What if something as simple as changing your shoes could dramatically reduce your risk of falling and improve your overall mobility?
In this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, Steven Sashen interviews Erin Futrell, PT, MPT, PhD, Associate Professor of Physical Therapy at Springfield College and a researcher in natural movement and foot health, who shares groundbreaking findings on how footwear affects balance and fall risk. Her research shows that transitioning to minimalist shoes can significantly improve stability in older adults, potentially reducing the risk of life-altering falls. Drawing from her work in physical therapy and exercise physiology, Erin explains how strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the feet can transform mobility, prevent injury, and enhance overall function.
Key Takeaways:
→ Minimalist shoes can greatly enhance balance, which directly lowers the risk of falling.
→ A gradual switch to minimalist shoes is crucial to prevent negative effects like calf pain.
→ Sensory feedback from the ground improves balance.
→ Footwear impacts the whole kinetic chain of the body.
→ Switching to minimalist shoes often results in a shorter stride length.
Erin Futrell, PhD, has been a physical therapist since 2007 and a board-certified specialist in orthopedic physical therapy since 2010. She has practiced clinically in Atlanta, GA, Boston, MA, and Springfield, MA, working with the general population as well as recreational and professional athletes. Her doctoral dissertation focused on impact-reducing gait retraining methods for runners and was conducted at The Spaulding National Running Center in Cambridge, MA. Futrell is the founder and director of the Foot Intrinsic Testing and Training Lab (FiTT Lab), where she and her team conduct research to better understand and enhance foot function for people of all ages and ability levels. Futrell teaches courses related to therapeutic interventions, physical agents, and musculoskeletal physical therapy.
Learn more about Erin’s study here: https://karger.com/ger/article/doi/10.1159/000550264/942122/Effects-of-Long-Term-Minimal-Footwear-Use-on-Fall
To learn more about the other articles mentioned please visit the following:
The (FiTT Lab) Foot intrinsic Testing and Training Lab: https://gulick.springfield.edu/fitt/
Study by Curtis, et al. They measured “experienced” minimal footwear users (avg. of 2.5 years of use) and found they had higher arch and greater foot strength than conventional shoe users. They also had a separate group of conv. shoe users wear minimal footwear for 6 months and found it resulted in similar foot strength as the experienced group (but they didn’t see a change in arch height after 6 months): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98070-0
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Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen
Some of the most important research about this whole natural movement or barefoot walking, barefoot running, minimalist shoes, whatever you want to think of it, some of the most important research that has ever been done has come out recently and if it doesn’t affect you now, it will. And it definitely affects people that you know. And we’re going to talk about it on today’s episode of the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting feet first, you know, those things at the end of your legs where we also break down the propaganda, the mythology and sometimes the flat out lies you been told about what it takes to run, walk, hike, do yoga, CrossFit, whatever you like to do. And to do it effectively, efficiently and enjoyably. Because if it’s not enjoyable, by the way, you’re not going to keep up with it anyway. So make sure you’re having a good time. If you’re not, find something that makes it so you can have a good time. I can’t talk because I just came back from vacation just a few hours ago and so I have a serious case of vacation brain. And I’m Stephen Sashen, the host of the Movement Movement podcast and the co founder and chief barefoot officer here at Xero Shoes. By the way, what we’re doing here is creating what I call a movement movement, hence the name of the podcast that means a movement about natural movement, helping people learn what it takes to let your body do what it’s made to do instead of getting in the way. And the first part of the movement, the movement part of the Movement Movement involves you. Nothing you have to do that’s special. It’s just, you know, spread the word, let people know about the podcast, give us a like and a thumbs up and a five star review. You know the gist. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. And when you want to find out more, go to www.jointhemovementmovement. nothing you need to do to join, there’s no money involved, there’s no secret handshake, there’s no dance you have to do every day before you go to work, though that would be fun. But anyway, go there, you’ll find previous episodes of the podcast, all the ways you can engage with us and other ways to have more fun. So let’s get started. Aaron, do you want to introduce yourself and tell people who you are and what you’re doing here?
Erin Futrell
Yes. My name is Aaron Futrell. I am a physical Therapist first and foremost. And I’m also an associate professor of physical therapy at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachuset.
Steven Sashen
And you are the reason that we are talking about this amazing piece of research, because you were the one who spearheaded it. Let’s do the TLDR version and just tell people what you found, and then we’ll get into the details of how this plays out, what’s happening after this, and how this affects more and more people as we get more and more research.
Erin Futrell
Okay, here’s the really quick elevator story of the study. We got a bunch of older adults. That means they’re 65 or older. We have to.
Steven Sashen
You have to pause right there. I’m turning 64 in a couple of weeks. And the idea that you just used older adults and I’m a year away is very disturbing to me. But. So I’ll deal with my psychological issues while you continue.
Erin Futrell
That is, that is, the scientific community refers to people over 65 as older adults. It’s not supposed to be pejorative in any way. And the age cutoff tends to be 65. Some, some studies capture 60 and older. And then also there, you know, this is a caveat, like, not all older adults are created equal. So you can be, you know, a young, older adult. You can be an older, older adult, like if you’re in your 90s. So remember that it’s just as diverse as adults or teenagers or kids. Right. It’s a. It’s still a really large body of people. But we tend to group all these people over 65. And particularly for. For my interest as a physical therapist is we want to try to prevent falls. Falls are a big problem in this community. They can really be life altering. So we got a bunch of older adults to volunteer for a study. We tested them. In order to be in the study, they had to already have a fall risk. So we captured that and then we divvied them up into different groups. And one of the groups was they were going to transition from whatever footwear they had to minimal footwear. And we used a 0Aptos in that. We had two, two other groups. There was a control group that was doing what we called a sham exercise program where they were seated, doing some arm and leg motions, nothing really involving the feet. And then we had a group that was doing toe yoga, just specific toe exercises. And the paper that, that we’re talking about today, we looked at the data of what happened to the people who wore the minimal shoes compared to the control group. And our big variable that we were looking at was their fall risk. Did we. Could we improve their balance and prevent future falls? And you know, long story short is yeah, the minimal footwear did that very well and it did it. If you like to read research and you love statistics, I don’t. But people get hung up on statistical significance. But in reality, that doesn’t always mean anything. And so what we have in this paper is real, real change, like meaningful change that you could see and feel and observe in a person over time. So yeah, so the movement, we got these folks to have better balance just by changing what’s on their feet.
Steven Sashen
And, and this is near and dear to my heart. I say this, I’ll say this in advance. Some people get upset when I say this as cavalierly as I’m about to. But my father is one of these people who trip fell, broke his hip and was dead a few days later. And I say it somewhat cavalierly because it’s been 12 years and so. But this is one of the things that has been top of mind for me since we started. Zero shoes. And then my mother, actually, she’s one of these people. She also tripped, fell, broke her hip, but then lived for another 12 years completely oblivious because my mother was just a machine. So I would ask her how she’s doing. She’s fine. Why as she couldn’t walk. Not a thing. So this is huge, obviously. And what thoughts do you have or. Boy, I don’t even know where to begin. When you assess someone’s fall risk, beginning and after, how do you do that? I’m desperately curious.
