On today's episode of the movement movement podcast, we're going to be talking with someone who not only was a big part of the beginning of the barefoot movement, was a big part of a subset of the barefoot movement, something that I'm not even sure if he's proud of, but we're going to find out more on today's episode of the movement movement podcast, the podcast where people want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first because those things are your foundation. We're going to break through the mythology, the propaganda sometimes, the lies that people have been telling you about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or do yoga, crossfit, whatever you like to do, and to do that enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. And then I mentioned enjoyably, I know I did. Point is if you're not having fun, do something different until you are.
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And short, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. So let's jump in. Ken Bob Saxon, it is a pleasure to see you. It has been way too long, sir.
It's been a while, maybe a decade. Not quite. You were out here. No, I've seen you a couple times out here since then, but let me back up.
You are so you are one of the OGs, one of the original barefoot running human beings, not human beings in general, but you know, part of the barefoot running movement that kicked off starting in 2009, really, but you're part of another trend within the barefoot running trend. And that is that most people refer to you as barefoot Ken Bob. And as a result, in that first couple years, the number of people who referred to themselves as barefoot somebody inspired by you. So it's all your fault that there was barefoot everybody.
That is true. You could call me blue eyed Ken or, you know, although that one I can't do much about. I guess I could nowadays contact lenses and such, but yeah, bear handed Ken, you know, things like there's all kinds of monitors we can associate with ourselves. But I guess it's like Chris McDougall talks about in his book, tribalism.
We want to belong to something, I guess. Yes. And everyone was, you know, I mean, I don't know if you saw it, so I had a video way back then and is essentially a barefoot runner say, so a whole bunch of jokes that things are barefoot, understand where it's, you know, just high on barefoot, you know, one name, and you played three or four different characters. Yeah, at least never saw that.
Oh crap, you know, I was going to grab a copy of your book and show your book, Barefoot running step by step, which is one of the original books about barefoot running and the best by a long shot, both in terms of the information that you presented as well as just the production quality. It's a beautiful book. Thank you. But before we get to that, I want to back up.
So tell humans and anyone else and whether they're vertebrates or invertebrates who might be listening or watching this, how did you become barefoot Ken, Bob, both? Well, the Ken Bob part is because I'm Kenneth Robert. That was the easy part. It was the barefoot part that I was going for.
Actually, as I've told many people, I was born barefoot, believe it or not. Wait, you know, I believe it. It seems, well, you know, the way people ask where your shoes, it's like something they were obviously born with, in their case, just the way they asked that question like that's so natural to just be wearing shoes all the time. I guess because I was doing something that was a little different in modern society.
And I was, of course, I published a web page, one of the first web page dedicated to barefoot running. There were actually barefoot sites, but not barefoot running sites and things like that. So I guess because of the website and email discussions and then discussion groups that grew out of that movement, it's kind of where it came from. So someone basically sort of organically got assigned to you rather than you identifying yourself that way first.
Originally, I was trying to do more of a Native American First Nations thing and go by running barefoot. But actually that was the original name of my website was the running barefoot website instead of barefoot running website, but barefoot running caught on running barefoot then. So it is running first and I happen to be barefoot while I was doing it. So well, and so, there were a handful of people who were running barefoot prior to the barefoot running boom starting or the barefoot running something starting to boom in 2009, 2010.
So how did that happen for you? When did you get out of shoes and start tracing around with your soul, touching the earth? Well, like I said, I was born barefoot. Actually, after that, well, after that I was in northern Michigan.
So we did put shoes on usually in the wintertime and in school and church, things like that. But whenever I could, I would take my shoes off and play outside and inside. I almost always had them off. So I got used to stuffing my toes occasionally.
You know, that's, it's there are risks associated with it, but there are also risks associated with wearing shoes. I would get have constant blisters if I were shoes all the time. Well, it's funny you mentioned some of your toe when people ask me about injuries in the last 12, 13 years that I've been doing this, I've only gotten two injuries and it was both times I'm stubbing my toe. Once walking out my sister's driveway, I didn't realize that garage pad was three inches higher.
And then I was just walking with a friend and I didn't see that there was someone at a rock that was surrounding some trees. One of the rocks I'd moved into the sidewalk and I didn't know and I kicked it and it was like, that's it. But you know, no, no, I go. Yeah, I live in a condo.
So as I recall, those garage pads don't move easily. No, I kicked it pretty hard and it did not move at all as far as I could tell. Yeah. So of course, we didn't have really accurate measuring.
So it's possible on my crown or so. Maybe it was unlikely. It worked for the car. I definitely would have moved it.
Right. Of course. Yeah. And so other than just sort of being barefoot, what about the running component of that?
Were you always running barefoot or did you start running and shoes or? No, I used to run in shoes. I used to think I was supposed to run in shoes on roads. And so I would run barefoot on trails behind my dad's house.
If I was going to run on the roads with someone, I usually wear shoes, especially in the wintertime again. But it just really, when I became more of a what some people call a purist was when I got married and we sold one of our cars and I started, my wife would drop me off at work and I would run home and I would put my shoes in my backpack to run home. And this was really the first time I ran barefoot on pavement, you know, for any length. And it was about 11 miles or 12 miles at the time.
So we moved closer later, fortunately. It's only about seven miles now and now I'm tired. The way what you're suggesting is running barefoot is somehow a real estate ploy. Well, it's the old, you know, many people have been brainwashed and I was not unlike that to think that running barefoot on a modern surface hard pavement concrete is unnatural.
