Dani Almeyda has worked in the health and fitness industry for the last 12 years. Throughout her whole life, health and wellness have had a major influence on her life. Whether it was from her experience as collegiate athlete, as a Director of Campus Recreation, or as a Fitness Professional, her experiences and formal education have provided her with a unique perspective and skillset.
Dani is a co-owner of OS Institute in North Carolina and OSi Online, and has a Master’s Degree in Exercise Science. She brings an abundance of energy, passion, and an incredible drive to help the world regain its Original Strength. Almeyda, a mother of two, and wife to a firefighter, is dedicated to serving her family and community.
Tim Anderson has been a personal trainer for over 20 years. He is an accomplished author and speaker and is known for streamlining complex ideas into simple and applicable information. He is passionate about helping people realize they were created to be strong and healthy.
Tim has written and co-written many books on this subject including The Becoming Bulletproof Project, Habitual Strength, Pressing RESET, and Original Strength Performance. When it comes down to it, his message is simple yet powerful: We were created to feel good and be strong throughout life.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Tim Anderson and Dani Almeyda about getting more gains by exercising less.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How rocking exercises help with relaxation, deep breathing, and alleviating back pain.
– Why using natural movement helps reset the nervous system unlocking hidden strength and potential.
– How crawling can improve walking and running abilities by strengthening the nervous system and promoting overall body health.
– How transitioning to minimalist shoes can enhance movement patterns and foot strength for improved performance.
– Why more research is needed to explore the benefits of natural movement and barefoot running.
Connect with Tim and Dani:
Guest Contact Info
X
@OS_Resets
Instagram
@original_strength
Facebook
facebook.com/originalstrength
Links Mentioned:
originalstrength.net
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
Could the secret to getting stronger and fitter be doing less than you ever thought was realistic or possible, or made any sense whatsoever? Maybe. We’re going to find out 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 with the feet first usually because those things are your foundation.
We’re going to break down the mythology, the propaganda, and often the lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to run, to walk, to hike, to dance, to play, to lift, or anything else that you do with your body to do it enjoyably healthily as you get older. I was going to say older or younger, but getting younger, that’s a tricky one to do so far. That’s going to be a future episode of this podcast. Not really.
I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast. If you want to be part of what we’re doing, it’s really simple. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement and you’ll find all the previous episodes. You’ll find out how to engage with us. And when you go to wherever you go, whether it’s iTunes or YouTube or Facebook, like and share and review and do all those things that you know how to do to tell people about what we’re doing.
We are creating a MOVEMENT movement, making natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice the way natural food currently is. And because it’s a movement, that means you are involved. So, in short, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and let’s just jump in, shall we? Hello, Tim and Dani. How are you?
Tim Anderson:
Great. How are you?
Steven Sashen:
I’m good. I have elected not to try to do my Clark Kent impersonation today. I’m glad that you have taken on the mantle of doing that one. So, do you have a pair of glasses?
Dani Almeyda:
Yeah, wear your glasses.
Tim Anderson:
I do.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, man, this is brilliant. No, definitely. Go find it. Okay.
Dani Almeyda:
He’s going for it.
Steven Sashen:
And Tim and Dani are from originalstrength.net. Tim’s got his Original Strength shirt on. You can’t see the rest of that. We’ll talk about that in a bit.
Tim Anderson:
My Clark Kent.
Steven Sashen:
There we go. All right, put on the glasses. Do the Clark Kent part. I don’t even recognize you. Take them off for your Superman part.
Tim Anderson:
Who is that?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, where’d you go? Could you get Tim back on here, please?
Tim Anderson:
Sorry, sorry.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny, I watched something the other night. Kate McKinnon was on Jimmy Fallon and she said that she likes to wear glasses that are not prescription glasses. She doesn’t need glasses because she just likes the look and it confuses people. And when I was living in New York years ago, I found a pair of glasses that I started wearing that I didn’t need glasses, but it was even better because they were just the top half. They didn’t have the bottom part at all. So, it’s just whatever that style of lens is called.
So, I’d be wearing these things that were just the top half, no lenses. And there was times where I’d be talking to people for an hour until they’d look at me and go, “What the? You know there’s no lenses in those.” “No,” I would go, “yeah, I don’t need glasses.” They found that very confusing. So, Tim Anderson, Dani Almeyda, do me a favor, tell people who the hell you are and why you’re here.
Dani Almeyda:
Oh, all right, all right. Well, we are with Original Strength and we are all about helping people move better and feel better and understand the truth that they were created to be resilient for a lifetime and not meant to feel fragile, broken, weak or injured as many of us do feel.
Steven Sashen:
That’s easy. Now, of course, it’s easy to say that when you were young, attractive, fit human beings. Talk to me about how you work with people of all ages. I’m assuming that you do, I mean I know that you do, but I’m going to say it like I don’t know.
Dani Almeyda:
Go for it.
Tim Anderson:
Well, we teach people of all ages that they are still young, attractive and fit human beings on the inside, and we help them return to those same movements they did when they were younger to actually help them restore their youth.
Steven Sashen:
All right, that’s a good setup and we’ll be diving into how you do that in just a bit. But first, since it is The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, do you have a movementy thing that you do as part of what you do with Original Strength that you would like to share with human beings so that they could get a little taste of what it means for what natural movement means from your perspective?
Tim Anderson:
Sure. So, we encourage people to do something that they’ve all done before called rocking, where they get on their hands and knees and rock back and forth. Most children do this right before they learn how to crawl. And that movement is phenomenal for what it does for your nervous system and how it teaches your body that it is one whole body and not a collection of parts.
Steven Sashen:
So, let’s just break. I mean, I know that sounds super simple and you just said it in less than a sentence. Okay, so literally on your hands and knees, hands under your shoulders, toes pointed or toes engaged?
Tim Anderson:
Yes. So, either one, because your feet are designed to be very mobile and those joints articulate in every direction, you can do toes down or on the balls of your feet, plantarflexion or dorsiflexion.
Steven Sashen:
Try either of those. And when you say rocking back and forth, you’re literally, you’re not moving anything. Your hands are planted. Your knees are planted. Your toes are doing what your toes are doing. And it’s just find a way to move back and forth. I mean, I’ve done this.
Tim Anderson:
Yes, so you’re transferring weight over your hands and then back over your hips. And the wonderful thing about it is it teaches all your joints how to dance together, your ankles, your knees, your hips, your wrists, your shoulders, your spine. It sets your posture, the curves in your spine. It’s great.
Steven Sashen:
So, do you want people to just to be going back and forth linearly or do you want people to make other motions a little like horizontal, lateral, figure eights, et cetera?
Tim Anderson:
So, yes, linear is where we start.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, I’m going to have to stop doing that, ask questions where you’re going to have to give me a straight answer and not a yes answer.
Tim Anderson:
So, we start them with linear back and forth because that’s pretty fairly easy to get to. And then if they’re getting adventurous, we have them rocking circles. Or if they’re really, really feeling frisky, we do try to do infinity symbols or figure eights.