Erin Futrell
So there are lots of different tests out there. One that’s really, really common. And you’ll see it if you Google, like how to test because. Because you can do it at home. There’s one called the timed up and go test, called the tug. It really depends on your age. Like it should be kind of divided into age, but it’s sort of this umbrella cutoff score is if it, if you get up from a chair, walk out in front of you a certain distance and come back and sit down and you time that, if it takes you 12 seconds or longer, you’re at a higher risk for falls. Now that’s a really broad, quick and dirty. It takes, you know, really quick test.
Steven Sashen
Wait, I know people are going to. Wait, I know people are going to do it. So what’s the distance?
Erin Futrell
Yeah. Oh, God, I don’t know off the top of my head. It’s probably like. It’s probably like three meters. I don’t know, like 10 or 20ft out there. So that is a quick one. It’s really easy to do on your own, but it doesn’t really capture everything. So in this. So that’s a quick one to just kind of assess for fall risk. And that was one of the ways we quickly assessed people’s fall risk in this study was we did a tug. There’s another. There’s another test. You don’t have to do anything physical. There’s something called the three key questions. And it’s, do you feel unsteady when you walk? And I love it because a lot of elder adults will say, no, I don’t feel unsteady when I walk. But you can watch them walk and they, like, hold on to things while they walk. They’re like, what if you weren’t holding on? They go, oh, yeah, I need to hold on. So that’s one of the questions. Do you have a fear of falling? Is another question. And then did you fall in the past year? So if you answer yes to any of those three, you’re an automatic higher risk. And that. That test has been sort of validated in multiple countries. It’s a really good, quick and easy one. But then the balance test that we used for this study to really measure fall risk and to really kind of put it on a continuous scale, like, can you see people getting better or worse? Was something called the mini best test. So it’s called the mini balance evaluation test, and it’s a really thorough test. And it kind of captures lots of different things about your balance. So your vision, your vestibular system, your somatosensory, which is like the sensors in your joints that kind of tell where you are. And also there’s a mental task. So what tends to be like, if you’re doing something really mentally taxing, your physical abilities might kind of go downhill. And so it captures that too. So it has people count backwards by like threes or sevens or something like that from a hundred while they’re doing a physical task. And so anytime how. How that goes. So that’s what we use in this study, the mini best test, and to kind of capture all of those systems. And we looked at the total score and how it got better or worse over time.
Steven Sashen
And it got better over time.
Erin Futrell
It got better, it got. It got significantly better, and it got. It got meaningfully better. So there’s something called the mini best test is. It’s kind of a fantastic test because it combines all these other balance tests that are commonly used out there in the Research world, but it puts them all into one test. So it takes probably like 10 minutes to do it. And so it’s more thorough than the. It takes longer. So sometimes people don’t like that aspect of it, but it’s very thorough, and it kind of captures all these other tests in one. And it’s also been studied enough in lots of different older adult populations that there are all these, like, norms for ages. And there’s. And there’s also something called the minimal detectable change. So how much would your score have to change for it to really mean something? That your balance got better? And so we included that in this paper. We kind of used that cutoff score. It has to get three and a half points or more better for it to really matter. And that happens in the group with the footwear, with the minimal, you know,
Steven Sashen
and this is again, one of these things where I said at the opening, this, if it doesn’t affect you now, it will at some point or you’ll know someone who it does for, who this does affect. Now, how would you recommend or talk about? You mentioned that there was a transition program. So this is something that we’re very, very diligent about, or as much as we can be, to say, look, this is not just about putting on a different pair of shoes, and away you go. Some people do that. Some people suffer through that. And I don’t mean suffer horribly, but some people will experience calf pain, which I say is totally optional, or various other things if they don’t have a clear idea of how to make a transition. So what was the transition plan that you had these people go through?
Erin Futrell
Yeah, so it’s funny, when I was developing this at the time, back when I was developing this study, I was like, okay, you know, my background knowledge. And in the literature, older adults have a lot of foot problems. Which is one of the contributors to falls is all these different foot problems you can have. And so taking somebody who’s used to, like, orthopedic shoes or they’ve been, you know, prescribed some sort of type of footwear and taking all that support away, it’s not indifferent. Like, if somebody always wore a back brace or a neck brace and you suddenly took it away, they wouldn’t have the capacity to, like, hold themselves upright. Right. Those muscles haven’t been challenged in that way. So I was really nervous, and I. I reached a mentor of mine, Irene Davis, because I used to study runners and, like, different footwear in. In runners. So that’s my background, and I know transitioning runners to minimal footwear. We were careful, you know, about how we did it and I, I remember at the time looking up several different footwear companies. What do they suggest? And nobody gives any like concrete anything at the time. I don’t know, I haven’t looked recently. But nobody gives you any concrete advice of like what’s the timeline? How should I do this? So I just tapped into, okay, exercise physiology principles, you know, my knowledge as a physical therapist, like how do we gradually introduce load to both bones and to your contractile tissues, your muscles and your tendons and also keep in mind that these folks might have pre existing foot problems. And so I, I made up a really conservative schedule and I ran it by Irene and she was like, no, this is too conservative. You need to do it bigger, stronger, faster. And I just, was like, I just disagree. I just went against, you know, what Young Skywalker said. No, Yoda, I’m not, I just, I don’t want to hurt people. Right. And these people are going to be in this study for a year. I really needed them to be in it and to, and to, you know, invest in it. And so I made a really conservative plan. I can share it on my screen if you want, like oh, that’d be awesome. It’s in, it’s available in the article and the article is freely available online.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, I’m gonn put the article and I’ll put the article in the show notes so people can download it.
Erin Futrell
So I can, I’ll send you like the, it’s, it’s available like as supplementary material in the article. But I’ll send you a document. But we over, over 16 weeks we like really gradually actually pull it up for myself so I can look at it. We really gradually. So the first two weeks I told people, I want you to wear these for just three separate ten minute times. Right. I just want you to walk around in a day and do that for five days a week and do that for two weeks. Right. And then so we kind of increased it a little bit. Every two weeks you just said wear them.
Steven Sashen
You didn’t say what they had to do in them.
Erin Futrell
I told them at first I said try to walk in them. Now we’re talking about like people who had, they weren’t excluded from this study if they had like if they used a walker or a cane or if they were, if they had trouble with mobility and that’s sometimes a problem. Like people are at risk for falls or if they have fallen, they’re kind of scared to get up and move. And so they don’t want to go for like long walks or they don’t have the stamina. So, you know, we said you can break it up, you don’t have to do it all at once, but try to take like three separate 10 minute walks so you’re in the shoes for 30 minutes, five days a week for the first two weeks. Then we very gradually increase it the next two weeks, take a 10 minute walk and a 20 minute walk so that you’re like walking around, but then also just wear them for an hour. So the total time for those two weeks was like hour and a half. Then the next two weeks, all right, keep walking 30 minutes a day and I’m on purpose, you know, and then wear them for two hours. And so we kind of just kept doing that. And after that, that. The first six weeks I was really cautious with people. And then after that I just increased it by an hour every week, like per day you’re wearing, you know, so like week seven, they’re walking around for 30 minutes and then they’re wearing them for three hours a day. Week eight, 30 minutes and four hours a day. Week nine. So we went all the way up until I think by the time. Yeah, by. By week 11. Right. So a couple months they were wearing them like all day.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Erin Futrell
And then. And intentionally trying to get some like walking in, so 30 minutes. And that was one of the criticisms of reviewers of this article. They were like, oh, how do you know the walking didn’t just improve their balance? And it’s been studied out the wazoo that walking alone doesn’t improve balance. And so there’s a lot of substantial evidence about that. And we weren’t really. That’s not what we were really going after. We didn’t want these people to just walk more. We wanted them to.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. Adopt a whole new regimen.
