What if one subtle collapse in your lower body is quietly driving most of your pain, stiffness, and “mystery” injuries?
In this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, Steven Sashen speaks with Dr. Mike Wasilisin, Founder and CEO of MoveU, who breaks down why most pain and injuries trace back to a few predictable misalignment patterns. After running a sports injury clinic and later selling it to build MoveU, he now teaches movement and alignment methods for everyday people and also teaches in chiropractic and PT education settings. In this episode, Mike explains valgus collapse, hip and spinal compensation, scapular position, and why minimalist footwear and better body awareness can help you move with greater durability and less inflammation.
Key Takeaways:
→ Valgus collapse, where the knee caves inward, contributes to issues ranging from foot pain to knee and hip problems.
→ Foot position matters, and toes turned outward often reinforce poor knee tracking over time.
→ Misalignment shifts the load to the arch and soft tissues instead of distributing the force properly.
→ Hip drop from poor alignment can lead to compensations and increased back stress.
→ Posture determines stress distribution, with hyperextension loading joints and flattening loading discs.
Dr. Mike Wasilisin’s journey in healthcare and fitness began in 2000 at a chiropractic rehab clinic while he was earning a Psychology degree from Kent State, which he completed in 2004. In 2009, he earned his doctorate in chiropractic from Palmer College, specializing in body mechanics, strength training, pain psychology, and soft-tissue therapy using TPI, ART, FMS, and SFMA. From 2009 to 2017, he built a thriving private practice in San Diego and began teaching Kinesiology at California State University while running CaliSpine, a clinic specializing in low-back pain rehabilitation. After a viral quadratus lumborum video reached 4 million views in 2015, he committed to going fully online, frustrated by the limitations of traditional healthcare. That led to the creation of MoveU in 2016, a movement that helps people take control of their bodies through structured programs free from insurance red tape. Now, with over 3 million social media followers and more than 150,000 people having gone through MoveU programs, the impact continues to grow. Featured in Men’s Health, CBS, and Live with Mark & Kelly, Dr. Mike’s mission is clear—helping people stop treating pain as an emergency and start recognizing it as a lifestyle issue that can be addressed through awareness, movement, and a long-term plan.
Connect With Mike:
Website: https://moveu.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moveu/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moveu
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/moveu
Connect with Steven:
Xero Shoes: https://xeroshoes.com/
Join the MOVEMENT Movement: https://jointhemovementmovement.com/
X: https://x.com/XeroShoes
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xeroshoes/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen
Maybe there is just one part of your body that could be responsible for the majority of the issues that you have pain or dysfunction or difficulty doing things you love to do. Just one little part. We’re going to find out what that is 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, stealthy, strong body. Starting feet first. You know, by using those things at the end of your legs. And. And we also break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or do yoga or CrossFit or Padel or anything you like to do, and to do it enjoyably and efficiently and effectively and. Wait, did I say enjoyably? Trick question. Don’t answer. Of course I did. Because if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up anyway. So find the thing that you like to do, and that’s what you’re going to keep doing. And we call this the Movement Movement. Because we are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do without getting in the way with a bunch of extraneous crap that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. And I’m the guy who started for God knows what reason. I’m Stephen Sashin, co founder of Xero Shoes and chief barefoot officer at Xero Shoes, and the host of the Movement Movement podcast. Now, I said, we’re creating this movement. All that means is, you know, spread the word, give us a thumbs up, give us a, like, hit the bell icon on YouTube. Share it with your friends. You know, we just want to. We’re trying to get the word out so more and more people get the experience, the fun and comfort and benefits of doing what is natural. Okay, here’s the shorter version of that. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. That’ll work, too. All right, let’s get the ball rolling. Dr. Mike, welcome here. And do me a favor. Tell people who you are, what you do, and then we’ll talk about that one body part.
Mike Wasilisin
What’s up, everybody? Well, Stephen, thanks for having me. First of all, this isn’t our first attempt. Sometimes we start a podcast, we just talk for an hour. Last time we talked, we went for, like, an hour, and Stephen was saying some things to me. I’m like. In my head, I’m like, he’s really saying this to the audience. And. And he goes, oh, we’re not recording. I go, oh, we’ve just been having a conversation for an hour. So.
Steven Sashen
No, no, no, it’s not. It was an hour and a half.
Mike Wasilisin
It was an hour and a half. It was an hour and a half. But we, we go. We go way back. Thanks for having me.