Steven Sashen:
Now, let me just start with the sort of obvious thing. Some people when they hear this are going to drop down and do it, and some people are going to think, “Well, they’re in a place where they can’t,” and some people are just going to think, “Well, that seems silly or stupid or really basic.” I mean, what I love about what you guys are doing is really, and the reason why talking about natural movement, it’s like what do babies do? What are these movement patterns that we start doing just naturally and organically and how does that affect us as we move forward?
So, for people who think that this is either silly or inconsequential or might be embarrassing or have any resistance to this because doing some things that seem “infantile”, it does bring stuff up for people where they have very strange … I’ve experienced where people have some very strange response to it. A thing that I do when I’m teaching people about barefoot running, where we’ll be out in a field and I’ll say, “Look at how tiny little kids run when they first start running, basically they lead with their head, which is oversized and excessively heavy, and then they just try to keep up with their head.”
And so, it’s like let your head go back and forth and just try to keep up. And it takes people sometimes like 15 minutes till they’re willing to even do it because it looks silly. It feels great, it’s really fun, but there’s just this incredible resistance to doing these babylike or childlike things. That’s what I’ve seen. What’s been your experience with that?
Tim Anderson:
Very similar. People do feel silly getting down on the floor and acting like children or moving like children, but usually if we can convince them that if you could restore your body and have all the mobility and strength that you wanted to have, isn’t it worth being just a little bit silly to get that?
Dani Almeyda:
Yeah, I was going to say, so we have a few shirts to say it’s crazy enough to work. You know what? It is a little bit crazy and that’s okay, it might seem crazy, but when people try it and have an experience and they actually see and feel the difference that it makes on their body immediately, then they’re usually like, “Oh, yeah, I got to do that.” And then you see other people around you and they’re doing that. So, I challenge those people to be a trendsetter and go ahead and just try it.
Steven Sashen:
The thing that I noticed the first time I tried just rocking forward and backward is that at a certain point, at first it feels weird and you’re going like, “Well, I don’t know why I’m doing this.” And then things happen, you find yourself just taking a big deep breath, something just lets go, something starts to relax and it’s surprising. That was one of my favorite things.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. Even here in our studio, we’ll have people that I guess people deal with issues that they don’t tell you about because it’s their norm. We’ve had people come after they’ve been here a while, say, “You know what? My back doesn’t hurt anymore.” And it’s because they’re rocking back and forth and they’re like, “I’ve been doing this at home.” So, not only did they do it here, they do it at home and we don’t necessarily know they’re doing it until they discover that they feel great and then they tell us what they’re doing.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a thing I think about almost every day when Lana and I get home from work, one of us, usually me, makes some dinner, which I’m okay with. I really like doing it. Makes some dinner and then we go upstairs where we have, technically it’s our second bedroom, but it’s actually the one place where we have a television and a big couch.
And when I’m eating, I will be sitting on the ground. And the thing that I think every time I do this is growing up, I never saw anyone do this. I mean, my parents never did. My dad did every now and then, if he was trying to turn a television stand into a bookshelf or something, he never read the instructions and God knows what would, there was always leftover screws.
But in terms of just daily living, no one ever modeled being on the ground, crawling, sitting, hanging out, lying down. I don’t know how to even ask this. Have people come in to work with you where they have any kind of relationship with that, again, any reluctance or reticence? Or is it more just when they do it, there’s this, once they get hip to it, it just feels good because it’s fun, because it’s natural, because it’s et cetera. Do you know where I’m going with this? Because I don’t.
Dani Almeyda:
Maybe, a little bit. So, there’s two paths we can go down. In one, I think it really depends on the age of the individual. So, sometimes as we see an older individual, they are much more reluctant to get down on the ground. It’s usually almost a fear relationship. We’re afraid to be on the floor because we don’t know if we can get back up.
And we don’t want to think about when we have to be on the floor because a lot of times, people associate it as you get older with falling. And so, you see that from one standpoint. So, getting people comfortable with being on the floor is really important to us and helping them be able to have the strengths to get back up and down.
But then on the other hand, you’ve got individuals that are fairly, very capable of getting up and down and you get them on the floor and they might feel like, “Oh, this feels silly,” the whole kind of conversation we’re having. But it’s part of our culture here, so everybody’s on the floor. That’s just kind of the way that we do things.
Then once they see that, okay, one, it feels good, two, they’re getting stronger, and three, we really hammer in that this is where we start. This is the basics. This is how we build a strong foundation. I think that that’s a really easy way to help get them more comfortable if we do see that. But honestly, since everybody does it here, it’s not as big here.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, no, but you actually hit the points exactly. I want to back up a giant step. I’m going to ask you to do two things. One, describe a little more if you can, about the fundamental things that people are doing if they’re going to come to Original Strength and work with you or take a course or however they might learn about it. And the second thing is, how did you come to this? How did you find, discover this, develop this?
Tim Anderson:
So, we’ll go backwards. The second thing-
Steven Sashen:
And you were on Krypton.
Tim Anderson:
Yes. So, what had happened was … So, that’s actually a good segue though, because my favorite superhero is Superman, and I was foolish when I was younger and still am. But I would train to the point where I would injure myself, but I wouldn’t stop because it was some weird badge of honor that I just got to keep training. So, I would never let my body recover.
And one day I was frustrated because I wasn’t feeling like Superman at all. And honestly, I asked God to show me how to train to become bulletproof again. I was thinking about Superman one night and I wasn’t there. And within a couple of weeks, I picked up a book on learning disorders in children and how movement can strengthen their brain and tie their brain together and strengthen their nervous system.
And within a couple of weeks, I learned that all the movements we made as a child is what knits our body together in our nervous system and physically ties us together. So, it was just like God kind of connected the dots and I started rolling around and crawling around on the floor.
Steven Sashen:
So, there’s going to be a transition from you personally rolling and crawling on the floor to what you now have. Talk about that.
Tim Anderson:
Yes. So, a friend of mine encouraged me to write a book about what I was learning. So, I wrote a book about, basically it was about the developmental sequence, what children go through to get strong so that they can walk around on two feet and explore their world. And if we return to those same movements, then the same thing happens for us again. It’s like hitting a reset button on the body.
So, I wrote this book and a few people bought it, and eventually we did a workshop about it. A lot of people came and then word of mouth spread, and it just kind of organically grew from that too to where we have a facility called the Original Strength Institute, where we help people remember how their body is designed to move.
Steven Sashen:
Love it. Dani, do you want to add anything to that or talk about your experience?
Dani Almeyda:
Oh.
Tim Anderson:
I met her when she was just a baby.
Dani Almeyda:
No. He learned from me as I was rolling around on the floor. No, I was kidding. No, no. Yeah. I came in, I had moved to the area. I was looking for a place to train and met Tim, saw this crazy guy rolling around, crawling outside, pulling chains, thinking, “Oh, my gosh, he’s crazy.” And he’s like, “Let me show you some things.” And also, I remember at that point him saying, “People want to learn about this.” He had just written the book and, “People want to learn about this.”
