What if your doctor told you that the last thing you needed was surgery and maybe the most important thing you need for recovery and dealing with whatever you walked in the door with is something different than what you walked in the door wearing. We're going to be talking about that and much, much more on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting to know feet first because those things are your foundation. And we break down the propaganda, the mythology and sometimes frankly the out right lies you've been told about what it takes to walk a runner, play a hiker, do a yogurt, crossfit, whatever it is you like to do and to do that enjoyably, efficiently, effectively, that I say enjoyably trick question. Everyone who's watched this knows that I always say that because if you're not having fun doing something different till you are, you're not going to keep doing it if you're not enjoying it.
I'm Steve Sincien, the co-founder and co-CEO along with my wife, Elena Phoenix of zero shoes dot com and we call it the movement movement podcast as we, that involves all of us, are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it's made to do without getting in the way. And the way you can be part of the movement is go to our website, for example, www dot join the movement movement dot com. There's nothing you need to do to join. There's no secret handshake or song doesn't cost any money.
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Why don't you tell people who you are and what you do. Thanks, Stephen, for having me here. So my name is on the scar. I'm a dynamic athlete, sports medicine and regenerative orthopedics in Boulder, Colorado.
So what we do at Dynamic Athlete is look at everything from an injury standpoint from a non-surgical point of view. So when over 90% of the injuries you have don't require orthopedic surgery, we're hoping to be the very first place you think of when you get hurt. Now let's start with the fact that you started out as a real, you know, I'm going to use a phrase that my grandmother used about my father who was a dentist. She would say he's not a real doctor.
He's a dentist. But in your case, you are a real doctor. That's correct. I think the biggest thing is noticing how do we get our athletes back to performing and doing what they want to do from a non-surgical route.
And the biggest thing for my background, I'm actually a two sport US national team doctor for US hockey and US soccer. So I look after my athletes much in the same way I do for the national team players. And people who come to you, do they have to be like high level athletes or not? Not at all, Stephen.
In our clinic, we actually consider everyone an athlete. So it doesn't matter if you are 90 and you want to play pickleball or you are a professional athlete or anywhere in between, the treatment is essentially the same for what we're doing for the injury. The only difference is how do we customize it for you and for what you're trying to get back to. How did you make the change from real doctor to normal doctor to this?
Was there an aha moment or was there just an evolution and you're thinking about how to treat people? Stephen, I tried really hard not to become a doctor and I know that sounds ridiculous. Wait, hold on. It didn't try hard enough because for me it was pretty easy.
I was a pre-med until I went, wait, they're going to make me spend six more years in school before I can do this stuff that I'm already doing. The clients, I'm done. Yeah. I'm done because my father's a cardiologist and my sister's a cardiologist and a brilliant and I grew up and I played baseball.
Ironically enough, a first Indian born of my family and my parents were really, really, really lenient in the sense that they said, go do what it makes you happy. In college I played baseball. Hold on, pause there. Your Indian parents just said, go and do what makes you happy?
Were they possessed in some way? I'm telling you, I'm lucky, man. My parents are phenomenal and that's really interesting because from religion to food or social or whatever it was, my parents didn't do anything other than look after their kids and make sure that they were happy. My two younger sisters and I saw it really whatever was made us happy and what brought us joy and I think that's maybe what got me into trying a lot of different things before trying medicine and I think that's why I feel like I'm a better doctor that way because I feel like I can relate to people better.
Sometimes when you have these different experiences and I've traveled a ton but I think the biggest thing was, like you said in the opening, it's not fun. I'm not going to do this anymore and I love what I do and I think that's really the biggest thing is being able to try out all the other things I wanted to do and really felt like that wasn't for me and then there was a time actually on this little story that I was coaching at a prep school in Ohio a couple years after playing semi-pro baseball outside of Boston and one of my advisees had taken too much time and so they rushed to the hospital and looked after and I just remember being on the other side of the window feeling really helpless and I think that's sort of what changed and I said I think I want to make a difference and I think for that aha moment I think that was really it. So what did you have to do actually before I asked this question I got to tell you a story speaking of parents just for the fun of it. So my parents who were conservative Jewish parents for years, most of my life was basically very nice Jewish girl that was their admonition and when I introduced them to my then girlfriend Laina and I said you know Laina is not Jewish but how do you feel about her being your daughter in law and my parents said you know in your previous relationships you started happy and you got less happy and this one you started happy and you've been happier and that's all we care about so we're all for it and I said okay where did you put my real parents.
That's right that's brilliant though I think at the end of the day that's really what your parents want right is for your kids to be happy and then regarded. Just sometimes they think that their idea of what you need to be happy is correct and they may be right but sometimes not so much. I got asked to speak in my high school last summer and I joked I thought they got the wrong sibling because my sisters were brilliant, frustratingly brilliant and they came back and they asked me to come back and speak and one of the things that a therapist once told me that he said you need to give yourself permission to live your life and when I was going through a difficult time in Chicago it was very very freeing and almost liberating when you realize that you need to give yourself that permission to live your own life it's not anybody else's and that's what came to mind when you brought that up. I like it.
So back into your transition from normal real doctor to regenerative medicine doctor and I want you to dive into that a little more. So what was it like when you know after that time and all moment we were thinking wait I got to change this. I mean it's not easy to even if you're basically saying the same field it's not easy to change course. Yeah I mean I think you know at that point I realized that I wanted to pursue medicine and what ends up happening is you take when you don't pursue medicine early on you have to take pre-requisite courses and so that had me going into Pittsburgh and studying there for a couple of years to do all my pre-med requirements and then apply to med school and then the first year I did it in Arizona and then you're in Brooklyn.
