Barry Weinstein is the Head Coach at FootCamp which is the fastest growing barefoot lifestyle brand. FootCamp offers free barefooting classes in Central Park, New York, supplies barefoot shoes, toe socks, toe spacers, and rock mats to strengthen our customers feet and build a robust orthopedic system to live a pain free life.
Barry’s emphasis on forefoot walking as a means of reducing orthopedic injury makes him unique in his coaching style. He uses a mix of history, anthropology, and anatomy to teach students barefooting technique.
Barry is a barefoot runner, a decorated track and field thrower, an Olympic style weightlifter, a former employee of the New York Road Runners and NYC Marathon finisher. Barry was also on the prestigious CRCA Junior Development road cycling team, competing in multiple stage races including the Green Mountain Stage Race and competed in the Tour of the Battenkill AKA “the hell of the north”, and raced in the collegiate circuit in the Washington D.C. area.
Barry has been previously featured in publications such as Scientific American, Fox News, BBC World News, Crain’s New York Business, Forbes and many others.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Barry Weinstein about the correct way to walk barefoot.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How the Achilles tendon absorbs and recycles impact when running barefoot.
– Why there are high rates of back and foot injuries associated with modern running shoes.
– How the only way to change minds is to build rapport and have non-confrontational conversations with people.
– Why some people experience orthopedic problems similar to those who overuse hell strike problems even when they don’t run.
– How overstriding or reaching out with the foot in front is not ideal for walking or running.
Connect with Barry:
Guest Contact Info
Links Mentioned:
classpass.com/studios/footcamp-new-york
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
All right, when you’re walking, should you be landing on your heel? Should you be rolling over your heel? Should be landing flat-footed? Should be landing on your forefoot? Should be landing on your toes? Should be floating in the air and never touching the ground? I don’t know. Let’s take a look and find out on today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, you know those things at the end of your legs.
We’re going to break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat-out lies people have been telling you about what it takes to run or walk or hike or do yoga or CrossFit, or play in whatever way you like to do that, and to do that enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. Did I say enjoyably? Trick question, I know I did, because look, it’s the most important thing. If you’re not having a good time, do something different so you are, because won’t keep it up if you don’t enjoy it, or unless you’re a glutton for punishment, and where’s the fun of that? Unless you’re a glutton for punishment, and then I guess that’s fun.
Anyway, be that as it may, I’m Steven Sashen, co-CEO, co-founder of xeroshoes.com. Here’s the T-shirt to prove it, and also xeroshoes.eu and xeroshoes.co.uk. Basically, Xero Shoes. This is The Movement Movement Podcast, because we, and that includes you, more about that in a second, are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do. Getting out of the way of things that make it worse even though they’re advertised as things that make it better.
All you need to do to be part of the movement is spread the word. Go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s nothing you need to do to join. There’s no money involved, there’s no secret handshake, there’s no song and dance that we do every day. It’s just that’s the only domain I could get, so that’s the one we’re using. And you’ll find the previous episodes of the podcast, all the ways you can interact with us and the places you can leave a review and a thumbs up and a five star or something, and hit the bell icon on YouTube. Look, you know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right, here we go.
Barry, do me a favor, tell people who you are and what the hell you do, and then we’ll talk about why you’re here.
Barry Weinstein:
So, my name’s Barry Weinstein. I am the head coach at FootCamp, which is New York’s Premier Barefoot Walking Studio. I have a class in Central Park, New York where I get New Yorkers to take off their shoes, which they do not like to do, and I guide them through a course where we walk on hard surfaces, rocks and gravel and grass, and try to create an introduction to your feet.
Steven Sashen:
I must ask the obvious partially obnoxious sounding question, if you are New York’s Premier Barefoot Studio, is there any competition whatsoever?
Barry Weinstein:
Nope. Nope, I’m the only one. I think there’s something like eight million people in the city, and I’m the only one doing this, so I get the label of premier right off the bat.
Steven Sashen:
New York’s number one undefeated top of the line barefoot studio.
Barry Weinstein:
Fastest growing as well.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. As someone who lived in New York for 10 years from ’83 to ’93, and when I go back, I’m either walking around often in our sandals or in bare feet, much to the chagrin of many people. I can’t wait to hear about that part. Do you want to say more about how you got to this before we jump into the question that I teased everybody with about walking form and structure, et cetera?
Barry Weinstein:
Sure, sure. I ran the New York City Marathon in 2022 with shoes, Altra shoes, so with the cushion and foot shaped toe box, had a cushion, zero drop design. Almost there, but not there, and I got a back injury from heel striking, and this was running. We’re not talking about walking, we’re talking about running. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Pause there. How did you conclude, and I’m not arguing of course, but how did you conclude that heel striking was the cause of whatever happened to your back?
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, I read Born to Run like the rest of us. Read Born to Run, everyone’s saying, “Read Born to Run.” I said, “Ah, Born to Run, it’s a bunch of hippie stuff, right? I don’t want to hear that.” I read Born to Run, changes my life, and I realized that my injuries, because when you’re in New York, you have your shoes on all the time. I grew up in a shoes on in the house household. I had deformities in my feet just like everyone else in the western world, bunion, plantar fasciitis. I had a tailor’s bunion on my pinky, I had very severe foot weakness, and I was jumping from shoe to shoe to shoe, a Nike Pegasus.
I eventually settled once all the foam ran out on Hoka shoes with a big thick cushion, and I said, “If only they’ve made a shoe with even more cushion.” Because I ran out of cushion on that, and I ended up running the Brooklyn half-marathon and heel striking through it, and I got severe back pain and I said, “How could I have severe back pain? It’s like I’m running on clouds. It’s like I’m running on zero gravity.” And that’s when I read Born to Run, and then I saw Harvard University went to I think Eldoret, Kenya and started looking at the college kids running and said, “They don’t run like we do. They have fascia strength, they have foot strength, they’re running on the ball of their foot.” I said, “Well, that’s curious. They’re running on the ball of their foot.”
And the other thing is, what I’m actually good at, I’m 225 pounds. I’m not a good runner, but what I’m actually good at is a hammer to throw and Olympic weightlifting, and the hammer deal and the snatch in the Olympic weightlifting are the two most technically demanding movements in sport, and that’s one and two with hammer being first, snatch being second. I have a very good knowledge of technique in general, which made me question the fact why I didn’t know how to walk or run.
I’m in the 2022 New York City Marathon, I’m getting ready for the photo station. They let you know so you can strike a pose, and you know what pose I struck? A massive raging heel strike just like that. I was probably 600 meters from the finish of the marathon. I’m looking at it later after reading Born to Run, and I find out that heel striking is not good for us and it causes back pain, ankle pain, headaches. Everything that I’ve been experiencing my entire life of 22 years in the sport. I used to work for the New York Roadrunners who puts on the New York City Marathon. I have 22 years in the sport, it was the first time I had ever heard it.
I had spoken to thousands, hundreds of thousands of runners, even elite runners. I had gone through coaching with Olympians at the Armory in high school, I’m Olympian coaches, and never once did they tell me I should cure my heel strike. And I read Born to Run. I look at this, all of a sudden I say to myself, “Wow, the running shoes that were being given are causing our injuries?” And I’ve spent so much money on these and so I said, “Okay.” And you know, I still haven’t come to the conclusion of this experiment, but I said, “Before I start telling everyone else this, I need to ditch the shoes and I need to see, because if I end up in severe crippling pain for the rest of my life, then at least it’s just me.”
But I have to do an experiment where I start off in the Xero Shoes. I started off in Xero Shoes, the Xero Preos, which I still wear today. I have a couple of them and those are the popular ones too, and then those are the ones I have experience with. I’m running in the Xero Shoes up to my local Costco to get some smoked salmon or something, and I heel strike the way through it and the next thing I go, “Oh, my back hurts like absolute crazy,” but there was something different about it this time because now I knew. Now I knew. I said, “Whoa, don’t heel strike in minimalist shoes.”
And then I go online, I find runforefoot.com with Bretta Riches who’s a Canadian running form practitioner who focuses on forefoot running, and she has, and I see this woman running without shoes over rugged terrain, something that before that I thought was impossible to do. I said, “The human foot was not even designed for this. You’ll get stress fractures, you’ll get all sorts of things.” And I see this woman doing it, and here’s the other thing, she’s not wincing. She’s enjoying it, which is incredible.
And this isn’t even the minimalist earth runner type sandals. This is like straight up unshod, straight up not even first world type thing. This is outside the western industrialized world kind of no shoes. It was incredible. But it was mostly incredible because she’s in Canada and I’d only seen people ever do this in documentaries in planes of Africa and all these places where they won all the championships. And she says that the difference between the forefoot running and the heel strike running is that you get to use your Achilles tendon when you run on your forefoot, which has 850 pounds of force absorption capacity, much more than the squishy shoes, even the new Nova Blasts with all of this, and you don’t need the stiff sole running shoes. They’re actually hurting you.
I go for a run the first time in the Xero Shoes. I’m sorry, the second time, after I learned no heel strike. I made it to the other side of Central Park. I can’t run another step. That was it. It was probably something like 400 meters. Now I’m stuck on the west side and I can’t take another step home. I have to decide whether or not I’m going to go on the horse carriage or the petty cab, both which costs a week’s salary. But I ended up just walking on my heels back home. Do it again, make it around the whole loop after probably three, four weeks of this. But each time getting totally stranded at a different part of Manhattan, trying to work my way home.
But then I start to see improvement in my feet, but most importantly, improvement in my low back, which I had eight months of chronic back pain from my running, which no one should ever have this sort of back pain from running. Running is good for you. Running is something that should help you. And I eventually saw that my feet were the only things that were getting work, the only things I’m improving. The rest of my body actually stopped having the orthopedic pain. Eventually I ran nine miles down to my wife in the Xero Shoes. Now, I’m 225 pounds, nine miles to me is equivalent to you like 30, 40 miles.
Steven Sashen:
You misunderstood. If I have to go 30 or 40 miles, I’m doing that in a car.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah, oh.
Steven Sashen:
Sprinter, I don’t even take turns at the end of the track, because first of all, I don’t have a GPS watch. I don’t like getting lost. Yeah, I don’t understand distance at all. It’s very confusing to me.
Barry Weinstein:
But you know what’s so funny about it is everyone says the same things to me, and you having lived in New York, you see that in New York City and probably London as well where I lived, there’s a modesty culture behind shoes. It’s almost… And say, what do I mean by modesty culture? I mean when you go to some parts of the world and you’re not supposed to not cover your head, it’s the same in New York City. And I’ve had people have public freakouts where I’m in the park and when I’m in the park running barefoot, I’m headphones in, hood up. Stop talking to me everyone, I got to get my workout in. But you obviously want to spread the word, but every time within two or three minutes you’re running, someone’s going up to you saying, “Your phone’s out, I need to ask you questions about what you’re doing,” and they’ve never seen it before.
