Welcome to the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember, your body was meant to move. Now, here's your host, Stephen Sashin. You think you have five senses.
I might have been listening because I can't remember what the hell they are. But maybe you have a sixth sense and I don't mean ESP that if you don't master and develop and practice, could really impact your life in a very, very negative way. We're going to find out more about that 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 from the feet first because those are your foundation. We're going to break through the mythology, the propaganda, and off in the outright lies that people have told you about what it takes to run, walk, hike, dance, play, workout, do yoga, whatever it is you like to do, more enjoyably and more effortlessly.
I'm Stephen Sashin from zeroshoes.com, your host for the Movement Movement podcast. Where our goal you may know is to make natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice way. Natural food currently is and we need your help for that, which is why we like to say we're creating a movement movement and we would like you to be part of that. In fact, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
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If you're on YouTube, by the way, my apologies for not having shaved today. Deal with it. And you know how it goes. So anyway, why don't we jump in?
I'm trying to think of this. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them to me via email, send an email to move at jointhemovementmovement.com. And let's do this, shall we? So first of all, I want to say hello and welcome, my dear friend Jim Klopman.
Jim, hello, dude. Hey, man. Where did you go to radio school? I never went to radio school, but I did when I was living in Manhattan, which was from 83 to 93.
I did make a good amount of money doing voice over stuff. And I'll show you the entire recording session that I did that made me $15,000 one year. Ready? What?
Here we go. Ready. I'll do the entire session right now. Fire.
Okay. That was it. So it was a commercial radio commercial for the army. And what they used to do is they would get actors to do the radio commercials.
And if the radio ones went well, then they would bring in actual people from the military to do the TV commercials. So there was times where, you know, I was doing Santa County for a living. There's times where I'd get some gig and I'd hear the set up for the commercials. It's like, oh, wait for it.
Fire. That's me. And everyone go, yeah. Right.
That's me. Nice. I don't do it. The voice over world, you can make a lot of money doing a very small amount of work.
Five guys who do most of it and they have a pretty cushy gig. But enough about that. So Jim, why don't you tell human beings where you're from and what you do? And then we're going to give people a movement to do based on that conversation.
Yeah. I'm based in Park City, Utah now. And what I do is I've developed methods and systems and patents and equipment to improve athletic balance. And athletic balance is something far beyond what you get at physical therapy.
Most balanced training stops at physical therapy a little bit beyond, but we take you all the way up to the surface of the LA level. And we find that there's a direct correlation to balance, athletic performance, coordination, agility. And we're pretty convinced now that as you improve your balance, you'll also improve your vision as well. Well, so let me back up and to say for people who are listening or watching that while you use the word athletic repeatedly, that doesn't mean this is for athletes far from it.
Would you know, cause that point? Yeah. So another way of saying it's dynamic balance. So, you know, it's movement, you know, the world is built for people who have, you know, that's a good balance because the American disabilities act, everything's flat, everything's perfectly staged.
So the world is set up for people who need canes and walkers. And we end up being stuck in that place as humans. And so the fact is you do go outside to challenge yourself whether on the slope of the tennis court, sprinting, running, going up and down trails, all those areas have higher needs of balance that we don't recognize that we have. Yeah.
Don't have. So let me start with since I like to give people a movement to do, you and I talked about this right before we got started. Do you want to have people walk people through it or do you want me to do it? Well, there's a, you know, one of our core balance challenges is a balance challenge in an athletic position.
So if you go to your physical therapist or the doctor, they have you stand and kick one leg in front and you have a straight leg that's on, you know, into the ground and one leg pointed out in front. And basically that's teaching you how to balance on your heel with a straight knee, a position you're never in in real life. Actually, it's a position you're in just before you fall on your ass. So we like to change that up and say that first of all, I'm just, you know, dovetails into the way too.
The big toe is sort of the core of all balance on the foot. So you have to engage the big toe. So we have you stand on one foot. So let's just actually walk people through it.
So keep in mind, some people are not in place where they can actually do this. So be it. You'll get the hint. So walk them through and give them an actual.
So you can do it next to your desk. You just stand on, let's say your left foot. Some people wear a car. Well, don't do it in your car.
You can't look at that. Open the sunroof. Exactly. Stand on your left foot and then you mange your knees, your weight is over your big toe.
I'm going to do it. Hold on. You stick your ass out a little bit. I got to bend out.
Wait, I got to go here. I'll change this. Okay. All right.
I'm doing this. And then you know, you just balance and have that other leg behind it. So it's not in front or to the side. It's actually behind it.
So you're in a deep, nice athletic position. Yeah. And you just feel that. Right.
Like as I just bent my knee. Yeah. So I just bent my knee. So my heel is behind me.
Right. Right. Mostly on my toe. And my knee is actually behind you too.
Yeah. Off the ground foot. The knee is behind you. Okay.
