If you go to the gym for any reason, whether you're lifting weights or using cattle bells or literally doing anything, what's the best thing to put on your feet? Those things at the end of your legs. Well, we're going to talk about that today with a very special guest who's here for a second time, but before that, just welcome to the Movement Movement podcast. The podcast where people who like to know the truth about what it takes to, well, use your body naturally, to run, to walk, to play, to do whatever you like to do, enjoyably, efficiently and effectively.
That's what we're here for. We're going to break down the mythology, the propaganda, sometimes the lies you've been told about that. And this is all based on, well, let's, you know, doing what's natural. That's why we call this the movement movement.
We're creating a movement about natural movement. You can help just, you know, share this with your friends. If you like the podcast, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find previous episodes, all the places you can find us on social media. And if you didn't like where you found the podcast to begin with, other places to find the podcast, I'm Stephen Sashan, the co-founder of Zero Shoes and the host of podcasts.
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So we are joined by Dennis Vasilevin. Dennis, we talked previously on an earlier podcast about what he was doing with cattle bells, which is really pretty amazing. And since then he's done something also amazing, but he was very upset that we didn't get to talk about the footwear and what he's been exploring and discovering about footwear for cattle bells and beyond. So first of all, Dennis, hello and welcome back.
How are you? Thank you. So tell people the incredible thing that you've done since we last spoke. I have one of the competitions with 85 freps of double long cycle 32 kilograms.
So we are going to break this down for people. So what we're talking about is a kettlebell competition, two kettlebells, 32 kilograms each, which is 64, you know, a little over 70 pounds and doing what's called the long cycle. And do you want to explain what the long cycle is so people can grasp how difficult this is? It's another name.
It's a cleaning jerk, which is literally well clean. It's a movement of swinging two kettlebells and getting them into what's called a wreck fixation on the chest and then from the chest, you're lifting them all in the head and you repeat the cycle over and over again. So from the top, you'll drop them into the wreck and then drop them into a recline, swing it, get it back into the wreck and keep going. And you did this how many times?
85 repetitions and 10 minutes. And the guy got second place. How many did he do? Well, actually on this event, it was like, I think no one was lifting 32 some of these competitions.
It's such a high level that the United States, yet it's very few people who can do it. Like worldwide, it's more than 100 leaf there's who can leap 32 kilograms. Two. Yeah.
Yeah. Ten minutes. But it's gonna see that elite level. Well, that's why that's why I'm so proud of it because well, it's quite, you know, outstanding performance in kettlebell sport.
There's rankings, sport ranks. So the highest sport ranked by the numbers, Master of Sport International class. And that's what I scored 85 frets. It's above the Master of Sport International class criteria by any existing kettlebell sport organizations in the world, I don't know.
Okay, say up to be fair, you know, to say that it's not the world world record. And I'm actually a holder of the world record in this weight class of 101 reps, you know, absolute peak of my career in 2015 and 42 years old. And actually, when you narrow down to professional, let's still lifting on the world level and therefore just well, it's very, very few of us. Yeah, I used to really like think where else can score such a result in my age.
But well, it's like worldwide, this result will stay like in the first five results in the work with talking youngsters, everyone without any distance for a, you know, at 63 when I'm on the track, I'm still competing as a sprinter. The guys in their 30s have started referring to me as an inspiration. And I want to punch them every time they do that. It's like, call me when I'm in my mid 70s, not my mid 60s.
I don't want to be an inspiration yet. But I imagine there are people who are in their 20s, early 30s, even who look at you as an inspiration. Well, I retired from the national team in 2015 and 11 years ago, I published a my drink, my toilet book where, you know, I feel like it's, and I may be more scared to jinx it to like count how many times I want competitions and how many reps when I will steal scoring. But once I retire from national team, I think, okay, the major part of career is completed and let's just see what I've done.
So by the time I published the book, 2003, I've done 68 competitions with double 32s. Well, 68 times I did 10 minutes set with double so to two kilohertz and my average results for my whole career was 83.4. With the absolute peak of 101 on the beginnings, I actually didn't took into account like my really fierce attempts before I mess like the year 2001, 2002, and I start for when I get to like mid 60s. So that's by all means, well, and that's why I'm really with confidence and says that it's a serious performance, not just because of my ego, but the pure statistics.
