What do people who are in super high-performance, super intense situations, you know, like people in special ops, like, you know, Seal Team guys, what do they think about this whole barefoot thing? I mean, my God, they're out in the middle of nowhere doing all this crazy stuff. Well, I don't know. What's my name?
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 feet first, you know, those things at the end of your legs. They're your foundation. And so we hear, break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the flat-out lies you've been told about what it takes to use them, what it takes to run, to walk, to play, to do yoga, or cross-fade, or hike, or whatever it is you like to do, and to do that effectively and efficiently and enjoyably and today. Just say enjoyably.
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All right, my name is Trevor Thompson. I spent nine years in the SEAL teams. I come from a background, a running cross-country. I've ice-clined back at your ski, I guide up in Alaska, and now I'm working for Protect Products and kind of spreading the whole body, whole health type of religion.
So I'm just going to make this really easy for you. I'll not forget. Actually, wait, I got to tell this story. You'll get a kick out of it.
We had a whole bunch of special ops guys who were coming to have a meeting at NORAD, and they stopped off at my house when my wife and I were running a business from the house to pick up some sandals. They were really into what we were doing suggesting we should be standard issue. That was a lot of story. But just for the fun of it, I said, hey, you know, I love when military technology makes it down to consumer stuff like GPS, but now I'm just wondering like, what's the resolution you get?
You know, we get three foot, but what do you get? They go, no, we're using the same satellites you are. You know, the same thing that you're getting. I said, cool.
Well, then what can you take a picture of from space? Oh, yeah, we can't tell you that. Okay. So I'm just curious about the historical part first.
What inspired you to even try to become a SEAL team person? And what's the whole process of that happening? Like, I mean, you know, it gets sort of either a grand eyes and exaggerated or quite the opposite in the mainstream world, if you will. But what's it like from your side?
So I was 18 years old. I was in college in Chicago. I was actually going to an art school. And most people pre-seal team do.
Yeah, as most of them are. Now, and that was about 2006 and the middle of war was going on. My family said somebody in every conflict back through the French and Indian war. So it wasn't out of the question for me.
So we've had a really long history. And I thought, you know, I'm going to, I want to give back. I want to do something also. And I literally thought to myself, okay, so I'm a decent athlete.
I'm not an idiot. Let's do the hardest thing possible. And I literally picked the hardest thing I could pick. Which just conflicts with that.
I'm not an idiot thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I didn't say I didn't have a screw loose.
Sorry. I didn't understand the difference. Yeah. And I went and talked to a recruiter.
And about a year later, I was in the Navy on my way to go do the thing. So how do they, how do you know where to begin? What's it like when you say you're going to be heading that direction? What do you have to go through?
What's the training like? What's the process of becoming actually getting on a seal team? Like, and of course, obviously the first thing is how many people start? How many people end up?
Yeah. So my class started with a little more than 200 people. And we finished with about 19. So it's a pretty high attrition rate.
You know, if you just look at that, you're talking at like 90% right? Yeah. And the way that process works is before you join an 80, you have to take a physical aptitude test that's specific to those programs. So it's like a one and a half mile run, 500 meter swim and it's breaststroke or side stroke, max pull ups, push ups, sit ups.
And there's bare minimum scores that you have to pass, which are if you're only passing bare minimums, there's no way in hell you're going to make it. Most of the guys are tripling quadrupling those numbers usually because the minimums are truly minimums. And give me an example for like push ups or pull ups. I think pull ups is six.
Oh, wow, that is a minimum. It is a minimum. And, you know, I mean, they're deadhang, you know, chest of bar type of pull ups. But man, if you weren't doing 20 to 25, people were looking at you weird.
And then beyond that, you're just getting your ass handed to you for six months. You know, they're trying to find somebody that doesn't just have a physical and mental attitude because that's relatively simple to find. I mean, there's a lot of collegiate athletes that can outperform us in name the discipline, but they're really looking for people that can kind of dig out that really impossible thing to get a hold of for psychologists to look at, which is the I'm not going to quit, no matter what scenario is. It's just damn near impossible for them to figure out.
Like, which person is going to be able to pull that out of themselves? And every time I've been asked by guys, you know, hey, what's it going to take? And, you know, how did you get through that? I was telling them, like, how bad do you want to be there?
