Episode 156: Do Shoes Alter Reality?

There's this idea that what you believe can influence the way you actually perceive reality. What if the way you perceive reality is influencing something else? We're going to dive into that in today's episode of the movement. Move with the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to find, well, to have a healthy, strong body starting, you know, feet first, usually because those things are your foundation.

Well, we talked about other stuff here too. And we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you've been told about what it takes to walk or run or play or to yoga or cross or whatever it is you like to do and to do that, enjoyably and efficiently and effectively. And I say enjoy it. It's Monday.

I never mind. I know I did because it's a trick question. I'm not going to keep it up if it's not enjoyable. I'm Stephen Sashan from zero shoes.com, your host of the podcast, which is sometimes just a rant where I'm not being a host.

But we call it the movement movement because we are creating a movement that involves you. It's easy. It's free to tell you how to say it. About natural movement, helping people realize that letting your body do what's natural is often way, way better than any of the quote technological improvements that have come around in the last 50 years.

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So let us jump in. Cody, can you see my favorite? Tell people who you are, what you're doing here and things like that. Hey, yeah.

Thanks for having me. Like you said on Cody comes from runners world Tulsa, which is a running store here in Tulsa, if you can believe that. Yeah, I have a background in physical therapy and a licensed physical therapist assistant, also a certified personal trainer through ACSM. And yeah, I first got kind of into barefoot movement back in college and then once your eyes are kind of open to that, it's tough to look back.

But yeah, I think I'm really excited to be here because I do work in a running shoe store. And yeah, it's kind of one foot in both worlds. I'm pun intended. We'll be back at the half a step.

Your certification, you mentioned ACSM for people who don't know. That's the American College of Sports Medicine, not an actual university to the organization of people who are involved in practicing sports medicine. It's a wonderful organization happily. The new president is Dr.

Irene Davis, who was at Harvard now. She's at University of Southern Florida. And why I say happily is because Irene is the leading proponent of research about minimalist footwear and natural movement. And the research she's done has inspired dozens and dozens of other people around the world to do kind of research to what I call the dumbest science ever because basically it's proving that most of it is proving it user or loser.

It's proving that letting your body work naturally is better than getting in the way of that, which is shocking that we need to demonstrate that when the big shoe companies have never demonstrated the validity of anything they've said. So anyway, that's a bit of a tangent. So I tease this episode, such a weird word to use. I tease this episode with this idea of what we believe affects our perception of reality, maybe what we're receiving is affecting something else.

And that came from something that you and I talked about for a brief moment before we hit record. Talk to me about what that was bringing up for you and maybe by the end of this I'll learn to speak English. Sounds good. Well, this is actually my first podcast ever.

So if I say something stupid, yeah, you'll have all kinds of grace for me. Actually, if I can go back to you earlier today was just listening to your Dr. Irene Davis episode. I think it was 132.

And I think the best thing people can do right now is pause this one and go listen to that one because well, I think that's very kind. But I'm not going to take credit to solve that arena. But even more, if you want to hear, there's two other things that are really good, but don't leave to hear them. Peter Attia did an interview with Irene.

I introduced the two of them and that one's really, really fun. And then so you just search for Peter Attia, A-T-T-I-A. He's actually Peter Attia, MD.com. And you can find, probably one second, you can find Irene's episode there.

And also, there's a free economics podcast called These Shoes Are Killing Me that was with Irene and Daniel Lieberman, who was at Harvard as well. He's still there. And that's another really good one. And I mentioned those because they're both more free economics one in particular is really geared towards mainstream people who know nothing about this.

And Peter, of course, is geared towards more people who are hip to health and wellness benefits of things and looking into that. So he takes a deeper dive into that with Irene. So anyway, but we're not going to make people leave now. So back to you for the win.

All right. So yeah, you're talking kind of about reality. And this idea comes from, I have a friend who's a psychologist and a counselor. And he was telling me, I was trying to get the right words from him earlier today, but he said, one way to approach mental illness is that people have difficulty engaging with reality.

So I'm not a mental illness professional. I've experienced it myself. But I think that sort of disassociation with reality is something that traditional footwear causes to your whole body. It takes reality, which might be flat, might be rocky, might be quite tumultuous, and replaces it with a ramp and tons of cushion.