But I never needed to put my shoes on. My legs would get tired first, you know, before my feet had problems. In fact, I did a 50k and 98, 99 in a trail run like most of those races are. Right.
And there a lot of the trail was just solid granite. Nice. So we did not invent solid hard rock hard smooth surfaces. We just moved them down to make roads out of them.
And actually one of the best places to run barefoot as a nice smooth road or sidewalk. Oh, no, my line is if you want to make a barefoot runner's eyes just water with, you know, glee is a freshly painted white line on the side of the road. Yeah. Those help smooth out the rough pavement.
But a brand new asphalt is actually nice and smooth. So when you started doing this 11 mile run back from work, what year was that roughly 1990? Actually, that's when we got married. Yeah, that's fascinating.
I mean, that is so did you bump into anyone else who was doing this or everyone just think you were flat out nuts? I bumped in someone else who thought I was nuts. And they invited me to run with the group that they ran with on Sundays. And that's how I got into more longer distances.
And that was about 96, I believe, because 97 I started my website. As a result of that in my first, let's call it official barefoot race. I did race barefoot. We had a staff day run at the university where I worked, and I did run that barefoot a few times.
And I even won at least once. A lot of the times there's only two or three people and it was mostly a walk. Of course, the problem with winning a staff race at a state university is you're running against state employees. There's not really no competition.
We're not used to running fast. So any people that you're running with who saw you running barefoot, I imagine they had kind of the typical reactions. Did you convert anyone? Did anyone have that sort of realization that it wasn't just you being crazy?
But this was a possible thing for other humans. I've converted a few, but most of that was after I started the website and especially after my book came out. And of course, Chris McDougal converted almost everybody. Well, not everybody, but in 2009 when his book came out.
And I mentioned in that, like I have a whole sentence. Yeah. But it leads into the website that encouraged barefoot Ted. It's hard.
I run with both of those. So confusing. Sometimes I run with both of them at the same time. Anyway, so that story about barefoot Ted and born to run is after he discovered my website Ted did and decided, hey, I go barefoot most of the time anyway and he works from home.
So he tried it. And the only thing is he lives near some really nasty trails, gravelly sharp gravely rocks and stuff. So that's why he got into the minimalist footwear. Anyway, like you did.
I've been on some of your trails. They're not real nice, but I've also hiked with my brother. We did a hike with my Herman. You remember Herman?
My old dog. I remember Herman. Yeah. Anyway, we did a 17 mile round trip hike from Bachelor Gulch up to some lake and then back.
And I was barefoot the whole way. Do you think it's important that we tell people who are men who's a dog? Yeah. Okay.
That's really important. But yeah, good idea. And he was twice as barefoot as we are. That's right.
Yeah. Yeah. That's my favorite thing. I walked into Whole Foods and they got mad at me because I was barefoot and I said, you know, why this was dangerous and literally a dog, someone walking a dog walk by one was the deal.
Yeah. My line when I described Boulder people, I say it's a place where Whole Foods doesn't like it if you come in barefoot, but it's okay if you're breastfeeding your dog. Interesting. Yeah.
That's logical. So in those early days, I mean, before the whole idea started to become more popular after born to run, et cetera. I mean, what were the kind of responses you were getting? Because I mean, it was crazy enough for us in 2009, 2010, but I can only imagine what it was like prior to that.
Yeah. You ran into a few people. Funny thing is, everybody had many people had different misconceptions. So like when I ran with the trail runners, George, the guy ran into, he was running the opposite direction to me when I was running to work.
And one day I was bicycling and I stopped to take my sweatshirt off because it was starting to get warm. Sun comes up here. We're Southern California does that in the morning. So George says, Hey, I'd like to see if you could do that on the trails.
You know, anybody can do it on roads. I was kind of the attitude of trail runners. And then the road runners, it's the opposite. It's like, well, I understand on trails, those are natural, you know, that how can you possibly do it on roads?
And most of my marathons, even shorter races have been on roads. I started out more on trails because of the influence of, as actually Buffalo Bill McDermott was a guy that led this group. And he told me he actually runs barefoot the day before the big race, he'd go running barefoot on grass for a little bit, 100 yards or so, just to kind of loosen up. And he is for people who don't know Buffalo Bill McDermott, he's named after the Buffalo on Catalina Island.
There's a buffalo herd that runs around there and there's Catalina marathon, which he won 13 times out of the first 20 years they held it. Wow. I don't know about the Buffalo and Catalina Island. Yeah.
Yeah. It's basically there's a herd of Buffalo. They have an airport on top of mountain and they have a restaurant there that sells Buffalo burgers. How did the Buffalo get on an island?
It's a commercial herd, I believe. Oh, okay. Yeah. We had one near my home in Michigan too.
And there's a bunch of them right here. They're great. Yeah. This the one in Michigan, I think they called it the largest Buffalo herd east of the Mississippi.
There's a community. Which makes sense. I haven't seen any Buffalo anywhere else east of Mississippi except there. The largest herd east of Mississippi too.
There's a community who died just a couple of years ago. His given name was Robert Altman. He couldn't use that doing comedy since because of the director and he was called Uncle Dirty. And he wasn't as dirty as his name would suggest, but he used to do a joke that for years when I would try and retell it, I couldn't do it without laughing.