That's what it takes. Because if you're a decent enough athlete, that's not a problem. Yeah. Yeah.
It sounds though, like it's more than I would guess even more than that. It's kind of like when people talk about entrepreneurship. I'm sorry. I'm really passionate.
That's not a thing. That's not the thing. So, you know, I would guess that everyone's got that sort of stick to it in this as well. There's another part where I'm at your point of saying you're not an idiot.
The special ops guys that I've met, they're all super smart. Yeah. And there's something about that problem solving in the face of, you know, sheer what would be terror for normal human beings. Like my wife early on, we don't have children, but at one point she said something about how she was afraid.
If we had kids, you know, she doesn't handle it. Oh, you haven't seen me under pressure. That's my favorite time. Because when it's like serious pressure, everything gets super crystal clear and all I want to do is solve the problem.
You know, normal stuff like people driving two, 10 miles an hour below the speed limit in front of me. That's all different thing. I lose my shit. But, you know, but when I was in 10 and then Square and six guys were pointing machine guns at my head could not have been more lucid.
So, you know, slightly everything. I'm not suggesting I would be a CLT more special ops guy. First of all, they don't take us. We're five five.
But that's all in the story. So when you got down to that 19, did you all have to do a weird segue? Here's the question. But don't answer yet.
The question is, did you all look around and go, oh, wow, weird variations of the same guy. And before you answer, I had a girlfriend who knew about people in Hollywood and when I was going out to Hollywood for something for the first time, she said, oh, I got to introduce you to these six guys. And so we all got together. Turn out they were all her exes.
And at the end of the lunch, one of them said, does anyone think it's weird that we all get along better with each other than we ever did with her? And I said, no, she only likes one kind of guy. Here we are. Yeah, I'd say it's a, it's pretty much a variation of same type of personality.
You know, there are outliers always, but you end up with a whole bunch of dudes that can pretty much get along and are very similar. I mean, I think the average, the average dude who's in the SEAL teams is like five, nine to five, eleven and like 170 to 185. Very similar. Yep.
Super similar. Yeah, that's the exact same sort of perfect body type for that. What's that? Is there any real difference?
It's gonna sound like a weird question, but I'm completely ignorant. So I don't care. Here we go. You know, with the special ops teams and the other military branches, what are what, if anything, are the differences between those?
It's all mission set. So it would be like professional sports, you know, so all the professional sports are pro athletes, but baseball players play baseball football players play football. So for us, our mission set is different than say the pair of rescue guys or then Green Barays or Delta Force or, you know, the Marine Force Recon. We all have very particular things.
The SEAL teams are a commando unit that does assaults and we are based in a maritime environment. The Green Barays are trainers of a partner force to help with an insurgency in a foreign nation. So they're most of those guys. I think they all have to speak foreign language.
So it's just like, it's a slightly different mission set. And that's what allows us to be set on one path or another as a unit when the nation focuses their efforts with that unit. And when did you leave the military? Let's see.
I left in 2016. So I did nine years. Yeah. I left.
Yeah, that's about eight years ago. Again, this could be personally, no need to go there. But back into when I was in Tiananmen Square and guys were pointing to me, I was trying to figure out who was gonna pull the trigger. When I got out of that situation and had this mind-blowing endorphin rush that felt like, you know, when you're standing in the ocean facing the beach and you feel the undertow and then you get slammed by wave, it was like that but with endorphins.
And my next thought was, if I went through literally, I'm like running away from guys still shooting. And I'm thinking, if I went through that a couple times a month, a week, day, I would not be able to come home in any way normal in that. If someone said, honey, you know, the refrigerator is broken. It's like, are you kidding?
So again, you don't have to get into it if it's way too personal. What was it like coming back and getting out of whatever you've been doing for those nine years? So I, I mean, I base jump, I, I climb, I backcountry ski, so I still find ways to entertain my brain in the same way. Like, I still keep that lizard brain on its toes.
And, and I love it. I get super calm and relaxed. And I don't lose it when there's high stress scenarios. And I think that that's a little bit of a post-traumatic reality.
And that's okay. And I like it. Some people are built for it. That's okay.
The one time I did a tandem skydive, you know, the guy strapped in my back was saying, as soon as we got out of the plane, just spread eel, otherwise we could die. And we roll out of the plane. And I'm a former All-American gymnast. We start rolling.