Yeah, no, it's a good addition. It's core. Well, it's way above my average. So my career and you give me this result at any point of my career, I will take it.
I won 11 world championships in kettlebell sport and more than half of them I won with like me pages, like this 384 to five. I mean, like this result that I show now and I was just kind of chasing my physical abilities and equation. What was the second place? Second place was like 67.
But I didn't care. I never care about the rivals. I always was looking for information to understand what's going on and what's there or records to understand what can be a good goal. But once I hit nine trips, that's basically solved the problem of winning.
Like nine trips was securing the first place on any event. And I was holding it for six years in a row in the national team. Never lost once. And then I even scored 100 trips, which is I was a sort person in the world in the future of this work with such a result.
But I just know I can. Well, of course, you cannot. This is far as I know. No, no, it always, you know, and well, this 2001 reps was from 2015.
I was 32 years old. And that's pretty much was my, I think a physical peak from that point I was trying to maintain. And right now, I think it's quite a compliment. And so again, congrats.
Now again, you reached out to me and said, so we talked about kettlebells and kettlebells training, kettlebells sport before in previous episode, but we never got to shoes. And that's how we got connected is that you got some zero shoes and had some experiences with that and how that affected your training. And you wanted to talk about that. So I'm going to let you just jump in and talk about, you know, I want you to address a couple of things.
What you were doing before zero shoes, what you were doing with zero shoes, and what the effect has been, and what other people were doing, what other people were wearing and what your opinion is about why they're wearing those things or what the problems might be, etc. So basically, you know, the kind of your footwear evolution, if you would, and what's happening in the bigger world where, you know, like, again, on this podcast, we'd like to break down mythology about how people were doing things. And I know you think that there's some mythology in what people are typically wearing in their experience of that. So I'm going to let you take it from here.
So I start teaching kettlebell sport information like 2010. And so before 2010, I was a peer just outlet. Just this was all what I was doing. Well, though I was working as a trainer in the gym.
So I was always interested in teaching. And I would honestly, I haven't saw that there's an option to teach kettlebell sport. I wasn't like the man yet, but then it just exploded in like late 2000s, early times. And it's much with the peak of my career.
So I get invited to teach. And when I start doing that, I realize that how great it affects my own performance. Because when I'm teaching in front of the people, if I demonstrating some certain technique element, I better do it perfect. And just by teaching the certifications and workshops, I improved my technique dramatically.
That was the moment when I just really start enjoying the whole process of refining and tuning up. And the technique and really like whatever you do. And, you know, one time goes by, I was able to dive in more and more detail. So I did like lots of experiments with my technique regarding the symmetry.
And it was pandemic times when it comes to shoes. Before the before 2020, it's only predicting shoes and that's what still majority of professional kettlebell sport athletes were so described. Well, I mean, some people know, because I've actually talked with other people like Chris Stefan, who's a former World Chef and has world records for lifting as well. We talked about what a little bit weightlifting shoes are, but for people who haven't heard that obviously, can you describe what they are or how and just how they're constructed, etc.
Yeah, they also are progressing. But general ideas that is quite a high heel part. Well, in all times, it's also wooden. Now it's some modern material, some plastic and like serious, well, it's like heavy duty, basically made from like pretty solid material, usual leather, and then very firm flat, like you basically feel like like iron, you know, standing on the especially if it's a rubber surface, kind of like a glue to the platter.
So it's no roll left right and plus because of the heel elevation, well, you're going to very very firm on the ground, which originally, well, it's our motivation came from Olympic, we're leaving, that's what Olympic leaders use. So the way I describe Olympic weightlifting shoes one way is it's like if you took a hardwood floor and then just elevated it in the you know, so it's basically they're taking the floor and using a heel lift to elevate that. And do you know why they've all that way and for whom they are good and for whom they might be bad? Well, actually, at least in your podcast, when you really okay, that doesn't go the topic that's called origin of the weightlifting shoes that was very interesting to listen how it's came into Olympic with the thing and you know, the heel elevation, you know, make it a bit less challenging to end to work when you perform it when you're lifting a barbell or kettlebells when you perform it what's called the first deep second when you need to, well, it's actually in kettlebell sport, you need to keep the elbows on the stomach.
