I'm Stephen Sashan from the Movement Movement Podcast. You can find us at JoinTheMovementMovement.com, or all the various places where you can think of where you find Join The Movement Movement. If you actually go to JoinTheMovementMovement.com, you'll see Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and iTunes and everywhere else. And this is a podcast for people who want to learn the truth about how to move healthily, happily strong, have healthy, happy, strong bodies, and to cut through the mythology that people have been propagating that might keep you from doing that.
If you've been listening to the podcast, you know that typically it's just me doing a lot of ranting. Well, I'm happy. That's not the case this time. I have my friend Dr.
Brian Hidershite. We will be exploring something interesting. One of the many things we'll be exploring, could you improve your running and getting rid of your injuries by moving faster without running faster? I know that sounds crazy, but we'll jump in and find out how that works.
So first of all, Brian, hello. Hi, Steve. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
Yeah, that's really good. You're not for saying, hey, thanks for doing this again because the recording didn't work the last time. That's what happened here. We are again.
I'm going to ask you a question that I asked before, and maybe you have a better answer now. You're a PhD, which means you have a doctor of philosophy technically, so say something philosophical. No improvements at all. You know that's going to be the same.
I have nothing to press up the same. That's actually very Zen of you. There's no improvements at all. Oh, OK.
I'm just going to stick with that one. I'll stick with them after Zen mountains or mountains and rivers or rivers. That's awesome. That's awesome.
It'd be true. OK. So we started this conversation originally, 20 minutes ago, and I asked you how you got to where you got to, and you were talking about how originally you were doing research on footwear, people, shoe companies were selling you stuff. If you had to sum up what you discovered from that in, like, an elevator pitch, elevator sentence, what would you say that you discovered?
One of the challenges definitely is that when we tried to do the testing on the different shoes, material properties of the shoe that they did not well represent what would happen in what people were doing. That's interesting. So what happens in the lab does not equal what happens in real life. Right.
Exactly. That wasn't our intent of testing the shoes was actually to give information about the shoes themselves, not to interpret 5, 6, 7 miles down the road and say what they actually would do in terms of injury or performance. But of course, that's many times how information is attracted. So you're saying that you did not give information that showed that shoes improve performance or reduce injury, but the shoe companies then would take your data and say that's what they did.
That's, yes, correct. We did not do that. Whether the shoe companies or others who interpret it incorrectly. Yes, they did not do that.
It's funny. I've there are some researchers who will remain nameless, but if they don't know who they are, who especially trying to prove that minimalist and barefoot running is frankly bullshit. They have studied VO2 Max and which is basically how well your body uses oxygen for people who don't know. And what they showed in a small study that has not been replicated that involved people who were claimed to be proficient barefoot runners, even though I know none of the people that were in that study and I know all the local barefoot runners and the conclusion was that the barefoot runners, their VO2 Max was lower than the people who were running in regular running shoes.
By the way, the regular running shoes were sponsored by the company that sponsors the entire lab. And so my argument was hey, who cares? Because what your VO2 Max is in the lab doesn't say anything about how you're going to perform in real life. And luckily the same lab is now saying we're still seeing VO2 Max improvements with the so-and-so.
I won't mention the brand by name, but it rhymes with flaky vapor fly. But we don't know why and we're not saying that it's going to change the way you perform in real life. And I actually had someone say well how can so many people are saying personal best in that shoe? I said for the same reason people are other people are saying personal best in other shoes.
It's not what people say. So that's the short version of what you discovered then. And now if you've got your interest now, what are you doing in research and or clinically? Yeah, so both like both environments were truly trying to look at how people are moving.
And we do think so. What changes can we make now? Oh, so we'll jump into that in a second. But I realized that since we skipped and did our intro a second time, I didn't give you the luxury of saying where you are and what you do.
Oh, sure. Dinner party. Hey, man. What do you do?
I work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a professor in the Department of Orthopedics and Rehab as well as physical therapy program. I direct the University of Wisconsin health runners clinic and have a clinic with NUW athletics to help with the major athletes. Cool. And to let people know, Brian and I met through an event that he puts on with Dr.
Ivey Davis from Harvard and Dr. Chris Powers at USC called the science of running medicine, which you can find at science of running.net. If you're a physical therapist, you're going to want to go to one of these events. This is where the three of them, let's just say argue to some extent about the best way to evaluate and treat runners and running injuries.
And we will jump into that in just a bit. In fact, so when you're analyzing movement now and trying to find ways for people to run better, healthier, et cetera, what's the thing that you're focusing on primarily? So we try to accomplish standards that can be done in just any sort of clinical setting. So we've done a number of high tech research studies that have shown us a relationship to movement patterns and potential biomechanical loads and injury risks.
But the challenge is that most clinicians don't have access to that sort of technology or at least can't afford a lot of technology. So we try to make other measures or other movement measurements that they can do in a clinic setting. So that's not that you're talking about involves force plate data and looking at kind of maps basically how joints are moving and joint angles and various things like that. Yeah.
So we're going to research studies. We've got an optic motion capture system. Eight cameras all synchronized with force plate platform data, some muscle EMG pattern recordings, all being fed back into a single computer. We can recreate that individual movement as best we can using solar models.
When you say this, it reminds me. So the panel discussion that I was on at the American College of Sports Medicine last year, there was some guys who had their motion capture stuff and they were all really proud of it. And they showed two things that I didn't have the time to go are you kidding me? But the two things were the first was showing a runner from the side and how when the runners look at the ground, look, we can actually see the impact force when they hit the ground.