You just do actually, I mean, you do a 30 seconds to me and on each side it has a massive ability to clear your brain and kind of reset your brain and get out of that, you know, chatty, conscious brain and take some of your subconscious. Can we do the advanced one right now? Sure. Closerize.
No, we never close our eyes. Oh, really? I love your eyes. What you're doing is you've just played in my hands beautifully.
So how come? Well, first of all, you train yourself to be a well-balanced blind person. Hey, there's a blind people. Listen, you are such a, you know, but blind people, blind people are going to actually take their visual cortex.
They'll take their visual cortex and they'll change the application of visual tortures. So the sense. So what happens when you close your eyes is you, we probably, we see there's probably five different systems that involve your balance system. Yeah.
Once they're even talked about in science yet, eyes, vestibular, tongue, which is pretty well researched, palm of the hands, you were a mapping system. You have a position in your brain, you have a brain, a map of every position your body can be in your vestibular system, the 100,000, 200,000 sensors on the bottom of your feet, the muscles on the bottom of your feet. All these are separate systems that are all engaged in the balance system. Why on guys earth would you take one system and shut it off?
Yeah. So you can think you're isolating the other system. When in fact, when we teach people to balance, we improve their eyesight dramatically. They see better their better field awareness.
They can shoot the basketball better, they can hit the golf ball better, they can put better all because the balance system is engaged along with the eyes. What's missing is that when you look at the eyes and you see my hand, that's only 5% of the data that's going into your eyes. 95% of the data is going into your subconscious mind. There's a large chunk of it that goes to faces.
So if I destroyed your visual cortex and you all used to always black, you didn't see my hand at all. Yeah. You go, oh, that's a happy face. That's a sad face.
By the same token, if you had destroyed visual cortex, you could walk down a hallway with obstacles, even though all you saw was black because your visual cortex is destroyed. And those research approves it. So our point is huge amount of data comes in through the eyes. And we think shutting off the eyes is something that helps to balance and it doesn't.
I'm not suggesting that it helps at all. In fact, I'll be back up a little bit. It actually hurts at the closure eyes. We'll hold up a little bit more to balance the closure eyes.
No, of course. But two things. First things first, let me back up to the intro that I gave for this, which was the idea that we could arguably say that balance is like a sixth sense. People do not pay attention to.
They don't develop. They often lose it for reasons that we'll no doubt get into. So that's sort of thing. And let me back up also about what you said during the intro.
So I would normally, at this point, hold up a copy of your book if I had it with me, but it's not the office. So I just want to say right now, a lot of what we're going to talk about is in your book. I don't know why you're laughing. Come on.
Don't have a copy of the book myself. Perfect. Tell people what the name is. The name of the book is balances power.
Yeah. So I'm holding up the opposite. And that's one of our core products called the slack box, which is sold through zero shoes. Balance training advice.
We'll talk about this. But I hold that up most because it says balance equals power. Right. We're the title of your book.
So yeah, no, I'm not suggesting that closing your eyes is good for your balance clearly as soon as you close them. It's like, you know, for most people I'll help right. So it's not good for training your balance. Oh, yeah.
I can tell you a funny story about that. There was a situation recently I won't mention why because I don't want to, I don't want to, well, because anyway, they have me sitting on one leg and then flip my eyes and then two minutes later said, all right, I guess you can stop now. So that's totally fine. And then they put you through a workout and then have you come back and do the balance drill again, where the idea is after you've improved.
Right. And it's similar to when you've seen people with the hologram watches or any other, you know, something else where yeah, once you do it once the next time you're usually going to be better regardless of what happens in between because it is amazing to me how quickly people do respond to balance training. We see that too, which is not always a great business model because we can't hook them in for years worth of training. Like they do it, you know, good.
Well, I say that for a couple of minutes. It's kind of like chiropractic treatment. I have a good friend who hates chiropractors, right? So chiropractors when I say it, but unless you can demonstrate that you can make people graduate from what you're doing, then, you know, I'm trying to do what you're doing.
Right. Right. So when it comes down to, first of all, there's anybody says they know everything about the balances and doesn't know what they're talking about. It's one of the most highly researched parts of the nervous system.
It's 40,000 neuroscientists in the world, and they said, I'm big at this shit out. I mean, they just recently found out the information you get from the bottom of your feet, doesn't even go to your brain. It goes to brain tissue and your lower spine. Oh, interesting.
It goes back down. That's what you look. If you look at the whole balance system and you look at the data flows, the data flows are generally closer to the processing center. So the best to the systems where right next to huge processing center, right?
So you got a lot of data from the bottom of your feet. So rather than spending all the time going up to your brain with the data and then back down again, they have a special mini computer that's like in between the brain and your feet to do the work for. I have so many punch lines in my head right now about the computer in my brain and my feet. I'm not going to not going to.