So it takes you on this and very circuitous route sometimes if you don't jump at it right away and I think the biggest thing is when you when I'm doing residency in New Haven at Yale the biggest thing that I noticed was there's not a lot that's fun in medicine to be quite honest. I mean there's a lot of you know what my dad does and my sister does from a cardiology standpoint I don't really find it all that fun and that's and I knew that with my sports background in coaching that sports medicine was always an option and then you start to look at what you can do in the non-surgical sports medicine world and that's where you can do these biologics which include bone marrow or as most people search for stem cells or PRP platelet which plasma but I think a lot of it was to do with how do I make an impact from my athletes from a non-surgical aspect and that's what led me to it. So if you had to do like your top three to top five things that people come in with and then top three to top five things that you do it as non-surgical intervention so doing this and actually people listening are watching like they're probably thinking like what does that mean for me so give me the you know the high level for what people come in for typically and then the high level for some of the treatments modalities that you would use. Yeah mostly it's lower body stuff I mean see but I think with the population that we have here in Boulder where they're doing a lot of running and a lot of climbing and hiking it would be hip pain it would be knee pain foot and ankle pain along with an upper body for the climbers we a lot of times get shoulder elbows and hands and wrists so really the only thing that I don't do is spine from that standpoint but you know imagine if you're if you're running and you've got outside foot pain these are some of the things you look at and attend and that could be bothering you because of various number of reasons where it could be either pinching or getting stretched and then looking at that and that's where some of the regenerative medicine can come into play and help.
And so what are some of those interventions that would use to be helpful? Yeah so so it's interesting we just had a athlete last yesterday actually came into the office and she's 32 years young and has about three months of Achilles pain and so she just started running and training for a marathon and she's developing us Achilles pain and so sometimes you can get away with not doing any of these procedures and that's always the hope right when we always talk about trying to maximize your recovery without intervention if you be surgical or non-surgical I mean really if you can figure out a way to change your training and we talk a lot about runners we don't stop them we just augment their training so that way they can actually heal and recover themselves but if you know we talked about putting her in a boot for a couple of weeks to see if that's going to help her and if that doesn't help then the next step would be a various combination of platelet rich plasma and platelet poor plasma which is something that would be unique for her in her setting. Any people who don't know what PRP platelet rich plasma is can you just find out? Yeah so let me talk about PRP or platelet rich plasma what we're doing is drawing blood from your body hyper concentrating the healing factors and growth factors and then re-injecting them back into where your injury is.
Now the key is anybody can say they do PRP Steven you can go get a kid tomorrow and you can put up a shingle and say I do PRP and you can charge let's say for the sake of conversation $100 now it really matters on who does it. I got in rough time very disappointed to the extent that we know each other that you think I would merely charge $100 for the sake of the conversation right yeah so for the ease of math but don't insult me like that. It's you know I'm not a math guy so I think it's something that lets me play easy numbers here so yeah so we'll play a state of $100. I actually use my 18 year old intern who just graduated from high school who's going to Wyoming she's a big time runner and so I use her a lot and I would say well if Rachel you know grabbed a kid or my athletic trainer or Caitlyn if she grabbed a kid and they charge $100 and people would gravitate towards that lower price point and say well PRP didn't work for me and I always ask them and I said well who did it how did they do it what was their pre-procedure protocol what did they do in the procedure what was their post-procedure protocol and what was the follow up and then Steven people look at me like I'm speaking a foreign language to them because they have no idea and so that's their lies the challenge because people will come in and say PRP doesn't work for me but then there's a lot of other factors that sort of go into it.
Interesting the I had another thought that went along with that but I lost it entirely oh actually I know what it was so for this person who came in with Achilles issue from running you didn't say the thing that I was frankly hoping you would say that's the kind of thing that it's an argument I have with doctors who are anti-bearfoot if you will for lack of a better term and the way they do it is they usually say I love this bear for running thing I'm seeing so many more patients it's gonna make it through college I go first of all that's what you guys said 1972 and running shoes started getting popular secondly when someone said they were running barefoot did you actually ask them if they were in barefoot or if they were in a shoe that was quote called barefoot I know I put that quote on called quote barefoot and is actually not did you analyze their form did you because it's really not about footwear it's about form did you take a look to see how they're running and that's when you know they the blood leaves their face I go so look first of all there are more people trying this never before you're never gonna hear from people who have no problems so you have a skewed table set and if there's more people doing something you're gonna see more injuries to your point that you made before pickleball everyone's doing it more injuries than ever and people were calling them pickleball injuries which technically they are but they're really just injuries from something where more people are doing it than ever you know that we're not doing anything before another doing something so it's not even that to call it a pickleball industry industry injury is a little bit of a misnomer they got it while playing pickleball but the question is what were they doing while playing that caused it so to that point if it were me with that patient I want to do some get analysis see what's going on and 100% I mean I think you're spot on I think that really the big thing that we we try to do with dynamic athlete is understand what you have and why you have it that's really the big thing and so you know I think I told you this before you know when we when we met that I think I've been looking at shoes wrong my entire life my entire life and so I think about this having grown up playing sports having having worked with the national teams that are sponsored by different issue companies and and looking at this and having grown up wearing these other companies I remember looking at this and fundamentally looking at footwear I think I was looking at it all wrong and I think that's the biggest thing that I noticed and for being a proponent of barefoot shoes this athlete yesterday was not actually in barefoot shoes and so that's one of the things I mean the entire office is outfitted in zero shoes because we made that change my parents are in those shoes in fact they came to visit a couple weeks ago and and it's almost like installing a program or installing something