Mark Bell's Power Project - Expert Tips to Level Up Your Foot Health

Starting point is 00:00:00 Kids are born with no arches. And somehow, over the first two to three years of their life, they make arches. No woman knows how to make a baby. They just happen. I promise you, your feet are such a key game changer when we're talking about performance and long-term health. Toe spinners in the evening can be a really useful tool,

Starting point is 00:00:17 especially if you've been cramming your feet into shoes. 90% of the time, I train in barefoot shoes. When I'm warming up, it's going to be barefoot. There's this saying, this one professor I had years ago, he was like talking about this one issue. And he goes, it's not profound, it's obvious. That's, I think, part of the problem with modern footwear. What you do in repetition, you know, the shapes that you rest in

Starting point is 00:00:38 are going to be present in your movement. People have terrible feet, let's be honest. Your feet, if anything in your body should be nailed, should be correct, like nailed down by your evolution, it's your feet. They're how we interact with the world. What can your feet fix? Are you seeing, like, because you're doing a lot of stuff, you're helping a lot of people. I think the knee is probably obvious, but what about the lower back? What about the hips?

Starting point is 00:01:00 What about shoulders? Do you think there's room to help people with all kinds of different things from the feet? What's the most important part of a skyscraper? The base. Yeah, the base. What about shoulders? Do you think there's room to help people with all kinds of different things from the feet? What's the most important part of a skyscraper? The base. Yeah, the base. Why is that? It's what everything is sitting on top of, yeah. Exactly. So if your arches are collapsed, think about it

Starting point is 00:01:15 just as a stacking process. If this leans just a little bit over too much, it falls over. That is what happens. I'm holding a water bottle now i want to i want to say this too um think about this for everyone like everyone here's a lifter right imagine that right now he's going to be talking to us about how we can strengthen and build our feet your base the thing that you reproduce force through that that's taking care of this foundation

Starting point is 00:01:40 if you can build the strength of your feet imagine how much more you're going to be able squat. Imagine how much more force you're going to be able to create through your feet when you deadlift. The amount of leg drive you're going to be able to create when you bench. Imagine how it's going to translate to those numbers just by having- The dexterity. Your mobility. Jesus Christ. There's everything. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so intangible in this way out here. And I get what you're saying. Think about this.

Starting point is 00:02:05 How much can you deadlift if you don't work on your grip, like if you don't hold on to the bar? Just as much as your grip can handle. Exactly. Unless you use straps. If you don't train your grip, you can't engage with things, and you're holding on. You're the harder you grip. So the same thing with your feet. If you lose – first off, the pain is there. So if you have collapsed arches that almost represents by like turf toe, plantar fasciitis, Achilles pain, shin splints, your knees hurt, whatever it is, that's going to be an irritation.

Starting point is 00:02:30 The body is not pliable and flexible and moving from the feet down. And that throws everything else up the chain. Your feet have 26 bones, 33 joints, hundreds of muscles, ligaments, and tendons. They're meant to orient and feel the ground and move and engage. They're how we balance. The big toe is the primary glute engager. There is nothing you would ever use your glutes for. If something's hurt, your back hurts,

Starting point is 00:02:48 you go to physical therapy or whatever, it's like you need stronger glutes, you need stronger core, you need to stretch more. Well, guess what? You can't use your glutes if you can't move your big toe. That big toe is how we signal to the body. Just like I can't pick this water bottle up if I can't grab it with my fingers.

Starting point is 00:03:02 Everyone who wants a bigger ass, I want you to think about this. Stronger big toe. Think about this is why you got such a peachy booty, Graham. You should see my big toe. This is the reason why. You got that big toe strength. It is the equivalent of grab the ground, squeeze the ground, screw your feet into the ground.

Starting point is 00:03:21 It means grab with your toes, engage, feel your feet on the ground. And if you don't do that, you're not engaging those muscles. And when you don't do that, that's when you get stapled in a squat or you can't pick things up. Even from a bench, you are driving into it. Your feet are how you orient with the ground. And if the foundation is not strong, it's not there. If you have pain, you will be inhibited. You will not be able to use your feet. You will not be able to create that strong foundation. You will not be able to orient yourself to the world that you are on. And that will limit everything else. So, you know, we could talk about a few things. We can go like the five layers, like how. And that will limit everything else. So, you know, we could talk about a few things. We can go like the five layers, like how to fix that and anything else, like tangible stuff.

Starting point is 00:03:48 So like, you know, what do you want to hear? What do you want to, I can just talk for hours. Since those shoes are, Mark's like, this is a horrible idea. No, I'd like to just add that anyone that's listening to this, like there's some people that maybe are still working on their diet. They still are a little bit heavy. There's, you know, so I think sometimes people are just like, man, I don't even know where to start with walking, but yeah, I think walking is excellent. I also think that, I think that running hills is a really great place to start or, or even just pushing a sled, not running with a sled, but just pushing a sled not running with a sled but just pushing a

Starting point is 00:04:25 sled josh bryant does a lot of programming uh for a lot of power lifters will have people sometimes run with a sled and he'll have them go like 70 and just use very lightweight because most people that are bigger they need to be slowed down because they haven't been practicing running a lot of people haven't been practicing running like Like it's odd when you're myself and you go out and run, you're like, I don't really think I've run much in like 20-something years. Like strange. Like I should have never. There you go. Shit.

Starting point is 00:04:58 It's something that I wasn't paying enough attention to. Here's the thing. The reason you weren't doing it is because you're saying, I have goals, meaning I went to go, sorry, I'm talking to the thing. I have goals I want to do. Right.

Starting point is 00:05:10 This, I don't feel confident to do. And if the risk of me going and doing this thing is not worth blowing on hamstring, therefore, I don't trust myself. Therefore,

Starting point is 00:05:17 I don't do it. And there were some versions of that that I would do because like we did the stairs, you know, out near the beach and I would run, I would run hills a little bit,

Starting point is 00:05:25 but I'd always walk downhill and I'd always walk the flat parts because I'm like, I think I'm going to F myself up. But people listening that aren't confident in themselves, I would encourage you to go to a field, get barefoot, just walk,

Starting point is 00:05:41 see how that feels, maybe try to run backwards or I'm going to say just like jog slowly backwards. Yeah. And maybe just see what you can do when you go to run because you're logically, your eyes are going to map out the ground that you're on. Your body is going to be feeling every step that you take and you're only going to run as fast as your feet will allow you to run. Yeah. So let's break this to tangible things.

Starting point is 00:06:04 What can you do if you were a lifter? Like part of this expressing, so think about if you have more power, if you can run and jump and sprint, that's going to be you being more athletic, stronger, more capable, right? So the higher your ceiling is, the more force you can put through your body, the more force in your body you can put through your body, the more strength you have. Three things at start. You want to think low risk things I really can't fuck myself up doing. First sled is just like really going slow, intentional pushing that. And then if you want that to go, so all these things regress, they regress and go up. So the lowest form of a sled is pulling. The next step is pushing, very slowly walking, feeling the ground, thinking about making love with the ground, with your feet.

Starting point is 00:06:35 It's just like really engaging with that. If you want to scale it up to the top level and be explosive, push as hard and fast as you can for 10 meters. So that's the regression, if you have pain, the easy intro and the up thing, the the top level progression yeah the progression um then the same thing the next thing would be backwards so walking backwards if you have pain and pulling a sled is good jogging backwards to try and get a little bit more of this elasticity and bouncing and then explosive running backwards you really can't hurt the only thing you're going to hurt yourself going backwards is tripping and falling to make sure you're in a safe space to do that hill sprints you can walk backwards up a hill as a very simple way if you're going to hurt yourself going backwards is tripping and falling. So make sure you're in a safe space to do that. Hill sprints. You can walk backwards up a hill as a

Starting point is 00:07:07 very simple way. If you're in pain, you can just even simply walking up the hill as just like the developed strength there, but then like jogging at the hill and then hill sprint, you really like I'm telling you backwards, sprinting, sled, pushing uphill sprints. Those are the three things that you really can't fuck yourself up, but you can scale those up. You can run as hard as you want up a hill. You can push us as hard as you want. You can backpedal sprint as hard as you want. And assuming you don't step on a rock or you don't like do the, like the, the outlier things, those things allow you onboarding ramps to add the stuff in. And slowly you start to develop because those are all strengthening the muscles you use for

Starting point is 00:07:39 running and explosiveness as well. And then you get more confidence. And then if you want to go, you do not have to, I think everyone should be able to, if you cannot go and run at least 80% sprints, you probably should not, you know, I should, you probably, it is probably best that you don't go and run. It's like saying, if you have a blown out tire in a car and I put the spare on there, this is your reminder to go blow up your spare tire because it's probably too flat. I put it on, they say, don't drive over 45 miles an hour. Why? Well, because it's not rated for that. So you could say, well, that's stupid. I'm going to go to this one. I should be able to do this. It's like, no, no, no. Let's back up and say, you would want to go and get real tires that are

Starting point is 00:08:14 rated for that speed. So if you don't go, let's say you don't go sprint because you don't feel like your body can maintain that and do that safely. Then let's say, all right, what do I need to do to address this and to change out the tires, so to speak, to build up that trust? And these are things you could do. And then once you do that, then you's say, all right, what do I need to do to address this and to change out the tire, so to speak, to build up that trust? And these are things you could do. And then once you do that, then you start to get more confident. I think doing some barefoot strides really give you good feedback. So you're going to run correctly. You're going to not overstride. Most injuries happen, people overstride. They reach too far out because they're heel striking. Instead of shorting that stride, which happens naturally when you're barefoot,

Starting point is 00:08:41 and you just do what are buildup strides. You slowly build up, maybe get to 60%, and you slowly build back down. You walk back for rest. You walk backwards if you want. Then you do it, you go to 70% and you just stay well within this area. And then as you get more and more confident, you can do that stuff. And this is the expression of that. And as we get older, I don't need my 70 year old mother to 64 year old mother, sorry, mom, to go and sprint max effort. But I do want her to be able to have some of that capacity, even if it's just getting up to 60%. It's like, we all have the capacity to run. Everyone does. The question is whether or not we have the tissue strength and resiliency to be able to maintain that for the

Starting point is 00:09:12 distance we want to do. So that's what you build up. And as I build, as I go from being able to not run at all, to being able to just barely, you know, stride and do some jogging, running, then to being able to go 60%, 70%, what I'm doing is I'm raising up the ceiling. So I raise up the ceiling for how much force my body can maintain at the top, meaning how much, you know, the weight, the bridge can hold at any one time. And as I pair that with strength work, with walking and with, let's say, jogging, that's intentional. So think of like jump roping or like very slow, easy, watch like Ilu, Kipchoge, when he does his long distance stuff, it's very slow. Well, one of the things is like that develops the resiliency and the volume.