Steven Sashen
Pleasure. No wait, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. It’s about time.
Mike Wasilisin
It’s about time.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, we’ve been trying to do this for a while. So anyway, so do the. Do the official intro, you know, name, rank, serial number.
Mike Wasilisin
Sure. Well, my name is. My name is Mike was listen Dr. Mike was listen. I’m went to school to be. I went to school for chiropractic sports injury rehab and I started the whole clinic thing. Ran a sports injury clinic with a bunch of athletes. Got fried out from just being like having to be in the office. And then I really thought I was making some discoveries about what the truth was that people need to actually fix their body and it didn’t exist in the health care system. And one day the camera turned on me and I just started saying the truth because I go, what the. I got 5 billion people watching me. Oh well there was like 20 at the time. But the point is, is they. I go hey, I got the world to talk to here. So I just started telling people the truth back in 2015 about like the body like patterns it breaks down into common pain and injuries. How to fix those without seeing me in person, without go entering the whole medical rigamaro to get all this test and treat you like your pain is an illness and a disease when it’s not. And so I’ve been teaching on all over the place with social. I’ve been teaching all over the world. I teach at different chiropractic colleges, PT colleges. You know, I’ve created. I create an app with. I have different programming for different types of pain injuries, misalignments. And I’ve been doing it for like this model. I sold my clinic in 2017 and I’ve just been building up this brand move you for about a decade now. Crazy A decade just trying to help people fix their and get to the bottom of it and make. Make series of improvements and awareness to their bodies so they can live more aligned. And so alignment’s really what I focus on is alignment is the optimal position of the joints of the body which equals 360 degree muscle balance, ligament balance. It creates durability to your body, allows you to run, allows you to cut, play, hike. And so I think the foundation of the body, the body Frame is what I help you improve is the alignment of the structure of your body frame. And then you could build muscle and mobility and strength on top of that. So that’s. That’s a little bit what I do.
Steven Sashen
That’ll work for me. And just for people who are hearing this move, U is just M O, V, E, the letter U. So fewer. Oh, nice. Fewer things to type. So there’s that, you know, doing. Doing a word and then you. As a shortcut for university is fraught with peril because there are examples of that that were not for real. What you’re doing is for real. But I’m not going to mention names. People will fill in the blanks either in whichever direction they go. Doesn’t matter. I don’t care. All right, so, you know, we teased this whole idea and you brought up, obviously, alignment and this whole idea that maybe there’s one part of the body that is the biggest cause of all the issues that come from misalignment. And do you want to jump right into that?
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah, let’s do it. So a couple years ago, I. I’m a big night owl, so I’m up till sometimes five, six in the morning. And it’s me, Pink Floyd, yerba mate, little edible, and I go deep. And I love simplifying the complex. And so I’ll set up with whiteboards and models and pens and papers. I’m just trying to simplify the complex. And I, I created a movement methodology about eight years ago, and I really dug in a couple years ago, and I came out of that, identifying five. Five movement patterns that we can attribute 90 to 95% of people’s pain, injuries, diagnosis, MRI, tightness, weakness. All of those tie to five misaligned movement patterns. And because we’re on. We’re with. We’re talking about the foot and their shoes in the background. We might as well go over the one on the ground. It. It what I’m going to share with you guys, we can wait.
Steven Sashen
We can do all five. We got time.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay, well, I’d say we’ll start. We’ll go ground up then.
Steven Sashen
Okay.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay. So I’ll share what these five misalignment movement patterns are, and then we will. I’ll do some. I’ll do like a live demo on this for you guys at home to do this yourself.
Steven Sashen
Perfect.
