Welcome to the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember, your body was meant to move. Now here's your host, Stephen Sashin. You're going to take a walk or a hike or go dancing or lifting weights.
You want to have shoes that fit because otherwise you can have all sorts of problems. Well, finding the right size shoe, simple. You know your foot size. You know the shoes that you buy.
So you just get one of those, right? Well, let's just say that finding the right size shoe is kind of like seeing a Hollywood movie star in person. Things are not what you thought they were. We're going to dive into that and find out why that's a problem, why it's a challenge.
You want to do about it 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 with the feet first because those things are your foundation. I'm Stephen Sashin. We're going to be breaking down the propaganda, the myths and sometimes the outright lies that people tell you about, you know, how to dance and walk and hike and lift and do all those things I've mentioned, enjoyably, healthily, efficiently for the rest of your life, I hope. I like to say that we're creating a movement movement, hence the name of the podcast.
And that means that you are involved. We're trying to make natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice the way natural food is. That's going to take people who experience natural movement to spread the word. And one way to do that, of course, is to engage with this podcast and share it and review it and like it and thumbs up it and hit subscribe if you're watching on YouTube, you know all the things to do.
Go to jointhemovementmovement.com, that's dub dub dub dub dot join the movement movement movement dot com where you can find all the different ways that you can find the podcast, including all the previous episodes to do all those things that I just said because I like to say if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. So let's jump in, shall we? Now, normally those of you who've watched or listened to this podcast before, you know that sometimes I ramble, not sometimes always ramble, but usually I get back to the original point. Sometimes we just take some diversions.
Well, this time I've had to make some notes because I want to make sure I kind of do this in the most logical order that I possibly can. I will no doubt get it wrong and I will probably take it tangent as well, but I'm going to do my best to really kind of lay it out in the simplest version. Now, there's two aspects to getting footwear that fits your feet. One has to do with you, the most important thing in the world, you.
And the other has to do with shoes and shoe companies. And I want to talk about both of those and this will explain the problems, why it's so hard to find shoes that fit and what you're going to be able to do about it. So let's jump into the you part. People think, well, let me just start by saying that people like to think that if they think of something, it must be real.
If they think something is simple, it must be simple. If they can imagine something, it must be true. And we see the replicator on Star Trek, we think there's got to be a way of doing something like that. Okay.
I mean, maybe in thousands of years, someone will figure out how to manipulate atoms and all you have to do is say Earl Grey Hot and the cup and the tea at the right temperature shows up, but it's highly unlikely. And it's a similar thing with shoes. People think, it's simple. I know my shoe size.
Let's just get that shoe or let's just get a shoe in that size. Well, here's the other thing that human beings do. They assume, they ask them, they assume that whatever their experience is, whatever they're doing, whatever is normal for them is normal in the way everyone else does it. And of course, you know the whole line about assuming I'm not even about saying it because it's old and cliché by now.
So, suffice it to say, let me start with this simple fact. Let's assume that you're size nine. What the hell does that mean? I will tell you, nothing or very, very little.
Here's what's crazy. For a size nine foot, there are 54 different foot shapes. Each one of them will fit a shoe completely differently. So for example, if your arch is low or medium or high, if your foot is narrow or medium or wide, if you have a curve, what's called a curve foot or a straight foot or a neutral foot, if you have Morton's toe, which many people think means the second toe is longer than the first.
It actually means your first toe is shorter than the second. Your second toe is a normal length. It's just your first toe is shorter than it should be. I am one of those people.
Also, I don't know what this is called, but the angle from your longest toe to your smallest toe, that can need to be kind of square or a little curve or like have a very severe curve. So, you put all those together. Oh, and I can't include Morton's toe. You put all those together and all the possible combinations and permutations of that.
And you get at least 54 different foot shapes. And I can tell you, again, each one of those fits a shoe differently. So, if you have a low foot that with a low arch, that's kind of, actually, I'll say this way, if you have a low arch and it's a wide foot, you could fit a shoe the same way as somebody with a high arch and a narrow foot for reasons that we will get into in a second. So, let's talk about the two aspects of finding a shoe that fits the way most people think about it, which is not the right way to think about it.
First is simply length. Like, what's your shoe size? People will say, I'm a size nine. And I go, cool.
Do you have any eight and a half in your closet? You know, often say, yeah. Do you have any nine and a half in your closet? They'll often say, yeah.
