping off of a I don't know a table or some kind of stand and they land they're not gonna land with their knees They're locked no right you're gonna they're gonna first of all they're gonna lean on the baller But they're not gonna land on their heels right something went wrong, right? So that's gonna give them that that time to slow their center mass down through the the dorsiflexion because they're landing with their foot Like this so they get to yep the knee flexion the hip flexion So we naturally do that yeah if you're out on the trail and you're unsure of yourself You land on the ball you're but you don't even if you're a little striker you when you stop it stop light You don't stop and land up here So I just think you know it to me it seems like an easy argument, but there are some people that are very very passionate about it Well, we're in an interesting situation zero shoes is growing really quickly We're getting a lot more attention and it's not just about us obviously I said on a podcast recently that if we went under and the whole natural moving thing took off because the big companies adopted it I'm totally fine with that I just want this to be a real thing But I also know that the extent to which we continue to grow Before or in lieu of any big companies deciding that they've got to figure out way to do the same thing They're not gonna take it. Well, they're not gonna just go. Oh, oops We were wrong and just change and they're not going to I tend to work on the idea that you know the best idea wins Which is just not the case and I'm kind of trying to figure out how to prepare ourselves as a company for the kind of Response that frankly I would never a million years thing to do that would be just some underhanded something or personal attacks or whatever It might be because people don't react well when they're back into a corner And what we're trying to do is back a hundred billion dollar industry into a corner Yeah, I'm in favor of taking the high road and just getting as many people on board and the question is how to do it Well agreed I mean that's the only thing we can do But at the same time we have to be prepared defensively and and it's something that's not natural for me It's not the way I normally think so it's really tricky Yeah, it's tricky, but I'm hoping that you know and you asked this question earlier on about how do you get people onto this?
How do you get them to experience it because you have to testimonial after testimonial It's a fundamental shoes as long as they haven't tried to do it too quick I'll be given up once you do it. It's just they love it. You can't go back. Yeah, and they think about you once you are Custom to minimal shoes go back Christian shoes is just weird.
So how do we Steven? How do we get more people towards this minimal shoe? I think you know, it just this just occurred to me It never had before I think that we need to stage more events where we can have the quote debate and I say quote debate because we have all the evidence on our side I would argue but there people think it's a debate so what I'm thinking of I'm not trying to make a comment throw or con for this analogy But I'm suddenly thinking about the whole debate series that went on with the new atheists when Sam Harris's book got popular and Daniel Dennett and you know all the guys that are talked about as the new atheists and they basically went on tour and they just did a whole I mean these guys made a career out of debating people who they knew they would never convince because their job was not to convince the person They were debating against but and not even the convince the people who are diehards in the audience But for the people who were new to it or on the fence It just gave them a platform that they wouldn't otherwise have because a debate construct is inherently entertaining what for whatever reason watching people Yell each other you know is entertaining maybe we need to start doing something like that of just finding a good PR agency who can schedule these kind of Conversations where it's you know you and me against some designers from pick your favorite shoe company or whomever it might be and Making these things more publicly available just anything that's going to get a conversation going And it's sort of like when I think about the articles that get written about barefoot or minimalist They always try to present quote both sides I'm just keeping quotes all day They try to present both sides of an argument as if there are really two sides of an argument and invariably the person who's anti barefoot Anti-minimalist has had no experience with what we're doing and they're just making up stories based on what they imagine based on their own Preconceptions but to do that as something where it's a live real-time event with audience interaction rather than an article where you know They're gonna misquote you begin with maybe it's something like that And I do think back to the ACSM event we were at where the Q&A part was a whole lot of fun I'm just remembering one person saying to me you said that you developed arches and you're previously flat feet when you switched to Middle-of-shoes, how'd you do that? I said I used them that was the end I mean it's like the silence in the room at that moment was so delightful And there's just I don't think you can you can get make those things happen in any other way than a big public forum with a Whole bunch of people where you're really you got to be on your toes because not only for the people you're talking debating Against but the people who are in the room and that would be that would be terribly entertaining And there's a handful of people who could do that really well you being one of them I would argue I can do that also and again the entertainment the entertainment value has to be high enough I think that may be a way to have a look into that Speaking of the ACSM thing and all of this I want to kind of wrap this up with the way I remember your last question or and what was the last question of the ACSM where the way I'm remembering it correct me if you Or tell me if you remember differently was your your question of the panel was started by looking at the 60s We were wearing super thin-sulled running shoes We played basketball and Chuck Taylor's and we weren't seeing the kind of injuries or the severity of injuries or the type of injuries We're seeing now So what problem were you trying to solve and why isn't it working?
