Why Cushioned Shoes Are Making Your Ankles Weaker — The Barefoot Truth with Colton Danz

A barefoot walk home. Three-quarters of a mile. Hip pain that had persisted for months—gone. No pills, no procedures, no intervention. Just feet on ground and a body remembering its own design. It's the moment everything shifts, when you realize you've been fighting against the way you were built the entire time. Colton Danz is a strength coach and movement specialist who spent years managing broken ankles and severe sprains that left him unstable on any surface demanding real foot strength—until he rebuilt his entire relationship with footwear and discovered his feet could actually work. In this episode of Health Is a Skill, Colton and Todd explore how modern life has quietly rewired our bodies: cushy shoes, desk jobs, car seats, couches. The listener will learn why feet are the foundation of everything above them, what proprioception actually means, and which single change in how you stand creates a ripple through your entire kinetic chain. You'll walk away with an immediate lever to pull. Todd Vande Hei built his career understanding systems and assembly lines. He built Health Is a Skill understanding that his own body was the most important system he would ever run. He carries his own version of this reckoning—years spent in shoes that did the work his feet were meant to do, posture that compressed instead of supported. His journey mirrors the problem Colton is solving: how a small architectural shift in how we stand transforms not just movement, but healing. Your health is a skill you can build. Start with the free resources at podtodd.com or explore team-based health optimization at stark.health