Welcome to the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember, your body was meant to move. Now here's your host, Stephen Sashin. Do you think losing weight is about exercise or diet or both?
Or maybe none of the above? Well, I'm sitting with someone who's going to answer that question the way that you've probably never imagined. Welcome to the Movement Movement podcast. The podcast for people who want to know the truth about how to have a happy, healthy, strong body we cut through the mythology, the propaganda sometimes outright lies about what it takes to run, jump, hike, do, crossfit yoga, whatever it is that you like to do, enjoyably, healthily and betterly.
That's my word today. For those of you who've been part of the podcast, you might not recognize where we are. That's because I am at the home of my friend David Clark. We have a poster of what you can see of his legs.
And what's going on? Oh, no, that's just like a tag that you're on. It looked like you had some sort of weird... That's the middle of the Leve the 100, man.
That's a sweet iconic hope pass. Oh, sweet. Here, wait. I'll lift this up so you can see.
There he is. Ah, okay. You know, book plug. I love it.
Cool. On Amazon. Don't start pitching already. Well, I'm relieved.
I got to tell you, because I thought you said this was going to be about the bowel movement. No, no, no. Before we jump in, just a reminder, if you're into what we're doing, obviously come to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. That's where you'll get pointers to everywhere you can find us and follow us and like and share and friend and request or review and blah, blah, blah.
You know the drill. I'm not going to bore you with that because you get it. So, I'm here with David Clark. David and I just FYI were in his house because we just recorded an episode of his podcast, which is called...
We are Superman. They can find where? Stitcher, a sound cloud, iTunes, any way it was podcast or my website, we are Superman.com. Perfect.
And David has an incredible story, which is what we're going to tell in just a sec. But first we're going to do a movement. One of the things that David is known for is fighting. Just randomly just picks up strangers and just beats them up.
Why do you do that, man? It started on Black Friday. No. I was at Walmart.
I wanted that television. Cabbage patch. So, as we... I didn't get myself.
Well, no, I heard comedian Dom Moreira doing a thing about Cabbage Patch Dolls. I can't repeat, but if you look up Dom Moreira, that is the Cabbage Patch, but that's not what Dom does when it comes to the Cabbage Patch. It's a good idea. So, we like to start with a movement and I ask David if he had a movement he wanted to share and what is the movement that you wanted to share.
I said punching. Now, let's talk about punching from a perspective that isn't about the thing that most people think of, which is violence, et cetera, because I know that's not the way you think of it. So, talk about how you think about it and what people do a thing that you want to share with them. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously punching can have all kinds of different intentions.
It can be just from keeping somebody away or inflicting damage or just competition, which is what I do. But there is a size behind it, obviously. It's not as simple as just throwing your fist in someone else's direction. In fact, that's usually the best way to get punched in the face yourself.
It's just start blindly. Well, I think someone said, you know what's a bar fight if someone starts with an overhand right. Yeah. And those guys do not get hurt each other.
No, no. So, why don't you do the world's fast punching something? And punching is actually, I think it's very interesting because it really does activate pretty much every muscle you can think of from your navel up in ways that are not. Well, if you're actually fighting fighting, it starts with the feet and goes through your hips and that's the end result.
But it is a really powerful thing just to be doing in general, which I find really interesting. So why don't you do the world's fast little punching something that people can do, even if they're maybe in their car, which is where a lot of these things happen. Yeah, I think the thing that you want to just connect without getting to a whole mechanics of a punch, which you just start from the feet up, is to just make sure that your body is connected to your punching. So, when you start with your hands up, protecting your jaw, you're going to rotate into it.
And then as this one goes back, the other one goes forward. So, and actually, it's a nuance pro tip that your fist starts out in a straight motion and actually rolls over at the point of contact. This is the hardest part of your body, right here is connected here to the elbow to the shoulder full extension. So, those punches, just kind of.
It's a very satisfying thing. It's a really satisfying thing. If you get, for people who aren't into the quote violence part of it, it's just a really satisfying motion because it is one of those full body motions. It's like even the people that train it, the gym where I train on, 99% are never going to give into, they're never going to spar much less actually fight.
But there's something very satisfying about the movement. It's a flowy movement. We listen to hip hop or heavy metal. Well, we have a punching bag in our office that we got because I asked people what they wanted to say.
No, no, we had an actual punching bag. And one of our employees that did say, if I know we're going to have a punching bag, you got to be working for free. So, he just loves to, you know, there's just something satisfying about that motion and making contact. And again, it's not even the violent thing.