And it was, you know, how is it that we, the settlers wiped out the buffalo with flintlock rifles, you know, where you had to powder down, it would take like five minutes to get a gun ready to shoot and you would shoot it and then it would take five more minutes to shoot again. Millions and millions of Buffalo, a handful of settlers with these, you know, crappy rifles. How is that possible? Because like most animals, when they hear a loud noise, they just scatter.
But for Buffalo, they don't react that way. So, you know, two buffalo are standing there. One gets shot and the other buffalo is like, Bob, I just love that joke. Yeah.
I mean, I'm doing that. So Bob, that sounds like a far side cartoon. Yeah, it does actually. All the animals have names.
Well, Uncle Dirty, just for the fun of taking a weird tangent, I was a professional stand-up comic and right after like my first professional, well, my first professional gig was opening for Uncle Dirty. But right before that, when I was just getting into it, Richard Pryor and George Carlin were on the Tonight Show together as guests. And they were saying, remember when it was just you and me and Uncle Dirty working at the bitter end? And then like a week later, my first pro gig was working with Dirty.
And that was, oh, anyway, he was a wonderful human being who was had his first child when he was 55 years old. And he said, it's the perfect time to have a kid because by the time she's old enough to hate me, I'll be dead. My brother's ex-wife, who you may have met in Golden, had her child at 35, I think, and she thought she was too young to have children still or too immature. I'm going to appreciate that one.
I met her daughter. She's growing up now. She's probably right. So, here's the point.
I mean, given the fact that you were way in advance of the boom and then the boom happened, what was that like? I mean, did it feel like, I mean, I can imagine what either feel like vindication or craziness or people just, I mean, what was it like for you going through that phase? Well, there's actually a couple aspects of that because when we started out, we were friendsiders, people who weren't afraid necessarily of trying to fit in, not afraid of not trying to fit. Yeah.
Anyway, we weren't worried about following current passions, so to speak, long hair, beards, things like that. So, one aspect of that was we got a lot more people with crew cuts and, you know, business. I mean, some of the people that were doing early on were business people, barefoot john's a lawyer, worked for, I think, the Department of Natural Resources in Alaska or something like that. So, fairly conservative job.
But there were a lot more coming in that were rather like worried about fitting in. And because it was becoming popular, they said, oh, it's okay now. Or one of my neighbors that started running with me barefoot and he'd known me since about 2000. And I think he ran with me a couple of times with shoes on before this.
But when my book came out, he said, well, now that you have a book out, it's okay for me to follow you. So, you get a little legitimacy when you publish a book. Yeah. Well, but so for you, I mean, obviously, one of the opportunities that arose was the ability to publish a book and you were going around teaching workshops as well.
And one of the very small number of people who had any kind of notoriety within the community. And I imagine that, you know, came with some pluses and minuses. Yeah, sure. But I mean, mostly it's been a lot of fun.
It's like the old Eagle song, you know, what a wild, crazy trip it's been or something like that. That wasn't quite the word to say. You said I put a little Steve Martin in that one. Yeah, I like that one.
Wild and crazy trip. Yeah. Anyway, lost my train of thought. That happens a lot too.
I'm on that same train. So let's do something that could be useful for human beings. So, you know, if you're meeting someone new who's well, first of all, I just love my favorite thing is when I'm running barefoot and I go buy someone who's in shoes and they say things like, well, you can't do that as, you know, I run by. Right.
I find it really fun. But if somebody came up to you, they saw what you're doing, they were in any way intrigued. If you were going to have to give someone instruction and you weren't going to be working with them directly, what's the instruction that you like to give? Start slow.
Listen to your souls, your bare souls practice at least a little bit to begin with on rough terrain that's stimulating. I had a question on a Facebook forum the other day that the guy was worried about the people that if he has like an international barefoot running day meeting, the people that come and run with him don't want to run on rough surfaces. But the point is to just if you can pick a place that has a small rough patch and get them to run 10 feet on that or walk 10 feet on it, they'll learn more in those 10 feet or 10 steps or whatever, then they will in 10 miles of running on a nice soft surface that gives them no feedback. He just might be something I was in a Chinese and then take them up on a nice friendly surface, you know, and that will also becomes more enjoyable after you run on a rough terrain.
Well, you know, this is I think it's one of the misconceptions where people think, oh, I should just run on grass and this is like taking the cushion from your shoes and sticking on the planet. So who knows what's in the grass? Well, and that's the worst part about it. Grass and soft sand, I live at the beach, and we have both of those.
And those are the worst places to begin. If you have soft feet that aren't conditioned to running, you're not running gently yet. You're not getting any feedback to teach you to run gently. And there are broken clam shells on the beach, bare bottles broken in the sand, you won't see them.
I did a play fun shop with Nike a year ago for their reintroduction of the Nike for you like they haven't introduced it enough yet. Anyway, some of their representatives, about 35 of them came down and I said, you know, we probably should go run on the bike path over here that's paved and there's some rough spots here where I can help people learn how to, but no, let's just run on the sand. I said, okay, well, a warning, somebody is going to cut their feet. That's going to happen.
You got 35 people here. Odds are 35 people here who don't normally go barefoot. Odds are somebody's going to cut their feet and one did. So I warned them.
But you have fun. Anyway, it's still fun. You're the kind of person who would know the answer to this question. What's one of the other things that's likely to happen if you have 35 people in one place?
Do you know this one? We're outside. So I'm not sure if we're just a little thing. The odds are like 90 plus percent that there will be two people in that group of 35 who share the same birthday.