So, he shows me and shows me some of the resets, took me through some things, started practicing, and I had struggled. I’m super hypermobile, so my body moves way more than it’s supposed to move. And I struggled with instability for most of my life as a collegiate athlete, a lot of injuries. And so, he showed me the resets, helped me basically retime my body back together. And I was like, “Oh, this is pretty good stuff.” So, I started using it with all of my clients and we continue to work together. And here we are.
Steven Sashen:
I just want to again back up a little bit. Tim, are you telling me that an effective pickup line is, “Let me show you some moves”?
Tim Anderson:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Tim Anderson:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
That’s pretty impressive.
Tim Anderson:
Watch me crawl.
Steven Sashen:
Let me show you some things. Usually that elicits a whole different reaction. So, both of you actually mentioned resets. Can you say more about what that is?
Tim Anderson:
So, the body, so your nervous system, if you can strengthen it, your nervous system wants to feel safe. And if you can do movements or make it feel safe, it will let go and allow you to move. So, when we say pressing reset, it is as if we’re pressing a reset on the body’s operating system and then all the programs on top of it run well. So, it’s like resetting a Nintendo or something like that.
But all it is is tapping back into the very original movements we made as a child. And those are preprogrammed in our nervous system to help us grow and develop. And if we revisit breathing, activating a vestibular system, we’re basically moving our head and our eyes, rolling around on the floor, rocking back and forth and crawling or our gait pattern. If we do those things, it’s like pressing reset on the nervous system, allowing it to feel safe, and it allows us in turn to move and express our strength.
Steven Sashen:
We talked, I mean, the intro to this episode was saying how basically you could get stronger and healthier by doing less than you ever thought. Talk about that if you would, because that was our brief pre-podcast chat. It lasted about five seconds. You hinted that. I said, “Yeah, that’s perfect. Let’s go.”
Tim Anderson:
It was. So, traditionally, I think it’s pretty common to think that if you want to get stronger, you need to lift weights or you got to work out. And most people think, “Well, you got to do that for an hour or two hours at a time regularly.” What I discovered is our design is so amazing that if your nervous system is strong, your body has unlimited strength and potential to allow you to do anything you want to do, mostly within reason.
But an easy example is, and I’ve lifted weights all my life and I quit for about, I don’t know, months and just crawled across fields, dragging chains and stuff like that, but just crawling like a kid does. And my body got a lot stronger than it was in the gym. And I know that because I came back to the gym and I was able to pick up much heavier stuff than I was picking up than when I left the gym. And I had been gone for months. So, I wasn’t training to get stronger in the gym, but I was able to express more strength in the gym.
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s an interesting point. Do you think that you got actually stronger or do you think that with the lifts that you were doing, there was something else like better alignment or just better movement patterns?
Tim Anderson:
Actually, stronger and better movement patterns. So, again, I was tied together better so I could express more strength potential that I had. So, most people are walking around with enough strength to crush their own bones if all their muscles were to contract, well, everybody can. Everybody do that, but nobody is able to express that because their nervous system will not let them tap into that. But if your nervous system feels safe and you’re tied together very well, then strength is almost effortless and so is mobility.
Steven Sashen:
It’s interesting when you said that, I just remembered seeing something on maybe a show, I Shouldn’t Be Alive or I don’t know what’s called, or something like that, and maybe if that’s what it’s called, the show is no longer on the air, which I’m so glad about because I used to watch it addictively and it was just basically for an hour, it’s a story of someone who shouldn’t have been alive because of whatever happened to them. But every 10 or 15 minutes, it was the kind of thing where you’re going, “Oh, my god, that’s the worst thing I could ever imagine.” And then it got worse.
But one of the episodes was a guy who had been hiking and a giant, I don’t even know what to call it, piece of rock, like 10-feet wide, 10-feet long, a couple feet thick, slipped off the edge of the cliff that he was on and pinned him. And so, he’s lying underneath it, face up with this multi-thousand pound rock on him and just freaked out and pushed it off his body and ended up basically tearing every muscle and ligament in his body.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. That’s unbridled strength. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Tim Anderson:
And it saved his life.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Got it off, got down. And then I realized that I had broken bones and ripped almost every tendon. I mean, it was just like, holy smokes. So, it’s like our brain is telling us, like you’re saying, our central nervous system, including our brain, is telling us to limit things to a certain extent because you could hurt yourself otherwise.
And it’s actually something I was talking about yesterday with someone about running. Actually, you know what it was? It was about the sub-2 hour marathon, and oh, it was even better. It was about the new Nike shoe. And people were saying, “Well, all these people are setting new personal bests.” I went, “Well, there’s this whole idea in running and for exercise in general and movement in general, the central governor theory. Basically your brain is telling you, ‘Here’s when you should put the brakes on because it’s going to hurt you otherwise.'”
And what many endurance athletes find in particular empower athletes as well is that your brain is telling you to chill out well before you really need to. And so, people are learning how to listen to when they get those signals saying, “I need to stop.” And then just they keep going past those initial signals. They eventually stop even. Eventually the signals get so loud they stop.
But my argument would be that a lot of what’s happening for people if they’re setting personal vests in some magic new shoe that no one knows why it’s producing magic effects is that basically, it’s essentially placebo effect. And what’s happening is they’re getting those central governor messages and just either ignoring them or reframing. So, yeah, anyway, that’s a tangent from this whole thing about how bodies can be super strong if they’re allowed to, if you will.
Tim Anderson:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Both of you have mentioned the phrase, “crawling in chains” a few times. Would you please elaborate?
Dani Almeyda:
I think that’s totally you. I’m sorry. He’s going to talk about the chain crawling here.
Steven Sashen:
Because I was imagining when you said “crawling with chains through a field”, I’m thinking that someone’s got you hooked up to a plow.
Dani Almeyda:
I mean basically.
Tim Anderson:
Similar, similar.
Steven Sashen:
Well, because if not, they were missing out on an opportunity. So, we’ve gone from rocking and we’ve talked about crawling. So, let’s talk about these progressions and then talk about adding change to the mix, too.
Tim Anderson:
So, rocking teaches your body where all your joints are. And it teaches your muscles, your stabilizers, how to stabilize your joints so that your prime movers can move your joints. Basically, it really sets your body free to move. And then crawling coordinates the opposing limb pattern and ties your body together so that you can generate … Well, so, one, that you can move from A to B efficiently, but it also helps tie your body together so you can generate speed and power and fluidity.
So, once you’re tied together well and you move well, you can add load or resistance to the movement patterns to strengthen your body and those patterns so that you can exude or demonstrate more strength. So, what I used to do in our old studio, we had a big grass field behind the studio, and I would go out back and I would crawl. It was an 80-yard field, and I would crawl 80 yards with chains tied to my body. So, I was creating resistance or drag.
Steven Sashen:
But just additional weight. I mean, you could have done this with a weighted vest if you weren’t such a dork.
Tim Anderson:
But it looks so much cooler with a chain.
Dani Almeyda:
Yes, it’s cool.
Steven Sashen:
Yes. You just proved my point.