Mike Wasilisin
Do a live demo. And so the first misaligned movement pattern is. You may have heard of this, let’s simply call it valgus collapse. What that is, is when your knee, when you bend Your knee, when you bend, your knee buckles inward. Now, it’s not just your knee that does this, okay? Your knee goes in because your upper
Steven Sashen
thigh here, let’s just back up and show it now. Now you’re going to show people, but there are people who are listening. So I’ll talk through it. Yeah, yeah, you can talk through it and I’ll do the same.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay. So whenever we do something like we have, we have seven, seven, about six functional movements, just so you guys know that we do, right? Our body, it doesn’t matter if you’re an MMA fighter or you’re a stay at home mom. Our body needs to do seven functional movements properly to live an active life. It has to push, pull, squat, rotate, hinge, step, lunge. So that’s it. And if you could do each one of these in biomechanical alignment, the way your body was designed to move from the factory. Your bones are built at angles and shapes and everyone thinks they’re so different. You’re not. Okay? We’re all about 99% the same. So if your body, if you could stack up the bones the way like, like Leonardo da Vinci and the Vitruvian man, if you could stack your body bones like, like, like, like Jenga in the right positioning and apply that alignment to your movements, your joints will wear appropriately and evenly. Your muscles will have equal balance between strength and flexibility. Your ligaments will not be under stress. You won’t strain, you won’t take one step wrong and hurt yourself. You won’t develop plantar fasciitis. And these things your body will wear just like a car tire would wear if it’s an alignment. So we’re going to be covering right now two of those functional movements. We’ll even get into three of them. We can, we can attach three of these functional movements and we’re going to look at this Valgus collapse model. Let’s start by. Let me go, shoes off, socks off here. And these are. I love Xero, but I’m going to contract with vivo and that’s okay.
Steven Sashen
That’ll change the, you know. So by the way, while you’re taking your shoes and socks off, how do you deal with the alignment issue that happens where, especially as I’ve gotten past the age of 60, where I wake up and I seem to have heard something while I was dreaming.
Mike Wasilisin
Heard something. When you’re dreaming, you know, you wake
Steven Sashen
up and it’s like I must have had a, you know, I must have been doing something. I must have been in an MMA Fight when I was asleep, because why did I wake up and suddenly this thing isn’t working?
Mike Wasilisin
Well, I’ll tell you this. Is that in terms of sleeping, Stephen, I’m going to take that as a half of a joke, and it is
Steven Sashen
half of a joke.
Mike Wasilisin
It’s a half a joke. There is like, I’m a side sleeper, and side sleeping is actually the most difficult position to sleep in because it requires propping yourself up properly. And I have. I have over years and years and years, actually, we started developing a pillow company called Puzzle Pillow. You’re missing piece to a good night’s sleep. And these are pillow kits. But you can use your pillows at home for now. But if you’re a side sleeper, guys, super thick knee pillow. Okay? The thickest knee pillow you can. Then of course, your head pillow, then a hug pillow to hug. And there is a missing one. It’s called the wedgie, which is if you’re on your side, the wedgie goes on your sacrum. So whenever you sleep on your side,
Steven Sashen
you’re now lying down on your side. Yes.
Mike Wasilisin
When you’re sleeping on your side, you actually want to fall. You actually want to rotate back slightly, not. So you’re on your back.
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Mike Wasilisin
Because if you’re on your side, your shoulders crushed. If you put a pillow behind your back and lean back, it’ll stop you with the knee pillow and then the hug pillow. Steven, you do that. I don’t know if you do that, but it is, Matt. You know, it takes a little time to get, but you’ll never go back. And then every pillow, every hotel you go to, you go, I need five pillows.
Steven Sashen
Well, I do something close to that because I have my wife, who’s the hug pillow, and my dog, who’s the sacrum pillow. But I don’t. But I need. I need to throw the knees in the middle of that.
Mike Wasilisin
Hold on. The wife is not the hug pillow. The hug pillow. The wife hugs the hug pillow, and you hug the hug pillow over the wife.
Steven Sashen
I get that. That’s an interesting idea. The problem with the wife hug pillow combination at all is I don’t know how it happens, but when Lena goes to sleep, her internal thermostat gets cranked up to, like, 110. So, you know, I can only handle a little bit of that. I got to get my own pillow.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah, you got to get your own. You got to, like, put the hug pillow between you and her just so she feels you touching her, which is good. Checkbox. And you got that? Yeah, I got The. All these you can just get. If you can go to the App store and get the movie app, it’s free to download, and I have all these videos under Lifestyle at the bottom. It’s completely free, so you can just get all those in there.