I had never seen it before, and I’ve been on this experiment where now I am a fairly comfortable long distance barefoot runner and I can run on rocks, on the bridle path, which is all rocky and sandy. I could do that for long distances. I run on asphalt. People say, “Oh, aren’t you afraid of the impact of asphalt?” And they just don’t understand, the impact is absorbed and recycled by your Achilles tendon when you just get out of the stiff sole shoes and get up into that forefoot position. It’s like a bow and arrow and it goes boing, like that, and it protects your orthopedic system from shock.
And they all are so confused about what is healthy for you because when you show them the Hoka shoes with the narrow toe box and the two inches of foam, they all say, “I want that one because that’s going to protect me,” but that is why we have 80% rates of injury to our back and feet. But in the western world, when people in the non-industrialized world who grow up barefoot can still use squat toilets into their nineties and can still run long distances into their nineties. We’re losing this battle Steven, but we got to keep fighting. But everyone outside, the foam’s getting worse, the heels are getting worse, and the solution that people have is now new niche shoe companies with even more foam and they’re rolling ankles and all that.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, it’s even crazier. There’s an event every year called the Running Event. It’s for companies that are selling to running shoe stores, and not only have things gotten higher, but they’re now making what I’m referring to as single-use shoes because that’s what they are. They’re basically have gotten rid of the outsole, the rubber outsole. They’re basically just using the mid-sole foam, and the idea is you’ll wear these for one race and then they’ll be useless. And guess how much they cost?
Barry Weinstein:
$500, the DNS ones.
Steven Sashen:
$400 to $500.
Barry Weinstein:
$400 to $500.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Now, the interesting thing is I can make an argument for why they may make you faster, and the argument is simply that they’re so light that there’s less energy just moving your legs. They’re not slowing down your steps per minute, slowing down your cadence. And because they’re so high, they’re basically allowing your stride length to be slightly longer because of the height. And if you have your stride frequency staying the same and your stride length getting slightly longer, that makes you technically faster. And so, but it’s a fake out. I mean, it’s a fake way of doing it. But I was blown away by seeing even new startup companies going for even higher, even thicker, even whatever else.
I mean, now that said, I also think that when we are the only game in town in a place like that event, then things are going to turn and they are starting to turn in a number of ways. While I don’t know that we’re losing the battle, but we’re definitely gaining some ground in the battle, just we haven’t taken over the opponents. We haven’t made it across their fictional border yet.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
That’s the-
Barry Weinstein:
I can see that. I went for a run on the bridle path and I ran into a guy who was a financial guy of some sort, some sort of financial genius, and he stopped me on his way to work and he stopped his commute and said, “What are you doing?” And I was like, “Don’t you need to be somewhere instead of asking me these questions?” But he got me in contact with the BBC who was not even on… He just said, “Let me call this financial guy at the BBC and get you on television because we need people to see this.” And I spoke to the BBC about this with a guy who read Born to Run and still wears super cushioned all shoes, and still that’s the weirdest one because you get people who read it and then they do the opposite having read it.
Steven Sashen:
I have been in a number of orthopedic offices in my day in the last 14 years, and the number of times where they have a number of books in the office is very high, and the number of times Born to Run is one of those books is almost a hundred percent. And then everybody walks in wearing their quote, normal shoes, and they all talk about how they love the book. It’s like, but you didn’t get it.
Barry Weinstein:
It’s because the group dynamic, especially in urban centers, is crazy. And in terms of the claims, now there’s the claims. I’ve seen the $450 single use super shoe. If you put that on a mid-level athlete, because this is supposed to make you faster, and the alpha flies for the slow group, unacceptable. Carbon plate for the slow group, unacceptable. Code spring, the roll-off technology, unacceptable. And you know what I do all day? For my marketing, I don’t have any paid at anything. I just go on Facebook, I Google foot pain from running shoes. I then look at everyone who made their comments from foot pain running shoes, and then I just say, just repeat points from Born to Run over and over and over. And eventually you get into their head, but it’s one person at a time.
And then in some ways, I don’t recommend Altra shoes because altra shoes have other problems, which is the cushion makes us stomp our feet and cuts off our 200,000 nerve endings at the bottom of our foot, which are there to guide us to learn how to run. But they’re like harm reduction because the people I talk to have bunion and they have all of this, and then they have the heel and they have all the technology and they’re just getting clunkier and clunkier shoes and they need something. And when you see these technologies, especially around Christmastime. At Christmastime, people get gifted shoes and then they’ll go on the forums and say, because they don’t have experience with these shoes, “Should I return them or should I keep them?” They don’t have any love for these shoes yet, but that’s where you need to be. Return those shoes, get those back into the thing and…
Steven Sashen:
Well, I’ve got a book recommendation for you. First of all, kudos to you for engaging in the conversation, and you are right. The biggest thing that impacts people is what they think other people are doing and what those people in their social circle or circles would think if they did something outside of the norm. There’s a book called How Minds Change by a guy named Dave McRaney, and if you’re going to be dealing one on one with people, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version of the book. The first thing you need to do is basically build rapport with people by helping them realize that you’re more than willing to hear their story and hear what they believe without criticism, without questions, literally letting them tell you more and more about their experience. By the way, there are like four people who develop variations on this technique.
The second part is getting them to, and this is what leads to all the rest of it, is getting them to think about their thinking in a way that they haven’t done before. And one of the ways that almost everyone has come up with is you ask them something like, let’s say we’re talking about arch support and they’ve been talking about how they need arch support and they’re trying all these different products, et cetera. You can say, “On a scale of one to a hundred, how confident are you that arch support is a solution?” And if they say anything other than a hundred, the question is why not a hundred? Why isn’t it higher? Or what would it take to be a little lower? Or where were you before you even heard of the concept of arch support? If you can remember back that far, which pretty much means you were in the womb.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Once they explain something about why they’re not a hundred percent confident, and it may be something as simple as, “Well, I’ve tried a bunch of things and they don’t seem to work,” then that opens up another conversation where you can start to get them to think about their thinking, how they come to conclusions, where they get information. The first person who recommended arch support, tell me about that and what made you decide to believe that person versus something else?
And anyway, it gets very, very interesting. And then you ask them again at certain points, “Where is your confidence level?” And sometimes with some of these conversations, you can get people from one side of the fence, “I’m 99.9%,” to, “I’m 0.1%.” And sometimes all you’re doing is getting people to be a little curious.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
And if somebody becomes a little curious, that’s not a hundred percent, but it’s often good enough because that wasn’t there before and then maybe they’re going to look at something. Anyway.
Now, the trick for me is that I can’t do, I don’t have the time to do just one-on-one all day, every day, 24/7. And so I’m actually talking to the people who developed these various techniques, and by the way, they have all given up on the idea of trying to change someone’s mind. Actually, one out of the four is undeniably there to get people from one side of the fence to the other. The other three, they are there to just have the conversation. Wherever it goes, it goes, and they’ve dropped all intention of having someone change their mind, either in real time or at all, which is admirable. I’m trying to change people’s minds.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
I’m literally talking to the four people in the book, I’ve already talked to one, and the guy who wrote the book to have a conversation about this. But anyway, be that as it may. That’s my kudos to you for doing that. And I think you might find the book interesting because it might make some of those conversations more interesting.
Which brings me to a question I wanted to ask, when you are… Oh, two things. It’s not just major metropolitan areas where if you are in bare feet, people are going, “What the hell’s going on here?” Here I am in the middle of Colorado, I spend a lot of time in bare feet and I get it all the time. It’s a weird thing that when I’m either in bare feet or what I’m wearing now, which is shoes, two different colors of the same style, you do anything unusual with your footwear and people notice it from like 50 yards away and they’ve got opinions.
Barry Weinstein:
Mm-hmm.
Steven Sashen:
My favorite barefoot one, and I’m going to come back to you for the win in a minute, is when it’s in the summer, and I’m going in a Costco, into Costco, and I do go into Costco and into our grocery store and into our favorite restaurants, they all know me by now. In fact, at Costco, I’m sure I’ve told the story, I was in the line at the pharmacy and the guy behind me says, “Hey, your shoes don’t match,” and the pharmacist without even looking up says, “He’s wearing shoes today?” They know who I am.
But I’m walking in once and a little kid like five years old says, “Mommy, that man’s not wearing shoes.” And the mom to her credit said, “Why don’t you ask him about that?” And he says, “How come you’re not wearing shoes?” I said, “Have you ever been to the beach?” He says, “Yeah.” I said, “Do you wear shoes on the beach?” He goes, “No.” I said, “How’s that feel?” He goes, “Oh, it’s really fun.” I go, “Same thing even when you’re not at the beach.” And he’s like, “Oh.” And mom was like, “Okay, got to go.”
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
But there’s ways of engaging in a way that is interesting. I am curious when you are out and about, what is either the most entertaining or craziest thing anyone’s ever said to you?
Barry Weinstein:
I had a woman who was wearing probably three inch heels, which were not anatomical, run, which was very impressive. That’s the first thing. It was a very impressive run, over to me and melt down in front of me saying, “Bare feet? There’s glass out there. Be very, very careful.” And then she started to hyperventilate and then she ran away from me. It was insane. It was totally nuts. I have people…
When I’m in New York and I’m on the bridle path walking with my wife, just doing some barefoot walking, and keep in mind, I don’t really do this as a cultural thing. I don’t really do this as a spiritualistic thing. I do this as a sports performance and medical rehabilitation thing. I don’t really, if I could snap my fingers and then cover my feet up with an invisible blanket, I would just to be like everyone else, but I can’t do that because I’m not going to put my health at risk by doing that. But everyone within a 400-meter radius is looking at me. Nobody’s looking away. I’m in Central Park. They’re worried about me. They’re disgusted by me. They think I’m a total freak.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, I’m going to pause. They’re worried about you. This is the anesthetical to what people think about New Yorkers. I mean, granted, they’re misguided, but they’re concerned for you. They worry. New Yorkers are so compassionate, they just may be a little off base.
Barry Weinstein:
They’re a little off base. And the history is interesting too, because when people from England came to the American South, they came from the north of England, and this was less rich at the time, or yeah, I think it was a little bit less rich than the south of England where all the queen is and all the hoity-toity people are. And then they came to New York-
Steven Sashen:
By the way, the queen is not there any longer.
Barry Weinstein:
Unfortunately. Unfortunately not. This queen was Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth, so she’s not there either anymore. Rest in peace. All due respect to the queen. But the history behind the footwear with the horses, the history behind the rounded toe box was to fit into our horse stirrups, the pointed toe box, and I was equestrian as well. You do need a shoe to fit your-
Steven Sashen:
It helps.
Barry Weinstein:
It helps. And then the heel, unless you’re riding bareback, which Native Americans used to do, which is incredible, and probably, I can’t say much on that, but then the heel as well, and this is a cultural thing that was heavily concentrated in the south of England because in Elizabethan England, you started getting widespread access to horses. And just like if you’re in your car, people are more willing to talk to you because they say, “Oh, he’s a car owner. He must be in the community or something.” I’ve noticed that since getting a car a couple of years ago in Manhattan. I’ve never even done that in my life.
