Kevin David Rail is a Fitness Nutrition Specialist with certifications through ACSM, ACE, NASM, and AFM, and he has a BS in Sport Management/Fitness and Wellness.
He has over 25 years in his field and is highly sought after. He has been featured in two critically acclaimed documentary films, Fasting and The Motivation Factor for his expertise as a health and fitness professional.
Kevin is the co-creator of My Inferno Body, a health and fitness app and has done content production, videos, reels, blogs, and exercise programs for such companies as ProLon, FastBlast Smoothie, Life Fitness, Livestrong.com, eHow.com, Wild Warrior Nutrition, and GarageFit.
Kevin has helped thousands of people transform their lives and businesses through expertly designed fasting protocols, meal plans and training programs to maximize fat loss, strength, mobility, and brain function. He is also a barefoot runner, specialist and educator, and can be seen any warm summer morning running around town unshod. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, mountain biking, slacklining, playing music and training for his next physique competition.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Kevin David Rail about the validity of current health trends.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How you should be asking yourself how your workouts are going to benefit you outside of the gym.
– Why getting outside sounds more fun and is more accessible to most people.
– How cross body patterns train your core and your body more than traditional forms of working out.
– Why it’s important for people to enjoy the movements they are partaking in.
– How even engaging in one different exercise a week can make a difference in your life.
Connect with Kevin:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@TrainerRail
Instagram
@fastingfitness_pro
Facebook
facebook.com/kevin.rail
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/krail/%20
Links Mentioned:
fastingforfitness.health
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
What if some or maybe many of the things that you know about what it takes to be healthy or maybe become not unhealthy, are upside down and backwards? Well, we’re going to be taking a look at some of those today on this 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, because those things are your foundation.
And we bring up the propaganda, the lies, the mythology that you’ve been told about, what it takes to run or walk or hike or do yoga or CrossFit or play, whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. Did I say enjoyably? Trick question, of course I did. Because look, if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep doing it. So that’s going to be, fun is going to be part of the equation.
I’m Steven Sashen, CEO of XeroShoes.com, your host of the podcast. And we call it the Movement Movement because we are creating a movement that involves you. I’ll tell you how in a sec about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do. And the simple thing about helping us with the movement part is go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Nothing you need to do to join. There’s no cost. There’s no secret handshake, there’s no song you have to sing. And that’s just the domain I got. And that’s where you’ll find previous episodes, all the ways you can find us on social media, all the places you can find us, wherever you get your favorite podcast basically.
But more importantly, if you want to help and spread the word, be part of the movement, then give us a thumbs up or a like or a review. Hit whatever it is you know how to do. Just basically, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. And before we jump in, because for anyone watching, you’re going to be already wondering, I’ve got a sling on for my left arm. Because yes, I was setting the world deadlifting record and got injured. No, that’s not true. Old gymnastics injury finally took a toll on me and I’m in a sling for the next four weeks. No big deal.
And luckily it’s my left hand, which I got to tell you, even though this is my non-dominant hand, I use it for a lot of things. And habitually like once or twice a day I try and do something and go, oh geez. Because I’m not supposed to do that. So anyway, let’s have some fun. Kevin, I didn’t tell you I’m not going to do an intro for you. Why don’t you tell people who the hell you are and what you do?
Kevin Rail:
Oh, well thank you very much. I will happily take the floor on that. And you kind of just answered my question about your shoulder. I saw the sling and I have a friend who just walked into the gym with a sling on, similar to yours, almost identical. And she’s four weeks out from taking it off. And I know how much of a bugger that rotator cuff injury is. Because I’ve had a lot of friends and family members and clients that have had it over the years.
Steven Sashen:
So well hold that thought though. This one’s not even a rotator cuff. The right one was rotator cuff and bicep. This one was all bicep tendon. It got shredded. And so what they did, this is amazing actually. They basically took essentially a drywall screw and screwed it into the top of my arm bone, my humerus, and then attached the tendon that was still healthy at that spot to that little drywall screw. And then cut off the rest of it from there to where it attaches to your shoulder, because I don’t need it anymore. Because it wasn’t working anyway. And so now I’m not bionic unfortunately, but I’m a Home Depot project.
Kevin Rail:
What a good reference that was. So aftermarket parts, you still have them. And I know a lot about drywall screws because I come from a family of carpenters. And my dad worked in the carpenter’s union for many, many years when I was a young kid, which kind of defined me as an adult with my level of fitness and exercise that I’m passionate about. But anyway, to rewind a little bit, give you a little bit of story of my background. I’ve been in the health and fitness industry for about 25 years. I’ve been exercising and working out to some capacity since I was about five years old.
And I’m a fitness nutrition specialist. I have a bachelor’s degree in sports medicine, fitness and wellness from California, University of Pennsylvania. I’m certified through ACE, ACSM, NASM, AFM, which is a movement specialist certification. I also specialize in fasting, minimalism, barefoot, running, barefoot education. And I love to run barefoot and I like to connect to the earth with barefoot as well. Whether it’s grass or whether it’s concrete or any kind of aggregate surface other than blacktop. Because there’s an agent in blacktop that stops the soft spots from getting the negative ions from the earth. And I know we’re not going to go in that back and forth for now.
Steven Sashen:
Well first of all, look, as a guy, you and I share something, we have a lot of info about a lot of things and a bunch of different topics. Some of them under an umbrella in this case, sports and fitness. But I think you’re going to have to stop by using the word specialized.
Kevin Rail:
Okay, well-
Steven Sashen:
Only because it’s one of the… I mean, look, I totally get it. It’s just kind of funny. It’s like I specialize in, and when you list five, seven things, it’s like, “Eh.” And I totally get it.
Kevin Rail:
I don’t sleep much. And I specialize in myself when I say that too, it’s not necessarily an ego thing like, “Oh yeah, I’m the best.”
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no, no, no. I’m just teasing you about that. It’s just, let’s say, I’m a specialist in generalism.
Kevin Rail:
True. I get it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. There you go. There you go.
Kevin Rail:
I know that.
Steven Sashen:
And by the way, for those of you who are not watching the video version of this, Kevin talked about all these things that he’s an expert in when it comes to fitness and what he’s been doing. And you wouldn’t know from looking at him. I mean, holy smokes. So that was, by the way, completely sarcastic. So out of all these myriad things, what’s the one that’s getting the most attention for you right now? Either for you or for people that you work with?
Kevin Rail:
Complex movement patterns and crossing the midline of the body and trying to reverse the aging process of the brain, which is zero people pay attention to it. And that is one of the things I’m trying to bring to the forefront. Another thing I utilize are classical training tools like Indian clubs, gadas, maces, and these tools called wands, health wands. And what I do is I take exercise to a whole different dimension, like a fourth dimension, if you will.
So you’ve got bench presses, great. They build your chest, they build your shoulders, your arms a little bit. Then you’ve got deadlifts and you got lat pull downs and you got lunges and you got heavy squats and all these different things that people love to do. And that still forms the basis of most workouts. But I promise you, once you cross 40 years old, definitely, but even 30 years old, you have to ask yourself, “How is this going to benefit me in real life and outside the gym?”
And if you live in Colorado, I live in Utah. We live in, I would call them resort towns, sort of. I definitely do. And everyone here is an athlete. Everyone likes to do things outside the gym, they like to hike, they like to bike, they do slack lining, canoeing, climbing, you name it in the outdoors all year round. So when someone comes to me and says, “I want you to train me. I’ve been watching you in the gym.” I say, the first question I ask is, “First, do you have any injuries? Second, are you on any medications. And then what do you like to do outside the gym?”