Steven Sashen
Okay, back to nes.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay, so first, before we talk about knee, Val, we need to show what normal alignment is in the knee. Because you guys are walking, running, hiking, right? In your Xeros. And whenever we walk and hike, we’re essentially doing a single leg balance step every step we take. But if you’re standing, doing a lunge, you might go. You might think of a lunge in the gym, but think about if you’re tying your shoe, you’re going down into a lunge position, right? And then you also have a squat, which some of you are like my backers. I don’t squat anymore. Then how do you get on and off the. Tell me, how do you have a crane that lowers you onto it? How do you get it on off a chair? These are functional moves, people. So if we take the lunge, for example, if we take the foot forward, I’m going to show you guys biomechanical alignment, the way your body is designed to distribute weight. With the straight foot, we have an arch that is lifted. We have an ankle that is not collapsed inwards. It’s not rolled outwards. It is central centric. And then we have a knee, a thigh that is rotated out or externally. And so now when you maintain those positions and bend the knee, that knee tracks about over your fourth toe. Okay, this is biomechanical alignment. And this is if you’re doing 10,000 steps a day right now, right? And if you’re buckling your knee, if you’re. Do. If you’re buckling this thing 10,000 times, this stuff adds up. So let’s talk about what valgus is. Now. This is. Guys, I’m not kidding you. If you’ve ever had an ACL injury, uvalgus, okay? If you have plantar fasciitis, uvalgus. If you have bunions, you valgus. If you have Morton’s aroma, you valgus. If you have hip impingement, uvalgus, acl, mcl, pcl, quad tendonitis, runner’s knee, jumper’s knee. It band, hip impingement, cam, fai, labral tear, hip osteoarthritis. It is.
Steven Sashen
I get hangnails.
Mike Wasilisin
Not. We’ll get. We’ll get up there. Now that. I cannot relate that to biomechanical misalignment. That Is a stretch.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. Okay.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay. So this is what valgus is. And this is where most of you are gonna fall in this path, which is this, the step occurs. And now your foot externally rotates. And then whenever you step.
Steven Sashen
So wait, hold on, just. I’m gonna be super, super simple for people. For external rotation, imagine you’re taking a step and your toe, your foot is going straight ahead o’ clock and you’re looking at a clock. If you look down at the clock face externally, rotating means your foot is like at 1 or 1:30 or, you know, even more sometimes. That’s. Yeah, that’s the external part is going from, you know, from noon to three somewhere in there.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah, that’s great, Stephen. Noon to three or so. So the foot is. Now here’s the evalus is the foot. Let’s say the foot goes at 3 o’. Clock. And now what occurs is that knee, instead of tracking over the fourth toe, it goes over the third toe, the second toe, the first toe, Often you guys go, even if you had another foot, it would go over the. I guess if you have two right foots, it would go over the third or second or pinky toe of your, of your second foot. So valvus collapse is a buckling or a bowing inward of the knee.
Steven Sashen
And even so way of looking at is like, if you’re not looking at Mike doing this, he’s facing the camera and his leg is basically forming a right parenthesis. So the knee is going towards the left. Actually it’s going inward. The easiest way to think of it for you. And you know, and FYI, I mean this, it doesn’t have to happen if your foot is externally rotated. I’ve seen people who have, who are like straight ahead and still, for various reasons that I’m sure you can talk about, have knee valgus.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah. And so this is what happens is most of the time our feet, as we develop properly, our feet are relatively straight. But what occurs is we buckle inward and it causes a collision of the hip. And so what the foot does is it just starts, it starts toeing out like a duck. Yeah. And which further. Which, which, which is a, which is a positive feedback loop where it’s going to create more problems or negative feedback. It’s bad. Okay. You don’t want it. All right.
Steven Sashen
Okay.
Mike Wasilisin
So when you step here in this valgus, whether your foot is straight or whether your foot is three o’, clock, anywhere in between, when that knee starts buckling or collapsing inward through here, what occurs is simultaneously it drags the ankle inward with it. And now all of the weight is now distributed over the arch. The arch is not designed to handle all of the weight every time. And now you’re going to see the arch is going to collapse with it. And then you’ll see the big toe. Your big toe starts pointing the other direction it points. It points towards your pinky toe. And that, that becomes what you guys know as a bunion. And so this valgus collapse that occurs right here and what happens and everyone at home and Stephen, you guys tell you, I need you guys to pause and listen to me for a second. You have gas lit yourself to thinking this is normal. So if I get you in front, if you stand in front of a mirror and watch yourself right now, you do, you go, no, I’m good. You have gaslit yourself to think that you’re fine. You’re not. You need to take a slow, real look at this in a mirror and to record yourself. I, I see it. I take.