But to our system, so you're not using it. And we'll have people come in, let's say they train at a level, they leave our session at a level two. We'll come back to next session and be a level four. Right.
And so the system's like firing back up and it's like we've unplugged it and plugged it back in the wall again and it starts coming back. And of course, different age groups, different athletes have different levels of progression. But it's truly, it's mind blowing how quick it regenerates and comes back. Let me back up again.
And I think you know this story, but I'm not sure that you do. I have a personal interest in this. And it's one of the reasons that I'm very excited about what we're doing as a real shoes and the reports we get from people who wear these shoes and what they're doing. Because it was a little over four years ago, my dad who was 80, little 80 and a half of the time, and he had always just been in big thick shoes and he kind of shoved the ball and he'd never get bounced.
Obviously, and he tripped up ledge in a hallway at a business that was maybe half an inch, half an inch, and fell down and broke his hip and was dead two weeks later. And so, yeah, I mean, I'll tell you it's crazy. I got a call that he had done this. He's in the hospital, had a hip replacement.
I talked to him two days after that. He was totally fine, ready to sue the people who had the thing in the hallway. And then three days later, I got a call from the hospital. It's like your dad just coded, you better get out here.
We just paddled him back. And maybe four or five days later, you know, that was the end. Yeah, it's oftentimes a broken hip is it is a death now, but it usually takes longer. But the numbers are staggering.
If you're over the age of 45, and you go to the emergency room, there's over 50% chance you're there for a fall. Oh, really? Over half of all emergency room visits over the age of 45 or for falls. And those are just the ones that are bad enough that need an emergency room.
Over the age of 65, it's the number one cause of accidental death over age 65, it's the number one cause of accidental injury. And the interesting thing is where deaths from all these other diseases are going down as medicine and drugs get better. The deaths from these falls are going up. So you think with the ADA rules and the fitness programs and all the healthy things we're doing that these number falls, it's per 100,000.
This is not a close number, continues to go up. So it's not a huge number. So it's the deaths are about the number of those, let's say of strokes, but it's still preventable. Oh my God, like hugely preventable.
And it's the number one cause of industrial industry, number one cause of industrial death. So it's just massive. And what people also don't realize is mind blowing fact, it was it's a number one cause of concussions. So it's not Johnny on the soccer field or baseball field or football field, it's people following.
So I say falls are a $30 billion a year problem and concussions are a 60 to 90 billion value of problems. So you're talking over $100 billion a year that's costing us because it falls that are totally and easily preventable. Well, so before we talk about the prevention, well, I mean, obviously I have theories about some of the causes in general and increase, but I don't want to say it. Let me hear what you think.
Well, I think there's several, we have four lists in the book. Here they are. One, I'll start with you, shoes. So enough about me.
Talk about it. So first of all, you know, the shoes today, you know, you have an elevated heel, we could rename our company Big toe balance because we just think the big toes are huge components to any balance challenge. So when you look at the running shoes nowadays, which most people don't run in, you have your toes virtually off the ground. They say a four millimeter lifts a flat shoe.
So but it's from four to 12 millimeters up. Yeah, built it. And the second part of it is the foam in the shoe sort of inoculates your foot from all sensation. When we balance train somebody, they will come in a lot of times with elastic shoes on to the first trip, first visit, and they'll say can I keep my shoes on?
We say, yeah, sure, keep them on. And like, because we're taking them to their maximal balance. I'm about a minute or two minutes in, they go, my feet are really hurting. Why am I feet hurting?
Yeah. And what's happening is because we've taken the balance of that foot is going, I got involved in this and I can't what's going on. And it's trying to pursue that foam to get involved. And we say, okay, take off your shoes and then we put them on their flat board with no shoes on no socks to because that's another level friction we don't want in there.
And they're like, that's amazing. Within five seconds, foot pain goes away. So no one calls these issues. Number two is I'll go to the four.
Number two is what we're doing now. So I just gave you discussion on the peripheral vision. As I'm engaging you here, I'm doing what's called peripheral denial. I'm shutting off the system around.
And the more I do that, the more I damage my balance system. Third thing is bifogals are trans, you know, these lenses that are multi-phogicians. So if I have lenses that are readers on the bottom or bifogals on the bottom, I'm cutting off the data that's coming in from the bottom. There's a huge amount of data that comes in from the bottom of the eyes.
And these come in through your rides, not the cones in your eyes, and they don't need vision correction. And then, well, I want to pause on that one as a guy who typically wears progressives. I'm not wearing them right now. So which, I mean, if I don't wear them, I can't function because I can't because I got progressives because basically like computer screen distance, I'm totally fine.
Anything closer, anything further? I'm screwed. So talking about that? Well, if you're doing your sport, and you don't have to have any close-up vision.
Oh, yeah. And I take them off for that. You do single vision. If you go in and roll.
I'm going to take them off. I mean, I'm going to track. You need both, right? Because you're in Walmart.
