Welcome to the Movement Movement. The podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember, your body was meant to move. Now here's your host, Steven Sashin.
You've got questions. We've got answers on today's episode of the Movement Movement podcast. For people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting from the feet first because those are your foundation. And where we break down the mythology, the propaganda, the myth, sometimes the outright lies that you've been told.
About what it takes to run, to walk, to hike, to play, dance, to lift, whatever it is that you enjoy, enjoy it. And effectively, and effectively. I'm Steven Sashin, your host for the Movement Movement podcast and also the CEO at ZeroShoes.com. And these are questions that have come in via email.
Some of them are exactly how I got them. Some of them are kind of combinations because we get a lot of things that are all similar. So I put them all together. If you have a question that you would like me to answer, just drop me an email to move.
M-O-V-E at jointhemovement.com. And speaking of which, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com where you can find out all the different places that you can engage with the podcast, where you can find the video or all the different places you can find the audio or our Facebook page or our Instagram or YouTube or you know all those different things. And of course, I'd love to have you review and subscribe and rate and rank and share and all those things that you know what you're supposed to do with the podcast. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
And when I ask if you want to be part of the tribe, it's because this whole idea of creating a movement movement where we're making natural movement, the obvious, better, healthy choice, the way natural food is, it's all about you. This is a grassroots thing. The more people who experience the fun and the benefits and the freedom of natural movement, the more we're creating a movement. So happy to have you on board, happy to have your help, can't wait to see what happens as we change the world.
Alright, so let's jump in. I've written down these questions. I'm going to stick them here next to my computer. Some of these are critical questions.
We're going to be covering things like what professional runners where, what happens with, you know, did people actually prove that being barefoot or natural is bad for you about transitioning to natural movement? And what's the last one? I might just say, oh, oh, and about strengthening. One of the most important things.
Again, feet first, strong feet. We'll talk about that too. So let's jump in with the first one. Here's one of my favorite questions.
Why don't professional runners go barefoot or wear minimalist shoes? Well, there are a couple of answers to that. My favorite is they do. You just need to look, especially start with my people, sprinters.
Take a look at a pair of sprinting spikes. And if I was smart, I would have a pair of mine here with me. All they are is a super thin typically piece of plastic, basically. That's the spike plate, the thing that holds the metal spikes that you use to get a little bit of grip on the track.
The spike plate is P-Backs or some other forms of plastic and then just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of cushioning. And that's it. They're super lightweight. They're not very flexible.
They're trying to give you some spring. So they don't have the whole natural movement thing down. But in terms of minimalist or barefoot, they are super, super minimalist. Then move up to middle distance runners up to kind of up to about a mile typically and look at their shoes.
They're in a shoe that's called a racing flat. And it's about as close to minimalist as any major shoe company is typically going to create. But it's pretty close to what human beings have been racing in for as long as we've been making shoes, not we, as long as companies have been making shoes for people to race in. In fact, zero shoes, we've just launched a brand new racing shoe.
This is our speed force named after the comic character in the flash because what gets in his power is the speed force. And we think these can do the same for you. But it just is really simple. Again, as close to nothing as you can have between you and the ground, except typical racing flat from a big shoe company still has a couple of things that I would say are wrong with it.
One, more cushioning than you need. Think about this. Cushning. A shoe company's love to use the phrase energy return for how good their cushioning is.
There's no such thing as energy return. All cushioning sucks energy out of you. No question about it. And then all cushioning is also tuned to a particular weight and speed, a particular force that you apply the ground.
And if you are not the right weight traveling at the right speed, that cushioning is not going to be very effective for you. And all cushioning breaks down the moment you start wearing it. I saw something recently, some people who had done studies on how cushioning breaks down over time. And most shoe companies recommend that you swap out your shoes every three to five hundred miles.
Well, when they evaluated how the cushioning degraded over time, they saw that after as little as a hundred miles, the cushioning was basically shot. The shoe companies, I think, say three to five hundred. So you don't get the idea that they're providing nothing of value that falls apart almost instantly and needs replacing almost instantly. Because if you saw that, if they told you that, you would think they don't know what they're doing, they don't know how to make a product.
I'm not going to argue, frankly. Because I think that's kind of ridiculous. And if you don't know your shoes, by the way, have a five thousand miles sole warranty, but that's a whole other story. So, the other thing they do wrong with most racing flats, again, squeeze your toes together.
Look at the shape of those shoes. They're not letting your feet move naturally. And what's incredible about that is if you squeeze your toes together, you can't actually let your big toe flex. And if your big toe can flex, you're not using the biggest part of the arch in your foot, which is a big component to strength and shock absorption.
So if you're not using your arch, then what the hell's going on with your feet? I can tell you, they're getting weaker over time. Because think about that. You put your arm in a cast or you immobilize any joint in your body, it gets weaker over time.
And that amount of time, not very long. There's a study coming out soon. I will reference it as soon as it's actually published, but I've seen it. I'm sorry.