different where there's some skepticism to it but when you start to have them feel the difference I think that really speaks for itself but to your point so seeing this athlete who just started a running program and and the things that when we asked about footwear and other brands that have a higher cushion amount and actually elevate you off of the ground and I think that's really the biggest thing from a proprioceptive standpoint balance and gate is how close can you get to the ground that you are impacting with or interacting with if you will right the the equal and opposite force in reaction and so when when you look at this and we have a synthetic turf in our office so we have people walk on that turf with their regular shoes and then walk on with barefoot shoes and I said okay which one do you feel more stable right so they put on zero shoes and they'll walk on and they'll say and they'll say you know what I feel more stable and more secure in these zero shoes and ask them why and they said I can feel the ground more and and to me that was the biggest thing is when you're doing that it's almost like you're doing physical therapy yeah by just walking around I mean we talk about that how do you build foot ankle strength if you're wearing barefoot shoes you're building foot ankle strength well how did so first of all glad you saw the light secondly I love the phrase like installing your program but I'm a little dismayed because it sounds like you may have just called us the MS-DASA footwear so no no no it's it's I almost again like installing a program you know when you're a head football coach somewhere and you know okay I'll run the game say say that you're you're installing a program and it's a sense of we like to challenge the way people think you know this and I think that's really what it is and say we have people try this on like a jacket and if it fits you great if it doesn't it doesn't but it's about challenging the way that you think and if you and if you think about this if that conference where I learned about barefoot shoes more in depth if I wasn't open enough to say hey I might be looking at this wrong then I never would have been that I never would have been open enough to what I feel like is do a better service for my athletes and my patients and so I think that's what we try to do well back up a half a step can you compare to what you're thinking now or now that you've had this real understanding that you're just writing how were you seeing footwear prior to that me I was it was essentially opposite it was a more of if we can cushion in you stabilize using shoes that might be better for example planar fascia I think I was looking at it all wrong where you were I was trying to get them stiffer shoes and shoes where it wouldn't it wouldn't affect the planar fascia as much now I look at this and the only thing I would ask them to do is make sure they get their feet analyzed make sure in the right shoe make sure potentially they want to have size larger just to give themselves a wider bigger toe box now if you think about it barefoot shoes have that wider toe box already as part of their nature and as part of that foot anatomy essentially covering the basic foot anatomy and so it wasn't an issue of the planar fascia itself it was more of an issue of the foot where squeezing the foot and essentially squeezing that planar fascia to the point where when it's getting stretched out it's causing problems and so that's where I think where I think most of the majority of the physicians and the people that look at this are looking at it incorrectly and so that's that's kind of where that came about I had a variation of that where I met someone who was a very big deal investor this very early on we barely started the company frankly and he said I love the idea of what you're doing but I can't wear your shoes I said why you as well I planar fascia I just kind of looked at him I said I got a sneaking suspicion you don't as well my doctor's one of the top doctors in veil and went yeah even still I was a pre-med I can tell you that my friends who actually went to medical school were not the smartest guys that were in the room so he may be but FYI so I said just like curiosity can you just like you know get up on your tippy toes he said yeah I said does that hurt in any way he goes no is it all right yeah you're in a planar fascia secondly can you just while you're on your tippy toes just bounce back and forth from foot to foot so you're kind of running in place but just on your toes he goes yeah I said does that hurt at all he goes no I said so once again you don't have planar fascia now while you're bouncing lean forward just a little bit and see what happens of course he starts running and I hear him going what the fuck as he runs away and I said so what you have is tight calves that are giving you the symptoms that mimic planar fasciaitis and if you just spend a little bit of time just walking around in our shoes or just getting out of shoes entirely you might discover that you're actually okay just you know you need to rest and you need to stop you know using things too much in place with those cows he still got surgery I mean this is the part that blows me away I mean this is why we're here Steve we want to be a resource for the community I mean I think this is the thing my athletic trainer said to me she was working with a division one college before she came to work and she said it's amazing how many how many surgeries college athletes need and I said Kaitlyn I think you phrase that wrong it's how many surgeries they get yeah not necessarily need and I think Stephen I think that's the great point that's kind of why we talk about even in our all of our materials that over 90% of the injuries don't require surgery so I say this a lot where if you have a heart member you don't go see a cardiothoracic surgeon first so why do you do that with the rest of your body and that's kind of where we are for from a resource standpoint well and I do want to highlight and acknowledge slash appreciate something about you and that is that that 90 number many people who are doing something that is a little non mainstream I don't want to say alternative to this whole different kind of work but non mainstream they still they get a little myopic and a little in their own little box and you know the fact that you keep reiterating 9% I love because as a person example when I showed you the MRI results or the radiologist reports about the MRI from my shoulder which had been causing a bunch of problems you called me and said yeah you know I don't recommend surgery right I said yeah your next to this is human surgery so you know I like that you are that you understand you're able to look at people understand what they actually do need or don't need rather than having just a fill in the box mad libs checklist uh paid by numbers approach to things and seeing everything is you know a bunch of different nails all needing hammer I mean I'll tell you that's what's funny about this even right and I say this a lot like as soon as it becomes not fun anymore I'm leaving I'm not gonna do it anymore and and that's the beauty of it where I feel like my training at Andrews in Birmingham Alabama it's one of the best places you can go for sports medicine I got to work with a lot of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country so for me to know what surgical indications there are is really important because I look after my athlete and whatever is best for my athlete either it's a non-surgical route or surgery it doesn't really matter it's not about me it's about the athlete in front of me so in your case right I mean there's there's people that'll tell you oh I can fix this with PRP or I can fix this as it were yeah and I can you know and and and to me