And then how do you know you're a size nine? And then that usually stumps them. And what it means is that more often than not, maybe but not always in a shoe that they like they're buying a size nine and that's the shoe that fits them. But that doesn't mean that another shoe from the same company or another company will be the same size.
And there's a whole other aspect of length that most people don't know about because it's part of the mythology of footwear or lies that big shoe companies have told you. And that is, how do you make a decision about the right length? Because some people have ideas like you need to have a certain amount of distance between the end of your toe and the end of the shoe, like a quarter inch or a thumb width or I don't know how long. People have all these different heuristics, all these different ideas about how you do that measurement.
Well, here's the question, why? Why do you pick a shoe that's longer than your foot? And most people, if they think about it, they'll go, well, it's because that's what the guy in the shoe sort told me. Okay.
And here's the reason because most shoes, especially running shoes, if you wear something that's too short and you're a runner, you're often going to find, you see runners at the end of long races where they've smashed their toenails, their toenails about not black or fallen off. So how is it that they picked a shoe that's longer than their foot, but still somehow did enough damage to their toes that they ended up bashing their toenails and turning them black or knocking them off entirely? Well, one part of that is of course, form because if you are running and you land with your foot way in front of your body, especially if you're going downhill, your foot can slide into the shoe and slide into the front of the shoe. But that's not the only reason.
In fact, it's not even the biggest reason. The biggest reason because people, by the way, they'll have that black toe thing or pop off toenails, even if they're running on like a flat marathon course. So what's happening? Well, if you think about a shoe and I don't have one that has a here that has a midsole, think of a shoe with a bunch of padding versus a minimalist shoe, you're going to pull one off myself, like this is our zero shoe speed force.
It's actually the sole is only four and a half millimeter stick. It looks a little thicker because the sole is wrapping around the shoe, but there's no midsole, basically just a piece of rubber and then that's attached to the shoe for all practical purposes versus something where there's a bunch of padding, a bunch of layers. Okay, now imagine a phone book. If you were old enough to remember what a phone book is.
So if you take a phone book or any book, if you were old enough to remember what a book is and if you start to bend a phone book or any thick book, you know, the inside bends faster than the outside. The inside edges can be almost touching or the outside is still like barely curved. Well, the same thing happens in a shoe. If you have a shoe with a bunch of layers, a bunch of padding, especially that padding is stiff, the inside as your foot bends, bends faster than the outside and the shoe effectively gets shorter.
Well, if you have a shoe like zero shoes that don't have a thick midsole, that doesn't happen. So the length is the length. So many people have preferences based on what someone told them because of the design of the shoe, which is completely not arbitrary, but completely, well, shouldn't be the thing that's making the decision for you. We have some people who've worn zero shoes who have gone down in size because they didn't have to go up in size to handle the width and be because they realized they didn't need that extra length.
Now, I'm going to put a bookmark there and come back to the whole thing about length in a moment. But just keep in mind that one issue is simply that the choice about length is dictated by things that people told you about shoes that could be different from one shoe to another. Now, for me, when I'm wearing zero shoes, my second toe, which again is longer than the first or more accurately, first is shorter than the second. My second toe just barely touches the front of the shoe.
Now, if I was in a shoe store, they would tell me that's too small, but I like it that way because it gives me some appropriate stuff to feedback. I know where my feet are. I feel everything. And because the shoe doesn't change length as I run, I've never had any issues with my toes hitting the front edge and that being a problem.
Now, I'm not saying that's the way you should buy your shoes. We'll come back to that in just a sec. But that's what's possible with zero shoes or a shoe that doesn't have a big thick midsole in a way that isn't possible with a shoe. It's a big thick midsole.
So let's move to the other aspect of sizing, which has to do with width. And this is easy. You know the width of your foot, you know, narrow, medium, wide. You've maybe gotten it measured and you're a D or an E or a C or a two E.
And that's meaningful, right? Eh, no, not even close. And here's why. Because your foot is a three dimensional thing and there is no two-dimensional measurement or combination of two-dimensional measurements that will really fully encapsulate fully encompass the three-dimensional of your foot.
So the fact that your foot is wide or narrow doesn't matter. Let's assume wide doesn't mean that you need a wide shoe. I know that sounds crazy, but let's, there's two aspects to that. So part number one, this again goes back to, we'll say arch height, but what we're really talking about is the volume of your foot.