And as soon as I ask that question, boom, eyes go up like this. “Oh, you know what? I do five Ks and I like to run and I like to do this and that and blah, blah blah. And I play pickle ball and I play tennis with my wife.” I’m like, “Great.” So I immediately say to myself, “How can I make you better at all that stuff you love to do out there? Because it’s going to make your experience better and it’s going to be more fun to you, and that is going to make me more successful in helping you.”
So one of the ways to do that is by doing cross-body patterns and training the core and the body in a way that pertains to more than just decline sit-ups and crunches and plank holds. So there’s an all-encompassing factor I like to incorporate in every one of my training sessions, regardless if you’re five years old or 25 or 55 or even 80 years old. Especially people that are aging, they’ve got to work on their balance and their flexibility and their brain function. And the best way to do that is by crossing the midline of the body. It lights up the brain like a Christmas tree, neuroplasticity, it’s neurological load.
Steven Sashen:
So give people some examples of what we’re talking about then.
Kevin Rail:
So if you stand up and you simply just go like this and slap your opposite hand with your opposite knee from a standing position. If you’re a desk jockey-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on, again, for people who aren’t watching, let me clarify. Oh, okay. That doesn’t mean bending, that doesn’t mean bending over to slap your knees with your hands, what Kevin did. And you’re sitting while you do this. But same idea when you’re standing is, for example, lift your left knee while you’re tapping it with your right hand. Did I get that right?
Kevin Rail:
Correct, correct.
Steven Sashen:
And then flip sides.
Kevin Rail:
Yes. And there’s a bunch of patterns you can do just by that. So you can stand up and you lift your knee, tap, tap your opposite knee. Then you could lift your foot and tap your opposite foot. And then you could reach behind your body and tap your foot from behind and repeat that cycle five times in a row and your brain will just go pow. It’ll light up like a Christmas tree. And you’re like, “Wow.”
And that’s a good way for someone who is wearing a suit working a 16-hour job to get up in the middle of the afternoon and do that movement break. And it’s going to rekindle their brain cells just like that. It’s going to help them have more work output and their boss is going to be happy with them. And that’s a small example. And then when you’re in the gym… Oh, go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I was going to say what you’re actually highlighting when I think about all the things that we used to do that we’re no longer doing, that were useful then that we’ve kind of forgotten. What you just said is we all should be doing the hokey pokey.
Kevin Rail:
The hokey pokey and twister are two of the best things you could possibly do. Dancing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, put your left foot in. I mean, honestly, it’s really funny. There’re a lot of those really, really fun dances that people just aren’t doing anymore are all cross body movements.
Kevin Rail:
Exactly. And the more complex the movement is, and the more body you engage, the higher endorphin release you’re going to get and the more brain retention you’re going to have. So your mood is going to improve, your anxiety’s going to go down, your depression’s going to go down. Your ability to think and concentrate and your memorization skills are going to go through the roof. Especially if you just do workouts that are all incorporating these movement patterns.
And that’s kind of how I have crafted my style over the years. And I’ve gotten to that point where it’s almost all cross body patterns and unique exercises. It’s not just like dumbbell clean and presses. It’s like a single leg, one arm clean and press where you’re on your right foot and you’re holding the dumbbell. And you cross it over to the left side of your body while keeping your left leg off the ground and doing a press above your head.
And then you do a series here and a series here, and then you go into a plank and you do a contralateral limb raise opposite arm and leg movement. So crossing the midline of the body and doing contralateral movements and complex movements where you’re doing two and three movements combined together. Especially if you’re doing a rocking and rolling type pattern with your body is absolutely amazing for the brain. It’s good for the posture, it’s good for flexibility, it’s good for balance, and it works your core in a way, like I said, that a one dimensional crunch cannot afford you or do for you.
Steven Sashen:
So two things really quick. One is just to highlight for people, because I haven’t really thought about this until now. I mean I’ve done a bunch of cross-body movement stuff over the years. But one of the things that’s going on is pretty simple. And that is if you’re, let’s say, going to be using your right hand to tap your left knee, your right hand is controlled by the left side of your brain. The left knee is controlled by the right side of your brain. So at the very least you’re getting these two movements simultaneously activating opposing sides of your brain. And then there’s the whole balance component that has to go in to make those things happen.
So it occurs to me now, I’ve never seen EEG or MRI info on what happens when we’re doing these things. But at the simplest level, the fact that you’re doing movements that require you to use a part of your brain on each side is a sort of interesting thing. And also another thing for those, again, either watching or listening, Kevin, I don’t know if you have anything available to do it. But if you have a beverage to get any more energy, I think that would probably be helpful for you.
Kevin Rail:
Well, I got my water bottle right here.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, perfect. That’s the one I was thinking of. And by the way, for anyone watching, please tell people what your shirt says because I totally adore it.
Kevin Rail:
Okay. The shirt says mountain dude, D-U-D-E, like the dude from-
Steven Sashen:
Dude abides. Yeah, the dude abides exactly. The car in front of me at the stoplight on the way to physical therapy this morning had a bumper sticker that was, “The dude abides.”
Kevin Rail:
Nice.
Steven Sashen:
So that was at the top of my brain. All right, so these are interesting patterns and I totally get what the neurological effect would be. But other than doing that sort of cross crawl thing of tapping your opposite knee with your not opposite hand. And you gave another one that was a dumbbell one. Give me that one again in slow motion and then if you could throw another one just for the fun, because these are really interesting.
Kevin Rail:
Okay. So the dumbbell one would be holding the dumbbell in your right hand in a standing position. Lift your left foot off the ground and then lower the dumbbell down to where your left foot was and kick your left leg behind you. So you’re balancing on one leg. Balance is another key thing. You’re crossing the midline of your body at an angle. And then you come up to a position like this and you pull the dumbbell in. And you pull your knee up in the air and hold it opposite. And then you do a press and then you tuck it back in. And then you lower it back down and you come back up and then you do a press.
So multiple things are happening here. You have to concentrate on balancing. You have to concentrate on crossing the midline of your body. You have to concentrate on your form and make sure you have good technique and you got to memorize the reps you’re doing. So just think of all that brain engagement. Instead of me putting you on a machine, a chest press machine. Where you can grab two handles and say, “Do a set a 10,” and you just push out like this 10 times. What benefit is that giving you? Yeah, you’re building your pecs and stuff. But-
Steven Sashen:
Well, let’s be clear. To say that it’s not giving you a benefit of course is a bit of a-
Kevin Rail:
A stretch, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Because it is. I mean it is making those muscles stronger in a very particular way that can be useful in moving up. But what you’re talking about is a different game. And so I don’t want to conflate the two and suggest that one is completely bad because we’re really talking about two different universes in a way.
Kevin Rail:
Correct, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
One is demonstrably building strength or size hypertrophy. And the other is really doing, what you’re describing, a whole different neurological thing that can have different kinds of uses. And I want to highlight something. What you’re describing is, how do I want to say this? It was a number of years ago when functional fitness became the buzzword of the day. And trying to imitate some of the things that you actually do in your daily life.
Now, arguably deadlifting is similar to grabbing a bag of groceries and picking them up. But what you’re talking about is a whole different thing even than that because it’s not trying to imitate these daily movements, but it’s doing things that actually I can see how they would impact your ability to move daily. Because you’re dealing with balance. You’re dealing with agility. You’re dealing with having to keep these things all in play at the same time, which is really interesting.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah. I’m going to rewind a little bit and then I’m going to move back forward. I wasn’t actually throwing the chest presses and stuff under the bus. There’s a time and place for everything in the world and your muscles don’t know the difference between a pushup, a seated chest press or a barbell or dumbbell bench press or any of that. And there is a time and place for all of it. And yes, you can build strength muscle, the whole nine yards. And if that is your goal, that’s totally fine.