But it was the same thing, having a horse meant you were a person of respect and those people who had the horses came to New York, the people who did not yet have access to the horses came to the American South. And I find that in places in the American South, Northerners will make fun of certain communities in the American South that have acceptance for unshod lifestyle, barefoot lifestyle, laugh at them. I’ve seen this multiple times. But the problem is that the shoes that people wear in the north are quite literally causing them all sorts of damage, and it’s the other thing is why do you think a lot of sprinters with good fashion strength are coming from Florida, Beachtown and Texas, which is slightly more welcoming to people with bare feet?
And Australia, I’m sorry, Jamaica, unshod culture. You can be a classy person in Jamaica. I keep saying Australia, but they’re the same thing. The other place with a really big barefoot culture and good track and field teams, and we can’t even keep up with East Africa in the marathon. And people say, “Oh, it’s, they’re in the mountains,” but then there’s people in Colorado in the mountains who can’t keep up. But the reason why is because they run barefoot in cross country up until sub elite. And then when they get into the elites, they put $500 single-use shoes on them, and they only have to use it once and they get their payout.
But if these shoes really did make you faster, you would find the people using them getting faster. But people get faster when they run barefoot and when they go finally their elite level or sub elite level in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and even fake Kip Yegan, I think, came in bronze medal place in the World Cross Country Championships barefoot, that was a modern version of this. And it’s really bad because the culture here in New York is so damaging, and you see people start to age here at age 30 in the same way that people who survive until that age in rural China age at 90, and they say, “Oh, it must be genetics. Must be genet-”
Barry Weinstein:
And they say, “Well, it must be genetics. It must be genetics, those people out there.” But the second those people move to the United States and have kids, there are kids put on the shoes, and then, they start to have the same wear profiles as we have in the New York area. The question is, this is all one big long rant going back to do the $500 shoes make you faster? If we were to do a real estimate of that, we have to look at everybody who wears the Super Shoes. I would say 60% of them, within a couple of weeks, will be going zero miles an hour because they’ll get injured from it because Super Shoes get you super injured. And then, the other 40% will probably see a slight, while they can last outside of being injured, they’ll see maybe a slight advantage from some spring. And then, eventually as they lose the ability to use their Achilles tendon, they’ll get injured in the next year.
And then, the one guy who is already running two hours, nine minutes marathon barefoot or whatever, is going to get the shoes, get his shoe sponsorship, and then, his kids are going to go into shoes, and then, never… That’s why heredity doesn’t seem to be such a big thing in the sport of track and field because in the marathon, you get rich, you put your kids in shoes, and the kids no longer become competitive. So, it’s not the shoes that do it’s the people that do it. The shoes are fashion.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s funny, Eliud Kipchoge who broke the sub two-hour marathon under perfect conditions, there was a couple articles that came out that got squashed where the headline was him saying, “It wasn’t the shoes, it was my legs.” But nobody appreciated that. Now, I’m not going to argue that certain shoes may, for certain people, help a little compared to what they were wearing before, but there are other confounding factors, placebo effect being one, and many things where you… How do I want to put this? Well, it’s basically placebo. If you think these things are going to be helpful, the signals that you used to get that were telling you slow down or signals that you’re now using saying speed up, or stay consistent, or whatever it is, there are, of course, people who are still winning races who aren’t in those shoes. The reason that everyone’s wearing those shoes is not necessarily because they’re making people faster, but if you’re neck-and-neck with somebody in a lot of races, and then, they switched shoes and for whatever reason, beat you, the first thing you’re going to do the next day is go by those shoes.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Because people are at the very least, superstitious about what it’s going to take to beat that guy who’s just next to you. There’s a friend of mine who… And to your point, I have a friend who is a multi-time Olympian, and world champion, and race champion, Boston Marathon, New York Marathon, who was trained by Arthur Lydiard in New Zealand, and Lydiard made shoes for his athletes that looked a lot like ours. And she says to me, “We never got injured until we got shoe contracts, and we’re wearing-”
Barry Weinstein:
Yep.
Steven Sashen:
Never had a problem until then, which was very, very interesting. And now, she lives in her shoes, which is fun. She wears them all the time. She doesn’t actually live in them. She’s much taller than it would take to actually live in a pair, let alone a number… There was one other point that I wanted to make. I’m seeing if I can remember it. Oh, the other thing about runners and sprinters in particular is when there is a cultural pressure or cultural support which goes hand in hand to that’s supporting this event, marathon, sprints, whatever, then there’s going to be more people doing it, and you are going to just find, if you have a bigger pool of people, you’re going to find those weird genetic freaks who weren’t going to do it before, but now, there’s some cultural benefit for doing it, and they’re going to show up as well.
So, there’s some advantage of just having more people doing it. To sprinting, I will say one of the things, and this could get me canceled, so here we go. I’ve joked with a friend of mine who’s a world champion, four by 400-meter runner, and American champion, 400-meter runner who has been a coach of mine as well as being a friend, who is a tall, really just unpleasantly, good-looking guy. He’s just one of these guys. Actually, it’s funny. When he’s got his game face on when he’s ready to compete, he’s just scary. I didn’t talk to this guy for years because he scared the crap out of me.
When he’s done and he smiles, this guy’s model gorgeous. Just spectacularly good-looking. Anyway, I joked with him, I said, “It’s not…” How do I want to put this? “It’s well-known in the sprinting community that having good strength in your glutes and hamstrings is really important especially.” And if you watch the way most white people walk, they don’t use their glutes.
Barry Weinstein:
Nope.
Steven Sashen:
And if you watch the way most black people walk, and again, this is going to get me canceled, ignore it, is they’re walking in a way that’s actually using their glutes. And I exaggerated this stereotypical way that black guys walk, and he just burst in hysterics and said, “Do you think this is why there’s only been one white guy who only one time ever ran, a sub ten second 100 meters?” And actually-
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, there’s only one.
Steven Sashen:
Well, there’s actually two, but the second one, it was wind aided. So, there’s only one who’s ever done it without wind aided. And he only did it one time. And I said, “So, do you think this is the reason why no white guys run a sub 10?” And he just burst in hysterics. He goes, “Could be. Don’t know.”
Barry Weinstein:
That’s really interesting. Glute recruitment, once again, we have a… Jamaica is a huge landmass, but it’s a tiny island nation in population, and they produce all the best women’s sprinters. Now, of course, there’s Sha’Carri’s our shining hope, but Elaine Thompson, and then, also Shaunae Miller-Uibo, I think she was from The Bahamas. But the thing is, is this region-
Steven Sashen:
Same idea, The Bahamas, St. Kitts, which yeah, it’s that whole area. Yeah.
Barry Weinstein:
Barefoot culture. It’s okay to walk outside barefoot. No one’s going to be staring at you, Steven, if you’re anywhere in Jamaica, barefoot.
Steven Sashen:
Well, to that point, there is a specific correlation between foot and ankle strength and sprinting speed.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Do you know the RSI test?
Barry Weinstein:
No, I’ve heard in past.
Steven Sashen:
Basically, you put your hands on your hips, and you bounce up and down 10 times as high as you can while trying to bend your hips and your knees as little as possible. You’re just bouncing with your feet and ankles. And what you measure is what you do is you divide the amount of time you’re in the air by the amount of time you’re on the ground. And basically, anything over 2.5 is really good. Over two seven is exceptionally good. Over three, you are a freak. I am happy to pat myself on the back and say at the age of sixty-one, I’m like a two seven one, and I’m a pretty good sprinter.
So, foot strength, hugely important. Research is very clear. Walking around barefoot, or the research is actually in minimal shoes, builds foot strength as much as doing an exercise program. The other thing, there is a let’s call it, for lack of a better term, an epigenetic version of this where people who start out as ballet dancers in particular, or gymnasts, or jump ropers, or anything where a young person, you’re doing a lot of foot strengthening things, which goes back to the point you’re making about people growing up in a barefoot culture, that helps really a lot too. I started out as a diver, became an all-American gymnast. But there is the genetic component to that because some people can build that foot strength, but they’re just not fast for whatever other reason. It turns out my grandfather, I didn’t know this till as in my mid 40s, nor did my mother ever. My grandfather was a gymnast.
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, wow.
Steven Sashen:
Who knew?
Barry Weinstein:
Who knew?
Steven Sashen:
Maybe there’s something in there. Don’t know.
Barry Weinstein:
So, Valarie Allman, the discus thrower. I’m New York discus thrower champion. So, I’m a discus thrower, and that’s not even the master’s division, but I had to beat a couple of college kids. But New York, there’s no throwers because we’re all not really thrower type, so it’s an easy field. But Valarie Allman was a dancer and she would go on point in ballet, and then, she’s the discus throw champ. She throw as far as I do, she used to throw at the men’s weight probably twice as far as I do. It’s incredible.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wow.
Barry Weinstein:
So, dancing definitely, and volleyball as well. Anything with a large forefoot. But you notice that in the vault in gymnastics for women, you do have a barefoot run up to the vault, and people always say, why do gymnasts run so weird? Actually, they’re the only ones in western society who can run right. The rest of us are all-
Steven Sashen:
Well, admittedly, they run weird, not all of them because many of them do that straight arm mechanical robot thing. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Actually, I never thought about it until right now. I can think of why. Because when you watch what they’re doing with their arms, they’re basically keeping their arm swing to a minimum, which helps pick up cadence because you only have a limited amount of time to run. And I knew for me, I knew when I hit my maximum speed, which was not running the entire length of the runway, it was about 10 feet less because I just figured the max speed when I hit the board that way. But yeah, they do have mostly weird arm swing because they haven’t been taught to actually run in a way where they could look normal-ish. But also, there’s another reason as well, which is that for some of those vaults, you need to get your arms from behind you to in front of you straight, quickly. And it may be advantageous to do it that way because you don’t see them-
Barry Weinstein:
Wow, that’s so interesting.
Steven Sashen:
Well, yeah, because when you look on floor ex, where they have to run as well, many of them don’t have that weird arm thing when they’re running before a roundoff. But their last step or two for a roundoff do look weird because they figured out a weird technique to get them in the position the right way, but that’s neither here nor there.
Barry Weinstein:
Gymnastics is so complicated.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I’ll tell you about gymnastics. Now, the floor, when you’re doing floor exercise, is basically a trampoline. And I used to watch the Olympics. And when I was doing this with my girlfriend, and I was getting really frustrated, and she goes, “What? Are you just jealous?” I went, “Yeah.” Because the moves that they just did, I was doing in high school, but I was doing them on a wrestling mat. And if they had done that move that way on a wrestling mat, they would’ve just broken both of their ankles. So, I’m jealous because I never got the opportunity to do shit on a trampoline like floor, where I would’ve been able to do some crazy stuff that no-
Barry Weinstein:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
So, oh well.
Barry Weinstein:
Well, mother of all sports, I think it’s so impressive. I’m an Olympic weightlifter as well, that all ex gymnasts-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, funny.
Barry Weinstein:
I think that the emphasis on technique, we need to borrow from gymnastics into running because when you-
Steven Sashen:
Don’t get me… Well, I’m just going to say it this way. There are things that you do as a gymnast to learn highly complicated movements that have never been applied to, I’m going to say sprinting in particular. And I have figured out a way to do that. There’s actually two, and then, there’s a third thing that has nothing with gymnastics that needs to be done. And I’m actually working with some guys on a patent that I have about how to do this because many people think sprinting is just faster running. And if they have bad running form, they need to move their legs faster, which is not the case.