I got to see where I'm going. I got to read the labels. I understand that. But if you're doing anything athletically, and we'll take people that come in, they'll go, they'll have their dual vision glasses on.
We take them off. And suddenly, they're bouncing better. And this, I can't see. And I go, I can't see.
Because that's not the data we're looking for. I don't give a shit about that data that you say I can see. Listen, if you take somebody who has macular degeneration, right? And this is particularly the young person who has, you know, some sort of African name is these macular generation, which is the central part of the vision gets clouded or disappears.
And you put in front of them a cup, a glass, and a plate. And you say, what position is the cup in? They go, I don't know. What position is the plate in?
I don't know. They can't tell you, and they go, grab the cup. Grab the plate. Grab the glass.
See the two different systems in play there? Interesting. That's the system we want. That's the system we work with.
So when we work with that system, we have tons of different methods of training that system. And it's different than what anybody else is doing. I don't even want to talk about it here, because it's just what we consider to be a trade secret. But learning how to use that system improves the athletic ability of the individual and improves their balance.
So back to this periphery thing. So you have peripheral denial, because of this. You have the glasses that take it away. You have the shoes.
And finally, the fourth thing is that we talked about here is you're moving about in modern spaces in a constantly degrading situation. So we say that, you know, you need a walker, like we have zero to 100 scale. So you need to walk away, say, at a canine level 20. The world is built for level 20.
So you've degraded your system to level 20. So it's just like you're never going to learn how to lift 100 pounds if you lift five pounds every day. So you're lifting five pounds every day with your balance system. Then one day you come along and you stumble, although you're dead.
And we don't stop. This is interesting. We don't stop people from falling. We cause you to catch your balance, lose your balance, catch your balance, lose your balance.
So when you hit the ground, there's no velocity. It's people that have bad balance go, yeah, they just, yeah, they topple like a two by four. Very high velocity. So this system, this, this world we live on the flat floors, perfectly perpendicular walls.
I mean, we have this level system built in. So we are totally detuned. So then one day, we come along and we get a level 30 or 40 balance challenge. And we're sitting out, and you can be totally healthy.
I've had really healthy people come in and say, yeah, I've had that fall. And they look healthy to fit, but they don't have a good balance. So the fourth problem is the world we live in. And going back to the crazy numbers I was telling you about before it might relate to your dad, amongst those falls for people over the age of 65, you know what the number one cause is for those falls?
I'm trying to guess. I'm guessing it has nothing to do with whether you're tall enough to get on that ride. No, I don't know. Can I get on that pony?
No, it's, it's a curb. Oh, interesting. And so here's the deal. When you see a step, every step by every building code in every city in this country has to be exact can't be an eighth or a 16th of an inch or it has to be exactly the same.
But we see curbs all the time, but there are always different heights. And there are different heights within the same street. So it's something that will cause you if you don't have this vision working and you don't have good balance, you'll catch a toe on it and go down. That's interesting.
I'm just from having flashbacks to when I was in Nepal, this is 30 years ago. And have you ever been there? So the way a lot of Nepali houses are built, they'll start with a room, then they need to add on another room and they just put it wherever the hell they can. And then they build whatever they need to build to get from one room to the other.
They're rarely at the same level. They build a third and fourth. It's kind of like a weird three-dimensional maze where none of the stairs match, none of the heights are the same to get from one room to the other. It's totally crazy.
And it really is. It's like a very cool entertaining game that you're playing 24-7 just to get around. Well, so if you go my use of course with the enhancement in this little town right next to tournament, the houses are 16-70s. And you go in there, every door frame, like this, there's a thing I don't understand is you look at Google, they're working so much money trying to make their offices interesting.
And they've got rounds for years here and triangles there and cushy things here. We'll also go like this. It's a source that are dead straight. Now to me, I understand you've got to have again for ADA.
You've got to have flat floors for those who are wheelchairs, walkers, and canes. Why not have these like this? Auto stones. Things that go like this.
Things that go like this. None of that. And so I just don't understand. I don't know.
I just don't get why we get so stuck into this. Well, then here's the other thing that happens is when you're in this area and you're in these perfectly, when we talk about this a lot in the book, you're in these perfectly perpendicular places in your office. Nobody ever has ever said, we need to spend more time in the office. True.
What do you do on weekends? You leave the office, you ski, hike, run, trail run, sprint, play hockey, play tennis, wake up. Everything you're doing is what? Challenging your balance.
Riding a motorcycle. You can go to an art museum and challenge your balance. There's nowhere or not museum other than the frames. There's a straight line.
So you come out and now Monday, you feel great Sunday night. You go to work and you get debilitated for a whole week. You feel like crap on Friday? Got to go back out and recover again by balance challenges.
So it's just it's a it's a horribly debilitating environment. Apple knows it. So Apple knows I got this box in front of me, right? It's totally rectangular.