Tim Anderson:
And the sound. The sound’s amazing. But so really though, the chain though, depending on the surface like grass or sand, it accumulates a certain amount of friction though the longer the chain is, so it’s surface area too. Whereas a weight vest pushes straight down on the body. When you’re dragging a chain, you’ve got resistance pulling in the line against the line of direction you’re trying to go.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim Anderson:
So, it’s just a fun way to train.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, man, I just blanked on the name of this device. I’ve done a review of it. I have it in my car. Why can’t I remember the name of this? This is going to make me crazy. We use this on the track at least once a month.
Tim Anderson:
Like a bungee?
Steven Sashen:
Huh?
Tim Anderson:
Does it have a bungee behind it or?
Steven Sashen:
No, it’s like a spindle. So, it’s got a rope that goes through, it’s like a tube. It’s about 10 inches long. Basically, it’s got a spindle on the inside. And so, the rope goes around the spindle. You turn the inside spindle, it makes the rope loop around the spindle, which creates more resistance. Oh, my god. As I’ve gotten older, I can’t do names, and then apparently, I can’t remember. Oh, EXER-GENIE, there it is. So, the EXER-GENIE, it was a device that some guy invented in the ’70s, disappeared, someone brought it back a little while ago. It’s awesome.
So, instead of chains, same idea. And yes, it’s got a 40-meter-long rope. And so, just having that rope on the ground creates the extra friction. You feel it once you get past the halfway point, you’ve passed the other end of the rope, it starts getting easier, because there’s less rope on the ground creating the friction. But basically, you can create as much resistance as you want without all that extra weight. It’s a really fun device. You’ll have to look it up. I think you would totally get a kick out of it.
Tim Anderson:
Oh, I’m definitely going to Google that now. And I’m not going to forget the name, EXER-GENIE.
Steven Sashen:
EXER-GENIE.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah, sounds fun. Like you want to rub it and something pops out of the bottle. That’s great.
Steven Sashen:
It’s kind of like that, but not at all like that.
Tim Anderson:
Okay. No.
Steven Sashen:
By kind of, I mean, not even close. But it’s super, super cool. And we use it for either kind of resisted running, so just we’ll set it to an amount of resistance that gives you just a little bit as you’re running to the kind of thing where it’s so much resistance that you’re just trying to walk and you basically have to be at an angle, you’re leaning forward, it’s pulling you back, you’re leaning forward, your nose is almost on the ground because that’s the only angle where you can get enough force to make yourself move. It’s a blast.
Tim Anderson:
I am intrigued.
Steven Sashen:
Yes. You have to let me know if you get one. It’s a good time. I think I have a link on my website, but be that as it may. Okay. Anyway, I don’t know where I wanted to go after that. So, what are the other things other than sticking chains on your body and crawling across a field much to the amusement of your neighbors?
Tim Anderson:
Well, that does amuse the neighbors. Actually, it gets you in trouble with your spouse a lot also.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on. You can’t just leave there. See, my wife is so used to the insane things that I do that I don’t think anything would get me in trouble with her. What kind of trouble do you get in crawling around in chains? That seems normal to me.
Tim Anderson:
No, so my wife’s pretty proper and well, she doesn’t like me … Well, so what it was was, is I was crawling through one of our neighbor’s yard in their grass, because they had a nice lawn and they were asleep. So, I wasn’t harming anyone. But somebody drove by and called my neighbors and told them that somebody was crawling in their yard. And this somehow got back to my wife and I was heavily reprimanded and told I will never do that again. So, that’s what had happened.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so, I’ve got to ask one question. Why were you crawling in your neighbor’s yard?
Tim Anderson:
They had really nice grass. Texture’s everything. You should know this. You know when you run barefooted, man. It’s all about the texture.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s true. Well, wait, did the neighbors complain or was it all your wife?
Tim Anderson:
No, so they thought it was funny, but they told my wife and stuff like that is, I wouldn’t say mortified, but she didn’t like it.
Steven Sashen:
So, now, the important question then is, did you stop or did you just make sure that she was never going to find out about it when you did it again?
Tim Anderson:
No, I just do it down the street where she can’t see me, like in other neighbor’s yard, people that I don’t know’s yard. I do it in a complete stranger’s yard.
Steven Sashen:
See, now I just want to be the neighbors who come home and see a guy crawling through their backyard in chains. I think that’ll be awesome.
Tim Anderson:
So, listen, no, I’ve upped my game. So, what I do now, I don’t know if you’ve seen those Hyperwear sandbags, but they’re just disc filled with sand?
Steven Sashen:
No, no, I haven’t.
Tim Anderson:
Well, so I’ve got one that weighs 50 pounds and I would put it on my head and march in the neighborhood. So, I’m the guy in the neighborhood with the big sombrero.
Steven Sashen:
Do you know Nick Nilsson?
Tim Anderson:
No.
Steven Sashen:
Nick Nelson. He calls himself the mad scientist of muscle. Nick is famous for just coming up with these crazy exercise variations. He’s a big fan of Xero Shoes. It’s N-I-L-S-S-O-N. If you look him up on YouTube, you can find videos. A lot of them he’s wearing either the Prio or the Speed Force, or actually sometimes he wears the … Well, all of the shoes that he has in different videos. But he will do things like just, I think he lives on a cul-de-sac, but he’ll walk back and forth while carrying 500 pounds on this yoke that he invented or doing other similarly insane shit that the two of you I think would get along quite swimmingly.
Tim Anderson:
I’ve got a really good friend that is very much trains like that as well. John Brookfield.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I know John.
Tim Anderson:
He’s the inventor of the Battling Ropes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I’m going to have to do an intro to you guys, I think.
Tim Anderson:
All right. I’m in.
Steven Sashen:
So, we talked a bit about getting stronger, doing less, but we then diverged a bit just to talk about you trespassing and not getting arrested. What else do you want to share just about the work that you’re doing or what you’re seeing with people? Let me back up to this. Why do people come to see you to begin with? What are the things that you hear people are interested in or complaining about or suffering from?
Dani Almeyda:
Yeah, so, Original Strength, which is a company that … So, we do certifications for fitness professionals and chiropractors, physical therapists, things like that. So, we certify professionals on how to help their clients and patients. But then we also have a gym here where we tend to bring in people that are feeling broken in tons of different ways, whether it’s they injured themselves years ago and they just now are getting around to the fact that it’s bothering them. They can’t play soccer with their kids.
They did some crazy workout at another gym and injured themselves and they are afraid to go back until they can figure out how to do it right, whatever it is. So, lots of different types of injuries and pain, but more of just a feeling of, “I know I don’t feel well. I’m hurting. I don’t want to feel fragile and weak anymore. I know I want to be able to do things.”
Whether it’s a doctor told them like, “Hey, you’re just not going to be able to do that anymore.” Or them thinking, “I just can’t do this anymore.” We kind of open the doors to them. So, we kind of plant this little seed of hope, like “Yes, you can.” And we show them how with really simple movement like we were talking about before. So, we start with the basics of just teaching them how to press reset and then helping them move their body as it’s naturally supposed to move, focusing on squatting and hinging and pushing and pulling and doing all sort sorts of fun stuff.
Tim Anderson:
So, if you give the body what it needs, it knows how to heal itself. And so, movement is so nice, you say it twice, movement, movement. And what your body really wants and needs is movement. And with the right movement, it can heal itself.