It’s learning how to sprint well, and I would argue that I’m still, yikes, still, make that go away, my apologies. I’m still learning how to do that, to learn how to sprint well, you’re either lucky enough to figure it out somehow, or it’s just built into the way you naturally move. But I believe that I could take a, let’s say, mid-level sprinter and make them a highly competitive sprinter by using some things from gymnastics to teach them the proper form and embed that in their brain in a way that that becomes the way that… My undergraduate research at Duke was on cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition. I know what it takes to learn a new movement pattern. There’s no opportunity to do those things in track and field activities.
Barry Weinstein:
Interesting. Interesting. For me, my philosophy, how I learned my running technique, I obviously had all the drills, A skip, B skip, C skip, all that stuff. Many years, my running technique wasn’t getting any better. Still heel striking. For me, I found that the best thing to get an efficient running technique is the nervous system in the foot and a combination of your natural environment as well as the 200,000 nerve endings of the foot. If you’re coming down on your heel too much, ouch. If you’re running too high up on here, ouch. And then, eventually, you find how to do it. If you land too far forward to your big toe, ouch. So, eventually, you have to run gingerly on the outside of your foot. And after a million steps, a million renditions, each one of them just hurting like nuts, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to choose this pain or you have to choose orthopedic pain that’ll just happen to you.
Steven Sashen:
You’re the perfect case for this. My wife has a great line. She goes, “Our shoes aren’t doing anything other than becoming your coach. The feedback that you’re going to get if you listen to it, will coach you into better form.” Optimal form? Not necessarily. I’ve seen people who have the idea, you’re supposed to land on the ball of your foot, and we’re about to get there, do crazy things like reach way out in front of them with their foot and point their toe to land on their foot. I know it’s horrible. I’ve seen people learn to run by basically doing a fast version of how Groucho Marx walks.
Again, it’s not actually a running form. There are ways if you’re getting the wrong feedback or not knowing how to interpret the feedback, where you can still be a little out of whack. I have another patent for that. So, working on that problem. But anyway, let’s move on to the thing that we tease this with because this is the perfect segue, and that is this whole question of where you’re supposed to land on your foot when most people, we talked about running, but you brought it up about walking. And you have, you have told me, taken what many would consider a controversial position about this.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
How did the controversy begin?
Barry Weinstein:
Okay. In the West, we started wearing heeled shoes. I know you know this. This was just to the audience who needs to hear the whole story. We started wearing heeled shoes and narrow toe boxes from a tradition of equestrian transportation, so horses, where the narrow toe box shoes goes in the stirrup, and the heel prevents you from slipping out of the stirrup, the two-inch or one-inch heel on the back of the shoe interrupted our natural walking gait where you land on the forefoot, and then, go down, come down to the midfoot, and just like a bow and arrow, and then, you push off. What this happened was that this interfered with this block here and we started going, “Kadunk.”
Steven Sashen:
Let me pause because the controversy is in the one or the phrase that you used about it being our natural thing to-
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
And I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, where and how did you come to that conclusion that that’s the natural way to walk?
Barry Weinstein:
In Northern Tanzania, the Hadza tribe who are a modern hunter-gatherer tribe who walks for business, they’re not a nomadic tribe, but they are persistence hunters, the same way of hunting that was in Born to Run, Born to Run, they are, I think, the last true Bushmen of Africa, there’s video of them where they’re walking along a rocky path where they’re walking on their forefoot, every one of them. And that’s the first piece of evidence. And I’m just going to do the second one. The second one, look at how toddlers and kids walk. Because toddlers walk. They need to learn how to come down on their heel a little bit because when toddlers and kids will actually run and walk way super Kipchoge heel, nowhere near touching the ground. And do you know what doctors do when the kid doesn’t… And the other thing will happen, special needs kids.
People always talk about, so somehow, special needs kids will be forefoot walking. Why is that? Because special needs kids aren’t attending school at a regular basis the way the non-special needs kids are. They’re homeschooled, and oftentimes, these kids will not be forced to wear footwear in the house. So, because of that, they never get the fascia binding construction of a modern shoe and will continue to forefoot walk. They say, “Oh, it must be something to do with a mental disability of some sort.” But it’s not. It is just because they aren’t being socialized to wear mandatory footwear. Indigenous people in northern Tanzania, the Hadza tribe, or Hadzabe tribe-
Steven Sashen:
Hadza.
Barry Weinstein:
As well as kids, as well as what happens unhindered.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so the things that I’m going to say are based on ideas that I have about walking form, but I’m going to throw this out there. And again, I’m not taking a position at this moment. You mentioned with the Hadza tribe, watching them walking on rocky surfaces.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
My question is what, if anything, changes if they’re walking on a flat smooth surface, or if they’re walking uphill or downhill, and if they’re walking at different speeds? And I don’t have the answers, but not surprisingly, I’ll tell you where I’m going with this. With kids, I’m the first one to say that if you watch kids who grow up predominantly barefoot, what they’re doing when they walk and run is different than what other kids are doing. The problem that I have with using kids is I’m going to take it slightly out of context. It will be not uncommon for someone to show a picture of a baby’s foot or someone up to the age of maybe two and their foot, where they’ve got a relatively narrow heel, and their toes are spread like crazy wide, and they go, “See? That’s natural.” And I go, “Yeah, their heads are also three quarters of their body.”
If your head as an adult was the size proportionally that it is for a baby, you would be 80% head. So, we can’t use the morphology of prepubescent children as an example of what we’re supposed to be when we become adults. So, there may be, and I don’t know, there may be other factors that lead to how babies, and toddlers, and special needs kids walk that I don’t know, I haven’t identified. Again, I’m not going to try and stake a claim in an opposing position, but I want to highlight just a way to think about these things of just how to investigate the thoughts that we have to start looking for counterfactual information, to see if it’s valid or not. Go ahead.
Barry Weinstein:
Mary Leakey in 1978, went to Northern Tanzania to the Ngorongoro Crater, which is truly the cradle of humanity, and found the oldest trackway. A trackway is a set of footprints from Australopithecus afarensis, who was the first ever human-
Steven Sashen:
Humanoid.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Yes, homo something. Yes.
Barry Weinstein:
She concluded that this group of early human only used their heels when walking as brakes and otherwise. And she said, “When you want to put the brakes on, you put the heels down.” So, you talk about natural human, they excavated it. And I think it’s in the British Museum right now. And you can see that these people were walking… In the United States though, they have trackways in White Sands National Park in New Mexico, and they discovered this trackway. They said it was the first human trackway discovered in the US or the North America, and they have a full print. But then, they also said that this was a kid, a teenager who was holding a baby downhill, and that it’s likely that if you don’t put on the brakes, the kid’s going forward and holding a big heavy weight. And you can even see that as the daughter, or not the daughter, as the teenage girl puts the baby down, the baby will walk a couple steps, and then, get tired and start complaining. You have to pick the kid up, put him on the other side, start walking again.
There’s plenty of the actual trackways from before we even had any shoes, which suggests a forefoot walk. But the other thing is just inside my own body, I speak to… And not even my body, most of the people I speak to on a daily basis are not running Leadville 100 or doing anything like that. Most of the people have never run in their lives actually, and they are experiencing the exact same orthopedic problems as people who are just overdoing it, heel strike running, and they have never run.
Steven Sashen:
It’s not about running. The simple thing, and we didn’t address this specifically, but actually, you just gave me the perfect segue for my current thoughts about walking and running, which is when people say, “Where’s my foot supposed to land?” My answer is, “You’re asking the wrong question because it’s going to vary in some ways based on whether you’re walking uphill, downhill, accelerating, decelerating, fast or slow, and the surface that you’re on.” I said, “But my answer is also fundamentally, you want to do the same thing whether you’re walking or running, which is to the point you just made, not overstriding, not reaching out, and putting your foot out in front of you, putting the brakes on, getting your foot underneath your center of mass.”
Now, I’ll say this, go with it where you will. I’m not putting a stake in the ground, but what I notice in my house where the majority of our house is tile, we have carpeting in the upstairs, in our bedroom, and in the hallway leading to our bedroom. And downstairs in our basement, we have a room where there’s a little bit of carpeting there too. But mostly, it’s just tile. I’ll walk in one of two ways, and it depends on if I’m going faster or slower. Or it also depends on whether I’m wanting to make sure I don’t wake up my wife. I will not infrequently be walking, landing on the ball of my foot landing, like you said before, outside edge, which is what people refer to as supinating. My foot rolls in. I’m still landing with my foot mostly underneath my center of mass. If I’m trying to go faster, and I’m still in that same situation, I will be over striding a little bit, and sometimes, but still landing in the same way.
Or I will land flat-footed. Or sometimes, I would need a force plate to really show this. Your heel is a ball, and you can land on different parts of the ball. If I’m landing where my heel is touching the ground first, still outside edge first, and mostly towards the front of my foot in that ball instead of the back of my foot. When I get on the carpeting, I’m much more prone to be rolling over that heel, again, mostly being on the front part of the ball. I’m much less likely to land forefoot when I’m on the carpeting. But again, the key thing from my perspective, which is the same point I make about running, is get your feet underneath you, and push… I just kicked the box behind me.
And the thing that moves you forward, and humans have a hard time with this, is the thing that happens to be behind you because we don’t have eyes behind us. We’re not as attentive to the thing that’s moving us forward is if you think about ice skaters, what moves them forward is pushing back, pushing their heel behind them, not letting the other foot get in front of them, having the foot land underneath them because if their foot was in front of them, once they took any weight off the back foot, they’d fall on their ass because their foot would go flying out from underneath them. Anyway, that’s a roundabout way to say where my current thinking is about walking.
Barry Weinstein:
So, gravity is an oppressive force. Gravity is the worst and no one even knows about this-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Barry Weinstein:
When you learn to go barefoot and you actually just say, “Fine, I have to wake up this morning, actually deal with this gravity thing, you can’t keep avoiding it’s bad for me,” you start to learn what gravity is the hard way. For humans, the most efficient way to move forward is obviously just to just say, “I can’t deal with it anymore.” And then, deadpan fall on your face. So, that is the most efficient way.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not sure. It’s certainly the least amount of energy to use to get to… It’s not moving you forward per se, unless you’re trying to cross the finish line. Yes. The least energy you could use, you would just be falling in some direction, most likely forward.
Barry Weinstein:
So, if I just give up, I just fall forward on my face. But it also is the most efficient way to move because it doesn’t require any muscle. It doesn’t require any sort of… It is just a natural occurrence, and it’s very inexpensive from the amount of oxygen you need, and your muscles don’t have worked that hard. So, walking and running are both simply just continuing this falling on your face and catching yourself reflexively, when your back foot is here… People try to think of these muscles. In weightlifting, Olympic weightlifting, it’s a lot of muscles, a lot of… It’s a very short movement to move the weight over your head, but it’s a lot of muscles. It’s a lot of oxygen, it’s a lot of burning, fat, calories, all that stuff. But in running and walking, it’s all tendons. And the point of the muscle is to stretch.