And I train people who have balance issues or their foot is in a cast. And I have to resort to machines and stuff and that’s totally fine. So I don’t want any of you to think I’m some kind of elitist and say, “Oh, it’s all crap.” It’s not. There’s a time and place for everything. But what I do, I’m not going to use the word specialize. What I do love to incorporate into my training-
Steven Sashen:
I’ve already changed your life.
Kevin Rail:
You’ve done it, you’ve changed me already. I’ve seen the light. What I do like to incorporate is a level that’s I feel a higher level than functional fitness. There’s functional fitness, yes. And deadlifts are, any kind of exercise really is functional. That gets taken for granted a lot, that term. And I don’t really like to use it, because bicep curls are technically functional. When you reach for a glass of kombucha and you go like this, especially if it’s off the tap and it’s nice and cold and delicious, that’s a bicep curl right there, light one. But if you do bicep curls like this in the gym, hammer curls. It’s exact same thing. So everything can be functional technically. But if-
Steven Sashen:
But hold on. You reminded me of something I used to say as a joke. Which is I don’t call bowling a sport, when the muscles you use for that activity are the same muscles you use for drinking.
Kevin Rail:
That’s a good one. Yeah. Well-
Steven Sashen:
So here-
Kevin Rail:
… I haven’t bowled in forever. But anyway, yeah, I need to go bowling again. That’s a fun sport. That’s probably, that’s got a bit of neurological load involved too. Because you’ve got to hit the right arrows and all that kind of stuff. It’s a whole other conversation. But yeah, that’s going back to the original question. I would say the month of July is usually my busiest month in Park City here from a training perspective at the gym. Because a lot of people come into town for the summer or for the month of July for some reason.
And I kind of put people through protocols, they’re completely unfamiliar with. And they’re like, “Oh my,” after the session their eyes are this big, they’re drenched with sweat. And they’re like, “I’ve been working out with this former bodybuilder who owns a gym in Florida,” where this guy is from Florida. And he is like, “I’ve never done anything like this in my life.” He goes, “This is so much better than those workouts.” He’s like, “I think I’m going to fire him when I go back home.” Literally people tell me that.
And they’re like, “Oh, can you write down all these workouts and stuff?” I said, “I’m already step ahead of you. I have them written down. I have them all ready to go just in case.” He’s like, “You are the man.” And I’m like, “I aim to please.” So, because I know how complicated they can be. And that is the best, that’s the most fun part. You said the word fun earlier. Yeah, movement. But I mean the Movement Movement couldn’t be a better title for your show and challenging yourself with cross body patterns.
Even if you just engage in one different exercise a week, I don’t tell people, “Yeah, you should change all your workouts up and just do this completely.” That’s not true. It’s like start small and work your way upward and try one challenging movement every week, work on it, practice it. Or a month even and then add another one and then add another one. And that’s kind of where I started many, many years ago when I was a young strapping lad in northeast Pennsylvania where I started out, I had limited space.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Where in northeast Pennsylvania?
Kevin Rail:
Scranton, Wilkes-Barre area. A small town.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I know. I know it very, very well. I went to a summer camp up there. Yeah.
Kevin Rail:
No way.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kevin Rail:
In Scranton?
Steven Sashen:
No, a little bit outside of Scranton, maybe 20 minutes outside in Shohola, Pennsylvania, which is really Pennsylvania. Which one of my best friends calls me one day, he’d made a bunch of money, and he said, “Hey, I just bought a summer house.” I said, “Where?” He goes, “You’ll never guess. You won’t know it. It’s in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania.” I said, “Where?” He goes, “It’s called Shohola, Pennsylvania.” I said, “Do me a favor, walk outside your house, take a right, walk for a hundred yards and tell me what you see.” He goes, “It’s the entrance to Camp Shohola for boys.” I went, “That’s where I went for six years.”
So I know that neighborhood well, the Twin Lakes area. I mean you’re talking my favorite thing. But independent of that. Because I’m sitting here with this thing going on with my arm or my shoulder. What you said about just people’s eyes lighting up and just having much fun. I’m doing the dumbest version of what you described right now.
I have a pulley where I’m just holding the pulley with my left hand, the one that’s out of whack. And using my right arm to pull my arm up and down just for passive range of motion. And when I do it, I just get blissed out. It’s like a very mild form of doing some contralateral stuff. But you’re right, it just does something in your brain that is just really, really pleasant.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah. So my wish to everybody is always just try to do some form of cross-body patterns or movement on a daily basis. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. It could be body weight like I just mentioned. Oh, and you asked me before to give you another example I think, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kevin Rail:
Okay, so I got a great one. Lying on your back. You grab two kettlebells and you do a chest press and you hold them like this up in front of your chest like this, and you raise your legs up in the air. And what you do is you lower your right arm and you windshield wipe your legs to the left as your right arm is coming down. Then you as your right arm’s going up, your left arm’s coming up and your legs are coming up. And then they go the opposite direction.
So when your legs windshield wiper to the right, your right arm is in the air and your left arm is coming down and then you’re completely opposite. You go back and forth in a seesaw pattern. And your legs go one way and your arm goes the other way. That’s a brilliant one. It’s in my protocol right now. Yeah. Me and my girlfriend have been doing it. And she loves it, it’s like one of her favorite exercises.
Steven Sashen:
So how have you either found or developed these things?
Kevin Rail:
I was about to tell you the story about Pennsylvania. Back early two thousands, I was confined to a small space in my mom’s basement where I had my DP weight set from high school still there. I was working for a glass sculptor at the time. I was heavy into fitness and lifting and studying, exercise, nutrition, diet, the whole nine yards. I lost my job with him. And then I got right into fitness, health and fitness. I went and got my degree. I got certified, the whole nine yards.
But I was going over to her house. She lived about a mile and a half from where I was living at the time. And I was working out in her basement instead of going to the gym that was right next to the place where I used to work for convenience’s sake, I’m like, “Well, I’m not going to the gym anymore.” I canceled my membership and whatever. So I ended up having to work out in this small space, maybe 10 foot by 10 foot, old DP weight set. We had a pull-up bar made out of wood that my dad made when we were like Boy Scouts, young kids, under the stairway.
And then I had this beam in the open floor system in the basement. And the height of it, I barely had enough space to do a press. I had to go in between the bays to do a press like this. So there was a beam right between me. And I do a press and the closest I get the dumbbells was an inch and a half apart. So it taught me good form, where they wouldn’t clank together. So I had to get creative is the bottom line. And I’m like, “What can I do to get great workouts with minimal equipment and a lot of body weight?”
And I was a mad scientist down there. I was like Einstein trying to figure out how to reinvent the light bulb or electricity. And I just started doing crazy exercises, one foot and one leg, cross body things from plank positions. I’d be doing renegade rows. Then I lift one leg as I’m doing a renegade row and I do side lateral raises. And that’s kind of where it all started. And that is like I told you, “You start small and you grow tall.”
And I started out with small basic movements. And then I got more complicated, more complex as time went on. And then it all just started staying in my brain. And here we are 20 years plus years later and I’ve accumulated quite a catalog, and an encyclopedia of movements and exercises that I could resort to just like this. So that’s kind of how it happened. It evolved from-
Steven Sashen:
I can imagine though, so at what point were you starting to train people and when did you inject these things? And I can imagine, if it were me, that the first time I was going to say to someone, “Hey, here’s this crazy thing for you to do.” There might have been some trepidation at the very least.
Kevin Rail:
Mm-hmm. Well, I started factoring these kind of movements in right at the beginning of my career, probably ’01 or ’02 to a small level. And what I realized was I could have someone sit on a bench and do lap pull downs and that’s great. So I’d have them do that, but then I’m like, “Let’s do something a little bit more complex.”