I don't think that's the best thing for you and then certainly and I think that's the route is you look at and that's why I say if you start from a non-surgical standpoint because the surgery will always be there there's no there's no problem with that that's always there it's really tough to go back once you've had surgery so that's that's what we try to impress upon our our athletes and like I said we call everybody an athlete so just because you guys are hearing me say athlete and you feel like you're not one I will respectfully disagree when you come into our office because we treat everybody like an athlete for people who are not living in or near or traveling too bolder to be seen by someone with the aliput you have what would you recommend for them like you know if they have whatever issue is going on how would you recommend someone proceed to I don't know take their own health under their control to a certain extent to identify who what kind of practitioner they should see how they might want to approach someone who to find out what kind of practitioner they are etcetera and what would you do if someone can't see you yeah I mean I you know it's funny because I've actually gotten some calls from people in Chicago for where I was practicing and they were asking me the same question and I actually ended up seeing them just from a virtual standpoint but I think if you do your homework really one of the things that you look for is has somebody done these sports medicine fellowship and I think that's really a big key so if you look for a non-surgical sports medicine physician in your area that's one see where they did fellowship and they do a sports medicine fellowship and see sort of what that fellowship background is because I can give you insight as to either there's some places that say they take care of athletes and there's some places that just take care of athletes so it's really one of the things that that you have to look at but I think that's really the big key is finding somebody with that background and also doing a little bit of your homework listening to podcasts like this that have a specialist and people that are pretty well versed in what they do I mean you know see if I tell you a lot there's a lot of things I don't know but you know I think you try to hone in on the things that you do know and that's going to be my best advice is make sure you try to find somebody that has that background in your local area or you can certainly you know call around but I think that's going to be the best bet. A lot of what we talk about is ameliorative that's a word I don't think I've ever sent out loud I know yeah it's a good one it's like I don't remember when in high school there was a couple words that we learned that if we use them in an English paper we were guaranteed to get an A ameliorate was one exacerbate the opposite was another contrapuntal so you can make somebody make it better exacerbate my model is too seemingly. It's that last one that I think you got me on. Oh contrapuntal is a good one counterpoint so that's where that comes from and there's one other literally someone like cracked the code of this one teacher.
That's just terrible. So we've been talking about you know the post injury side of the equation. Do you have any thoughts for people about anything preventative? A lot of this stuff that we describe so I'll give you an example for runners just in the sense that runners are different breed altogether and so when you try to tell them to cross train their idea of cross training is just running potentially on uneven ground or doing something like that and so they're lines of challenge.
I often talk about this one foot box where just if you if you draw out this one foot box and you think about triathletes where they swim bike and run their whole body stays in that one foot box. Now I take care of hockey players and those boys and girls will skate side to side and they get out of that one foot box. So when we cross train and try to figure out injury prevention a lot of that has to come from the hips and the stabilizers and so we've talked a lot about this this is sort of from a running standpoint it's there's a book and foundation piece where one is going the one side of the book and is going to be your feet and the type of footwear that you wear. The second side of the book and is going to be your hips and your hip stabilizers and essentially the rest of your body you shouldn't be staying relatively still or quiet as we like to say so that's going to be the biggest piece and when we talk about cross training people don't like to work on their corn hips even you know why four reasons I will tell you why one it's hard to do the number two it's not sexy number three it's hard to do number four it's not sexy I told you I'm not a numbers guy but that's really the reason why I mean that this is this is the problem everybody likes to look in the mirror when they go work out and do all this stuff and and it's a small subtle things that make the biggest impact.
I think you're on to it ish it's definitely hard to do and but they're not sexy since since strong and bigger butts have become a big thing. I would argue that runners think it's not sexy because they're afraid of getting bigger they're afraid of putting on weight they're afraid of you know things like that. I mean I used to be just amazed I'd be on the track with this one coach and his athletes who are all Olympic level athletes and they could barely do a push up. They're using a kettlebell that was like two pounds and straining to do it.
They couldn't do a squat to save their life a little on a deadlift. Now they're great runners but I used to argue with this coach I'd say they'd be healthier runners they have larger careers if they were stronger like legit strunner and why don't you just give them two days a week where the training volume is at best nominal if not nothing and let them get stronger for real and you could see that there was no way he was going to do it because frankly he was under the misapprehension about what he was offering his athletes. He'd basically attracted one really good athlete to him that he didn't destroy that athlete did really well and then suddenly a lot of other people came to him so he felt obliged to stick with what he was doing despite the inefficacy of it. I think I think a lot of this comes down to how do you customize your training for the athlete in front of you.
So we do genetic testing on our athlete let's give an example. So imagine if you want to improve your output or you want to improve your time by 1% that makes a big difference in terms of understanding how it's customized for you and then into your point about strength training it is it is remarkable to me that if you stay in that one foot box at how you continue to overwork one subset of muscles and then underwork another subset of muscles which essentially ends up developing a house of cards and that's when you crumble. I've taken care of triathletes that work out eight hours a day and I tell them that their hips are weak. Stephen they look at me and they go what are you talking about.
I work out eight hours a day and I can then push their leg down with one finger and I said you are over training one and under training the other. I said you wouldn't be becoming more powerful runner. I mean just think about that not even better just in terms of pure power. You become a more powerful runner where you'd actually be able to recover faster.
You'd be able to maintain and handle that mileage in that player because you are stronger and more powerful to your point. I Bill Sands who was Dr. Bill Sands he was the head of Biomechanics for the S.L. and became for a while and then had a lab out at what's now called Colorado Mesa University and he said the same thing.