I read Davis from Harvard showed the results of it. And the gist is they took healthy runners and put an orthotic and arch support in their shoe. And within its little as 12 weeks, they had lost 10% of the muscle mass in their feet. That does not sound good, if you ask me.
Now, when people hear that, they think, oh my God, what happens over time? You must get to zero muscle mass and you can't use your feet at all. That's not, of course, true. You kind of hit diminishing returns and kind of flattens out.
But more importantly, you're obviously making things weaker by not using them. Use it or lose it. And if you use it, you can un-lose it. So that's what we're all about here.
So, and then there's a second answer to the question. Because if you do look at the marathoners, for example, they're not in racing flat, typically, nor are they in spikes. They're in shoes that look more familiar to what many people see padded motion control shoes. Not all of them.
We've had some barefoot runners. We've had a BB-Bekila who won the marathon in Zolabud, who I think we're in the 10K. Can never remember. And Ron Hale who won the 10K in Mexico City, who ran barefoot, the three of them.
When someone asked Ron why he ran barefoot, his answer was apparently, it was the lightest shoe I could find. Now, why don't more runners run barefoot? Well, a couple of reasons. One, they're getting paid by major shoe companies to endorse those products.
So clearly, they have to wear them. Many professional runners get the majority of their revenue, their income, from big shoe company sponsorship. So, why would they not wear those shoes if that's the thing that's paying the rent? And in a similar vein, these are people who started running, many of them started running very early on in shoes, and they never had the experience of doing anything different.
And if I were a professional runner, I would not be trying to change to something that I've never done before and put my livelihood in jeopardy. That's kind of a silly thing to do. But then you look at African runners or some of the early runners from New Zealand who worked with the coach Arthur Lydiard, they spent most of their time growing up running barefoot and put on shoes. And many of them ended up having problems once they started running in shoes, because again, their feet weren't working naturally.
Or of course, if you read the book, Born to Run, and if you haven't, get the book, Born to Run and read the book, Born to Run, about the Todamada Indians in Mexico who ran the Leadville 100, the highest marathon in the world, certainly the United States. And they ran in some Wauche sandals, a strip of tire with some leather on its strap to their foot or barefoot. And they won that race. They were sponsored by a shoe company in the second year of the race and they couldn't run the shoes.
They ripped them off and finished the whole race barefoot. So, we do have minimalistic barefoot runners, but there's a lot of incentive for those people not to show up, not to exist, not to be doing what is natural. So, you've got a good company if you want to try that. And of course, go take a look at zerushus.com and look at our Facebook page and you'll hear from thousands and thousands of people who've made the switch, who are now running every distance you can think of in something truly minimalist from our Super thin sandals to our shoes, or even barefoot as well.
So, check that out. Okay, on to the next question. Didn't these lawsuit against Five Fingers, The Five Fingers, V-Broom is the name of the company? Didn't that prove that barefoot and minimalist is bad for you and causes injuries?
And a simple answer? No, it didn't nothing of the sort. So, I'm just going to do this really quickly. First of all, here's what the lawsuit was about.
They were claiming that if you wore the Five Fingers shoes, your feet would get stronger. Well, they didn't have a study that explicitly backed that claim up. And the lawsuit was for making an unfounded medical claim. Now, here's the second part that's relevant.
The lawsuit settled out of court. So, we don't know the answer to the question from the lawsuit of whether or not wearing Five Fingers shoes improved foot strength or not, because, again, there wasn't a study then. And the lawsuit didn't prove anything either way. It settled.
Now, it also settled for $3.75 million, which I know sounds like a lot of money if you don't have $3.7 million. But compared to other lawsuits where people went after footwear companies from making unfounded claims, like the toning shoes, the big thick shoes that the sketches and rebucks that would make your butt look like the Kardashians, which, you know, is the big thing. The Kardashians, which doesn't do anything like that, those lawsuits were settled in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So, why did the Vibram lawsuit settle for so little?
Well, there happens to be a bunch of dots that you can connect between natural movement and foot strength. I think that existed even when that lawsuit happened almost, what, nine, eight, nine years ago. That showed that if you use your feet, they get stronger. What a shock.
There's actually studies now, Sarah Ridge at BYU, who we're going to be talking with soon, had to do a study showing that if you did a, well, not had to, but did a study showing that if you just walk in a minimal shoe, your foot strength, actually the diameter of the muscles and ligaments and tendons in your feet got bigger, which is equated to strength. Your foot strength basically got stronger the same way that would happen if you were doing an exercise program specifically for doing foot strengthening. So, the thing that amazes me about this is why do we have to prove scientifically something so, so obvious that if you use something, it gets stronger or can. If you don't use it, it gets weaker.
And the answer is just shocking because the big shoe companies don't have anything of the sort. They don't have studies showing that their products reliably make you a better, less injured, stronger runner. But what human beings have been doing for millennia, we somehow have to prove that it's legit. Okay, whatever you say.