And so you can get away with that for a long time, but sometimes reality breaks through. And there's a friend of mine who has a line, you can argue with reality, but reality always wins. Yeah. And it's a really interesting way because there's another aspect of that, which is just the experience of or the lack of, let's do that way, the lack of experiencing reality when you can't really feel the ground, when you can't tell if you have some gate change.

And I say, you can't tell if you have a gate change because many people, when I was in the lab with Dr. Bill Sands, he was the former head of biomechanics for the O'Solimpic Committee. When I was in his lab, it was amazing discovering how people's gate would change with every different shoe they put on their feet. And most of them never noticed, including like, you know, a guy who was a habitual, well, he said he was a barefoot runner, but he mostly spent his time in five fingers.

And when he was barefoot, his form was perfect. When he was in five fingers, he was overstrolling the heel striking and did not know it, which is sort of amazing. So, you know, when you were wearing something that elevates your heel, it has enough padding so you don't get enough sensation from the ground or very much sensation from the ground, the soul is instructed to change the physics of how your foot interacts with the ground. Most of us just either don't notice or we habituate to it.

And so what are your thoughts? And what are you, and I want to put this to the lens of somebody who works in a shoe store, what do you see? What's your experience or thoughts about that phenomenon of distancing you from reality and how that then pans out? Yeah.

So I just had a customer Friday, I think, came in and I was working with someone else at the time, this individual had just been trying on shoe after shoe. I was had about like every shoe in the back, in the front for this person to try on, and it's just not getting anywhere. And so that's when I get called over to just maybe use my background in physical therapy to do a different heat analysis. And so I haven't, you know, trying a couple of shoes that, you know, thought would be telling for his date.

And then I said, hey, like, just take your shoes off. And he did. And he was doing a lot of stuff too. And he ran and it was, it was beautiful.

Something to behold, and he didn't have pain. And that is a situation that has happened multiple times working in physical therapy, especially with runners or other people. You feel the ground, you orient your body appropriately with gravity and then things start clicking. But it is tough working in a running store where we don't even carry a shoe like zero shoes.

Well, that was obviously my next question is, and you know, I'm going to give you a, what's the word I'm going to give you a way in for whomever the buyer is, which is we don't need to tell people to run these. This is an upsell. This is an additional product to add to someone, you know, additional arrow for their quiver. And there's an ebook that I've gotten put together that I contribute to that talks about two things.

One, research from Dr. Sarah Ridge showing that he's walking in middle shoes, built a suit, as much as we an exercise program. But then the other part is the people who did net that exercise program and ran in regular shoes over the course of a year. This is from Dr.

Isabel Sacco, the people who did the exercise program over the course of a year had 250% fewer injuries than those who didn't. So there isn't a study yet yet showing that if you just walk around and choose like zero shoes and run whatever the hell you want, you're going to have a 200% lower injury risk rate, but it is the exact same exercise program in the middle of the equation. You know, do the math, even though that specific study doesn't exist yet. So when we were at the running event, we created a show for running stores, that was our pitch.

It's like, we're not telling people not where they're gel cayano or they're hoke over whatever the hell it is that all look exactly the same now. I mean, we would, but I'm not going to tell that to people who think that that's a well-threatening livelihood somehow. It's like, this is an additional thing. Like when you're done running, especially these super maximal shoes where they're really expensive and they break down really fast, it's like get out of them as soon as you're done running and then we're something that's going to build strength back into your feet.

Yeah. Oh, it just had a follow-up thought. I know I was that exercise program barefoot difficulty being in a running shoe store. Yeah.

That's actually how do you? I mean, given what you know and what you believe, how do you deal with doing the exact opposite all day? Yeah, I have to admit, it does feel like doing the exact opposite of what I know. And I've been thinking about that because I assumed that would come up in our conversation.

But I think it comes down to thinking about what a running store provides. And so the store I work for locally owned, there's just us. Owner's been working there for 40 years now in the community. She puts on a ton of races of runners while racing.

And so really what I think the local running store provides is a community hub for runners. And so in that lens, I'm more so selling running than running shoes. And if with my background, I can get someone to try on a shoe that they haven't tried before that might have less of a drop, lighter weight or more of a more forefoot room. And they like it and they keep running, then that's great.

But ultimately if I can just keep people running and often people will have pain and I'll tell them, hey, I'm a personal trainer, I can help you rewrite some of these patterns before they know it in one of my sessions barefoot. And we've got it. I won't tell if you won't tell. Yeah, that's true.