Isn't that cool? But what they showed was this massive spike of force that was heading in the opposite direction the person was running. So like they're slamming on the brakes while they're landing on their heel and they're going, isn't that amazing? We can study this like, no, no, no, no, you're missing the big thing here.
They just put on the brakes. Let's not even talk about what it means to send that force. It's like through your body. There's some arguments about that.
I think they're bad arguments. I think it's pretty obvious. You don't want that as much as you can reduce it. You want to reduce it.
But regardless, even if you think that it's totally fine, it makes no sense to be having that much force going in the opposite direction. You're trying to run the second thing. They showed a runner from behind just when they're footed at the ground and they showed the direction and the amount of force that was going in different directions. And so what they showed the runners first hits the ground and there's a force vector pointing at like 45 degrees out.
I don't remember what was in or out, frankly. But then it almost immediately switches to 45 degrees from the other direction and then to like 30 and then it finally gets straight up and now when the runner hits mid stands. And all I can think is, dude, this is in the motion control shoe that you've spent 50 years developing. Really?
That's the best you can do? Yeah, you're looking at it again. Like it was super cool that you could capture this. And I'm looking at it like, wow, that's super cool.
You just proved that what you do doesn't work. Yeah, I think that's some truth to that for sure. So when you simplify things to give clinicians something that they can work with, what have you landed on pun intended? The thing is that the most clinicians are going to have access to what they see.
But of course, you're going to realize the eyes are not going to capture a lot of detail that you need to look at some other running mechanics pieces. We provide a way that they can utilize it as simple high speed camera that most of us are able to store our phones or something else that allows us to slow down the movement pattern and look at very particular aspects of the movement pattern that can give us insights in the biomechanical modes. Can you be a little more vague, please? Yes, I can absolutely be more.
The specific things that we look for in terms of flaws and movement is how much the person moves up and down. How much they're centered mass that you want to call up. How bouncy they are. They're head.
You can use their shoulders. Another one is on the other side. Hold on. That's an interesting thing because a lot of runners that I see, they collapse in their midsection.
They basically run and they look like a screen. They look like a totally. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. They are interesting thing. Yeah. Okay.
overstrider and overstrider is one that left of the like how do you define that overstrider is not me long strike length As you went faster, you have to have a long strike length strike increase Overstrider really is we're talking about is that the instant of landing where that foot is positioned relative to your center mass And so what would you call bad versus good? In terms of distance that's the hard part because all of it's it almost that's the hard thing on a sort of movement mechanics that almost all its scales will speed to some extent so if I'm trying to put a value on and say oh You should land 10 centimeter to the head of your center right? It only works if I'm running an answer to certain speed and this is something that I pointed out to people is they'll watch video Somebody running and they'll talk about them over striding or not and have no sense of what speed is Yeah, the real effect of speed is if you're moving across the ground much faster your foot can hit your foot can touch the ground Further in front of your body But it's not getting weighted until your body's over it because your body's moving that fast And so really that's where a force plate comes in handy because you can see where the force happens in relation to the center mass But in lieu of that so when you're giving people guidance about what's what they want to look for what's good or bad in terms of Or striding what do you tell people if they don't have access to a force plate? They're just looking at video and trying to maybe factor in speed Yeah, so we try to do is a couple other surrogate measures such as looking at the knee and Like Contact and also looking at your shank or the lower leg material and how far off a vertical that is right that closer to So you want so ideally then you're looking for more your lower leg your tibia to be more vertical and the nyangle to be 20-25 degrees roughly yeah, so basically with that small knee angle and a vertical tibia that basically means you're trying to get your foot underneath your body And what do you care or do you have any thoughts about where your foot is sitting around in that?
Foot strike angle foot inclination foot angle or busy know he'll strike mid foot forefoot And so our big approach with that is that we I'm less concerned about the exact angle They at the ground in or if they use a four foot mid foot or rear foot strike pattern But we usually you'd find it four way so you got a four foot mid foot rear foot and then heel strike so I consider heel strike to be this Bigger category right so we think about potential angles that your foot can get in you know in a 40 degrees of an angle Right, you're going on your towards your rear foot whereas four foot strikers are going to be much much smaller You don't see a 40 degree four foot no But the thing also though is obviously footwear is going to make a difference because if you put a big heel underneath someone Then you're more likely to hit that in advance and have a hit ahead of your body Or more accurately or another way of saying that is if you actually have that small knee angle and vertical shin angle It's actually harder to land on your heel because it's basically already behind you So those factors I soon plan to it as well especially do you ever do test people both like in and out of shoes to see what that looks like? We don't do much out of shoes But what we do for example with our athletes who run cleatally most of our wearing the exact same shoes for very very similar shoes And we test them at a whole range of running speeds So we're gonna make comparisons and look at do individuals with different shoes Land in different distances and have themselves or the same shoe a difference speed how does that factor in and interestingly not even when they're wearing Similar shoes they can have a whole range of over striding risk When I was spending time in Bill Sands lab whose former head of biochemistry He was at Colorado Mesa University is what they've I think since renamed himself to what he saw is every different shoe changed people's gate Unless they were like internationally ranked typically middle distance runners and lower like anyone running the 1500 lower You could put bricks on their feet nothing changed But anybody nor to that or anyone who's not that skilled every shoe made a difference and same thing if they were jogging It was sometimes different than if they were at full speed I also saw things we took some habitual or people who were well-trained barefoot runners I put them in a pair of five fingers and they went from barefoot running with a midfoot or four foot strike to heel striking and overstrying in their five fingers And here's the kicker they didn't know they were doing it So there's it was fascinating to see now the one thing that Bill would do he put you on the treadmill and it was like five feet wide Ten feet long he puts you on a mission impossible harness or case you know what? Humbering you don't land on your face and go fly back to the treadmill and make an American's funny as no video But he would put you in your favorite shoes and watch you filming at 500 frames a second Then you have your barefoot and we saw that 95 maybe 95% tops when they went barefoot They're gate changed into something that was way closer what you described without any instruction And I found when I was in this lab if I gave people who were still overstrying and feels driving 30 seconds of instruction It would change so we were seeing dramatic differences with just that simple intervention now whether that would stick when they put on shoes or not It's a story, but it was incredible to see how quickly people would adapt. Yeah People can change like you said whether it's an external trigger that does it such as the shoes or Terrain or cradient or whatever it might be or if you try to use a sort of verbal cue The verbal cues I found people doing two things that really surprised me when I first started seeing it But it made sense after I saw it the first was people who would overstried they had their foot way out in front of them And then they'd planor flexed they pointed out of the ground so they're prancing when they ran I'm not why are you doing that is what I'm supposed to land on my forefoots, but not like that exactly so I've seen quite a few people not just before for sure But those have read something and decided that they're going to adopt that running style right adopted in a way that you're like Wait, it's a time out.