And I didn't feel like I had left the plane. And so I'm going to, this is going to be so cool. And I'm totally chill as we're starting to roll. And the guy's like smashing my helmet.
And I was like, Oh, right. Sorry about that. So there's a picture on my fridge. And if we land of me, look at all happy in the guy behind me just like scowling at me.
Sorry. We're okay. That's his problem. I've taken a bunch of people in Tandems and I find them fun.
You know, they should be fun. Yeah. Well, you know, it was an easy job and everything was fine. We landed standing up.
It was great. But he was just still freaked out from freaking out. And look, I get it. He didn't know that I was chill.
He thought I was kind of kidding. I understand. So of course, here's the magic question. We're talking because you have some thoughts and feelings about human feet.
So when did you kind of start being curious about what you're going to put on your feet and how you're going to work? And let's chat about that. So I count myself very, very lucky. My cross country coach in high school.
So being what 14 or so years old, he had us run, I say almost half of our mileage, a third to half of our mileage was done barefoot, which I know is not common. And that would be very early on in the spectrum of the barefoot type of movement in North America for US like school. So yes, I don't know how hard it was that when we were 14. See, that would be like 2001 to.
Yeah, that's way early. Yeah. Yeah. We're a lot of people doing that thing.
No, and I think that came from him being a marathoner and him looking at. Specifically a lot of the Sub-Saharan African runners and a little bit of the Copper Canyon Indians and him just thinking like, hey, this works for them. And so why not start my kids that way? He didn't have us running on concrete or anything crazy.
Like he had us running on grass and turf and which is as children, you know, you can really overdo it for kids that have never done it. So, man, I owe a debt of gratitude to him because I then got to the point where I can run as long as I want to run on concrete or dirt or whatever the medium is. Did he say anything? Did he just have you do it or was he explaining the value of it?
He explained the value. You know, he gave us the, hey, your feet are meant to be attached to the ground. This is what we've done for millions years. Like this is how our feet developed.
This will give your body a mechanical advantage when you have to cushion via the thing that's attached to your legs instead of using the shoe as the cushion. So you will learn how to run properly and avoid lower leg injuries. Who was this brilliant man? His name's Wes Smith.
I think he's actually probably still out there in LA area. Oh my God. We'll have to look him up and say hi. That is, I gotta hear that story.
That is delightful. So here's an interesting question then. So with the whole team training barefoot sometimes? You mean the cross country team?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Baring any odd injuries or specific mechanical disadvantages that somebody would have and they possibly would refuse to do it.
Almost everybody did it on a very regular basis. I asked because I was just in an event at the American Physical Therapy Association and one of the guys presenting is the family doctor in a very small community and they have a high school. It's like also really tiny. He got like all of those high school cross country runners to be training either barefoot or minimalist footwear and competing and minimalist footwear.
And they never since they've done that or in the years that he was involved in that, they didn't have one injury that kept someone from running from competing. And the only couple of injuries they had that were causing some pain but again didn't stop someone from running. More people who while they switched to a minimalist shoe were still overstrying and heel striking for whatever reason. Everyone else totally fine.
And this tiny, tiny, tiny little school from upstate New York placed I think like fourth in the nation against these massive schools with tons of money. And a lot of it was just due to the fact that they stayed healthy the whole time. And I think it was very similar for us. I don't specifically remember any injuries more than the occasional shin splints.
And that's I mean, we were putting 80 to 100 miles in and a lot of that on concrete asphalt. So it's going to happen. But I mean, shin splints are talk about a minor like it's a hiccup. Yeah.
We had a guy working for us, our first customer service person who was 65 and he was using our fitness. All we had is our kit then. So he's running with a four millimeter piece of rubber underneath his foot putting on 120 to 160 miles a week and on roads. And you can't do that.
He goes, I just did it. Yeah. And I mean, I have since spent the same amount of time doing the same sort of stuff running in, I mean, I've run around in bedrock sandals like, you know, next to nothing's like it just it doesn't bother you if you train the body. Yeah, I'll be getting you some sandals that are better than I was.
I mean, I know a guy who knows a guy who hooked you up. So, so you know, back up to when you're in in seal team, what were you guys doing for footwear then? And I asked him part because I met a guy who I think you might have been greenberry who said their whole team they all switched to minerals footwear. Now, interestingly, he also said we all got a lot of plantar fasciitis and I looked at him and this guy was massive.