So I’d have them get into a quadruped position on their hands and their knees with a pad under their knees. And then I’d have them extend their arm and their leg out like this with their arm and leg in a perfectly straight line. And then I’d have them bring their knee to their elbow and I’d have them curl their spine. I’d say, “Squeeze your abs, now extend back out.” And I’d have them do like 10 and 10 on each side. And they’d get up and they’d smile. And then like, they’re really excited about it. Like, “Wow, that was a cool exercise. I never did that before.”
Nowadays, that’s a pretty common exercise I feel out in space. But a lot of people don’t know why it’s cool. And one of the reasons why is because of that cross body effect, it lights the brain up like a Christmas tree. So both hemispheres of the brain get lit up, they do something like that. And then I’d have them do lat pull downs again. And then that’s how I started integrating it in with workouts.
And then I would just do, if someone’s like, “Well, my balance is crap. I need to fix my balance.” When I was interviewing them before we train. I’m like, “Okay, well I’ll have you do standing alternating marching bicep curls. So you’re going to hold dumbbells and then you’re going to do a bicep curl and you’re going to lift your right leg. Then you’re going to lift your left leg.” And that may seem simple to you or I, but to the average person that’s never done anything like that other than just standing still, it makes it really complicated for them. Because they’re like, “Wait, which leg was it?”
And you’d be shocked at how people fumble around and they can’t get, to me, the simplest pattern. So I kept integrating little things like that into workouts. And then it became two or three movements, then it became four. And then people came to me specifically for that. Like, “I saw you training this guy and you were doing this really weird exercise where you’re spinning over in a plank position and pulling your knee to your elbow and blah, blah blah.” And they’re like, “I want to train with you.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool.” “And I want to learn some of those patterns.” And it just eventually evolved to a point where I do predominantly, my workouts are probably 90% that stuff and 10% conventional or beefcake, whatever you want to call it now. So that’s how it happened.
Steven Sashen:
I like conventional or beefcake, but more you have given me my favorite multiple mixed metaphor ever of Einstein reinventing the light bulb. That is that there’s so much to unpack in there that I absolutely adore. So this is all really fascinating. I’m also thinking, it occurred to me that there’s another phenomenon, neural phenomenon that we’re talking about with these patterns. Which is, whenever you are trying to learn a new movement pattern, like you’ve got one that you’re kind of ingrained with and you’re trying to learn a new one.
So to go from running over striding and heel striking in regular shoes to proper natural running form, either barefoot or minimalist footwear. There’s a feeling that we get that we will label frustration, which is what’s going on when you’re trying to break out of an existing neural pathway and lay down a new one. But what you’re introducing is something that’s so novel. There’s not an existing one in place.
So I can easily imagine that’s one of the other reasons why people have this somewhat euphoric experience. Because that laying down is something new, that opening something new is really fun. It’s like, let’s say I have nominal experience with drugs, basically none. But I do know, and certainly people talk about this, if you take some drug, MDMA or whatever you might be taking, the first time is like, “Holy crap.” And then often after that, it’s not quite the same.
Because that first time of laying down that new neural pathway is the mind-blowing thing. And after you’ve got that one, you’re kind of just going down the same path and it’s not going to have that same pattern interrupting novel thing. So you’re introducing a whole bunch of pattern interrupting novel things. Which again, can give you that really super fun experience as you’re doing things that are valuable.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, totally. And there is a very fast effect of these three-dimensional movement patterns that I’m describing. For example, people that I have doing them. And the first time, I have them do it in a session that they’re like sometimes all over the place. And they’re frustrated and they even get angry sometimes. Not at me, just at themselves. Like, “I’m so uncoordinated, blah, blah, blah.” After we do it literally the third time through and they get it. They get up and they’re just like, “I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I got it.” And I said, “All you got to do is be calm, chill is the word my friend.” So practice makes perfect, but perfect practice makes even better perfect.
And when you do this, it’s like it’s got a fast return on investment. You can get these things dialed in faster than you think. And yeah, the first time you learn something, it’s like going to a dance class or a swing class or something. You’re going to be all over the place with the dance class or learning instruction from somebody. But as time goes on, you’re going to get smooth and you’re going to get better. That’s why dancing is super good for the brain too.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, there was research that came out probably about 13 years ago right after we started the business. And it was from Kirk Erickson who was at the University, I think, of Pittsburgh at the time. Don’t hold me to it. And he had been studying elderly people who either walked or didn’t walk. And not, I mean, because they couldn’t walk. I mean, they either had a practice of walking for some amount of time every day or they didn’t. And he tracked these people and maybe he gave them an assignment, maybe he took a group of people and had half of them do a walking practice. And the other not, I don’t remember.
But the interesting thing is he did a brain fMRI at the beginning of the study. It was a long study, like a nine-year study. And along the way, and again at the end. And what he found is the people who were walking retained more gray matter in their brain. And I asked him why he thought that was. And he goes, “The stimulation from walking, both moving your body and just what you see when you’re around. You have to pay attention to what you’re walking on and what you’re walking in. Where you’re walking and what you see around you, in a way that otherwise you don’t have.” And I said to him, “Imagine what it would’ve been like if they were barefoot.” And he was like, “Oh.”
Kevin Rail:
Light bulb.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. We didn’t have the cash or time to recreate that study to see what the effect would be. But it seemed pretty obvious that adding the extra stimulation component would’ve been interesting.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah. And also when you’re walking, you’re doing a contralateral movement. It’s like your right arm and left leg. Right arm, left. Opposite, opposite. So anytime you do that, it’s similar to crossing the midline. Contralateral movement is just as good. So those two components right there have to do with walking. And if you’re walking outside, then you’ve got ecotherapy. You’re exposed to the sun, to the wind, to the smells out there, the evergreen trees, the foliage in the wind in the fall, the petrichor in the summer when is raining.
All these different factors bleed into it. And that all improves brain function. And in my opinion, it reverses the aging process. And I think it’s quintessential for, people talk about, biohacking. That’s a big buzzword. I’ve been doing biohacking, some form of biohacking for decades. And it’s all of a sudden this big huge buzzword, it’s all you hear about is, “Biohacking, longevity, reverse the aging process, 50 is the new 30,” and all these different things. And I’m like, “Well, yeah, it’s true. You just got to go out there and walk for 20 minutes a day, and get some sun exposure, get some vitamin D boosts in your system.” It’s all very simple basic things really people need to focus on.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you brought up one that in our very brief conversation before we started this chat that I definitely want to hit on. Especially with the intro about things being maybe not quite what you think. Let’s talk about the sun, shall we?
Kevin Rail:
Let’s. Let’s talk about the sun. I’d love to.
Steven Sashen:
All right, I just gave you the intro. You’re up.
Kevin Rail:
Okay, well, I just spent, I would say, eight months in a row with heavy, heavy snow and darkness here in Park City. We broke the record for snowfall, all time record. And you’re in Colorado, you probably had a similar effect out there. But we didn’t have two consecutive days of sun for, I think it was, eight months in a row. March, it snowed every day except three days. And believe me, I love snow, don’t get me wrong, but it just kept dragging and dragging and dragging. And seasonal affective disorder is a big deal. It’s a big thing. It’s very serious.
I actually did a YouTube video on it back in March to try to calm people down. Because everyone I knew, my clients and friends and people, they just started getting really frustrated and angry, mid-March and stuff. And I’m like, “You realize you’re getting affected by seasonal affective disorder, right?” And some of them were looking around left and right, and they didn’t think about it. And I’m like, “It’s been snowing since mid-October. It’s been dark. We haven’t had much sun.” And everybody loves snow in Park City. But most people were complaining about it eventually.