There's something about this contact that I think resonates with us. I think that flows through our whole message, right, is that it connects us to something deep within our evolution. Like even running does, right? You might compete with running, you might run away from a predator or a hunt.
Fighting the same thing is program, we have to protect our families, we have to fend off our tribes. I've never been in a fight. I have gotten punched in the face once. So, you didn't do well.
No, I actually did really well. I kind of saw it happening. It was a really weird situation. I'll tell the story at another point.
But I just had this weird feeling like if I just let this guy do his thing, it would all be over very quickly. And so, and as he punches me in the face and as I'm going down, all I can think was louder than I thought it was. And then I got up and it was all over. It just felt like this weird, like, karmic something.
It just had to get itself resolved and we'd all be fine. But there was something you just said that reminded me, oh man, I had a funny thing that popped in my head and then it fell out. Maybe it'll come back. But I'm not going to tell you why we're here.
So, why we're here is that David has one of the more amazing stories that I've ever heard. I'm not going to try and tell him to do it justice. It's one of these stories that if you see David now, you frankly probably won't believe it. So, let's start with how would they see the before picture and then tell them what the going through and after story is?
Yeah, it's a long journey. I mean, I started in many ways, my real life, current iteration of life started in August 2005. I woke up 320 pounds. You probably went to bed 320 pounds.
I have no idea. You went to bed. It's not like you suddenly go. I have about 25 pounds of food in me.
But it's not like you wait 150 and you woke up 320. It's not like a free Friday. That would be kind of cool. That would be very free Friday.
I woke up like I did every morning. That's what I was going for. Like I said, 320 pounds. How tall are you?
I'm 6 feet tall. Yeah, that's a lot of David. Literally half now, 160 pounds. And there was a host of other problems too that we were contributing to that.
I was addicted to fast food and drugs and alcohol. And I had, I just bottomed down in every possible way. I lost everything I had. I had a very successful company at one time.
I thought that was going to make me happy. It didn't. I had wife and kids and love in my life. I thought that would make me happy.
And it didn't. It was great things that I was thankful for, but yet there was still something missing. And I said in my book out there that I finally came to this conclusion that I wasn't a 320 pound alcoholic by accident. And all of these times I was trying to find the right diet plan, the right motivational book or workout plan or something to get leverage on myself.
But that one was when I realized it was my thinking that needed to change. I always joke that you only have to change one thing. Yeah. So when you say it was your thinking, what specifically or can you identify some, if you had to kind of boil that down, what was it that was the thing that was leading to all that?
Yeah. I had to stop searching for happiness with my eyes open. You know, like, because I kept thinking it was out here. It was on the lot.
I could drive it off. I could buy the house. I could open up another retail store or something that was going to make me happy. My break account was growing and my happiness was shrinking.
And I realized that wasn't a, that wasn't by mistake. This is, you know, it's funny. It's not an uncommon story that people have what seems like great hour success. And then suddenly it hits them.
It's like, oh, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Why do you think you were struck with that realization or why didn't you recognize it along the way? Because that really is a problem. Like it's success.
There's nothing wrong with having nice houses and cars and all these things. But the problem was that I placed my value on that. I grew up in some tough circumstances, hard times in my family. I spent a lot of years homeless living in the back of my father's truck, kind of disenfranchised, you know, disconnected from reality.
And I always thought, you know, someday, you know, I was going to, I was going to do this thing and I started, I went to college. I had to go to GED, go to college, did well in college, sell in Mattress's part time. I got it. I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to start, I'm going to buy this company that's failing and I'm going to turn it around. But all of these things are like, if I had a house, if I had a car, like those were going to make me feel complete. And that's the danger. It's not having the house in the cars.
I mean, thinking that that was going to be the solution and it wasn't. I used to stay away late at night and wonder towards the end, like, what is the secret of life that all these people seem to know that I don't know. Because maybe it's not the secret of life, but it's definitely the secret to not drinking yourself to death. See, that's the thing that's so funny is that, is that if you ask any of those people who you thought had the secret of life, if they thought they did, none of them would say they did it.
And many of them would say the same thing, like, it's not working for me. I thought it would make me happy. I like to say that success is four times worse than failure because if you get there and you're not happy, you're not happy. If you expected to be happy, then your hopes were dashed.
There's nowhere to go but down and no one likes to hear a successful person whine. That's true. Thank you. Good night.