This guy was like 65, 250, nobody fat. I looked at him and said, I don't think you have plantar fasciitis. He's like, well, my doctor said, yeah, I got a hunch. What are you thinking?
I said, well, can I stick my thumb in your calf? He goes, sure. But my thumb in his calf, he's suddenly flat on his face on the ground. I just sat there, you know, digging out the one spot that I can tell was super tight.
And then after about three minutes of that, I said, how do you feel? And he stood up and walked around and went, she's just like 90% better. I said, go back to the base, tell your physical therapist to do that for a week for everybody. Let me know what happens.
And I saw him a year later, he goes, that was it. We just had tight cans. Magic. Yeah.
And I think actually the bulk of the guys were running around in, if I recall correctly, a lot of them had this early, Merrill, really thin shoes. And then I had a pair of high top innovates that I deployed in. So a lot of the guys actually were embracing the like either zero drop or very thin shoe because it works. Yeah.
Well, and my God, I'm also thinking, you know, the reason that some of the guys are saying our sandals should be standard issue is this doesn't take up any room in my pack. And there's times where I need to get out of something that's got my feet soaking wet so that my feet can dry off. So I don't end up having, you know, more problems. And the good news with all those special offs guys is, you know, you guys have your own credit card, you can do it every one.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We'll just, we'll go ahead and just that thing. I recall doing some of those.
Was there anything that you went, you know, they're not going to notice, let me buy this. No, everything had to get written up, but we sure found reasons to buy a lot of things. Yeah, that probably wasn't looked at too closely. Yeah.
I mean, because honestly, we weren't trying to fleece the government. We were trying to do our jobs. There was some definitely like creative language used, but it works. You know, the equipment works that we needed.
And look, I imagine that you treated this in the same way that any professional athlete does. Like, if this looks like something to give me an edge, I got to try it. Exactly. And that's what they're looking for for any of the guys in any of the special operations groups, which is they want people that are thinking outside the box or they're throwing the box away.
I used to say that I preferred a little bit of a plan that doesn't have boxes. Yeah. Yeah. So were there any people who like came into that program and they were wearing some big thick padded motion or whatever and then found themselves discovering that that was not doing what they needed and became another natural movement person.
Actually, I think that the team that I was at, the teams that I was at, by and large, almost everybody there embraced that kind of direction, which it really is just a function of the times that people were being taught the benefit of that sort of movement pattern. You know, we had guys coming in, teaching us yoga, teaching us how to do these movements and you have 20 Navy seals out there doing downward dog and like, you know, cow cat and it's wild to see, but then you see the back end benefit, which is we're more resilient. We don't break as often. And that means we're better to deploy.
Yeah. It's a really interesting thing. Actually, it just occurred to me that the difference between what you just described and sort of the spec out mentality of making you guys more bulletproof. It's amazing to be seeing in professional sports the opposite where they're not doing that and kind of working almost on kind of nutrition basis.
I mean, we're starting to work with a bunch of pro athletes and one guy reached out to us recently and I felt guys said, you've given me extra seasons in my career. And, you know, that's worth billions of dollars to both the players and the teams. Why they don't do something similar to really keep people healthy is kind of a mystery and happily, you know, we're starting to do that with them. It's a wild mystery.
And what's really interesting to me looking at professional sports in particular or Olympic level sports is that the athletes that get paid the least and are doing it for the passion are usually the ones that are the most proactive, not reactive to their PT, which is incredible to think about. Like the guy that's getting paid $50 million a year as opposed to the skier that has to fund their own trip to the Olympics. Right. And that skier is doing all their own PT and they don't get hurt.
And then the football player is hurt on a regular basis, but they have the world of right in front of them. Yeah. You can remind me when I went to the world Masters Track and Field Championships. Every other team except the US.
So every other country other than us had paid for physical therapists and massage therapists come with them. And our guys know we're gonna do that. It's like, what are you kidding me? No, it was.
There's also a book called Speed Trap about Ben Johnson. And when you read that book, you see how they treated him like a racehorse. So he would do a warm up and then get a massage and then do another warm up drill and get another massage. And basically, you know, anytime there was any little glitch in any muscle fiber, they want that out before the next thing.