And they were like, “It’s just too much. I’m done. I’m over it. I’m sick of shoveling. I’m sick of this, sick of that. I can’t get around in traffic”. And I just saw, I stayed calm the whole time. And I’m like, “I just got to stay calm and recognize it and keep awareness going.” So seasonal affective disorder is a big deal and it should be treated as such. And I like to do anything possible to keep my mental health high. And I try to encourage other people to do the same thing. So it’s very real and it needs to be addressed. And I don’t think that’s addressed enough either. And the cross body patterns work perfectly for that too.
Steven Sashen:
Well, there’s another thing that you mentioned about being in the sun.
Kevin Rail:
Oh yeah. Oh, in the sun. Okay.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, the sun.
Kevin Rail:
So the sun, what you’re-
Steven Sashen:
That thing, big thing, yellow thing up in the sky.
Kevin Rail:
Yes, yes, yes. So what I was getting at was there was a big lack of sun during that whole time. And that was a major reason why people are getting the seasonal affective disorder. I suggest getting as much sun exposure as you… Not as much as you can. A minimum of 20 minutes of sun exposure on the front side of your body and back side of your body every single day that the sun is out, a maximum amount of skin exposure to the sun. And yes, board shorts are totally fine.
One of my rituals every day in the summer, non-negotiable. And I tell everybody this that I work for and I tell clients and everything, “I need to have that sun exposure. I need like one hour a day. To lay in the sun this way, lay in the sun on my stomach, I’m good.” No sunscreen, no nothing. If I’m going to be out for multiple hours, I have, as you can see, no hair. So I will put sunscreen on my head, my nose, my ears, areas that are going to be like the sun’s going to be beating down.
But I use organic sunscreen with all ingredients I can pronounce, or I’ll use shea butter or I’ll come up with a concoction that’s all natural and all clean. Because I do not like conventional sunscreen or whatever the other stuff is called.
Steven Sashen:
Sunblock, or-
Kevin Rail:
Sunblock, whatever the heck it is. All those chemicals, I don’t like them. The skin is the biggest organ in the body. It absorbs everything in sight. What you want your skin to absorb is the sun itself. And when that happens, vitamin D gets released in the body. Vitamin D is a very important nutrient for boosting the immune system, boosting brain health, boosting hormone function in males.
When men are exposed to the sun for I think it’s 20 to 30 minutes with as much skin exposure as possible, testosterone rises by 210%. I read that in a study once. I don’t remember where, I just remember reading it. And that is miraculous, especially for guys that are 40 plus, 50 plus and so on. They want to get a natural boost of testosterone. Easiest way to do that is lay in the sun, go for a walk in the sun. So that.
And the reason your mood boosts through the roof is because of the vitamin D being released in your system. That’s a mood booster. So any of you out there listening or watching, wonder why when you go to the beach, your mood goes through the roof. It’s not necessarily because you unplug from work and you have a week of freedom. It’s because you’re probably in the sand, you’re in water, you’re smelling nice smells from the breeze of the ocean coming in and you’re getting sun exposure. So you have a multitude of factors happening that’s boosting your mood right there.
Steven Sashen:
So what would you say to people who, like my wife are pasty white people? And for her literally 20 minutes in the sun, especially here in Colorado, she’d be practically, literally toast.
Kevin Rail:
This is an easy answer. You start with five minutes and then you work your way up. No? She’ll still get barbecued?
Steven Sashen:
That’s fine with me. Actually, I don’t know. I mean she just avoids it. She’s northern European, just super, super white. And very, very sensitive to it. And I know a few, people like that. Others, I’m the opposite. I mean, I’m totally fine. I rarely get burned, et cetera.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, well like I said, it’s you build an immunity up to it, just like anything else. So I would start out with five minutes at a time, test her levels. She should test her levels, see how long she could tolerate it, and then just slowly increase it. And then in the event that she does need a sunscreen or some kind of blocker. I would just get something that’s organic and clean. And stay away from all the hydro benzoic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that I can’t even pronounce. Whatever those long words are. Yeah, be clear of those.
Steven Sashen:
We should definitely make some sort of supplement where the ingredients are, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that would be very entertaining just to see who even notices.
Kevin Rail:
That is that probably no one would even care. And then at the end it says zinc oxide.
Steven Sashen:
Your results may vary.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, results may vary.
Steven Sashen:
So we haven’t taken down fitness, but we’ve added a new level of fitness. We’ve certainly added something new to play with when it comes to sun exposure. Or because people have definitely been told, “Stay the hell out,” in a way that is arguably, quite arguably, problematic. FYI and here in the Denver, Boulder area. For us, I don’t think we’ve had that kind of haven’t seen the sun in that long. But what’s so funny is, if we have three, maybe four days of not sun in a row, the newspaper headlines are apocalyptic.
Kevin Rail:
Oh, really?
Steven Sashen:
It’s like being in Seattle and they start freaking out. But literally it’s headlines about how horrible the world is for four days of not seeing the sun. People lose their minds very quickly over here.
Kevin Rail:
Wow, that that’s a fast return. Now normally in Park City during the summer, it’s usually gorgeous here. Sunny all the time, clear skies, blue. And we had a good run from June 26th until about two days ago. It was clear and beautiful finally. And I was like, “Oh,” I just drank it all in. I loved it. And then it got cloudy again a couple days ago, and now we’re back to sunny again. And it’s supposed to stay sunny again. And I hope it just keeps on trucking all the way to the end of August, if I had a perfect world. But we’ll see what happens.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we will definitely see what happens. It is definitely different than it’s ever been here. So now we’re in the middle of July and it’s unbelievably green. The hills are all green.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, same here.
Steven Sashen:
Which is so rare. We’ve had it happen once in August where things were still green before they got all brown. But I’ve been here 30 years, this is the second, maybe third time I’ve seen things being this green this late in the season.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy good actually. Because it is usually brown and dry.
Steven Sashen:
No complaints. All right, so what else is on our things that you specialized list that might make people go, “Hey, wait a minute, what?”
Kevin Rail:
I would say gut health. I think we should talk about gut health.
Steven Sashen:
Let’s do it.
Kevin Rail:
Okay, so according to the, I don’t know who it is, CDC or somebody out there, NIH or somebody, the average amount of fiber, daily fiber intake is 25 grams for women, 30 grams for men. But-
Steven Sashen:
Wait, wait, you think that’s the actual average?
Kevin Rail:
That’s what the recommendation is.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I was going to say, because the average is like nothing for most people.
Kevin Rail:
Yes, correct. And not enough people pay attention to dietary fiber. In my opinion. It’s like the unspoken nutrient or mineral I guess you would call it in the diet that’s missing from most people’s diets. Because the average person is more fixated these days on macros. “I got to get my macros, got to get my protein always.” You see these influencers and these health and fitness experts on YouTube plastering up the place. And they get really close to the screen and real serious.
And they’re like, “Always prioritize protein, always prioritized protein.” That’s all they talk about. And you see reel after reel, after reel about, “This has 45 grams of protein and blah, blah, blah, amount of carbs. And yeah, keep your carbs down if you want to live a long life.” And I completely disagree with that. I think you should follow a balanced diet. And every meal should be balanced with a good source of protein, a good source of carbohydrates and a healthy source of fat. But I think you should prioritize fiber. Because most people don’t get 25 to 30 grams. I eat two meals a day. I follow a time restricted eating protocol, which is a form of fasting, and I literally get 55 to 60 grams of fiber a day. Not protein. I get enough protein. I don’t count protein. If I was to count anything, I would count fiber. And I try to get a minimum 55 to 60 grams. And the reason-
Steven Sashen:
So that-
Kevin Rail:
Go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, well no, go ahead for the reason, but I’m going to prime you. So you can keep going after you say the reason. Is for many people, even the idea of what you just said seems incomprehensible. So you’re definitely going to have to say how you’re packing 55 grams of fiber into two meals. So but get there.