The overall three-dimensional shape of your foot, the oval-ish shape of your foot. If you have what we refer to in the industry, now you're in cool footwear lingo. If you have a low volume foot, a lower arch, a lower instap at the top of your foot, if it's just not very high, then even if you have a wide foot, you might be totally fine in a narrower shoe. Because again, the shoe is three-dimensional and basically when your foot goes in and it will stretch it out width-wise and the top will just come down to match your foot.
Conversely, if you have a really high arch and a really high instap, a high volume foot, you might get in a really, really wide shoe and it still might be too tight because again of the three-dimensional aspect of your foot versus the shoe. Now, one thing people like to do to try to figure out if a shoe is going to fit is they'll do something like pull the insole or the sock liner out and step on that. Well, that's cool. It just doesn't really mean anything.
Once again, your foot can actually make the shoe, I'm holding up my shoe, depending on how the shoe is designed, the sole and the insole can easily be narrower than the way the shoe comfortably fits. So, for one, the upper can stretch so that it stands further out, further wider than the sole or the insole or it could be the other way around. It also could be based on different designs. Wait, hold on.
Here's our, this is an Oxford, this is our Alston and if you're watching this, you'll see, but this is a completely different kind of construction than our racing shoe, the speed force. So, on the Alston, the upper comes down and basically just goes straight down and then that attaches to the sole versus the speed force where the upper wraps around your foot. So, these are made the same way and we'll talk about how shoes are made in a bit, but they fit completely differently or they feel completely differently just because of the different kind of construction and Oxford dress shoe versus a racing flat. So, there's that component as well.
Again, on either of these, depending on how your foot works and the way the shoe is designed, your foot can be wider than the base of the shoe and it's perfectly, perfectly fine. Now, by the way, in sandals, this is not an issue because sandals are two-dimensional. So, there's a length and width and that's why we have templates for our sandals. You can just print out the template, step on it and see how it fits in advance.
Shoes again, whole different story. Okay, I'm looking at my notes. So, let me jump into how the problem that shoe companies create. Stars include it every shoe company and it starts with the last.
I mean, it starts with the end. I mean, it starts with a thing called the last and this I'm holding up a last. And if you're looking at this, you will see something I'm about to describe and that is basically a plastic foot shape, not perfectly foot shaped actually and not actually plastic, but something close to plastic. They've made these in wood, they've made these in metal, they make them in all sorts of different compounds, but that's not the important part.
The important part is it's basically foot shaped ish. If you put a shoe on here that's made on this last, it'll fit. But if you look at the shoe separate from the last, they might look differently because once you take the shoe off the last, and I guess I should talk about why the shoe was on the last, it'll look different off the last and it does on. So let me tell you what you do with that last.
First of all, every company has their own last. They make their own based on how they want to make their shoes. Some lasts are narrower than others. Some have higher volume on the instep than others.
Some have toe spring, which means the toe sticks up because that's how they're trying to make their shoe. This is the template for the shoe. And the way that human beings make shoes and it is human beings who make shoes is they wrap the materials around the last, put everything together and then pull the last out from the shoe. Now, this is an interesting thing about shoes fitting.
First of all, again, different companies, different lasts. So while there are standards, and I put air quotes around standards for what a length should be or what a width should be, there's no real standard for lasts. You can have lasts with noticeably different lengths and they will be all still be the same size nine, for example. But of course, they will fit differently based on the length and that whole 3D volume thing and the design of the shoe.
You can see how complicated this is getting already. But the other thing is, even if you're talking about the same shoe, you buy two pairs of the same shoe. One could fit differently than the other because the person who put the shoe together, who wrapped the materials around the last, maybe that one person pulled tighter than the other person or didn't pull as tight as the other person. So there's still human beings involved and there's probably never going to be technology that replaces all of that.
And if there is, even still, you're going to end up with different companies using different lasts, different lasts on different kinds of shoes. So this is another thing. So this is why when you buy a shoe from company A versus company B, they could be the same size but fit completely differently, even if they're the same style. But it's also why if you buy a shoe from company A and a different style of shoe from company A, they could fit differently because A, slightly different last, B, different construction, again, like a racing shoe versus an Oxford dress shoe versus a hiking boot.
