Episode 257: New Discoveries About Your Feet

A feeder pretty old. I think we can all agree to that. So there's nothing new that we would know about feet, right? Wrong.

There's a lot going on. Frankly, since the whole barefoot thing took off, a lot of people were paying attention to feet in a way they never have before. We're going to hear 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 feet first, you know, those things at the bottom of your legs. And we also break down the prop again in mythology and sometimes the flat out lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or cross whatever you like to do, enjoyably, effectively, efficiently.

Did I say enjoyably some Monday? I know what I did. It's a trick question. Because look, if you're not having fun, you're not going to keep doing what you were doing anyway.

So find things that are fun. We're here to help you do that. I'm Stephen Sashan, co-founder and chief barefoot officer here at zero shoes.com or dot eu or dot co-dot uk, depending on where you are. And we call this the movement movement because we, including you, no pressure, I'll tell you about that in a second, we are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your feet and the rest of your body do what it's made to do without getting the way and causing problems.

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So let's get started and have some fun. Jen, pleasure having you here. Do me a favorite. Tell people who you are and what you are doing here.

Well, thank you for having me. I am Jen. So Dr. Jen Ferez.

I am actually the co-founder of Gate Happens. I am here because I like to talk about feet. So I mean, truly like the biggest thing in my life is education. And I am educating patients in the clinic.

I am educating people across the globe. And I'm also teaching other practitioners. So really talking about feet kind of is my life. But I like to make it fun.

I like to make it interesting. And I like to make it relatable because like you said, if we're not having fun and if we're not doing the things that we care about, then really what's the value? So my job isn't just to bore you with foot facts, but really to empower you to keep moving and doing the things you love. Well, we will be doing that.

You may be thinking of something. I remember being a kid and going to this one shoe store in when Bethesda, Maryland was a tiny little sleepy town. And I used to find it really weird. You know, somebody would have a job where they spend the whole time just putting things on your feet and looking at your feet.

And for the last 16 years, that has been my job. And of course, I find it totally fascinating. So if I could go back in time and apologize to that person for my bizarre thoughts, I would judgement. I mean, to be fair, I actually hated feet.

Like people kind of like they asked you, how do you get into this? Right? How do you get into feet? Like it's like such an odd conversation to have.

But like I hated feet. I thought that we were gross. I wanted nothing to do with them even all the way through Cairo school. So my background, I am a chiropractor.

And even through Cairo school, I actually wanted to specialize in shoulders. And so I was a softball player at D1 softball players in college. And I had chronic shoulder issues, wanted to help overhead athletes throw better, right? And I'd show up to this course.

It was a rock tape course, which is a kinesiology brand. And I wanted to learn the course wasn't about shoulders, but it was just a taping course. But I wanted to learn about shoulders. Well, little did I know that the instructor specialized in feet.

And all of the examples were like foot foot foot and how the effects of gate mechanics. And I had never heard it explains like that. Because I love biomechanics. I always have I love physics and biomechanics and how it all works together.

And so when she started talking, I'm like, wait a second, what? It's not just this gross thing at the end of your leg, right? It's like, no, it actually has an impact on how you hit the ground and how the ground hits you and how everything interacts. And it was like this curtain was drawn back and I was sold.

And now here we are 10 years later. And that instructor of that course is my business partner, Dr. Courtney Connolly. Oh, what a shock.

I mean, as people who know how to make feet interesting go, you're in court near the top of the list. So that's what I mean. All right. So my intro is saying that what we know about feet is changing dramatically in part because when when Zero She started Gishai, I have 16 years ago from when we're reporting this now, there was well, there was a little bit of research.

In fact, the lawsuit against Vibram, the five fingers company, where they had made an unfounded medical claim that wearing their shoes could hurt your feet or sorry, wearing their shoes would help your feet make it stronger. I think that case fell apart and settled out of court because there was research on previously the Nike free from Hooterman showing that by wearing a shoe that let your foot actually move, you could build foot strength compared to a traditional shoe. And I think that there's enough connected dots that the plaintiffs realized this was not going to be a fruitful case. But there wasn't very much.

And then of course, in the early days from 2009 through, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, a good 10 years, there wasn't much more because certainly the real research needed to be funded by someone and us little upstart companies did not have that kind of money and the big companies were not inspired and it's sort of wise to find out what they already knew, which is that they were hurting people. But in the last really five years, maybe you seen a little longer, there's been more and more people getting grant money and research funding from whatever institutions they're in to look at this and there's just a whole lot. So that was my long version of kind of the evolution of things. Do you see it similarly or differently?

Absolutely. I see it very similarly. So I think like you said, the interest has risen. And so with the interest, then comes the money.

And so now we're seeing more research coming out. And now there's several research articles that show that walking in a minimalist footwear can strengthen your feet. And it's really the first category of footwear that can say that because, you know, just logic and sense, right? We know that toe spring reduces the amount of work your foot has to do.

So let me pause there. So toast brings most shoes. Oh, I got one. I got you.

Don't I'm prepared. Yeah. Okay. So yes.

So show it. For you. You aren't seeing it. Yes.

Okay. So for those watching, I'll show for those listening, I will explain, but toes bringing it. If you imagine your shoe sitting level on the ground and the toes are elevated up off the ground, many shoes, modern footwear today has this kind of upward angle of the toes. Well, when your toes inside and it can't move down.

So it can't move down. Yes. It stays there. And so with the toes in that elevated position, inside the shoe, the toes are extended.