Steven Sashen
Wait, hold on, I’m going to. Wait, I’m going to pause right there because you just said something that I think is really important. I was going to say, and you alluded to it. Rather than just look at yourself in the mirror, you want to set up a camera, video, you know, your phone or video camera, and point it towards you. Because we’re so used to the way we see ourselves from our perspective in a mirror that literally we can see it incorrectly. Yes. Yeah. So, and it’s easier. I mean, and FYI, you might even want to show it to someone else. And there’s a quick story from my end where I had someone who was complaining. He said, I think the rubber on your shoes is defective because I’m wearing it out on the heel in this one spot. And he shows me the spot. I said, well, you’re over striding and heel striking. You’re putting your foot way out in front of you when you land and then you’re dragging it back and that’s causing the abrasion that’s making the heel wear away. He goes, I don’t do that. I said, I said, dude, this is just physics. There’s no way to cause that kind of abrasion without that kind of motion. So he sends me a video. And there was a problem with the video. I was hearing the audio, but I couldn’t get the video to play at first. And I could hear it because he’s. I could hear that he was landing, then his foot was slapping the ground. I finally got it to play.
Mike Wasilisin
I’m Listening.
Steven Sashen
And I. And I did a little freeze frame on it. And I drew. I drew lines on the screen showing him that. What he was doing. And then it took 20 minutes for him to finally agree that that’s what he was doing. And then he said, yeah, but I don’t do that.
Mike Wasilisin
It is, it’s. There’s denial. There is these phases. It’s true. Of like, acceptance. One is like denial. And then there is. Then there is a. I forget them. I have a degree in psych. I paid 100 grand to learn what a couple things that I forgot.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
But there is like, for example, I had a. I had a marathon runner. He’s running like 5 minute, 40 second miles. Crazy. But he’s just in. Last night, Sunday night, Chronic it, band issues. And I did a lunge face on View. And I saw it, but I realized it wasn’t enough for him, so I had him take his shoes off and I record it from the back. And I showed him right here, Chronic it issues. If you can see in the film.
Steven Sashen
Oh, yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
If you guys can see this at home, you don’t. His whole ankle is buckling and bowing inward.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. Instead of being a straight line from his heel up his leg, it’s literally just. It’s a left parenthesis. It says it’s his. His left foot making a left parenthesis from the back. It looks crazy.
Mike Wasilisin
He saw it. He goes, holy. He goes, my knee. He goes, my ankle’s bent. It looks like it’s ready to snap. I go, yeah, great. So it took. But me, by the way, just. If you guys didn’t see this, I zoomed in super tight so he could see this. And it takes that level sometimes for you to see it, but you have to do these tests. Guys in minimal clothing, I’m talking tighty whities, briefs, barefoot, for sure. With good lighting. Like, you have to see it like that.
Steven Sashen
Well, you know, there’s another thing that plays into this and you’re. I want you to go back to it in a sec. But is that when we’re doing any sort of. Any movement pattern, but especially even a dysfunctional one, after a while, if you keep doing it and it, you know, it starts out and it’s uncomfortable, you keep doing it, your brain eventually goes, oh, you’re not going to change that. I won’t pay attention. So not only do you stop feeling it, getting the proprioceptive info, but when that happens again, that’s partly what makes it literally harder to see. It’s weird.
Mike Wasilisin
You’re so Disconnected from it. It’s just flopping around, doing whatever. And it’s, it’s ultimately Stephen and everyone out there is, is if you follow my page and kind of know what I do or don’t, you might go, oh, I get. What’s the best exercise? What’s the best stretch? What’s the best this it is, I teach you how to have awareness of the alignment of your body. And it’s, it’s called positional presence, which is a constant state of awareness to the alignment of your body. Ultimately, every movement that I teach you, every movement is designed to help you connect with a muscle, to connect with alignment, so that whenever you do walk, you have, you basically open up a side of your dashboard in your car where you can see some new. You see some new gauges and dials. So that is ultimately what I’m teaching you is how to be aware. But to be aware of it, you have to know what is aligned, know where you are, and then you simply bridge the gap.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. And again, the video. The value for videotape I’ve seen this with runners is we often are so unaware. Well, you know, actually the example I like to give is when I was a young gymnast, when I was in junior high school, part of the compulsory floor exercise routine, you had to put your arm parallel to the ground. And so we went out and did it. We put our arm parallel to the ground and our coach would say, no, parallel. And we go, what? This is parallel. You go, no, you’re pointing up. And so from your eye perspective, parallel is with your hand above your shoulder, actual parallel from your perspective, from where your eyes are, looks like you’re pointing down a little bit. It took us, it took us 13 year olds weeks to learn what that actually felt like and get that locked in the memory.