So you cannot quite tackle the pelvis back, but the knees going forward. So with elevated heel, it's really the benefit and less challenge to the ankle. Yeah, so the couple of things that people have told me, and I'm not an Olympic lifter or power lifter, but one is yes, if you don't have great ankle mobility, because your heels are elevated, you don't need as much ankle mobility when your knees are forward, like at the bottom of the squat or even in that kind of almost just I mean, any sort of knee bend, you're using less ankle mobility with your heels elevated. Another thing is with Olympic lifting, where especially with the snatch, even more than the clean and jerk, but snatch and the clean and jerk, when you have the barbell over your head, your shoulders are a little hyper extended, you're basically like pulling them back as far as they can go.
So you're using the alignment of of your bones to hold the weight up there instead of your musculature. And often, for the only lifters, they're hyper extended. So the bar is slightly behind their midline, which means that it's pulling you backwards. So that little heel lift is kind of adjusting your center of mass.
So you're not going to fall on your butt, basically. With kettlebells, obviously the way that you're holding the bells when they're ahead, it's a little bit different. But there's also one other theory that people started using them for squatting, for powerlifting. If I can never remember if they have shorter femurs or longer femurs, but it's basically depending on your anatomy, again, it can make the balance a little bit easier.
It's a bit of a crutch kind of fake out thing that for specific types of lifting and specific body types, that then like in many sports, like sprinting spikes, somebody there's a new spike design, somebody wins 100 meters in that spike design. And even if the winning had nothing to do with that spike, suddenly every company is making that design, everybody's wearing that shoe. And it seems like the same kind of thing happened with Olympic weightlifting shoes, they went to all sorts of powerlifting, where it's not relevant, and everything in CrossFit and just kind of everywhere. And anyone thinks that if they're doing anything, did you need them?
And sort of the last part that I'll my rant about weightlifting shoes is like most athletic shoes. And for no reason, it makes any sense to me, they're pointy. They squeeze your toes together. But just want to do the world's fastest version of getting a picture in people's minds about what weightlifting shoes are, Olympic weightlifting shoes look like.
And as you're saying, you know, you and everybody else in Catabell, that's where you started. But actually the difference between Olympic weightlifting and cataball sport regarding them, this heel elevation and ankle challenge is actually amplitude and Olympic weightlifting. Guys go all the way down, there's no other choice, right? When you're holding like 400 pounds over your head, your glutes go to the heel.
So the ankle challenge is maximum and we can probably say, you know, that's maybe the most strongest argument towards this heel elevation. And then in polylifting was the criteria, like keep parallel to the ground. So it's a little shallower. So it's a little less of a challenge.
Catabell sport, our underscore is like half like 45 degree. That's speaking, it's not too much of a challenge for ankle really, you know, like this heel elevation, like I feel like in Catabell sport, they're like in this group of three Olympic reliefs, in the Catabell sport, it's like least needed for sure because it's just really shallow short undersk one thing is you're holding the weight over your head and you're like sitting all the way at the bottom. And I think when your legs are slightly bent, that's one thing where, you know, it's like eventually why I switched to barefoot shoes to zero shoes because items honestly see any benefit in elevated heel. And then another thing is that the fear support on the edges of a foot that, you know, usually weight lifting shoes, their soil even might be like a little bit wider than the top of the shoe.
Even the latest ones, last year, I was making slowly progress, so I switched from Adidas and narrow pointy shoes to white toe lifting shoe, so which was a bit easier and spread the fingers, but still like very hard soil of the shoe that can prevent you from rolling. So that's an interesting thing is like, okay, we're going to lift you, move you further off the ground, but then to make it so that it's more like the ground, we're going to make the sole of the shoe wider. So there's going to be less opportunity for you to roll over an edge, which of course, if you think about basketball shoes, the number one cause of ankle sprains is falling over one of the edges of the shoe, where they make it wider with that same philosophy. But in fact, because of all the lateral motion those guys are doing, they'll still like catch an edge and then twist their ankles and be out for games or season.