And what this does is it creates a rocker in the front of the shoe that allows you to kind of rocker over the shoe rather than having to extend the toes and propel yourself forward. So what that means is it reduces the amount of work it takes for you to propel forward. Now, common sense means that makes it easier, which means you don't have to work as hard, which means over time it's going to weaken your foot. Again, that's not the conclusion of the study.

If we want to be technical, the study says it doesn't require as much work, but you put that into application. And if you don't use it, you lose it, right? So it's kind of this back and forth where that elevated toe and making things easier on the foot has been the conversation for so long. Let's make it easy.

Let's support our feet. Let's do all these things instead of actually strengthening the foot and the all of the beautiful mechanisms that are built into the foot itself. I was at a panel discussion again. And one of the guys I was debating was a guy from, I think it was Brooks.

Don't hold me for something if I'm wrong. Anyway, and he said something like, you know, our job is to give you a shoe that's comfortable and propels you forward. And I grabbed the microphone from him. I said, can I be obnoxious for a second?

And he goes, okay, I said, nothing propels you forward except your legs. The fact that there's that toe spring, that rocker thing doesn't propel you forward. And I said, don't you remember momentum? It says that.

Yes. So don't claim that you're violating the laws of physics. And he took the microphone back. All right.

Yeah, we're not violating the laws of physics. So let's stop saying things like that. Yeah. That's because nobody's checking the work, right?

Yeah. To a point it makes it sounds good. It seems, makes sense. Oh, it's rocking you forward.

That must mean it's moving you forward. No, no, not doing that at all. Or similarly, this one's better, but it's not on toes spring, but I got to do it. An ad that I saw from Nike was the most honest ad I ever saw from them.

It said that the shoe gives you the feeling of propelling you forward. And this is about the cushioning in the heel where I tried to pair their shoes. They were talking about and it does give you the feeling of propelling you forward because as your heels coming off the ground, the foam is re-expanding faster than your heel is moving. So it kind of taps you in the heel.

So it's like something's happening. But of course, the A, the bottom of the shoe is not on the ground. So it's not doing anything. And even if the bottom of the shoe was on the ground, there's no amount of expanding foam that's going to move a 150 to 200 pound person.

Yeah. Well, and the loads that go through our feet when we're walking can be six to eight times body weight. So yeah, it's absolutely insane. Which when you think about that from a muscular perspective, right?

If there's six to eight times our body weight going through our feet as we're walking, especially as we're running, the amount of strength that we need to keep our feet resilient is really incredible. And yet it's one of the areas that we don't ever work on actually strengthening. And when you say that, wait, like, oh my God, has to be strong enough to support all that weight, people go, well, that's, you know, I don't think I can do that. So like, no, no, no, this is the joke is that you've been doing it most of your life without an issue.

And many, many, like human beings evolved to be able to do that. That's the amazing thing of the structure of the foot is that it can do that in a way that your knees, hips and back cannot. Yeah, absolutely. So back to the evolution of research.

What else have you been seeing? So one of the biggest changes I've seen in the last few years is kind of conversation about how the foot works. And so for a very long time, again, I'll use my foot model for those watching, explain for those listening. But so for a very long time, the conversation around the foot has been that it locks and unlocks.

And here's kind of what that means. When the foot comes down to the ground, we know that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction talking about physics, right? So as we hit the ground hits us and that's called ground reaction force. Now that force has to go somewhere and we need to be able to absorb it and dissipate it.

So what we do with the foot or how we'd used to describe this was we used to unlock the foot, which is also known as pronation, where the foot starts to spread and the arch lowers down and we start to kind of spread out all of the structures of the foot. That was known as the unlocking of the foot. And then when we start to go into propulsion, so as the heel comes off the ground, we needed to lock down the foot to have this kind of locked system, if you will, to push off of. Well, what they've found and on your belly and Luke Kelly and they've got a really great crew out in Australia that put this research together, that the foot is a dynamic system.

So the conversation is changing because, yes, the foot has to be able to lower and spread, but it also needs to be able to recoil, but it never locks. It never stops moving. It's always moving and always dynamic. So I started talking about this in terms of, like, if you think about locking as jumping on concrete, right?

There's no give there. So if you imagine, we used to talk about the feet as concrete. Now we're kind of talking about the fetus trampolines, right? There's always this constant lengthening and recoiling that's happening and everything is constantly moving.

It's so interesting because we know that there's a stretch reflex, like everywhere else. We know that, I mean, we can experience that phenomenon of you stretch something that wants to come back and it's amazing to think that with all of the muscles, ligaments, and tendons in the foot and ankle complex, people did not think, well, yeah, that's got to be what's happening there too. Yeah. And there is, you know, there's also just historical things that are that seem like they're locking ideas like the whole, like the windlass mechanism, which, so I'll let you explain that to people and how that could seem like a locking phenomenon, but it's really a trampolines ring phenomenon.

It totally is. That's such a good example. So the windlass mechanism for everybody listening, I want you guys to just put your feet flat on the ground. And all I want you to do is just lift up your toes.

Now, specifically we talk about the big toe, but just lift up all time. So whenever you lift up your toes, your arch will naturally lift up. And that's because of the tension and the tissues underneath the foot. This is known as the windlass mechanism.

It's a free mechanism. Basically, whenever our toes lift up, our arch lifts up. Now, what we're talking about is, again, what we used to think is during the propulsion. So when our heel comes up and we're going to press off forward, that built in mechanism, because when you go to push off forward or extending the toes, we used to think that listing of the arch into the passive and of structures were what propelled us forward.