Steven Sashen:
So, you just hinted at some of the other things. We have squatting. We have hip hinging. We have pulling. We have pushing. Anything else that we’re missing. There’s got to be a twisting thing in there somewhere.
Tim Anderson:
Dan John, he calls it getting up from the ground. Getting up, it creates rotation. But then gait pattern also creates rotation and twisting. So, gait pattern to me would be the big one if you’re going to add a fifth one in there.
Steven Sashen:
So, you want to kind of touch on each of those?
Tim Anderson:
Sure.
Steven Sashen:
Why not? We got time to kill. What the hell?
Tim Anderson:
So, I’ve got a really wise friend who just looks at the body and how it’s designed to move. And he says the body’s designed to do, and his name is Dan John, by the way, super famous, nice guy. But he says, the body’s designed to do five things, push, pull, hinge, squat, and carry. And if we honor those five things and we do them regularly, your body will always be strong and able to do what you want to do as you go through life.
Steven Sashen:
Right before we started this, a friend of mine sent me a video. It’s a woman, I wish I remember her name. And it’s not that I forgot it, I never knew it, so I’m giving myself that clarification. I could look it up. But I skipped into the video after where they told her name. She weighs 120 pounds. She just squatted 495. It was really amazing. Now again, that’s a big weightlifting thing.
So, when we talk about some of these activities, hinging, squatting, pushing, pulling. Again, most people think of that either from weightlifting or the body weight analog of that, of doing pushups and pullups and whatever. I’m imagining that you have a different take on many if not all of those.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. So, we can cover squatting and hinging with the rocking motion and even pushing, because we’re pushing our bodies away from the ground. Crawling definitely is pushing away from the ground in the legs and the feet. But it also, if you look at the pattern that the legs go through when you crawl, we’re still working on hinging.
And now squatting in itself is a sitting and resting position that we should actually have even when we’re 99 years old. It shouldn’t be what we call a third world squad. It should be an everyday I can just squat because I’m made to kind of squat. And then carrying things, well, that’s how we were designed to pick things up and we walk from one place to another. And the way we get them there is we carry them.
So, I guess our take could be different, but if you love to lift weights, the developmental sequence or the movements that you were preprogrammed with, if you engage in those regularly, it will allow you to lift weights so much easier and so much better. You’ll enjoy it better.
Steven Sashen:
And when we move that into the gait pattern, since a lot of people came to this from running and either barefoot running or minimalist running or natural running, however you want to frame that. Can you talk about what you’ve seen and what you’ve done with people, whether it’s walking or running?
Tim Anderson:
For improving their gait pattern?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Or frankly, or anything you want to talk about just as we talk about moving and gait.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. Obviously, and you know this, but people can walk, or you see them walking in a store or down the mall or whatever, but they’re really going from one place to another, but they’re not truly, truly walking with their appropriate gait pattern. So, if you watch someone-
Steven Sashen:
So, wait. For people who didn’t see, Dani didn’t move, she got behind you and was texting.
Dani Almeyda:
Texting.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. So, we’ve learned how to walk just using our legs, but our foundational gait pattern is where all four limbs are moving. So, if I’m crawling on the floor, if I’m just moving my legs, I’m not crawling. I need my arms and my legs to dance together to crawl. But that’s the foundational gait pattern. So, when I’m walking or when I’m running, I want my arms and legs to dance together because that’s what strengthens my nervous system and keeps my body healthy and resilient as the years go by.
So, if we help an adult remember how to crawl, they will walk better and they will run better and they will produce and transfer force and energies better that their body comes into contact with.
Steven Sashen:
So, are you doing anything explicitly about walking or running or doing something about that transfer or are you just-
Tim Anderson:
It’s a transfer. So, if we make the very beginning gait pattern solid and very fluid, then the gait patterns that are built on top of that become more fluid and better as well.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. I imagine people walk into your place wearing big, thick, heavy motion controlled, padded shoes. Yes?
Tim Anderson:
Yes, yes.
Steven Sashen:
What happens when that happens?
Tim Anderson:
Well, so we have two rules and they’re very important rules because they deal with the nervous system. The first one is don’t move into pain. And the second one is don’t move into fear. So, we have to meet people where they’re at because if we move them into fear, their nervous system is going to guard and protect them anyway. And they’re not going to move nearly the way that we want them to be able to move so that they can experience how powerful movements.
So, what we do is we politely and gently encourage people, you can take off your shoes if you want. And then as they get more into the crazy stuff that we teach, we can have a deeper conversation about footwear and things like that.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Well, I found that in different parts of the country, there’s different attitudes and opinions about the whole barefoot thing. I was in a store recently and it’s winter here in Colorado in barefeet, and someone made some comment about it, not derogatory, but just like, “Oh, my god, you’re not wearing shoes?” And I said, “Imagine, what would it be like if we were at the beach where you just wouldn’t even think about that? It would be a common thing. It’s just that it’s winter and it’s Colorado, it strikes you as unusual.” So, there’s a location thing.
There’s also having spent time in the south, there’s also the cultural component of that as well. How have you had to deal with that?
Dani Almeyda:
Sorry, I’m just laughing because he’ll take his shoes off and walk down the street, as we’re going to the coffee shop all the time.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I was in Costco recently and they stopped me, some of the employees, very, very upset. And they said, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yeah, why?” They said, “You’re wearing shoes.”
Tim Anderson:
Wow. I haven’t had that. So, here, there used to be signs on the stores that said, no shirt, no shoes, no service.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Tim Anderson:
That was very big here, and I’m so tired of putting on a shirt every time I walked into a store.
Steven Sashen:
No, the thing is you walk in with a shirt and shoes and no pants, it didn’t seem well.
Tim Anderson:
Exactly. They don’t care if you wear pants or not.
Steven Sashen:
That’s right.
Tim Anderson:
I was always confused about that. So, really, I have to ask you again, what was the question? Because now my brain is somewhere.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I’m just intrigued by, because see, Colorado, especially around the whole barefoot thing, it’s kind of a hippie town where I am. So, it’s not insane, insane. But in some parts of the country and the south, more than others, not trying to … Or the south, if you’re not by the beach or by the water, it’s definitely let’s say less-
Dani Almeyda:
More conservative.
Steven Sashen:
What’d you say?
Dani Almeyda:
I can say conservative. We can say it.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Conservative. I was just going to say, just going around barefoot is the kind of thing that you definitely get more looks than you would in other places. I mean, New York City, you get a lot of looks. People are freaking out if you do that. Very fun to do, by the way. A lot of the roads are super smooth and the sidewalks are … I mean, it’s awesome and wash your feet at the end of the day. It’s not a big deal. But anyway, I’m just kind of curious what it’s dealing the people that are local and giving them that gentle invitation to go barefoot, but what happens after that?
Tim Anderson:
So, here, like Dani mentioned earlier, we just create a culture of where it’s the norm. So, if you want to wear your shoes or they’re really thick, you’re almost going to be the outlier where that may get your attention. And maybe you want to fit in and see what everybody else is, what the fuss is about, why are they barefoot or why are they wearing the Xero Shoes? So, really, we don’t have that much of a issue here because we set the expectations.