Kevin Rail:
Okay, so let’s talk about the importance first. When you have the high amount of fiber, it’s able to work its way down into your small intestine when you have the higher amount of fiber. And it populates the good bacteria in your stomach. You may know it as probiotics or gut flora, and probiotics actually exist in your stomach already.
People are always telling me, “Oh, my gut’s out of whack. I’m going to Whole Foods to get a probiotic.” And I’m like, “No, you’re not. You’re going to Whole Foods to buy a supplement that’s going to be found in a sewage system somewhere down the street in a day or two. That’s what you’re buying.”
Because I don’t believe probiotics are the catchall, do all to improving gut health. It’s a multiple stage process that involves eating prebiotic foods, increasing your fiber intake. Slowing down the frequency of your meals, meaning eat less meals and slowly increasing your fiber intake. Just like your wife, when I said five minutes of sun exposure a day, start out with 10 grams of fiber a day. If you’re getting zero, if you’re getting five grams a day. And then do that for two weeks, then increases it to 15, then increase it to 20, then increase it to 25.
And because people are like, “If I eat all that fiber. I’ll be in the bathroom all day, or I’ll have bad gas and everything else.” You will, if you go from 10 grams of fiber to 60 overnight. Yeah, of course you will. But you slowly work your way up, your stomach expands, it gets used to it, and you’re off to the races and you’re good to go. And once you get to that level, it’s easy to maintain it. So how do I get that many grams of fiber in two meals?
I incorporate psyllium powder, number one, in my first meal of the day. And in that first meal, I also have a high amount of fiber in there, such as berries, bananas, bananas are prebiotic. They’re really good. And then I have other things now that have a good amount of fiber in, I use plant-based protein powders that have digestive enzymes built into them, and they have a good amount of fiber. So my first meal will be 20 to 25 grams of fiber. And then the second meal, I’ll include things like beans. I’ll include things like whole grains. I eat these low-carb wraps that literally have 15 grams of fiber each in them, and I’ll have two of them. And there’s 30 grams right there alone.
So my meal ends up being like I’ll have sometimes, I could tolerate, 45 to 50 grams of fiber in one meal because my body’s adapted to it. And over time, that’s how I did it. So it’s a slow progressive process. And I eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables, which are high in fiber as well, like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussel sprouts, and these different things. All of which also help males specifically lower their estradiol levels in the body, which helps increase testosterone by default. So that’s a little hack for reverse the aging process and keeping hormones optimized as well. So that’s kind of how you get to that point.
And then if you take a probiotic and your gut is already in good shape, you’re going to reinforce the good gut bacteria by having your probiotics. And then I eat things like sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, kombucha. I eat a lot of fermented foods. Pickled things like olives and pickled beets and stuff like that. So you want to incorporate all these kind of foods into your diet and all that stuff contributes to better gut health. And then if you were to trigger your system with a 24-hour fast once in a while, it sends a bunch of populated stem cells through your gut to help populate the good bacteria as well. And that is the trick of the trade as well, that comes into fasting.
Steven Sashen:
Do you have a thought on resistant starch?
Kevin Rail:
Love it. I think it’s great. So like green bananas and stuff?
Steven Sashen:
Well, I’ll describe what it is for you with a bit of a story. Many years ago, like 25 years ago, there was a bookstore in Boulder that was closing. And I went to see if I could find something. And there was a book on resistant starch. And the idea was basically you can have all the carbs you want and they’re going to be good for you. And I’m reading this thing, and the gist of it is that when you take a starch, even pasta or rice, anything that’s high in carbohydrates, you cook it and then let it get cold. When it’s getting cold, basically the carbohydrate molecules rearrange themselves into something that’s very hard to digest.
And I’m reading this going, that sounds like the biggest piece of crap, pun intended, that I’ve ever heard in my life. And I just put the book down. It was a dollar, I didn’t get it. 10 years later, resistant starch became the big thing and showing what an amazing thing it is. And so the idea of a cold pasta salad, leftover spaghetti, I mean, all these things can actually be really good for you. Because suddenly you’re not digesting as many of those carbs. Not that carbs are bad, but you’re getting more fiber as a result of this, which people thought was completely crazy. And here it is. It’s a real thing. So that book was ahead of its time and I was a little too dumb to recognize it.
Kevin Rail:
Well, what you’re describing also, potatoes fall into that category. A lot of people are scared to death.
Steven Sashen:
I eat potatoes.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, people are scared to death to eat potatoes. They’re scared of death of corn and carrots and stuff. I’m like, take your potatoes, cook them. If you’re scared of them, put them in the fridge overnight. It’s going to do exactly what you said. And it’s also going to lower the glycemic index of said potatoes as well. Right. So if you want to enjoy your potatoes, eat them cold. I eat cold food all the time. Love it. I love cold pasta. I love cold potatoes. Cold sweet potatoes are amazing. And you can take-
Steven Sashen:
And it’s-
Kevin Rail:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
… so funny you say that. We have a whole bunch of cold, purple sweet potatoes.
Kevin Rail:
Love them, they’re my favorite.
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God, so good.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah. They’re the highest in antioxidants too, the purple ones. That’s why I like them.
Steven Sashen:
I did not know. We just have someone in our office who was trying to make a business of doing purple sweet potato recipes and products and whatnot. And did not go as well as he was hoping, but still does it just as his daily life. And so he’s always giving us these purple sweet potato… I don’t even know what to call them. They’re not brownies, but they may as well be because the ingredients are purple sweet potatoes and a little bit of chocolate. And oh my, oh my. They are good for you and addictive.
Kevin Rail:
That’s interesting you mentioned that. Because I met a guy like five years ago who was in Park City who was a friend of a friend who was launching a business. I thought he was from Hawaii or something. And he had these mushed things that were made from purple sweet potatoes, and he had chocolate and all these different flavors. And it sounds very similar to what you’re talking about. And I don’t know if that’s still up and running or not, but holy smoke, they were delicious. And they were like a dessert.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And I don’t even like regular sweet potatoes. This is going to sound funny. They feel too sweet to me. But purple sweet potatoes just totally perfect. I mean, man.
Kevin Rail:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I’m completely addicted.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, they work good in smoothies, to be honest with you. Or smoothie bowls. And they’re very versatile. You can use them in multiple ways. And I have.
Steven Sashen:
In fact, my wife has been putting them in her smoothies. So I’m a big fan of frozen bananas in a smoothie. She is not. So she’s doing purple sweet potatoes and same effect of making it a little more thick, a little more rich, a little more flavorful. Yeah, it’s a good one. And I do not have a purple sweet potato business.
Kevin Rail:
Oh, okay.
Steven Sashen:
I’m just saying. So all right, we’ve got sun, we have non-functional functional workouts, we have gut health. Anything else we want to jump into?
Kevin Rail:
Shall we talk about barefoot running?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I’m not sure.
Kevin Rail:
Have you heard of it?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I mean, there was a book, I don’t remember what it was. There was a song from Springsteen, something, I don’t know, something about that. Yeah. So how did you discover getting out of your shoes and doing something with your bare feet like running?
Kevin Rail:
Well, it started, for me, around 2008 or ’09 is when I started to get entrenched in it. And then by 2010, I was completely unshod. And I’d never looked back since, no pun intended. But one of the biggest things I’ve noticed from my transition from shoes to no shoes was when I’d run with actual shoes on and just strike any which way, I would be toast for the rest of the day. I like to do heel repeats and on steep hills and stuff, and sprint training and that kind of thing. And I would literally be, my legs would just be burned to a crisp and exhausted and tired or lethargic, sore, the whole nine yards.