Same in the throat, especially in the shot put. You want to actually get a stretch reflex where your body thinks your pec is about to break and will reflexively go forward like that. When you fall forward on your face in walking and running, all of a sudden, your Achilles tendon will load up, and then, your calf muscle, your calf muscle is not there to lift you up, like all that in your psoas muscle. Your calf muscle is just there to say, “Oh my goodness, I’m about to rip in half. Let me get this foot out of the way.” And it’s a stretch reflex. That’s the difference between running, and walking, and weightlifting. Weightlifting, you’re using your muscles in order to move the weight. In running, you’re using your muscles just as a stretch reflex, and also, throwing as well in track and field. That’s why when you land on your heel when you’re walking, you don’t actually activate that stretch reflex until you’re already on your forefoot. And when you do that in your calf muscle. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Well, again, let’s bring that back to overstriding because I think there’s another piece to this. And FYI, I’m going to tell you, I’m going to agree with you and tell you how I’ve been walking up hills lately. You’re going to like it.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So, if you overstride and land on your heel, by the time your foot comes down, your plantar fascia are stretched already and unable to be responsive. They’re unable to be strong. You basically stretch them without really… Well, they’re under load…
Steven Sashen:
Them without really… They’re under load, but they’re not stretched in a way that is giving your body that signal that you just described, of, oh, I have to respond to this. So then in the same way that if you put too much weight on the bar and you try to lift it when you’re in a weak biomechanical position, that’s a bicep off the insertion point, same thing can happen with your plantar fascia is… What the hell are you doing with your camera?
Barry Weinstein:
My apologies. I’m just plugging it in so I don’t…
Steven Sashen:
That was pretty entertaining though. It was like-
Barry Weinstein:
Okay.
Steven Sashen:
Very roller-coastery. In the same way that again, you could rip your bicep off either insertion point, typically distal, if you have too much weight without giving your body the signal through that muscle to be contracting properly, your plantar fascia do the same thing if you’re over stride and your foot comes down essentially flat. And then arc support, all that’s doing is getting your plantar fascia completely out of the way. So you have a weak, non-responsive thing, and now you’re banking on upstream parts of your body. I can’t think of the word I’m looking for, it’s a Friday afternoon, that are having to take the burden of the information you didn’t get from your feet and do things that they’re not really wired for.
Barry Weinstein:
The plantar fascia is a genius device with the windlass mechanism. So the wind loss mechanism, each toe here, is a different setting on your foot. So you want it stiff, you’re going to go all the way to your big toe. If you want it loose, you get it on the outside of your pinky toe. The most flexible part of your foot is the pinky toe. Then as you get stiffer and are pulling back the bow and arrow by rolling to your big toe, it’s stiffening the plantar fascia. The plantar fascia needs to be loose. And just like a piano, how with a piano or a guitar, the tighter that string is when you tune it, the higher pitch that becomes. The same thing happens with your plantar fascia. So when you are landing on the outside of the ball of your foot, this is the best place. This is the lowest note. This is so flexible here, and this is the best way to absorb the impact shock from the ground.
And the second your heel touches the ground, it’s like you’re letting off the tension from the bow and arrow. So when you walk, and this is the second type of heel strike, people don’t talk about the heel strike where you land on the ball of your foot and then your heel comes smashing down. That’s a heel strike too. So what it is, is you just want to have a line from the ball of your foot, and you really need to give a big chest because when you’re falling forward, you want to fall like this and you want to line from the ball of your foot up to your hips, up to here, and you literally want to fall on your face and then catch yourself with the other foot. And if your heel doesn’t touch the ground, this will create a ball. My foot is weird now, from barefoot running. Your foot’s probably weird as well, where we have this backwards bending foot like this, and this creates a ball. And what it does is it essentially allows you to simulate a circle. Yeah, go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
The biggest thing that it does, the windlass mechanism, what it does, is it aligns the bones in your foot into an arch, which is the strongest structure we’ve ever come up with. That’s the biggest thing that it does. I would contend, and I have some ideas about this, and I’m not totally sold on it because I haven’t done the research, but for example, we have a bunch of cyclists. We used to sponsor a team called the Hincapie team. We’re now sponsoring the Novo Nordisk team. Do you know the Hincapie guys?
Barry Weinstein:
I was on the CRCA Junior development team. Of course, the Hincapie Sportswear. I used to work for Champion Systems.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, okay. Well, anyway. So we had one of the Hincapie riders, had the Prio, just so happens in the back of his jersey. They finished their training run, bunch of these riders. They’re hanging out at a coffee shop in North Boulder, which by the way, I always like to say, if you want to make a million dollars fast, just show up with a crane and steal the bike rack at that coffee shop on a Sunday.
Barry Weinstein:
I know.
Steven Sashen:
It’s crazy. But anyway, the guy puts on his Prio because he was getting out of his cleats and then rode home just in our shoes and notice he was putting out more watts in our shoes than when he was clipped in. And I said, I think it’s because when you’re wearing cycling shoes, you basically turned your foot into a stupid lever. And the little bit of extra force you’re getting from your foot is not necessarily the important thing, but the signal that you’re getting when you use your foot that goes upstream into the posterior and interior chain is the thing that is going to be making a difference. You’re giving your body… You’re going to get a kick out of this. Sprinters in particular, they say, your swing leg, the leg that’s in the air, you need to dorsiflex, you need to pull your toe up to your knee and you’re supposed to keep it dorsiflexed as you land.
If you look, there’s not one sprinter in the entire history of the fucking world that keeps dorsiflexion through the point when they’re coming down to contact the ground. Never. They’re not pointing their toes, but they’re not pulling it up towards their knee where it’s above 90 degrees. So not a thing. So I think there’s some relationship between that and what happens in cycling where there’s the right amount of plantar flexion or the right combination, however you want to measure it, where you’re engaging things that are sending signals to the other muscles you’re using. Get ready. About time to fire. That doesn’t happen when your foot is a dumb lever in a shoe that doesn’t let you move.
Barry Weinstein:
So the stiff sole, the carbon plates on the stiff sole cycling shoes are terrible. I was thinking about this two days ago. I said to myself, there has to be… I said to myself, nobody knows what we’re doing with our footwear. Even in weightlifting, they have these massive two, three inch heels of footwear saying it’s going to help us squat better. But it ends up just-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. Wait, hold that thought.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So the whole thing with Ollie shoes, with shoes with a big heel, for people who don’t know, they’re basically a wooden plank with a wooden heel underneath them. So you’re simulating the ground, but changing the angle and someone who’s an Ollie lifter, and since you are, I’m curious what your thoughts are about this. Those shoes were developed, I’m told, for Ollie lifters mostly for dealing with a snatch even more than clean and press, or clean and jerk, it used to be a press, is because if you really have good form, you’re using your shoulders to lock your shoulders out. So you’re basically aligning the bones properly. And if you do that well, your shoulders are a little hyperextended. Your hands are a little behind, your shoulders are a little behind your head.
Exactly.
And therefore, when you’re, especially in snatch, where at that point because the weight is a little behind you, if you didn’t have that little heel lift to tip you forward, you’d be just falling backward. And what’s happened is people just assumed, oh, I need those as squat shoes, which is complete bullshit.
Barry Weinstein:
Obviously because Americans want to join Olympic lifting, it takes a lifetime to become an Olympic lifter. They don’t have the ankle mobility. Sponsors, like, let’s get these people into the sport.
Steven Sashen:
I think it’s a version of, that guy just wore that shoe and won. I need that shoe for everything.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah, it’s crazy because your trunk angle in the snatch… So this is the trunk angle with heeled shoes where these tiny muscles on the top of your shoulder, this is now supporting the bar. When you get and go down to level, you actually have to move forward like that. And you get these massive rhomboid and trap muscles supporting the bar. And you even saw there was a weightlifter named Toshiki Yamamoto, team Japan Weightlifter, who showed up to an international competition. And in weightlifting it’s all-out national warfare, like serious stuff. And he shows up to international competition wearing CrossFit shoes, which were zero-drop. And people were like, what is going on, like that? And he won. It’s more herd mentality, but this herd mentality is so bad for people’s low back.
I think that, in some ways, I wish we could we start a stampede for minimalist footwear. Where’s the herd mentality where everyone starts wearing Xeros?
Steven Sashen:
I’ll tell you something funny. I’ll tell you how we’re getting there. We are now dealing with a lot of professional… Oh crap, we just lost connection and I think it’s because his phone battery died.
So I’m going to pause for a sec and hopefully he’ll come back.
Okay, thanks to the magic of technology, you’re back. All right, where the hell were we?
Barry Weinstein:
I was asking how we can get Xero Shoes and minimalist footwear to have the next stampede of people going to switch.
Steven Sashen:
So what I was about to say is that very interestingly and appropriately, there are more and more professional athletes getting hooked to the idea of the importance of foot strength. And we have a bunch of pro athletes that we’ve been working with, in various sports, who are wearing our stuff, first just casually, to walk around building foot strength based on the idea that just… Well, the research showing that walking in minimalist footwear builds foot strength, when they’re training and they’re in the gym for a reason that we talked about. In fact, it reminds me, we have a powerlifter, we had a power lifting event, and she came over to our booth and was trying on our shoes, and they called her name for the bench and she’s like, “I got to go.” And she just runs over there, comes back a minute later saying, “Well, I just set a personal best.” And I felt like I was just gripping the ground and more connected to the ground than ever before. And of course, people who aren’t powerlifters typically don’t know, that even the bench starts with your feet.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So we have all these pro athletes casually training. There are a couple of people who in their warmups, either on the court or field, are wearing our shoes. And then when-
Barry Weinstein:
U.S. artistic swimming, is that true?
Steven Sashen:
U.S. artistic swimming is a different story, but them as well. USA archery, because the guys there, they say, and women, they say, it’s like, they feel like they’re really more rooted when they’re wearing our shoes, which they are.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
But pro level sports people who are really getting into this. In fact, I just scheduled a meeting with a guy who’s a very, very big deal football player who said in a conversation we had, that wearing our shoes, got rid of a whole bunch of issues that he had. And it’s seemingly given him more years in his career and he’s already older than most of the guys that he’s playing against. So I think, I hope, that that’s one of the two things that’s going on in 2024. I can’t even talk about the first one unfortunately, until we sign the paperwork in a couple of weeks, that will help the top down version of that where there’s going to be more people with high status saying, these things changed my life. You got to wear these things.
But the key thing that is going to make this work is, we alluded to it before, is the people in these smaller communities, there’s actually research about this. It’s very cool. There’s a book called Change by a guy named Damon Centola, and he says, in a small community, when something new gets adopted, it’s when 25% of the people adopt it.
Barry Weinstein:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a magic number. So some of the top down stuff will then impact the smaller communities. And then of course, people are in more than one small community. And like we said before, if they feel like they’re part of a different community where they’re not being ostracized for doing this unusual thing, then they sometimes feed that community or sometimes bring things into that community. So all of that stuff, the grassroots bottom up and the top down stuff mix and match in a way that I think there’s going to be a significant acceleration in 2024 and early ’25.