And really we just tell them upfront, “Hey, your body is amazingly, wonderfully made and this is how it’s designed. And if you want to optimize that design or your function, then you stick as close to the design as possible.”
Steven Sashen:
And have you gotten feedback from people when they’ve started to spend more time barefoot?
Dani Almeyda:
A couple. I think they’re majorly switching over shoes. We’ve had a lot of people switch from wearing the big thick, chunky shoes to wearing minimalist shoes because they know that it feels better and they move better. They can feel the floor better. They’re better at their movement patterns that we have them do.
Tim Anderson:
And we have a lot of, I’ll call them compromisers, where they feel okay being in their socks without shoes, but they don’t want to take their socks off on the floor and walk around because to them, “Oh, it’s icky that somebody else is walking barefoot on the floor,” and that’s just-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s fascinating.
Tim Anderson:
But people have their own issues, but they are coming out of their shoes and wearing socks. So, it’s still good. Now, they’re not getting the full benefit of all the different textures, but it’s a good place to be.
Steven Sashen:
I’m just so curious. This sounds silly. I mean, I’ve been running Xero Shoes for 10 years with my wife. I’ve been barefoot for a few years before that. I never really sat to think, why is it that people have such a thing about feet and barefeet and walking on something where we know it’s totally safe, it’s not going to be an issue. And of course in other places in the world, it’s not an issue. What is it? What are they thinking that makes them say something like, “I don’t want to do this because”?
Dani Almeyda:
I think people are afraid of germs.
Tim Anderson:
Germs.
Dani Almeyda:
I think it’s germs.
Tim Anderson:
There’s hand sanitizer stuff everywhere you go and people are always like, “Where’s your stuff?”
Dani Almeyda:
And there’s that whole connotation of some people having stinky feet or sweaty feet, maybe they’re just real self-conscious.
Tim Anderson:
But you know what makes them that way is shoes though, isn’t that?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. That’s the irony. Yeah, it’s just such a fascinating thing because of course, we get more germs and transmit more diseases by shaking someone’s hand or being in a room where someone is ill and then rubbing our eyes. I mean, the feet are so less likely to be a cause of something, unless you’re walking through poop or doing something where obviously that’s a problem, but A why would you do that?
It’s one of my favorite things when I talk about walking and running barefoot. They go, “Aren’t you afraid of stepping in dog poop?” I go, “When’s the last time you stepped in dog poop?” They go, “I don’t know, 20 years ago.” It’s like, “Well, why would you start now if you took off your shoes?”
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. Typically, wearing shoes or barefoot, I try not to do that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, exactly. I make an effort to not do that. Of course, it’s not really difficult. I don’t know. Have you used these things called eyes? Have you ever tried using those when you’re walking? They’re amazing. You can see things with them and then adapt how you’re moving. It’s crazy.
Dani Almeyda:
But we’re like this, so.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s what it is.
Tim Anderson:
But you probably know this, too. Even if your eyes can’t catch something, if you spend a lot of time walking barefoot, your feet will catch stuff, but your eyes can’t.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. There are a number of things that I regret from, I wish I could go back in time. One is I wish I had a picture of what my footprint looked like when I got out of the hot tub because it just looked like an oval with dots and now it looks like a footprint. And the other is I wish there was a way of testing my reflex arc and the flexibility and strength in my foot. I wish I’d done all of those things so I could compare now.
Because in addition to getting more flexible and stronger, it feels like I’m just reflexively faster. If I start to step on something that it’s not going to feel good, I’m off it more quickly. And I don’t have any way of proving that, unfortunately. I wish that I’d had that kind of foresight.
Tim Anderson:
Man, that would be amazing information to have. If you could find somebody that you were warming up to to transition from regular shoes to your shoes, that would be the great place to test.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a really interesting one. The challenge with doing any of these things where you want to study someone doing something like that over a period of time, because that’s going to be a six-month to multiyear process. You probably have a, for many people, there’ll be a kind of quick learning at first and then it’s going to slow down, but continue improving.
Anything like that, the cost for doing that kind of study is super, super high. And it’s one of the things Lana and I have on our to-do list is raising some capital, raising some money so that we can support some studies like that just to see what happens. Of course, the challenge there is that if they prove the obvious thing that using your feet is better than not using your feet and has all these value adds, people will say, “Yeah, but you guys paid for the study.”
Tim Anderson:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
What are you going to do? This is something I talked to Sarah Ridge on a previous podcast episode. I called it something like the stupidest, stupidest research ever done. Well, Sarah had done some research showing that if you walk in a pair of minimalist shoes, your feet get stronger in the same way that they would if you did in a explicit foot strengthening exercise program.
And I said, “Isn’t it amazingly stupid that we have to demonstrate that using your feet is better than not using your feet.” When the shoe companies have never demonstrated anything showing the value of what they’re doing, the natural movement people have to prove that natural is better than not. Crazy.
Tim Anderson:
Well, whenever you’re going against a grain, everybody wants proof.
Steven Sashen:
Well, right, and even that, that’s the thing that’s so funny is we are not going against the grain. I know human beings have been wearing footwear for a long, long time. And the advent of the modern motion control padded shoes just the last 50 years. So, for 99.995% of human history, we’ve been wearing minimalist shoes or going barefoot or something like that. Something just a little protection for your foot, something to hold that protection onto your foot. That’s it. So, we’re not the intervention. The intervention is all the new stuff. The intervention is the Nike Vaporfly and the HOKA and everything really.
I did a panel discussion at the American College of Sports Medicine a year and a half ago, and there was a guy from Brooks and a guy from Adidas who made a comment about, “We’re trying to improve performance and reduce injury, but we can’t prove that we can do that because that would be really expensive and cost a lot of, and take a lot of time and have a lot of confounding factors.”
And all I could think was, “Dude, if either one of you could make a shoe demonstrably better than the guy sitting next to you, that’s worth billions of dollars a year, and you’re telling me you’re not doing it because difficult and expensive?” Ludicrous. But the fact that they had no evidence. And just then in one of my slides, I pulled up 20 studies from PubMed showing how natural movement is better.
So, Isabel Sacco in Brazil showing how it can get rid of knee osteoarthritis and Sarah’s research about foot strengthening and it goes on and on and on. But that research gets no attention because there aren’t multibillion-dollar companies promoting the research. So, anyway, he says ranting,
Tim Anderson:
We get it.
Dani Almeyda:
Yeah. And I think what you just said as far as you’re not going against the grain is a really cool way to look at it. However, unfortunately, the rest of society doesn’t know that.
Steven Sashen:
I know.
Dani Almeyda:
And we go with the same thing, too. Everyone wants the complex, the sexy, the new, the next best thing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I mean, if all you have to offer is crawling around in chains, I mean, where’s the fun of that?
Tim Anderson:
So, the good news is you don’t even have to use the chains, just crawling.
Steven Sashen:
Well, wait-
Tim Anderson:
That’s all you need to do.