And literally the first time I did a four-foot strike run, when I went through the whole transition period, I noticed I didn’t have nearly as much pain in my legs. And my exhaustion level was way down. And I was like, “What just happened here?” And there’s something to this. Then I got rid of my regular crap shoes with the big spongy heels, and I got myself some Converse all stars. And I started running with a flat soled shoe, zero heel drop. And then the pain got even less. And then as I got thinner and thinner with my shoes, I worked my way down to a one millimeter shoe. And I’m like, “I can’t believe this. I have no lethargy in my legs whatsoever the rest of the day.”
And then when I became completely barefoot, I was like, “Why is no one else doing this? Why does the world not know about it?” And I’m like, “And the impact factor,” my knees would hurt, my hips would kind of hurt when I’d run my shoes on. All that disappeared completely. I mean completely. And I’m now 50, I’m still running barefoot. And I’m like, “I never feel joint pain with my knees or my ankles or my hips. None of that stuff.” I mean, I got a couple little nagging injuries here and there, but nothing compared to what I did when I was in my 20s running with shoes on.
So all these epiphanies occurred and I was like, oh my goodness. And when your foot actually touches the ground, the earth, you just feel so connected. It’s so different. And your mood literally goes up. It’s like we could debate all day about the earthing and electrons and neutrons and all that stuff hitting your body. And pressure points, hitting your feet and all these different things. But just the fact that you’re barefoot and you’re connected to the earth, it just feels different.
And it makes even that runner’s high and the endorphin release you get when you run, period, just 10 times more magnified when you’re barefoot. And all those benefits are rolled into the fact of why I did it and why I started transitioning. Because I really started to study, why would you want to run barefoot? And it was because of the aches and pains during the day that I wanted to transition and see if that was different. And it was different. And it really, really spoke to me.
And then I just started working out barefoot in the grass, doing kettlebell workouts and circuit workouts and dumbbells. And I worked out in my mom’s basement barefoot. And I would be barefoot in our gym, but I’m not allowed to be. So I wear one millimeter shoes, I just slip them on. They’re like slippers, which my vote for zero shoes is the next phase of your business, you should create a zero shoe or a one millimeter slip on. Because I still love all the other shoes.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I’ll tell you the simple reason that we don’t.
Kevin Rail:
Okay.
Steven Sashen:
It’s because people do everything you can think of in every shoe that we make. And if we go down to one millimeter, well, the joke is, our 5,000-mile sole warranty is if you wear the soles down to less than a millimeter, we’ll replace them for a significant discount. But when you go down to one millimeter knowing that people are going to go do things in the shoes beyond what you’re describing, they’re going to blow through them in no time. So we need to make something durable enough for people to actually use them and enjoy them.
But I mean, the closest thing we have, we have a Genesis sandal, which is about four mil, which is crazy flexible and lightweight and all the rest. And then our Speed Force training shoe, which is the shoe I race and train in as a sprinter, that’s about four and a half mil. And the thing that’s fun, I mean, I have one pair of the Speed Force I’ve been racing in for three seasons, and they’re still great. So part of our thing, one of our goals is to keep things out of landfills.
Because with footwear and apparel, there is no real green solution. There is nothing that’s really beneficial to the environment. There’s a lot of people who are saying that the things they do are, but when you look closely, it’s not quite what you think. I mean, we’re using hemp canvas, for example. It’s better than cotton canvas. We still use cotton on occasion. We still use wool on occasion. We will do things that are made from recycled plastic, but we do not claim that we’re changing the world.
Because the recycled plastic is definitely taking trash out of the ecosystem, but it’s not carbon beneficial at this point. So suffice it to say, the green story is much more complicated than people want it to be. And there are people who are taking advantage of everyone liking simple stories by saying how they’re saving the world by doing something that is not as beneficial as they actually claim. But anyway, so that’s a bit of a tangent for why we’re not doing something that’s one mil at the moment.
Kevin Rail:
Got you. That makes sense. I get it. And by the way, hemp, that’s a touchy subject with me as well. Because years and years, I’m talking like in the ’20s and ’30s, hemp was the crop that was used for all paper products and materials for clothing and everything. And then the newspaper companies started lobbying against it. Because they were losing money in bank and they wanted all the power and the money. And they somehow got all the power and the money. And nowadays, I’m not going to jump on my soapbox too heavily, but if we just start cultivating it across the country or across the nation. And went back to using hemp crop to make all the paper products, all the clothing and everything else. It would probably reverse the pollution epidemic we have. And all the global warming that everyone throws out there. I’m get rid of the paper products.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know if it’s going to do that. But what it would do is free up a lot of water that’s being used by more water intensive crops. And that would be a big deal. And it is a plant that grows very fast and has, like you said, so many uses. It would definitely be beneficial. And you’re right, there are financial slash political forces that are in the way of that happening at the moment. It’s really now, the good news is that in the apparel space, it is being recognized as a valuable commodity.
And so I think over time we’re going to start seeing more of that and more products that are made from materials or from crops that are less water intensive than, say, cotton. Hemp is one, bamboo is another. I mean, they’re a handful of them.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah. I love it.
Steven Sashen:
We’ll see. But these things do not happen quickly, sadly. And the other thing, not only do they not happen quickly, but there’s a bit of a problem. Because the communities that tend to adopt these quickly, I’m going to be a bit glib and a bit obnoxious when I say it this way, it’s usually a bunch of rich white people. And they get on their high horse about how they’re saving the world. And then once they start seeing, “Hey, I’m wearing hemp and my friends are wearing hemp,” they think that the job is done. Because they’re in their own little environment.
And actually just I complain about this all the time. We have some investors and they keep saying, “We really want to sell your sustainable story.” I said, “No, no. We’re going to talk about how we make things that are durable and good for you and using less energy, et cetera. But that’s not what we build our brand on. Our brand is built on natural movement. And the companies that are building their brand on sustainable are frankly, typically lying.” And they keep saying to me, “Yeah, but people really want that.”
And I just read a study maybe two days ago that came out saying, “Yeah, most people do not make buying decisions based on sustainability. Over 70% don’t care.” They’re just looking for the right thing at the right price. And I went, “See, told you.” So anyway, that is a whole other thing. How the hell did we get on a hemp? Where did that come from? I forgot where we were.
Kevin Rail:
I don’t remember.
Steven Sashen:
Oh-
Kevin Rail:
We were talking about the minimal shoes.
Steven Sashen:
… yeah, barefoot things and then one millimeter, et cetera. So now people, if they’ve been paying attention, will say, “Okay, so you’re going mostly barefoot, but we were talking about all this snow in Park City. So what are you doing when it’s cold and snowy, et cetera?”
Kevin Rail:
I just wear regular winter boots when I’m shoveling snow and stuff. But when I’m going around town, I wear Converse All Stars or a zero heel drop shoe, hard rubber sole. I’ve never owned a pair of Nikes. Because I just never supported Nike. That’s just my personal preference. But any kind of spongy workout shoe or cross trainer or those Jokas, I’m not going to say the actual name. But there’s a shoe that rhymes with Joka that I don’t really like. That I see people walking around in. And they’re like, “Oh, I got all this padding in my foot. Look at me.” And they’re all smiley and stuff. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s great. You’re still pounding your heel into the ground. And every single shock that you feel goes from your heel all the way up to your neck. And you may end up with back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain coming down the road. And when you cross the 50, 60 year old mark.”