Basically Glute Media on almost all runners was underdeveloped and he would do something very similar and shock people when he showed him that. Glutes in general actually even Glute Max. I've seen so many distance runners who just have no glutes at all. They just don't use them.
When I was in residence he said joke around I said you could probably solve all the world's problems if everybody just worked on their gluteus medius. That's right. You're not too far off probably. I think there's an earlier, I mean in fact if something that happens to me, I have a lot of good runners in my neighborhood like very good runners and I've also got a lot of not very good runners.
I saw something the other day that blew my mind. A woman ran by me and her left leg looked basically fine. Her knee was tracking forward and she wasn't over striding. Everything was in line.
Her right leg, her chest felt like her knee was coming in about to hit her left knee and her right foot was pointing out at the same time. Knees pointing in, foot's pointing out and just the gate looked weird on top of that. Then I noticed she was a little bit overweight and I noticed that her left glute looked normal and her right glute did not exist. I don't know if she'd had surgery, had some neurological problem, whatever, but it was so tempting just to stop her and say, you know what's going on here?
Fundamentally that thing of watching runners where their knees are coming in towards each other is just the sure sign that their glutes are not functioning at all or barely. I know Irene Davis when she gets people into her lab to help them get better. The first thing she does is get the amount of regular shoes and issues like ours and the second thing is doing gate refraining by focusing on people learning how to use their glutes. This is leading to a very entertaining question.
When you're walking around town and you see people running by you who have something like that going on, what happens in your mind? I'll tell you what happens in mine after you. I'll tell you so my fiance and Nicole and I, we travel quite a bit whenever we can and I feel for her because when we're in airports or when we're walking around and I would just people watch as one does and I was like, oh, look at that poor guy. Watch his feet and watch the way that he's walking here or on this poor girl that she's her knees diving in.
Like you say, the valus. So you just start to look and you start to appreciate them. You start to look at what kind of shoes are they wearing and you look at what's their walking mechanism and what those are gate look like. Are they heel striking?
Are they rather than using their whole foot? I think the biggest thing I put on the zero shoes was noticing that I was a big heel striker and changing the way that I walked in terms of being more upright and being more using my core and understanding that your core might not be that strong and then having to work on that and I think that's really big thing. So we break down and I mean, it's got the point where I think Nicole can probably do my job at this point. So she's been so good at that.
But I think that's really the biggest thing, Stephen, is that you look and you start to see these patterns and then have it over and over again and then you start to correlate them with body size or shoe or the way they're working into your point. You can start to see what muscles are developed and what muscles are underdeveloped. Yeah, the next time Danny Dryer, the I Who created Cheat Running is in town, the three of us will go sit down by Boulder Creek and have an entertaining time when Danny and I lasted that literally as everyone walked by, you could hear both of us go, go, Jesus. I mean, there's the people that we almost wanted to tackle and just stop.
It's like, you're going to be hurt by the time you're done with this run if you keep doing that. Yeah, my athletic training is that you should just throw cards at people and just have them, say, look, we'll see you Monday at 10 o'clock. So it's not a bad idea. Variation on that.
When Born to Run came out the book, I took business cards and every time I walk my book store, I'd go in and find copies of Born to Run and put my business card into a bookmark. Oh, it's a beauty idea. Actually, Stephen, can I tell you one thing? I don't know if I should really say this out loud because I should really want to do this, but I want to go to a baseball game and sit in the upper deck and have a whole bunch of business cards.
And just when I do the wave, accidentally knock them over. So it just snowfalls upon all the people. So anyway, if you see that happening in the future, it was an accident. Yeah, no, you would.
I would not recommend that at all. More what I recommend having boxes scattered around the stadium so that it might happen. Other people might be similarly clumsy. I mean, that would be a horrible thing that I would never recommend.
I don't condone that. I just, it would happen in the dream, you know? Nor would I replace a t-shirt in a t-shirt gun with a bunch of your business cards, but I mean, just buy accident because you never know. And definitely, oh, I was going to make a horrible joke.
I'm not going to do that one. If anyone needs to hear it, you can email me and I will tell you that. I said we can do that off here. That's fine.
Yeah, it's pretty rude. Or it's anyway. So there was something else that's about that. It's funny.
You mentioned Nicole being able to do your job. Laina from hanging out with me saying things. She started to see people who identify moving patterns is the same idea. This is the thing that's just so crazy for me.
I like in running to writing. And what I mean is that everyone thinks they can write because they had to write a paper in class or whatever it is. And the same thing, everyone thinks they can run because you can run. That doesn't mean you're doing it correctly.
It's like, no one would think that if you want to become a better bowler, you don't need a lesson about how to bowl differently than holding the ball two hands and throwing up between your legs. Or even if you're using one hand and you're crossing your fingers rather than having a hook that's designed to pinch just right. But when it comes to running, people think all you do is get some shoes in the way you go. And even worse, they think if it's not working, they just need a different pair of shoes that are fundamentally the same.
And this is the mindset that I'm wrestling with, if you will, or trying to deal with overcomets, et cetera, from your perspective as a regenerative medicine specialist. Is there something similar about the way you're seeing things where you're looking at the way most medicines practice, most people think about medicine, where you're really trying to upset that applicant or engender somebody who thought? Yeah, I think the way medicine's taught, and I find this a lot with the students that I take, it's pretty antiquated. It's more about, it almost seems like it's more about the physician rather than a patient and the athlete in front of them.
And I would say this a lot that I'm really proud of where I went to school and the level of training that I've gotten. But at the other days, even it's two people talking and trying to figure out how do we get the person in front of me back to what they're doing. And so to your point, when you look at different shoes, and one of the things that I've asked my runners to do actually is to get two different styles of shoes. Now, if you think about this, it has to do more with the pressure of what you're actually exuding up into your body off of the shoe than the actual shoe itself.