That's not what we're after Whether it's some other cue or change that they run out right the other one that I found is people who run they look like grouchon marks So they bend their heads a lot and they still overstried but they're catching their foot on the ground and then pulling it below them So they're not applying a lot of force, but it looks like you know, it looks like cross-country ski Right, how did you think to do that? And then I realized oh you're supposed to put less force in the ground just wasn't bending your knees They came up with those cues and they found a way that works with them I talked to some people who refer to themselves as accomplished barefoot runners because they've run half marathons And then they run like that it's allowed them to do it, but I wouldn't call it necessarily the best choice for the future Yeah, absolutely. I cannot imagine trying to run faster No, you definitely got a limit and that's the things when you one of the things that I've seen especially if they're barefoot runners doing that When they put on something like one of our products which allows them to run faster suddenly They discover form cues or form problems that they didn't know they had because their form changes and they say hey The shoe is like making a bunch of noise and you're making noise You're slapping the shoe down because it's just a variation that you've made from your grouch on marks thing to being able to have more form Or better form, but you haven't adapted to that yet. It's really fascinating It's we call it like our shoes a coach because they're getting you information you can use But I've seen some people have interesting relationships with their coaches No, yeah, for sure And so I know and partly what inspired this conversation is that one of the things that you focus on in the science of running medicine Events is cadence.
That's another thing that you look at and this is full of mythology. Oh my goodness. Is it ever so please jump in? Yeah, so we utilize the Reason we went toward cadence and separated not because it was the solution But because it was something that people could understand and could utilize as a cue to trigger some of the changes We were after mechanically and that's what's been the challenge is people forget about the rest of them I just said they focus on separate is the answer the solution and and therefore we get all these issues that we're trying to correct now So let's talk about what is valuable in cadence and define it for humans who don't know it And then let's talk about the part that gets lost where people think it's a one-size-fits-all panacea for all running problems Yeah, so separate is the number of foot strikes that occur per minute So how many times your foot is the ground or both of you the ground now?
You have a number of steps for you know when I jump in here and I want you highlight something that cracks me up People when people talk about especially bear for running and middleness in general the phrase that gets used a lot is short in your stride Yeah, and I when I hear that my head wants to pop off my shoulders and then spin around in the next load Or just float either way because people don't realize that stride length is just a distance from when your foot hits to when your foot hits Yeah, is not and you can have an appropriate quote short stride barefoot stride and have a long stride length because you're running fast Get it right a lot of force in the ground when you do that But for many people that is the cue that makes sense because they can't see behind themselves I realize that their stride is actually the same length It's just that it's happening in what's referred to as the backside mechanics instead of frontside mechanics So well and when it's backside mechanics or whether it's float mechanics Because most of your increase in stride length as you run faster better occurs in the air correct? Correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So anyway back to cadence Yeah, so you're right when we think about ranked speed Let's just say you're running an eight-minute mile, right? And you have your steps per minute and you've got the length of each step and so you put those together now You have speed and so what you said is if you increase your number of steps for that That means you have to decrease the stride length and while there's some But there also is a way you can do so without compromising the advantages of strike length So fast you have to have a decent strike so to clarify if you're saying the same speed and you have a longer stride length You have to have yeah, you have to have faster turnover faster But obviously if you're just increasing if you're increasing cadence and stride length stays the same That's the same thing.