Starting point is 00:09:46 So I raise the ceiling and then I develop the volume. I build the base of the pyramid, then I raise the height. I build the base, build the height. Louis Simmons' pyramid is only as tall as his base. So that's the big picture. And then within that, that develops. Think about this. From an ancestral, so to use a broad word, but from a perspective of how we would have trained,

Starting point is 00:10:05 we would have, upper body would have been developed by carrying, by pushing, by pulling, by picking things up, by fighting, wrestling. Lower body would have been developed by running and jumping. The Greeks would have done a lot of jumping, like broad jump into a sand pit. If you have a pit, you go jump and you land.

Starting point is 00:10:16 Something that takes that soft balance of the force away. Running would have been, I sprint to build strength and explosiveness. You want to see strong pound for pound guys. Sprinters are what you want. The amount of force they can put in their pound relative to their body weight is insane. And then you think, okay, that's part of the equation. But what about the volume?

Starting point is 00:10:32 I'm bouncing back and forth. I'm developing this. Think about this. Walking, the form of walking where you land, you slightly invert your foot, you walk, you roll up through the fourth and fifth minute, cross the big toe and push off the big toe is the same thing as sprinting or as running minus the heel to heel part. You just lean in and you pronate across. But the same function and motion you have with this stuff develops the tissue resiliency.

Starting point is 00:10:52 So after 100 – so you go and you do 10,000 steps. That's 5,000 steps each foot that you're developing that, right? Think about that. If you're intentional – and this is the thing is you go and wear like a big – none of these are the hokas. If you're wearing shoes that let you kind of flap the ground every single time, down every single time, and you're not getting the feedback, you're not getting those feet stronger, then you can go walk 20,000 steps and actually be loading your body in a way that's not helpful, but it's still volume and you're not developing the resiliency. So you can make your feet stronger with just like some minimalist shoes, you think?

Starting point is 00:11:20 Think about this from a perspective. Your feet. I want to make this as simple as easy of an onboard for anyone listening as possible. It does not go do my process. It does not. I do have a process for your fear and pain, just so you know, but it is not like you need to do my technique. You need to do my philosophy. It's like your feet need a bare minimum. There's five steps we can go over to just like barely get your feet moving. And once you get that started and you move with feedback, it is a snowballing thing. It's so accessible. Everything there is like, think about this. Kids are born with no arches and somehow over the first two to three years of their life, they make arches. No one knows how to like, no one knows how to make a baby. They just happen. No kid knows how

Starting point is 00:11:58 to make an arch. They just never see a baby getting pushed around the stroller. Their little toes are always going. Yeah. they're thinking, they're feeling. So if a kid can do it, it's a self, it's doing itself. It's literally, it's like a battery of a car. The more you drive it, the more it gets charged. So if a kid can engage and do this, you can do it too. So the question is, if your feet are hurting in minimal issues, if they're not strong, if they're, let's say they're weak and you're in pain, then something isn't getting that

Starting point is 00:12:22 snowballing process. But once you get the beginning foot introduction, it's a snowballing thing that continues to build momentum and they get stronger and stronger by doing it. This is not something you're like, you need to spend 40 minutes every day doing active release therapy for your feet and then do all my specific motions before you even think about putting on a shoe and before you even think about squatting. It's like, that's overwhelming. How long has, for you as a clinician, have you been paying attention to feet of athletes? Because like, I was a soccer player. I wore cleats all my life. But when I was in college, I had to get surgery on my foot because I had a bunionette that formed because of narrow cleats and they had to shave

Starting point is 00:12:55 part of my bone off, which ended my soccer career. If I had, if like, if I was paying more attention to my feet and like wearing the right footwear for the sport, I would have been able to probably go farther in that sport. OK, and I'm curious, what are you noticing with athletes when it comes to their feet and what are some ways that maybe you have athletes pay attention to those things, fix them, et cetera? Definitely. Well, first off, I want to say this is a topic that needs to be talked about much more. Definitely. Well, first off, I want to say this is a topic that needs to be talked about much more. And it is way too taboo for so many people right now to talk about. And we need to throw that away because I promise you, your feet are such a key game changer when we're talking about performance and long-term health that when you start to realize it, when you get out of your shoes and you start wearing wide toe box shoes, you start improving your feet, man, you're going to unlock so much more potential out of your lifts than you ever thought possible. And I promise you, the first time you put on a pair of wide toe box shoes, you'll feel like you're wearing clown shoes. In literally a couple weeks, months later, you won't be able to put on a pair of Nikes

Starting point is 00:13:59 anymore. You won't be able to put on a narrow dress shoe because it's going to feel horrible. You're not going to want to go back. So first off, when did I first start noticing something about this? I would say it all sort of started because with the evaluation process I talked about, I would get people out of their socks and shoes, right? I want to watch you squat. And Chris Duffin always used to say, load is a very powerful tool for exposing problems. It's a great

Starting point is 00:14:26 teacher. So I'd have people squat. I don't care if you squat in shoes. I don't care if you squat in weightlifting shoes. If you're an Olympic weightlifter or you're a powerlifter that likes the raised heel, I want to see what you look like barefoot because you should have the capability of squatting barefoot no matter what. Maybe your depth is not as deep as before. You should still squat barefoot. Fundamental human movement, right? Too often, you get someone out of their shoes, that feet, you know, those feet are going everywhere. They don't even know what's going on at their feet

Starting point is 00:14:54 because they're always covering them up. Okay, it's one of those things, out of sight, out of mind. I want to bring it back into the full picture. So a couple years ago, I was really sort of going down the rabbit hole into foot stability. And I found Dr. Ray McClanahan of Northwest Orthopedics. Now, Dr. Ray McClanahan is the inventor of the correct toe toe spacer, which I believe, and we can talk about that if you want to later, why it's the best one of the different

Starting point is 00:15:22 ones out there for specific reasons. But he himself doesn't put out a lot of content specifically under his social media, but Correctos does do a good amount of social media. So anyone that wants to go into that, but I started diving down and reading a lot of his blogs and it just sort of dawned on me because it fits so well within my why, which is help people move better in the gym and in life, decrease problems and improve your potential performance. And I connected so much with his story. He told me he was a college runner and he was just having so many injuries develop. And he was looking at his shoes and they were just tearing up. And he was having these horrible bunions that were painful.

Starting point is 00:16:04 And he was like, there's got to be something to this. And I myself realized that too. I played baseball, football my entire life. Those cleats are narrow as hell. I got into Olympic weightlifting. I got my first pair of weightlifting shoes, the old Adidas from the 1998 Olympics. Those were the first ones I bought in 2001. So they were on the cheap discount back then. And those things are that narrow. I have huge bunions on both my toes. My entire life, my toes have been smashed into a triangle. And when I look at some of the early content I was making for Squat U, I'd be out of my shoes, but my toes would be smashed together. And he told me, take your shoes off. Take the liner out of your shoe. Now, step on the liner.

Starting point is 00:16:44 And at the time I was wearing, I don't know, like a Nike free or something like that. Step on the liner. Have your toes within the shoe liner because that's how it fits within the shoe. And then from there, let your foot collapse back and forth. Pronation, right? And see what happens when you pronate your foot as far as it can go. Look what happens at your knee. Notice how far it moves as well. Now, spread your toes out. Now, for some people, they may need a little assistance if they've been stuck in a narrow toe shoe for a long time. Your big toe should be directly in line with your metatarsal bone of your foot. And when you spread your toes out, likely they will go over the toe liner, the shoe liner, meaning that shoe is too narrow for what

Starting point is 00:17:26 your foot is designed to look like. Then without doing anything else, keep your foot in that toed spread position, let your foot pronate back down and back. And you'll notice when that big toe spreads out, automatically your foot is unable to pronate moreover. It almost hits an end range. And then in doing so, your knee can't collapse over as much. The position of your big toe has a direct impact on your foot stability, your ability to maintain an arch, and your knee stability, which then impacts your hip, your lifting technique. It all comes down to that big toe and its position and the position it is pushed into with the majority of shoes today.

Starting point is 00:18:10 Most people are wearing shoes that are way too narrow for their feet. And I don't care if you size up or you try to go to an extra 4E wide, they're still too narrow in the toe box. And it all comes down to the way shoes are manufactured. It comes down to fashion. And this is something that,

Starting point is 00:18:24 this isn't new to the 21st century. Shoes have been manufactured to have a narrow tip for centuries. There's research dating back that looks all the way back at the 17th century in people of nobility, of higher socioeconomic class had narrow tip shoes. People who are the working class, had narrow-tipped shoes. People who were the working class, that's where they had the wider shoes, the moccasins. So for a long time, it has been a fashion standard. Yeah, what looks better, a moccasin or a woman in a pair of stilettos that's got a sharp point at the end, right? Exactly. They bind a Chinese woman's feet. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:19:00 Yeah. Why did they do that? It comes down to fashion, to what people believe is the standard for the day. So there's no doubts why Nike developed shoes that are narrow-tipped. It has nothing to do with allowing the foot to function as it should. We put thousands, millions of dollars into research and development for these big companies. And all they're designed to do is find out what shoe you'll buy, not to allow your foot to function as well as possible. Because here's the big thing that Ray McClanahan told me, and this just sort of blew my mind. He goes, look at your baby footprint that you had, if your parents have it still, from when you came out of the hospital, when you were born. Your toes are the widest part of your entire foot. But as you age and you start putting your foot

Starting point is 00:19:51 into normal shoes, they come to a tip. Your foot starts to adapt to the shape of the shoe. And a lot of people don't believe me, but there are many, many research articles out there in literature documenting this in the scientific community where they go to places around the world where people do not wear shoes. Yes. And their feet are just as wide. Their foot doesn't change because they're not adapting it because of the shoe. Now, some people will say, well, who have if i have that bunion or i like these you know nikes the drip's got to be there right well then i would then i would then i would look at your your function right you do the shoe liner test it is no question after doing the shoe liner

Starting point is 00:20:36 test that you can have improved stability of your foot a better quality arch control and better knee stability when the toe is able to spread out. I think most people, if they were to take the sole out, as you're mentioning, like the shoe liner, and they were just to put their foot on it and not even do anything else, they would find out that their foot doesn't even fit on there at all without even moving their foot around. Post that you shared yesterday that I put up, people are like, oh, that shoe's too narrow. People would be surprised the amount of shoes, if they literally took their shoe liners out, the amount of times their foot looks exactly like that

Starting point is 00:21:10 within their shoes and they have no idea. I was helping Reebok years ago come up with a kind of powerlifting style shoe. I was just observing a lot of people's feet at the time and I was like, well, maybe it's just me and my chubby friends at powerlifting where our feet are kind of pouring out the sides of our shoe. But then I'd go to coffee shops and I'd look at other people's feet. And I was like, some of the, a lot of these people aren't overweight. I'm like that woman over there, she's not overweight. That person over there is. So it wasn't a matter of like just somebody being a bigger person and they had a bigger foot. I was starting to observe it in everyone that was wearing kind of like a tennis shoe, I guess you'd say, where the foot was kind