But look at Apple's screensavers. What are they all totally fractal nature? Mountains, trees, all sorts of nature type things. And even their little pink line that goes around drawing lines.
Nothing is squared. That's so cute. You think that's an Apple thing. Those are screensavers from DOS computers and then Windows computers.
There's a whole lot of those wacky little things. But the thing about screens for me, I mean, it goes back to your peripheral was a peripheral blindness. What was the phrase? Yeah, it's a peripheral denial.
So if you have you ever heard of Enbioppio, little kids that are wandering high. So what happens is that I is getting plenty of data. It's a weak muscle thing. But you have to put a patch over the strong eye to make the weak eye start to work.
If you don't do it before age eight, it's incorrectable. Not because the eye can't see is because the brain has said I've had enough of this. Right off. So when you have now and I've spoken to optometrist now who say they see it, kids coming in like this all day long and they tested kid and their peripheral vision test is nothing like ours.
There's something right here they go. This kid's got peripheral vision denial. Because he's starting to shut off that part of his brain. Well, my thing to peripheral vision denial is and I've been I've said this since he's when I get my first computer in 1983 is it's difficult for me to deal with computers because I just don't think in a 14 inch or six or twenty three inch thing.
I don't even think in one thing. I mean, my officer's piles of stuff in various places. The only way I know where anything is that three-dimensional model is so difficult for me. It's funny.
There's certain kinds of activities that I can't even do in my regular office. So I'm in our conference room right now. If I'm doing editing, it's easier for me to do it here than it is in my office. And I had an office at one point where it wasn't working because the ceiling was too low.
Like hypersensitive to where so is around me. So if you look at this way and we have a presentation we did on this for Man's because that is what that does to and as we've talked about this in terms of athletics being in the zone when you have that big view and I'm pulling in as much data as I can to bring your conscious brain shuts off. Everybody's in the audience right now. If you just turn to wherever you are and don't look at one spot for twice the everything you possibly can, you won't have any conscious thought at all.
I just had a flashback. I was with some people, a bunch of marketing things that we were doing. We were in a restaurant and we were sitting in a corner booth and I'm working on a problem and I said, wait, I can't do this. I have to get out of the booth to do it because the ceiling was like, and the restaurant was like 15 foot ceilings.
I had to get more space around my head. So you're sensitive to it but now imagine every person in every job in this country that's in those spaces. It's a total shutdown mode. It's really fascinating.
I'm also thinking it's like the amount of work that I've done sitting in a hot tub late at night, the first of this company we live in a house. We're running a house at a hot tub. Now just spend hours every night just kind of sitting out there because that's how I get my best thinking. So I want to back up.
This is the thing I say often in these podcasts. Why you? How the hell did this happen? How did you get into this?
Who are you? What are you doing here? Well, it's been really a myth of synthesis, whatever type of project. So when I was 50, I spent a day skiing with Stein Erics and Justine and I, and he was 74 and I asked him, you know, how do you ski so well?
I could ski better than he could at that age. But still, I didn't that day because I didn't want to embarrass him. But he was amazing. And we just had most fun.
I'm more fun talking with him than skiing. But he said, well, first of all, he called me Jimmy, which was interesting because my own people called me Jimmy and I was like eight years old. But he said, Jimmy, I ski every day. Okay, I can't do that.
So I asked him about some of his gymnastic work. And he said, yeah, I used to do gymnastics when I raced. And he said, I still do some of it. And I said, but you know, I think it's interesting that we see a lot of athletes age out who have great physiques and great muscles because fitness has gotten so great.
And of course, you can buy really good vision. So they're not even saying you can buy really good muscles. You could buy. Well, you can't do it.
But you know, so like, why was an athlete aging out? And I thought maybe it's a balance system. So I messed around. I looked for all sorts of balance challenges in the industry.
And there was nothing in the fitness industry that was a challenge. I discovered slack lining. When I got on the slack line, walking didn't make sense to me because putting one foot in the front of the other is nothing that you do athletically. So you're just never within that position.
So I started doing some one foot work. And I was ridiculously fast as a skier at 50. Well, age 51, I was faster. So I'm like, wow, something's happened here.
So long story short, I engaged to local university, the engineering department, designed a frame for me. We built on the frame, we patented the frame, I built the protocol that we patented to I'm son by, and we tested it on different athletes. Wait, was this for the slack bow? Yeah.
Okay, so basically just to describe it here, I'll let you describe it for I've been on one. So I know, but I will let you describe that for me. It's basically a two inch line adjustable frame. It's like a slack line.
But what makes it different for us is it's infinitely controllable. And we have what's called a slack plate. So I'm going to pause and do a Jim to English translation. So what's slack bow?
It's a suspension system for a slack line. So basically it's portable. It's just imagine, actually, if you imagine a bone arrow, and you take the wooden part to bow and put that on the ground. So the string is parallel to ground.