Erin Futrell
Yeah, yeah. And we did count. We gave everybody in the study a pedometer and we counted their. They’re walking. And there’s been studies about that by itself, you give people a pedometer, they suddenly walk more. Right?
Steven Sashen
Yeah. What a shock.
Erin Futrell
And so the, the groups.
Steven Sashen
Wait, wait, I gotta. Wait, I gotta tell you something funny. You know, for. There’s one group for whom that doesn’t work. Who Kids.
Erin Futrell
Really?
Steven Sashen
Well, the way I can say it is there’s a. I don’t want to throw people under the bus too much, but I will throw some people under the bus. The people who came up, the couple who came up with jibbets, those things you put in the holes of Crocs, their next business, what they did with the money they got from Crocs was I blanked on the name of the, what they called the company, but it was a gamified pedometer for kids. Like, let’s get kids out and moving more. So they have this pedometer, they’ll move more, they win points that they can then spend in our online store. And I said, and I’m thinking if I was a kid, I would take the pedometer and just like shake it all day. And in fact, in their promo video, there was like a quick shot of a kid doing that. And it’s one of these things where, you know, the parents love this idea and the kids are like, yeah, not going to happen. And they, they spent AKA lost many, many, many millions of dollars. Not understanding that.
Erin Futrell
No. Well, our groups, the, the, the three groups that were in the study, they all walked equivalently. They, you know, and the, it’s funny, I had to go back and look up the, the kind of. What’s the, where did the 10,000 steps come from? Everybody does this whole like, I have to get 10,000 steps fiction. It’s kind of. Yeah, it’s kind of made up and there is some cool evidence out there about like, also, why is that the universal number for like everybody? Right. And so I looked it up specifically for older adults and it, you know, it’s recommended for them. Don’t try to get 10,000 steps per day, but try to like think about how many steps you’re getting for a week. Because sometimes you might need to take it. You did a lot one day, you might need to take it easy another day. But, but our groups, they all, they walked equivalently. It wasn’t like the footwear group was walking more because we did tell them spend time in the shoes. But it was mostly to just make sure they weren’t like putting them on and sitting down and reading a book all day, you know, and so that was the point of that.
Steven Sashen
So, so after the 16 weeks, what was happening after that?
Erin Futrell
Yeah, so they were in the study for a year. So after 16 and the magic number, why 16 weeks? Why do we make them do them for that long? Tends to be that if you start doing any sort of muscle strengthening exercises, it can take anywhere from basically about six weeks. Maybe is the minimum where you might start seeing changes in your muscle, where you might actually see them hypertrophy and get bigger. And then for older adults it’s probably going to take them longer. So, you know, typical For a younger adult would probably be six to eight weeks. And so we just doubled that. So like you’re going to capture it. Something’s going to happen to their muscles. If anything’s going to happen in that time period where we’re having them do it like most days a week, five days a week. And then after that we told them they could cut. They can continue to do it as much as they want, but do it at least two days a week. Still spend like all day in your, in your minimal footwear. And that was the, the physio exercise physiology principle is once you’ve built up your muscular strength and endurance in a, with an exercise program, you can maintain it by doing something as little as two days a week. And so that was that rationale.
Steven Sashen
And were you collecting actually what I got to back up a giant step. So I have not, I have been very deliberate about not putting out a very specific plan.
Erin Futrell
Yeah.
Steven Sashen
Because of the idiosyncratic nature of what it takes for someone to transition and some of this, I mean, I’m not going to get into it, but I have a whole neurological idea about, you know, different people need different things to make the transition. The short version is some people literally can’t tell if something hurts or not or feels good. Some people just have. Which is the biggest group is this group that has bad proprioceptive skills. They don’t know what their body’s actually doing. So they’ll think that they’re doing something, but videotape shows they’re doing something different. The next group of people, they’re, you know, pretty facile. They can tell if something hurts. They’re, you know, they kind of know where their body is and they just need some cues that can speed up the process of learning. And then the last group, they’re naturals and their problem is they have so much fun. Once they get out of shoes that squeeze their feet together, they do too much too soon and revert to one of those previous levels temporarily. And many of them will go, oh, I got a blister. See, this is bullshit. And it’s like, no, no, you just went out and just switched your shoes and still and just did your normal 10 mile run without noticing that this is about form, not footwear. But footwear informs the form. And of course in this case, footwear informs everything else as well.
Erin Futrell
I will tell you this, like, I admit I’m right there with Dr. Davis who said that was too conservative. I know it was very conservative. This plan that I, that I made because I didn’t want anybody to get hu. And to drop out prematurely or to just, you know, not want to wear the shoes. Two, only two people had any sort of adverse effect. Those two people, when I asked them, my first question was like, why are you following the schedule? Both of them, And I’m gonna throw you under the bus. They were both men. They said, what schedule? After we like, funny, after we spent so much time going over it with them, making sure they understood it and checking back in with them. And both of those guys, like, they just didn’t follow it at all. They just put shoes on and went. And they both would complain that their calves hurt really bad. Right. And their feet. And so everybody that followed the schedule, it was fine, no adverse effects, but they dropped out. One guy did and one guy didn’t once. One guy had to, he was just like his, he, he just did way too much too soon.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Erin Futrell
And his, he just couldn’t, he couldn’t adhere to, like walking around. He just needed to rest his calves. He had to, like, really, really, really damage them. So he had to drop out the other guy, once we got him back on the rails and following the schedule, he was fine.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. Again, like I said before, calf pain is optional. It’s an indication that you’re doing one of three things wrong. Either you’re over striding and planar flexing, pointing your toes, or you’re eccentrically loading your calf, or you’re pushing off as your foot’s coming off the ground. You’re pushing off too much. Actually, is there even a third one? Those are the two bigg that people tend to do. And I know that. I think there actually is a third that I can’t think of.
Erin Futrell
But you bring up an interesting point. Like, I wonder if this is the third. I don’t know. And this is something I commented on in the paper. There was this, there was another paper I read that that said, oh, in this short term study, like, they put older adults in minimal footwear and they found one of the things that happened was their stride got shorter. And so they said, oh, they feel uncomfortable. A lot of times balance studies do this. If you’re not moving as much outside of a range, that means you have worse balance. And so this, this other author, he attributed, I think it was, he attributed this shorter stride length to this person feeling off balance in the shoe. And I would actually disagree.
Steven Sashen
And I, I would disagree completely.
Erin Futrell
Well, my running, my running brain. Right. Comes back in because I know when you transition from a, from a thick Cushion shoe to a minimal shoe. Your stride shortens. Right. Because you don’t want to hit your foot on the ground as much a lot of times, especially if you’re a heel striker.
Steven Sashen
Well, what I say is your stride shortens if you’re maintaining the same speed of movement.
Erin Futrell
Yes.