Starting point is 00:21:49 of pouring out over the sides. And I was like, this is, this seems like a huge problem. Ray McClanahan told me that he believes 90% of people are wearing a shoe that is too small for their feet. Yes. 90%. So yeah. So I started making that transition. That was a couple of years ago. And again, I, anytime I find someone that I feel like I can connect with their why and understand that it all comes down to mechanics and helping us move better and live a better life, whether that be in the gym or out, I started going down the rabbit hole and I want to understand not just where they're reading or where they're writing, but where it's coming from. So I'm going to read your citations, right? I'm going to be that science nerd that I developed after I got my doctorate, right? And just everything, it just

Starting point is 00:22:28 makes so much sense. A lot of people are like, where's the citations for this? Where's the research? Man, go find it. There's so much out there. You literally type in narrow-toed shoes in Google Scholar. You'll find a ton of stuff. And the great thing about it is it can be fixed. Even if you've been in shoes for a long time that are way too narrow, there's so much potential to fix it by just starting to adopt a wider toe box shoe, going barefoot more often. And then for some people that need a little bit more assistance because you developed that horrible bunion, there's different toe spacers like correct toes that allow that, you know, think about it like braces to the teeth. It allows your toes to just have a little bit more assistance

Starting point is 00:23:06 in opening up a little bit more. Let's not forget about the socks too, you know. Sometimes the socks have kind of compression to them. So like I have a pair of Vivo shoes that I really like a lot. But yeah, we've gotten into the toe sock thing. A little bit up, a little bit up. There you go. And what's interesting about a toe sock is that when people see you in a toe sock or they see you in uh you know shoes that are like that as

Starting point is 00:23:30 well they just like immediately they're like whoa like it's so much of them to handle but you're like that's a human foot you know what i mean i know some people think that feet are kind of gross or whatever but you're just like that's no different than seeing my hand, like me just walking around with a glove forever. And then now you see my hand or you see, uh, like a, something that's slightly over each finger. It's the same thing with our feet, but when you wear these things on your feet, you know, everyone kind of chuckles and laughs, but I think the socks are actually a big factor too. And there's something about the kind of almost like maybe kinesthetic awareness of having something in between those toes that makes you feel like they have a little bit more freedom. So that in combination with having a wider toe box, I think is the answer.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Well, you're talking about the feel, being able to let your toe spread out. I mean, you have so many mechanoreceptors within your foot and sensory receptors that allow you to feel the ground, just like your hands. I mean, that's the way our bodies were designed. And when you put yourself only in these really thick shoes, you completely change the way your body is perceiving the ground and again, hindering stability. So right now, like, and you look on my social media, I don't share a ton of lifting videos, but I'm always barefoot with my, with my squats or my deadlifts. I still put on my weightlifting shoes to do my cleans and snatches.

Starting point is 00:24:50 Cause I still train as an Olympic weightlifter, even though I don't compete anymore. And let me tell you, it's a very bad part of my day to put on those narrow ass weightlifting shoes still, because there's no wide toe box weightlifting shoes yet on the market. Um, but as far as squatting, I'm always barefoot and I would never go back because of the feel that you get when you can let those toes spread out and you can feel the ground. If your body's shifting, if your foot's collapsing over, you can instantly feel it and allow yourself to change your technique in real time the way you can't ever feel it if you're in a thick sole. How do you think a minimalist shoe has helped with shin splints?

Starting point is 00:25:29 I think it's just from the foot level, the foot is getting stronger with every step that you take in a minimalist shoe, right? And if you think about the goal of the technology in running shoes now, it's to make it more comfortable, right? We're seeking comfort. And the squishy midsole, the carbon fiber plate, it creates an ease of use. Your foot doesn't have to do much work. So now when you eliminate that and you get into a minimalist shoe or a barefoot shoe, now you feel the ground.

Starting point is 00:25:56 And every single step you take, and that's why there's a break-in period where it's like you shouldn't go from zero to 100, right? Because that would once again be stupid. Like starting maybe two days a week, slowly incorporating it on some small walks or things of that sort. But once that becomes a, okay,

Starting point is 00:26:11 now I can do this Monday through Sunday. Every day I could wear a barefoot shoe and have no issue. I think over time, my foot has just gotten stronger. Now I'm not saying that the barefoot shoe or minimalist shoe has been the only thing because it's not. There's a lot of other pieces to that. But I think one, it creates this level of awareness for me too

Starting point is 00:26:27 where now when I go to the airport or when I'm walking or sitting at Chipotle, I can go sit in my Asian squat and I don't care what the looks I get because I'm just like I'm working on my mobility. It keeps me more cautious because at any point of the day, I could work on mobility. It doesn't just have to be when I'm at home or when I'm doing X, Y, and Z. It could be when I'm at Costco. I'm like, oh, there's a long line?

Starting point is 00:26:45 Shit. Asian squat. I could work on the post chain, get some RDLs in, whatever. So I think over time it's just become – it's like built into my lifestyle, my routine. And the minimalist shoes, you may run in them a bit, but you also are kind of using them strategically. You're not – you have certain runs where you'll run in like just a running shoe that's going to actually help propel you forward right exactly so i mean pretty much when i'm in most of my other runs i wear some form of a running shoe when i'm in the gym i'm in always in a barefoot shoe if i'm

Starting point is 00:27:14 sprinting i'll either go completely barefoot or get into a minimalist shoe because i can really the velocity when you're sprinting it's forcing you to really get on your toes and be on the forefoot right so naturally you're going to be in a running gait that is really natural to the human body. Heel striking is not natural. There's nothing natural about it. That's why when you take your shoes off, there's very few people that heel strike when they sprint. It just doesn't happen. It's not the most efficient way for your body to pick up speed.

Starting point is 00:27:41 So incorporating pieces of that barefoot sprint work has also been a big thing. And one thing we were talking about on the gym is you mentioned like you on a trail and you did notice when you were using one of those minimalist trail shoes that your foot had so much fatigue and you just tell them about what happened. Yeah. I mean, one of my friends wanted to go on a quick trail run and I had like a 16 mile workout that day. It was just a long run getting miles in the feet. The first six miles I wore these Vivo barefoots and we went through a trail. So it's a mixture of, you know, hiking, jogging, running, kind of everything in between.

Starting point is 00:28:12 I felt pretty good for the first six miles. And this was the first time I really took barefoot shoes for a run. So six miles, I'm like, all right, after I was done, I'm like, all right, did the math. I'm like, I got eight or nine more miles. And in my head, I'm like, that shouldn't be too bad, especially now I'm going to get into cushioned shoes.

Starting point is 00:28:27 It should feel real easy. But the back half of those miles, I started to feel more fatigued, like my entire body. Because when you're in minimalist shoes or barefoot shoes, the energy that you have to use to focus on your foot placement, to focus on your foot itself impacting the ground, it's a lot of energy even though you don't feel it that much because you know for me at that point six miles was like

Starting point is 00:28:50 it was more of like an easy run i could do but then i noticed on the back half it wasn't just the heat in austin i felt like i used more energy in those first six miles so even as i was wearing these hoka shoes i'm like dude why does this feel so hard? Like eight miles around a trail, like it shouldn't feel this difficult, but it did. And I think it's just, it shows you that when you're using barefoot shoes, it requires more out of your body and your mind. And that's why Mark, like you've mentioned, people have talked about you having your Nike super shoes and like, I thought you were barefoot shoes, but those shoes tend to save your feet when you're doing heavier mileage.

Starting point is 00:29:25 And just save your lower leg. Maybe for someone that doesn't have experience running, it might not be a bad place to start. I do think that you can train your feet. There's other ways to train your feet. And I would say it's similar to a lifting strap. Straps and lifting, it might help save your elbows. It can allow you to overload, you'll be able to handle more weight. But if you're someone that's powerlifting and cares about having like a strong deadlift without straps, then you're going to have to also train your grip. And so in this case, you're going to want to train the feet, train the shins, train the calves, train the lower leg.

Starting point is 00:30:01 But in addition to that, just wear whatever shoes feel good. Like so much of running, what I'm learning so much of running comes down to like, what feels good for you? What food feels right for you? It doesn't matter if it's an uncrustable, it doesn't matter if it like doesn't fit this like particular diet protocol. Um, it doesn't matter that, you know, what you want to bring with you or what you want to wear maybe isn't the most ideal thing. What matters is how comfortable are you with it? Because sometimes you're running for several hours. When we started doing all this stuff with our feet last year, I noticed that number one, my foot striking changed and even the imprints that I would see

Starting point is 00:30:41 on my different sandals and different shoes, like I now had an arch because of all the activity that was now going on. So a lot of people are told they have flat feet and they're given orthotics. I know you mentioned sometimes orthotics are necessary, but how should those people with flat feet address their flat feet if that's even a thing? Yeah. Well, one, I'm curious. Can I see your feet? Yeah, sure. I'll take these off real quick. I'm using the Neboso. I'm curious. Can I see your feet? Yeah, sure. I'll take these off real quick.

Starting point is 00:31:06 I'm using the Neboso. I got the ball in half, and I'm stretching my big toe as we speak. There you go. Yes. What should I do with my feet? I just want you to stand there. Okay. Just stand.

Starting point is 00:31:20 So she's kind of checking out his feet here. Analysis of the foot going on. Play by play. So I would actually call that more of like a pancake foot. What's a pancake foot? I love pancakes. Pancakes are tasty, so we're winning right here. Some syrup.

Starting point is 00:31:52 He does have syrup in his desk right here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's cook those butterworths sugar-free. That's the good stuff there. Pancake feet. So, yeah, what are pancake feet okay so yeah it's like the cartoons like when they're uh starving and the guy turns into like a hamburger with the butter on top oh boy sorry about that um yes so i classify flat feet which again means nothing so when people say oh i have flat feet like what does that mean right people when people say, oh, I have flat feet, like what does that mean, right?

Starting point is 00:32:26 People kind of say it as if it's a bad thing and you're just saying it maybe doesn't mean a whole lot. Yeah, it has no – I have no context for that because there's so many different subcategories of flat turf feet, let's say. So what you have is no arch. Just because you don't have a arch. And when I say an arch, you do. I was listening to one of the episodes where you were showing on your shoes your imprint and you can see it, right? So it's not like your navicular, an entire medial plantar foot is on the floor. You have a lower arch, right?