It went right along with we locked down the joints and the passive structures were what pushed us off. So it kind of was this team partnership of stiffness, if you will. Well, now there's been multiple studies that have looked at. They've done it kind of both ways where they looked at pushing off without toe extension and they also looked at anesthetizing the muscles of the foot.

Because if you think about it, right, if push off comes from the windlass mechanism, then anesthetizing or putting to sleep, the muscles of the foot should not have an impact. And what they saw was decreased power at push off when they anesthetize those muscles. And so that goes to show that the muscles are actually creating the tension under the foot that creates that trampoline. You know, I kind of think of, if you think about the trampoline, I really like that analogy.

I use it a lot when I'm teaching. You think about there's the black part, the mat, and then there's the springs all around it, right? The black part is essentially actually the muscles. The muscles are contracting isometrically.

So they're not moving. They're just contracting to create that tension. And then the tendons around them are the springs that help us move forward. So without a stiff mat, if you will, if that mat wasn't able to maintain that tension, we have no trampoline.

So that's how all these structures, it's not just the muscles. It's not just the windlass mechanism. It's not just the joints, but everything working together in this harmony that really makes us efficient movers, which is really, really cool to understand. Well, and I want to back up to a word that you used before that for many people is the, is a thing that they attach to with an identity as strong as where they're from, who their parents are, what their lineage is, what religion they practice, and that's pronation.

Pronation. So how much do you know about how and why people started thinking that was a bad word and what's involved with the idea about pronation during this time that we've been talking about? Oh, man, pronation. So as far as history lesson, really, the only background that I have on where a lot of it came from was when flat feet were deemed as bad.

And I'm sure that you have more to add into this that I'd love to learn. Oh, I do. When flat feet were deemed as bad and we started being excluded from military, right? So then there was like this military exclusion for like flat feet was, you were disqualified, you weren't able to participate.

And that was like a huge black and white. This is bad, right? You can have flat feet or what is being determined as a flat foot. It's still not have a, it's still not be pronating.

Yes. Either it was a proxy or it was, you know, something else. Yeah. And that's let's break that down for a second.

And then you can jump in with the history. So because there is this really big misconception around number one, what flat feet are a number two, what pronation is? And technically they are different things, but those terms get thrown out interchangeably. And so if you think about arch height, so like when people say I have high arches or flat feet, we're actually talking about the height of the medial longitudinal arch, which is that big arch on the inside of your foot.

And here's the thing. Some people have high arches and some people have low arches. And that's okay. It's kind of like walking around.

Well, that's not like a sesame street move. That's something Grover's going to say. I mean, but really like it's okay. I don't know.

You're right. Like it's the same as walking around being like, Oh, I have this problem because I'm tall and I have this problem because I'm short. Like it's really, it's more phenotypical than anything. It's just your presentation.

What matters is how much the arch moves and how strong those muscles of your feet are. So as long as you're mobile and strong, regardless of your arch, quote unquote type, you can absolutely live a long movement filled life with out foot pain. Now talking outside of higher flat feet into pronation. So with pronation, we talked about this a little bit before is when the foot comes down and hits the ground, we're going to see that arch lower down.

So we're going to see opening of the joints along that medial arch. Now, if we drift into excessive pronation, what you can see from behind is kind of this tilting where if you drew a line down the back of the calf and down the back of that heel bone, it kind of starts to create this bow or this sea. And for again, again, for a long time, this has been known as a bad thing where people are over pronated. And then I can't tell you how many people come into my office and say they're, they have flat feet in their over pronating and they're literally like, has Davis high arch when I put a pedograph under them.

They don't even their whole foot doesn't even touch the ground. It's like this word has been thrown out all the time. And pronation is absolutely necessary as long as we can get in and get out. It's a great motion to have.

So to echo that, when I was in the lab with a guy named Dr. Bill Sands, he was a former head of biomechanics for the U.S. Olympic Committee and he had a lab out in Western Colorado at what's now Mesa State University or Colorado Mesa University, I think that's what they call now. And he said there's pronation on the issue, hyperpronation.

Basically, if you can't control it, that's the issue. But it's a natural kind of spring like thing that's built in your foot. And you watch world champion marathon runners and you know, they're the inside of their ankle bone can practically touch the ground. They're pronating so much when they're running, except that everything just springs back to the strong.

The I suspect that where this became a dirty word, because when you have a shoe with an elevated heel with an padded, elevated heel, where you end up naturally landing on your heel with your foot, somewhat outstretched, more in front of your body, you have no control at that point. And so at that point, you know, since the heels of ball keying, it's a ball, it's going to roll in some direction. And for most people, it's going to roll inward and you're going to pronate. And so shoe companies came up with a way of saying, Oh, here's a thing that we can call a problem and then sell a correction for it.

And because you see the go to shoe stores and this is what they do. They do some little thing to see if you quote, pronate and then they assign you a shoe. And it feels, I mean, look, we love it when people take us seriously. It's my own personal little thing.

I mean, I'm a special little snowflake. So anything that you can do to make people feel like a special little snowflake, they're going to spend more money. And my favorite thing is there's a guy who I would love to have on the podcast, but it would be very challenging for a reason I'll mention to the fun. It's Simon Bartold.

And the reason that I would love to have Simon Bartold is that he used to be Mr. Anti-Pronation and now he's Mr. Who gives a crap about pronation. And when you ask him what changed, he says the research.