Steven Sashen
Because your cadence, your cadence has to increase. And the only way your cadence can increase is if your stride is short, because you can. I mean, I had an email volley with someone just the other day about this, and she was saying, you know, does my stride get shorter? I said, well, depends. Stride length has to do with how fast you’re choosing to move and whether you know how to actually use your glutes and hamstrings to push you forward. And so it’s like if you look at Olympic level, not all of them, but most Olympic level runners, their stride is no shorter when they’re not heel striking and over striding because they are pushing. And stride length is, you know, an effect, not a cause. So anyway, that’s a whole other.
Erin Futrell
It is. Well, and this is my observation in runners, when we, when we switched them from one to the other, it’s a very, like, common phenomenon that changes at a constant speed. But we interviewed the folks in this study in all the groups. We kind of asked them because we were kind of studying our study at the same time. That’s a different paper. But it’s. We asked them their opinions about this whole thing and opinions about the shoes and this and that. And I remember a few of them said, well, I feel like I take smaller steps because I don’t want to hit my foot on the ground as hard. And I was like, oh, that made sense to me, like, because the same thing happens when people switch when they’re running.
Steven Sashen
Right.
Erin Futrell
And so that might be the third thing you’re thinking about. Like, if people don’t naturally do that, they’re kind of hitting their. If they’re heavy footed and they’re hitting their foot on the ground just as hard as they did in cushion shoes, that might be a. And they do. And they do it too soon. Too much. Yeah, Yeah, I can see that being a cause of pain.
Steven Sashen
The, the. Well, it could be. I mean, the biggie is simply just, you know, any sort of overuse thing. And the only way you’re going to overuse your calves is if you are either pushing harder or decelerating more. And those, those are the two biggies. There were some backing up to the transition thing. The thing I say to people is, I mean, I Give them a couple of pointers and say, you know, the only.
Steven Sashen
You want to start stupidly small. Like if you’re. If you’re walking for a minute, maybe five minutes, if you’re standing all day, just, you know, for half an hour. If you’re running 20 seconds and see how you feel the next day, and it feels like, you know, you just did a little too much of the gym, you want to think about relaxing more, not just getting stronger.
Steven Sashen
You will get stronger, but that’s not the biggest contributor. And if you feel like you did something bad, then a. For both situations, you want to rest till you feel better and try again. But if you feel like something really went off, then you definitely need to pay attention to some big form issue. If it just feels like, you know, did too much of the gym, not a big deal. If you feel like you did something crazy, which almost never happens, then, you know, you got to pay attention to the form. And the form is pretty straightforward. Don’t reach out and put your heel in front of your ankle when you land.
Steven Sashen
I mean, that’s it. And then for runners in particular, but walking too, I go instead of pushing off the ground, which if you have it, you know, I say to them, if you’ve got a shoe that’s super stiff with all this toe spring. So the. So it’s basically constantly pulling your toes up towards your knees and dorsiflexion. Then you’ve gotten used to pushing in a certain way that now you’re doing more of that you don’t need to.
Steven Sashen
You want to think about lifting your foot off the ground like you’re, you know, like if you step on a bee, you don’t push harder. You lift by flexing your hip. Or if you’re going to knee a soccer ball in front of you, you put, you know, you lift to make that happen. Yeah, those are the two big cues. And people, you know, then they get into a tizzy about walking or.
Steven Sashen
Or running slower. I go, speed is just stride length times, cadence times, how many steps per minute. So if you want to go faster, just manipulate one of those. I mean, not a big deal. Any backing up or moving forward or moving in some direction. So I’m curious, when. When you were checking in with people, what was the check in like? Or were you hearing any spontaneous comments from.
Steven Sashen
Oh, sorry, wait, I want to tell this story. That’s what it was. There’s a doctor that I know who works with a very small group of patients. They all work together. They all work in A factory on. On concrete floors all day. And he had such a great. He doesn’t work just with them. He works with their families, too. He had such a great experience switching like their high school cross country team to minimalist shoes where their injury weights rates went to. Went to next to nothing. And this tiny little school won like a state championship partly as a result of that, that he switched everyone in the factory to wearing minimalist shoes. And the way when he presents this in public, says 97% of them stuck with the minimalist shoes. And the number of lower extremity injuries that I treat went down to almost nothing. Then he says privately, the 3% that get dropped out because they weren’t having a good experience. Then started seeing how everyone else was having a great experience. So they tried it again, and now we have 100% at.
Steven Sashen
What’s the word I’m looking for? Adoption rate. But I can’t say that because people wouldn’t believe me if I said that. So the fact that, you know, that one person kind of stuck with it and came back the other one. Yeah. If he had rested more and tried it the way you described or some variation of, I imagine it would have been similar.
Erin Futrell
So probably it probably also, unfortunately, as we get older, it takes us longer to heal. Right.
Steven Sashen
And so, like, tell me about it.
Erin Futrell
And it was already. He was already too far in by that point where we couldn’t really start him over.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, I get it. Yes. The longer to heal or get over the workout that I had this morning, I’m working with a personal trainer. And I said to him a while ago, I only work out three days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then I recover and I basically feel okay by Saturday afternoon. And I say, is this the rest of my life? That I’m going to have 72 hours of not being sore? Somewhere he goes, maybe. Yeah. What’d you expect?
Erin Futrell
So know you’re alive, Steven.
Steven Sashen
No, no. I got to tell you, it actually does. The fact that I feel sore in places means something is happening, which I need at this point because it’s not like when I was 17 through 30 where I would grow musculature. Musculature. That’s not the word I’m looking for. Anyway, I have a hypertrophic response. Hypertrophic response very easily. Or I could lose body fat easily. At 64, it doesn’t happen that fast. And so having the soreness kind of keeps me going because I know something is happening. And it’s not so bad that I actually. I’ve had times where I had to walk downstairs backwards. It was the only way I could get downstairs or slide on my butt. I’ve had that too. Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s not that bad now, but it is, you know, I need to use the handrails to get on and off the toilet. There’s definitely that. So I and my wife asked me early on, she said are you having fun? I went, oh my God, more than I’ve had in decades. So it’s a good time. Anyway, so I’m curious and I asked this only because of the times that we hear from people spontaneously. Did you have an opportunity to hear from people spontaneously during this study about what their experience was or were you asking them that anecdotal stuff along the way?
Erin Futrell
Well, I asked them. So at a certain point, it was at the 16 week point I asked them questions about their experience and they were try, they were attempting to be like open ended, not leading. And we asked the exact same questions to all three of the different groups and some of it was based on other research in this area which was like, you know, did you, are you any more aware of your feet or. I think we asked some. Something around the, the sensory. There was like a question asking about their sensory. I don’t have the exact wording in my head but you know, do you feel like you’re more aware of your feet or like how do you feel about your foot sensation? That type of stuff. And, and people were like oh yeah, I can feel everything through these shoes. Some people like that and some people didn’t.
Steven Sashen
Right.
Erin Futrell
They were like I feel like I can feel everything. And, and, and that a lot of times would end up in an answer in a positive way. They would. I could feel. I can feel the ground better. I can correct myself if I feel like I’m about to lose my balance. There were, there were things like that being said and then we asked them about previous like pre existing injuries or aches and pains anywhere in the lower extremities all the way up to the back. And many of them said yeah, that they were like actually they. I hadn’t thought about that. Yeah, hasn’t been bothering me. And that comes from that question was kind of stemmed from there. There’s a paper that’s written about women over 60 with knee arthritis.