Starting point is 00:33:03 Okay, fine, right? Your navicular position is not as high as maybe mine. That's fine, right? That's your foot. But what I look for is this overpronation moment, okay? And the overpronation moment is the spiral component that we were kind of talking about, right? So do you have a shift in the direction of eversion internal rotation, which is part of pronation, okay? Now, when I see that on someone's foot, I then want to understand, is it flexible or is it rigid? Certain people's feet is over pronated with the spiral in a rigid form that's typically like a later stage they have

Starting point is 00:33:45 severe pain because all of the joints are arthritic but that's like a later stage but it's a foot that you have to understand right and then the opposite of that or what typically happens before that is a flexible so that would be someone where they look at their foot and they're like oh look at that arch i got a nice beautiful arch and then they stand up and they're like, whoo, look at that arch. I got a nice, beautiful arch. And then they stand up and they go boom. But when they collapse, they're like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not doing that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:14 Right? So they have. If I did that, I could feel if I did that. You would feel if you did that, right? Yeah. So you have, you know, eversion, internal rotation. There's a spiral moment to it. It's flexible though, because if I just look at internal rotation, there's a spiral moment to it. It's flexible though,

Starting point is 00:34:31 because if I just look at your foot, it's neutral, no gravity, no body weight, you stand up, boom, right? Then you have to say, well, why is that happening in that person? Do they have a weak foot? I don't know. Maybe in certain cases, or the big one is they might have an element of ligament laxity. And this is the big one that a lot of people overlook or forget, right? Ligament laxity is oftentimes genetic, right? So we all have connective tissue properties that are genetic. And in certain people, the ligaments, where we have over 100 ligaments in your foot are just a little bit too flexible to support all of your body weight, force, acceleration, gravity, all of that, that it just starts to kind of collapse in the spiral. That is very different than someone who is muscle weakness.

Starting point is 00:35:20 Muscle weakness, strengthen the foot, strengthen the post-tips, strengthen the core, strengthen the glutes, and you help to de-rotate them but we're strengthening the de-rotators of the foot yeah to then stabilize the foot now a pancake foot that's just my term that's not like a medical term except if you go to another podiatrist and be like, I have a pancake foot. They'll be like, I don't know what you're talking about. So a pancake foot is, so this was frontal transverse, right? Or planes. Yours is sagittal. Yours is just genetic. Your bones were developed with a slight, sorry if this is confusing, a slight declination to the bone. So instead of them being inclined, this is your arch, right?

Starting point is 00:36:09 They're just a little bit declinated. Yes. Okay? That's just part of your structure. Okay? Okay. So your foot does not tolerate orthotics. I would never give a foot like yours orthotics because I know that it wouldn't work.

Starting point is 00:36:23 Thanks, doc. Appreciate it. Because if you- The years of fucking orthotics as a teenager, it wouldn't work appreciate it because if you years of fucking orthotics as a teenager fuck you bro i'm joking but not joking anyway let's keep on just find that guy yeah i need a fucking strangler oh boy if you try to put something like a hard piece of plastic that's what orthotics are right they're like a stiff thick hard piece of plastic trying to drive your arch up. Let me just force these bones up. But the bones are technically like parallel to the ground. That's your structure. I can't move that shit, right? So you have to understand that. Now, could we build a little bit of intrinsic

Starting point is 00:37:01 muscle strength? You've already said you've done that, right? Can I strengthen the glutes? Can I get my feet connected to my core? Absolutely, right? And I see tons of high-level athletes with your exact same feet. And really my colleagues who in school we would be like orthotics, orthotics, would be like, how does that athlete not have injuries? I'm like, because they don't have that spiraling internal rotation, right? So that's how I start to look at quote unquote flat feet. Yeah. The arches of our feet are supposed to be

Starting point is 00:37:32 non-weight bearing, but for some people, if their foot is pronated a certain way, or if they don't have a super high arch, then that area of the foot is going to be weight-bearing to some extent, right? Correct. Yes. And so therefore, they might need a different kind of help than the next person, right? Yeah. So I will typically teach people how to find their passive pressure distribution. And I'll just have them stand. I typically have them stand on an oboso mat because it'll force them to feel the weight distribution. And they'll just stand with their feet shoulder-width apart with the eyes shut and just totally relaxed, right? Passive, relaxed.

Starting point is 00:38:12 And just take an assessment and feel where is your body's pressure, right? Do you have more in one foot versus the other foot? Maybe the front of the feet or the back of the feet, on the inside or the outside. So you're just doing like a self-check. And then it often helps people realize, okay, if I have a standing desk or when I move, when I'm cooking, brushing my teeth, whatever, where they're standing passive, this is where my body weight wants to sit. And then I can understand the effect on the rest of the body.

Starting point is 00:38:40 Yeah. Where my default, I like to shift to the side of my feet. I have a higher arch, right? So my passive, it actually feels like I'm like this. I'm not all the way in a, on the side of my feet, but that's where the tendency is. So it'll be up into my IT band and then into my hips. So if I'm like, damn it, why are my hips always so tight like my glutes oh okay because when i stand i'm passively in this inverted supinated position so i need to be like okay tripod spread it out find a stable centered base and then there we go as we've been going down this rabbit hole of fixing our feet fixing the way we move and adjusting things in terms of how our actions like you look at the imprint that I have on this shoe, this earth runner. And you saw some flaws with it. But the thing that I was surprised about, I'm like, this is weird, is I can see my fucking arch.

Starting point is 00:39:36 I have an arch. When I was told you're flat footed, you don't have an arch. Here's an orthotic. And that's in both these feet. Like, I don't know if you can see this on camera, but I have an arch in this and it's going to continue improving over time. So when it comes to a lot of this movement stuff we're talking about and adjusting the way you move and making these small changes over time, you can change the, you don't have to be flat footed if you were told you were flat footed. A lot of it is maybe the

Starting point is 00:40:03 things you're doing in the gym, maybe some of the things you're doing with your feet the way you're walking all of these things can be changed to be ideal and you're not stuck with that that paint of being flat footed if if you've been flat footed for a long time use the same thing we just talked about think of it as a behavior instead of a shape you know what i'm saying like the behavior of the foot is not the the same as a flat-footed behavior flat-foot behavior could be one thing but the other thing with the human body is is it's going to protect itself in a lot of different ways right like you know you were saying you was working your scap because you had the injury so you know that you're kind of protecting yourself on that side. So you were trying to decompress it, so to speak, right, and open it up. The foot, I've seen people wear, I'm going to tell you who's a perfect example of it,

Starting point is 00:40:56 is the fashion jogger. Y'all know who that is? The fashion jogger? Pull her up. She's this beautiful Italian woman that runs. It's on a commercial. Yeah, probably so. I know you. She runs. Ten years ago, she would bow and corner.

Starting point is 00:41:08 Now she's pre-cornered. But what happened is she's starting to get a little bit inside ankle bone low. Well, she recently, not too long ago, had an injury where she said that there was an extra piece of bone by her navicular. Was it an extra piece of bone or was it a tissue that was being developed because the behavior the ankle started to fall in and that becomes like a callus type yeah yeah calcifies to protect itself right because it's starting to land right there and it's starting to go so it's like it puts a tissue there yeah that's her oh okay no this isn I – okay. So she runs all over the world. Yeah, yeah. She'll go running in snow and she's running.

Starting point is 00:41:47 And she's like – she's got some crazy time too. But, you know, if you're not moving right, the injury is going to come. So when we see somebody that goes super flat-footed in their behavior, see, she's got the heel flip because if you land pre-cornered, meaning your knee is in when you land instead of when your foot comes off the ground, then your heel is going to be automatically going to be away. Couldn't catch up to her if I wanted to. Fucking flying, man. She's moving fast.

Starting point is 00:42:15 Her run looks so aesthetic. She's easy on eyes, too. I mean her run. She's good looking, too, but I was talking about her run, guys. You animals. Jesus. I didn't see her run yet. I love you, Fallon.

Starting point is 00:42:34 That's my wife. Uh-oh. You're putting us in danger, Andrew. Stop. This is all Andrew's doing. This is all just talking about form. We had Corey Schlesinger on the podcast, Phoenix Suns strength coach, You're putting us in danger, Andrew. Stop. This is all Andrew's doing. This is all just talking about form. You had Corey Schlesinger on the podcast, Phoenix Suns strength coach.

Starting point is 00:42:53 And I heard other people kind of say this as well. Like some people are of the belief that you should be able to do all different kinds of things with your foot and with your ankle and with your hip. When we brought some of the go-to stuff up to him and we brought certain things up to him, he was just like, I think that you should be able to do it all. And I don't think that you're saying that you shouldn't be able to do it all. But I think what you're saying, and I don't want to put words in your mouth so you can clarify. But what you're saying is you're trying to recode people with a particular system to have them respond to patterns that they start to ingrain into their everyday life, into their sport. It's more of that, right? You're not like saying, I don't want to ever see these movements.

Starting point is 00:43:33 They might happen. You might end up in compromising positions in sport. But there's not really, probably in your opinion, not a reason to train through those bad positions? Well, this is what i would say training in the bad position is not going to make you resilient to it um and so training with the knees collapsed you know doing a squat no it's not going to make you resilient to it because a guy like kevin durant would have never tore his achilles who gets more reps in on duck foot in their front chain right than kevin durant That's a good point. So he would

Starting point is 00:44:06 be the strongest person in the world. Now, saying that we was actually watching a video with Corey early and he don't like us. And that's okay. It don't matter to me. I got like a very small circle. But I mean, he's an NBA strength coach.

Starting point is 00:44:24 He's dealing with high-level guys. NBA's had all-time history. ACL, Achilles' Taz, and things like that. So, again, we have these strength coaches that's part of a problem. And then instead of saying, listen, all of that shit's all the same regurgitated bullshit that they all saying. So when you see them, I was watching the Boston Celtics warm up in a championship. And one of the dudes that has been injured all the time, I can't remember who it was,

Starting point is 00:44:53 but somebody brought it to my attention. They showed he had bands around his ankles and he was walking like this. And he was walking around or whatever. And it's like the dude gets hurt, but that's his warm up. he was walking around or whatever and it's like the dude gets hurt but that's his warm-up he so so they had odell was prepping his his uh for the super bowl he was prepping his uh his warm-up was like some kind of thing where he was doing this stuff where he was slamming the inside of the foot into the ground he had bands around his knees and stuff like that and then he goes out there and tears his acl in that shape. Now.

Starting point is 00:45:27 What you guys predicted when you were here last time. Well, we worked with him four years ago. So we saw it in his workouts that he was standing on a Bosu ball and they were throwing him a football and he had these arm things on. Now, a lot of times it's products, right? Like he was working his band system product for somebody. We went work with him. We did like three or four workouts with him. And then he never did a FaceTime.

Starting point is 00:45:48 He never followed up with us or anything like that. And then he went out two years later and he tore his ACL on the left leg. I have the video. I got the thing on my phone where your conversation is deleted after. But we told him that his left side was going to be at risk because of what he was doing on the Bosa ball. He was balancing, and he was introducing collapse to it. Now, that's a good little segue to the little kid, the baby that I had showed you because what you do in repetition or what you do consistently

Starting point is 00:46:18 or the shapes that you rest in are going to be present in your movement, right? It's going to show up in your game. So if you pull up the video, Andrew. Where he's sitting? Yeah, the baby where he's sitting first. So you see how he's sitting inside ankle bone low? He's on that big toe, right? Now, if you go to the other video.

Starting point is 00:46:36 Let's see if people can see it. And this is a family member, and they just want, you know, they believe in what we do. You see it there. Now, if you go to the run, you'll see, slow that down, you'll see that shape in the run. The same shape that he sits in in the run. Right?