Mike Wasilisin
What a good drill that you can apply later in life. You remember that for like it was a wacky one.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, you know, a little bit of time. So, okay, so we’ve explained what new valgus is and you started to describe part of the problem that’s going on with. And by the way, I want to do something about the, what you said about the arch. Your arch is totally able to handle all the forces when they’re applied correctly.
Mike Wasilisin
That’s right, yes.
Steven Sashen
So I just want to clarify that one.
Mike Wasilisin
Sure.
Steven Sashen
So, so since this knee valgus thing is from your perspective and you know, we’ll have to go through the other four things in a moment, like such a central thing, can you just quickly describe what some of the Other effects of that are as you move, you know, up or downstream.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah, well, let’s. Let’s start at the foot and move up a little bit. So we. Well, let’s. Let’s go to the foot. And so whenever. Steve, what Stephen said is, yes, you’re, you’re. The arch should be able to handle the weight of your body when distributed properly. But if you guys are valgusing, what’s occurring on the, on this. Let me lower the hole, lower my whole camera down here. We’ll start at the foot here. So whenever we are. When you are valgusing, that ankle is going inward, the knees going inward, and your. The. The mass of your body is now being forced over the inner part of your foot. And your foot is designed to distribute weight between the big toe and the fifth toe under the arch, the outside of the foot, the central of the heel. Like that’s the distribution that you should be distributing weight. But if you’re. When you go collapse, the weight distribution now is forced on the inside of the foot. And now that arch is literally trying to do the work of the rest of your foot. And it will fail over time. You know, it will fail and flatten. And that’s what we’re going to see here is if we just take this. The muscle effects. As the ankle goes inward, our plantar fascia on the bottom of our feet is elongated and stretched. Yeah, the muscles of the foot aren’t gripping properly to lift the arch. You have this ankle moving inward. And so now you’re causing imbalance of angled musculature. Could lead to increased strains, increased. I mean, you’re going to have imbalance in the lower leg muscles in here specifically. Now, when we get into the knee itself, what’s interesting is the ACL ligament is if your knee buckles, like right now on me right there. Okay. That end range there, I’m hitting my acl. That’s all acl, to be clear.
Steven Sashen
So wait, what Mike’s doing right now is exaggerating the valgus and showing as far as it can go. Like, that’s. There’s a place where it stops and when it stops. What you’re saying about the acl, the
Mike Wasilisin
ACL is the ligament, the key that is stopping it. And so if you’re valgusing, you are literally teetering with your. You’re relying on the fittest little ligament to support the impact of your body. Like you are. As my golf coach says, with my crazy golf swing and my strong grip, he goes, you’re living right on the edge of a bad neighborhood. Okay, so that occurs. And now what, what is happening here, too? A lot of runners to IT band issues. Now, remember that the, the glute maximus. People think that the glute is like, oh, it extends the thigh. It helps me squat and hinge, which it does. But the glute max, which is what is totally underrated movement, 50% of its job is rotation, and so 5 0% of the glute job is rotation of the thigh. So it actually rotates the thigh bone and the knee outwards. And so if it is not doing its job there, the thigh is rotating in the IT band. IT band to the tfl. Its secondary function is to abduct your thigh is to hold it out. So now you are relying on your ACL and your IT band TFL to hold the leg into position subconsciously while the biggest, strongest, most powerful muscle in your body is completely inactive.
Steven Sashen
Right.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay. So when that knee goes in, not only does it go in. What you guys need to understand at home is it creates torque. And what torque is, is we have this big, long thigh bone up top, and we have this short leg bone at the bottom. When the ankle goes. When, when the knee rotates in the thigh, the lower leg bone rotates inward, and so does the upper thigh bone, but they don’t rotate inward at the same, at the same angular speed. The upper thigh bone is rotating faster than the lower, and so it creates a twist or a torque like you’re wringing a towel inside of your knee joint, and inside that knee joint is your meniscus, for one. You also have your lcl, your pcl, but you’re creating torque and twist at your meniscus. So of course, the meniscus wears down unevenly from it. Okay. And we could get in, we can even get into specifics about where the meniscus wear where, But I think we’ll kind of just move up the chain.