Yes. No, and that's it. And that's the beauty of rock bottom is that, you know, I kind of had a tremendous amount of ego driving me to, you know, the old kind of ironic ego maniac with an inferiority complex. All of this is going to prove that I'm worth something when deep inside.
I know I'm not. Well, that's, I mean, that's, it's not even ironic. I mean, that's the math. It's like when you think that's the problem.
The only, the only real option is to try to prove the opposite unless you investigate and discover that there's no there for it and the whole thing falls apart. But let's move into the movement side. Yes. And then I'm going to take a call and then once that happened, then what happened?
So I needed something to connect me to something deeper than all this external stuff, right? I wondered who's the David Clark that's not a business owner, not a father, even he's not a son. He's just a raw human being. And I figured that I might have a good chance at finding a little bit of that if I did something with my body, physical and something that had a big emotional attachment to it, something where the stakes were high, emotional stakes were high.
And so for me, I had no idea why, but it just popped in my mind to run a marathon, which is such a common thing for someone who has 320 pounds to think. I didn't even know how far a marathon was. I had no idea. In fact, it's funny.
I thought when I researched it. I figured no one else knew this information. This is surely lost to the ages. That's how they get you.
I got like a little silicone bracelets made up. It's a 26.2. I know what this is. This will be my own little thing.
Love it. Obviously, I was had some tenuous relationship with reality. Yeah. So but I did, and this was like before the days of Biggest Loser and stuff where, you know, now you kind of see that a little bit like people, but I didn't know.
I've assumed I went to my first race was a Turkey trot at CU on Thanksgiving Day. And I assumed everyone there was going to be 145 pound elite athlete and that certainly I was going to be the only one. I think I'd lost some weight of 270 or something. But obviously there's a lot of people who are there for the turkey.
Yes. I'm telling you that I brought. Yeah. Now here's my favorite story about that.
My friend Lorraine Mueller, who was a world champion marathoner. She won the bronze and Atlanta marathon. She went to one of the Turkey trot races because she needed the turkey and because she was a Libyan they put her in the front of the line and right before the start she looked through her left and right and there's four other Libyans who all were there because they wanted the turkey. It's over there.
It's over there. It really is. So how'd that race go? The Turkey trot.
It was one of the most amazing days of my life. Really? I ran every step of it. It hurt, which is kind of funny to me now.
I'm 40 plus 100 miles. I was in a situation like that before I was moving my body, physically using my body to create an experience that I felt was missing from my life. And I ran every step of it. It occurred to me that I probably would have been faster had I done run walk.
But to me I wanted to run every step. It was 40 minutes or 38 minutes or something. I felt like a runner. I felt like a runner.
And then had the running evolve from there. And so actually I got asked this question. What were you running in? I was running in a six gel nimbus.
Yes. Big, big, padded, neutral thing. So I'm going to cut to the end of the story ish and say that this is not where David ended. So what was the evolution?
How did your running evolve and what happened to your bodies? You were doing this and stuck it in that part. I had to obviously address the way I was eating too. So in that process I started eating whole foods and eventually that led me to being a plant-based guy.
But so I was feeding myself well. I eventually got to the marathon and did that. It was the inaugural year of the Denver Marathon. I'd lost 140 pounds over that 15 months I think it was getting there.
And I did that and it was that finish line was kind of a starting line of a whole new way of living. I eventually did Iron Man and then I got hurt. Then I got hurt. I had two herniated discs in my back which had probably been there for a while just being overweight and the running made it worse because I was running very poorly.
How would you define poorly? Slamming my heels into the earth. You know just being disconnected from around and not knowing when I was flopping the clown out there. Which was your basic idea when you first started just like just getting the end and weren't paying attention to how you were doing it.
It was all about managing the pain and the stress of running. I never thought about running smoother. It was just like can I be fit enough to move my body. It was very mechanical.
You know and push yourself hard which I was. I was working on the gym. I do intervals on the treadmill and just trying to work my body to burn calories and lose the weight I wanted to lose. But anyway when I got hurt and I had to have spinal surgery eventually that's when I was like something clicked.
The stakes were really changed for me. I was like okay I can walk away from this. I can go back to my old life and all these things. If I want to do this I've got to treat it like it's something I need to get good at.
I've played guitar and I did well in my business until I screwed it up with drugs and all that. I did well whenever I applied myself to something I did well. I became a student for lack of a better description. Literally a student who works in an internal figure on your own.
No I start first thing I started reading everything I find. I read cheat running and I read every book I could find by Galloway and Hal Higdon and which is on training plans running form. The internet was around I think but pretty new but you could search. You could find books so I just bought books and just read.