Steven Sashen:
Although look, the gadget geek that I am, in fact, I’ll tell this story. So, being that it is that present giving season, and my mother-in-law sent me some money, which is very kind and completely stupid and ridiculous, but she does it all the time anyway. And all I can do is say thank you. But there’s just no need to give a 57-year-old man a Christmas present.
Regardless, I was thinking, I want to spend a little money. There’s a toy that I’ve wanting to get for a while. And then I got a letter two days later from the surgeons who did my shoulder surgery three years ago saying, “Hey, we’re auditing our numbers and you apparently overpaid.” And they sent me a check for $1,500.
Tim Anderson:
What?
Dani Almeyda:
What?
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. That’s the first thing I said. And then second thing was maybe they made a mistake. And the third thing is, “I don’t care. I’m cashing this thing.” So, I bought a toy. It’s a Nordic hamstring curl machine, basically just as a sprinter, eccentric hamstring strength is usually important. So, I got a thing to do that. It makes me very happy. I love this thing. So, anyway, that’s my new toy. But other than chains, so that’s my way of saying I like toys. So, other than chains, what other toys might I play with if I were hanging out with you?
Dani Almeyda:
Well, I’m going to just throw this in there. Your own body for sure. Best thing.
Steven Sashen:
I know. Come on.
Dani Almeyda:
All right. All right. What do you-
Tim Anderson:
Toys?
Dani Almeyda:
Yeah, toys. I don’t know. We have so many toys. Well, we’re really big fans of the Hyperwear sand belts and also the Hyperwear weighted vests. Those are both great pieces of equipment that you can use for a lot of different types of training.
Tim Anderson:
We like sleds, pushing and pulling sleds.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, dude, you are just going to so love the EXER-GENIE.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah? All right, I’m in.
Steven Sashen:
All the fun of a sled without a sled.
Tim Anderson:
And that’s what I need because I travel.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah.
Tim Anderson:
But yeah, we love sleds, slam balls or soft, I call them soft atlas stones, where you can just pick them up and maneuver them and stuff like that of different weights.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a guy that I met, he’s here in town, who actually, when I met him, we were at an event. It was a lunch for physical product CEOs, and I’m sitting next to him. I said, “So, what do you do?” He goes, “Oh, I make an adjustable weight medicine ball.” I said, “Oh, cool. How does that work?” He goes, “Well, I can’t tell you that. It’s technology.” And I said, “Yeah, because what I’m going to do is I’m going to drop my multimillion-dollar company and steal your stupid idea.”
Dani Almeyda:
Did you say that to him?
Steven Sashen:
I did. And about 10 minutes later, he walks back up to me, he goes, “My apologies. Here’s how it works.” So, anyway, it’s crazy expensive, but I saw them recently and it’s really fun. It’s basically just a medicine ball, where it’s got kind of like a screw on cap, if you will. And you can put different weights on the inside of it, very clever and kind of expensive. But for travel and for convenience, that works out well. But I love things that you can throw and slam and hit walls with and stuff like that.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. And then the other thing, for all of those things you could do, we have ropes. Imagine that. We’ve got ropes and chains.
Steven Sashen:
Ropes and chains.
Tim Anderson:
All kinds of fun things.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. You might want to clarify that. I wouldn’t open with that. “Yeah, come on over. We have a lot of ropes and chains. Come here, let me show you something.”
Tim Anderson:
But that’s how-
Dani Almeyda:
You know what, it might work. I don’t know. Crazy enough to work.
Steven Sashen:
Of course, you do.
Tim Anderson:
Guess I’m curious enough, I want to come in the door.
Steven Sashen:
“I’ve got ropes and chants. Come on, let show you something.”
Dani Almeyda:
I’m not going to lie, Steven. I’ve had phone calls, people calling in and being like, “Yeah, I saw this guy walking around in my neighborhood with a thing on his head and walking with sticks.” He uses Indian clubs, “And I hear he owns this place. Can I come work out here?” So, people-
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
Dani Almeyda:
People like it.
Tim Anderson:
Curiosity.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good. Cool. Those are all good toys. But the thing that I like about them is that they all do have one thing in common, which is what you hinted at before. It’s basically giving you a way of, I don’t want to use the word “exaggerating”, but just adding some added element to this natural movement pattern.
Tim Anderson:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Tim Anderson:
And so, the way we explain it to people is once we teach them how to press reset and tie their body together, then we put them through natural movement and really we teach them how to be farmers, moving things.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah. It’s funny you say that. I was at the first Paleo FX conference. I was on a panel discussion about natural movement things. And at one point I said, “Look, let’s just cut to the chase. Everything we’re doing here is fake natural movement, really, because no one is walking down to the river and picking up stones and bringing them back to build a house. No one is running to catch their food or running away so they don’t become food. And the difference in that one is so noticeable. Because I don’t care how fast you run and how much you’re doing high intensity intervals.”
When I go out and train, I run as hard as I can. Maybe I’m a little sore the next day. When I am at a track meet and I run one fast race, I can’t move for the next four days. The whole hormonal thing that goes on when you’re in competition mode, and that’s not even the same as being chased by or chasing something, but it’s the closest that we can get in a controlled circumstance in a whole different game. So, we’re doing these things to do the best we can to imitate what it would be if we were living in a very different world.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah. And basically, we do them here, too. Because outside of here, people still have a life they want to live. And we’re in a rural place where people do yard work, they shovel mulch, they plant trees, and they work. So, just being able to do that stuff easier, we’re improving quality of life.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great. Well, is there anything else that we want to jump into, tackle, talk about? Anything that I missed?
Tim Anderson:
I don’t know. I’ve learned that if I rub the EXER-GENIE, Will Smith will not pop out.
Steven Sashen:
That was pretty much the subliminal message I’ve been trying to communicate the whole time.
Tim Anderson:
We covered that.
Steven Sashen:
Glad you picked it up. Yeah. My shirt doesn’t say Xero Shoes. It says EXER-GENIE Will Smith, do not rub.
Tim Anderson:
I do have a question for you. So, your new Speed Force shoe, do you run sprints in it?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah, I’m wearing it right now. I’ll tell you, when I come to the office, I normally just kick off my shoes right away. I mean, I’m normally barefoot most of the time. And the only reason that I wear shoes even in the winter around here is because in the parking lot of our office, for some reason that no one has ever been able to explain, it’s always muddy. And I just am lazy. Sometimes I can jump over it, but basically, I put on shoes so I don’t have to deal with the mud in the parking lot, and then I’d come in here and kick them off. I keep wearing these. I keep forgetting that I have them on.
Tim Anderson:
I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
To answer your question though, so yeah, when I’m on the track, and so for people who don’t know, I’m a competitive sprinter. I will do all my warmups barefoot and drills barefoot. And then when I’ve got to go for speed, I’ll put on my Speed Force now. I was wearing the Prio before and now I’m wearing the Speed Force. I feel like they give me as much grip as my sprinting spikes do, and partly because I’m able to move my foot more than I can in my spikes because they squeeze your toes together and don’t let your foot move. But also, they’re crazy grippy and they’re really lightweight.