Interesting. Yeah, I don't know what. 65 days in a year. Yeah.
Why not? Yeah. Well, those things. So, oh, you should give me some thought of the Nike free how ironic.
I mean, that shoe was developed extensively because, as we were watching the runners on the stand for track team training barefoot, you try to design something to something like that and it couldn't be further from a barefoot. Right. And it was supposed to be a gradual, a use as a transition from thick-silled shoes and then gradually work down to thinner-silled shoes to barefoot. And it doesn't work.
It's better off to start out barefoot, like I said, and listen to your souls and then run with the thin-silled shoes. I'm wearing minimalist shoes. Sometimes when I go hiking nowadays, my feet aren't as tough as they were maybe a more sensitive than I used to be, but the gravel is sharper. One of the...
Yeah, that's it. Well, I think mostly people going out and sharpening the gravel around you is a little point. That's what I said about the race that Louis Escobar held in central California. I think it was called the Born to Run race, maybe after the book.
But it was in a cow pasture, and I'm pretty sure the cows spent their whole days sharpening pebbles. Which is difficult because they have no opposable thumb. And so that's a lot of commitment. Well, they have teeth.
That's probably using the gravel to sharpen their teeth and it also splits the gravel into sharp. I mean, that's the worst trail I've run on for barefooting in southern California. Oh, wow. Now, maybe Ted had some that were worse.
But yeah. One of the things that I really enjoyed when running with you is you were one of the few people who really emphasized paying attention to relaxing, paying attention to seeing how little effort you could apply to do things because everyone still has a real no pain, no gain mentality. Especially in the idea that, well, I have to go through that. I have to strengthen my calves.
I have to build up skin on my feet, et cetera. I mean, including those, if you will, what's some of the other mythology that you've seen people walking in the door with when it's trying to get into natural movement? Well, of course, is that and of course, the grass and the sand is where you're supposed to start and it's not that you should start on snot. Yes, no, that's not correct.
You should all start on snot. That's a real issue. It is. And it does teach you not to slip.
You have to keep your weight above your feet. What's his name? The Russian guy with the method, Nicholas Romanov. Nicholas Romanov.
Yeah. He has some videos of him running on ice. Yeah. And I don't know if he's barefoot or not, but it doesn't matter.
The fact is, you can as long as that's basically the advice I got about driving cars in Michigan is keep the shiny side up. If you're not balding, keep the hairy side up. But anyway, you want to keep your body upright above your feet. If you do that, you won't fall theoretically.
Well, you know, it's another thing I hear a lot where people talk about slipping and I go, look, we can't buy like the laws of physics. If you're putting force on something at an angle, it's going to be slippery, no matter what. Right. If you put your feet underneath you, then if you just imagine slipping your foot and putting it down, tell me how slippery that is, they're not at all like a what that's how you can run.
Right. And doable. That's what happens in showers with us old people. Yeah.
Right. They're like leaning against the side or something and then they slip backwards and just stay upright. You know, there's another video of someone running on ice was proving the point that when you're sprinting at full speed, most of the force you're applying is and put it in an ice rink. So they use the carpet to get up to full speed and then ran across the rest of the ice with that problem.
That's the acceleration. That's the problem. Yeah. Because when you're accelerating, you're pushing back more.
Yeah. But once you get going, it's mostly just coasting. Yeah. Any other misconceptions that you bumped into that you found yourself having to clear up for humans?
Yeah. Well, speaking of things that you can't do or you told you can't do while you're doing them, it says nothing to do with barefooting. But I had a Honda coupe that I drove out here from Michigan. And the first time I rebuilt it, I forgot a washer in the transmission and I had no reverse and no first gear.
There's no problem. I could just push it out of parking spaces, about an 1800 pound car through cylinder engine. And for first gear, I just started in second. My girlfriend, I was explaining this to my girlfriend's mother and says, you can't start in second.
There you can't just use the clutch out. It's like, this is what she was taught. She never tested it, but it's obviously real. And that's kind of the thing with barefooting.
You can't run barefoot because your mom told you over and over again, you know, you put your shoes on, you're going to catch a death of cold, you're going to cut your feet wide open and die. You know, all these things that we learned, not through experience, but just through people pounding them into our heads. Yeah. These are, was it Einstein, I think, or Mark Twain, one of those intelligent people common sense is the accumulation of prejudices we learned while we were young or whenever.
That's a good one. That sounds more tweenish than Einstein Ian. Yeah, I don't like the term common sense because I think Twain did a thing on that too. It's not common and really sensible.
Exactly. And if you have to go to the argument that it's just common sense, that means you don't have a real argument. You don't have actual data, actual reasons. It's just common sense that this is the way it is.
I mean, there's one in you alluded to it before where people say, well, we didn't evolve to run on hard surfaces or surfaces like we're running on now, which is, have you ever been to the places where we evolved? Yeah. You're running on now. I have not been to Africa, but I've run on prairies and various states in the United States.
And I've run in the mountains, like I said, rock hard granite surfaces for miles, which basically it's a part of a wash that gets washed down every year from floods and such and really nicely surfaces. I go both directions. I just realized this, they have the exact same argument with two different points. So one is we didn't evolve to run on hard surfaces.
We evolved to run on grass and smooth or mud or whatever, or sand. And then you go to those places, it's really hard. And they go, oh, we didn't evolve to run on the hard things. We actually need cushioning.
It's like, well, we make up your mind. Right. Right. Right.