And C, there was a C, oh, and C, there's this other thing, look, I'm going to be totally candid. Making things is hard. Making shoes is really hard. And Laina and I, when we first started Zero Shoes 10 years ago as of today, ten years and a week ago, we had met some guys who had all been in the footwear industry for about 35 years before we met them.
And after hanging out for a while, they said, you know, we believe in this natural movement thing. It's probably the most important thing in footwear and for foot health. And we would start this company with you, except we've been in the footwear industry for a long time and we're not stupid enough to try and start a shoe company. And Laina and I both thought, well, and I think we said, yeah, we know that we are hyper optimistic and naive, but that's the only way anything happens anyway is people walking in blind.
And so that's what we're going to do, even though the blinders have been taken off, boy, we had no idea how right they were and how, boy, misplaced our optimism was. It's hard, making stuff hard, making shoes super, super hard. So one of the other things that can happen is, and this is not unique to us by any scratch, if you poke around, you'll see, this is true for every shoe company. So you can take the same last and have the same basic design for two different styles of shoe, but they'll still fit differently.
So what's going on there? Well, now it gets down to the materials you're using. So if you're using a material that's not like an extra foam in it, either for protection or for comfort or for insulation versus something that's just like just a piece of leather, for example. So let's fit around the last the exact same way.
Everything will be totally fine. Then you pull the shoe off the last and the leather shoe, nothing changes. But the shoe that has any of that foam in it, the foam expands inward. So suddenly you've got two shoes made on the same last that are saying basic design but with different materials and they fit differently.
Are you seeing why? Look, I know it looks like I have a lot of hair, but you'd be amazed at how much it's fallen out since I started doing this. It is shocking, even to me. So you put all of that together and this is really, really a challenge.
Now some of you may be thinking, well, come on, this is easy. Remember? So it must be easy. There's got to be a technology solution.
And because you're imagining one, you're probably thinking there is one. Guess what? One of the companies that have tried doing this and that are doing this with different kinds of technology. One technology, the first one was to basically get opinions from people about what shoes fit their feet and then based on what shoe you like comparing that to other shoes.
So what the company would do is they would do 3D scans of the inside of the shoe and then they would say to you what's your favorite shoe, which size do you like and then they would compare the 3D scan of that shoe that your favorite to other 3D scans and say, so you're probably going to like this one. This one's going to fit as well. Another version of that, actually that's kind of the common version. The other version is taking a 3D image of your foot and then having the 3D inside of the shoe and comparing those two.
And then there's another one which is using virtual reality or augmented reality where you just hold your phone up and point it at your foot and then it'll show you the shoe on your foot. Okay, so three problems. Problem number one is that for the first one, it just doesn't work. Now especially when you're talking about something like zero shoes where our designs are fundamentally different than other people's.
Our shoes are wider than others. They don't have the same, they don't have toespring. The length is just a different, the natural movement footwear companies make shoes very differently than regular companies. Or even a company like Altra that was one of the first companies to popularize wider toe boxes.
How do you compare a narrow shoe with a wide shoe or wide toe box shoe? Those programs couldn't do that. Similarly, when you, oh, God, I just remember this. Here's one of my tangents.
So there's a company, I'm not going to mention their name because I asked the CEO to be on the podcast and he didn't want to be because he thought that maybe I would be insulting to other shoe companies. If I got him all the podcasts, suffice it to say they analyze footwear and they have a whole bunch of technology to figure out what makes footwear comfortable. And he posted some results of their research that basically said for those of you who are making footwear, if you want to make it more comfortable, what you should do pretty much reliably is to make the toe boxes wider. Now he didn't say that that was just his overarching thing to companies that make shoes that always squeeze your toes together.
Well, we make wide toe box shoes so that doesn't happen. We're already doing that. So if you do a 3D image of your foot, your foot is going to be wider than the majority of shoes on the planet. And so how are they going to match your foot to a shoe in any way that does anything other than squeeze your foot together?
They can't. Now let's get to the augmented reality and virtual reality where you hold your camera, she looks at your foot and puts on a shoe and then tells you which shoe you should buy. Oh, my oh my oh my. So again, it suffers from the first problem, both the first two problems of just doing the matching between your foot shape, the three dimensional shape of your foot and the inside of a shoe and how that shoe is going to bend, how that shoe is going to flex, how the material is going to stretch or not stretch, all these other factors.