So it's kind of comical that they've built they build back into that shoe, something that they had to build in because of how they disconnected you from the thing that doesn't need that, aka the floor. Yeah, I'm still in this process of analyzing this, but what happens in kettlebell sport, I can see in professional division, some professional office before I preach a white stance. Right. It's maybe like a 90 degree between legs.
Well, there are just specific of kettlebell sport direct fixation. It seems easier to reach them palis by your elbows when your legs are wide, and at the same time, the lower the knees so your quads can relax. And if you're like, if you're liking mobility, so you can compensate by widening the stance. Oh, interesting.
And then when you stand so wide, you kind of like sliding off the shoe and Olympic-wide eating shoes that's only the shoes to wear. Whereas if you're lifting something like you feel like you're rolling up the shoe to its edge. But I think it's not solving the issue. Well, maybe it's solving the the issue of sliding to the side, but it's actually makes you think less about your technique and improving as the athlete.
So you just, you know, get over over build shoes and kettlebell sport this right fixation. You can also get like some super bulky huge bear because you're liking off mobility and you can't quite place your elbows on the stomach. So you put like a very thick leather belt so you can rest arms on it and do some lifting by that. The most strategic thinking you should rely on the equipment as less as possible.
And that really motivates you to make major improvements in your body such, you know, flexibility so you can place your elbows on the stomach even without belt and withstands. And that's what I've noticed wearing a lifting shoes. It's, I have, I've received such a great feedback from the floor. And it's because we're lifting for 10 minutes straight and imagine like you're repeating the same movement.
So what happens is, you know, over the multiple repetitions, you might wear a liking of perfect symmetry, or slightly asymmetric or so one leg might give a little bit more output than another. So outlets then move on the platform slightly through the lifting. And you actually probably can tell like what's exactly wrong with them because some outlets moving to the left, some outlets moving to the right, some outlets going to start like tilting to the left or right side. So it's like, I think it's a demonstration of slight like a symmetry going with your body.
So again, I'm trying to, I'm walking through this in my head. So a couple of points that I just want to reiterate. So the key thing again is the rack position or one of the key things is the rack position, which again, people didn't really follow. Imagine just trying to put your elbows together against your body and then you're risking other two.
I mean, so I'm exaggerating a little bit, obviously. But thanks. But this is the idea. And so I like that, you know, if you can't actually get your elbows into your stomach, so you can essentially have a bit of a rest in a way, but also that's how you're going to help explode for the second part of the lift.
So then you can get a belt to fake it. And in the same way, the those shoes are allowing you to kind of fake it because the way they're overbuilt when you're wearing the shoes and you don't feel connected and you're not connected to the floor really well, you are, especially when your stance is wider, when your legs are further apart, you are putting force on the outside edge of your foot. And if that's unchecked, you know, you'll keep sliding, sliding, sliding out. And the idea that because we're not symmetrical, as you're still just doing this thing where you're heaving significant weights up in front of your body and up over your head, you're going to with that asymmetry and with the fact that you're putting pressure on the outside edges of your foot, you might find some of this image that if you watch it in fast motion, you'd see someone kind of scooting to the left or scooting to the right or turning clockwise or turning clockwise, which is showing an imbalance.
And this is the part that I love that you mentioned that I'm really landing on. It's going to show an imbalance that if you are just connected to the ground and your feet can feel the ground, you can feel those imbalances and correct those issues so that that will make you a stronger, better, more resilient athlete in general and in this case, better for kel you know, point there, there details but in kettlebels sport, that's a stance and so if you're standing, you know, with an ideal width of a stance, well, which is slightly wider than the shoulder widths, but then over the time, kind of under the radar, your feet sliding to the side, you're losing efficiency. Plus, you're keep falling apart. That's the issue of advanced athletes.
And the question is how to stay consistent through the set. And well, during the workout, we might use a mirror, so you just have a visual remind, but you don't have mirror on competition with the barefoot shoes. Like, what I've noticed that I'm noticing right away, once my stance started getting wider in the barefoot shoes and I adjusted immediately. So I'm constantly receiving feedback.