Steven Sashen
Right.
Erin Futrell
Who, who wore basically like aqua socks like those types of shoes. I think they made them wear them for a few months.
Steven Sashen
It was like six months. Yeah. ISABEL SACCO STUDY yeah, they were, they wore a shoe. It Was called Moleca. And it’s, it still squeezes your toes together, but otherwise it’s a really inexp lightweight, really, you know, low to the ground, flexible.
Erin Futrell
So I wanted to kind of capture that phenomenon. And I would say our, our, our group was in agreement with that. Most of them were like, yeah, like, I haven’t had any, like, people who had plantar fasciitis or Achilles 10 tenopathy, like, or knee pain or hip pain. Yeah, that actually feels better or I haven’t noticed it bothering me. So, you know, I would attribute that to probably just like what Sacco found is. And there, there’s was speculative, was, oh, we think the whole kinetic chain is affected because how could it.
Steven Sashen
I mean, this is one of these things. How could it not be when suddenly you’re at the very least not elevating your heel or putting, you know, developing a shoe, especially if it’s got like a flared sole that’s changing all the torque and moment arm effects of, you know, when you’re landing. I mean, it’s. This is one of those things that’s so screamingly obvious to me and to anyone who’s been doing this.
Erin Futrell
So many people, I think, will tell you, you know, if they’re used to wearing big, thick cushioned shoes, right. They feel like they’re leaning backwards. Right. They’re not like pitched forward anymore. They have that sensation. They go, oh, I was really leaning forward a lot. And that’s a phenomenon with older adults who lose their balance. A lot of times they do lean forward. They’re looking down and they’re sort of always trying to catch their balance. They’re kind of continuously falling and trying to catch their balance. And so putting them back, their center of gravity changes a little bit and gets more inside them. That might be why they feel better balanced.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, it’s something that, that my wife discovered before we started the company. Even when I was just making sandals for people and they were going out and having a good time, she wore them for a few weeks and then she put on what she thought was just like a normal shoe that had a very small. Yeah, I mean, not even a very big heel lift. And she said, I feel like I’m going to fall on my face. And so, yeah, it’s, it’s a. It amazes me in both positive and negative ways how the brain is designed to acclimate to whatever. You just give it on a continual basis, whether it’s good or bad. And then I love that it’s like, oh, yeah, that Thing wasn’t bothering me because we also don’t notice those kinds of changes, especially if it just kind of gradually goes away and then it becomes the new norm and somebody has to bring it to your attention until you go right. Unless it’s one of these dramatic things, which we’ve had that often as well, or somebody switches to our shoes, and literally the next day, we have a guy who’s working with us now who was about to get his second hip replacement. I sent him a pair of shoes, and four days later, he said, I don’t need my hip replaced anymore.
Erin Futrell
All right, well, there you go.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, the X ray hasn’t changed, but I’m not in pain, so what’s a big deal?
Erin Futrell
One thing I noticed, it’s funny, I teach goniometry, which is like, if you’ve ever been to physical therapy, when they measure your. Your joints with this little protractor type of tool. And when we go to get to the ankle and we’re talking about, like, college age people, right. They’re in their, like, early 20s. We’re measuring each other. And so many of them lack any amount of dorsiflexion. It’s because they’re sitting in plantar flexion all the time in their giant wedged heeled shoes. And most of them are wearing athletic shoes, like, around on a daily basis with that thick heel. And so they’re always in plantar flexion.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. And. And this is again, another one of those things about your brain adapting. It’s like I watched this happen with runners in my neighborhood where they’re, you know, big, thick shoes with big heel lift. And the good runners are not using the heel at all, not even coming close to it, but. Which means they’re not stretching their Achilles at all, practically. And then people will say, oh, if I switch to a minimalist shoe, I get Achilles tendonitis. Like, no, no, no, no. What happened is your brain got used to the fact that you can only stretch your Achilles, you know, a small amount, and then you tried to force it. You had an argument with your brain when you switch shoes, and your brain is going to try and win because you’re working with a much more primitive brain, and that one’s going to win. If you taught it that that was safe to stretch your Achilles further, and there’s ways to do that almost instantly, then you wouldn’t have that problem. And it’s like when I got back into sprinting. Well, you can’t train in your spikes. You’ll get Achilles tendonitis Yeah, because you’re training in a big, thick shoe with a big heel lift, and then you’re slipping to something that’s the exact opposite. But if you actually trained in the spikes, you wouldn’t have a problem in your spikes.
Erin Futrell
Yeah. And eventually also, like, if you’ve been. If your tissues have adaptively shortened over time.
Steven Sashen
Well, this is the thing. This. Wait.
Erin Futrell
I’m actually let them lengthen a little.
Steven Sashen
I wonder how much is actual tissue shortening, which we can only tell from cadaver studies, really, versus just literally your
Erin Futrell
brain in certain places.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. I mean, I remember there’s one of the early. One of the people who brought Moshe Feldenkrais to America, which his whole. That whole bodywork work system is all about telling your brain, this is safe again. And he tells a story of a woman who had a frozen shoulder where she couldn’t lift her arm past parallel to the ground. And he had her bend over so she was. Her. Her torso was parallel to the ground. And just lift her arm as high as she could, and she lifted it, and her arm was parallel to the ground. Then he says, stand up, and she’s pointing to the ceiling. She’s like, what the hell?
Erin Futrell
Yeah. So, yeah, no, I love that Feldenkrais stuff. Like, it is. It’s cool to say, let’s do it this way with this change, and people can suddenly do it.
Steven Sashen
Well, my favorite part about it is that the way you work is let’s work on the good side first, the side that isn’t having a problem to just lock in what it’s doing, and then we’ll work on the, quote, bad side, and it will have learned from the good side. And the reason that I love that is because that’s how I got into this whole thing is I. My first barefoot run, I ended up with a blister on the ball of my left foot, which is the one that got injured more often. So the next week when I went for a run, I just paid attention to the good leg. And then nine minutes and 31 seconds later, the bad leg figured it out, and everything’s been fine.
Erin Futrell
Oh, yeah. Brain like symmetry. Your. Your.
Steven Sashen
Yes.
Erin Futrell
Legs like symmetry.
Steven Sashen
So what else? Anything else from the study striking you that we didn’t bring up yet?
Erin Futrell
No, I mean, you know, their balance got better.
Steven Sashen
Oh, did you measure strength as well?
Erin Futrell
We didn’t measure strength in this. We did that. We have future paper. We did. Look at what we did. It’s hard to measure. What we were specifically looking at are your intrinsic foot muscles. Right. Those little ones in the foot, they don’t go into your calf. They’re just real small ones called the foot core, which are also, you know, kind of highlighted when you do toe yoga exercises. And so it’s really hard to measure those with any sort of, like, strength measuring device that it.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, ultrasound.