Steven Sashen
If you looked at my recent MRI, you’d see it, because 33 years ago, I had a gymnastics injury where I landed and twisted at the same time. My lower leg didn’t go anywhere, and everything above my knee went somewhere. And you heard a sound that sounded like a gunshot, and I just made a tear in the lateral meniscus in a very specific spot. And you can see that’s, you know, that’s been wearing ever since.
Mike Wasilisin
Me too. I, you know, I was actually about 16 years ago. I, I, I, I say I fight it, but I fight valgus on my right knee is, I Could handle tear my right meniscus. Before, when I was in chiropractic school, I was training for the BIC 7, which is, I don’t know if you guys know Davenport, Iowa. It’s a pretty famous seven mile race. The whole first mile was like 15 degree grade uphill. It’s brutal. And so I trained for that for a few years and I tore my meniscus. This is before I got into like the sports injury biomechanics of this. You know, in chiropractic school they don’t really teach you. They’re not very palmer. It’s not very specific on extremity movement. They’re very good with spine, but not too much. So I had to learn that like extracurricularly so that I developed that.
Steven Sashen
For how long?
Mike Wasilisin
I don’t know, probably for 15 years before that. So even now, me, 15 years later, I still have to take special care to my right knee before I run. Like I run every morning now. And I’ll get, I do. It’s called Ground Force. This is what I’ll teach you guys, how to perform something called Ground Force. It is the skill you need to learn. I named that myself. I mean it’s a name that has been named. I just took it and applied it to this. But I’ve been working at this for, you know, if I don’t, if I don’t tune these muscles up before my run or hike or whatever, my knee will hurt. Like it will hurt again. Yeah, yeah.
Steven Sashen
And, and you know, to that point, the fact that I’ve been, I mean, my doctors are sort of surprised that I’ve been a master’s all American sprinter and I’ve been running on this thing for God knows how long for the last 18 years. And I go, well, it’s pretty straightforward. When I’m running, everything’s in the right alignment. So it’s. That’s the thing that’s saving it.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah, exactly. So when you put your. A lot of people go, well my, my mcl, I have a tear in my meniscus, guys, I’ve done this. You can find on any area of the body. You can find a study that has been done where they have MRI, 3 to 2, 300 to 2000 people that have no pain. Over 40 year old adults, 80 to 97% of them have tears, have 80 to 97%. So people go, it’s torn though. I’m like, yeah, so is mine, but it doesn’t hurt. And so is everybody around you. And the question is, why does yours Hurt and then mine doesn’t hurt. And it’s my best scientific guess is that the people who’s hurt, they have an active inflammation in there because they’re continuing to, to, to, to, to pressure distribute inequally to this day and causing a, almost a wound to stay open in that area. But when you stay in alignment for long enough, your body is healing itself. It’s laying down. Yeah.
Steven Sashen
As much as it can. I would also, I also have seen people come up with other ways and this is going to talk as we move into the other four things. You’re going to make other compensations that you’re not necessarily putting the same kind of forces in the problem area. I mean it’s, it’s a whole other thing anyway. Let’s keep moving upstream, shall we?
Mike Wasilisin
Let’s move upstream. Okay, so I’m using guys for reference. I’m using my right leg valgus as an example. And let’s just assume my left leg is, does not have val. Most of the time you guys have it on both, but one side is more pronounced than the other. Okay. So as we go upstream, let’s just say we take a step or we do a lunge or squat and that right knee, that right knee buckles inward and the right foot drops.
Mike Wasilisin
What is occurring is. And you know what? I’m going to give you guys something, a reference to understand this. I have a 13 year old client of mine, friend’s kid, the flattest feet ever. And I had him lift his arches and I had his parents measure his height on the wall. When he lifted his arch, he gained over one inch of height instantly. Listen, how do you communicate with a kid who doesn’t have much pain? What do you talk about? He’s 13. What do you do? Tell him what’s going to happen his body in 20 years. Yeah, right. But when I told him he will get taller, his ears perked up.
Mike Wasilisin
Height. So we stuck, we stuck with height. The point is this is your arch under your foot. If you guys, your arch gives you lift, right? You ultimately when you arch you have a gap under your foot. And whenever that arch drops, the arch doesn’t drop by itself. The arch is connected to the lower leg, to the knee, to the hip. And so whenever that arch drops, the same side hip that the arch drops on lowers with it. So you now have uneven hips.