That was part of the process for me too. So what did you get from the books or how much were you able to apply what you learned from books? Yeah I think cheat running actually did give me a picture. There were some descriptive terms in there.
Eventually I found born to run too which helped me tremendously. I think when I was the first stages if you will of my since 2008 when I was just recovering from my back surgery. In 2009 when I started to apply everything I'd read and try to make it translate to moving my body. So using running shoes quote unquote.
So born to run actually gave me the picture of actually what would it be like if there was no shoe. What's the name of that book? Write that down. That's my like Doug McChrispher.
It's actually I'm going to put in a big plug. For people who don't know the book and there are people who don't it's an amazing book by Chris McGoogle and even if you're not a runner it's just an incredible story. It's a great adventure story. There's a great science story woven into it.
My wife Laina who is not a runner I eventually talked to her in a reading sheet like everyone just couldn't put it down. So if you haven't yet please do you will not regret it. Yeah. I'm not a good teacher for me.
What do you move like as a human machine without anything? And that was my changing. So I did start switching to running in very minimal footwear but I had a sufficient amount of fear still built up. I didn't like buy the whole thing yet.
So I had like stick a little toe in and so I started running once a week in minimal shoes. And I spent a good year stretching that out. That's actually not a bad transition plan. When people ask you know how do I make the transition first of like how to get started and then there's how do I if I've already got a running program what do I do?
I go yeah just inject a little something and then expand that slowly whether like start at the beginning of your run in something very flutter like zero shoes and then add a little more time or pick one day and then extend that. So there's a lot of ways of doing it but whether that was intuitive or just figuring out that was the only way you could do it. That was a good way to do it. Yeah I read enough to know that people get injured doing it.
You know people go too soon and go from wherever they are. I'm just gonna buy a pair of eyebrows. Right. You know just go run.
Right. As nature intended. But this is one of those things people say we weren't we didn't evolve the run. Like if you ever go to the place where you would be involved.
Exactly. It's like a lot of that that hard-packed dirt is practically concrete. But we were out there hurting themselves because they're trying to do too much. Yeah they were just trying to make the switch immediately from you know from doing 10 miles a day in big thick pad of shoes to 10 miles a day essentially barefoot.
And some people are going to do that because that's the problem. There are a few people who had perfect form. They were really great and they were able to do that and they ruined it for the people who needed to learn a new pattern of running a new gate style which does take a little bit of time to do that. And I was operating off of the database that I just created.
It took me a while to get to a marathon. So it's gonna take me a while to get to running barefoot. You know the flip side I was on a panel discussion when the barefoot thing was just taking off and there was a bunch of physical therapists who were all saying well it could take you like three years to develop the ability. And I finally said how many people in this room have run at least a mile barefoot on concrete or a road and I raised my hand and no one else did.
I said you guys you're making up a story that based on no information whatsoever you don't even have it you haven't even been doing this thing long enough the whole barefoot thing hasn't been around long enough for you to have had anybody come through your clinic for two years or three years. So it's just this idea that they come up with I've never met anyone who couldn't make a successful transition to at least being comfortable running barefoot or in something truly minimalist much much quicker and then it can take time it takes time to develop but it's not like you know you're not gonna be able to do it for two years. Right because the magic's not in it's you have to learn to run differently. Right.
And I think a lot of people miss that somehow they change shoes and still kept running. Well you know annoyingly in the very early days of the middle is movement that was the way it was positioned by companies like Vibram even where people thought well let me say differently the big shoe companies have basically trained people to think that it's all about the shoes you get this new magic shoe and everything's gonna be great even though that's what we said three years ago and it wasn't true then no one has ever no shoe buddies ever said remember we told you that that shoe that we did three years ago was gonna change your life sorry we pulled that totally out of our butts this one though this one's a real deal. Yeah so we're all kind of programmed for that so it's not surprising that that's the way people took the whole minimal state and I was actually told that the correct way to run was to hit on your heel. Oh really and then roll forward and then push off.
Right. But people in the running industry the shoe industry whatever but yeah so I still had that in my brain. They're running industrial conference. Right.