So what do I mean by that? Imagine if you are using the HFS and the pre-o, rather than running, and I say, they're stylistically different. So they're going to put different pressure points on your feet. So my preference would be actually to alternate those shoes every other day.
So that way you're essentially giving that your body a day off from that direct pressure point. If you're just running an HFS every day, then I don't think you really get yourself that off day, if you will. So that's just philosophically what my suggestion would be for my runners. That's interesting.
There was, there's a and by mechanics researcher named Beno Nigg, he's in Canada, I'm from a working from somebody senior, but if I'm remembering correctly, but he's been here for most of his life. Anyway, he is often misquoted. And the way he's misquoted is that running your company say, well, Beno says everyone has a preferred movement pattern that you can't change. So we're making sure this for you, you need a little special snowflake.
And I confronted Beno with this, and he said, well, that's not what I say. I say you have a preferred movement pattern, and you don't want to arbitrarily change it. Now, I argue with him about that too, because you may have a preferred movement pattern that A is already influenced by the shoes you started wearing when you were a kid. And so you've gotten used to that one, preferred, and he'll say it's using a least amount of energy, arguably.
But only because if you're learning a new movement pattern, it's going to take more energy to use a new one because your brain is wired to be old one. So that's misleading as well. The other thing is to suggest that arbitrarily changing movement pattern is always going to be detrimental, makes no sense to a gymnast, where every movement pattern you learn is something novel. I mean, it has to be.
And even for running, you know, you look at, it's fun. You look at video of Usain Bolt running in slow motion, and you go kind of amazing, look at his form. And then you look at the other seven runners in that race, and they'll have the exact same form. And they didn't start that way.
You look at them when they were kids, they learn to run that way. And that's what made them along with great genetics and great training the fastest people in the world. Well, the other thing too, that's just to jump on that, is if your strength doesn't allow you to have a different movement pattern, then you are going to be in that movement pattern. Imagine if you are stronger, right?
And you look at how Usain Bolt from a strength standpoint versus some of his competitors, I mean, he's a guy that can play various sports just based on his physique. So to your point, a lot of it has to do with if you can make yourself a more powerful runner, really free, you can start from bottom up and making the foot and ankle as strong as possible, that's going to propel you into being able to do some of these things. Because if you have more stability with your foot and ankle, you're actually your output in the gym and your output in actually trying to get stronger with your legs and your glutes and your core, because you feel more stable on the ground is vitally important. We have, we have, and you and I talked about this because you're in velvet with hockey.
We have professional hockey players who say I'm skating better than ever because as soon as I get out of my skates and putting on your shoes. And that's translating to mostly accelerating and jumping, which is relevant for them. And it makes total sense. I mean, but back to Ben's point for the fun of it.
Just to land on that. I said, so are you suggesting that if someone, oh, and the idea that you can't change your gate, again, misrepresented, he said you don't want to artificially change it. But the way running shoe companies have misrepresented that is again, they need to make something special for you. And I said to Ben, are you suggesting that people's gate wouldn't naturally change it?
They switched into zero shoes and went barefoot. He goes, oh, no, no, it changed instantly. What I mean is that with the running shoes that are out there for most people, they're all basically the same. So you're so it's not going to make a difference.
And the only difference happens as they wear out, but fundamentally they're all doing the same thing. So it really doesn't make a difference. And so it amazes me how that information has not, well, again, has just been misused in ways that blown me away. And I harp on this one.
So pardon me for anyone who's heard me say this a million times. But my favorite, and by favorite, I put an air quotes around that. And I really mean least favorite bit of information that has done nothing is on their website. Nike has published the abstract or part of the abstract of a study that they designed and commissioned where they took their best selling running shoe and they compared it to a new shoe they had developed.
And it was a 12-week half marathon training program. And in the 12 weeks, the people wearing their best selling running shoe, over 30% got injured in that 12 weeks. And in the new shoe, only about 15% got injured in 12 weeks. Now imagine going to running shoe store and saying, Hey, I'm looking for a good shoe and they go, here's our best seller.
One out of three people who wear this, I'll get injured within this. It's like, can you give me something better? Okay, here's a better one. Roughly one out of seven people get injured in 12 weeks.
It's like, do you have one that isn't going to injure me? That would be my favorite. But the kick is Nike proved that after 50 years of development and research and all the things that have gone into making their late issues, the best they've been able to do is get one out of seven people injured in under 12 weeks. And by the way, if you ask what they change and then better shoe, better shoe, they say, and this part they didn't publish on their website, we removed many of the protective features.
Now, here's the kick. If 15, let alone 30% of the people who switched to zero shoes got injured in under 12 weeks, not only would we be out of business, but I'd probably be in jail. So how people have misused information and how big companies have misused information and basically made people unwilling to look at data and in a way that should make them go, this is not okay. That just blows me away.
And clearly, there are similar things happening on the medical side, whether it's mainstream medicine or quote alternative medicine. I mean, we talked about this, and I think one of the things that sometimes is antiquated in medicine is, well, this is how it's been done, and this is how we're going to do it. And not having the openness and being, I think really securing yourself to say, okay, well, could I be looking at something incorrectly or to continually be trying to find better things or better options. And so, you know, when I walk into the conference and say, you know what, I may have to look at this differently and then go try it on myself.
And, you know, I was wearing Nike Pegasus, those are my shoes. And I remember putting on the zero shoes and I was just walking around for five minutes, and then putting on the Pegasus again. And my feet, it felt like my feet were begging to be back in the barefoot shoes. Now, you know, we said this, I'm not that tall, I would love the extra height advantage in the, in those Nike shoes, but at the end of the day, it's about what's right for, for what my foot and what my body feels better and more comfortable.