I just said then that's gonna make you run faster So what is about cadence that is? both interesting to you clinically and from an electoral perspective and talk about just how it's become this sort of magic holy grail Yeah, so the reason I got into it was because what I mentioned before about the flaws of running which is like six excessive bumps And when you increase somebody's cadence you will reduce their pumps and you can reduce how far you hit the ground out of the center Mass they will reduce their over stride and so what we do is we utilize those cues of a higher step rate So they get so we can force them to feel what we want them to feel and then without necessarily saying oh what we've done is now We've taken you from a hundred and fifty eight steps per minute to a hundred and sixty eight steps from it That means from now on you are 168 step for your money That's what you were born with and you look under the your scalp You'll see tattoo under four at one sixty eight because that's what you were prescribed We were born and that's completely false right? Honestly here and faster that number has to change if you're in a hundred hundred hundred hundred hundred So are you suggesting that this idea that most people have that you're supposed to run at 180 steps per minute might not be true Right and so then you heretic Yeah, when it comes into play and says that that is like this is optimum for all which just flies in the face of common sense Right when you think of how different we are terms of our body size and shape and fitness levels And now we're all supposed to get up and run at exactly the same step rate Makes no sense regardless of what speed we are so then two questions come to mind One is talking about how you work with someone and obviously they're doing this on a treadmill at first They have to get out in the wild and find it differently But talking about how you work with someone to find what is let's call it an optimal range Given conditions changing and also talk about what the value of doing that is what's happening When people other than the fact that by increasing this their cadence while not running faster You're more likely to end up with that knee angle and shin angle So vertical shin angles like me angles put underneath your body basically But what else happens and how you guide people to finding what's right for them? Yeah, good point So the first one that we want to make sure on is that it's always relative to where they're starting from So we're not making a guesstimate looking at every measure in their body height and the body mass and the running speed and putting in a new Equation to come up with this is your optimum step rate Those don't you haven't you haven't done that because you don't want to be rich Yeah, unfortunately, I think people have tried to do that Yeah, back in the 70s and they failed pretty miserably Not something that we're able to be able to pick up in any sort of A predictive way other than what we we do is we look at their mechanics and like I said before if they're knee flexing angles The tibial angle for bounces too much That whatever step rate they're running at when they're showing those flawed mechanics Then we want to adjust that step rate could be as long as four steps from in it It could be as many as 14 steps per minute to a point where we see improvements in those flaws And then the idea is we use the metronome to guide that change initially And why do we use a metronome because we didn't even before we started using step rate We would just do verbal cue like you described before a benjany a little bit more bring your foot more under center mass Don't bounce as much bring it to be a more and number one the people didn't necessarily understand that we're asking to do it number two There's too many verbal cues from the even conceptual understanding You should do so we tried to take a lot of initial thinking away and say here follow is real And then once they we think we got the rhythm a little bit Then we'll supplement with verbal cues in a sense of saying what feels different Do you feel like you're bouncing less do you feel like you're need is more softer?
Do you feel like you're more under center mass off your heel? I three thoughts. I'm gonna have to give them to all give you all it once or I'll lose them One is how would you guide people to play with this on their own? Two is do you I lost it there already?
Do you oh? Two is what does it take for people to get used to that new cadence because we do the one we do because we're used to it And something that will feel weird and the third is do you in that process once you once it looks better to you Do you try to move them over that so they can pendulum swing towards where you think might be ideal? Something I do with people where I'm trying to think of the specific thing that I have to do Oh, it's about lean or various things where I haven't tried to exaggerate something Because otherwise what's correct feels weird and if you exaggerate it then coming back feels more normal So again for people who aren't going to go into a clinic necessarily want to experiment with this the process of getting more comfortable with that cadence And then going further and coming back to You know, just however you might use that in the lab I'm gonna start on the table on board the first the second one first being how do we get people to get more comfortable with and how long does it take even Comfort is a hard one because it that tends to vary quite a bit between people people can reproduce what we're asking really You know within one or two sessions and bring it back a month later and say how much you run by the way I showed you to run before they can reproduce this for to respond on that doesn't mean that they're doing it all the time But they've recalled enough where they can reproduce right comfort element is something that I think we struggle with and that is that there's always this If you take a runner and put it in a very distracted environment even after undergoing very good Gateway training that's a distracted environment many times you will see their old pattern start to push itself up So it's always there as just being masked and pushed down pretty highly right Which means that again for a while they're running is gonna take some thought and some cognitive override to make an active Comfort becomes challenging because of that but in related to that in terms of somebody being able to do it on their own I'm actually very hesitant about doing any key chain Changes on people outside of the clinic for what we said before which is they tell a top-to-pattern that you're like Whoa that is not what I was after and that's actually very risk or injury risk Increase such as that that the growth or run pattern described that is a huge issue for hip flexural realization at all the problems like one that type of running So when we utilize the training in my clinic it is strictly for injured runners Learn to add injuries chronic injuries trying to get back from an injury then we utilize this as a solution I think we're I struggle with and this is an area that we've explored briefly Which is do you ever try to do we ever try to change in people who don't who are not injured right or from a performance standpoint? We've tweaked performance issues a little bit or a gate for performance issues a little bit But the idea of trying to prevent running injuries through key chains that is a really tough one and the science is we That would yeah It's one of the things when people ask me about running as your issues for example Like oh, there's three reasons I can think of you wouldn't want to do it One is if you don't want to just spend some time to get used to it, which is silly It's like saying hey my arm came out of a cast but I'm never gonna use my arm again It's gonna take some time to get stronger.