Yeah. The problem with cushioning is my dog is yawning. We have a new dog. No, I was not brand new.
He's four years old. Anyway, the problem with cushioning is that it deceives you into believing you don't have to change the way you're running. If you're running with impact and you still get the impact, you just don't feel it in the most sensitive parts of your, the drive trainer, the soles of our feet. Those are sensitive for that specific reason, because that helps us save the knees, the back everything, you know, barefoot Todd couldn't run very far with shoes on because his knees as back hurt started running barefoot.
He's done marathons, ultra marathons, you know, 100 miles. And he can do them now with footwear, because he's learned how to do them without foot. Did you see film, Mathetone's book 159? I haven't.
I think I have a book of his though, but it's a different one. So fill out this book 159 with based on the idea that what's going to take for someone to run a legit marathon under two hours and his supposition is it's going to be a decent surface and someone running barefoot. Yeah. So this is why I have it one under two hours, because I didn't read that book.
That explains everything. Everything. Yeah. Things that that explains.
I didn't read the book. And that's why I can't. That's why I don't play basketball. And I'm doing five foot five.
Exactly. And I didn't read it one and a half times because I still haven't completed a marathon in under three hours. Many of my marathons have been over four hours and five hours of me and barefoot Todd did one in eight hours. That was a lot of partially, well, this isn't interesting story.
You probably saw it in the book and there's pictures of it, but we made shoes at mile 20 for Todd out of the strings out of our shorts and the mile marker sign. And we drilled holes with the sharp pebbles that were on the trail. So they were sharp pebbles there. And we got lost once also before that.
We got lost and got back on track and ended up with a guy that was walking the marathon and wanted to finish last. So we walked with him for a ways and chatted until we got back on course. And then Miantod ran ahead. And then when we were making shoes, he caught up to us again.
So we all finished the last six miles, which was the gnarly, gravelly trail. This is Park City Marathon, if anybody's interested. And so we all finished together. And the order we wanted to, I finished first, of course, then Todd then Dell, who later ran into, you know, own McCall and he wasn't Wisconsin or Illinois.
He started barefoot running groups and stuff after my website and everything. And Dell joined his group and started running barefoot. In fact, affect some people because he was walking and doing all these races walking as slow as he could to finish last because he thought running was bad on the knees. Funny.
Well, you know, my favorite part of the story actually is highlighting something else. So you are someone who you will definitely err on the side of fun whenever that's a possibility. And so it seems the fun part about that story is you weren't attached to winning the race, you know, having a goal that you had to achieve. I was the first barefoot finisher.
Well, there's that. Buy a few feet. So well, actually, no, because Todd had the shoes on it. We made.
Yeah, I was also the last barefoot finisher. So there was a straw man in the early barefoot days where some people were claiming that barefoot runners said that it's going to definitely make you faster, which is not the case. Right. I feel that was point is if you're a good acclimated barefoot runner, the fact that you don't have anything weighing down your feet is good.
And you know, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing that I say is you can start a barefoot runner from 50 yards away because they look like they're having a good time. And it's like most of them, some of them run fast. We had a lot of people set personal best.
But I think that seems to be more universal is it's enjoyable enough that you it changes the way you think about going out and running that you're doing something for fun, not with some arbitrary goal that you think is going to get you to some arbitrary place that you think is going to make you happier if you do that. And as someone who rarely runs nowadays, I do a lot of walking with the dog and a little bit of running and occasionally with the dog when he wants to. But I still believe that you will run more often and perhaps longer in your life and more safely, more importantly, which may be partly because you maybe don't overdo it as much, but also because it's more fun. We did the Jimmy Stewart LA whatever it was called the relay marathon that they do and LA that used to be sponsored by Jimmy Stewart.
I don't really know that. Yeah, now he doesn't do that anymore. But there's somebody anyway. But we had four and a half Bearfooters on our team.
There's a five member relay marathon. And we were looking at the pictures afterwards and you look at who was smiling and then looked on at the feet and they were the bear, but there was one girl that ran with shoes on. I had met her actually at a 5k that she ran Bearfoot because she forgot to bring her shoes or running shoes. But she wanted to wear her shoes because she was going to do the Great Wall Marathon and don't want to risk anything.
So she probably got blisters from the shoes. We have a couple that ran a seven day stage race across Madagascar. It's a 256 k race. And so they're going through water and then on a sand and then on a pavement, you know, super hot is like every possible train within one run that you possibly do.
And at the end of that race, like every other runner was in the first aid tent with broken toenails that had fallen off and skin was sloughing off and they were like, anybody want to go for another 10k? The old bad water marathon, which I mean, that one's designed to be hard. It's the hottest time of the year and the hottest part of the country, the lowest altitude up to the highest altitude near almost. Yeah, I want to drive that course.
Some people run it twice. I mean, they go run up and then run back. Man, I mean, look, what's another thing that's interesting. How Bearfoot running became almost synonymous with distance and ultra.
I think that was a lot of Ted. Chris McDougall. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm a sprinter and people ask me, why don't sprint barefoot? And I go, well, because the monitor track services are like, full speed is like glass. So you need a little something. I haven't found a surface that is smooth enough and not slippery enough to really put that to the test, which is something I'd love to do.
Right. And I'm not a sprinter at all. There are very many of us. We're an odd bunch.