Barry Weinstein:
Do you think that you could get a runner, a professional runner in the pro field, at a major marathon?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, at a marathon?
Barry Weinstein:
I’m dying for this.
Steven Sashen:
At a marathon. It’s an interesting question. The challenge, not surprisingly, is that what the big companies do is, once they find someone in high school or college that looks like they’ve got good potential, is they start sponsoring them early. Now granted, unless you are nationally ranked, going to the Olympic trials, et cetera, you’re not getting decent money typically.
But the challenge with pro runners is they’ve been so used to the thing they’re doing, that as a former… I’m still a competitive athlete, but when I was super, super serious, the idea of changing anything is terrifying. And rightly so. And I say this to pro athletes all the time, don’t switch mid-season, don’t switch just because, if you want to explore this, here’s the way to do it. Start by walking, go to the gym, do the warmups and then see how you feel if it makes sense. So I don’t know. Now sprinters, on the other hand, different story. So the deal with sprinters… I’ve been developing a new sprinting shoe. I can’t even call it a spike because it doesn’t have spikes.
Barry Weinstein:
Sure.
Steven Sashen:
With an unusual use of carbon fiber that hasn’t really been deployed yet. It’s something that I thought of a number of years ago, and a company unbeknownst to me basically said, well, we made this thing for you and we’re going to be testing it very soon. What I can say, and it actually applies to some people in some other sports as well, what I can say… Can I say even this? What I can say is, there are many things that people put in their shoes and they’re doing it for superstitious reasons because the technology makes no sense. These things, I put them in my shoes, and it demonstrably changed the way I was running.
Barry Weinstein:
Interesting.
Steven Sashen:
And what I’ve said to anyone when they’re developing a new shoe or something to put in a shoe, I go, if it really worked the way you say, we’d be able to see it in force plate data. And there’s no company that’s ever come up with some magic new technology for footwear where they’re showing the force plate data. And I said to the guys that developed this carbon fiber thing, I said that to them and they said, “Oh no, this thing that we’re doing, you can see it in the force plate data.”
So last but not the least on that, because I’m two degrees of separation to a bunch of Olympic sprinters, my only goal is… I have two goals. One is to get them to try the shoe and see what they think. And then of course, the second goal, of course, would be to race in it. And then the thing with that is hopefully they would win. And my next goal, so I guess there’s many goals up until this last one, is to immediately get banned by the U.S Olympic Committee.
Barry Weinstein:
For unfair advantage to bare feet.
Steven Sashen:
Correct. And the reason that we would be banned is actually not even for the unfair advantage, it would be because we would’ve a patent on this technology. None of the big companies could use it. And so they would then petition that it’s unfair because they can’t use it. This is something that happened in the… I can’t remember if it was ’60s or ’70s, I have to look it up. Reebok did a thing called the brush spike. So instead of having eight big metal pointy things, they had what looked like tiny little hairs, like a centimeter long. And they’d come in little bunches, like 20 of them in a bunch. There was maybe a couple of hundred of these spread out over the shoe and they got banned. And the reason it was given was because these little brush things were messing up the track. To say that that was bullshit would be an insult to bullshit.
Barry Weinstein:
Compared to a metal spike, a Christmas tree spike.
Steven Sashen:
It was completely because the big companies couldn’t do it because they had a patent on it.
Barry Weinstein:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Barry Weinstein:
That’s wild.
Steven Sashen:
Now that said, what happened is two guys wearing the brush spike won a big deal race. And so the big companies were like, oh crap, we can’t do that. We’re going to be screwed. We got to shut them down. The number one thing that happens when you threaten one of the multi multi-billion dollar footwear brands with something they can’t do, is they try to shut you down.
Barry Weinstein:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
We are hoping it doesn’t happen, but anticipating some frivolous lawsuit, and if it happens, I’ll be publicizing the crap out of it.
Barry Weinstein:
So sometimes the lawsuit is just an opportunity for you to defend yourself in front of a large audience. And-
Steven Sashen:
The big shoe companies use lawsuits as marketing because every time one of them sues the other, it’s in every newspaper in the world.
Barry Weinstein:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t like being in that group of people, but if I have to play that game, I’ll play that game. I don’t want to-
Barry Weinstein:
If it gets the technology to more people.
I have one more question for you. For the common man.
Steven Sashen:
Yes.
Barry Weinstein:
Composite steel code boots. Everyone I talk to… Are there any plans-
Steven Sashen:
It’s the number one request we get. We’ve been working on it for quite a while. Not surprisingly, the challenge is making something that has the protective and functional features that those boots have while still allowing for as much natural movement as humanly possible. And where you run into the glitch and natural movement is basically at toe-off. When you’re getting to the point where the last thing on the ground is your toes, it’s easy to make something that at that point feels like you just go flat and you’re stuck. And there are technologies that we played with for eliminating that while still having the protective feature of a steel or composite toe. But there’s other things that go into that as well.
And to be totally candid, I don’t know what that means. Anyone who’s listened to this or seen me on live events knows that I can’t keep a secret to save my life. Some of the stuff we’re doing with pro athletes has a bigger bang for the buck than what we do with the composite toe product. And it’s easier to develop the things for them than to figure out the problems on the composite toe thing. Plus, to make something that is usable for construction workers, for example. You need to go through an OSHA certification and even more rigid certifications in the EU that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Barry Weinstein:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
So it’s tricky, is the best thing I can say.
Barry Weinstein:
Dead on arrival. Dead on arrival changes.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, definitely not DOA. But we are not a company with huge bundles of money hiding in the back somewhere. We don’t have some venture capital fund behind us with millions of dollars, and they’re willing to lose money for years until they make money. So we have to take decisions, this is going to sound peculiar to most people, but because we’re growing so fast, we have to make certain kinds of decisions about how to spend our money on the products that allow us to continue to grow so fast and because we only have so much money for inventory. It’s a tricky balancing act that no one has ever gotten right. We’re doing the best we can.
So suffice it to say, as someone who has made a living for all of his life up until doing Xero Shoes, by doing something immediately getting paid and then being done with the transaction, this thing of planning three years out with all these competing constraints makes my brain explode. So we’re working on it.
Barry Weinstein:
That’s totally reasonable, right? Sometimes the economics just doesn’t work out. And you need to decide whether or not you’re going to get the thousands of people who are benefiting from the technology that we already have, and how are we going to fund this technology that might not work out. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to even just conceptualize the composite toe. Everybody talks to me about it, and I say, there’s this regulation there that was put there by people who did not work at Xero Shoes. These people designed it from a bench, a legislative bench, and now you have to get around it for natural movement. Just the construction, I can’t even imagine how you would do it.
Steven Sashen:
It’s tricky. I will say this, and I’m not recommending this. There are people that I’ve heard from. We had a big meeting with all the people who had said, I’m looking for a work boot. And a number of them said things like, “Well, my last set of boots blew out. I just took the toe from that. And then I bought a pair of fill in the blank shoe that were a size and a half, two big, and just threw that toe in there. And that’s what I’m using when I’m on a roof, climbing a ladder, whatever it is. And I said, I can’t be responsible for that way off label use, but knock yourself out. So we’ll see.
I want to back up before we wrap it up.
Barry Weinstein:
Sure.
Steven Sashen:
Which again, is coming back to my thoughts about the whole idea of foot strike when you’re walking. And I want to bring up, as part of a way to wrap this up, perhaps, that there was a guy who did a video that got a lot of attention, where he was saying, here he is in some outfit from a few hundred years ago that you’re supposed to… Basically he was showing overstriding and plantar flexing, and that’s the way you’re supposed to plant your foot. And his rationale was, you’re getting the most feedback that way about what to step on or step in. And I will undeniably agree that you have the most opportunity for reflexively stepping off of something if you are landing more towards the front of your foot, but not by prancing, not by… Because basically you still have the majority of your weight on your planted foot while your foot is coming down and suddenly checking out, this is a cool space to be. You can still pull off and don’t lose your balance.
My biggest regret or my two biggest regrets with Xero Shoes is that I didn’t, on day one, look at what my footprint looked like when I stepped out of a hot tub or a pool, like an oval with some dots in front of it. My footprint, not one of those footprints, with like a massive arch in it, but it looks like a recognizable footprint. I had no way of measuring simultaneously or in conjunction, the flexibility of my foot and the speed of my reflex arc, of stepping off of something because it feels like, it seems like, I am able to flex around things that used to be difficult to step on. And if I step on something unpleasant, I’m stepping off of it much more quickly than I would have in the past. I have no measurement for that. I’m sure you have experiences similar or some experience in that domain because of some of the things you’re stepping on or in. But the biggest regret is I don’t have the data to show what those changes were.
Barry Weinstein:
For me, most of the time, what’s the worst thing I’ve stepped on? A rusty nail in Yellowstone National Park, sticking up out of a bridge. Stepped on it, didn’t realize it until two steps later. I was totally fine. I wasn’t fine for about a minute and a half of me yelping in the middle of the park when there’s wildlife around. But it was totally fine. I think that is very difficult to find something that’s truly damaging to life and limb to step on in New York City. And I’ve run over a glass, I go on the Bridle Path, I run over sharp rocks. I think that our feet were well-designed to run over some much, much, much worse stuff that I can’t even find stuff to step on anymore, to step on acorns, step on all this stuff. But for me, when I’m walking, if I step on something uncomfortable, I will definitely stutter step and essentially do a one leg hop on the other side.
But that’s a reflex that I think was pretty well-designed for me. The worst is when I heel strike and then go over a rock or something and then it’s right in there. That’s real pain. But when I am approaching it like this, my toes are mostly flexible. But it’s a definitely good question. I can tell you that most people, despite relying on walking, most people, it’s mostly their entire physical life is just walking. They really don’t even know what to look for or think about it. So for me it’s… Oh yeah, go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you just said my favorite thing. Look for.
Oh, just lost him again. We’ll pause for one sec. Be right back.
Speaker 1:
Recording.
Steven Sashen:
All right. Third time’s a charm. So hopefully we had enough juice to make that happen. All right. Once again, I have no memory of where we were because I don’t remember anything that comes out of my mouth.
Barry Weinstein:
Four foot walking in terms of the heel touching the ground is the best way to… Yes.
Steven Sashen:
It was also, again, just what you’ve noticed about if you paid attention to anything that feels like it has changed, with the time that you’ve spent barefoot.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah. So first off, when I started barefoot, before my first ever Xero Shoes or anything like that, even back when I had Ultras, which has the cushion and everything, so that didn’t do much. So even with the foot freedom there, I still had the cushion that was keeping on my feet all like this. Then I get Xero Shoes. First off, I had a bunion and a bunionette from my Nike Pegasus. And so my big toe was in here. Second, I had two hammer toes. It’s really funny how you can see some people’s feet who look so deformed, but you’ll notice they go by a very geometric pattern, especially like Brooks people, the people who were at Brooks. So you can have a hammer toe and all this, but then eventually it will go around and you say, wow, that literally looks like the insole of a Brooks shoe.