It was I was so jealous. But at the same time, you know, those guys, especially the super power athletes, their career tend to be way, way, way short. They are and some of that is just a function of the activities that are performing. Yeah.
And some is just like a genetics, something or other. There's a friend of mine who's got, I think the American record and maybe the world record in almost every sprint event that I'm in. He's just a couple years older than me. So there's no way I'll ever get near him.
But he's super, super fragile. So he'll go out, set a world record, then be injured and then the next time he's on the track six months later for another meet sets another record. It's just one after the other. It's mind blowing whole different world.
So he gets. I mean, what else? It's so interesting that you started in high school. And I'm curious, at any point, did you find yourself really kind of diving into the whole barefoot of your things just with the research or any of the science behind it?
Because I have no doubt that at some point you're walking around whatever the hell you're wearing and people are getting the comments to you that we all did. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I was on the full forend of that spectrum of that guy. Like I was practicing yoga on a regular basis.
I was using, I mean, I think I found like a do-it-yourself kit for like a copy of the, what is it? Rahramari sandals. The Rahramari is just basically what the ton of the color call themselves, which is the running people. And I had read that book that born to run.
And I was so far down, like, no, this is just what you're supposed to do. I mean, reading old reports about like Appalachian children having, you know, strong feet and never having lower back issues and all this crap. And I was trying to espouse that to everybody that I could get my hands on. I was constantly telling the holistic health thing to.
And yeah, occasionally you get looked at like a goofball. But the reality is like, if you're able to change one person's perspective, you might save their back knees, hips forever. Yeah. And in the time since you've again been out of the military, what you're doing now, or through what you're doing now, is there still some, I'm trying to give you how to you ask this question.
Obviously what you were doing then, a lot of this was supporting all the things you were doing at a performance level. Now it's slightly different thing. How's it changed for you? It's still a performance thing because I ski, I mean, I back under ski at a relatively high level.
I still do a lot of hard physical efforts from hunting. I mean, I hunt moccasins on a very regular basis, like mousse hide flat for real moccasins. It's just, it's a part of my life. It's a lifestyle.
Now it's not just a choice. I will not be stepping away because I just cannot see myself doing that. I just don't see a benefit to moving backwards. What's your experience dealing with skis and ski boots are not the most barefoot friendly?
They are not, but specifically with ski boots, there's such a clamp down, you know, mid calf down piece of equipment. I just treat them as, okay, that's a function of sport. I don't even want to go with me too much. And your feet are so locked in that as opposed to being in a boot where you functionally have a little bit of motion, but you're off the ground and you're set weird with a ski boot, you can actually be set pretty flat in the boot itself.
If you get fit right and then beyond that, it's just a ski boot. Yeah. Well, I expected that was going to be the, the tenor of your answer, which is, you know, you're, basically you're strong enough to handle that time when you're doing the thing that you need to do that. Yeah, it's not ideal, but that's what you need to do.
Yeah, I have a similar comment when I talked to climbers. I know you need to climb, this is going to squeeze your foot into a tiny little crevice, but once you get out of it, you know, check this out. And that's what they do. It's like we need to tolerate when our feet aren't strong, precisely, or in a compromised position.
Yeah, exactly. There's a friend of mine who she actually put out an e-book, I think was called Catwalk Confidential, but don't hold me to it. It was how to be, it was basically how to walk in high heels, how to be comfortable in high heels. It was a fake out.
It was really a foot strengthening exercise program. It's like once your feet are strong enough, you can tolerate this for a while. And that's the truth. You know, you're not going to be in ski boots for more than four to six hours during day, likely.
That's fine. Because if the rest of the time you're walking around barefoot or nearly barefoot, cool. That's, that's the PT that your body needs. Yeah, absolutely.
So, you know, I wanted to have this conversation because obviously you've been in more extreme situations than the average human being. And I wanted people to understand that this is more than just walking around in a goofy parachute or being barefoot every now and then or whatever. This is like, you know, a legit thing for very high performance people and super appreciate that. Absolutely.
And I will talk about it to my dying day because I 100% believe it. Well, you know, people will sometimes say to me, they'll use that B word. They say, well, you believe it. I believe there's a fact.
Yeah. Humans have done it for 99.9% of our history. I think it works. It's actually, I read Davis did the math.