And so I'm going to relate to know this is an interesting question perhaps at the store. Do you guys have you ever sold the copy of the book, Born to Run or the new one Born to Run to? It's in our little library. It's over there.

It's just needing. You know, this is one of my favorite things when I go somewhere and I see that someone has a book like I was in a doctor's office recently, or a Phoenix surgeon and he had a book or had a copy of the book in the room that I was in. And then everyone walked in and big thanks to motion girl Pat, I'll show you shoes. And they talked about how much they love the book.

It's like, but didn't you? Wait, what? No, it's like that disconnect. It's a tricky one.

And I think at the end of that episode with Dr. Davis, you and she were discussing like, how do you get more people to wear the shoes? And I wanted to like yell like, you know, one way you could copy what the other brands have done. You probably thought of this already.

Get in the stores, have people try them on? Well, easier said than done. I mean, yes, the goal would be just simply get people to try things on or, you know, for people listening, if you're not going to get a pair of shoes or some other truly minimal shoe, which there are very few just take up your shoes and start walking around. Right.

Start there. But the challenge with running shoe stores, I'll tell you this story. And I'm sorry that this meat jam, you haven't away so much. You had a sales person working for us who'd been in the footwear business for a while and had moved from brand to brand.

And then we did it here and love what we were doing, changed her life. And then we go to, in fact, it was the running event last year and we go to the running event and all of her previous accounts showed up and they couldn't have been happier to see her. They were thrilled to hang out with her and none of them brought our shoes into their store. And she was very distraught by that.

And I said, well, it's not personal. It's not because they don't like you. They adore you. The difference is that previously when you move from company to company, they didn't care if they were selling stock and you muzuno, a six.

I mean, it just didn't matter to them. It was all basically the same. But now you're asking them to not only buy something very different, but think differently and have to tell a new story. Even if it's just an additional story, it's a new thing they need to learn and they just weren't confident that they'd be able to make money, despite the fact that every store we've been in makes money selling our shoes.

She was so upset not only by their behavior or lack thereof, but realizing that they weren't doing anything to be helpful, that she said, I got to get out of business and she left the footwear sales forever. Oh, so getting into shoe stores has been running shoe stores in particular has been incredibly challenging because they still believe that barefooter minimalist or frankly natural movement is somehow going to hurt you, despite the fact that their runners are coming in already saying, I'm hurt, what do you have for me? So it's a bit of a cognitive problem where it's like, no, they already have the problem you're worried they'll get here. And what we're finding is the opposite is that problems somehow often disappear.

Yeah. I've had some conversations over the years, different, and I've worked at a couple of different stores and asked them, why don't we carry a barefoot option? And they have the same answer because I've been really grateful to work at stores that want to educate more than sell. And so the locations I've had where they've told us to educate ourselves.

And so our data analysis probably looks a little different than most locations. But yeah, it is that sort of like a paradigm shift. But I think if we got some barefoot shoes in one of our running clubs, just, hey, go for a run and see what you think. Well, I would argue that's probably the worst thing to do because you don't want someone just put on a pair of shoes, you wouldn't do this with a regular pair of shoes, you wouldn't say here's a brand new pair of shoes, you just go for a run.

Oh, but we do. Oh, man. Well, you certainly wouldn't say go for a race. No, no, no.

Yeah. So if you're looking for something minimalist, you don't want people just to take their normal 5K day and just switch to 5K day in a shoe that's going to be bought for you for a day for now. So that's why the whole idea of use these is something when you're done running because one day you'll be walking around, picking up the mail, doing whatever, and then you'll run to the corner or you'll chase something and you realize, oh, well, I can do this. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm really good runners in my neighborhood bunch of work.

Yeah. And, and, and then a bunch of really good casual runners and I'll see somebody run by technically they have good form landing, midfoot underneath their body, everything looks great, except they're in a big thick shoe and they're healed, never touches the ground. And so they're not getting the full use of their Achilles as a spring. And I wonder what they would be like switching because fundamentally it wouldn't be any different for them.

So, you know, that would be intriguing, which brings me to the question, what do you guys do for gate analysis since nine times out of 10, it's complete bullshit. Yeah. Well, I would say I would just, I think it might be worth having people just throw on the shoe and jog around, not for a training run. But yeah, but to get it to get the feeling, well, we saw that with in Bill Sands lab, we saw that most people, not literally 90%, when they switched to barefoot, they're forming a silly change when they switched our shoes at same as when they were barefoot.