So that's how I solve the problem of my feet getting wider. Once I feel that, I said, it's very cool. Well, I want to dive in that a little more. You remind me there's a world champion sprinter that I know who said when you're doing the various drills to learn how to have proper sprinting form, your first goal is to get it right, and then the goal is to make it so you can't get it wrong.
And of course, sprinting, you know, it's less time or less opportunity to get it wrong. But what you just said is so interesting because what I say about a truly barefoot shoe is that the changes that you're going to experience are from the feedback that you're getting. It's what you can feel with your feet that's going to tell you if things are going right or wrong and gives you the opportunity to adjust. And normally I think about this in the context of running or even walking where many people just kind of swing their leg out from them and land with your footway too far out in front of them, again, walking or running.
And when you do that in either bare feet or in a barefoot shoe and you land on the back part of your heel less effectively, that's going to hurt. And if you pay attention to try to find a way to move what doesn't hurt, your gate changes, it gets more efficient, takes less energy after you get used to it, because you're learning something that takes a more energy to learn a new thing but then less energy if it's more efficient. But I had never thought just that simple thing of how your feet would be spreading out from the repetition and weight. And that gives you a chance to adjust to be more efficient through the whole thing, which I love.
What else did you notice when you switched to zero? What other things about that kind of shoe design did you notice and effect from? Yeah. So next big thing is transition from the bump to the underscore.
So that's a face when you perform like a jerk. So when you're kicking the elbows when it builds up, or you flexing your quad so hard that while you're basically throwing your body, it's like, like, seem like, oh, if you go from the tip toe. Yeah. And then once that weights to go, well, then you'll rush under it, going to underscore landing on your heels and because I think the weight over the tail.
So we don't wait. I'm just going to pay the picture of people for this one again. So you might know it if you're thinking about the clean and jerk for lifting, you know, they're basically doing effectively a dead lift and then getting the bar of their shoulders and squatting all the way down like, ask to the grass for a kettlebell. You're not squatting that far, but then there's that next thing that literally is like jumping to get the bar over your head and then squatting again to get underneath the bar and rather than trying to get the bar to go all the way, you're just getting the bar some way and then you get underneath.
So it's a similar idea here and just giving people the image of what you do in that, you know, imagine jumping, but you never get your feet all the way off the ground. You know, that's kind of the effect that we're talking about at the foot level. So like, and so when you're landing on your heel, you should get it just right and it's some others get mislead and they focus on how much noise they make by landing the heel on the ground rather than timing. You know, so it's all about to get under the weight quick enough so you can place your body and straight arms under the belt.
It's considered off timing when your heels on the ground and arms still bent. So then you need to press. So you need to rapidly go under it and manage your wild belt, go up straight in your arms. So the weight goes through the axle of the arm.
So it's a timing and it's not about how high your heels went or your heels went during the bump or how hard you draw them. It's about, well, just get the timing right. And here's the balance of like, let's say, if you have a very powerful bump, well, then your underscore can be shorter, but if your bump is not a strong one, then you should go down there deeper. But again, it should be just just a perfect timing.
And it's not good when it's not enough, but it's also not good when you're over keeling it. And I think the weight we think she was, it kind of motivates you to overkill it because while you have this like a hard, you know, surface of the heel and then when you guys concentrate on just slamming the heel into the platform. And because you have such protection that you make a noise, but you don't feel pain from your heel, you don't have you not receiving any feedbacks that you're over keeling it. Well, you're receiving immediate feedback and you understand once you land your heel on the ground, like you did it right or you'll jam it like too hard on the ground, or maybe not enough and you can roll forward a little bit.
So again, it just helps you to get it just too not just perfect, you know, when you're distribute enough weight on your heel, but you're not over keeling it. And well, that's another thing that I really like about the thin soils and barefoot shoes, that in a sense, where well, the bottom of the underscore. That's great. And ironically, it's a similar kind of thing with running.
You put a big bunch of foam underneath your heel. What's actually happening in that situation, aside from the fact that the foam almost makes you land in your heel because of how it gets in the way of what your natural gait would be otherwise where your heel would pass over the ground and you'd land more midfoot or forefoot. But the other part is that cushioning doesn't end up running you. The foam isn't actually absorbing any force.