The second is crap. I don't know what the second is I'm having trouble with listed three right now I get three in my head and one disappears But the biggest one is if you are a competitive athlete don't do it if your livelihood depends on what you're doing Don't mess with it for now now now if you get injured that's a different story Think of there's other reasons you may in the off-season want to start experimenting don't be a bonehead and that's a really interesting point now Now the idea that of people putting themselves in a dangerous situation by experimenting with cadence I will of course say like we're not it's not rocket science play with it and see what happens Use your body as a guide if something feels wrong. Maybe it is if something feels awkward That's a slightly different story because you're not used to it But definitely if you can't get video feedback that would be really helpful because then you can watch and to see where your foot's landing See where the shin angle is these are things that you could many people can see relatively simply not I'm gonna come back to that point in a second But there's another thing about cadence that's interesting and I'd love for you to comment on it I don't know who study was maybe it was coming out of your lab for all I know about cadence and force And I made a u-shaped curve because it seemed that with increased cadence the amount of force the impact loading forces were lower Up a certain point and then they started getting higher and of course speaking as a sprinter Spinner's are trying to get the maximum impact force because that's what makes you run faster massive force But distance runners by and large are looking to decrease force within kind of a window So can you tell me about that aspect and what you've noticed there? I'm not just familiar with that particular relationship So no I understand the right to be doing the deal to in cadence and loading rate and put in clinician angles You see some of the curblier relationships, but impact force gets lower and then higher Well, I mean the basic I think the basic idea is that if you are landing in the way We're describing which is basically foot under your body rather than way out in front of your body You're just not going to get that massive spike of force initially and you're actually if you're landing the way that we're talking about You're going to be using your muscles like a mince intended as this brings some shock absorbers There's supposed to be more than using your joints to try to absorb that or the shoe which will never do it to try to absorb that So I think that's the gist is that increasing cadence is another cue that just leads to that form change that can lead to reduced Loading forces, but then you get to a certain point again as you start becoming a sprinter you're putting more force in the ground That's the only way you can do that.
So I thought you were gonna know that one we were gonna have a If I can find if I can find it is something that I remember seeing 70 years ago if I can find it I'll track it down and send it to you Yeah, that'd be good because you're actually right that you know, I think when you're talking about any of these metrics Even in terms of how much you bounce up and down. Oh, yeah You want to bounce less less to zero if you don't bounce at all you are very inefficient as well It's interesting you say that there's yeah There's some runners that you see that look like there's just you know like skating on ice and it looks so cool because it doesn't move at all And some of them are really fast, but yeah, it's not that's ideal. That's just and I've played with that It's like I can't do that one. I don't bounce very much.
I can't do that skating on ice thing It looks super cool But I think you're coming you're coming you're a lot of that's going to be the sprinting room and again We going from distance running speeds to right It's not just a linear change. No, no, no mechanics change in much different ways. Yeah, there's certain mechanical changes that are very different in some that are exactly the same So the basic idea of where you want your foot to land is basically the same the gist of how you're applying forces basically the same But it's just more there's just extremes in sprinting that you don't see in distance running But if you look at if you look at a good distance runner and a good sprinter That and you look at it in super slow motion Some of those differences are really hard to see unless you're staring at someone at 500 frames a second in super slow It has to do with how we your knee extends as you're entering the swing phase There's all these like really weird things that when you know them They're really obvious, but if you don't know it just looks like someone's sprinting is just running faster than someone who's a Discon runner, which is not the case at all. Yeah, so I want to here's where I want to get into something fun So back to the science of running medicine events you and Chris and Irene you argue about a number of points He's a great answer number of points and I have a theory about I'm gonna say this way And I'll say something I want to ask you to comment on I said to Irene who does this amazing presentation about her research Which essentially shows how regular running shoes can be the cause of problems and getting out of those and into something truly minimalist and under truly Minimal she does what she calls minimalist and partial minimalist.
I call it true minimalist and fake minimalist So it's true minimalist category There's us your shoes and people barefoot and some five-finger shoes and one innovate shoe. There's no longer made But anyway, she shows here's why running shoes can cause these problems Here's why natural movement in a truly minimal shoe can get rid of those and it's a very well Thought out linear presentation and I said it's almost ridiculous that at the end of your presentation people don't come running to my booth And tackle me and steal my shoes, but they don't typically about half the people in the room will come up to get more information And then about half of them will end up trying what we're doing and seeing what's going on and I have two theories about why that doesn't happen But actually first I want to stop there and just have you comment on just what Irene is shown and how that doesn't relate to what you're doing What your thoughts are? Yeah, so you're right we do argue And Irene is a fantastic presenter and has a wealth of knowledge and studies that she's put on over the last several decades That's really informed her approach to it I don't I think that there are some extrapolations in their data not over speculation that's suggesting that but to take it to the level of saying that This will reduce injuries and this will Enable you to run faster perform better those are elements that are still big gaps and then we all have gas I'm gonna interrupt there to say because I don't think that she ever says this will make you run faster or perform better No, I think you're right. I think that's true.
I think it's actually I think is a gap, right? So it's funny. It's funny Phil Maviton. He wrote a book on 159 and his prediction is the first person to run a real marathon Some two hours will be barefoot or in our shoes something that says like as possible But just give you something to protect you from the ground but basically as light as possible But yeah to determine whether and we have people who claim they're saying and they are setting PRs all day every day We hear about people.