Basically there's no way to really get it quite right. But here's the bigger problem with the augmented and virtual reality versions. When you see a shoe on your foot, on your phone, it looks so real and you're going to think my God, I've picked the right shoe because this magic technology just told me that I did. If you then get the shoe and it doesn't fit or isn't comfortable, you or I, I assure you, would be more upset because your expectations were really high.
You thought this is it. I found the right thing. It's going to work. And then your expectations are dashed.
It's going to be worse for the in the augmented reality world than if I just said I'm going to send you a random shoe and then we'll just keep sending you new shoes till we find the right fit regardless of which one we start with. I'll send you a file for even if you're size 11 and will eventually figure it out. That would be frankly less crazy making than thinking you've got the right one, expectations being really high and then seeing that reality doesn't match your expectations. It's kind of like, you know, using Tinder.
It's just what you see in real life. It doesn't usually match what you saw on your screen. So last but not least, you know, let me sum all this up with one basic idea and then we'll talk about what to do to solve this problem with getting something that fits. The basic idea is this.
It's going to be like some of the three bears or at least go to the likes and the three pairs of shoes. If I took three people with identical feet and put them in the same shoe, they can have three different ideas about whether that shoe fits and whether it's comfortable. Even if for everything I just said, there's still one other factor that's perhaps most important, personal preference. You may, even if you get rid of the idea that you need a thumbs with in front of your foot or get rid of the idea that you need a certain amount of the shoe has to be a certain width compared to your foot.
Or I mean, if you get rid of all the mythology and you understand everything that I just cried perfectly, you still can have a personal preference. There still could be some way that you move that there's a little different than the way that particular shoe moves and it may be that it's different from season to season with the same shoe as material change or temperature changes. I mean, there's all sorts of things that can affect that, which brings us to the last thing. What do you do to get a shoe that fits?
What do you do other than going and trying them on in a store, which by the way, even that isn't perfect because what you do feel in the store is often like the foam inside a foamy shoe and that could feel really comfortable because, you know, foam is squishy, really comfy, but foam breaks down in no time and soon can go from comfortable to uncomfortable. The guy who I mentioned was that shoe analyzing company, he said most of the footwear either starts out comfortable and gets uncomfortable because the material is breakdown or starts comfortable and gets uncomfortable, whichever the opposite is if I said it because the material is breakdown. So materials breakdown and either start, make something starting uncomfortable, getting comfortable or starting comfortable and getting uncomfortable. Did I get that right?
I can't keep those in my head when I do that right. Suffice it to say there's that personal preference thing and then there's expectations even in a store. So what do you do in one minute? I'll tell you, try.
Just give it a whirl. Get the best information you can from the company, not from random people because again, they have totally different feet than you do. If you look on Amazon and you look at where people say the shoe either fits too small, too big or normal, you'll see that there's people who disagree on all sides of that. They might be in a skew in one direction or the other, but how could it be that someone says the size 9 is too big for them and someone else says the size 9 is too small?
It doesn't add up or that the shoe fits small or the shoe fits big or the shoe fits just right. So the best you can do is really simple. Just drop your expectations. Just know that there's people out there who want to help.
We, for example, do free domestic exchanges. So do your best. You know, take what you think is most likely the case, your favorite shoe most often based on some of the information that I may have just given you. See what that does in your head.
Pick a shoe size. Know what the exchange policy is and then just find something until it works. And then the best you can stick with that. So I know that was a kind of anti-climactic version of the what to do, but it's just unfortunately reality.
Reality is the only way to know is to know it's your own experience. That's the only thing that's going to give it to you. We as shoe sellers try to do our best to lead you in the direction of getting the best experience on the first try, but we, like you, are humans, doesn't work every time. And three people, same foot, same shoe, different opinions.
So I hope that what this does though is just illuminate some of the challenge that we're facing and that you're facing as well and know that there are a lot of people, not just us, who are really trying to help and have you have a great experience so you can live life fee first, which brings me to just saying goodbye by saying, if you want to be part of the podcast, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. If you have any questions or many feedback or have someone you want to be on the show, drop an email to move at jointhemovementmovement.com. Like and share and review and thumbs up on YouTube and do those other things. We'd love to have you be part of the tribe.
So please subscribe, go out, have fun and live life fee first. You've been listening to the Movement Movement podcast with host Stephen Sashan. Remember to join the tribe and subscribe at jointhemovementmovementmovement.com.