That's the gist of it. The string is the slack line. The bow is the thing that holds it and gives it whatever tension you need. And the plate you're talking about is just a piece of wood essentially.
That's about what a foot by three inches it roughly. Yeah, foot by three and a half. Yeah. That's pretty good.
I was guessing that fits on top of the slack line. So rather than just having the webbing that you're standing on, you have this block that you can stand on as well. Yeah, great job. And so we do everything one foot, because we determined that all athletic balances on one foot or the other.
You're either transitioning to one foot or the other or you're on one foot or the other. So this whole thing of balancing with both feet, and we do some two foot balance, but on specific type equipment. But a lot of times, not a lot of times, but all balance and athletic movements on one foot or the other. So anyways, I got back to my story.
So then I tried it. There's no real test of coordination. There's the five, ten, five in the NFL and there's vertical leap, which I say is a fairly good measure of coordination. So we did a vertical leap test on, it was only like 10, 12 athletes, and we had to do 10 sessions of the patented 12-met routine.
And every athlete, except for one, increased the vertical leap by over 10%. No changes, anything else. And also what I found fascinating is when you watch some pre-intervention, they jumped and did their tests. And then when you watch them after they did the 10 sessions, their kinetic chain of fluidity was just totally different.
They were just graceful. They were ballet-like when they went up and touched. The one guy that didn't do it, he was 5'11", he had a 37-inch vertical beginning with the 41. So he increased by 8%.
But he was insanely good at the beginning. Which was also a valuable test because here was somebody who had insanely good balance in vertical leap and we improved it. So what we find too is that when your balance improves, your whole kinetic chain improves. And it took me years to figure this out.
But what I determined was it's a very simple premise, which is if you define the balance system as an autonomic system, which is not clearly defined as such. An autonomic system is supposed to be a system that the human body or human has that's automatic and protective. So first of all, falling hurts. So I'm pretty sure that stopping falling, we don't think about it, is protected.
So it takes something like hitting a golf ball. You can't swing any harder than what your balance system allows because you'll fall over. Now, if you're under the age of 12, you can do it because kids are under the age of 12 fall all the time because they're still engaging in defining the balance system. If you're drunk, you can do it, right?
Because you shut the balance system off. You're supposed to detune it. But you cannot swing so hard that you fall. So this is true.
The base was true with you. We're running and cutting. It's true with long distance runners. It's true with any of the move.
You do not run any faster than your balance system allows. You're going to love this. I think you will. So when I teach people, we'll find out maybe one.
I'll give it a bit. So one of the reasons that we get along, one of the things that I do when I teach people how to run naturally, not to be barefoot, but I usually do a barefoot will be out of park somewhere. And this is not about running per se because I'm not a fan of teaching someone to run on grass because that's like taking the panic from your shoe and just taking your ground. And you don't know what the hell's under there anyway.
But what I have them do, I go pretend you're a kid. Watch what kids do when they're goofing around and playing. So keep your arms by your sides. Like, I'll try to use your arms.
And basically just lean your head until you're about to fall over. And just do the barest thing you can to keep yourself from falling in your face. And just keep moving your head in these wacky different directions and let your head guide you. And it takes people a while so you can see that they're constantly just on the edge of falling but not clean themselves.
And then they start having so much fun. That's a great goofy thing to do. You're just letting yourself fall and catching and falling and catching. Well, in all balanced families at the front, I don't, I recently stopped training anybody under the age of 15 years old.
Because they come in and have too damn much fun. Nobody's listening to me. You know, specific protocols are supposed to be doing. Kids are screwing around.
I can't stop. And they won't listen to me because I haven't too much fun. So I need somebody just a little more serious. I'll, you know, my wife, Jan, it's much better handling that kind of stuff.
I can't do it. But anyways, yeah, that's a good thing to do. And you know, that leaning to the side, there's a famous basketball player. Kyrie Irving had a video of him warming up.
And he did that leaning to the side. And he's truly one of the most athletic people in the NBA. That leaning to the side looked like he was doing it with CGI. It was wild, but far over he was.
So yeah, those, that kind of stuff is good. All that's good to challenge your balance. And the only problem we have that is when you lean to the left, you end up putting the weight on the outside of your foot. And there's nothing functionally balanced while I was on the outside of your foot.
That is true. Here's a question. Keep doing it safe because I know it makes you feel good. Well, yeah, I just do a flunk it.
It's all I care about. Let me, let me ask you this while I scratch my eye. So what's your take? And I'm not surprisingly having an opinion about this, but I'm going to ask you as if I don't, what's your take on the whole trend in the fitness world about instability, training, doing things while you're on a BOSU ball or on a stability ball or on it.