And then the 10% who didn't, it took like 30 seconds to give them some coaching to change that. But again, I'm really curious about what you guys do for data analysis. Oh, yeah. Sure.

Yeah. And, yeah, so what we do, it's different per person, you know, I have a different background than my bosses. Well, let's start with a simple thing. You're putting on a motorized treadmill.

Yeah. No, non motorized or running or what are you doing it? Running around the store or outside. Okay.

So they're running around outside and are you just looking or you videotaping? So I do, again, analysis where I do a video, but just for general people coming into the store, we just watch. And so what are you looking for then? The main thing is we kind of look for asymmetries and going from there, we look at like, you know, what looks off and we're basing that on like, are using one side more than the other because most people do that.

It's less about, you know, everyone asks right away, like, so I used to be a heel striker, but now I land on my forefoot and they still land on the heel. But yeah, the other times where I've heard someone say that they don't heel strike and I watch it do it is very high. Yeah. So I guess our game analysis is it's kind of vague in what we're looking for.

And more comes down to like, can we find a shoe to support this person's and by support, I mean, comply with this person's stride in a way that they might not be getting right now. And my mind is working on how can I talk about getting them in less shoe? So first of all, if you're looking for asymmetry, I'm assuming that means you're watching them either from the front or the back as they're going to order away from you. And can you for people who don't have a sense of what that might be like, what kind of things do you see that are asymmetric?

Yeah. So, you know, it's tempting to look right at the feet, but you see a lot more sometimes looking at the shoulders. And so you might see someone twist their shoulders more towards the left or more to the right or their arm swing is asymmetrical. That can give you a lot of cues as to what's going on farther on down the chain or they might have landing on their left foot.

Their right hip might drop, which could be a cue that like they are not fully activating their glutes on one side. Yeah, they can get pretty complicated and I'm definitely guilty of getting in the weeds with people. But you know, I think a lot of people are a little bit more receptive to being told, hey, like this is something you're doing. I'm not be aware of it.

Turns out using this sign more than the other. Let's try to equal that out. The reason I said this mostly bullshit is well, because the research picks that up, but more specifically, when I go into most running shoe stores and they got to try to no set up, there's a camera there that's filming at 60 frames a second, basically from the knees down, right? They're missing all the things that you said you're primarily looking for from, you know, the knees up.

That's how I started the same whole setup. Yeah. And well, and I think about, you know, the video they're using, which is at best 60 frames a second in Bill's lab, he was filming you at 500 frames a second, because he said you can't learn anything with less than 250. So, you know, let's go to five.

And then the last part is that they're using this with some prescribed notion of if you do X, then you need Y kind of shoe. Right. And the army studied that and found that it didn't matter. They could put people in the shoe that they were prescribed or a random shoe.

And the injury results were exactly the same performance was exactly the same. There was just no, this whole idea that you need that you can figure out what some hustle was running and find a shoe to adapt to that or change that or something and help them become less than there was no evidence for that. So when you guys are, when you're looking, even though you're not using 60 frames a second on a motorized treadmill, and you can answer for other people in the store perhaps, how are you then like that thing of picking a shoe that can comply with them or work with them or do something with or for or to them? How do you do that?

Oh, it's tough. Honestly, it'd be way easier just to say take off your shoes and like, well, since you don't have that luxury and other people don't have that. I said, then what happens? Just a lot of time asking questions.

How did that feel? You know, first of all, does the shoe fit? Yeah. Most people are wearing shoes that aren't only too much shoe, but are way too small.

Really? Yeah. Most, you know, you should have generally, you know, like to be able to put your thumb between the end of your toe and the front of the shoe for most people in traditional running shoes. So, ladies, I have to go.

So yes, for most people in traditional shoes, you know why? Oh, because the shoe doesn't move and your foot does. It's even better than that. When you, because that's part of it, when you have a shoe with a big thick midsole, if it bends at all, it's like bending a phone book for people who remember what a phone book is, the inside of Ben Fassr on the outside.

So as you're going through the gait cycle, the inside of the shoe gets shorter. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then you end up not being able to engage your foot in sway.