I started this the other day was 99.9975. Yeah, it's bonkers. I guess it's mind. It's completely mind numbing to think that shoes are the answer.
Well, I'll tell you something. I'll tell you something amazing. I've talked about this on the podcast. I've also done a rant about it.
But now there's a new piece of information that I didn't have before. So on the website for a major footwear brand that I shouldn't mention their name rhymes with Mikey. So on this one page kind of hiding in their website, they published a portion of the abstract from a study that they designed and paid for about four and a half years ago. And what the way they publicized the results were that they have a new shoe that reduced injuries compared to their best selling shoe by 52%.
And the injuries they were tracking this over a 12 week half marathon training program. And injury was anything that kept you out for at least three days. So that's basically a week. Now, if it sounds really cool, it sounds great.
Then if you actually look at the page, amazingly, they published the numbers, which is that the best selling shoe injured 30.3% of the people wearing it in 12 weeks. And the better shoe only air quotes only injured 14.5%. Now, it says some amazing things. First of all, it proves that shoes can be the delimiting factor for injuries, which should have been denying for years.
They basically say, if you're getting injured because the shoes are great. So that's one thing. Now, of course, you know, it raises questions like, well, if that other shoe is better than the best seller, why are you still selling the best seller? Why isn't everything made the way that new shoe is made?
And then, of course, the question, what's the difference with that new shoe? And their answer, which they didn't publish. But I have a copy of the study is we removed many of the protective features. So they made it more like this.
If we injured 14.5% of the people wearing our shoes in 12 months, this conversation will be happening for my jail cell. So it's sort of amazing. But here's the question. Here's the thing that I never thought of until someone asked me this the other day.
They said, why do you think Mikey has this on their website? That's a really good question. I'm betting and I could be wrong, but they know about what we're doing. I mean, I talked to the agent for some of the pro athletes that we're working with.
I said, the moment when your boys place five minutes in a game, we're going to in our shoes, we're going to hear about it. And he said, yeah, Mikey called me last week to find out what you're up to. So they know what they're tracking us. My suspicion is that they have that on their website for the same reason there's a warning legal on cereal boxes.
Oh, yeah. It's a liability thing. Yeah. If someone decides to go after them, they go, well, we put it on our website.
Which the whole thing has always been wild to me just based on looking at the original shoes that like Baramun was making. Right. What a divergence you guys really took from a thing that is essentially like a cross country running flat, which worked fine. Yeah.
The first the first waffle trainer. I remember I was like 12 years old when I put it on. It was about 10 milliliter foam. It did something clever that ultra then kind of kind of copied it away.
It was the soul was flat, but just like where your foot is, but at the toe, the foam, you know, it was like a V shape or a or everyone to call it basically. It's just like a wedge. Yeah, kind of a wedge instead of being totally flat across the whole thing. So I remember as a young sprinter, I lean forward to start running and just rock me on my toes.
It was great. And it was, you know, too narrow, still kind of squeeze your toes together. But fundamentally, it was like, it was a minimalist shoe. Yeah.
And then yeah, they went in a whole different direction, obviously. Even more fun example is Arthur Liddyard, who was the coach from New Zealand. He made shoes for his athletes. They look just like these.
Zero surprise. I mean, he had them doing all sorts of wild stuff, like running in sand or any downhill. His programming was gorgeous. Totally brilliant.
And similar to what we were describing before, I know a number of those athletes. And they all say the same thing. We never had an injury until we got a shoe sponsorship. In go.
Yeah. I read Davis asked that to someone who was in the Stanford running club in the late 60s or early 70s. She said, what did you guys do about injury? Well, look, the reality is you can look at apocryphal mentions of, say, Native Americans or even like, long hundreds from 1700s.
They lived in moccasins that had, you know, one to two mill of thick moose or elk leather. And they literally survived on their feet. Yeah. You could not have a lower leg injury.
You would starve. Let me see. Let me see if you have an answer to this one. People say to me, but we didn't evolve to run on hard surfaces and air feet.
Well, those people have nothing outside very much. I've been on a lot of hard dirt. Yeah. My answer, I said, if you go to where we evolved, you're going to find hard pack mud.
It's just as hard as cement everywhere. Yeah. And I've also said we didn't evolve to fly jet planes or double backflips. I can do the latter.