And if you ask why I'm nervous about having him on, it's because he loves quoting research like Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam. And if I don't have that study in front of me and have five, ten minutes to look at it and figure out what might be a problem with the study or a confound or some other thing, I mean, he can out study me, if you will, a long and my fantasy would be that I would say, let's think about, I mean, let's just break these things down and look for what might be problematic in that study or what might be from what we know, just, you know, common sense, not what the masses think, but common sense from a kinesthetic by mechanical perspective. Yeah. But we actually did an interview with Simon Bartold.

And he's going to go with it. Yeah. I mean, this was years ago. So forgive me if I don't remember all the details.

But one of my big takeaways from it, which was really interesting, was, you know, we come from very different backgrounds. We come from very different perspectives. And we knew that going into it, but we were very, it was a very respectful conversation, which I absolutely love when you can disagree with somebody, but you can, you know, both present your side of the argument. And where we fell in the middle was it was actually a quote that we had taken from Irene Davis because we also did an interview with her.

And it's basically, it came down to use as much shoe as needed, but as little as possible. Yes. And the first version of that is if you're going to overstride landed the footway out in front of you and heel strike, you want some protection for that because you're going to get screwed. If you don't, ideally you don't want to be doing that.

And therefore using less and less shoe and at the same time, if you're not ready to run over granite, you know, sharp granite, whatever, in your bare feet, which nobody is, then you want to shoot this going to accommodate that. Basically, there's a use case for footwear. You don't have to, you don't need to be an absolutist. If you're climbing, if you're doing certain kinds of rock climbing, you need a certain kind of rock climbing shoe.

And so yeah, there's, there are functional necessities. If you're missing one or both of your feet, you need something special for that situation. Yes. Yeah.

I actually want to circle back to the pronation conversation for a sec because I think you brought up a really good point of the shoes effect on pronation. And you talked about the elevated heel component, but I want to add one more piece to that. And that is the shape of the toe box. Yes.

Right. Because if you think about the foot, and this is an oversimplification, but we like to talk about the foot tripod, right, where this, the, if you think about the stable points of the foot being the center of the heel, the big toe and the ball of the big toe and then the pinky toe and the ball of the pinky toe. Basically, if that's our tripod, if we sweep the big toe over towards the other toes, I'm basically just literally pushing it in, literally just pushing it in, right? If I push that big toe towards the other, towards the other toes, and now I just swept away one of the legs of that tripod, which way is my tripod going to fall?

Right. So I'm literally taking away the stability pillars of that first ray, which is your metatarsal and your big toe. I'm taking away the stability of that entire medial side of the foot where that arches because I sweep the big toe towards the other toes and immediately I'm going to open up those joints and see more pronation, which our body then can't control because it's going past the range of motion that's supposed to have and the stability mechanism that it's supposed to have isn't there. Well, and what's interesting is there's some shoes that will say that they're wide because they're wider at the ball of the foot and then they just get 20, 20 and they're still just basically taking that big toe and moving it in so much that it has no function.

Yeah. Well, and you and I both know that saying wide and wide toe box are two different things. Very different. Right.

So just for those watching the wide size, wide, the number one, they can say they're shoe has a wide toe box and really only widen it at the ball of the foot like you were just saying, or if you take a regular shoe and then you buy it in a size wide because I hear this from my patients all the time. I know I need wide. So I bought this as an in a size wide. And then I feel bad because I'm like, okay, can we still return them?

So when we talk about a size wide shoe, we're actually creating more width at the man, sometimes creating more volume in the upper so that we have, if you have a more high volume foot, we have more space. That does nothing to change the triangular shape of the toe box, which is what would be a true wide toe box or natural shape of a foot, right? We actually need that shoe to widen and have a straighter shape or wider shape at that toe box. And that's what would allow that big toe to stay in alignment, which would keep the stability of that medial column, which would help fight some of that pronation created by shoes.

So to highlight something about what you just said, this is one of my little pet peeves. So as more people have gotten interested in this and as there's been more research, one of my favorite, least favorite things is when I see someone showing a picture of like, you know, a baby's foot and how it's basically just triangle. It's like a trapezoid. It just goes wider, wider, wider until there's tons and they go, that's, you know, the baby's foot.

That's what our foot should be like. Like that's like saying a baby's proportion of head to body is the way we should be when we get older, but half of our body. Like he takes our hands above the head. Exactly.

So it's like a really wide feet, similar shape. And I go, but you forget that they, I don't want to use the word in reading in a negative way, but there's a huge genetic component to what they have. And so there's this sort of like fantasy, naturalistic fallacy idea of what a foot should look like, which is, you know, starts at the heel and narrow and just goes wider, wider, wider kind of into infinity. Another thing, you know, like people, you said like sort of on the big toe side, kind of straighter, flatter people forget that, you know, the very end of your toe, it does curve in your toes or not, you know, or not just linear.

And so there's way of, and I say that clearly somewhat defensively, if you look at a zero shoe, it does curve in a little bit where your big toe naturally curves in without moving your big toe in so that there's a whole, you know, foot shape. Now granted that even that foot shape exists on the same kind of spectrum from flat feet to the arch. And there are people who have like really, really wide things from the ball to foot forward. And you know, and there are people who are the exact opposite.

We have one of our basketball players who wears our basketball shoe, the X one, who has really narrow feet with great natural toes play. He's his whole body is super long and narrow. And so he's like a double A, but still has a great foot. And so people like to hyper simplify things and use ideas.