And whenever there's not movement where it's supposed to be, you know, it has to happen where it's not supposed to happen. Oh, that's great. Because that's a brilliant line. So whenever there's not movement where there's supposed to be, it's going to try to remove it where there's not supposed to be.

Can you dive into that a little bit and tell me what you've seen and discovered, et cetera? It would be my pleasure. I... Thank you, sir.

This is a huge thing with knees. Often we try to support the foot because it is supposed to help the knee. And it's the exact opposite. When you block the foot from moving, you require the knee to move differently.

I'm speaking anecdotally, you know, I haven't done research on this, but we see it all the time. Most people, you know, for whatever reason have poor ability to dynamically control the knee through their glutes. And so if you block the foot, then you create a situation where the knee is required to move in ways or position itself in ways that are not healthy. And it's just a vicious cycle of like, well, when you're more supported the foot, when you more supported the foot, when it's actually less and more strength at the foot would be able to let the knee do its job, which is really working in primarily one plane.

Yeah, it's... I love that. I'm going to steal that for a reason because it's a really good one. It's funny that the whole idea of posting your foot, of trying to keep it in some particular shape, which is totally arbitrary, just has that exact effect of if your foot can't move everything else about it, is trying to compensate.

There's not wired for that. And then to your point, people come... I mean, this is the part that blows me away. And I guess it shouldn't is that people just keep coming back looking for some variation of the same thing that caused the problem to begin with.

Right. Yeah. So many people come in and they're like, oh, that's a couple of weeks ago, she came in wearing insoles in two pairs of shoes. She was like, can you watch me running these?

And we did. She's like, I'm having pain. We had her take the insoles out. And she ran without pain.

And then she said, so do you have a better insult? And she's like, no, actually, here's why I probably don't need one. And I've stolen something from you, which is the best way to support an arch is from the top down. If you support an arch from the bottom up, you break it.

Right. Yeah. But that's a brilliant example of, you know, people are so indoctrinated that you show them explicitly that the thing they think is a solution is causing a problem and they just look for another version of the same thing. Yeah.

Yeah. It's stuff. And so I think that's kind of an example of, you know, being unable to fully engage with reality, I think is, you know, taking that idea of movement not happening where it should and also feeling not happening where it should. And there's this disorder, a Charco Foote.

I don't know if you've heard of it. No. CH, AR, COT. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to be blind or I'm going with this, but it happens with people who have some sort of neuropathy or inability to sense through their feet. And so they do is end up applying more impact than they need. And their foot goes from being arched this way, totally reversing, which is kind of similar to the way she was made.

And if we're mimicking a disease state, that's probably not good. Yeah. And people who are experiencing that are, you know, as part of a disease process. It's not like a specific choice.

But anyway, that's interesting. Yeah. You know, I know about it, but I haven't really looked into it very much. I wonder how much of that, given the neurological component, I wonder how much of that can be addressed by first getting actual feedback from the soldier foot to your brain.

And then what that's going to do to the musculature or what it can do to muscle firing patterns and whether that I haven't heard people talk about this, I wonder if it is addressable in some way with natural movement and just starting with getting some sensation back, et cetera. Yeah. I know. And I, you know, it's definitely an allegory, but yeah, maybe there is a way to do that for people.

I'm always blown away when you watch people, okay, has become the footwear for old people. And it's amazing watching people in those shoes shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, slow, slow, slow. And then amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm being euphemistic in a weird way. It's stunning to me that it's become so popular. And now when we're the running band, every few other than ours was at least an inch and a half thick.

Yeah. It's just getting more. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years. Especially now that everybody's doing it, that's never a good sign.

When everyone's doing one thing, that usually means that's about to break. Yeah. It is. We do get a lot of people come in from their usually podiatrists saying, I need the carbon fiber shoe and, oh, like, you know, are you doing a race soon?

No, I have plantar fasciitis and I'm in my 80s and it's like, oh, that is a lot between, you know, barefoot and carbon fiber shoe. That would be better for you. But, well, the whole, I mean, the carbon fiber thing is fascinating because again, back to the running event, every shoe there was talking about their carbon fiber. Yeah.