Well, it's kind of, you know, some of the things you're seeing now, they're using my methods that I've developed years ago, but you know, I had a website recently asking to write an article because someone has just written an article reviewing all the unstable surface training research that was out there, which proves unequivocally that unstable surface training doesn't work. And I've looked at all this research and the protocol has sucked on every one of them. There's one bit of research that was just done in Spain a year ago that used my methods that proves it does work. So defined, to the extent that you're able slash willing slash whatever, define somehow a difference between what they're doing and what one of your methods might be.
Well, one of the things they're doing is A, they don't allow progressions. What do you mean? Well, it's like, hey, Steve, we're going to prove that lifting weights is going to make you stronger. So I'm going to give you the protocol.
Here's five pounds, lift it three times a day for the next six weeks and we'll come back and test. Got it versus increasing the weight of time. Yeah. Secondly, what happens is, are you, what are you testing at the end?
So there's a real tendency in the look, it's called strength and conditioning. And I'll tell you a story about why it should be renamed strength conditioning and control. So everything with balance, and you see all these people doing his balance work and lifting weights at the same time. Right.
It's like, why not brush your teeth and comb your hair at the same time? It just doesn't make sense to do them both at same time, either build strength or improve your balance system. And it is the core of all athletic movement, but it gets just a motorcom of attention. It only gets like three minutes a day weightlifting, movement patterns, skill building patterns, those are all more important than building up to balance system.
And what we say, and we're working on it the vice now to measure athletic balances, you know, good your balances, you don't, you know, good your heart rate is always on. So I come back to that's one reason why. And then what you're seeing too is like the video of Alvin Kamara, they buy our equipment down there and he's standing on a medicine ball. And he's catching sticks, the hecho sticks, which are good things to do.
We do it differently. We don't put people in medicine balls, even though Alvin Kamara is doing it right, he's engaging the front part of his feet. Most people like this on a medicine ball, like that. The legs are bowed.
Again, outside of foot, nothing happens there. Secondly, when you look at most people and they try and bounce on, they basically try to put their feet on the outside and squeeze in rather than on top and using their feet. Exactly. And the great thing, and I complimented the guy, you know, back and forth, and I just can't remember his name now.
Sharif was his last name. But he, if you look at that video, that went viral about him, Kamara, he's got the area cleared. There's nothing for him to fall and break his neck on. Secondly, I mean, there was striking condition coach at one after the other, just peed all over this guy for doing it.
And oh, it's dangerous. Oh, how does that affect you on the football field? Oh, you know, all these criticisms. Hey, I think the most important thing we know in our science is our progression.
We'll put something, I have a goth on a medicine ball and our social media stuff we did a few weeks ago. But this kid's been training with me for six years. He's progressed to that. If you put something on a medicine ball that hasn't been progressed, I mean, swivel, I'll break their neck.
So there is that kind of unstable surface train. Now there's other unstable surface train that we call earthquake equipment. And this is, I've gone to the biggest, fanciest medical balance training centers in the world and the country, excuse me, and they have these plates that are moved by servos underneath you, right? They're going like this.
So it's an earthquake. Yeah, miniature version of a mechanical ball. Right. Well, but my balance challenges, a I'm standing on a piece of something flat right now, and it's solid, but I'm still moving challenge.
So I get on an unstable surface that's generated by me. It's that same thing and it's exacerbated 100%. We take offers some of their movement patterns on solid ground. And then we put them on an unstable, our own design unstable surface.
And they find all the floors and the government right off the bat. And I say to them, it's minuscule when you're on solid ground. It's magnified when you're on the unstable surface. But when you get back to the earthquake machines, I don't know where that stuff's coming from.
My subject going back to your vision thing, I have it's in the book, I pictures of, I have a lot of brain damage in the back of my head. So my cerebellum has a lot of brain damage. And I probably there's nobody my agent in this country as balanced as good as I do. But if I close my eyes and I stand on one foot, it's scary how bad it is.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I've never looked to see, I've never looked for videos about professional bull riders on mechanical bulls, but I would be willing to bet that they're not a whole lot better than people who just hang out on mechanical bulls, because there's no doubt that they're getting a whole lot of information about just some natural thing that you start to figure out from being on an angle.
There's, but there's, I mean, we see two different types of bouncers, foot-based balance that comes from the ground and there's a bounce. So if you're a mountain biker, horseback rider, we train horseback riders and they, their balance improves dramatically. And then the horse says, oh, I'm feeling more comfortable because they don't want to hurt the person on their back because they get, they get in trouble. So they'll move quicker and gracefully and better because the person on the back is their balance.
But that's ass balance. So this took me a while to figure out too. I bought a couple of unicycles. I was going to learn how to ride a unicycle.
I get on the unicycle, it took me nearly two years to figure out the unicycle is ass balance. So how well can I sit on my ass and not have much pressure on my feet? Now when I ride my mountain bike, pedal balance, yeah, I'm going around turns and my pedal, but a bull rider's got ass balance horseback riders got ass balance and mountain biker, I mean, a cyclist has ass balance. So it's a different balance.