I mean, yeah, I mean, one of my co-workers who never runs, we would sprint down the hallways and he could stay up with me the whole time. But if I ran 10 miles, you know, he's going to drop out. Well, this thing, somebody said, you know, what do you think? How fast do you think you run a marathon?
I said, it's an irrelevant question. I mean, I would never in a million years, I don't take turns on a track that's too far to go. So which I had a thought the path of my head that I'm going to ask the question first, which is, so you were part of Dan Lieberman's original research and barefoot running. You were part of that.
How did that happen? Actually, not really. No, but Jeffrey Ferris, who runs a bicycle starter named Ferris Wiehl's interestingly, no, but he's actually went to a lecture by Lieberman and asked him about barefoot running. And that's when Lieberman said, hmm, maybe I should be looking into that.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So he kind of started Lieberman on it, actually, and he was from my website in our discussion groups. So is that how Dan then found you?
I think that was indirectly through, uh, Irene? Irene Davis. Yeah. Thank you.
So we appeared on one of those feel good things at the end of ABC World News Tonight, and they started off with the New York City Marathon. And many people think they have to have the best shoes to do this. And barefoot Ken Bob, right, disagrees with that. And they did an interview with me.
And then they said, went to Irene and said, what do you think about that? And she says, I believe people were born to run barefoot or something like that. So so we met through that. And then I think she was, I guess she worked, I guess she worked with Lieberman before, I'm not sure.
But definitely through Chris's book, they got together in that respect. And now she had believed it was at Harvard, too. So here's the $64,000 question. Anyway, for those of us who have not only experienced the benefits ourselves of barefoot, out of the equation, and just referred what I'm doing is natural movement, because that's the whole idea.
As you said, you know, once you can move correctly, you can put on shoes, some not all there's some shoes where you're going to get away no matter what you do. But that's, but I've seen people in movies running in high heels, which is really impressive. Well, you know, I mean, look, as a sprint, and usually take them off after a minute. Well, yeah, as a sprinter running in high heels is no big deal because basically, yeah, they're already on your toes.
Yeah, exactly. So, but in terms of, you know, we've seen the benefits ourselves, we've seen tens and tens and hundreds of thousands of people experience the same thing. They're still obviously, you know, well, let me just ask the question. What do you think it would take to change the tide so that people realize that this was the first choice, if you will, and then Sean would be the second choice under specific conditions?
It's a tough thing because it's mostly about marketing, marketing budgets. Nike has a way bigger marketing budget than I do. And I have for now, coming up and me doing free workshops and play fun shops, I call them, because work is a four letter word for Swiss play. Anyway, that's irrelevant.
It's, I, and so is shop. All those words are four letters. I don't know if you go back as far as Adobe Gillis and his friend, Manfred, who was played by Gilligan, Bob Denver. And he couldn't say the word work.
I was, I always, it's probably major influence on my philosophy of life with Bob Denver has Manfred, I think was Manfred. Mine was being in New York City in 1980, and taking the number six train from Wall Street up town at a time when everyone was getting off work. And I was the only one on the subway who wasn't wearing an identical suit. And I literally only thought that crossed my mind was I'm never going to be one of those guys.
There you go. Yeah. Much to my father's sugar in. Yeah.
So, I think only one person, my oldest brother has grown up to be what we call a suit. And that may be why his ex wife is his ex wife, but I'm not sure about that. Well, I mean, marketing is an interesting thing because certainly it's no question that big companies have not only huge marketing budgets, but brilliant marketers. And by that, I just mean people who are able to tell a story, not factually accurate, in a way that convinces people that is factually accurate.
Right. I totally agree with that. I thought about my skills with words and things and logic and thinking, Oh, I should go into marketing. Then I realized I have ethics.
And I resent that as a marker. But you are, you know what, but you're working in a product you believe in? Well, it's not just that I believe in it. It's legit.
I mean, in fact, it's funny when I was in college, and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. Well, you believe it's legit. But yeah, I agree with you. In a marketing class that I took, they brought into guys who were professional marketers, and they were working for Procter & Gamble, selling toilet paper.
And it was just like on the subway, my thought was, I will never be that. And so, you know, selling something just for the sake of selling something or selling something because you can make up a story that's convincing people. That's a whole different thing. When you have the luxury of being able to tell the truth, then what you're doing is just sharing information in the best way possible.
Yeah. But to your point, I mean, on the other hand, toilet is an essential product, according to most people, especially during the pandemic. There was a lot of contradictions or counter reactions to that is jumping the shower and wash it off. Yeah, there's that.
But you know, what's so ironic about that is like, so once we started making footwear, people would say, but you know, can't some of the big companies review off? I hear there's more than one company that makes sinks, toilets, or refrigerators, you know. And as there should be, right? Yeah.
And I'm not anti-capitalist entirely. I'm anti-onregulated capitalism and anti- I mean, we have laws against lying and advertisements and things like that. But there are ways, like you said, where you can say things that make it seem like, it's at the beginning of the interview, you talked about natural movement, natural foods. Yeah.
Natural has no definition as far as the FDA is concerned. Right. And mushrooms are natural. Yes, true.
We can talk about things about levels of processing things, but I mean, right, right. And your point. So when Adidas shows how wonderful their boost foam is by bouncing a steel ball off the boost foam and bounces like 10 times, it's not lying, but it's certainly misleading because if you bounce that steel ball off the steel plate, it'll bounce 250 times for it to rest. So you know, but that convinced people, oh, that cushion must be good.