The force is still going into your body. What it's doing is it's spreading the pressure out so that the sensors in the bottom of your foot don't feel it. And so you're not feeling it in your feet. So you can't really make those adjustments.
But the force is still going up into your shin and in your knee, then in your hip. There's research showing that no amount of cushioning reduces the amount of force going into your knees if you are landing on your heel. And it's a similar thing. So this is getting to that again, that information that allows you to adjust because if you're, I like the phrase over healing it, if you're overhealing, then clearly that's actually not optimal form.
And so to get that information about how to find that optimal form from the feedback, somebody with walking, somebody with running. So again, in this application, I'd love what you discovered. Did you notice anything with the difference in the foot shape or the toe box shape and how that impacted anything? And I'm not trying to lead the witness you might have you might not have.
You mean that the fire is at the top of your toes? Yes. Yes. I'll do it as well.
As I said that I switched to, well, I've achieved this result at the five frames December 5th. So I can say that it's like my experiment is officially and successfully completed at least its first run. And we are in, well, it was December 2025. But I started wearing barefoot shoes, zero shoes from 2000.
So five years. It's a long time solved problem with narrow toes. Like I stopped using them for a while just for all kinds of activities, for every day, walking and for running while and now for lifting. It's definitely a few more natural and stable.
Of course, even back then when I was using narrow shoes, you find it your way and you adjust it to the tool accordingly. But interesting thing was that it was kind of like a transitioning stage from this very narrow squeeze toes, Olympic lifting shoes to barefoot shoes in the middle was a YR shoes was a with a Y tool that kind of like transition, right? It's like they ease a little bit your toes, but they're still grabbing the whole foot and the heel, but still, you know, step to the right direction. I remember that once I switched to the Y tool, weightlifting shoes from from the classic narrow ones, I haven't noticed the difference first and I did a couple months of training.
And then by I think I went for competitions or something. So I basically I needed to use my old shoes by some reason, I haven't took my to work. And that's when I noticed, I said, okay, I haven't noticed how I switched to the Y, but when after a while, when I get used to the Y once I try to put on the narrow ones, I said, you know, it just feels impossible. It feels so high.
Yeah, I actually got a text over the weekend from a very well-known CEO of a very large footwear brand who wears that company shoes and wears zero shoes. For some reason, he had seen a pair of Nike that he had seen that looked really cool. And so he just said, well, they look great. I got him.
So he puts them on his feet. He walked like five feet and went, oh my God, I can't wear these. They're squeezing my toes together so badly. And he had just forgotten because it had been so long since he had worn anything that squeezed his toes together.
He forgot how bad that felt. So anything, so I don't want to keep you too long for this, but I'm really glad to hear just about your experience, obviously, and how similar it is to other people doing completely different things, which is what I find really, really fascinating. Anything else that you can think of just about either your experience of transitioning to using a minimal shoe for kettlebell sport or just the experience of wearing zero shoes when you're doing this? Yeah, another very cool thing that happens was I don't have crumbs on my feet anymore after a big set.
So I have what feet? Well, I never really have any major issues with it or this kind of like, you know, I was likely to call my life. But when I was doing competitions, kettlebell sport competitions, like major 10 minute sets, I wasn't really feeling it during the set. I guess this whole competition, but the moment I put the bells down, I realized that my feet like I barely can walk in just such a hard crumbs.
I just kind of like trying to with sprite leave the plop or so no one will notice and lean on the wall and start to stretching my shins and maybe took the shoes off, you know, just was cramping the middle of the foot. And it's not the case anymore. It's not again, you know, I believe in a scientific approach to experiment. And when you try something new technique or new tool for a couple of reps was a lightweight.
Well, you know, it's not the true experiment, true experiment when you did the whole training cycle and you took a real deal, weights and you did the whole thing. And it's not only you should survive it, but ideally you should demonstrate somewhat, you know, reasonable results. So that's how you can tell, okay, does it work or not? And right now, like I said, right now is actually the toughest challenge for better for children, only where it's not really clean.