Starting point is 00:46:58 Now, go pull up the one that I put with Jameis Winston. So this is Jameis Winston stretching in the W and then he goes down into that position because he introduced that to his nervous system. So when he got pulled, his moment of who I am and what kind of security or infrastructure I've built in my body, if I introduce my nervous system again, like we said, a five-year-old, right? If I show it inside ankle bone low and a w sit like that it will use that on the field at some point well it's a great video aaron rogers going out of bounds and he's getting pulled down the exact same way he goes inside ankle bone

Starting point is 00:47:37 high i got um the kid uh jake from that was the quarterback at um University of Georgia in the SEC Championship about three years ago against LSU. Same thing. He gets hit, and he goes into a child rocker position, and he gets laid flattened out, both heels out, toes are in. He lays flat on his back, and he gets up, and he makes the next play. Yeah. You know? One thing, because you did mention the BOSU ball,

Starting point is 00:48:04 and I think with a lot of these tools, it depends on what the athlete is doing with it. Right. Like you mentioned, like he was going into those positions with the tool, but you don't have to use that tool. You don't have to go into those positions with that tool. It can be used for some great movements and great balance if you're doing the right things on it. Right. Right. So I did want to mention that because I think that's an amazing tool if the athlete uses it correctly.

Starting point is 00:48:31 Oh, the BOSU ball is awesome. The BOSU ball? Yeah, we use it. You can get into like a dome position with the feet and something like a hip circle, bands around the waist. I mean you can drive the heel out. Like that's what I always teach when I teach people to mess with any of those types of movement is to drive the heel out first not to drive the toes out but you never know what the fuck people are going to do yeah when they're when they're utilizing uh certain tools yeah i mean i we like uh we like the bosu ball we use it for a couple of things um you know we have our little

Starting point is 00:49:00 products like the wet the chucks and the slant boards and things like that. What's your take on toe spreaders? I think toe spreaders in the evening can be a really useful tool to restore what your feet should be doing, especially if you've been cramming your feet into shoes. When I was 20, I went to Nepal and did this big trek up to Everspace Camp. We did like 26 days in the mountains. And there were these porters who were carrying 80 kilos on their back, and they were barefoot.

Starting point is 00:49:30 And their feet looked like triangles. So the heel was back, but their feet were so wide, and none of their toes touched. And every time they took a step, the toes touched the ground. So they were carrying these huge loads barefoot in the mountains, and they had these feet. And I remember being like, whoa, that's weird. So toe spreader is a great way to recover your feet, especially if you're having to use a shoe that does what? That compromises your foot function. So again,

Starting point is 00:49:56 all tools are valuable. When am I going to do it? How useful if I have to wear a cute shoe and then, you know, I'm a climber or I wear a soccer shoe, great, great recovery. You know, even Olympic lifting shoes aren't, aren't necessarily designed for your foot function. Yeah. I mean, seriously, you guys, I don't think, you know, like Kelly may have broken the internet a few times, but he broke the internet the most when he was like, sorry, people, you can't wear flip-flops. I mean, whatever on all the other ways that, you know, he is, he's like made people mad. Brian McKenzie from a million years ago. the other ways that you know he is he's like people mad brian mckenzie from a million years ago that's the number one like people freaked out they were like it was as though i don't know it was it was it was hard it wasn't hard because i was right can you reiterate the flip-flop thing

Starting point is 00:50:35 though because i don't think people got mad i've seen that they got actually mad all right everyone look here's the deal if you're going to the bathroom on a gas station in the middle of a long drive, definitely feel free to wear flip flops. And what we see here with these flip flops is and I got married in flip flops before I knew. I just want you to know. Yeah, people are going to pull up old pictures. Liar. If there's any of those photos on the Internet, someone's going to find them. So remember what we said is I'm trying to not change my function at all.

Starting point is 00:51:09 I'm trying to have shoes and clothes that just allow me and my body to do what it should do. So in order to keep the flip-flop on, you have to just clench your big toe. And that changes how you walk because as soon as that toe can't flex, you actually can't make your foot do what your foot is designed to do. As you walk and that big toe flexes, that flexible plantar fascia everyone hates becomes a rigid spring. And that allows you to transfer energy and use energy from your calf to propel yourself forward. So if you clench that big toe, you've created an artificially rigid foot, super rigid foot. Talk to anyone who has turf toe, and they can't walk through their big toe.

Starting point is 00:51:49 And they end up walking around. So now if your toe is super stiff, you end up solving that problem by walking through your foot, not around your foot rather than sort of using your ankle and using your toes the way they should be. And what you start to see is that arch and foot starts to lose some of its integrity. It loses its spring. It starts to kind of collapse a little bit. And if you see in cultures where people are barefoot, their feet look rad. And in cultures where they were flip-flops, they don't look as good. In fact, in Hawaii, they call it island feet. There's actually a phenomenon for people who wear slippers all the time.

Starting point is 00:52:23 Their feet tend to be just look like they've been created this rigid thing. Go ahead and sprint in the flip-flop and let me know how that goes for you. So again, I say to you, if we add speed to this, how does that work? There is that one video that's been going around about that really good runner who runs in like every kind of shoe, including a flip-flop. Have you seen that thing? Have you seen that video? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He does, like, he's really good, technically good runner, and he runs in, like, every kind of shoe,

Starting point is 00:52:50 including, like, some weird boots and weird trippy stuff. Anyway, it's a good video. Are you guys ready to second-hand experience the hatred that is don't wear flip-flops? How about this? It's not the limiting factor. Maybe it shouldn't be your primary shoe. Again, if it... Look how reasonable you've become.

Starting point is 00:53:05 Wear some sandals. Yeah. If it has a back, you're good to go. So any shoe that has a back, you know, any slipper or anything that has a back, you're good to go. Yeah. He used to be a lot more blunt. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:15 He'd be like, take those off. Real athletes don't wear those. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, look what's happened to us. Real athletes drink water. What are you doing? What is that?

Starting point is 00:53:22 What are you drinking? Yeah. Yeah. I tell you what, my skin is just scarred. I can't take the hate anymore. Sorry, everybody. I was wrong. I was so mean.

Starting point is 00:53:31 Power Project family, your normal shoes are making you weak. This is why I partnered with Vivo Barefoot Shoes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat, and they're flexible. and they're flexible. So with every single step you're taking, if you're taking a 10-minute walk outside or when you're working out in the gym, your feet are able to do what they're supposed to do in this shoe. They have tons of options for hiking, running, training in the gym, chilling and relaxing, casual shoes. If you're out on a date, you need to check them out. And Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject, and you guys will receive 15% off your order automatically. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash power project and you guys will receive 15 off your order automatically again vivo barefoot.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes so barefoot was an interesting one i wore vivos for a year um

Starting point is 00:54:16 they how did i get into i i think there was one time i saw the shoes and thought they were really interesting because I have flat feet. And I was like, oh, I'd really like to try these shoes. So they sent me the shoes and I was like, this is interesting. I mean, the first two weeks, you had to get used to it. How was it for you? Like, what do you remember? The first few days, like my feet were in pain. They were not used to touching solid ground and just walking around so not like uh i can't describe what the the sensation feels like it's just

Starting point is 00:54:55 uncomfortable that's what it is and i remember trying to do some crossfit stuff like jumping skipping like jump rope skipping box jumps my feet were just they were on fire yeah and i was like oh i don't think i could i don't think i can do this this is this doesn't feel right so i rather than stop i said okay i'm going to just go between both of them and then i started to realize that was actually it was funny after a few months I then I said to myself hold on you actually you don't even notice most of these things anymore and I stopped wearing my other gym shoes I started wearing the vivos more I didn't realize that I was doing that consciously I just was every time going to pick my training shoes which I had loads of I

Starting point is 00:55:40 would just take the vivos yeah and that was that was it. And then I just remembered thinking, wow, this made such a huge difference because when I put on my other shoes on, I just felt unsteady, unstable, and I would always just go back to wearing the vivos. So when I did the, Vivo had this thing, it's called Vivo Health, and you do, they analyze your feet

Starting point is 00:56:05 and how you walk and how you run. Yeah. And he said, bring your running shoes. And then I put my normal running shoes and I was running and he could see that I wasn't having in contact with the floor when I was running.

Starting point is 00:56:20 Is this right here? Yeah. So that was like a 3D print of my feet. As you can see, I was extremely flat footed. Like, yeah. And 3d print of my feet as you can see i'm extremely flat-footed like like yeah and you mentioned one of your feet is bigger than the other yeah so uh i think is it the left one or the right the left one is extremely flat and slightly bigger than the right one so this was also an eye-opener because i always felt that my left whenever i had shoes on the left one

Starting point is 00:56:46 felt tight and when we did that now it made sense yeah and he almost said it's a shame that shoes don't come in optional sizes like that or half sizes um and it was after that we did because i started running then and then you know we did all the analysis and i learned about foot health and how to you can actually train your feet didn't know that yeah you do exercise for your feet again didn't know that and um yeah we've i've gone back since and it's made a big improvement and do you have to order two pairs of shoes so you can get like a 12 and a half on one shoe see unfortunately 13 on the other yeah well no so 13 is too big so you need like a half but oh i see yeah once you get to a 12

Starting point is 00:57:33 most people don't the half sizes stop it's so weird right like you get eight not eight and a half nine and a half ten and a half eleven and a half but once you get 12 they just like us you can get 12 and a half like do they not do that in the uk in the us no in the uk it's very hard it's even already hard to find 12s anyway so most sizes stop at 11 especially european sizes they stop at 11 pause but like there are so many like you're a 12 yeah you're like 12 to 13 i'm a 13 12 and a half to 13 our feet size aren't in common no that but then also it's different sizes right it's like a 48 or something right like it's not like 12 i think maybe like 47 in the in europe 47 i wear 46 in vivos so that's a 12 and a half like yeah that

Starting point is 00:58:20 would be about a 12 and a half in the vivos yeah Yeah, I wear a 12, so 46. Yeah, yeah. You ever tried a Vibram shoe, the five-finger one? I used to wear Vibrams before, but that was years ago. And people used to take the piss out of me. Oh, yeah, all the time. They used to take the piss. What's he showing right here? So that's a pressure plate.

Starting point is 00:58:39 So you can see, obviously, the green, and that shows how much pressure I have with contact with the floor. When you're just standing. Just standing, yeah. So much on that left side, huh? Yeah. So the main thing he said, he said, because we're so used to having shoes that the toes go up. You notice you can't see my toes.