Like I'm bouncing it is for the steel ball. And I love to point out, you are not a steel ball. Right. You are not.
And the biggest issue this goes into running technique is in the running shoes, like I said, you can be deceived into running with more impact. And that happens because people aren't letting their knees bend. They're relaxing their knees or their calves and allowing this whole spring that we have built into our body to activate. And when that activates, as our body moves in front of our feet, it pushes us forward.
So you actually get, you know, your regenerative braking, so to speak, without the braking, just regenerative. Yeah, Dan Lieberman would say you don't have the impact when you land, but you do have a force when you land, but it's gentle and it is loading that spring. The impact only comes if you keep your knees stiff and straight. Well, it's again, you know, people misunderstand.
And if you're launching yourself up high to try to think, oh, I need to run, I need to launch myself up in order to run. Well, you know, the complete lack of understanding that most people have about physics is what allows them to be misled about things. So even with force, I mean, for sprinting, you want to apply the most force in the ground as you possibly can at the right angle and the right speed. That's what makes you faster.
But can you mean correct angle, not a right angle, right? Yes, I think right. English language is weird. It's very, hey, here's something you like, can you think of a word for the infinite that isn't the negation of some other thing besides infinite.
Yeah, anything like that, anything like that, anything like not non ending, yeah, yeah, forever. But that just applies to time. Right, no, like something specific instance. Here's my other this is a verbal pet peeve that my mom it was my mom's very unique.
That one kills me like you can't be very one of a kind. Yeah, but it is one of those uses of the language like Mark Twain, where we're dealing the ridiculousness of a phrase which makes it funny. What are your thoughts of people using the phrase whole nother? I have no problem with it.
Really? Yeah, I'm not a grammar police person. No, but you like playing, I mean, you like playing playing with words and I like when other people play with them too. Okay, so you're okay with another.
If it's interesting, I was watching a video yesterday on grammar on a science channel on YouTube, and they were talking about, you know, like double negatives and stuff. You know, we ain't got any is no different than we ain't got none grammatically speaking, I guess, because what's any mean? I got the problem with that. Yeah, okay, there you go.
But you know, I mean, language evolves and evolves because the way people use it. Well, I have a theory that whole nother was one of those. Yeah, it was originally just a processing or a slip of the tongue. Yeah, caught on.
Well, and that's what's the other one that's in my head. It hasn't reached my tongue yet. Do you like the fact that we use anachronistic terms for modern things like that we're going to take something on television, even though we haven't used no tape? Yeah, I'm not necessarily opposed to them, but I have corrected several people sitting in my dean at the university.
You were correct. Have you corrected anyone on ATM machine? It's what? ATM machine.
ATM machine. Yeah, I'm a compact disc disc. The CD disc. I heard someone today on NPR saying how they were leaving their IRA retirement account money to NPR.
They forgot to put in the individual. He said my IRA retirement account. Well, they don't want to be mistaken for the Irish Republic army or something like that. Oh, but he couldn't have left his Irish public-owned army to NPR.
That could have been useful. Yeah, yeah. Back on track, if you will. Is there anything else that you would want to, you know, in part as a words of wisdom for someone who's starting to explore this whole barefoot natural, et cetera thing in a way that would give them the best chance of having an enjoyable experience?
Yes, enjoy it. See fun, see pleasure. If it hurts, you're doing it wrong or too much, too soon. So that's the whole idea of running on a rough terrain to begin with or walking on it, is when you get to the point and you can do this in 10 steps, 10 feet or 10 steps, depends on how big your steps are.
But you can get to the point where it's not as uncomfortable as it was when you did on the first step, just by learning to relax, let your entire soul contact the surface. This is another one of those things that false says we've been taught, is that to run barefoot, you got to stay up on the balls of your feet or the toes, you know, in the forefoot. And when you're spreading, maybe, yeah, but most people, most of the time are not sprinting unless they don't run at all and then they're sprinting to catch a bus. Then the biggest fear there is a heart attack, but that's another story.
But yeah, let your body, as Daniel Lieberman called it, comply, compliance. You want to allow it to flex and to bend and load that spring as your body's moving forward, that spring will help you move forward. And you don't have to push because that spring is just releasing on its own as your weight shifts forward and off the pressure is removed from the spring, it automatically pushes you forward. So you don't have to push off, or at least not consciously, right, you don't have to try to push down on the ground, gravity will get you there.
I've not seen anyone whose foot does not land unless they're landing on their head or their hands or something, in which case you didn't keep your body upright. So keep your body vertical and enjoy the scenery, enjoy the air blowing across your feet, going through your hair, going through your face masks. No, days and you don't have to wear the face mask unless you're around other people. So you know, close to them.
Well, all fine bits of info. It's nice. One of the things that I also appreciate about you is that you were never dogmatic about like, here's a way to do it. So in other words, you weren't trying to carve a niche for yourself by saying, this is the specific way, but really inviting people to explore and experiment using fun and ease as guide and basically learning to become your own coach rather than trying to listen to somebody else.
You adopt something that is not necessarily a problem. And every one of us, almost every one of us is amazingly unique. That wasn't the word you use, incredibly unique, very unique, very unique. So I don't expect, you know, you to try to imitate the stride that I have.
I don't want to imitate the stride you have. We all have, we'll develop that stride by listening to the bear our bare souls and what hurts what doesn't hurt. My knees don't hurt when I pay attention to what I'm doing. Actually, only one of them usually hurts because I bent backwards when I was a kid skiing behind a horse.