And so it's become a thing that like everything in footwear, the companies use some technology or some misreposition of physics in a way that no one thinks about and then it becomes like the thing. So carbon fiber, the joke there is it's not doing anything functionally. It's their structure because of that much foam and that kind of foam, if you didn't have a carbon fiber layer, the foam would just shear almost instantly because it's so, but it's become like, oh, carbon fiber, that must be good because there's carbon fiber in there as well. It's good for the companies who are sucking more money out of your wallet because those things are more expensive, but it's literally only there for structural reasons does not do anything to help you move in anyway.

Yeah. And I think it's worth noting or bringing back what Dr. Davis said about how so many people try to outrun their feet and, you know, should humans be able to run us up to marathon? You know, who knows?

Well, let's say there should be some humans who can. Yeah, because there's always going to be a big bell curve with people on one end of the other. My favorite, I wish I remember who it was and which race it was, was it some marathon, you know, whoever won ran out like a 205 or something like that. And the last person took them nine hours.

And the person who ran, I make them at that number, but it's something like that. And the last person, the guy who ran the 205 stayed to the end and congratulated that person saying, I can't run for nine hours straight. Yeah. I would never do that.

You know, it was so heartwarming. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, Phil Maffetone wrote a book called 159, which is his idea about what it would take to run a circular marathon, on a regular marathon course, not some perfect course with pacers, et cetera. And one of the big parts is, you know, it'll be barefoot because the whole reason, lighter shoes, you're not finding lighter.

Yeah. The problem is we just can't find someone who's already like, you know, a 25 to 10 person who'd be willing to sacrifice the remainder of their career. Yeah. Gubber that they'd be fine.

And because they'd be terrified. Yeah. Because the shoes can't create energy. If only your muscles can do that.

Ellie Kuchugate said that exact thing about a year ago in an article where he said it wasn't the shoes that made me run sub two hours. It was my legs and that article vanished as fast as it showed up. I never even heard about that. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Literally, I think the headline was, you know, quote, it was my legs. Yeah. I don't know if he got a nasty gram from Nike. I have a friend who was quoted when Nike did their self-lacing shoe, the background shoe.

Yeah. He was quoted basically saying, it's just a gimmick and you got to let it from their lawyers saying, I know you haven't worked here for decades, but if you say anything like that, again, we will suit you to believe in. Ooh, yikes. You know, they know when they're doing the wrong thing and not surprisingly, they don't want anyone to make them have to admit it.

Yeah. And it is tough to going back to like working in, you know, where sometimes I feel like I'm doing the opposite of what I think is right for someone. It's hard to distance. Like the people who know better.

Yeah. And I think that's what I want to do. I want to be careful. I want to be careful.

I don't come across saying like running stores are bad and shoes are ethically bad, even though they're bad, mechanically. Yeah. Because people running. You can leave it to me.

I have. To your point, I don't think running shoe stores are bad and I don't think- Oh yeah. And you've never said that. No, no, no.

And the interesting thing, I mean, look, the average running shoe store is like 500 square feet and makes less money than the average graduate from a decent university who goes to Wall Street. I mean, it's ridiculous how little a lot of these stores make. So these are people who are doing it out of love and concern and wanting to do the best they can. Yeah.

And what I've seen is that we've got 50 years of people learning and believing something that's patently false, but they didn't know that or even if they find that out, they, to change would be so catastrophic to their sense of self and to their business model. Potentially, that's what they think that things just don't change. And my theory is we're going to hit a critical mass point where there's enough people walking around running around in minimal shoes that everyone finally goes, oh, that's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, man. I thought again, I see how this happens to people. Well, you're too young for it to be happening.

I know. I can't do names anymore. It's really annoying how like someone either someone that I know or some Hollywood person that I've seen a million times and then I can't think of it. I said, wait, and just cross my fingers.

Oh, my goodness. Well, so let's go back to the very beginning of our conversation then. So thinking about this whole idea about reality and is there anything more that we want to kind of add in about how reality is affected or you are affected by your ability or lack thereof to experience it. Yeah.

So I think, you know, to avoid getting way too, you know, into what reality is as far as. Oh, no. Oh, no. Not going to stop that.

I'll leave that to you too. No, no, no, no, no. Come on. We can do it.

As far as like, you know, in any sort of health education, you know, we talk about anatomical position and like, so there's a certain essence of reality about that. Like, this is what the body is and how it lines up. There's never an arch support or footwear on those models. And so what we don't consider is that that changes things, you know, everyone who knows anything at all about the barefoot movement, like knows when you put something under the foot that's lifted and the heel, it affects your knee, it affects your hips, your pelvis is shifted or rotated forward and you have to accommodate for that with other things.