So all the chaos going in there is spitting in. So people say, we want to break in the shoe. You don’t break in the shoe, you break in your foot. Your foot breaks in. So don’t do that. I had really bad feet despite being very strong, but I had very bad feet. Over time. I would feel injury, all of a sudden injury, and my toe starts going like this. Then all of a sudden, more injury, injury, injury. But the thing about these injuries is that it was swelling and some metatarsal and some sort of transition injury and whatnot. But then after the injury, I would’ve better range of motion and all of a sudden something would start to make sense. So my shoe size, Steven, went from an 11 and a half to a 15. Isn’t that insane? Now I use the Genesis sandal because… Here’s the other thing.
So when you’re supplying shoes, all of a sudden, people go on the internet who’re your biggest fans in the beginning, and then they say, they’re making the shoes tighter. They’re not making the shoes tighter. Your feet are expanding. And then there is this one company called Soft Star who makes these very wide shoes. But these are shoes that are specialty shoes for people who have been barefoot for a long time. And whenever the companies try to widen out the toe box, everyone gets mad because they’re not at that stage of the journey yet. And the question is, do you want to get the people who are at most at risk to make the biggest improvement? Or do you want to cater to the people who are already probably doing okay? It’s very difficult for a shoe manufacturer to decide that.
Steven:
We have, when we first started, we were doing, do it yourself sandal kits. And we would then do custom-made sandals. People would send a tracing of their foot, we’d make sandal for them. We have about 5,000 tracings. And we saw the vast range of foot shapes. And our goal is to, it’s on a Bell curve. There are people who have really narrow feet. People have really, really wide feet of varying shapes. There’s basically fifty-four shapes of the human foot for the same size. And our goal is to make things size. Our goal is to make things that fit the largest percentage of that bell curve. Super, super wide feet, we’re not there. Well, let me rephrase that. Super, super high volume feet because it’s not about three dimensional width. It’s about the three dimensional volume of your foot and the three dimensional volume of a shoe. Similar idea, super, super low volume feet, same thing. So we’re trying to accommodate as many as we can, knowing that we can’t get everybody, which pains me, certainly not with one product. When people say, “Why don’t you just make a version that is a wide version?” I go, “Well, because then we would need double the warehouse space and double the inventory, and we’re just not there yet.” That’s a whole other story. The thing with humans is they think that if they can imagine something, it must be doable and simple, and neither of those are.
Barry Weinstein:
And the economics work out.
Steven Sashen:
And the economics work out. Yeah, neither of those are necessarily the case. Suffice it to say, but I do want to put some closure on this one. Your take as someone who comes out in the walking should be ball of your foot first and foremost.
Barry Weinstein:
No healthy animal walks on its heel.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, and what’s your take on landing ball your foot and then your heel coming down and touching the ground or not?
Barry Weinstein:
Don’t touch.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Barry Weinstein:
Heel doesn’t touch the ground. Heel never touches the ground.
Steven Sashen:
I would argue that back to your point about the Achilles, if you don’t let your heel come all the way down, you’re not getting the full strength and ability out of your Achilles.
Barry Weinstein:
It’s one centimeter or one millimeter before the ground, so it looks like, and the other thing is that you can still pull the Achilles back here, but it goes way down to the ground, but it never touches. When you let the Achilles down, it’s the bow and arrow pulling it, but if it touches, it can touch maybe skin deep, not a problem, but the second that heel comes to rest, the arrow gets let out.
Steven Sashen:
My argument would be that if you are landing with your foot predominantly under your center of mass, by the time your heel is touching the ground, at mid-stance, you’re already. It’s basically a touch and go thing because it’s one thing, if you are overstriding and then you’re landing ball of your foot and your heel comes down because then you have just more ground contact time. Again, this would all be stuff we’d have to research in a whole bunch of different ways, but my contention would be that that little extra bit is where the magic is because basically if your Achilles is able to stretch that much, and for almost everybody it is, then it’s that last little bit that initiates the stretch reflex.
You don’t get a stretch reflex at a normal stretch level. You get it at that extreme end. If that’s what’s happening, the amount of time that it takes for that to happen, you’re probably already. I mean, I would suggest that it’s part of the thing that then is getting your foot to work well to get you off the ground into that next step as you are falling and you’re catching yourself or not falling on your face. Don’t know. I mean this would be a fun thing to look at biomechanically and unfortunately-
Barry Weinstein:
Absolutely. There’s a bunch of different interpretations of this. With the interpretation that I have, the goal is to minimize the impact shock on the ground that goes into your orthopedic chain through heel strike, and it’s to maximize the impact of absorption from the Achilles tendon, which otherwise goes into the rest of your body. When your heel doesn’t touch the ground, there’s no impact shock into the heel. When your heel does touch the ground, that means that there is some impact shock that goes up into the heel. The knees are the traditional shock absorber in the United States, and that’s why we have knee replacement, hip replacement, upper back, lower back headaches and neck pain.
Steven Sashen:
Well, to be clear, the knees are the traditional shock absorber if you’re overstriding, heel striking, so you’re basically landing with a relatively straight leg because the muscles, ligaments and tendons around the knee are perfect shock absorbers. There’s research from Isabel Sacco in Brazil where she took elderly women. When I say that, I realize they’re not that much older than I was or than I am now. Some of them are. Many of them, not so much. Anyway, these are women who had knee osteoarthritis, not just, “Hey, I think I have knee pain,” but looking at X-rays, arthritis. She put them in a minimal shoe, and just said, “Walk around in these.” Six months later, the worst case scenario was people who had reduced their medication dramatically because they weren’t having that kind of knee pain. For many of them, for some of them at least, the knee osteoarthritis was gone because she says they weren’t putting that continued force into the knee joint. They were using their muscles, ligaments and tendons to protect it, which is what it’s designed for.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah. I mean, if you look at we have 850 pounds of force absorption capacity from our Achilles tendon. We don’t use it. Overstriding is a really interesting concept too because overstriding is like a pulling thing. If you overstride and you want to pull the ground behind you, your foot will get blisters on the bottom of your foot to prevent that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I have a whole diagnostic thing of if you’re getting blisters, depending on where you’re getting them, it’s going to tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
The other thing is that when you’re having to pull your foot under you, you’re using your glutes and hamstrings when they’re in the weakest position instead of the strongest position, which leads me to something you’re going to like. I’ve talked about this in the last few podcasts I think because it’s something that I only have recently stumbled onto and do. So, outside of our house is a trail, kind of hilly, and I have this new way of walking uphill that I think you’ll get a kick out of. Ready?
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Imagine you are standing on your right leg as you’re walking and you basically want to do nothing with your left leg. Okay?
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
What you do with your right leg, the thing that you’re doing that’s going to move you is you’re twisting your upper body to the left. Okay, so what that does is it stretches your right hip flexor and because you’re, again, a little falling forward, you have a hill in front of you, if you just use your left foot to stop you from falling on your face, and as soon as it touches the ground, as you start to turn your body back towards the right, your hip flexor releases. So you had stretched it, and then it releases. Just like a rubber band stretching when you release it, it springs a little forward. You’re twisting totally to the right now with your left leg on the ground. You’re stretching your right hip flexor, and the right foot just comes in contact with the ground in front of you because again, you’re on an upward hill.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Then you reverse the whole process. So basically you’re twisting your way up the hill. It takes almost no leg strength, and you look like a complete doofus. I don’t care because it’s really, really cool.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah. I mean, so the hip flexor is definitely, the stress reflex is what pulls the knee forward. If you’re a fast runner, then you would have what looks like a knee drive forward that’s intentional or something. It’s just the hip flexor that when you’re back, it’ll stretch and just swing you forward. That’s why people say run and relax. You see the fastest people in the world, they’re running totally relaxed. When you look at me, it’s like-
Steven Sashen:
People say that, and I go, “Look at Tyson Gay,” who up until Usain Bolt was the fastest man in the world. When that guy is sprinting, it looks like he’s going to explode there’s so much.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah, that’s true, so it’s definitely different for the athlete, but efficient running, especially over the marathon distance. The sprints as well. You go in the 400, you need to be-
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, the what?
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, for the 400.
Steven Sashen:
The 400, that’s a marathon. Are you kidding?
Barry Weinstein:
That’s a marathonl
Steven Sashen:
That’s all the way around the track. Are you nuts?
Barry Weinstein:
You need to definitely be relaxed because it’s incredible how the speed maintenance is. It needs to be totally second nature and totally relaxed like that, and then the foot will just do it. You look at some of the best runners who have become the champions in the marathon, and even some of the best sprinters. When they’re growing up, they’re actually not thinking about it. They’re letting their neuromuscular system as well as physics and their environment dictate their running, but when you get an American track coach, and they say, “Look forward.” You get American track coaches that say, “Arms must be like this, never across the midline.”
You look to the best. Truly natural running is a result of our anatomy and the environment. It’s not really something that’s built, even though of course, drills are always totally useful. The only problem is that in the Western world, obviously because we have these big cushion shoes, we have absolutely no experience, so the second we put on Xero shoes, the second that we go barefoot, for the first year, you’re walking like a one-year-old. Then it takes five years until you’re walking like a five-year-old. We all need to do it. It was a bit of a catch-up period.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I will contend, based on my research back when I was at Duke that the learning period and the adaptive period is also similarly different for everybody. Although, I would say that people fall into four different categories. It’s not worth getting into right now, four neurological categories that say something about what the transition period will look like or could look like. Sadly, I haven’t figured out a self-diagnostic for people to use to identify which one of those categories they’re in because depending on which one you’re in, it does change what kind of feedback you need to tell your brain what’s going on to inspire a new gait pattern that’s outside of the one that you’re habitually using, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Barry Weinstein:
That transition, that never-ending transition. It takes a lifetime to build strong feet. That’s what I tell people. They want to go up to me and say, “How long until I’m running super fast like this?” I say, “It takes a lifetime to build strong feet.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, my answer is, “I don’t know. It depends on you.” I mean, look. Again, back to my comment about Western thinking. We can think of it, it must be easy and doable. Everybody thinks they can look at some fitness expert or bodybuilder and go, “I could look like that.” No, you can’t. Statistically highly unlikely. They think, “Oh, I see this fast runner. I’m sure I could get there.” Not likely. The people that we see, and I’m putting myself in this equation are genetic freaks. I say that because I mean, I used to say for men in my age group, I may be the fastest Jew in the world, but then I met my friend Allan Tissenbaum, and Tiss crushes me, but he is. The guys who are the fastest sprinters in my age group … I’m 61 now, so I’m in the 60 to 64 age group … they are the freakiest of the freaks.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
That’s just the way. I didn’t learn. Again, I’m at the back of the top of the pack is the best way I can say it, but I’ve been like that since I was in kindergarten, or in kindergarten I was the top of the pack. I was the top of the pack till it turned about 15, 16.
Barry Weinstein:
What do you think? There’s a 100 people in your age group faster than you on Earth? Then all of these guys are like, “I’m the worst of this.” They’re like, “Darn, I’m the worst of the top 100 in the world.”