My actually, my favorite one is a different one with you. You'll argue against the barefoot idea. They go, well, we didn't evolve to run on, you know, flat hard surfaces. I go, you should go and take a look at where we evolved to run and walk.

These are harder surfaces than what you're used to and with more crap on them than you would ever want to step on. So, and we also didn't evolve to do a standing double back flip, but I could do one. So, you know, there's just confetti. Really?

Cause I'm going to need a video of that. Yeah, I used to actually know here's what happened. I'll give you the short version of the story. I was about to try one literally about to throw excited, really, really crazy, good standing back flip.

And the last second is I'm literally like gearing up to throw it. My coach is at the other side of the gym facing away from me, stops in the middle of what he was doing and just turns and points and he goes, no. And just shocked me. I didn't do it.

I said, what the hell just happened? He goes, the last time I was in a gym where it got that weirdly quiet was when I was about to try a standing double back flip 10 years ago. And I knew you were about to do it. And so I did the closest thing.

I basically did it into a foam pit where I made it so I could, it looked like I could have done it on the ground because I was competing and I didn't want to break anything by doing anything stupid. I knew I'd make it past my head. I knew it'd be fine. I didn't want to land it away where I bust out my ankles.

So I didn't do it. But I could, but again, you know, we didn't learn to fight fighter jets. I definitely can't fly fighter jets. But we can do that too.

So anyway, there's this whole like natural, naturalistic fallacy and inverse naturalistic fallacy that's just a little bizarre. Anyway, back to where we were. I don't know where we go. But well, I think in general, that's a really good point because people like to think of things in black and white.

And unfortunately, that's just not how it works. Right. There's always shades of gray and there's always like, we like to talk about like a shoe spectrum, just like we talk about, you know, there's different shapes to the foot. Like you said, there's some people that have a narrow forefoot and there's some people that have a wider forefoot.

But as long as their toes are in alignment with their metatarsals, we're happy. Right. It's when the metatarsals are pointing straight forward and their toes are pointing at each other that now we have problems, right? Because not only from a joint, I mean, that's a very easy conversation to have, right?

The joint alignment does not look right. If I was to hang my door crooked and open it 10,000 times a day, something would go wrong. That's very simple, you know, outside of all the other physics that I can jump into as far as the tie bar mechanism and the stretch reflex that happens when the four foots plays, there's so many beautiful things that happen when we let our foot spread the way that it's supposed to. But simple enough, just let the joints be in alignment, right?

Yeah. Was there anything else from your conversation with some of our told that struck you was particularly interesting, either in a positive or negative way? I mean, negative into that you guys were pointing in other directions. No, I don't really don't think there's a lot of negatives that came from it.

One of the topics actually, it makes me want to go back and listen to that conversation because he talked a lot about muscle tuning and kind of the vibrations that happen within the different tissues and the frequencies that they vibrate at. But honestly, it's been so long since that's conversation. I can't even remember what the takeaway was, but it definitely makes me want to go back and listen to it. That would be interesting.

Bill Sands, that was one of his big things is out of all the different interventions that people had tried that he found in his research, it made no difference. He thought that that was a biggie. So he was really into compression cast leaves. And I don't think he did anything below the ankle, but he saw that basically certain kind of uncontrolled vibration could cause problems because basically it's making it so the muscles aren't able to fire properly or in the right sequence or something.

And so they'd be fighting against each other and couldn't lead to issues. It'd be interesting to see like tying that research into like dry needling research, right? When you're doing dry needling and like use East Tim because you get that muscle reset. That would be really interesting.

I mean, so I have a messed up spine. My L5S1 is all jacked. And so my cycle, yeah, I didn't want to get too technical. So for people who care, I have a grade two, L5S1, spondylosis with a pars defect.

Okay. And if you and if you look at an MRI of my spine, you don't need to be a radiologist to go, Oh, Jesus, that's bad. And if you do look for my sciatic in the MRI, you do have to be a radiologist to still go, that's bad. So when I was getting a lot of injuries, when I first started running barefoot, which when I first started getting sprinting 18 years ago, I could literally almost feel that the signals were not getting into the muscles at the right time.

And they were fighting with each other and that would lead to strains. And I had that happen like once or twice in the last several years. But that's a really interesting idea. And the muscle tuning thing is intriguing because again, there's mythology around that about what you're supposed to do to get things ready to fire properly and etc.

So that is an interesting, an interesting one. Oh, but I needling. Sorry for jumping on that one. I'm actually getting some of that now because I've had so my right knee, thanks to gymnastics, is actually messed up as well.

So it's bone on bone on the lateral side. They carved out 30% of my meniscus and that finally caught up with me. And so there are muscles and tendons, muscles really in my lower leg that are firing like nonstop, they try to keep things stable and it's made other things get out of whack. And it's interesting as we reset those kind of getting underneath and finding out, no, here's the real problem.

It's actually going on. It's been both satisfying and annoying at the same time. Well, it's amazing how our body's protected, like how our body will protect itself, you know, like you said, if those muscles are guarding when you take that away, you're very much going to feel, well, what were they guarding for? You know, the muscle is good.

Well, I'll do something about that. Yeah. The other conversation that reminds me of was the Irene Davis one, where we were talking about how the muscles prepare for landing. And that I find really fascinating going back to the shoe conversation, because basically if you think about a very visual talk, I'm trying guys for the audio learners.