Starting point is 00:58:59 Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm so I stand with toes up because all the shoes we have toes up, which we then get used to standing back rather than also, you technically should be able to see all your toes on that pressure plate. Yeah. And he said, I'm so used to doing that. And also the pressure point is it should be almost centered, but I am,

Starting point is 00:59:21 you can see where the pressure is on either side. And yes, the left is the right one just looks like i'm not even maybe like you made your left foot bigger pressure on all the time yeah so that's also and actually i find myself correcting myself it's the subtle thing so he said a lot of us stand where we are comfortable so a lot of us do this yeah we stand like this and he says that's why there's more pressure on one side so he says if you uh just small things is changing that so i always find myself sometimes if i'm cooking i'm

Starting point is 00:59:50 like change your style just standing like that you know so it's just those small changes i didn't even think about until kind of we went through all of this and then when we did the second time round almost a year after like you you could see there was a difference, especially the way I run and especially with the pressure on the pressure plate and how I stand. But it's just learning all that was so alien to me because I didn't think there was a lot of, especially there's a lot of science and information you can learn about your feet. And just the simple things as the way you stand can affect, the way you walk can affect everything else. You know, so I had to change a lot of ways. So now I, 90% of the time I train in barefoot shoes. And when I go for walks, you know, like I said to you, I walk a lot now. I train in barefoot shoes. And when I go for walks, you know, like I said to you,

Starting point is 01:00:45 I walk a lot now. I walk in barefoot shoes. I didn't used to like going for walks back in the day. Really? Yeah. Was that a change in habits? Yeah. It was, I think, you know, ever since I changed the way I train,

Starting point is 01:01:01 but I also think that I always say to people, I'm the laziest fit person you would ever meet. Like I am super lazy. So I had to force myself to be more active when I'm not just in the gym. Yeah. If that makes sense. I know what you mean. So I'm,

Starting point is 01:01:17 I have, uh, as you can see, yeah, those are the, the, the, the leg exercises.

Starting point is 01:01:22 So it's controlling your toes, which I didn't think that you you could do but i mean this is it's a little bit interesting when you watch him do and he does it really well and and then it's like yeah you should be able to like individually move them and stuff like that so yeah i learned a lot for that from that day what did you have oh good no i was just asked like it's like performance wise though or maybe not even performance wise but what was something that you noticed like after wearing the vivo shoes for a while that you noticed like oh shit i didn't even know this could come from having stronger feet

Starting point is 01:01:54 it's more to especially when it came to um the explosive so i used to do i was learning some snc training with one of my rugby coach so we were doing it for fun yeah and then beforehand i was doing it in cushioned shoes and yeah yeah and i struggled with a lot of the movements because i'm not used to being explosive and once i started vivo so i actually started doing them in vivo shoes as well a lot of the snc stuff and after a while i noticed i was moving better i was just like you know in terms of speed reaction and also when it came to um squats and kettlebell training i found that once i stopped using those uh the cushioned shoes i was moving better and then the main thing

Starting point is 01:02:41 for me was i used to have a lot of back pain and I used to butt wink a lot when I used to squat. And I found that my mobility now is so much better. So it got to the point where I would say to people, okay, right, we're going to do a Kang squat or Cossack squats or barbell or kettlebell. Let's go. For me, it's standard. It's easy. And then I get someone to do it. They're like, I can't do that. How can you not do a cossack squat it's really easy but because i'm so my

Starting point is 01:03:11 mobility has improved so much for me a basic movement like a cossack squat some people still struggle because they don't have that um mobility and ankle mobility because my ankle mobility was shocking when i started and now you know when it comes to things like overhead squats and having some barbell cycling in the workouts and doing some snatches in the workouts i can do that now where i couldn't do that before yeah but for me certain things i used to think things like pistol squats so you know i thought you know i learned to do it but even just doing pistol squat to a box i thought you know pretty standard yeah some people can't do that yeah and that's when i realized how much improvements

Starting point is 01:03:51 i have made since i changed you know especially my footwear whereby now that movements that seem basic to me is very hard for individuals to actually execute and people in great shape too struggle with them no it's it's it's making it it's made a big individuals to actually execute and people in great shape too struggle with them no it's it's it's making it it's made a big difference in terms of like not just balance doing things while i'm doing jujitsu but like things like walking when you're talking about kind of changing the way you stand we've done a podcast in the past when we were talking about like how we walk differently in terms of the way we place our feet yeah and the amount of weight we put on different parts on our foot when we walk.

Starting point is 01:04:25 We run differently. A lot of things have changed after we started not just like obviously, you know, like right now we're smashing our feet with these things. But like as we've been able to increase the fitness and dexterity of our feet, it's seeped its way into other things that we do as far as like lifting running jujitsu all of that type of stuff yeah it's pretty wild but it's like that or thick socks and smashing together this has inhibited you it's like if you've been a bad relationship your whole life for a bad job you've never thought about yourself as an individual guess what you're not going to just be able to be in a good relationship it's like you got to learn that pattern let me add this in real quick it's funny i like those shoes like the nikes i like wearing them just like if i don't

Starting point is 01:05:04 wear them a lot of the time but when i'm podcasting or something and I want a shoe that looks good, I like wearing those. The problem is though, it's funny when I, when I walk in those, I feel the ground. When I walk in these, I feel like I walk differently. I walk stiffer. And the crazy thing is there are people that walk around without a hundred percent of their day. And I never can, I would never put my three feet through that after understanding what my feet should be feeling. So, and that's part of it, which is how do you get this message? Because one of the things I hear is that it's very easy for foot nerds to get out and say,

Starting point is 01:05:34 your feet are being trapped and destroyed by the shoes you wear. Stop wearing shoes. It's like, yeah, but I like to look good when I go on a date. And some people like to wear Jordans. So your feet are strong and resilient. It's just no different than, the way I want you to think about it is with the right strength and the right foundation,

Starting point is 01:05:50 your feet are very strong. And that means they can be in a shoe like that for a few hours and be totally fine. But just like if you're going on an airplane and I was sitting for hours yesterday, if you're just sitting down for hours at a time, we kind of get that, okay, maybe I should do some movement

Starting point is 01:06:01 and open that up and undo that. So if you are wearing those shoes, that's totally fine. If you have to wear shoes, I mean, there's things you can do, right? So like even these Air Jordans, I don't hate them all. Like they're obviously a narrow toe box, but relatively they're kind of flat. Okay, I don't love these. But the point is like if you can have a shoe with a wider toe box, there are dress shoes that look – you can make – if you have to be in shoes all the time. Like if you're – and it's totally fine.

Starting point is 01:06:22 Wear shoes. I'm not out here. A lot of times dress shoe has a pretty wide toe box. Yes, and you can get dress shoes that look like they have a heel, but they're actually down. They're flatter. Those are great options. And Anya's reviews is the best for the amount of research she's done for men and women, different types of shoes and European shoes and stuff. The point is that if you have to be in a shoe all the time, because there are a lot of guys in the military.

Starting point is 01:06:44 There are people that work construction, have steel-toed boots. It's tough, right? So there are choices you can make to have better options. So flatter, more flexible, wider in the toe box. What's the other one? Thinner sole. Of those, being flat is the most important. Being flexible is the second.

Starting point is 01:07:01 Wider in the toe box is the most important. Flat, so same heel to toe, is the next most. And then you get like a, what's it? Toe box? There's toe box. It's flat. It's widen the toe box. It's height.

Starting point is 01:07:14 Yeah, there's the thinness. There's one more. It's just going to, flat, flexible, widen the toe box. Flat, flexible, widen. I said it all. Oh, yeah, thin sole, yeah. Yeah, that's the least important. So if you can get it flat, if you get it flexible, and if you can widen the toe box, you, wide. I said it all. Oh, yeah, thin sole, yeah. That's the least important.

Starting point is 01:07:28 So if you can get it flat, if you can get it flexible, and if you can widen the toe box, you're good. And the next part, the thinness in the sole is about comfort. So if you're not ready for that, that's totally fine. But the thinness allows you, like, not to sprain your ankle when you're walking on an uneven surface, and it lets you feel the ground. But remember, it's not about being perfect. This is not about the right shoe. It's just understanding your feet are strong and capable, if you do the work underneath them and then, hey, when you have to go on a date,

Starting point is 01:07:46 you don't have to. If you want to go on a date and you want to, you know, like when I wear my six inch stiletto pumps and I go on a date and look cute, it makes my butt look really good. When I do that, it's like, oh, okay,

Starting point is 01:07:57 let me just do a little bit of work afterwards. But one of the things I love is that I go through this running program and I get clients that always give me feedback and I got a 20 day process which you do this and your feet continue to go.

Starting point is 01:08:05 And one of the ladies that was doing it said, I had to go out and wear dress shoes, like six-inch heels, something heels. And she goes, normally my feet ache for days after doing that. But, like, I woke up today and it felt great. I was like, that's what I want. Your feet should be able to go and do whatever and bounce back. You should be able to go run, play basketball, lift, and feel great the next day. When it comes to, like, heels, whenever, like, with my exes, whenever I'd see them in heels, I'd be like, do you like wearing that? It just looks really painful. And the reason why is because when I

Starting point is 01:08:32 wore cleats, when I played college soccer, I am thankful this happened to me because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. But since I wore cleats all growing up, my feet, let's say this is my pinky toe, my pinky toe came in and it would compact my feet and they had to shave off the bunny and net bone from my pinky toe and stick a screw in and that's the thing that like i was in crutches for six actually seven months i went back to try and run on the field and i couldn't so i got cut and that's that's what stopped my soccer career but i'm thankful that happened but either way i know the problems that narrow shoes can have because I have a wide foot. Yeah. And most people, even people have narrow feet, they're still toes, no foot. So there's two things. People look at, like you saw the alpha

Starting point is 01:09:13 fly where there's the raised toe on the front of the back. They say that pretenses your toe for the next stride and allows you to roll into it, but it actually is just an aesthetic thing. Nike's narrow toe box that comes together like an elf is just an aesthetic thing. The only reason there's a raised heel is just an aesthetic thing to make you look taller. So these three things that are so common, like the curve under the shoe, the narrow toe box, the raised heel, are literally only for aesthetics, which is fine. If you want a shoe that looks good, that's absolutely fine. But the important thing is to understand that these things have an impact on your function and your health. And over time, degrades the quality of your foot and you literally lose the capacity to move. And then when that can't work, all of the muscles in your calf, your shin, your lower leg, your knee, your hip that are engaged

Starting point is 01:09:53 by those feet aren't working. And then that creates long-term functionality that's lost at those up your body. And then you get weaker. I don't know who it was that came onto the podcast and said it, but there's somebody we were talking to recently that said that top level professional athletes are just the highest level and the best compensators for issues because as we're talking about all this i think about all the nba players that have been running and playing in basketball shoes all their life and typical basketball shoes are pretty narrow and these guys are jumping sprinting going side to side playing defense getting low you see uh i mean i'm not gonna say this is what happened to him, but Kevin Durant, who had that Achilles injury that fucked him for a year, and he's back on the court. But these players are doing these amazing athletic movements.

Starting point is 01:10:34 Most of them don't give a fuck about the shoe they're wearing. Even Jordan, in Jordans. They do. They sell them. They sell them, yeah. Here's a good example of this this because what you want to think about is people go, well, why do they wear that?