But I've actually always been one of these people that's very willing to dispense with the common ideas of things the giant notion but I don't want to do it from place of ignorance. I'm willing to let go but I want to know what I'm letting go of. And so I felt it was somewhere in between I didn't know what it was but it was like it's somewhere in between so I'm just gonna take it easy be smart it was amazing like I mean the way I felt it didn't take me very long I did spend that one year but before I started transitioning onto the trails too and the first time I put on a pair of minimal shoes and rinsed and need is which is a trail of a mountain red in Boulder technical sharp rocks like I was kind of like I don't know if I should do this but I feel like an animal like in a good way like a primal and I never want to run anything else again so I felt like I thought I was running before but now I really started doing it. This is the thing it's funny I was joking you can always spot a barefoot runner from a mile away because they're smiling and because there's something just so satisfying about feeling things and I took a I went up to me just with a friend of mine a woman and Jesse who does everything barefoot and we're running up to his barefoot and people are looking at us like we're crazy but we're the ones having fun right.
Right. That's one of the that's actually funny because as my running evolved and eventually I went on to do Leadville and 40 different hundred mileers. Okay so here's the point to brag so talk to you about that and things you've done. Yeah so I mean I've done like I said I've done Leadville I think eight times hard rock, bad water some of the toughest races on the planet I wanted to challenge myself.
Right. And you know I started moving from the back up to the front of the pack and managed to pull down some some winds not against Scott Jurek or Rob Crut but some regional winds and some set a couple American records on treadmills of all of us like 12 hour treadmill runs and I even ran 40 hours on a treadmill but anyway I'm just gonna pause there. Oh my god I'm trying to think of something that I would enjoy less than doing 40 miles on a treadmill. There's nothing.
Yeah. But you would but nevertheless you would enjoy it in some some way. Oh yeah I would enjoy stopping. I would enjoy.
But this crazy thing happened though as I got faster. Hold on hold on a minute what made you even think to run to do a 48 mile or 40 hour treadmill thing. You know I mean long enough to know that this thing is not connected to anything really so. Like seriously I mean because there had to have been a moment where you thought of this idea and thought yeah that could be interesting and then you told someone and they had a response that's the way normal people would respond.
Oh yeah. And you justified it. Well honestly there was a part of me seeking out the things that my other cause you'd live in Colorado. You'd be rubbing elbows with Olympians and ultra running royalty and I kind of sought out the things no one wanted to do.
Got it. You know what people didn't want to do bad water so they'd go bad water it's on the roads it's 130 degrees. Right. So yeah okay I'll do that.
Like people like I can't run on the treadmill but I lost all the weight run on the treadmill. Right. You know so like the treadmill is there and like you don't want to run the treadmill I'm gonna do it for 24 hours and then that. So in 2015 my 10th year of sobriety I wanted to do 10 epic events to celebrate that year and at the very end I didn't have a 10th event and I didn't know what to do I'd run the Boston marathon four times in one day I done bad water I ran 343 laps around high school track here.
And I had no idea what to do and I was like sitting out there in the couch and literally I thought I had run 40 hours on treadmill. Oh shit. No I've got a 40 miles on the treadmill. I was mad at myself for thinking.
I love it. What I was gonna say honestly is I started moving up the front pack that's a great thing happened. You know people would recognize me a little bit and they'd go so there's this expectation. And you can't run through an eight station like this when people are expecting you not to.
So I would notice as like I'm suffering you know you're 80 miles in whatever and you're coming up on an eight station so I'd like straight up and I'd start running because of the other people that instantly my body changed. Right. I felt better I was running it was taking less energy to run faster so it's just more and more reinforcement that helped me go to the next level. I wasn't letting my body break down.
Yeah. I mean your body is gonna break down but it didn't mean my form had to or at least I could mitigate that somehow. You know it's interesting I hadn't thought about this until you said that but I watched a video of some guy who's like run every day for the last 60 or something and his form has gone to not good let's say and the people around him were running similarly and when you do look at people running ultra marathons a lot of them it looks like yeah there couldn't be having less of a good time and I can imagine there is this like unconscious thing where you get the idea that that's the way it's supposed to be. Yes you just accept it from the rules.
And then to question that I imagine is a revelatory phenomenon. The best compliment I ever got I ran across the country in 2016 with five friends who are ultra runners we did this together for mental health awareness which is ironic but and I was running with all these very accomplished athletes and runners and I don't think there's a single person who didn't mention you don't run like an ultra runner. Yep. That is the best compliment I've ever got.
Very interesting. It is a fascinating thing. Another thing that I've seen people do is when they get into barefooter minimalist and they have the idea one idea they get is I'm supposed to land on my four foot and so what they do is they still reach out as if they're in shoes so they're going to overstride but then point their toes so they land on their four foot way in front of their body but they also have the idea they're supposed to be less stressed so they bend their knees a little more so they have running kind of like Groucho Marx walking fast and they're able to do this I mean it works in that they're able to continue moving but it's not running and the first time I saw somebody do that I went how did you think to do that they all like you're supposed to land on your four foot I went yeah but not like that. That's I don't know what that is.