And it's the most basically all what you do is you're going for the bump in the second bump in the second. So that's where it seems like you can choose the most. And I'm feeling great about it. And I don't feel any, any tension, any crumbs in my feet anymore.
I have a theory about the foot cramping similar to why people some report to, you know, foot pain in general in regular shoes. And that is if you're in a shoe that doesn't let your foot move, you're basically doing like isometric contractions. So you're trying to move, but you can't. And if your bodies in a position where the muscles or ligaments are stretched when you're trying to do that, you're putting them under strain where if they could move, you can use the rest of the structure, the bony structure to support the muscles, ligaments, tendons tendons.
And if you can't do that, you're just putting them under too much strain and position you're not supposed to be in. And even with, it's like little movements during the course of the day that allow you to alternately, you know, relax certain muscles while you're using other muscles. For example, if your foot is able to move, it will move and there'll be subtle little things. And this can all, I don't think anyone's tested this, you could do this with an electron myeraph and put that on people's feet and see what's different as if they're in a regular shoe versus something like your issues, which would be a very cool experiment to do.
I'm going to have to talk to someone about that. But that's my theory is that basically when you're trying to move something that can't move a stiff, sole shoe, you're applying force in a way that puts more strain on the soft tissue. It's really, if I made or shared the emotional moment, it's like once I really start thinking about it, it's the changing your whole life experience. It's like, you know, my association is like, you know, you're going for some safari tour on the bus, you know, like you see all this beauty but you're sitting in the bus, you're walking the bus, you cannot feel it.
And that's, for me, it's something like you're wearing the heavy boots that boots compared to barefoot shoes because when you're like, I'm running outdoors and like, I like to feel maybe a smaller rock under my, under my, like, you know, small toe or there, I can feel the surface, you know, if it's like a, you know, asphalt or it's a soil or it's a sand, like all this like feedback, it just fills you up with like way more feedback, the thin soil where in the over-boosted shoes, you just numb, you know, you just, the laces or velcro just squeezing your foot and you're not feeling anything. It's like a brick under it. I just, I joined it so much in all kinds of activities. And now, of course, maybe not surprised why it took me longer because while you always kind of want to maybe challenge the theory and test it out.
But I'm so glad that I gave the shot and I'm so glad that I'm at least in all the whatever time I have left, I will enjoy it in the barefoot shoes and I really think it's a good thing and I'm really grateful to you for creating such a amazing, beautiful project and even more to like educate people on how important it is. It's not just a new way to work on the shoe style. It's just a very serious and political reasons for shoe to be this way. So yeah, and what you described that emotional experience, I mean, there actually is neurological evidence about how, you know, letting your feet feel and move does things in your brain that creates positive experiences, whether it's relaxation or focus or clarity or just enjoyment.
I mean, that's a real thing. It's not, it's, it's a neurophysiological psychological phenomenon. And, and yeah, you can't go back. So, well, and then again, total teleplasure.
I'm really thrilled that you reached out to share your experience with everyone. I hope they find it useful. But again, you are teaching, you have a book that's out. Do you want to tell people how they can get in touch with you to find out more about kettlebells and kettlebells sport, which is an amazing, amazing thing.
How can people find you? I'm actually some last name. That's my username, my username, my Instagram, that's my YouTube channel and that's my website. And just to be clear for people listening, he's Dennis with 1NDE and IS, V-S-I-L-E-V kettlebell.
So I do hope you check him out because you'd be learning from one of the masters and that there's no better way to learn than from someone who has mastered this sport the way that you have. So for everyone else, again, thank you for joining me on the podcast. Again, a reminder, head over to jointhemovementmovement.com. There's nothing you need to do to join, by the way, just the domain name.
But that's where you find previous episodes, the ways you can find us on social media, how you can share with your friends and family and get them hip to this idea of natural movement, letting your body do what it's made to do instead of getting in the way of it. If you have any questions or comments, somebody you want to have me talk to on the show, especially if you know someone who thinks I have a case of cranial reorientation syndrome and wants to have a little chat about that, I'm Game. You can drop me an email. I'm at m-o-v-e at jointhemovementmovement.com.
And until then, until whatever is next, go out, have fun, and live life fee first.