I'm not saying that we do that. There's more to it than that But yeah the long-term study on injury prevention and improved performance That's an interesting one and a tricky one and an expensive one and a time consuming one So that doesn't exist right now in large part because the people on my side that truly minimal scan We're gonna have the cash to put out that put out the money from that research and what a shock the big shoe companies They're not gonna do it because the last thing they want to find out is that we're right and I know a number of them suspected that we're right because that's Anyway, they've looked at the research they've experimented on their own They have that so ignoring the performance injury part or the injury prevention part Although she does talk about that and does have some ideas about how making these changes would be preventative But regardless, okay, so that was an interruption just about what she's saying and where you're going from there Well, I was gonna say that so what a lot of her data based on loading read information We know about how people are loading rates without loading rates if as it changes as it goes down That's a good thing that is always potential advantages for it and that's up That's the hard part where you know I think the three of us argue on it and that is the importance of loading rate from a ground reaction force measurement vertical Right, obviously has relevance meaning and can has been shown to have some relevance towards certain types of injuries It's just the extrapolation of is this the one size No, it's interesting that you interesting you say that way because I'll talk about one argument then another theory about why people don't rush Attachably after her presentation the other thing she talks about is more than just loading rate is loading pattern to style So for example if you owe shoe with a flared soul the flared the flared souls can hit the ground first Just gonna get a fulcrum that actually caused your foot and lower leg and all of your body to move in unnatural patterns Then you have to compensate for and then of course like we talked about before if she breaks down then that's gonna cause problems as well If it does lead towards if wearing a higher-heeled shoe tends to make you be a heel striker And I like to point out here Wait, I can reach and grab this I can point out that your heel is a ball and if you land on a ball That's unstable and suddenly you need all these other things to combat that so there's other pieces to what she's doing other than that But I'm gonna tell you the argument that I made to her about why people don't rush my stage And then I'm gonna say something about you here's the argument made her I said the people who are in that room think they've made the decision about what they have on their feet through a rational process They think they have concluded by whatever analysis and you know whoever they listen to that their wearing no shoes for a specific good reason And and if they think what they've done is rational You can't argue them out of that with data You can't give them other rational things that are gonna make them in fact They'll look for the tiniest little chink in the armor and go see that's gotta be all crap because you know that I don't believe in that and that's why I'm wearing these shoes They're five inches high and look like stilts and only people really brothers wear them when they're going out on the clowns So that's one thing and I think there's a way around that I mean what I like to say is just look at what's natural look at your feet Have a quarter of the bones and joints or feet and ankles a quarter of the bones and joints of your whole body and more nerve endings in your souls And anywhere but your fingertips and your lips clearly you're supposed to use these things and they're supposed to give you certain kinds of information And do certain things do your shoes let you do that do your feet feel better at the end of the day And they did at the beginning of the day do you feel better taking off your shoes? And you're putting on your shoes, so there's ways of having the conversation that isn't just about data But here's the other one this goes to both you and Chris what I read and actually it's interesting with what you said about how you've changed the way You're working with clinicians. I reen presents a very detailed and let's say complicated argument But even more it's something that most clinicians aren't gonna either have the Equipment to implement or the skill to implement or the desire to implement It's like a whole process for analyzing what's going on coming up the right intervention and presenting that to the client the injured runner So that they can make these changes and monitoring that over time It's a very involved thing that I'm willing to bet some of those people the audience just go Oh wow I just can't do that and they some of them may be right some of them You know that different people have different skill sets about how to look at something and analyze it and know what a common factor is versus an Extremeness factory various things this then you come out and Chris even more than you come out with something really simple And you go hey, let's just take a look at cadence Let's take a look at bounce and just let's look at those two things and they go oh, thank God I can do that and so I'm not saying that you're right or wrong I'm saying that what you're presenting is a simpler story for people to latch on to and I'm intrigued by that because I'm intrigued by the stories that we tell and how that leads to different behaviors And I would say that to a certain I would argue that you guys actually agree on many more things than you disagree on But when you're able to present a story that's as simple as let's play with cadence and bounce Then that just gets it just seems like it's easier to wrap your hands around and then Chris's story arguably is even simpler Which for people who don't know it really has to do with just the angle of your torso when you're running And that's even simpler for people to go because they can just look at that and show other people And it's just the simpler stories seem to not always but can win and I'm concerned about that because I'm not saying again The simple story is incorrect But I would argue that it's probably incomplete and if we give people something they can latch on to that is simple Then they're not gonna want to pick up something more complicated human beings try to avoid doing shit It's hard and so this is my kind of fundamental concern and I'll stop ranting in a second My simple story in a way is take off your shoes find a nice smooth hard surface go for a really short run 20 seconds See how you feel the next day if you feel good try to add 30 seconds if you feel sore wait till you feel better Then do it again so you don't feel sore if you feel hurt then you want to change something and here's a few cues until you're having fun That's the guide and start increasing the time and in a way That's a simple story as well and it overcomes a lot of these things because some of the things that I say is the intervention pick up your cadence check Where your foot is see your body is all those little things but they're secondary to go do a short run see if you're having fun If you're not come back to you can and then you can play with so anyway But that was my half criticism of what happens from in that event in your conversation of curious what your thoughts are yeah I'm servicing I think you oversimplified my solution I really like Because I think there's a big element because that would be akin to me saying really I mean solution is just laying in your And I'll take everything else because that is a big element of what you describe it's true.
It's true. Okay, so that's the nugget take on Yeah, yeah, okay, so for clarification the other big behind the justification for yeah Okay, but then so to make sure that people don't walk away thinking that's just about bouncing cadence get you know Get a little more specific But I would like you to address just a phenomenon if you will of what you know How these conversations happen and what people do with them with the goal of course is to make people have a better time be healthy happy Fun strong bodies. Yeah, I think it goes back to we said before which is that we kind of approach what we're hearing with our own biases That we're coming into the conversation with I think you have obviously a biased toward a reed's approach Given your what you've explored on your own and where you're at now. I'm not saying that you are close-minded to other options I'm saying that you have I would be more open to what it reads I would actually content I'm not gonna disagree, but I would contend that my approach is Consistent with both definitely with you with Chris maybe a little less So because I don't think what he's saying is as important I don't think it's gonna create the effects necessarily that are important I'm not saying that I just miss it.