Starting point is 01:10:46 First off, most of the shoes that these athletes wear are bespoke models made. They're specifically made and built around the foot. Ooh, okay. They're not like, the version is,

Starting point is 01:10:54 Ilyud Kipchoge is running that marathon. I'm probably saying his name wrong. Ilyud Kipchoge is how some people say it, but I, yeah. Ilyud Kipchoge. Ilyud Kipchoge. Right. Well, I'm going to just now,

Starting point is 01:11:03 every time I say, Ilyud Kipchoge. Right. Well, I'm going to just now, every time I say. Eliud Kipchoge. Put his voice over me. The real salty, deep, you know, such a voice. So when he's running, he's actually running that marathon in a bespoke version of the Nike Alpha flight. That's not for sale. These athletes are making, generally speaking, bespoke versions of this stuff, and then they go and pump it out. And the other thing to think is that these shoes are made, if you were like me me where my shoe size is the same as my age for a while, 12, 13, they made that shoe.

Starting point is 01:11:29 I had the LeBron, the first one and two LeBrons. I loved basketball shoes when I was younger, and I also was slow as fuck because I couldn't pick my feet up. That shoe, this Jordan, is made for a 200-pound basketball player and me who happened to buy it because my parents wanted to buy it for christmas so you know think about that is like that shoe that you're wearing those they're not they're they're made to 200 000 pairs because they got to ship this all out and send it to you that's not made for you you know it's like that's one thing to keep in mind is that when you do see this they're not necessarily it's not what you see and they were trying to get a shoe that looks different that looks cool so that you'll buy it it's a business thing as well so it's not about functionality and what are some things that you personally do to like take care of your feet

Starting point is 01:12:06 make sure that your feet are themselves so i know that you guys uh i had you know obviously promote this and seen it too especially when i'm warming up you know it's going to be barefoot i have the vibram shoes the five the five finger yeah the five toe shoes i will sprint in those i will run some medium to long distance in them every once in a while maybe like once or twice a month okay uh i will also roll my feet with a lacrosse ball i'll also roll my feet on a barbell okay you do it on the barbell and it's like 10xing what the lacrosse ball is doing i'm gonna go do that every once in a while get a golf ball in there something like that and then um there are really fantastic things that something like an epsom salt bath can do if you're doing it just for your feet okay i recommend just doing it for the whole body but if you're doing it just for your feet you know you're looking at chinese medicine once again drawing um toxins out and whatnot from the bottom

Starting point is 01:13:12 of the feet because that's kind of an end point in the human body so i think that i think that magnesium baths epsom salt baths are heavily underutilized, heavily, heavily underutilized. So cheap. You can get a bag, like a five pound bag off Amazon for like $9. What would your suggestion be to people for maybe how they should try to be striking the ground? And I know that there's, it's too broad of a question because everybody has their different movement inefficiencies because of maybe certain things in the gym. So maybe their feet are turned out, et cetera. But what should we ideally be looking for when we're striking the ground when we're moving forward in space?

Starting point is 01:13:53 So first one is to find the rhythm. So walking is supposed to be rhythmic. Second big thing is you have to take sufficient strides or steps. A stride is actually two steps but sufficient step length yeah so if you do not take a sufficient step and maybe you don't because you don't have big toe range of motion that'll jack it up right but you have to be able to take a long step to force the other arm across don't do this in it right so i can get this reciprocal pattern between here. If I can't take a long step, there's no need

Starting point is 01:14:28 for me to rotate my T-spine. So that just shot everything. When we take long steps and we get that reciprocal swing mechanically, like biomechanically, that's where the spiral is created. But that's also how your fascia, so the

Starting point is 01:14:44 spiraling that Mark was just talking about with the pictures is really fascial and mechanical right so then that's how you load your fascia so if you start to shorten your stride so that it's staccatic i actually think that the way that people now walk in modern society is actually a huge hindrance on movement longevity and anti-aging and all of that because we just don't have the ringing out of the fascial rag or you don't get a sufficient pump up to the brain for cerebral blood flow. Like there's this whole like cascade of events that happens if you don't walk the right way. And at the simplest requirements of walking the right way is stride length or step length and the speed that is associated with that.

Starting point is 01:15:33 I think we're so conditioned to our feet going into whatever looks popular, whatever we're used to. And there's this saying, this one professor i had years ago he was like talking about this one issue and he goes it's not he goes it's not profound it's obvious and that's like i think part of the problem with modern footwear we're so accustomed to it it's like so i i brought this shoe maybe i'll show it i've been. Dude, you're really fucking strong, by the way. You just ripped that shoe right in half. And it didn't even make a sound. It was just like, yeah, this is Jedi shit. Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 01:16:13 So I have this shoe here. I know it's kind of silly, but I just threw this on the bandsaw, cut it in half, and, you know. You covered up the branding. I just realized. I bought it at Ross too. I just went in and got like the cheapest, like this looks like what I think a shoe, most people think a shoe looks like, but we're just trapped in this paradigm.

Starting point is 01:16:33 It's simple. But you look at this, like on the outside, you see a shoe kind of flat, but then like so many things, I think that when you ask one or two or three questions, you realize there's not much like holding up you know this idea yeah so i call it like three questions deep like why is sugar bad

Starting point is 01:16:53 and you start to go down the thing and it's like the person doesn't have a great explanation like zero yeah a lot of times it's even like one in the um then you find out there's uh the man behind the curtain you know it's the Wizard of Oz. So in this case, what's going on with shoot companies? It's totally nuts, but this is – you think of your foot just sitting there flat. Well, it's presented as flat, but then when you cut it in half, you look into it.

Starting point is 01:17:20 This is the resting position. I don't know what they see or don't see, but the resting position for your foot. Imagine if you were barefoot, and you're standing on a flat surface, and your heel would be down. The heel would be at the same elevation as the big toe. That's obvious.

Starting point is 01:17:39 You might have a little bit of an arch built up, and your toes would kind of be splayed and you'd be nice and comfortable that's another thing i could spin off for quite a while and i'll actually come back to that why they'd be comfortable but so their idea of a resting position is that your heel is three quarters of an inch higher than the middle of your foot at rest and then the toe i mean this is crazy and you just look at it for a minute and you can see all this stuff the idea is that your toe that's your big toe is going to be lifted up elevated so what we know about tendons is they're basically just like big rubber

Starting point is 01:18:17 bands and if you just let a rubber band not be stretched it'll it'll shrink and so they're putting your big toe in a position where you're actually shrinking it and your foot's never actually relaxed you're never going to be comfortable in this um and then there's other huge problems like you know you've got this i mean look where the big toe actually is and this is probably what patrick willis was dealing with yeah his big toe is moved over here it's being shoved in the middle of the shoe. And that, like, maybe you can get away with that for a while when you're just, you know, walking around in the mall. But when you, like Patrick Willis,

Starting point is 01:18:57 one of the most amazing things I've ever seen him do was, was it against the Cardinals, he ran down a wide receiver over, like, 70 yards. It was just like, that was, that was crazy. 235 pounds or whatever the hell he was. Just sprinted faster than the wide receiver.

Starting point is 01:19:12 Just nuts. But if you put those tendons and ligaments and all that stuff under load, like they're going to start to conform to this shape and they're, you're going to make them do things they can't do. I know so many older athletes in my life that I've known and i've looked at their feet in recent years yeah and i've just i just constantly see big toe just pointing in this direction their feet are like just it's not good over a long period of time yeah but even if you're older you can you can improve but right now if you're in your 30s 20ss, whatever, fix this shit.

Starting point is 01:19:46 Andrew, can you bring up that thing on the Nike site? Do you still have that kind of handy? I do. And it's funny because you guys are talking about the high heel and how, I don't know if they're hiding it or dressing it or whatever. But on Nike's website, they are literally telling you that this is a good thing. So this is a basketball shoe but uh i'll just read this whole um you will never sponsor us now so you can bring this shoe up on the screen as well okay let me um i watched the u.s open this year i've never i've never watched that

Starting point is 01:20:21 much tennis in my life my wife's friends were into it and they were watching it. And I actually found myself like getting into it. I was like, this is fucking amazing. Like these are insane athletes. That 19 year old kid that won, it was ridiculous. But I was like, there is no fucking way they are playing at this high a level in stock Nike shoes. Like these are bullshit Nike shoes. These are like custom. Like there's just, it's not possible. Like I don't't know the truth on that but i was just thinking in my head i'm like they cannot

Starting point is 01:20:49 be running back and forth like this in regular nikes you know yeah nba players i've heard they have cussed like of all the the curry shoes all that one's out for everybody and this one's made specifically for him specifically for them so all those high level guys they have specifically made shit for their feet yeah well this one is uh the giannis shoe i guess whatever it's called giannis is that the guy in the bucks yeah fucking savage so drive downhill the lightweight midsole is hollowed out under the foot where the zoom blah blah blah position this allows zoom air units to be compressed under weight and expand to help energy. Also, they are slightly tilted forward and primed for your forward motion like a 100 meter sprinter emerging from the starting block. So that way you can attack the rim.

Starting point is 01:21:36 That's me. Did you know that Wilt Chamberlain apparently at the end of his career did a 50-mile ultramarathon? Holy shit. And what did he wear his entire career? Chucks. Chucks. Chuck Taylors, yeah. You know, and the only problem, I think Chucks are heavy.

Starting point is 01:21:58 And the big problem- They might not have been super wide, but- They're not that wide and the toe is messed up. But aside from that you know it should make us all stop and think like okay he did it you know it's it's not the one of the things i like i try and tell people like why i would ask people that are skeptical about the sandals and um they say well doesn't that hurt? Isn't it, doesn't it hurt to walk around? It's, it's so thin or whatever.

Starting point is 01:22:28 And I go, well, at the end of the day, when you go home, do you ever take your shoes off and they go home? Like, yeah, sure. Like do you walk around your, your kitchen on the tile or the hardwood? And does it hurt? And they're like, no, it doesn't. Well, that's because once you have a hard surface, you don't push in any harder than you need to in fact your reaction time just speeds up yeah and you you're not actually i wonder if you guys have noticed this now he brought that up i don't think about taking my shoes off and having that

Starting point is 01:22:57 be like a relief yes i don't yeah i used to i used to like i'd be on my way home and i'm kind of like i can't wait just to kick these shoes off and just chill yep i don't, yeah, I used to, I used to like, I'd be on my way home and I'm kind of like, I can't wait just to kick these shoes off and just chill. I don't even think that I never, I didn't even think of it until you mentioned it. Now I'm like, oh, that gap has closed a lot. Cause I might still be wearing these in my kitchen just, just without even recognizing they're still on. Yeah, totally. No, that's so true. Like you guys like walking around the pool on the cement?