And so I guess just like when you, one thing I always tried to get through to my patients and physical therapy was there's a reason you can't get the right muscles to work when you're doing this exercise because it's because of my shoes and things aren't in the right, you know, physics based positioning to fire and just, you know, myriad of other downstream issues with that. How does that relate to something that I've heard a bajillion times, which is basically people think that there's special little snowflakes that they are, that everyone's different from the way people say it is, there's a different thing for each person. Everyone needs something different. And my response, well, here, I'm going to tell you my response.

How much are your response to that? Oh, you know, the last thing people want to hear is that they're not. But you know, I know at the end of a long, busy day with customers, my first instinct is to say, oh, that's normal, you know, what you're experiencing. But what I try to do is just ask more questions and then get them, guide them to a point where they're like saying, oh, like, I'm really not that different.

I think unless you do have some anatomical issue, we're all built basically the same. Yeah. Running form is running form. Nick Romanov talks about it.

He said, the better you get, the more form converges to an ideal. And there'll always be something that's a little different. There'll be some idiosyncratic thing, but the fundamentals have become identical to that point. If anyone searches for a video of Usain Bolt running in slow motion, you watch this form and it's amazing.

And then you look at the other seven people in the race, exactly the same, except for the last few strides where there's a couple of people who are like in the sixth to eighth position where they're overstriting and just trying to do so. By and large, everyone else looks just like he does. And I think this has been a big thing in footwear, is just catering to this idea that we all have. We want to be special.

We want to be treated as individuals, despite the fact that we're fundamentally the same. Yeah. I wonder if it's tied into this, but I know in physical therapy, a lot of people not just sort of vie for this individuality, but more so identify with their deficiency or with their pain. And so it becomes something that they almost rely on for.

It's their identity. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, man, it's tough to shake someone's identity. But when it comes to shoes, it's a little bit easier.

Here, awesome fun. We'll dive into this thing and what is reality. So since you brought it up that way, this whole idea that people will identify with their problem, it becomes part of their identity. I mean, this is psychology one I want to, is people, for whatever reason, we evolve to bond over our problems.

And I think probably because being hypersensitive to our problems is what kept us alive or those of us who survived, they kept them alive and they had children and they had children and here we are the offspring of a bunch of winers or hypersensitive people mostly. But this idea that the way you move, I mean, I'm always fascinated by how people move the way their parents did. There's no reason for that. But they learned that and I think unconsciously did that to fit in from day one.

And then you see it and literally it's part of their identity. You give them a new way of moving. They don't know who they are. It can be very literally psychologically disturbing when you show someone they can move differently.

And especially if they have invested literally so much money in keeping this idea alive. Sorry, wait, there's a, I think it was Fritz Purls, psychologist who had a student whose mother was dying. She's in the hospital and the student says, you know, can you just come see if you can give my mother any help before she dies. And so, pardon me, if it was not Fritz Purls, it might have been Milton Erickson, one of those right here guys, doesn't matter.

So he comes in to her hospital room and notices there's a box of wooden matches on her nightstand with a pile of burned out ones next to the box. Purls has attention. He says, what's with the matches? And she says, oh, I just light out one of those every time my daughter brings in another one of these quacks to try to help me.

And so the whoever it was, Erickson Purls opens the box, takes that image, lights it, blows it out, that's the pile and says that'll be $200. No, oh no. And, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's academically, intellectually fascinating. But in terms of people's well-being, it could not be more frustrating to watch people hold on to an identity, a movement pattern.

And those things are very closely related to that. And I think it's, oh, please. Oh, I was going to just toss in there that I often wonder if we're more afraid of uncertainty than pain. And if a certain we're a lot more comfortable with that situation.

I think that relates to the fact that whenever if you say to someone or they walk into your store and say, I want to run a 5k in nine days, what do I do? You know, they look for a paint by numbers, fill in the blank way of getting from here to there, ignore, I'm just sorry, Ronik, ignoring that they are individuals. When they come into the store looking for something where you treat them like an individual. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no, yeah. Here, listen, I'll sum it up this way. Humans.

Yeah. Well, so complex and so the same. Exactly. I would argue so, so not complex.