I mean, it’s my favorite shoe to run in, and all of my training partners are doing the same now. And some of them were just like, “Yeah, I like the Prio, but I can’t really run in it. It’s a little too heavy for me.” And then the Speed force is what they’re wearing now. I’m actually working on a sprinting spike. I’ve got a kind of skunkworks project. It has no spikes and it doesn’t squeeze your toes together. It’s super, super cool. But hopefully, that’s about a year away. Anyway, so yes, I do. But you had a followup question it sounded like.
Tim Anderson:
Yeah, well, no, I was going to say that’s my biggest complaint about the Speed Force is that typically before I had my pair, I would come in around and I’d walk around and here barefoot or without shoes. I wear these things all the time.
Steven Sashen:
I know, it’s crazy.
Tim Anderson:
I don’t take them off and I’ve worn them every single day.
Steven Sashen:
I know, I know. And look, I’m not sure exactly when this episode’s going to air, but I’ll hint at something. We’ve got another shoe coming out called the HFS, which stands for holy something, something. It’s a tiny bit heavier. The upper is a little bit lighter, and the tread is a little more road friendly, if you will. I’m going to show it really quick. It’s a teaser for you.
Tim Anderson:
It’s pretty.
Dani Almeyda:
That’s awesome.
Tim Anderson:
That’s cool.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s super, super cool. And similarly, we got a few samples here in the office just to make sure the production run is going correctly and people who’ve been wearing the Speed Force, now they’re gone, “I don’t know which to wear. I’m going back and forth.” So, we’re really committed to doing this. We have a couple other shoes that we’ve developed for 2020 in particular, where the people who are testing were going, “I keep forgetting that I’m wearing them.” Now, we’ve been hearing that since day one. But even more with some of these, because they’re even lighter, they’re even more flexible. They breathe even more.
And yeah, it is pretty wacky having the same experience you are. It’s very weird that I find myself wearing shoes the majority of the day because I just forget. I mean, I just don’t even notice it.
Tim Anderson:
So, my wife’s yelling at me at home, always telling me to take my shoes off now, because she doesn’t want me wearing them on the carpet. And I just-
Steven Sashen:
She off, “Don’t crawl through the neighbor’s yards.” Man, this woman, she’s a ballbuster. Jesus.
Tim Anderson:
Well, she runs a tight ship. She does. She’s not going to watch this, so I’m sick.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, man. I wonder if Lana is embarrassed by all the things that I do or not. I’ve never asked her. She’s never said anything, so I’m assuming she’s totally fine with it or just walks further away so people don’t know that we’re attached to each other. That’s probably what it is.
Tim Anderson:
I’m sure she’s used to it. I’m hoping my wife is.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, she’s definitely used to it. But I’m sure there’s things that every now and then, she’s got to be rolling her eyes. My parents very early on, so I come from a, let’s call it nominally Jewish family. We went to synagogue on the high holidays and that’s it. That was really it. But my parents used to say to me, my mom in particular, actually, my dad in particular, “We want you to marry a nice Jewish girl.” And I said, “You have no idea how hard it is to put up with me. If I can find anyone who can do that, end of story.”
And then they met Lana and I said, “So, are you okay with the fact that she’s not Jewish?” And they said, “Look, we’ve just seen that in your previous relationships, you started out happy and then got less happy. And in this one, you started out happy and have gotten happier, and that’s all we care about.” And I said, “Okay, where’d you put my real parents?”
And it’s been true. So, I’m an incredibly lucky human being. In fact, my mom who has Alzheimer’s, after she had long ago forgotten who I was, would spontaneously say, “Lana is the best thing that ever happened to Steven.” And she’s totally correct. So, that’s a good one.
So, yeah, my apologies for now creating this additional strife in your relationship where your wife now complains that you’re wearing shoes. I will do my best to make that worse for her.
Tim Anderson:
Thank you.
Steven Sashen:
By giving you additional options where you do the same thing. There’s actually a funny one going on right now. I can’t wait to see how it pans out. Peter Attia, I don’t know if you know Peter. He’s a doctor and very interesting health and fitness guy. And he’s been wearing the Prio and the Speed Force, and his wife is totally not crazy about the Prio. I think she’s iffy about the Speed Force. I’m hoping that I find something that he likes, that she likes as well. That’s my new challenge.
And sometimes we get the other way around. Sometimes we’ll have it is polarizing. There’s times where people wear our sandals and the spouse will complain about how they look. And then we get them another sandal and they go, “Oh, I actually like that one.” So, it’s a very funny thing. We’ve had people make a comment about the exact same shoe. One saying, “That’s too masculine,” and then the next breath, someone’s saying, “That’s too feminine.” It’s like, “Okay, then you’re clearly both right.”
Tim Anderson:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Anyway. All right. Anything else before we call it a wonderful day?
Dani Almeyda:
Well, I would just love to point out if anyone wants to learn more about Original-
Steven Sashen:
I was just about to do that, but go ahead.
Dani Almeyda:
Okay, okay.
Steven Sashen:
Go ahead. I was going to say, if people want to learn more, where do they go? So, you preempted it, but please continue.
Dani Almeyda:
All right. Well, I was going to say, if anyone wants to learn more about Original Strength-
Steven Sashen:
So, wait, wait, hold on. Not if, when.
Dani Almeyda:
When. So, Tim has written several books. They are fabulous. You want to check out Pressing Reset: Reloaded. It’s on Amazon or on our website at originalstrength.net. We’ve got tons of free content on YouTube, blogs every week, videos, just tons of content out there. And we also have an online platform for anyone looking for some coaching specifically at osionline.com. And you can get lots of cool programming and other information and even random recipes that we like.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s a good one. And then certification for people who are fitness professionals who are looking to integrate this.
Dani Almeyda:
Yes. Yes. So, any fitness professionals looking to help simplify movement and help change the industry and get people moving better, faster, check out originalstrength.net. We’ve got certifications happening all over the world and something coming up here. And we would love to meet you and see you and help you help people better.
Steven Sashen:
Well, first of all, thank you, thank you both. Secondly, I hope everyone does come and check it out. Third, I want to say something I’ve been trying to avoid saying this entire time, and for people who aren’t seeing this, you’ll have to find the video to see it. I just want to let everyone know that no cows were harmed in the making of Dani’s earrings.
Dani Almeyda:
No, but they’re pretty legit, right?
Steven Sashen:
They’re awesome.
Tim Anderson:
Those are Holstein, Holstein earrings right there.
Dani Almeyda:
Looks like Dalmatians.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s right. No cows or dalmatians were harmed in the making of your earrings. They’re great. Okay. Well, anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s been a total pleasure and thank you for the support you’ve given us over the years. I mean, it’s been a real treat. And watching how you guys have grown this has been really, really a blast. So, kudos to you.
Anyway, that’s beyond that. For everyone else, thank you. Again, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com, where you can find previous episodes and how to find us in all the different places where you can find podcasts and videos and places to interact. If you have any feedback or have anyone you think should be on the show, drop me an email. Just [email protected]. By the way, that is move at, not just move at. So, [email protected] and most importantly, go out, have fun and live life feet first. Take care.
Tim Anderson:
Thank you.