Erin Futrell
And so we use ultrasound to. To measure. I got to tell you, they’re tiny, small muscles anyway. And in measuring in people that are in their 60s, 70s, we had a guy in this study who was 96. He was the oldest one in the study. He was in the group. He was in the footwear group. It’s really hard to find it in some of these older adults. Some of the. We get. We. We measured five different muscles, intrinsic foot muscles on the plantar surface of the foot. Foot. And so I don’t know. The jury’s still out. I haven’t looked at the muscle changes. I would say one of the things we asked people, did they feel like they were stronger? And I would say anecdotally, like, a lot of folks thought their foot, they’re like, yeah, my foot feels better, stronger. Like, I can feel with it. Which. Which wasn’t expected for them. And I would say the people that did the exercises, the toe yoga and the people that. That were minimal footwear, both reported that.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, the. It’s one of these things that I say, as a scientifically minded person, I’m the first one to say that anecdotes does not do not equal data. But a preponderance of anecdotal data is a very critical data point. And, and especially when it. When it’s given spontaneously. I mean, when we. When this is what I say, it’s like, look at our reviews. We didn’t ask for those. And this is what people are reporting. That’s a big deal.
Erin Futrell
Well, it’s also fun to. To compare their anecdotal data to the actual data. So you ask people, you feel like you have better balance, and we could really tell them if they really did have better balance or not. And I would say a lot of people in the control group said, yes, I think I have better balance. They did not have better balance. Yeah, it’s one of those things, you know, you’re. You’re in a study about. About fall risk. And so we did give them a sham intervention. They weren’t doing nothing. So they. But they were doing. The control group was doing something that I would say is very commonly seen when you go to, like, a senior center or you go into YMCA of older adult. And you know, you got to do what people are able to do. And so a lot of. For safety, a lot of times older adults are told to sit in a chair and do their exercises. Yeah, the exercises that we gave people, they didn’t have any weights. We didn’t progress them in any way. They were just doing like active stuff. They were really common exercises that you’ll see in those classes. And there were actually two people in the control group that did get better balance. And it might be because they were so bad off to start with.
Steven Sashen
Right.
Erin Futrell
That actually did help them because it is. It might have been like significantly more activity for them.
Steven Sashen
There’s a.
Erin Futrell
But across the board. It shouldn’t have helped them. It really. I wasn’t expecting it to help people.
Steven Sashen
There’s. It is fun when it’s surprising. I did some research when I was an undergrad, cognitive psych research where without getting into the details, people thought they totally failed the exercise, completely failed it. And statistically they all did better. And basically it had to do with whether we have an innate perception of rhythm. And this the way the study protocol. I’ll explain it anyway, we gave people, we listened to like four bars of various drum rhythms in various levels of syncopation. From no syncopation to like really simple. Two things that were crazy and the crazy syncopated ones were so unpleasant for people that they just hate. And then so they listen to these various. Some number of them, I don’t know how many we did. And then we’d wait for a few minutes and we play a number of rhythms back to them and just ask did you hear this one before or not? And everyone thought they failed it and everyone hated it because the syncopated rhythms were so annoying. But statistically we found that people did break down the way we thought. And. And yes, we do have an innate sense of rhythm. And yes, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. Right. So that’s what happens when you get to do a study in the South.
Erin Futrell
That’s cool.
Steven Sashen
But there’s another one that’s interesting. I have a friend who has a company called Nimble N Y M B L and they’re doing the cognitive stuff that you talked about. So it’s an app where people are mostly doing, you know, stand to sit and. And various very, very simple exercises while getting some additional cognitive load. And they’re getting good results from that as well. They won’t use my shoes because they don’t want that to be a confound. They want it to be all about their app. To get money for the app. App, not get money for our shoes, which totally cool. They wear our shoes, but they don’t prescribe them because they’re trying to prove the value of the app. But that’s another one that I find very interesting, especially since my undergraduate research was cognitive. Other research was cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition. So what’s happening in your brain while you’re learning something, and what happens if you’re being distracted or not being distracted? And so it’s all fun, blah, blah, blah.
Erin Futrell
I will say with this, you just stimulated my brain. One of the things that we really wanted to look at, so we were. Our main variable of this study was fall risk.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Erin Futrell
Because that’s easier to study with smaller groups. If you want to study big, like epidemiology of falls, you study fall incidents, or you actually literally count how many falls someone have. And you have to follow people for a minimum of a year to really get a good idea. Unless they’re a very high risk population. Maybe you could do it right. Less, but. And then there’s even ideas that you should do it for two years. Right. You should follow somebody for two years to really capture if something’s really changing fall incidents in a population. But to do that, you have to have huge numbers of people. It’s the same with, like, running injuries. If you want a running injury to occur. We got a prospective study with hundreds of people. And it’s the same here when we looked. So when we were looking to design this study, the funding agency wanted us to use fall incidents. And I and I tried to. My statistician and my co author, Julia Chevin, and I, we were like, okay, no problem. And we looked at how many people we’d need in the study. We were going to need like 800 people.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Erin Futrell
Maybe it depended. Depending on the equation, it was like 400 to 800 people. And sometimes that was per group. So it might have been like 1200 people if we had three groups. Right. It was. It was just kind of unattainable for. For little old me and my fun, you know, my little lab. And so that’s kind of an inherent problem in falls research, is that if you want to study falls incidents, you have to have a ton of people. If you want to look at fall risk, you can do it with very few people. Like, relatively. In this study, you know, it was like the whole study had about 100 people in it. Well, it wouldn’t be groups.
Steven Sashen
It wouldn’t necessarily again, back up to statistical significance, it might not reach that level. But of course now you have these two groups and doing any sort of follow up could be interesting, actually three groups and it’ll be interesting to see, you know, if there’s any follow up that’s, that’s meaningful. But, but even that, you know, costs time, effort and money. And this, this is the thing that I’m grateful for, is that in the early days with the whole barefoot movement, that barefoot movement movement, there was just no money involved and there was no one doing, there was very few people doing any research. And because what’s the point? The people who had the money were not going to do the research because frankly, those are the big shoe companies and they know what the results would be. It would not be in their favor. And I say that because on the Nike website they have the results of a study that they did and it proved that their shoes injure people at different rates and different shoe designs injure people at different rates. So, but they didn’t do that till about six years ago or so that they did that study. But so, yeah, I mean, something with these, this, these three cohorts you have could be interesting if there’s a way to follow up. But more importantly, what’s coming up. So I was saying it’s great seeing this research actually happening. At the same time, it’s not making a difference yet because the belief that cushioning is good, more cushioning is better, the super cushioning is even better. Even though there’s ranted for hours about why that’s not true for 99% of the people. It’s just so ingrained. It’s going to take quite a while until people start to really believe that. Or more accurately, it’s going to take quite a while until enough of the population has had the experience of the benefits of getting out of those shoes. Choose that people will start to accept it as possible. And then another, there’ll be another inflection point where they go, oh, let me try it. And another inflection point after they have the experience and have something similar to what we’ve been talking about. And that’s all going to take time.