Those shoes, I just cringe when I see people with them. And they’re so spongy. And I’m a big kettlebell guy too. And kettlebells, you should be either barefoot or absolutely have a zero heel drop shoe on at the most. So you want your feet to grab into the ground. And those big clunky shoes, I don’t care what brand it is, holy smoke, that’s just so damaging for the foot. And the toe boxes are like this and people get bunions and all these different things. I’m just, it just gives me the creeps.
Steven Sashen:
And the reason that they became successful is twofold. One is it’s an easy story to tell people, “You like cushioning? Here’s more.” More has to be better. And the other is simply that the footwear industry is a bunch of uncreative copycats. So if something starts to take off, everybody jumps on the bandwagon because they’re literally afraid they’re going to go out of business if they don’t. So what’s happened, there was a trade show back in December for footwear manufacturers. And every performance footwear company had a big, thick, giant padded shoe. Because of the ones that you’re mentioning that started taking off a few years ago. And it’s become a bit saturated.
And the research is now starting to come out to prove everything you just said. Which could not be more obvious if you know anything again about physics or kinesiology or anything else. But yeah, it’s very, again, consumers like a simple story. And cushioning feels good. Sitting on a memory foam mattress feels good. Lying on a memory foam mattress feels good. Clearly that’s got to be good if I put it on my feet. And it can feel good, but like certain things that you eat, it tastes good, not good for you. Same thing with your feet.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah, totally.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a whole other thing. And so I want to highlight though, you are smart, which means that you’re not going to be doing crazy things. Just be because you have an idea that you’re supposed to be barefoot all the time. You do what you need to do in the appropriate circumstance. Now that said, there’s a video of me, I start promoting it every fall, where I am shoveling snow in one of my super thin sandals.
But I had a trick. I’d go out until I felt cold, and then I’d go back inside until I felt warm. Then I’d go back out until I felt cold. It would always take be a little longer. Then I’d go back out inside until I felt warm, which took a little less time. By the fourth time, I’m out for a half an hour shoveling snow. And it was fine. And similarly, and this is true for heat and cold. If it’s super hot or super cold, I pay attention to where I’m parking my car and what it’s going to take to get from there to the entrance of whatever store I’m going to.
I don’t just spend a ton of time outside in bare feet on a hundred degree pavement or on a 20 degree pavement. I think about it and arrange accordingly, which it’s amazing. I talk to people and they go, “Ah, I don’t want to have to work that hard.” It’s like, “What? You just park and you look for where the white lines are, and you walk on the white lines.
Kevin Rail:
Yes. I’ve done it many times running barefoot. I have kind of a cutoff line of when I feel like it’s safe to run barefoot out here in town. If I’m on blacktop and concrete, which I usually am. Because I run up Main Street and different places like that. And sometimes when I set out, I’m running on these paths that have all this shade and they’re perfectly smooth and fine, and I’m on blacktop, no big deal. But then by the time I get five miles into a run. I’m on my way back, it heats up a bit and I’m like, “Ooh, I’m going to have to look for a sidewalk and hit concrete.” Because concrete doesn’t heat up like blacktop.
Blacktop, I mean, I’ve had blisters this big on the bottom of my feet because I did not drop the ego. And I decided to run on really hot blacktop. And just like you were saying, it still goes back to, I’m going to use your wife’s example again, of exposing yourself to the sun for small amounts and then increasing it. And eating a small amount of fiber and increasing it. And then running, wearing minimalist shoes and then taking them off and running for a hundred feet. And then put them back on, finish your run. And then go 200 feet and then go 600 feet.
And it’s the same exact thing with the heat and cold exposure. Expose yourself for 30 seconds one day, then try to get to 45 seconds the next week, and then a minute, and then two minutes and three minutes and keep on going. And I have run in the wintertime barefoot too. And people look at me like I’m nuts. And I’m like, “Oh, it was like 28 degrees, still as can be, beautiful sunny sky. And in that case, I do want the blacktop to be hot.” And it worked out perfectly. It’s the complete opposite of the summer. And I’d be out there chugging along barefoot, and it was absolutely perfect. So-
Steven Sashen:
Well, I found over the years, it definitely seems like I have more capillaries and my circulation has changed. Because when I’m out in the cold, my feet are almost always fine, whether I’m barefoot or in sandals or whatever, while my hands and head are freezing. So it’s definitely, things definitely change. And that’s similar. I just thought of it this way. Way back when, 40 years ago, I was doing biofeedback and I learned to change the temperature of my hands or my face or whatever.
Just by, I mean, I can’t even describe how. You learn to do it by having a device attached to you, telling you what your temperature is. And then you do a relaxation technique and just eventually your brain figures out how to change the way your blood is flowing. And I think this is just a variation on that same idea without the equipment, just the feedback of whether it’s cold. And Barefoot Ken Bob, he likes to say, “Numb feet or dumb feet.” And so that’s the thing you pay attention to. It’s like, it’s not like we’re building up calluses and thick skin. We’re just learning to pay attention and make intelligent choices.
Kevin Rail:
Yeah. And I get that question. I don’t mean to go off-topic, but people sometimes ask me or they see me running barefoot. They’ll come to the gym like, “Did I just see you running barefoot up in Main Street the other day?” I’m like, “Yeah, that was me.” And they’re like, “You had no shoes on at all. You were bare.” And I was like, “I know. I run barefoot.” And they’re like, “Your feet must be mashed to a pulp. You must have huge callouses and blah.” I’m like-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, they wear in.
Kevin Rail:
… “Not at all.” I’m like, “You would never even know while looking at my feet.” The bones and the muscles remodel on the bottom of your feet. You get used to it. You adapt. And it’s not what everybody thinks. You don’t have dirty feet, you don’t have mashed up feet. Doesn’t make them smell any worse. Actually, your feet are cleaner when they’re bare. Yeah. It’s when you’re stuck in a sock and a shoe all day, that’s when you develop bacteria and odor on your feet. And that’s not good for your feet.
You should have your feet exposed to Mother Nature as much as possible. So it’s completely opposite of what people often think. Your feet aren’t mashed to a pulp and all that kind of stuff. I mean, in the beginning, if you push it hard, yeah, maybe you’re going to get a little bit of callousing and stuff like that, but it all goes away. It’s brilliant.
Steven Sashen:
Well, that is the perfect, perfect way to come full circle to many of the things that we think are the opposite of what they really are. So on that note, if people want to get in touch with you and discover more about what you’ve been doing or do any work with you, et cetera, how would they do that?
Kevin Rail:
You can find me on all social media channels, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube under Kevin David Rail or Fasting for Fitness. That’s where you’ll find me.
Steven Sashen:
So Kevin David Rail, R-A-I-L.
Kevin Rail:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
And Fasting for Fitness spelled out or with the number four?
Kevin Rail:
Spelled out, F-O-R. And I also have a website called fastingforfitness.health, which is fasting F-O-R fitness dot health. You can find me there too.
Steven Sashen:
Perfect. Well, A, I do hope people check out what you’re doing, because I love what you’re up to.
Kevin Rail:
Thank you.
Steven Sashen:
And especially not because it’s just counterintuitive, but because it’s creative. And if you really look into it, there’s nothing that you’re saying that is crazy. I mean, you can really draw a line between from the things you’re describing to things that really do make sense. If you start looking into it with any degree of curiosity and scientific mind. So much, much appreciate it.
So definitely check out Kevin on social media, on his website, et cetera. Let me know what you experience when you do. And for everybody else, just a reminder, head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find out more about places you can enjoy the podcast, where we are on social media, where you can leave comments and reviews, et cetera, to help us spread the movement about natural movement. And if you have any questions or recommendations or comments, whatever, you can drop me an email at move, M-O-V-E, @jointhemovementmovement.com. And until then, just go out, have fun and live life feet first.