So if you think about having a baseline, when you hit a surface, we talked about this earlier with that ground reaction force, right? When you hit a surface, we want to kind of meet in the middle. So if you're landing on a surface that's soft, think about like sand, like soft sand, stepping in the mud, something that's going to squish underneath you, right? Let's get fun.

Memory foam inside your shoe. Well, yeah, exactly. That's where this is going, right? Let's start barefoot.

So if we're going barefoot, this is like our natural ability of our body to temper our environment. So if we're going to stop on a really, or step on a really soft surface, our body, our muscles will create more tension in order to create stiffness in that soft surface. This is also why so many of my patients come in and say they're pain started when they had a beach vacation, because their muscles had to have more tension than they were used to side note. But on the flip side of that, right, let's think about a really hard surface.

So if I was going to walk barefoot on concrete, if I was going to come down, my tissues need to be a little bit softer, a little bit more pliable so they can adapt to that hard surface. Right. So this is kind of our body's ability to temper our environment. But when we interfere with that, right, this is where the shoes come in.

So if I'm walking on concrete, naturally, my muscles should be a little bit softer, more supple in order to adapt to that. But if instead I put a whole bunch of cushion underneath my foot, now I'm going to come down hard on a hard surface underneath me because I have no repertussions of that. Right. So we're actually changing the way that our body adapts to our environment by interfering with what we're feeling underneath our feet.

Yeah. The way I say it is you know, you got these 200,000 nerve endings in the sole of each foot. So your brain knows what you're stepping on or actually more importantly, your the reflex arc you have in the base of your spine is going to go up and right back down. And when your brain or your body can't feel it, it's going to land harder to get some feedback and by the minute is too late.

And now, especially if you're landing with your foot out in front of you, you're going to be sending a spike force into your joints and whichever one is weak as ankle hit me back, not in that order. Hopefully not. Then that's going to be the one that's going to bear the brunt of it. And that was Christine Pollard's research where she was, she literally thought that cushioning was going to be good and reduce impact forces and was stunned to see that it either didn't reduce them or made them higher.

Yeah. And again, it's a common sense. Yeah, common sense is cushioning must feel good. It feels good.

So it must be good. But when you think about it from a biomechanical perspective or neurological perspective, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, gets in the way. I mean, the example that I love to give is the big fat circus guy in a slow motion video takes a cannonball in the stomach. You ever see this?

It's a slow mo film from God knows how long ago. And he bends around the cannonballs. It hits him and you see ripples of fat moving around because he's a big fat guy. So that's the pressure getting spread out.

But the force of the cannonball still sends him flying back into the tarp that catches him. And same thing, you know, with the phone or whatever, you don't feel it as much, but the force has still got to go somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. So anything else in the new news about how feet work and how and how people, people and or what where companies are dealing with that or not dealing with that as the case, maybe? I don't think that I think we've covered most of the new research on how the foot works. I would say the one other area of research that's getting a lot of attention right now when it comes to the foot is all risk.

So fall risk. Ball risk. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So actually they're finding there with a lot of research. And this isn't super new. There's probably over the last 10 years, there's a bunch of research articles pointing towards this, but they're starting to stack up where you can't ignore it anymore. And what they've found is that weakness in your feet is one of the top indicators of fall risk in the elderly.

And we know that falls in the elderly is one of the highest risks for mortality, because it can lead to things like hospitalization and hip fractures and things like that. So one of the studies in particular actually looked at foot strength compared to bigger muscle groups like your quadriceps and foot strength was a much bigger indicator. If you've got to leave, the statistic was 20% higher risk of falls compared to strong feet and there was zero difference across the quad strengths, like weakness versus strength. So that was one study.

Another study looked at foot strength as basically individual indicators. So outside of anything else, because we know when you have comorbidities, when you have other things going on, everything stacks up to increase your fall risk. But they wanted to look at risk factors in isolation of other risk factors. And the only two that came out of the study with being identifiable by themselves was blood pressure and toe strength.

And it was like, those two things alone can identify your fall risk outside of anything else. And again, let's back up. You've been wearing issue with a bunch of toes. You've been squeezing your toes together.

You haven't been using your feet. They get weaker over time. This was a computer for a purpose. It's like put our supporting people's in healthy people's shoes.

And in 12 weeks, they've lost 70% of their strength in their feet. So Aaron Futtrell did some research on this, sponsored by the CDC and showed again, similar things. And there's actually a related one. This is one I found really interesting.

One of the nurses at Duke University identified this. Oh gosh, this is maybe 13 years ago. Ish walking speed high correlation to being dead within five years. And of course, when we watch elderly people, when they're having issues, walking, people, they tend to get prescribed bigger, thicker, stiffer, less feeling, less mobility.

I mean, it's just a vicious cycle downward. They're walking slower to get, so they don't over plant their foot, front, front, front, they're self and not being able to balance properly. So it's just like running downhill, except that they can't run, but they are going downhill. Again, it just blows my mind.

Well, you can see also alterations in gate up to seven years prior to a dementia diagnosis. So alterations in gate can be one of the first signs of mental decline leading to dementia. What specifically do you see? I believe that also came down to speed speed and cadence because they are two different things and potentially I'm going to stick with speed and cadence because I feel like there was another one and I don't remember what it was.

Yeah, it could. That's interesting. It could be. I mean, I think about my mom went through having Alzheimer's and I don't recall, she also felt on a burger hip, but she was so like, all summery that she had no memory of it.