And but to your point, Stephen, it comes from being open and having a willingness to experience change where it's to your benefit, because it's really easy to just stay in your shoes for the rest of your life and find some other reason. But these are, these are opportunities missed if you're not open to these, these ideas that have been around for a while, but just have been, have been overshadowed by a big marketing budget and athlete sponsorships and things like that. So PS you're already engaged, you don't need to be an inch taller. Fair enough.
No, I, you know, you get, that's why I like wearing my hockey skates, right? I'm six foot tall in the hockey skates. So, but you know, we were talking about this that hockey skates are minimalist shoes at its core. There's nothing, there's nothing there.
And so you look at soccer cleats, so the two sports, the two US national teams that I've taken care of, it hockey and soccer, both of them are essentially minimalist shoes, one with a blade on the bottom and one with cleats on the bottom of it. Well, except that soccer shoes typically bind your feet like crazy and have, you know, really pointed toe boxes. Some people will argue, well, that's for, you know, better kicking and having more control. It's like, well, then tell it to all those kids, including many people who are now playing professionally, who are playing barefoot.
Correct. And so I think you're going to see a shift of there. And so I think that's where you'd see a shift. But my point is that when you wear the barefoot shoes prior to going on, I'll use myself as an example.
So I'm a terrible skater and I continue to try to get better at it. But one of the things that I noticed was when I wore my zero shoes prior to skating, my feet didn't hurt as much. And I felt stronger on my skates. Now, it takes somebody that knows what they're doing on skates and translate that.
And then on top of that, you have these kids that are skating eight years old nine, 10, 11, 12, that have very weak foot and ankle strength. Imagine putting them in these shoes and then having them play, you are going to accelerate them. And that's the same thing across other sports. So when I talk to, when I talk to families or parents, I mean, these are some of the things that they see, and this is not coming from a salesman or anything else like that.
And this is just coming from somebody that's looking out for your best interests and seeing what we can do to get you to get to your optimal potential. Yeah, there's a lot to be said. Well, first of all, again, we hear this all the time from, actually I said that, definitely, our friend Dr. Emily Slickill, who's a surgical podiatrist, had a course that she was selling that I think was called Catwalk Confidential.
That was basically how to walk in high heels, except it was a lie. It was really a foot strengthening program. So you could tolerate walking in high heels. So she's all barefoot all the time.
But you know, she realized that there's women who are not going to get out of their heels. So what do we do? Let's build some foot strength so you can handle it. Right.
And we talked about this. This isn't something you have to go run five miles in. You could wear these shoes around in your day to day activities and build foot strength that way. And you know, a lot of there's other companies that have talked about, you know, there's one company in particular that talked about a very large rocker bottom type of style shoe that said it was a workout while you were while you were walking.
And it's essentially quite the opposite. I think everybody in the audience knows what I'm talking about. But Here's the thing. They're right for the wrong reason.
It wasn't workout to use those shoes because they weighed so much. Yeah. And you were walking. I mean, that's the other thing too.
That's for sure. We talk about the number of steps that you need to have it be beneficial. But if I think that's the challenging part that I'm not saying that this is a workout for you when you wear the zero shoes or better shoes in general, it is well, it's more of a strength program is what I look at. So I guess I guess maybe I'm incorrect.
You can look at it as a workout, but not in the sense that that other shoe company was taught. Yeah. Yeah. So the research, I mean, look, it's not about the research.
It's simply is this, it's user to lose it. If you're not going to get weak, if you're using something, get strong, that's the bottom line. We just let your feet move. And if they haven't been, that's going to make them stronger.
That's why in my office, even when I have my students will come in and say, well, let's just rest them for a little bit. I said, rest is usually the wrong answer in my clinic, unless something is broken or something different situation. But a lot of it's going to be augmenting what you do, which is what I talked about the top of this was augmenting what you do from a training standpoint. And when you wear these shoes, you are augmenting your training because you are changing the way that your foot and your ankle and it comes in contact with the ground underneath you.
And thereby building strength when you are just in a grocery store, walking around, or you're, you're, you're, you know, with your kids, or you're doing whatever you want to do, you're continually using those intrinsic muscles in your feet that will help stabilize you when you are running or when you're doing other things. Yeah, we've even had cyclists who report they put they're putting more force into their pedals, getting more watts out when they're in our shoes, instead of clipped in. And I said, yeah, it's because the cycling shoes you're wearing, basically make your feet just a brick that you can only control with your ankle. You don't have, you're not really getting that initial force that you can use by using your foot correctly, nor are you getting the signals to the upstream muscles, both enter and posterior chain, your quadrature, hamstrings, etc.
That that's part of what your foot is trying to do is to tell those other muscles, oh, yeah, get ready. Right. You're not doing any of that. So, no, it's even neurologically.
So if you look at the neurological connection, right, the proprioceptive connection that you get with the bike or the ground, I mean, we have hockey players that don't even like to wear socks, because they don't want to have anything that is coming into contact beside their foot, into the skate and into the blade. And so if it doesn't surprise me, and because those players say, I feel more powerful, I feel like that neuro connection is so much stronger, and you're actually getting a more whole body experience because you're going from foot to the brain and back. And I don't think you do that with other shoes that have so much padding, which is why I put my parents in these shoes as they're getting older, and you look at injury prevention. Now, I mean, I've talked to both spectrums here, Stephen.