I mean Davis saw this in her lab she had a she set up a force plate on a treadmill and said try and keep the force under this line should have basically monitored you know keep the force under this line and she found it quite a few people would do the kind of Groucho Marx thing to try and catch the ground rather than actually use your springs the way they're supposed to be used and apply less force by absorbing that with the muscles like a misinterpreted that not by doing things like you know this with your body yeah yeah interesting. It's a tension before punch. Oh yeah that's a really interesting point. It's a role with a punch.
You don't want to get tense in advance you don't want to on the one hand you've got to you have to be aware of it but you also don't want to anticipate and take more than is actually being thrown at you which you see all the time so it's like you're ready to go when it wasn't even that hard a punch yeah I've seen that in fights. Interesting. And interestingly when I when I made the switch I kind of took a step back from ultra running a couple years ago and started doing some boxing MMA and I would do everything in the boxing gym in the floor and in the ring. Well I was just going to say that talk to me talk about that connection and it is about connection between running and fighting let's say in this case and just the whole phenomenon of using your feet.
So it became I'm really very fortunate that I've got to meet some really cool people and my first fighting MMA lesson was with a world champion USC five time USC champion Pat Millet Titogi Machado and you know they can't just drilling it to me over and over again how punching and striking starts in the feet and it's just screwing your feet into the ground you don't come up you come down so I'm hearing footwork footwork footwork I think. I want my foot to be doing the work right now I mean these boxing shoes I have a tie all the way up to the end of the I want like a sexy school girl you know I kind of do but not a boxing ring that's like a bad idea. If you want to hold on just if you want to do sexy school girl you got to really rethink the facial hair. Yeah well I'm not saying I'm not saying get rid of it I'm just saying it's a different kind of sexy school girl.
But yeah that's a good point. But so I just started doing that and not you know sparring I wouldn't because people step on your feet. So most of my training I do therefore including the conditioning drills and right all that kind of stuff. Maybe feel more connected to my feet if my feet are doing to work and did that did that did that affect the way you were running as well.
We're doing any running. I was still running what I call recreational you know 40 50 miles a week. I met Dean Carnassus and Dean yeah Dean's famous for being 50 marathon in 50 days and he's famous most importantly actually for ordering a pizza while he was running and having to deliver it to him while he was running rolling it up like a burrito and eating it. And when I met Dean I said I'm the anti Dean Carnassus he's what do you mean.
Actually it was fun I want to introduce myself because I know who you are. So that was very sweet but then I said I'm the anti Dean Carnassus he goes why. Well when I say I'm gonna go for fun run I'm gonna go do like 50 meter repeats and when you say I'm gonna go for fun run it's like I wonder where I'll be in three days. Yeah.
Yeah. A whole different world. Yeah absolutely. Now he's a good dude.
He's very into cat. And he introduced the world to alter running in a real way. Yeah. Yeah.
Very into cat. So if you were gonna give someone you know there are a lot of people actually I get a lot of emails from people who say well can I run barefoot or minimalist or can I run zero shoes because I weigh fill in the blank and usually their number is way less than where you started out. What would you say to them. Yeah I would say to trust your body you know we have a lot of fear isn't always correct.