I just diminish the value of it a little more And I'm gonna talk I'm happy to talk him about that because I don't know what he's done in clinical setting to see how that works But I'm open to it because what I'm more interested in is just what's the thing that's gonna basically lead to people having a happy Healthy good time using their bodies naturally not includes what you're doing again I'm exploring this because I want to know what the best story is to tell so that people can Explore an experiment and discover what does work that is true that ideally is based on actual research and data not just anecdotal granted Look we've got we have what 15,000 reviews and God knows how many emails and phone calls So while I don't think that anecdotes that upper pondered some anecdotes equals data when you have this much anecdotal information You can't dismiss it. I told I hear you coming from it I think the other element that clinically where we evolved to because this is not what we started we started my clinic practice 20 years ago Twenty five years ago. It wasn't like hey, I'm gonna do separate because I love it It was more about this is it's one thing One thing for the next part of it is I think where the clinicians and again I'm speaking to the audience who's comes to the science of our medicine and where they make gravity tour a lot of us do with What they're hearing from their patients and what they think their patients will Actually follow through on it. You hear it because I was a patient adherence to clients is enormous That's and insurance companies getting involved in payers systems You know I read systems is unique She does have insurance involved with a lot of cash pay as well Christmas, right ours is completely insurance based And we have if people are out of network that we may be cash the option for that But so you got a lot of other barriers and constraints that's really interesting when you do take on Irene's approach Which she will admit right off of that.
It's a it's more involved right like said Little more complex in terms of how she goes to this retraining how many sessions if you are going to work for landing in the shift Love load to the kelly's in the cat got to prepare all that You've got to have a patient group who is committed to that time and frankly We're dealing with some high school students in the area in the middle of season It's not to work if we're dealing with our collegiate athletes. It's not gonna work. I'm not a middle season anyway unless they're broken Yeah, look in the middle season. Yeah, you don't want to mess things in the middle season anyway, but back up I don't want to lose the I don't want to lose your accusation.
I oversimplify things Wouldn't be the first time if you want to clarify that or add in the points that I overlooked or dismissed or discounted so people really get what you can give them that Be great. I didn't go to the old details. It was a little course and we'll talk so again the idea of looking at all those interacting elements of the mechanics the case is one of those first steps to bring out a lot of the pieces of the plane They don't always work. It doesn't always work You mentioned people can create some sort of solution that you're not totally after some of it over striding I think it's a key element But how do you do that at different speeds and how do you really train that properly not much as too much?
That's where it comes into a lot of different elements as well So it gets more complex and if you just assign a particular step rate I wasn't suggesting I don't say that I have written a number of articles and done a number of things about how the whole mythology of 180 steps from It is complete with allity, but I do say experiment with that and I do say play with that and I do recommend video I have a whole theory a neurological theory about what it takes to make changes in our movement patterns in part I did research when I was at Duke on cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition and what one of the things that I noticed is some people They just have no relationship to what's below their neck You know you say are you hungry they go? Yeah, I go how do you know expecting them to say? I feel this whole of my stomach They're putting me in a hungry and they don't have a relationship to feelings in their body and they need a whole different kind of intervention The people who can feel things but they don't have the appropriate septive skills you ask them to put your arm, you know Parallel to the ground and it looks like it's not so germany because they don't know what parallel is so They need a lot of video feedback because they have a disconnect between what they think they're doing what they're doing Some people they can feel things they've got good corporate septive skills They just need cues to speed up the process because they'll figure out on their own But you can accelerate the learning process some people are just natural some problems They have so much fun doing something new they get tired and they revert to one of those previous steps And then there's a phenomenon that we forget that the process of learning is by nature Frustrating because the feeling of frustration is the feeling of laying down neural pathways and trying to get out of an existing groove And we forget that that we're supposed to feel frustrated when we try it and then we rest and it integrates a little And then we come back and it's a little better until we can't remember how to do the old way and that is a process I actually I read and I are competing on something We have some theories about how to do what you're describing to improve adherence and to make this data available so that people can Learn it better on their own or at least keep it better when they leave a clinic and we're not surprisingly thinking very much the same way for a number of reasons I don't really care who wins this contest because I want people to move whether they're running walking hiking I don't give any special magic to running But it's just moving in general and I do think there are ways to give people information in a way that works for them that allows them to Learn these new patterns and integrate them and integrating means getting to the point where they're in the back of your brain And you're not thinking of them anymore You just do them and we know it's possible because if it weren't no one could do a double-twisting double backflip So we know it's possible to learn highly complex things that we're not wired to learn It's takes certain kinds of information presented in a certain way to do it and no one has done that yet And I think we're on the brink of it's very well said and I think there's always like you said a lot of commonalities between three of our approaches And we'll admit that we utilize all three of the approaches to make the patients But figuring out how to teach every person walks on the clinic That's the challenge because there is no one teaching solution for every person That's the same it has to be lost enough to be able to adjust itself To keep depending on who that listener is it's it's interesting someone asked me once about if you could make an app It just gave people the right cue. I got it.