I've been in one of the former. So we can do things that we didn't evolve to do that we're capable of doing. We do that every day. So how much time do you spend actually barefoot barefoot in out in the wild?
And by the wild, I mean, like around other humans. Enough where so I worked for Blackberry for coffee company and it was enough where if I didn't come into work in either sandals or moccasins, they would ask if there was something wrong. And I'm talking like, this is Salt Lake City where there could be two or three feet of snow in the ground. Right.
I'm like, well, this is this is how I believe I should be walking around. I'm in moccasins a lot. If I need to like protect my feet, that's what I do. I just I literally wear a leather sock.
I was in the pharmacy line at Costco a while ago. And if I'm wearing shoes, I wear mismatched colors. I mean, so like, here's the shoes that I have today. Okay.
Same shoe, different color. Guy behind me says, Hey, your shoes don't match. And the pharmacist without even looking up says he's wearing shoes. See, it's the same sort of thing.
Yeah. I've had to, I've had to tell many a store that there's nothing illegal about being barefoot. In fact, at a supermarket, they said, you can't be barefoot in the store. And I said, why is it sanitation issue?
I said, I don't care if my feet get dirty. And they're like, wait, what? That's true. There's nothing that says you can't do that.
No, I said, when's the last time you clean your shoes because I clean my feet every day. So I'm not sure what you're talking about, you know, sanitation. They were a little perplexed by that one. You can have a policy that you're supposed to wear shoes, but it's not illegal.
And even with a policy, I mean, they can ask you to leave. That doesn't mean I have to. Exactly. At one point, I was in Whole Foods barefoot and somebody complained that I was in bare feet just as a dog walk by.
I went, wait, so is he? And that confused. What about hands? Like people use their hands to touch everything.
So what's it like? Do you need to be wearing gloves? Well, clearly you must. I mean, otherwise there's going to be some sort of problem.
It's yes. We can go on forever about the illogical responses to running around in anything other than a normal shoe. So anyway, clearly we can go on about this forever. And I'm hoping it was just fun for people to get a bit of an insight into a world that is somewhat secretive.
For me. Until you guys leave and then you just chatter boxes. Some of them really are. You're nothing compared to a father of a friend of mine.
He was one of the top CIA guys for 40 years. And when he was in his 80s, I was grilling him on stuff. I'd say, what were you doing in Thailand in 59? And he said, oh, I had a large suitcase of money I had to bring across the Burmese border to get the war started.
What were you doing in Zaire two years before the coup? Oh, I had a large suitcase of money that I, but we had a large suitcase. Everything I could think of. He was there two years earlier with a suitcase full of money.
That was wild. And I told his kids and they're like, what are you talking about? I mean, they had no idea, which was more wild. So that was pretty fun.
Well, Trevor, people want to, you know, just find out what you're up here, especially with the biz you're connected to or just want to say hi, if they have any questions or open for that. How can they track you down and say hello? So the best way is literally I just have an Instagram account that says Trevor dot Patrick Thompson or Trevor dot P dot Thompson. That's it.
It's super easy. It's just my name. And then I'm affiliated with and I work for Protect Products. And those are the easiest ways to get a hold of me or find out.
Smell Protect Products for them since it's not a typical spelling. Yeah, that's right. P-R-O-T-E-K-T and then products just like it's supposed to be spelled. I have fantasy that someday we will stop you protected into it, but I have a fantasy someday we won't just remove vowels to come up with a new product name or new product.
Oh, yeah. Just shake the Scrabblebox for the next one. If you look on Amazon, there's a whole bunch of companies, Chinese companies that got into the idea of making bearish shoes and they undeniably just grabbed a bunch of Scrabble tiles through them on the ground and went, that's the product name. Yeah.
Well, Trevor, been a total total pleasure. I really appreciate the conversation. For everyone else, I hope you do as well. We chat to Trevor if you're inspired to say hi.
And remember, go check us out at www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You'll find links to all the social media platforms that were on where you can say hi and interact with us there as well. And as always, if you have any recommendations, suggestions, if there's somebody you think should be on the show, especially if it's someone who thinks I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, pass it on. You can drop me an email.
I'm at movemov.e at jointhemovementmovement.com. And most importantly, go out, have fun and live life-y first.