Erin Futrell
I tried in this study. So there were about 100 people in the study across all three groups. And when everyone was done with the study, as they, as they ended and we told them their individual results, we kind of told them the whole. What was the whole study about? And then we, but we gave them the option, we will give you a pair of these Shoes, if you want. And a lot of them took that option.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Erin Futrell
And so we provided the shoes because at the end of the day the shoes really helped. Right. So I wanted to give all these people that had volunteered their time with me the opportunity to like to use those. And so we gave them all free pairs of shoes. And so. Yeah. And even the people that did the foot exercises, we gave them, we gave them the opportunity to have the shoes too. And I would say the majority of the, of the folks took it. It. There’s another, there’s another study that’s like a short term study, just about kind of the immediate effects of what happens in with older adults and minimal footwear. And they actually got their opinions on the aesthetics of the shoes. And I would say that is probably, that’s a challenge. Right. Is like you can’t please everybody all the time. And so some of them, I didn’t really give people like color options or anything like that. It’s just like, here, you have to wear these.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, everyone’s got an opinion on that one. I mean, for everyone who says I don’t like this shoe or this color can find another person who has the exact opposite opinion.
Erin Futrell
But there’s so many more options now than there used to be.
Steven Sashen
Yes and no. There are more options now, but there are also many more options that are not truly minimalist footwear. They’re either too much padding or a little heel lift or pointy toes or. I mean, it’s basically we’re reliving what the early days were 16 years ago where the big companies came actually 15 years ago, and the big companies came out with what they called barefoot shoes, which were not lot. And now there’s just more companies who are doing that, who are smaller companies doing that. The bigger companies aren’t even doing it as much. So it’s the same kind of confusion in the market. I, I was at an event recently where somebody was wearing a competitor shoe that I knew was not a truly minimalist shoe. And he was raving about them. I said, well, come over to our booth and you know, try on ours. And he puts on ours and went, oh my God, these are different. Yeah, yeah, so, and you know about keeping the shoes. I, I, there was a very informal, not even a study really, but we gave some shoes to a physical therapist who works with a lot of Parkinson’s patients. And again, not a real study, but just kind of wondering what would happen over time. And there was some really cool, again, anecdotal info, like one person Kind of shuffled in and then put on our shoes and started like, jumping around and walked out fine. And I bumped into her a year later, and she said, by the way, everybody kept their shoes. They’re still wearing them, and they’ve bought more. So that. And again, I’m. I’m not. I’m happy about that, obviously, for the business, but I’m more happy about that because as Lena, my wife, said early on, she was, look, there’s enough shoe companies in the world. There’s no reason to start another shoe company unless your shoes are changing people’s lives. And that’s the thing that gets us up in the morning and deals with, frankly, all the significant challenges of running a growing business is that’s what we hear all the time from people. From people. And the more we can identify specific groups where we’re showing a demonstrable benefit, the better. And. And I know there’s more research coming out that’s going to allow us to talk about other specific ailments or injuries or issues, and the more of that, the better, because that’s. It’s going to help over time. At the very least, if somebody buys a pair of shoes, then they see the research, it gives them some. Whatever that word is for. For. Not buyer’s remorse. The opposite of buyer’s remorse.
Erin Futrell
Yeah. Well, at the very least, here’s what I. In the background research that I did and my team did, we looked at this huge report about. There’s this huge report that comes out called the U.S. preventative Task Force. Does this, like, study about all the falls literature. And they look at everything. They look at medication, they look at vision, they look at exercise, but they find that exercise is like, a good thing, right? It. It can moderately improve your balance. There’s a lot of other reasons that people can fall, but musculoskeletally, neuromuscularly. Right. We do what we can. And so. And I think they included like, 70 studies about exercise in their report, and, like, two of them included anything about the feet.
Steven Sashen
But we’re. Well. And, you know, even the stuff that
Erin Futrell
really need to include the feet, people. That’s the first contact with the earth.
Steven Sashen
Well, even more.
Erin Futrell
Teach people how to use their feet.
Steven Sashen
Even more. The thing that I find. I wish I could say I find it perplexing. I find it just too obvious and too. Too unsurprising is that the research that’s like anti barefoot, anti natural movement usually has. Has two things in common almost always. The first is we let people transition to a barefoot shoe by running for five minutes on a treadmill. I mean something as simple, I mean as stupid as that one and simple as that one. And the other is they never pay attention to or measure gait. Because like I said, this is about form, not footwear. It’s just that footwear informs your form. And I, I mean, I’ve had this argument with, with doctors for 16 years when they go, oh, I’m getting more patients than ever thanks to this whole barefoot thing. I go, cool. First of all, you guys said the same thing in 1972 when running became a big thing and running shoes became like a big deal. So get your story straight. Which is it? And then secondly, I go, this is about form, not footwear. So when people came in, did you ask them if they were actually running barefoot or in what people in the industry think of as a truly minimalist shoe or not? And they go, well, no. I go, did you look at their gait in any way? Did you do any gait analysis? And you know what proper gait mechanics are? They go, no. I go, well, then I don’t really care about your story. By getting more patients, when more people start doing some activity, when the pie gets bigger, your proportional slice gets bigger too, even though the proportions are the same. And by the way, how many people in regular shoes are still getting injured at a very high rate?
Erin Futrell
Oh yeah.
Steven Sashen
So it’s like, like what’s the math on how many people who are, you know, doing barefoot running especially correctly? What’s the math on how many of them are getting injured compared to the people who are wearing a regular running shoe? Again, back to the Nike study. Their best selling shoe in a 12 week study injured 30.3% of the people wearing it. Injured it. How do we compare to that? If I injured 30.3% of the people wearing our shoes in a year, I’d be in jail.
Erin Futrell
So let’s not have that.
Steven Sashen
No, no, I’m trying to avoid that. Although, you know, I mean, I could use the mental break at this point.
Erin Futrell
It could be vacation. Vacation again.
Steven Sashen
Little weird vacation. Yeah, I’m cool being like, I’ve done a lot of meditation. I spent many, many, many hours in a room just staring at my breathing. So, all right, so what’s the future for you or anyone else that you’re hearing about or any wishes for the future in? When it comes to research?
Erin Futrell
My wishes are to continue this work, continue looking at how footwear affects feet, how we can strengthen feet, how that translates to function. I would love to continue just like Kind of offshoots of what this study told us. Okay. So we know this can help older adults with the fall risk. Okay, well, let’s. Let’s have people wear the shoes while they’re doing these, like, fall prevention exercise programs, because they don’t really, like, involve the feet. And we need to involve the feet. Yes. Strengthen your glutes, strengthen your quads, but strengthen your feet at the same time. And that’s. That’s a simple. We know that you could do the targeted toe yoga exercises, and these older adults could do those, but they’re hard and they’re frustrating, even for young athletic people sometimes.
Steven Sashen
It’s also. Anytime you’re giving something, someone something that is a real noticeable change in their daily routine, just. Yeah, it’s always low.
Erin Futrell
If you can slap on a pair of shoes that we know can benefit you and get you stronger, as long as you do it gradually. Right. And let your body get used to it.
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Erin Futrell
Then it can just be part of your routine and part of your day, and it could really make a meaningful change. And so that’s really what I want to continue doing. And, and also kind of, I’m trying to build right now a database of feet because as far as I know, it doesn’t exist. And so.
Steven Sashen
Wait, hold on. What are you measuring? Because we have. We’ve got one.