And the differences are typically not meaningful, except in these three circumstances don't get me wrong. But we all, you know, all fundamentally, we're all just hoping that our next thought helps us figure out how to be happy by the end of that thought. Or at some point, you know, soon thereafter. And yet we bond.

I just listen to it. There's an NPR show called Hidden Brain. And I just do an episode about why and how we complain. And it does create a bonding experience between people.

But if you're complaining about a third thing or something that's intractable, it sets you up to have a miserable experience with that other thing. So we get the benefit of bonding, but then we're creating an outsider that we then can no longer relate to properly, which goes back to our reality thing. And in the back of my mind trying to find a way to bring that back to footwear, but I'm not there yet. But suffice to say, I mean, I literally do think, look, the internet.

Has catered to our desire to complain, be acknowledged for it and have people agree with us so we can feel that we're not alone and feel better about it. And it has literally monetized that to the extent that certain platforms more than others, all people do is complain. And more, they will complain in public rather than getting their problem solved directly. I mean, the number of times where I've responded to a comment on Facebook where I said, you know, rather than asking the random people here, use the phone app on your phone and give us a call.

Yeah, exactly. And give us a call because our 20 people and our customer happen to them, they actually know the answer. And it's not the one that you've heard from, you know, random people. And people won't do it.

I mean, some do, but it's just this now there's a place to vent first and maybe never get your problem solved. And some people have vented and then called us from it or not. But then they never go back and do anything to that original post, even if we solve the problem entirely because they don't get any credit for that. Yeah.

Yeah, attention maybe. Well, so so on that note, here's the way I'm going to bring that back to footwear. Okay. It's an ironic thing that again, people have this desire to be unique and special and acknowledge for that.

In your store, if you broke down the different types of shoes, how many did you get? Three categories, two categories? Oh, let me think. It's under five.

Well, I'm trying to do two ways I could approach this because when I say to customers when they come in, it's like, look at the wall. There are so many shoes on here. Like you need to be picky. And sometimes that goes where I want to do it.

Sometimes it doesn't. But again, like if we, I'm trying to categorize them, ignoring, you know, you can categorize it. This will give you two categories. Footshape versus non-fortunate.

Right. But drop versus non, that's two. After that, you know, the whole thing about like motion control or neutral or stability, that's all hand-weighting. So that's all one.

So we've now identified a Venn diagram with three circles and in most stores, two of them don't come, aren't even in the store or let alone overlapping. Yeah. So we're down. That's good.

So most stores were down to one. Yeah. Exactly. And then all you're doing is you're being special because this is the one that so-and-so wears.

This is, you know, I'm a 250 pound white guy who runs two miles on a weekend and I'm going to wear that shoe that 105 pound Canyon wears. And that's where it is helpful to like get people to focus inward a little bit. Because so many people say, you know, so-and so, tell them about these hookers. You know, these hookah one ones.

And I got to try them on. And right off the bat, you have to say like, hey, you know, that shoe might be, they might run in that. Right. Right.

But that doesn't mean you have to or even the shit. My joke about that shoe is it's actually pronounced, well, here's the joke. It's actually pronounced on a on a which Hawaiian means one one, which is not true, but I like the joke. That was good.

So Cody, if people, you know, especially anyone who's near you in Tulsa, Oklahoma, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, just find out more about, you know, how you're working with people or just want to come visit you or just say hi or thank you for anything that they got from you, including if you don't let something move that's supposed to, then something's not supposed to move is trying to mention. We said it way better than what I just put it. How can they do that? Yeah.

So I have a website, CodyKFitness.com. Probably the best way is to come and run as well Tulsa. We have an awesome running group. It's just incredible community.

It's really supportive. Everyone from beginner 5k's to ultra marathoners. Love it. And some days, someone will say, including sprinters, but they never do.

Sorry. I'm a special little snowflake. You're a special little snowflake, too. Well, for all you other special little snowflakes out there, thanks for listening to this episode.

If you want to hear others, which there are many now, more than enough to keep you busy on a long walk or a run, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Again, if you want to help spread the word, please do just share, like, thumbs up, review, you know the drill. And also, if you have any requests, any comments, any complaints, if you think I'm a case of cranial rector orientation syndrome, whatever it is, you can drop me an email. I'm at movemov.e at jointhemovementmovement.com.

But most importantly, just go out and have fun and live life-feet first.