It was anyway, so when I go upstairs, sometimes I have to be reminded, okay, I need to keep my body vertical and stop leaning forward, bending at the waist because for some reason that makes my knee hurt. And that's one of the other misconceptions is leaning forward is good, but not if you're bending at the waist forward and your legs are still leaning backwards. So you want your entire body to lean forward so that your feet can push you forward. But actually, not really even the entire body.
It's more like I try to keep a vertical torso or at least it should feel vertical. It should feel like it's balanced. So I don't have forces pulling me forward or backward. And by getting my body in front of my feet, that's what pulls me forward.
I start falling forward. The image that I sometimes use is like Fred Flintstone starting his car. Yeah, yeah. But he always used it and then the car would start moving.
But he was feet were behind him. That was the thing. That's the point. Yeah, it's kind of like the opposite of the coyote running off the edge of a cliff.
And then he doesn't start falling until he, oh, off the edge of the cliff. And then he started to, oh, if only like that. Yeah. Anything else before we call actually here's the big one before you call it a day.
If people want to find out more about what you're up to or learn from all the things that you have learned, please tell them where to go and what to do. I love telling people where to go. Yeah, go to barefootrunning.com. That's my website.
And I am still open to maybe not right now, but after more people are vaccinated and such to meeting up with people who want to walk or run with me. And when I was doing that year or two ago, and I did not many people show up, but it's funny. My neighbor that started running barefoot after I wrote my book after the book was published, you've already told this published. So you get people from like everywhere in the world coming out just to run with you.
And it's more of a run walk. And nowadays, it's more of a walk run. And it's becoming more of a walk. You remind me, you were the only person who had the following advice from running down hills where people often think they have issues.
You said, well, you have two choices. You can just slow down, just make sure you're getting your feet underneath. You don't use your foot breaking or you just run down the hill as fast as you can. And just, you know, like, let it lose and have fun.
And nowadays, I do more of the slowing down. My feet just don't keep up like they used to gravity. But yeah, and there was a woman in Chris McDougall's book that also had that technique of just letting the knees collapse. I think it's how she described her.
He described it. And then moving forward, rather than resisting. Well, Ken, thank you very much. It's pleasure catching up.
It's been way too long in part because we don't get to get out very, but that'll happen sometime soon. Yeah, I'm not very social anyway. I'm just, I don't hate this staying at home stuff. I've always loved staying home from school when I was younger.
Yeah. And even when I was older, I guess I was always younger. I've never been older than I am now. But it's a little bitch head bird joke.
He said someone came up and said, here's a picture of me from when I was younger. And just every picture of you is from when you were younger. Exactly. I'm not an a social person.
I had COVID back in January. And so I was essentially locked in the basement. Early. Yeah.
This January. Not the first time. So I was locked in the basement for two weeks. And I got to tell you, it was really pretty fine not having to see another human being or see anything and getting out of the basement.
It was a furniture basement. It's not like it was, you know, that's part of getting out. It took me a good, we can have to adjust to seeing humans and just the stimulation outside was wild. That's what I'm fearing.
As much as I fear anything and I don't have that many fears anymore. It's everything I've ever feared in my life. It's usually just a matter of handling it, you know, I'm afraid to go to school because you have a test or whatever. Yeah.
It's okay. But not the end of the world. We're afraid of what we imagine would happen if we did something, not the thing itself. And that's what keeps a lot of people from going barefoot to it's the fear that has been instilled in them much by prejudice or bigotry against going barefoot.
That is, prejudice against it. Well, you know, I mean, we're dragging out the end of this but it occurs to me. I mean, the bigotry is an interesting phrase to use or prejudice is an interesting phrase because the people that we, what we associate with barefoot is often people who are poor or some situation that we wouldn't want to be in. And you know, I'm sure that's a piece of it as well, is that's in the back of someone's mind.
You know, they might need to be aware of that one. It really is fascinating because it's actually, you know, here's one, so in Colorado people freak out, of course, if you're walking around barefoot. But if you're on the beach, they don't have that. So it's a matter of location.
It's not a question. You're more likely to cut your foot on the beach. Right. Yeah, right.
And where else you can see the glass and not step on it. Yeah. So I've said that to people here when they say something about going barefoot, I go, this will be fine if we were in Santa Barbara, right? They go, well, pretend you're in Santa Barbara.
There you go. Yeah. If you guys have Spanish names cities in Colorado too, I think Colorado is Spanish names. Exactly.
We used to be part of Mexico, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. This all used to be part of Mexico. Don't get to start on that one. Anyway, again, a total total pleasure.
Let's not wait so long till the next one. All right. There's anything we can do tomorrow. I'm a little busy tomorrow, but I appreciate it.
Cramping down goes where I live. So, and I do what people do take advantage of checking out your website. And if you're ever in SoCal coming to visit social butterfly, although you're not, your, I know my experience of you is you have never turned down someone who's willing to go out and play. And so yeah, that's.
And I found that it's actually easy to socialize with people while I'm running because that kind of distracts me from the fact that I'm socializing with humans. It's a good strategy. I like it. I actually, when people wanted to do interviews with me for media and such, I'd say, okay, well, let me get my Bluetooth on and I'll take you for a run virtually.
Perfect. So for everybody else, again, now you know where to find Ken Bob and have fun doing that. And again, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find previous episodes, etc. To like and share and you know, you know, the drill, as I say, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.