I can't do that. That's right. He's what changes and sometimes it's the right cue at the wrong time I'm right you at the right time I was like totally unrelated this when Elena my wife and I before we were a couple I was visiting her and I don't know what I did or said something that got her very upset and after a little while of the silent treatment I went in and said or did something else that made it even worse and she said did you think that was gonna be helpful? I said of course I did and either I was wrong or on your death bed.
You look back and I was pretty good So yeah, and I don't know which in my apologies. I was trying to be helpful I get it sorry about that to be mindful of time that is both yours and the fact that I got an appointment having soon if you Wanted what are you looking at for the future? What are you seeing as what's upcoming? That has you interested in excited?
Yeah, so what we're trying to do now is recognizing that running injuries are way more than just Movement mechanics. It's a part of it, but there's a whole lot more going on there We're trying to we've earned the middle of prospective observation study board be collecting data on the numbers for less three years Or from training volume and training habits to sleep habits to nutrition habits to think bone density measures to running mechanics To change the speed of running mechanics over time Eventually start to sift through all those sectors Only as a weird question given the fact that we are as the book title and best selling album from two unrelated people says born to run We as soon as we start walking we start running since this is something that is just part of our DNA if you will How do we match that phenomenon that really is just something that we start doing and we start doing well when we start doing it With the seeming added complexity of trying to address it in the ways that you're describing I think so much of it is to do with like we are it is it eight in the sense that we know how to do it? That doesn't mean we know how to do it well, you know in the sense Yeah, you see some really Unbelievably bad runners, and or they just can't figure it out or they what they've done is they've taken walking and just walk faster And to point where they're just a fairly a flight phase and it's really still walking It's like walking with a little hop walking with a little leap Yeah, yeah Or the fact that people have would they have run very well with their kids and playing around the playground what not and then they stop Right 12 or 14 and then in their mid 30s when they've had a couple kids in their own and their bodies have completely changed in 20 years later They now decide that they want to pick up running as an activity Here's an odd and remembering how to do that and recognizing that you're not the same person as you were then Oh good patterns better change. Oh, when I got back into sprinting at 45 after a 30-year break And was injured pretty much constantly for about the next two years the biggest lesson that I learned and it took me literally Two years to learn this is when I have the thought let me just do one more that's when I should stop My brain I'm still 18 is I could totally do another And that extra day not can't do that either and watching sprinters get older watching what changes in sprinting biomechanics is very interesting But you just aren't as strong as you get I was at the senior games I just turned it Yeah, so I just qualified and all the six year old guys are hanging out when you saying oh guy when you get to be 60 It just goes over a cliff and 80 year old guys walk up what you guys have no idea what you're talking about And but it's true and you watch what changes when muscles atrophy Start being is a real thing you just can't say muscle mass and same strength as you get older and then you have to make changes and the changes are Relatively similar that these guys have and you just hope that you can figure it out in real time You can't do it in advance if you try to make those changes in advance it doesn't work and interestingly, you know what the biggest change turns into Cadence they just try to get more steps in the ground and try instead of covering more distance It's yeah, it's really interesting to see and some of these guys are still like crazy fast It's really it's both hopeful inspiring and annoying You got there's I just don't see it so I Last question I was gonna ask Well here if people want to find out more about what you're up to and get information about that where would you direct?
Yeah, all right, but the general public certainly check us out at University of Wisconsin's website Your Wisconsin's massive website in the part of our community rehab They can see all of our research that we have going on for the clinicians in the audience physical therapists positions other healthcare professionals across the board If you're interested in running medicine check us out at science Or our annual science running medicine conference We don't want to hear next year looking to do most likely go be at Mayo Clinic That'd be fun now, but yeah, I know you were also there's other events once they're coming up People might be up We also have the the running summit that we host in partnership with mottwin Physical therapy based out of Utah So we will be in Park City, Utah in September in 2019 It's been our fourth annual event. It's really a fun time to change the agenda That's in your exchanges every single conference with new speakers internationally that are brought in physicians physical therapists Through conditioning coaches a number of pharmacists to sleep medicine experts coming in and speak on various running limited topics I guess it's focused on healthcare provider lines. Yes, it's gonna be fun. I actually just signed up to be sponsor Yeah, no, I'm really looking forward to well, you know Just over the mountain for me So it's a pretty easy trip and then I go right down the hill in Salt Lake City and go to the red iguana for dinner It's the best Mexican food I've ever had so that was really inspiration.
I don't care about your It's a pretty fine place. It's I call it's older ask if you just made it smaller higher and richer It's aspen light is another way of thinking about it anyway, Brian not surprisingly This has been a total treat This is the longest we've actually gotten to do this and I did no prep for it Which I knew we wouldn't have to thank you and I'm really looking forward to obviously whatever we can do to be helpful If there's anything hey, wait, I said you appear pre-use what do you think about? I love my where I'm gonna do the gym every day I haven't quite used him yet outdoor running. I'm not early I think need a little more prep time for that, but otherwise fantastic Well, okay to be posted when you finally get the courage to run you will find that you've been kicking yourself by not having done it sooner is my Anyway, total treat and really quick to do the sign off first of all Thank you all for listening and be part of one of my non-to-solo rants If you have any questions feel free to chime in wherever we can do questions And we will answer them if I see anything that Brian you can answer I'll forward that to him follow us in all the places You can follow us subscribe and share etc.
Come to www.join the movement movement calm So you can find out more about what it takes to have a happy healthy strong body and enjoy walking running Hiking or whatever it is you do for the rest of your life. I'm Stephen Sashan and I just want to thank you And as I love to say live life feet first