And my memory is that that was met with a rather amazing silence. I Remember that oh really? Oh, I have I have a recording not to look at it again. It was great I remember saying that if we were sitting here 50 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation Oh, that's funny because I don't remember that.
I'll look at the video again. I'll never that but yeah You have to bring that audio up again. Okay. Yeah, be careful I don't think we know how many injuries that injuries have changed.
We're just on a good rockers. This is the yeah And the problem is I'm really frustrated. I know we have to wrap this up I'm very frustrated because people say to me well I mean show me that men will shoes don't you don't have so much many injuries I put back rant and you have no idea how many times sure and it's being read by people who just really are Anti-minimal shoes. It's very clear by the comments.
They don't get it They think it's dangerous and you know so if I can't do it and I've got a lot of like pilot data and that kind of thing I'm not sure I mean, I'm not saying I'm the best grad writer But I feel like I'm really well positioned to do that kind of research So well, I know that search is really the way to go, but it's part of the way to go well again again And again, it's it's interesting I've said to someone recently that maybe the best thing that could happen is that at some point You know, we're partners with some other entity and they don't want me to be working for the company because as an independent person who could sponsor research Then even though I have would have a background that would presuppose me to believing in the value of minimalist footwear At least I'm literally independent at that time I'm not making any additional money as a result of it, etc And so if you know if not me maybe we should need to find a few well-heeled people who read born to run and believe in it Whether they've adopted it or not to fund something where we could do it and granted a really good study is gonna be a longitudinal thing It's gonna take quite a bit of time that's that you have to randomize people I mean to do it's tough effective randomized and we have to follow them for at least a year What's I just blank on Ross's last name? So sports science support in South Africa Ross. Oh man. I'm really horrible at names Like anyway, he and I've been talking about this or we first talked about it like 10 years ago And he was suggesting that he would try and find a way to do it It's like let's just get a couple a bunch of people and let's do the civil one Let's just throw them all the minimalist footwear and just see what happens and I agree, but he was just saying let's just get the ball rolling.
Yeah, they criticize if you don't so yeah Yeah, yeah, it's treat well look you can randomize it. Of course you can't blind people to this There's you know, they know what they're wearing You can randomize and do what you can to make it, you know as as To build it's interesting though because if you can't blind a study people are gonna walk in with preconceptions that may impact their activity If they believe that minimalism is good They may do something different than if they believe minimalism is bad It's almost like we'd have to track them for some amount of time before we even recruited them for the study to see what they're doing and make sure that that doesn't change Once they switch into whatever they switch I think bake sales the solution everything national debt national bake sale. I think there's definitely There's a lot of cookies that I would like to sample that would you know help with the national debt? I think it's a good plan.
Well on that brilliant note where we've solved all the world's problems with a bake sale I want to first thank you. This is as always a pleasure I know we keep doing this for hours because when we get together we do and and and looking forward to when we get to Do this next and maybe we'll be able to craft a good public event that we can that we can get out and have a good argument Slash debate slash conversation with some people who think that we're full shit. Okay Being a blast so let me wrap it up by saying for all of you are watching listening Thank you so much for being part of the movement movement of course you can find us at www.jointhemovementmovement.com Where you'll find all the ways that you can interact with this and of course like and share and subscribe and review If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe If you have any questions drop them in the emails to move at zero wait move at join the movement movement calm And as always until next time live life feet first