So it's a different balance. How old were you when you wanted to learn to ride a unicycle? Okay, our realtor actually, our commercial realtor, he rides a unicycle all over the place, yeah, doing it since he was in, I don't know how long he's been doing it, but let's just say his children have a very hard time with the fact that's what he does. Yeah, it's good for him.
Once you get it, it's good. I just said, so funny, because actually, boy, one of my, one of my first, I don't know how to describe this, I learned a moonwalk from a guy who's a very famous bass player. And we were pushed out in Williamsburg, Virginia together. He was, he and his brothers were in a band.
I was doing magic comedy things. Anyway, he taught me to moonwalk. I taught him to do a standing back flip, then a whole bunch of us all about unicycles. And the thing that's so funny about ass balance is it's, it's, it's 90% relaxation.
It's 90% just sinking. I ride a recumbent bike because I'm a boy, and I, and I've been doing that for Jesus 30 years. And you know, when I put people on a recumbent, they're all freaking out. I go, look, I'm just going to push you.
You don't do anything. You just hang out and just learn to sit and do nothing. No pedal. Just learned, you know, we'll get a little, a little, just relax.
And eventually you figure that out. But it's obviously, it's a very different thing on your feet. Yep. Absolutely.
So, so, so, if somebody, you know, what you're pointing to, which I think is really interesting is two pieces of the puzzle. One is that there isn't an awareness of let's call balance our sixth sense. There isn't this awareness that this is an actual thing that is important independent of this instability training stuff, which I agree is just kind of silly. And then there, there isn't yet, and I know that where I'm going, this is something you're trying to do, there isn't yet a program that has been not developed, obviously, but caught on to give people something that they can do where it is, it is a progressive program where they, where they experience the combination of satisfaction of progressing and the, and demonstrable benefits thereof.
And I find this kind of amazing because I'm remembering, in the last couple of years, I've been in various hospitals for a career, whatever, and almost every one of them, actually not even hospitals, doctors as well, where almost every one of them has a flyer from the hospital about some balancing for the elderly. And when I look into the program, you know, it's, there's no, they are there to it. Well, there's two things that go on them. I mean, you know, we, again, like, I mean, I like to focus on the athletic balance.
So, you know, we have our equipment's being used at the University of Michigan, I met with them last week, and they said, well, okay, but, you know, can you give us a set of gradations? And so, you're level one through nine. And we gave them that. And so, that's part of what's missing.
But what's also missing is the, we don't realize our balance is bad, so it's acute, so we fall on. Right. So, we have a golfer, let's say, who comes in, and he's an eight-handi-cap. I look at his balance, I go, do you know your balance could be improved?
Yes. And I said, well, if I improve your balance, we believe that although you're handicapped by 40%, I go, no. Right. So, we're improving balance.
Yeah, let me highlight that. So, for whatever reason, people buy large, and perhaps probably people who are listening or watching this, buy large don't have the frame of reference to conclude or believe, right? Balance may be the fundamental or a fundamental problem underlying many of the other issues they're dealing with. Right.
So, it's just an, it's in disconnect. So, we've had golfers that come in, we improve their handicapped by 40%, within eight to 10 hours, and they come back and you go, how's it going? Oh, you know, I was at six, now I'm at three. Oh, great.
Cool. The balance framework. Well, no. I bought a new driver.
I got a new coach. La, la, la, la, and I go, aloney. That's just not true. You've been on a plateau for five years.
You come and spend time with us now. It changes. And so, this is incredible distance. And secondly, there's a huge distance because nobody wants to admit I have been busting my ass for seven years to lower my handicap.
And you're telling me I just did this eight hours and I've lowered my handicap? Right. No, I'm American. Nothing comes easy to me.
I work hard. I buy a better game. I hire the best coach. That's how it works.
Don't tell me it's that easy. And so, I have this problem all the time. So again, we come back to, here's the thing. There are balance measurement devices.
There are measure, measure, measurement devices. Nobody understands the balance system we do in the movement patterns that we know. So, we're working on developing a system where you can say, oh, I'm a 45. I'm going to balance train four weeks later.
I'm a 75. And look at this. I'm faster on my mile. I'm faster on my 100 meters.
Things are going better. My injury's gotten better. So, you can start correlating your balance system to other parts of your life. Oh, I feel like crap.
I'm going to go balance train for 20 minutes and come back. Oh, look, it's gone up. I feel great. I'm thinking better.
I mean, there's all sorts of things you can correlate to. It's really interesting. One of the things that people, I'm amazed people don't, well, at least they differently. People, especially in the West, I think, I don't know why I said it that way.
We think of things as being very disparate and we don't realize the interplay of certain future or certain functions. So, for example, the point that you made early on, we have all these nerve endings in the soles of our feet. And people, for amazing reasons, don't correlate or connect that to the vestibular system. It's like, oh, my feet hurt or my feet are doing whatever.