I've talked about the eight, nine, 10 year old who's got weak ankles and from a foot strength standpoint. Now I'm talking about my parents and my dad's in his 70s. And so he's got a bad arthritis in his knees. And so, but I put him in these shoes, and you could see a difference in the way that he walked.
He felt more stable. And, you know, I mean, it's good enough for my parents, right? It's good enough for everybody else that's out there in my opinion. I think your parents are definitely the artistic by which all things should be measured.
I told you, I mean, we talked about it, but I mean, that's the thing that you want the best for the people that you care about. And that's what I did. And so to see him be able to move more confidently and more stable is a thing of beauty because now he can go enjoy what he wants to do much more. So that's the full spectrum, Stephen, everybody in between.
And I think that's really big thing. And you could be a runner, a pickleball player, you can be a climber. I think it's the same thing. You look at climbing shoes, for example, what are climbing shoes?
They're essentially the same. Well, the difference again, if you're a serious climber, squeezey, pointy toe. And then actually, it's really fun. I watched the videos with a whole universe, I remember to say his last name, a guy who climbed El Cap, for silly El Clamp.
Anyway, I'm horrible at names. You're looking it up for you. I am. Yeah.
Well, while you're looking it up and then you'll say it, he, I've watched him do different climbs and talk about which shoe he wants for clients. Alex Arnold. Thank you. For some, he's looking for something really flexible.
And for some, he's looking for something really stiff, depending on whether he needs to jam his toe into something and use that as a lever, to get a grip on the rock. And that was really, really cool to see. My favorite thing to point you just made is we've been testing out some shoes with some pro basketball players. And man, they know so much about their feet, but they didn't know how much they were ignoring the information they were getting because they didn't have any other options.
And that's been really fun. Like some of these guys, we put the shoe on their feet and five minutes later, they're telling us what their experience was. And we're recording this because that could be the commercial. It's like everything they're saying is exactly how we designed it.
And they're noticing it, which is really, really fun. That and my other favorite thing is when just like you, someone says, I put these shoes on my parents and it changed their life. That's one of my favorite things. I think that's the biggest thing that it's about this day and age.
When we talk about genetic testing and getting information for athletes, it's how much more information can you get? And what's the best source of information? And it doesn't have to be pro athletes, but they are so fine tuned that they know if something's a little bit off. And so the more information that they can get, because they can analyze it in a manner and they have the talents and to be able to get that information to them for them to be able to use that right?
And say, if you say, look, I was struggling when I cut this way, but I didn't know I was struggling until I had these shoes on, that's a big difference, right? And then you can do things to correct that. But you just hit an L on the head, is that most people have never experienced an option. So they don't know there's an option and they don't think of looking for an option.
And so our first goal is to give show people there's an option and see what their experience is and then work there from there. But I think that's what we do in our clinic here. When I say just walk on our turf with your regular shoes on, and then now put these on and see what you think. And really, it's just it's just more of them coming to that realization themselves.
Like we talked about this, and septions one of my favorite movies. I mean, when you're able to have that thought come into your own mind and say and be organic and so, you know what? No, I actually do feel more stable in these and what's the reason and you start to analyze and see the difference between the shoes. You start to have an understanding.
And there's and I think a lot of it's been people not knowing there's an option because of a larger budget or or this is what the athletes says I should wear. Yeah, it's funny. You just mind me, Dr. Phil Maffetone who was one of the original guys talking about doing heart rate based training for a distance runners and distance endurance athletes, he also used to recommend go to Walmart, get the cheapest finish you can get away with because that's what you want so you're feet can work.
And I when I became friendly, I said, so you were saying these things in the 80s, do you feel vindicated that people are not catching up or do you feel mad that took that long years that one? Yeah, yeah, I mean, education is a hard hard thing to overcome. It's much like what we're doing from a non-surgical standpoint, right? Everybody tends to go see North Peak Surgeon because they didn't know there was another option when we came out here.
We met a lot of great people and they found out what I did. And they said, you need to move out here yesterday because there are not people that do what you do to the level that you do with that from a non-surgical standpoint. And I think, yeah, it's about options. And at the end of the day, it's about what fits you there may be some people that for whatever reason will say, no, this is not for me.
And that's okay. And that's okay too. But I think it's more about the openness of trying this and understanding how do I get something that will give me more information and that in a byproduct actually allow me to build a stronger foundation, basically bottom up. Well, that is the perfect segue for wrapping this up.
So I will ask you if people want to find out more information about you and what you're doing, whether they're going to come see you physically or virtually or just get an understanding of what they can do for wherever they are, how will they do that? Yeah, thanks, Steve, very much for having me. Go to dynamicathlete.com. That's our website.
You can take a look at that. You can see what we're doing on Instagram, dynamic athlete underscore Boulder. And otherwise, you can just give us a call if you want. And we'd be happy to point you in the right direction.
But we do a lot of our stuff here in our Boulder office right downtown central Boulder. And we'd be happy to take care of our community, the way we you guys are taking care of the community with issues. Well, much appreciated for everyone. I hope you do take advantage of that.
Because what I'm just doing is really quite wonderful. And if you can avoid unnecessary interventions and to get back to health, that's always highly recommended. So reminder, just first of all, thank you all for being here. Secondly, head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.
That way you'll find previous episodes, all the ways you can find us on social media, all the other places you can find the podcast, if you don't like the one where you already found it. And if you have anything you want to check in with me about, if you have any questions, comments, if you have someone who you know who should be on the show, ideally at some point someone who thinks I have cranial recco reorientation syndrome, for which there is no non-surgical intervention. Obviously, here's that. So, but you can drop me an email, move, m-o-v-e at jointhemovementmovement.com.
And most importantly, until next time, go out, have fun, and live life, feet first.