It was like, how'd your hip? We mean, it's fine. Like, you're in a wheelchair. You can't walk.

The, so I'm trying to remember what her mobility was like earlier. And I just wonder how much of that gate change really, I mean, I know how this is really, I'm hoping other people could think about this. The fact that you start losing certain abilities, cognitive abilities, what does that do to how you're interfacing with the world and walking more slowly because of that difficult interface. That's a really interesting, I'm going to have to find that research.

That's a really, I know, I know right where I have it. I just send it and we'll put it in the show notes. I mean, that's a really interesting path to go down. And I wonder, I mean, if you identify that early enough, if you can, if there can be some intervention way back when I first started doing this, there was a guy, the university of Pittsburgh, a camera name right now who did research that I'm not crazy about because it was based on using fMRI in a way that the woman who first put someone's head in fMRI, Joe Hirsch said, you can't really use fMRI for this.

But the gist was it took elderly people as a longitudinal study, like nine year study, and looked at the amount of gray matter they had in their brain over time. And the ones who retained the most were the most active, did the most walking. And I said to him after I read the research, imagine what would have been like, I said, why do you think it made a difference? And he said, all the sensory information they're getting from just being out and walking, I said, imagine if they were getting more sensory info from their feet as well.

And he said, oh, that make a big difference. But of course, we don't have the money for a nine year study to. But it's. Yeah, I mean, the walking research is that alone is incredible because they've shown different studies with step counts where you can reduce depression, you can reduce your risk of dementia by step count.

And it's just, I mean, yeah, again, the research is endless. So it all comes down to move more, right? The movement movement, it's the more you move, the more you maintain. And that's what we want to do is maintain a healthy life for as long as we can.

And we thought that's what I want to do. My favorite part about my wife and I got our first ever for each of us dog three years ago, something like that. And my favorite thing is walking the dog because my favorite thing is going clouds and just, you know, the clouds around Colorado, as you know, or when they're when they are in the sky, they're delightful. Yeah.

Even my son would get along. He's constantly in the car going clouds. Sorry, my son's three for those who say 2016. No clouds, clouds.

But I'm like, yeah, but do you see the clouds? So this will get a little personal ish. I mean, I've talked about it before, but two, two and a half years ago, there was about a 16 week period where we didn't know if I was going to liver die because I had a rare cancer in my eyeball. And during that time, one point I'm walking the dog and it's pretty beautifully cut out of the day.

I literally had this lot on my head. I said, oh, man, I'm going to miss those if I'm gone. We don't have them on my planet. And I took a great picture of one the other day when I was walking the dog.

It looked like a giant fish in the sky, like a mile long fish with fins and everything else to send you the picture. It was great. That's awesome. I love it.

Anything we've missed and things that this kind of new things for people to think about when it comes to feet and function and movement? I mean, I think just to kind of summarize some of the stuff that we've talked about, right, is number one, the fear, our mobile system. So we need to allow them to move. If we try to interfere with that, we're going to interfere with how our feet sense our environment.

We're going to interfere with that stretch recoil. And we're also going to see that atrophy of our muscles, the decrease in our strength over time, which we've talked about all the reasons why that's important from just simple propulsion to fall risk in the elderly, you know, and we didn't even get into athletic performance. But there's also research on such a digital awareness, increasing jump height, vertical jump, sprint speed, change in direction. Right.

So all of these different components come back to let your feet function, let them be strong, don't interfere with their function. And then going back to that, letting the toes spread from a stability, alignment, and engagement perspective. I still think that there's, I don't know if there's research about it, but I still think there's some way to go on getting rid of some of the mythology, especially mythology supplies to what people then end up selling other people based on stories that aren't true. So, you know, like the whole thing of toe spring, okay, that's fine.

They're not working. But I think the, I think there's some confusion there that when you are running, this has been going on since my God, since I remember being six years old and hearing this, of like, you know, pushing with your toes, toe off, you're doing some active thing with your toes. But the reality is by the time your toes could be doing that, you're so far past mid-stance, they're not adding anything that there's a very significant isometric component or possibly eccentric component. I don't think it's really been looked at, especially when it comes to athletes, especially because of the shoes that they're wearing where they're, you know, in a compromised position to begin with.

So that's one. And when it comes to like products, I see people selling things based on like, look how springy this thing is. Like, yeah, great. But if that spring doesn't work anywhere in the natural gate cycle, it's a cool magic trick, but it's not doing anything.

Or again, the feeling of propelling you forward from that Nike ad. I think there's things that, really how to describe this, that I'm just dying to dive into their weird goofy subtle things and to be completely something about it. I have no illusion that if the research comes out showing all these really cool things, that it will make it down and make for companies change what they're doing, or that the majority of people will ever hear about it or whatever else. But I think it's important for those of us who are carving a new path to have it in our back pocket and happily more and more of that's happening.

But, you know, we can only do what we can do, right? We can keep shouting in the rooftops and hope that more people listen, you know, that's why we have conversations like this. That's why, you know, Courtney's been on a couple of major podcasts in the last couple of years, which has been awesome because it's helping get the word out there. Like people are, I think people are thinking about their feet more than from a functional perspective, more than they have ever before.

Absolutely. So I think I mean, even going to the gym, right? I'm still seeing people wearing clouds at the gym, like I'm not talking about clouds and talking about like clouds, like they are wearing pillows on their feet at the gym, but I see them taking their shoes off and I never saw that before. Right?