You know in fact most of the time it's not you know it's most of the time we we I think we mistake fear and common sense right it's not afraid to run out into traffic every shower right that's just common sense right but I'm afraid to trust my body I'm afraid to move I'm afraid to do these things that might get injured but this machine is so powerful and so okay we'll just trust it a little bit. So you evolved over all of this time you know millions of years hundreds of thousands of years whatever you want to call it so trust that it's gonna work for you doesn't mean you have to like you know go crazy and try to do whether you're running in shoes or not you don't want to try to do too much too soon so trust your body keep it small you can do it you've been you've been moving okay so I'll back up one second people used to say to me or people say to me now aren't you worried about hurting your knees you know all that running you're doing what you're doing hurts your knees like you know you know what my knees are in the biggest jeopardy is when I was three or twenty pounds standing in line for my third mid-mack that was a lot of stress on my knees so if you're carrying around extra weight your body's kind of grown strong right carry that weight around it's funny you say I have a friend who lost a lot of weight and one of the things she said is I miss being strong yeah and she's because I mean she you know she had a lot of fat mass but she also had more muscle mass yeah she just is I miss being strong but you can keep that oh yes so that's activating and moving around and it's gonna it's gonna you start activating using your running muscles and other things and it'll do you well I mean I think running is like anything else it's like a piano it's like ten is golf whatever the better you get at it the more you're gonna enjoy it right so learn to do it right the thing I like to say about what I love about barefoot is that for me and for many people I've heard of it's the whole thing about minimalist or barefoot running or more accurately let's say it differently the whole thing about running where you can actually feel the ground and get the feedback that your body is wired to receive is that if you take the time you learn to listen to and respond to that feedback and so your feet become a coach actually laying a says we're not selling anything magical we're selling shoes that become a coach for you if you're hearing too much noise if you're getting too much friction which means you know the souls wearing down too quickly all of these are your coach telling you what you should do next what you should try next yeah and we're so wired to listen to something external and how someone try and tell you what to do rather than feel it internally fact the fastest way to change a movement pattern is to get real time to do two things first get real time feedback so you're either watching a mirror so you can do this in treadmill watch a mirror if you're an user cating in trying to point them out but mirror in front of your treadmill moving your knees so they're out or if you're landing some strange waves you know give you something so you can actually see it in real time and then after you get used to doing that then just get rid of some of the feedback so like put it in front of the mirror for a few minutes and then just extend the amount of time that you have no feedback from the external situation so that you're starting to feel what was going on internally so you just switch the external the let's see the external does this while the internal does this and that's that's the the simple key to doing it because it's all about getting that information and knowing what to do with it it's like we jumped about you can work with your coaches all the time that tell you to keep your hands up move your head you go sparring one time start to get punched in the face that problem is going to take care of itself one way or the other yeah you're not out right or you're gonna remember oh oh you mean oh up I thought you meant up but I think it's yeah right oh yeah I think it's interesting the way my internal definitions of things had changed and rearranged because like when I think of running now it's so tied to minimal running like that's what running is to me running is spiritual for one for me and it involves minimal movement just like food when I used to think of food I would think of bad food there's good food there's foods I have to you know stay away from food has changed from me now I have food which is healthy whole food plant based food and then I have junk and crab that I either don't eat or it has a different category right I won't eat it or I won't think of it as food and when I talk to wait a lot of groups I actually say that I said there's no such thing as food addiction you just have a tooth-brought that's the food you allowed all these things to exist under the umbrella of food and they're not do you have something to do to broccoli and chicken breasts and no not so much I wasn't Costco yesterday they had little mini pretzels covered in dark chocolate with caramel and I bought a bag don't mean delivery mechanism it's okay it's yeah I have I have like two a day it makes me extraordinary I have no I'm not that guy not so much in my you look at my freezer there's a thing of Ben and Jerry's ice cream that's been there for three years because it's been in there so long as just then you can't just make it nice it has so much freezer burn that's all freezer burn but it's but I just you know I just want to taste something every now and then because that's something very pleasant but it's not something where I find myself mindlessly doing because I don't find that enjoyable like I'll go through a phase where for like three weeks in a row I'll be thinking I can really use the right piece of cake and I never can find it it never shows up and then either the whole thing goes away or on week three I go oh I know where to get that and I go have a piece of cake and I feel extremely happy and then that's it whereas for me there was no such thing as the wrong cake. Here's my favorite cake story when I was living in New York City I was running at least two that I can think of three actually off the top of my head but this is my favorite so when I was living in New York City I was doing stand up comedy for living I'd be coming home one two three in the morning and I was always looking for just like a piece of chocolate cake in part because I was on my bicycle for twenty thirty miles a day just getting around town and I just needed calories right so so so I was eating donuts and cake I just needed calories so I finally found this one corner deli place right two blocks away from where I lived and right by the counter they had this these little things of cake that were wrapped up in Saran wrap and they were dollar a piece and I went I went to hell try one and it was my it was just my favorite it was incredible and one day they didn't have any and I said to the guy behind the counter you know where's the cake he goes oh he's over dead and I went looking at it and he goes yeah right there over there and I'm looking at it and I go I walk I said I'll see this right there over there and I go looking and I don't know why he spoke with that accent he was from New York no it's not true. It's a Jewish girl.