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on. Someone I met who was a Silver medalist in the Olympics, she goes, “I was the fastest loser.”
Barry Weinstein:
They’re never happy. They’re never happy.
Steven Sashen:
No.
Barry Weinstein:
I read something like 30% of people over the age of 30 will ever sprint again in their life, and it’s usually for the bus. Only 30% and you get these guys. I show up to the track meet. Every one of these guys is unhappy with their position in the track meet, but if you’re even the worst, even if you’re in the last place in the track meet, you are the top 1% of physicality. If you just show up, are you ever going to be the top 1% of the 1%? Probably not.
Steven Sashen:
Here’s my line. My goal as a sprinter. I have a couple. I want to just continue hitting All-American times, which get slower and slower every five years. Right now, last year I was pretty close to setting the All-American time for the age group behind me. I think that I had it in me to do two age groups behind me, but then I had cancer, so that put a crimp on my indoor season. So that’s one goal, continue hitting All-American Times. Goal number two. Make it into a semi-final at the Worlds. It’s the best I would do, top 16. That would be awesome. Goal number three, have some of those super fast guys invite me into a 4 x 100 relay and get carried around in a relay.
Barry Weinstein:
Would you consider going to the Penn Relays? They have Masters events now, and you’re 100% fast enough.
Steven Sashen:
But it’s invitation only for the Masters.
Barry Weinstein:
Why aren’t they inviting you?
Steven Sashen:
I’m not that guy. Seriously, for your question about in the world, the last time I checked world rankings for indoor, I was somewhere around 70th, but again, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t guys who are faster who would push me back, but they hadn’t competed that year or whatever it is. For Penn, realize it’s an invite, and the invitation typically goes to those really well-known guys who are the ones who would crush me. It would be fun. I would love to do that race. That would be a blast, but they’re not going to invite me.
Barry Weinstein:
My goal in track and field is to continue in the sport until I’m old enough that I get that invite into the Penn Relays, the old man race, the 100-year up. I’ve been training my whole life for it, and you just need to eat well, don’t do anything silly.
Steven Sashen:
This is what happens when you go to the Masters World Championships. So when I went in Finland 14 years ago, there was a 101-year-old guy who did the field events, so he did the shot put and he did the javelin, I think maybe.
Barry Weinstein:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t remember. Either way, comes out in his walker, super slow. Gets to the line, puts down his walker. They hand him whatever the implement is for the shot. I think it’s like two pounds at that point. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He goes like five, 10 feet, and the crowd goes insane. Their first thought is, “I want to be that guy.” Their second thought is, “I just need to outlive all the people sitting next to me.”
Barry Weinstein:
That’s the key. You just need to outlive everyone out here and then still show up because here’s the thing. You can’t just be 101 and not show up.
Steven Sashen:
No. Here’s the annoying news for me. I was just turned down for a Guinness Book World Record.
Barry Weinstein:
For what?
Steven Sashen:
Well, oldest standing backflip. I can still do one, and the reason they turned me down is there’s a 94 and some number of days guy who did one into a pool. I can’t find a video about it. That doesn’t count. I’m doing it on the ground, and all I know is my Olympian friends when they see that, or my friends who are really good. There’s a guy. Jujimufu is a friend and Juji is a great flipper. When I showed him what I did … Well, no. He’s in his 30s. Maybe he’s getting close to 40, but his response was still, “Are you fucking kidding me, dude?”
Barry Weinstein:
It’s incredible, right?
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know. It’s what I do.
Barry Weinstein:
He’s huge.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. Oh, no, he’s great. Yeah, the fact that he can do a standing backflip is really awesome. So, I was really bummed that they would not allow me to create a new category of oldest standing backflip on the ground. They said, “Level surface is all we care about.” I went, “But he didn’t even land it.”
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah, that’s ridiculous. That doesn’t count.
Steven Sashen:
I think if everyone listening petitions the Guinness World Record group to say it should be on the ground, landing it on your feet.
Barry Weinstein:
Two categories. He still gets to keep his, but you got to have the one on the ground. 100%.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. I agree. So hopefully we’ll get a little petition drive going. I’m literally, you know what? I was saying that as a joke, but I think I’m going to get a petition going.
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
That one is, and the joke there is I’m 61. If they had allowed me to do it, there’s no question in my mind there’d be some guy, some circus freak who’s a couple years older than me who would be able to then beat me. Then we would just have a duel until one of us dies.
Barry Weinstein:
Some old Moscow circus guy.
Steven Sashen:
It would be hysterically fun.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah. I mean, that would be hysterically fun. Obviously, you don’t want to get too many people who are untrained. You need the gymnastics background for your whole life. I’m not going to be entering this at any time in my life. I’ve been curious to try gymnastics, but there’s nothing I can do.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a different thing.
Barry Weinstein:
There’s nothing I can even start doing. It’s just impossible. I tried the rings. I get up there and dropped. It’s too much for me.
Steven Sashen:
Well, for the backflip thing, the only people who would ever be able to engage in that competition are people who like me, prior to the age of about 25 had done probably, and I’m not exaggerating, 30,000 standing backflips.
Barry Weinstein:
Yeah, especially as a diver.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no. It was not that. It was because as a street performer and when I was performing at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, I was doing anywhere between 10 and 50 a day.
Barry Weinstein:
That’s incredible. That’s athleticism beyond.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know. It’s again, genetic freakishness. Just for the fun of saying it, when I used to do a lot of them, and now I do them very infrequently. When I was doing a lot well into my 40s, maybe even into my early 50s, but definitely into my 40s, I could literally see the entire thing. I could feel the entire thing. The last few that I did when I did one at 61, when I did one at 60, when I did one at 55 or something, I set it, and I can see that. Then I literally black out until I’ve flipped and I’m seeing my feet coming towards the ground, and I figure out where to put my feet. It’s the weirdest thing in the world. It’s just so much muscle memory that I can do it basically unconscious.
Barry Weinstein:
Wow. That’s incredible.
Steven Sashen:
It’s very interesting.
Barry Weinstein:
That’s incredible. I was impressed when you could do the old man test with the socks. I saw that one. I was like, “Wow, that’s so impressive. Let me send that to some people.” Next I should send them you’re doing still just like the tumbling. Oh, my goodness.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. That’s on TikTok and things as well, the old man.
Barry Weinstein:
It’s funny because the age thing, if you go to anybody who’s just a normal person who’s 19 years old and ask them to do any of this, it’s not happening.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I can tell you. I have mixed feelings about the fact that when I’m at a track meet and there’s a bunch of Masters people who are in their 30s to 40s and even the ones in their 40s, let alone the high school kids that might show up, and they tell me that I’m an inspiration, it’s everything I can do not to punch them. I don’t feel old enough to be an inspiration yet.
Barry Weinstein:
Well, you are an inspiration. I hope I don’t get punched, but it’s just as a person. Regardless of age, just being able to get on there, it really is inspiring. The other thing is, it’s so inspiring, but it’s also so informative because there’s actionable stuff that you do that nobody else does. There’s some people who are like, “I’m really inspired to get out there,” but for you, “It’s like I’m really inspired to start doing what this guy is doing because it has results.” It’s not even just you because that inspiration is now 100,000 people. I don’t know how many customers it is, but it’s thousands of thousands of people. It’s creating a revolution, and there’s a huge following.
Steven Sashen:
It’s approaching two million.
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, my goodness.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.
Barry Weinstein:
Two million people.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Barry Weinstein:
It’s two million people, and it’s just incredible. I’m one of them, obviously, and it’s changed my life. If you think of the number of years I’m going off and I’m doing the same thing, but if you look at the number of years of pain, of orthopedic pain not had, that’s the most important metric you can have because it’s truly inspirational. That’s all I can say. I hope I don’t get punched in the face for that, but that’s it.
Steven Sashen:
No, no. It’s simply because here’s what I can say. I have a genetic disorder. My genetic disorder is I think of anybody as a friend of mine, so if at any point they start doing any of this bowing down, “You’re an inspiration,” thing, it gets in the way of that, “Hey, you’re just a friend of mine,” thing, so I have to do something to shake that out of them because it gets in the way of having a relationship with a peer. That’s where it is. I have no interest in being on any sort of pedestal other than the one with a gold medal because we just won the 4 x 1 relay. Even then it’s still any given Sunday, the guys in second or third could have won.
Barry Weinstein:
Wow. Well, I go to the Masters track meets. I cannot believe these people. I just can’t believe them. They’re unbelievable. There’s this one woman, Sue McDonald. You know Sue McDonald?
Steven Sashen:
No.
Barry Weinstein:
She just turned 60 a couple months ago, already has every world record in the sprints. It’s incredible. It’s discipline, and it’s incredible, but it’s the showing up. To me, that’s the most important part. Showing up after you have a bad meet where you embarrass yourself in front of everyone, that’s the hardest part because-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, dude. When I went to the world championships in Finland, I had the worst race of my life. It was undeniably embarrassing, and I’m looking forward to getting back and having people go, “Oh, wow. Cool. You actually worked it and got better.” I mean, it was a horrible race for me, but I also had no experience at that time, so I don’t kick myself too much.
Barry Weinstein:
Oh, my gosh. Well, obviously no one even asked how you did. They just go, “Oh, you went to a track meet. That’s so cool.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, there is that, and track meets are just attention deficit theater. Anyway, we could go off on that forever, but let’s not do that. Barry, for anybody who wants to find out what you’re doing in New York, if they’re in New York and they want to track you down and have some experience of what you’ve been doing and helping them do the same, how can they find you?
Barry Weinstein:
www.footcamp.net. I have my whole schedule of classes. I have a whole store where you can buy all your toe spacers and Rock Mats and your barefoot shoes and all that stuff. I have a blog where I go over a technique guide. I go over what you can expect by going barefoot. I can go over what you can expect with a barefoot lifestyle. You can follow me on social media under barry_wein is my Instagram handle and on Facebook as well.
Steven Sashen:
Well, we’ll put all those in the show notes.
Barry Weinstein:
I’m on ClassPass. ClassPass. Free classes on ClassPass.
Steven Sashen:
There you go. Obviously, this has been a total blast, so thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure. I can’t believe, frankly, that it just took this much time until we crossed paths in a way to make this happen. So I’m really, really thrilled and grateful and really appreciate it and can’t wait to hear how all these things continue to evolve because like I said, it’s all of us who are spreading the word. At a certain point, we’ll hit a critical mass where even the doubters are going to go, “Oh, let me give it a shot.”
Barry Weinstein:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
That’s when the world’s going to change. So until then, for everybody else, first of all, thank you for being here. Secondly, if anyone notices, yes, I’m getting over a cold. Hence my voice. Third, don’t forget to go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. For previous episodes, all the ways you can find us on social media, the place you can find the podcast if you’re not happy with the one where you’ve already found it. If you have any questions or comments or feedback, if there’s anyone you think I should be having on the show, or especially if you know someone who thinks I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome coming my way, that would be a really entertaining conversation. You can drop me an email, move, M-O-V-E at jointhemovementmovement.com. Until then, most importantly, go out. Have fun and live life feet first.