Starting point is 01:23:25 Does it hurt? No. No? Well, it's, again, you're just being sold something you don't need. Yeah. It's crazy. You know, the cool thing is that this is something that anyone who does strength training or has been lifting for a while kind of already understands. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:23:39 Within lifting, yeah, there are Olympic lifting shoes, and Squat University just came out with the first barefoot Olympic lifting shoe. But either way, the shoes are flat. Like if you're an experienced lifter, you know that you want the bottom of your shoes to be flat. A lot of lifters choose to go with the deadlift slippers, right, because it allows them to fully flex their feet into the ground and create as much force as possible. Now you wonder, though, why am I only trying to wear the best shoes to create strength within my foot while i'm in the gym yeah why don't i have something for when i'm moving around all day long standing doing everything else yeah should i have something that allows me to i don't know express the most amount of strength that my feet can yeah and you're not and you're like we talked about earlier your feet will get they'll get stronger but they'll be in a relaxed position. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:25 This is not, this is not your relaxed human. It's not human. It's like somebody's just telling you, you are wrong and we have to, we got to fix it. Yeah. This is, you're not going to change that structure of the foot and the way we're meant to move, you know. And here's the other thing that's kind of funny. We always think about this being the predominant view, but just of human history i mean think about the romans how did they conquer all those different lands or or the persians or whoever it was at whatever time

Starting point is 01:24:55 they're running around in literally almost nothing in fact up until the 70s all our running shoes were just like super flat, super thin. It was so – Do you know what changed that? His name was Coach Bowerman and Phil Knight. So they teamed up. There you go. And Coach Bowerman – He knows his history.

Starting point is 01:25:18 I like it. His whole idea was – What did he create? He created Nike. And he created nike and he created his first um shoe was called the cortez i believe and so what he did maybe you should if you could pull up an original cortez it's kind of interesting so his idea was that and he personally wasn't a runner himself i mean he coached a lot of runners but from what i've heard i could be wrong he wasn't't a runner himself. I mean, he coached a lot of runners, but from what I've heard, and I could be wrong, he wasn't like a great runner himself.

Starting point is 01:25:49 His idea was if we add more padding to the heel, the runner can lengthen their stride. Okay, and this is another gigantic piece to the puzzle. And there's some truth to that because you can relax your stride a bit, but there might be a cost to it. There's actually no truth to it. Sorry oh let's go and john i want to ask you this because like we were talking about feet earlier but when we were talking about that in the gym um you're mentioning how some people make too big of a step too soon because this is like the second time where

Starting point is 01:26:22 barefoot shoes and barefoot activities have like come into like become popular and they were, but a lot of people got themselves hurt. So can you talk to us about like kind of how people got themselves hurt and then how people can safely transition? Cause number one, vivos aren't the only shoe out there, right? There's a lot of other shoes that can be like ultras are pretty deep, pretty good. Um, and a lot of other shoes that can be like ultras are pretty deep pretty good um and a lot of other shoes that might help people in different ways yeah so yeah i mean a lot of people's feet uh are incredibly weak yeah and if you immediately expose them it's the same thing with anything uh you put a lot of weight on someone's back and they don't they were not familiar with it it's gonna be a problem so you can jump off the deep end and seriously like make your foot problem

Starting point is 01:27:06 worse. Like a lot of like the back pain we were talking about with the instability, a lot of people's feet have instabilities. You guys were talking about like piano toes, like moving your toes up and down, like, and that connection, which most people can't do. Like if you're sitting at home right now, like try to lift up your big toe on the left, make it go, move the left pinky toe. Like a lot of times we just, I know you can do it. You can make it happen. It's not easy. It's, it's not easy. And so there is this disconnect, which is a sign of weakness. And so if you have something that's weak and you go expose it to something like barefoot shoes, then you're going to expose that weakness and it's going to be worse. And this is where the goes back to your earlier question about how can people change and what do they need

Starting point is 01:27:49 to do? I think long-term barefoot shoes are the answer to be fully honest, a barefoot sprinter guy. Like I think barefoot itself, if you can, is a great way, a natural way. We're talking about kind of primal evolutionary stuff that your foot should operate. But on the way to there, you need to be a little bit more specific. So if you have foot pain, people ask me this all the time. I have pain. What should I do? And I'm like, I got to evaluate. I'm not a professional.

Starting point is 01:28:16 I can't just crystal ball it like Sarno all the time. You have to get evaluated. So there are shoes for overpronation, oversupination. There's neutral shoes. So there are shoes for overpronation, oversupination. There's neutral shoes. Ultras are great shoes. But yeah, I think long-term, barefoot's the answer. And you were also mentioning in the gym something about certain individuals

Starting point is 01:28:32 who have like bone-on-bone stuff in their feet and just barefoot shoes aren't good for those people, correct? So what was that? So, I mean, that's the instabilities we're talking about. If those instabilities are there, this goes to the body. We were talking about how to create extension. If those bones are on bones and you don't have the ability to use the muscles in your toes, the intrinsic muscles of your feet aren't working, then you're just going to collapse further into that bone on bone problem. And it's going to make it worse.

Starting point is 01:29:02 Yeah. and it's going to make it worse. Yeah. So I do want to mention too, because we've been talking about a Vivo, and I'm using Vibrams too right now, but I've been wearing Vivos for about a year now. And as I was making that transition, I played soccer all my life, et cetera, but I had certain times where my feet were in fucking pain. Like they hurt. So I want people to understand, just like Mark, you're getting into running,

Starting point is 01:29:24 and it took you a while to get to where you are now. But you had to make a gradual transition to be able to run three, four miles nonstop. This type of barefoot transition isn't just putting on a pair of Vivos and going out running. Like you might have some pain sometime. You might have to go and wear some different, your normal shoes so that you can relieve your feet of some pain here and there. But it's not going to be something quick in the long run though. It could be, it's, I've found it to be extremely beneficial. Like I feel like a fucking kid because the connection I can have to my feet, my toes and all that shit. It's exciting, but give yourself time in that transition.

Starting point is 01:29:58 And when you have these bumps in the road where you're feeling pain or like if you start to feel pain in your knees because of something, just understand that it is a gradual transition. It's not going to happen in just a few months. It could take a few years depending on where you started. If you can be patient, it's so much better on the other end. If you're willing to be like, you know, six months from now, one year from now, what, what sort of workout, what sort of food diet will, do you want to have for to be good feel good in a year you know if you have a wedding in six months i get it you have a quick thing you need to do but like what are you going to do for 10 years what's your 10-year plan and ideally it's barefoot extend that time horizon people have terrible feet let's be honest uh my feet aren't perfect

Starting point is 01:30:42 some of the people in this industry that know more about feet than me have terrible feet. And they're just trying, you know, that's why they got so good at it is to try to fix their own feet. So, I mean, these things take time. It is water on rocks, so to speak, before we can smooth them out. And, yeah, we have to, like the patience thing, I'm not good at it. I'm somebody that's learned from trauma. I had to hurt my back. I had to pull a muscle

Starting point is 01:31:05 i've had to kind of lose things i couldn't do before to where it kind of you know knocks you out of this and says hey like i don't want to keep going down this path you know and i want you guys to correct me if i'm wrong but maybe it's because i'm so fucking excited about the barefoot thing but you know being an athlete for so long and me noticing personally how much of a change it's made for me athletically and the way I move and different slightly naggling pains here and there. I can, I feel like if I see this much of a difference and I've been doing the athletic thing for so long, I think it could be a massive mover for just anybody who just gets control of their feet and makes that transition

Starting point is 01:31:46 over time that a lot of things you know you change this one thing and a lot of things just follow suit am i wrong in that logic or what do you guys think about that i'm good well i remember when we were on our walk and we were talking about how we get guilty about maybe putting some cream or honey in our coffee right right and it's like that's somebody who's health conscious and we're still going, well, it's going to benefit us by maybe I just omit that sugar from my coffee. And Mark's kind of saying like, what about the people that have this all day long?

Starting point is 01:32:15 This is all they do. Like what kind of benefits would they have if they pulled the sugar out? Do you see what I mean? It's this idea of like, of course, it would have this immense impact, but they might have a longer process to get where they want to go versus you. You'll get instant feedback a lot more.

Starting point is 01:32:31 Your athleticism, you're constantly been a mover your whole life. This has earned you rights that the non-mover or the old person much older than you has got to pay back to get those things. I think feet are a low-hanging fruit. I mean, absolutely. There are weak links in the body. There are patterns. Everybody is unique and specific, but I think the feet, it's a foundation. It's your first contact with the ground.

Starting point is 01:32:55 And if there's some sort of twist or torque or instability there, that starts to manifest itself upwards, right? Yeah. And so I think it's a really low-hanging fruit that a lot of people can work on themselves. We've been pretty abstract today. Let's be specific. Can you move your toes? Can you lift up just your big toe?

Starting point is 01:33:14 Work on that. Can you get a lacrosse ball and put it on the bottom of your foot? Can you walk around barefoot for a little bit, right? I think you will notice measurable changes if you can do that with the minimum amount of consistency in your life. And if things hurt, like if you put a lac changes if you can do that with the minimum amount of consistency in your life and if things hurt like if you put a lacrosse ball under your foot and it hurts a lot

Starting point is 01:33:30 that's probably a sign that your feet are not very strong and maybe not very resilient right absolutely and the same thing with like elbows and knees and stuff if you get down on all fours and that shit hurts a lot uh you might have some issues with your tendons, ligaments and things of that nature, right? So that's where room to grow is. We can go back to our hips over here, right? When we did that exercise, we did an exercise where he was just activating his groin muscles and we put him in a specific position.

Starting point is 01:33:54 You could probably see that video on the YouTube channel. But I mean, it spasmed up pretty intensely and the groin muscles, what was your experience there? up pretty intensely and the groin muscles not what you do what was your experience there well yeah i mean again laying down on my side and i've never tried to quote activate my groin muscle that way at least i don't know like if you activate it when you're like thrusting forward during intercourse not sure if that's the same thing but what i was doing was like pulling back it was so weird because um you had me do a couple different things, but then you put my knee in a certain position.

Starting point is 01:34:27 And again, I'm laying on my side. And as soon as I lifted my knee up, I could feel everything just like, no, my body was like, dude, whatever you're doing,

Starting point is 01:34:35 you need to stop right now because we've never done this. And I don't know what's going to happen. I tensed up and it locked up. It didn't lock up. It just was about to cramp very fast. I mean, we're talking within like seconds of moving my knee a certain direction. And so that's when after that, Andrew wanting to get better over and over, he was like, what else can I do? And I'm like, you have to work on this for a while.

Starting point is 01:34:58 The weakness that you experience, the cramping that you experience is a sign of weakness that you're talking about, Mark, that you can work on. And so like sit there, stay there, get better at that for a while. So if you experience weird pain in these interesting positions and look, there's a difference between, there's this famous track coach. He says, there's a difference between pain and pain, pain. And I think we kind of know the difference between the two and so yes if you find those weak points that's something to work on absolutely yeah you find something that's just like ridiculously hurts then that's probably not a great idea to push into that correct but if it hurts a little bit and you can make progress there that might be onto something i think you

Starting point is 01:35:40 said something in the gym earlier that i think was really useful i'm like how much pain is too much and you're like well if there's a, like if over the course of the next couple of days, you're like, oh, like shit's getting worse. Well, then that's a pretty obvious thing is to kind of go based on, I mean, it'd be nice to just throw out a number to somebody, but it's kind of hard because everyone's value of pain or degree of pain is different.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Expert Tips to Level Up Your Foot Health

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