So, one of the studies that could have been cited, here's my suspicion. I think that Vibram, who really didn't care about the suit, I mean, they weren't really committed to that product at the time. They just wanted to make it go away and for them $3.75 million was like, good, let's make it go away. I think that day at least we're showing that there were studies out there done originally with the Nike Free in like 19, oh gosh, I don't remember when, well before the whole barefoot minimalist boom kicked in in in about 2009, showing that wearing those shoes made your feet stronger, not as much as something that's truly minimalist that doesn't elevate your heel and have a whole lot of padding squeeze your toes together.
But nonetheless, even that shoe is better than what was traditionally being recommended for running and provided more foot strength. I think they were enough doubt in the minds of the defense, sorry, the plaintiff in this case, the people suing Vibram that they were more than willing to settle for that small amount of money. Now, I don't know that this is true, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that lawsuit was instigated or supported by some major shoe company or companies. Again, maybe not, but it just seems like such a weird thing to do because 50% of runners get injured every year, 80% of marathoners get injured every year.
We don't see similar lawsuits against Nike and Reebok and Marilyn Adidas and all these other companies. Why is a fascinating question that somebody might investigate at some point? Alright, let's move on to an next question. And this one I'm giving verbatim.
How long will it take for me to transition? And it just stopped there and it came from someone named Terry. Now, I'm hoping that Terry was asking how long it takes to transition to being able to be comfortable in a barefoot running or in minimal shoe and not some other kind of transition that I know absolutely nothing about. You never know.
So, I'm going to answer the first part about what it takes to transition or how long it takes to transition effectively to being able to comfortably run barefoot or in minimal truly minimalist footwear. And the answer is, I have no idea. Not because I don't have any thoughts about this, but because it's all about you. It's an individual thing.
I can't tell you what's going to happen for you based on any number of factors. How old you are, how fit you are, how heavy you are, what kind of activities you've been engaged in up until now. If you spend any time walking or running in barefoot or just being on the beach or being in your home without wearing shoes, there's so many different things that could affect the answer to that question. I just can't give you an answer.
The real answer is this. Listen to your body. It's don't do well. It's going to say don't do too much.
But that's stupid because the only way you know if you did too much is by having done too much. So suffice it to say, start slow, start easy. I always say if you want to transition to barefoot running, get on a nice smooth hard surface that's going to give you the most feedback. Take off your shoes.
If you want to wear your shoes, your can, our shoes, our sandals. But if you really want to make the transition, go barefoot. It's going to give you the most information to be the most helpful. And go for a really short run, like 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and see how it feels.
If it hurts, do something different the next time until you're having fun. And then once you're having fun and you can do it enjoyably without getting sore the next day or anything, then extend that 20 or 30 seconds by 10 seconds the next time. And then another 10 seconds after that and 10 seconds after that. It'll build up much more quickly than you imagine, but just really, really take your time.
If you feel like you've gotten injured in some way, that's because you're doing some form related thing and correctly that you're going to want to correct. And it's typically one of a couple things. What's referred to as over striding, reaching out so your foot lands way in front of your body, trying to get that underneath your body, trying land on your forefoot or your midfoot. You don't need to stay there.
You don't just stay on your toes, but just that landing lets you use the shock absorber that's built into your foot and then the shock absorbers built into the rest of your legs. And then also don't push and pull off the ground. So rather than thinking about pushing off the ground by flexing your foot, you want to think about lifting your foot off the ground by flexing your hip. Like imagine if you step on a B, you would lift your foot off the ground, not push your foot off the ground, because that would put your foot further into the stinger.
So use that same thought. And then pick up your cadence a little bit. Some people say you have to run at 180 steps per minute. That's just a magical mythical number.
Just pick it up a little bit though, because most people tend to be running at a cadence. That's how fast you're feeding moving, not how fast you are running. They tend to be at about 5 to 10% slower than what's optimal. So maybe you're running at 160 steps a minute.
Try 165. See what happens. See what happens. And just play with that.
And again, you are becoming your own coach with the feedback that your body is giving you. And last but not least, how do I get my feet strong enough for running barefoot or middle of shoes, run barefoot or in middle of shoes. There's foot strengthening exercises that you can do, and we've talked about them on the podcast in other episodes. But the simplest thing is none of that is going to be the same as actually walking and running.
So start by walking and then bring it running slowly just like I just described. Use your feet, and that's the thing that's going to make them stronger. And that's what's going to give you happy, healthy, strong feet that could help you for the rest of your life. So those are our cues and As for today.
Again, if you've got questions you want me to answer, drop me a note to move at, join them movement movement.com. And again, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find out all the different ways you can engage with the podcast and be part of the movement, helping people discover the fun and benefits of natural movement and making natural movement the obvious, better healthy choice the way natural food currently is. If you want to be part of the tribe, of course, please subscribe and share and like and review and rate and do all those things that you're supposed to do with the podcast. I can't wait to see what's next.
We have a lot of great episodes coming up. If you haven't found the previous ones, go check them out. You'll enjoy those as well. And more importantly, as always, live life, feet first.
You've been listening to the Movement Movement podcast with host Stephen Sashan. Remember to join the tribe and subscribe at JoinTheMovementMovementMovement.com.