So he's pointing me over there and I'm standing there and I'm like I don't know what you're talking about the only thing here is a bunch of boxes of entomies chocolate oh my god you're cutting up an entomies chocolate cake into eight pieces and re-rapping them and selling it for dollar a piece it's a three dollar cake and I thought I didn't like entomies chocolate cake so of course I started buying the entire cake but the joke is but that's right and the joke is it lasted longer because I didn't need that much I needed like half that much so it was the best deal ever which is the perfect kind of thing for a Jewish deli to find is a good deal on chocolate cake and you don't have to eat it. Yeah I saw that you started that and it was going to peter out quickly it's like I don't know where this is going to go yeah so any other any other thoughts that you want to share just about what you here's a crazy one for someone who's who's thinking about doing an ultra for the first time what advice would you give them first of all you have to come grips with the fact that if you're thinking about it you've already decided to do it so who's rendering acceptance I've thought about it but the thought is I don't want to do that. What's the time I'm doing it you thought I'm not doing it. I've spent a lot of time thinking about not doing distance.
Hey why the hell not do it. I like to do it. I like to do it. If you're thinking about that sounds like no if life's too short you should be a sprinter.
I get my running done in a much shorter period of time. It's really I was running his life. What do you do it for small increments of life or long ago that somebody somebody asked me I was an interviewed for a documentary they said what are you going to do when you can't run and I literally sat here like this for 30 minutes going wow that is the most oppressing thing I've ever thought of and actually right now I'm having some trouble because I'm having spinal issues so I can only get a little bit in before one of my legs goes wonky because of my spine but in fact my training partner said to me today she said I can't believe you still come out every week. I have to.
I mean I'll do as much as I can because what else would I do. So I really enjoy that and the fact that it's you know mild tweak in my spinal cord like whatever. I've got a different take man. I just think like you know I think that inevitably I won't be able to run.
I'm like very aware of that so I enjoy it. I mean I really take the time every time I go up there peak which is my favorite run here in Boulder. I touch a little marker and I go it's not today. Nice.
You know which makes because I just came off of a really bad injury too with my Terry Mike Hillies and it made it peaceful to get through that because I was so present and all the times I could go up there. It's hard to retroactively be grateful. That's true. If you do it in the moment it's a lot easier so I was like oh I can do other things like I can find happiness.
Well moving my body I can go to gym I can swim. I can do other things. No exactly in fact I have been thinking about it because there's a high probability that I'm gonna have to get my spine fused at some point and so I won't be able to run for a couple of years and what am I gonna do and I've actually started getting back into some things that I really enjoy. Other kinds of movement I've gotten back into archery which I find terribly entertaining because it's all about intermittent reinforcement.
It works great for a moment. You can be an archer. You can be an archer. I have to tell you when I go to the archery range you would not be the only one.
Actually I go to the range in Broomfield and I have to tell you it's one of my favorite places to go because the range of human beings that you see in an archery range pun intended is incredible. There's you know goth chicks and crazy hunters and not all hunters are crazy but these guys are crazy and everything between you know little kids old people it's the most eclectic group of human beings I've ever seen in this area and I love that. That's really what it's like. It's so much fun.
So I do think about that. I think about I've actually I've there are a couple guys that I know who are Peligico or wheelchair racers and it's like can I get in your chair because that looks like that would be really fun frankly. And they're like yeah. I'm the guy who walks in a wheelchair and like an electric wheelchair.
I'm the guy who walks in a house and I can go. So I gave real cordial and I had to go out on a tangent on my podcast. He rolled his wheelchair across the country. Oh no.
On a modified wheelchair. Just a regular. Wow. Oh that's crazy.
That is really outrageous. There are a couple of times going down the T-Tons where that could have been a little hairy. Yes. Yes.
The documentary on Netflix will roll with me. Oh really? Okay. I'm going to flip that.
That's a blast. Anyway. So advice. So if you think about doing it you've already decided to do it.
Do it. Yeah. I mean I think just do it. I'm like what are you waiting for?
Like it's we're so so strong. We're so capable. It's we just got to believe in ourselves like a tiny little belief can turn into something unimaginably beautiful. I'm I'm flashing back.
I was at a talk that Tony Capitie did about ultra running and some guys said I've run a 50 mile race and I want to run a 100 mile race. What do I need to do to train and Tony said nothing. It's all in your head. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Anything else you want to leave our friends with?
No, that's it. No, that was easy. You're not going to find me. We are Superman on all social media Twitter, Instagram, my website, all we are Superman dot com.
It's not me. We are sweet. So thank you for being part of the movement movement podcast and being part of the movement because we are creating a movement for people who understand that natural movement should be as obvious a thing as natural food is right now. So join us at JoinTheMovementMovement.com where you can find links to all the other places you can find us.
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