Erin Futrell
Oh, do you have a database of feet? I’m measuring. I. So I. I look at just one muscle with ultrasound. I look at the abductor hallucis. I ask people about their shoes, what they wear birds for daily use as well as if they play different sports or if they’re dancer or whatever their activity is. We measure hallux valgus angle, because that’s easy to measure. We do measure. We try to measure strength of the abductor hallucis with a little dynamometer, kind of like the paper grip test, like pulling out a card, but we do it with a little dynamometer. And then we do the arch height index, seated and standing, which, if you don’t know what that is, it’s kind of like one of those foot measuring devices in shoe store, but on steroids. And it’s considered kind of a better way to measure your arch height because it takes into account foot length and foot width and things like that.
Steven Sashen
You know, you just remind me. The one study that I can think of that hasn’t been done yet, and this is coming from anecdotal data starting with me is I had ridiculously flat feet my whole life, and there’s some muscle I stick my foot in the camera and show it to you. But I too lazy to do that right now. That was like overdeveloped as a result. And once I started spending more time barefoot and especially running barefoot, my arch developed. And now it’s not anything massive that’s predominantly genetic, but there’s an arch. I mean when I step out of a swimming pool it doesn’t look like, you know, an egg with dots around it, an egg with more eggs around it. There’s actually a little curve in there and that muscle that was overworked is no longer protruding the way it was overworked. I have not seen or heard of anyone wanting to do a study on changes in arch height with. Whether it has to do with, you know, wearing zero shoes or just doing foot exercises or whatever. And that’s one that I would like to see that I think you’re right.
Erin Futrell
You know what they have done is. And I can send it to you. There is a study of like not that they did interventions but people who wear minimal shoes versus people who don’t. They just looked at different characteristics of their feet. I’ll send it to you. And I want to say that there are noticeable differences.
Steven Sashen
Interesting. I mean I’m not going to be surprised but I’ll be curious to see what they say. By the way, we don’t have the database that you’re looking to put together. That would be a good one.
Erin Futrell
But yeah, I’m just trying to because really like there’s no way to say well what is an average or what is. There’s no such thing as normal. Right, but, right. But like in the opportunity I have at Springfield College is we’re very sporty school, we have a lot of athletes. And so I’m trying to measure just starting with the easiest low hanging fruit students. And so they’re all kind of, of a certain age but they all. I can get, I can get a lot of feet per sport or for non athletes or per dancers where I can start to look at oh and I’ve asked like what kind of footwear they wear. So I can, I can say and we, we’re kind of in it with the athletic training department where they can track their injuries. And so over time I can develop this huge old database and be like do certain foot types or certain footwear have relationships and do they end up leading to certain types of injuries in certain sports?
Steven Sashen
That would be interesting. I realized now my story is a little not as good as I wish it were. I just realized why I Watched some video, I don’t remember who did it, about foot strength and developing foot strength and talked about certain sports that you could do or certain things. But then he mentioned, by the way, I mean, you know, gymnasts and dancers, their foot strength is through the roof. And I was a gymnast until I was 32, but then after I landed and twisted and heard that sound coming from my knee, gymnastics stopped and I didn’t, I wasn’t really doing anything that was very foot intensive for like the next 15 years.
Erin Futrell
Yeah.
Steven Sashen
And so, so I think, think, you know, my foot strength came back more than just developing it from nothing is my suspicion. I don’t know, it’s the one regret that I have is that I didn’t measure foot strength and arch height, which I guess would be two regrets from the day that I started this until, you know, anytime thereafter. But I’ve measured since and you know, it’s off the charts for an almost older guy at 64. I’m just waiting. I’m actually looking forward to 65A. I’m in a new age group group for sprinters and be, you know, all the discounts.
Erin Futrell
I mean, that’s right. Everything’s going to be cheaper. Right.
Steven Sashen
I’m very excited. I’m, I’m not excited about having to have dinner at 4:30, but you know, that’s okay.
Erin Futrell
And maybe they’ll, I, they’ll ID you again, you know, just on the other 65, if they don’t ID you, it’s going to be, it’s going to be an insult.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, I’m, I haven’t really thought about that until now and now I’m depressed. So I’m, I’m actually, I’m actually looking forward to getting the point. There’s a story that I heard a blackjack card counter was at a table and there was like some old, like old guy, looked like he was 80 years old sitting at the table just half asleep and would play a few hands and then kind of go back to sleep and then play a few hands and go back to sleep. And finally the guy who was the card counter notice noticed that this guy was also a card counter and he was only playing the hands where the advantage was like way in his favor and, but no one paid attention to him because he was just like some random old dude and he walked away with 40 grand.
Erin Futrell
Yeah, I mean with, with age comes wisdom and that, that guy he knew
Steven Sashen
and a certain level of anonymity if you play it right.
Erin Futrell
Yeah, yeah, there you go. It’s things to look forward to.
Steven Sashen
I, I, it’s all very interesting. I can, I can say that. Anyway, Aaron, if anybody wants to get in touch, any reason including like, you know, if they are inspired to help with funding in some way, what’s a way that they could do that?
Erin Futrell
They can email me. Do you want me to send it to you so you can post it on your website?
Steven Sashen
Well, I’ll do that but you can
Erin Futrell
also tell them and I also have, well, Yeah. E Futrell SpringfieldCollege Edu My last name is spelled F as in Frank U T R E L L And I also have a little, a small research lab at Springfield College. We call it the Fitness Fit Lab stands for I’m not even going to know it Foot intrinsic testing and training lab. So the Fit Lab at Springfield College, you can also search for that and I’m on there.
Steven Sashen
Awesome. Well, thank you, thank you. And I mean I thank you for this of course and thank you for the research which I know when you told me about it I couldn’t have been more excited and I had expectations about what happened and those were exceeded. So it’s just been really a treat and I’m looking forward to, for lack of a better term, taking advantage of that and exploiting that to help more and more people who are, who are currently at risk for falls where we can help do something about that because
Erin Futrell
it’s a, it’s surprisingly an untapped area of research and an untapped I think business market to, to really get your
Steven Sashen
adults to buy it and it’s an 80 billion dollar insurance problem right now.
Erin Futrell
Yeah. So this seems like a pretty simple solution.
Steven Sashen
One more thing think, one would think
Erin Futrell
the study that I did was funded by the cdc. They also think that it was before all the funding was taken away. They also thought that this was a worthwhile thing to look at because it is a simple and affordable way to make a big difference people’s lives.
Steven Sashen
Yep. Very, very happy to hear it. Well for everybody else, thank you so much for being part of the conversation and just a reminder that a, if you liked what you heard and want to hear more, spread the word, give us a thumbs up or like or five star rating or hit the bell icon on YouTube while you hear about future episodes. If you want to find previous episodes go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com but most importantly, no matter. Oh by the way, if you have any recommendations, requests, people who you think should be on the show, especially if you think there’s someone who has a who thinks I have have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, then I want to hear about them. I have been for years wanting to get someone who thinks I’m completely full of it to talk to me but they don’t want to. I’ve had one where I got really close but then he realized it would be public and he was like oh no, I don’t want people to hear what I’m thinking but I would love to have that conversation. I’m open to it. I’m literally open to if I’m wrong about something, there’s nothing I like better. As a marketer I like finding that out to then figure out what I need to know. Know more of or better of or whatever would be an English sentence. Anyway, drop me an email. Move mo v e@ jointhemovementmovement. Com and more importantly, no matter what you’re doing between now and whatever we do next, go out, have fun and live life feet first.