This is like in the last two, three years, I'm at, you know, big bucks gym and I see at least 20 people that have their shoes off and I'm like, that's a win for me. You know, I still go to the airport and that's always my temperature check is like, you know, what I'm feeling good about getting the message out there. And then I go to the airport. I'm like, Oh, God, we have so far to go.

We have so far to go. It was once a guy in front of me, the airport with, you know, big, thick foam shoes and the, and they had caved in on the inside. So the shoes that he put in next to each other, the midsole, the foam part with like a V. Okay.

And so I took a video of this and this tells the difference about different social media platforms. I posted the video on Facebook just from the knees down to showing how this guy walked with, you know, his feet, like way inverted that way. And on Facebook, I was like, Oh my God, shoes are horrible. That's killing him.

That's horrible. And on Instagram stuff, some body shaming that guy. Stop telling trainers. That's why I've never done it.

But I'm not using the body shaming. I'm shoe shaming. Yeah. Meanwhile, then when I do see somebody at the airport, there's a guy the other day who was walking past me.

He was like very much like on a mission, but I couldn't help it. And he was wearing some brand that I recognize. And I was like, Hey, I was like walking by and he looks back and he had this like angry face on what you say. And I was just like, nice shoes.

And I walked away and just like, Oh, I love these shoes. I was like, you know, so I'm like, Oh, this is great. You know, so I try to call it when I see it because that's what I'll keep them going. I do as well.

And it's very funny when it's people who recognize me or some people who don't. So I was in my sister's gym where there's a handful of people wearing zero shoes. A friend of mine says, when I go to the gym, he goes to North Carolina, he was the preponderance is zero. It's like over 50% are wearing zero shoes.

But I met my sister's gym and there's a guy wearing our shoes and she comes up and says, Hey, what do you think of those? And he spent 10 minutes raving and she points to me and says, you know, this is. And he didn't because he bought issues on Amazon and never like other than a little picture of us. Yeah, it didn't really have that thing.

But it is I judge it based on how many times I get recognized on Costco and on average, it's three. So when you know, but it started out a couple years ago, it was one and before that it was zero right now, it's three. And that's what we try to get out of there as fast as I can, because that places a nightmare. I mean, I love it.

I love it. Oh my God. Yeah. That's putting your car sideways in the middle of the island, just staring with your mouth out.

Something. It's a good contemplation. Yeah. My favorite story of recognition is I was on an event actually at a stride lab, which is a minimalist shoe store in Boulder for those listening.

And I know you know that. No, you know, I know you know, but I was on an event at stride lab. So it's like, you know, you're with your people. It was actually a Katie Bowman came into town and it was after her book signing.

And so you're like with the like the foot people, right? And I'm there to support and I've got my gate happens jacket on. It says like it happens on the sleeve. And this guy was very, very nice.

But he comes up and he's like, Kate happens. I love her. Are you a patient of hers? No, no, no, no.

When when your partner Courtney, what business partner Courtney was on Peter Tia's podcast, it was I enjoyed getting double name checked when she said, you know, referred to as zero shoes from Stephen Sashina Peter's. Oh, yes, he was a good friend of mine. It was like, yeah, two in a row. we succeeded.

All right. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure, as I know it would be Jen. If people want to get in touch with you, find out more about what we've been talking about or if they have some issue where they need some help, because I know that you don't have to see people necessarily in your office. Tell people what they can do to do to find us to learn more of all the things.

I mean, like I said, education is our passion. So we have lots of free resources. If you go to gate happens, Instagram page or our YouTube channel, I know this sincerely. I see.

Uh huh. Yeah, you got it. So yeah, not gate like open and shut, but gate like how you walk. So yeah, so gate happens is, is our company name, but you can check us out on Instagram or YouTube for lots of free resources.

But we also have online courses for everything from bunions to just making your feet stronger. We do have virtual consultations. So we have a team of clinicians that do one on one appointments and create like curated individualized plans. If you do have something getting in the way of doing what you love.

And then I do have a practice in person with my husband, a kinetic chiropractic in Lafayette, Colorado, if you're local or want to travel in, we'd love to have you. But yeah, I would say gate happens.com or gate happens. Socials for all the things is the best way to reach us. Well, I hope you take advantage of that because, you know, there are more and more people trying to be helpful in this way.

And you know, you two are really at the top of that, whatever thing you want to use for a metaphor for being on the top of. I can't think of one at the moment. Let's go building rather than pyramid. OK, yeah, there we go.

I like building buildings. OK, I don't know. There's other people. Well, there's always other people.

But I'm not saying there's only one person at the top. I mean, this summit is not a peak. It's got there's a bunch of people hanging out there. Yeah, that's what I was going for.

OK, yeah, we'll find us. It's the rooftop bar. rooftop bar is top of a Mesa. How's that?

Perfect. There we go. Anyway, everybody else, thank you so much for being part of this. Once again, go to www.jointhemovement.com.

By the way, you don't need to join anything. There's no secret handshake. There's no money involved. We don't do a special dance every morning, which would be really fun if we did though.

And that's where you can find all the previous episodes, which they're quite a few with wonderful people like Jen. And we've found us on social media. And other places to find the podcast to be not like the one where you already found it. And of course, if you have any requests, any suggestions, anyone that you want to be on have on the show or anything, where you want to get in touch with me, you can drop me an email at move.

M-O-V-E at JoinTheMovementMovement.com. And most importantly, between now and wherever else, go out, have fun and live life feet first.