Mike Wasilisin
From one arch that drops, your hip drops down unevenly. And what occurs at this is when that hip drops unevenly, the opposite side now becomes high. In a high hip side, it Puts depending on your back position. Misalignment pattern number two, hyperextension of the back. Misalignment pattern number three is hyperflexion or flat back hyphosis in the low back. Okay, so we hit these flexion. This is misalignment three, hyperflexion of the back or flexion hyperextension. Number two. Misalignment pattern number four is uneven hips, which we can call scoliosis if they’re uneven enough. Every. When one hip drops down, the spine shoots off to the other direction. It’s got to balance itself back. So the more the hip drop, the more lateral curvature you have in your spine. And when it crosses a 15 degree marker, you’re labeled as scoliosis. So we just covered valgus. Uneven hip, scoliosis, hyper flexion, hyperextension. The reason I said that is this.
Mike Wasilisin
If you have a valgus collapse of the right knee and that left hip drops. If you have hyperextension of your back, which is about 70% of you, when you extend your back, you distribute the forces into the joints of the back, the SI joints, the facet joints, the low back musculature becomes short and tight because of the position. And so now when you drop a knee down valgus, the right knee, the left hip, is now high. And when you’re in hyperextension, you, you are distributing most of those forces into the joints of the left side of your low back. SI joint, L5, L4, L3 facet joint. And you do that over time. It becomes joint pain. Then the body starts to grow bone.
Mike Wasilisin
I don’t know. God did everything, but he decided whenever the body grows more bone, it looks like stalagmites in a cave. I don’t know. He screwed up on that part. It grows really weird. And it grows inside the canal. When you’re 40 over time, 45, 50. And then you have numbness down. That left leg is called, it’s labeled as stenosis. Stenosis. All that is is a chronic hyperextension of the back for decades.
Steven Sashen
And, and FYI, for people, just to be clear, hyperextension, just think overarching.
Mike Wasilisin
Overarching, yeah. Okay. But if you have, if you’re somebody amongst smaller percentage of people that have a loss of curve of your back, you’ve lost the natural arch of your back and it’s flat. And if that right hip, if that right arch collapses, the knee goes in. What occurs now is this. Whenever you lose the curve of your back, the weight is now being distributed into the discs of the back and the Joints are good. The joints are like, you know, it’s like a car tire that’s. That’s unbalanced. The one side’s wearing down. The other side’s like brand new. It’s like brand new. It’s got a thousand miles on it unused. So if you have lost the curve of your back and then you have a valgus collapse on top of that, what occurs is the disc. The center of the disc is jelly. So we’re dealing with something called hydromechanics, me, hydraulics. Think about compression of rubbery liquid. And so when you lost the curve of your back and the right knee buckles in, the left hip is high and it compresses the disc on the left, but the pressure goes out the right side of the back. And that’s why some of you get sciatica disc herniation. A pain that goes down the right side is because you’ve lost the curve of your back and you have a high hip side. Disc bulges to the low hip side. Mostly. Look, I’m playing with Vegas odds here. You know, I’m right. Mostly. Okay, there’s oddballs, but for the most part, my odds that I could build a gold castle with this stuff. All right, so that explains how the valgus collapse and the high. There is one caveat to this I want to explain. Some of you have a leg that is actually built from the factory, a little bit long. I’ve seen, I’ve seen 2 inches anatomical difference. This woman has. When you have a 2 inches long leg, you have a significant scoliosis. Because I want you guys to understand. So show my model here how this works.
Steven Sashen
Wait, hold on. While you’re getting the model, I got to say this though. So leg length discrepancy is one of the most. I would argue is one of the most highly. That’s a little. That’s couching. It is a highly over diagnosed thing.
Mike Wasilisin
Yes.
Steven Sashen
The number of times I have someone. I literally have had people say things to me like, well, my right leg is half a millimeter longer than my left leg. And I go on Thursdays. So they go what? I go on Thursdays when the moon is rising. I mean, what are you talking about? So it’s often used by, let’s say people who are in the chiropractic profession who are trying to get money from you. So this is not going to be like a little thing that’s corrected by someone just yanking on your leg. We’re talking about like a real, real thing.
Mike Wasilisin
And just so you know, I have been exiled from the chiropractic community and I’ve been exiled from the physical therapy industry. So I am like an unrestricted free agen. Urgent on this. What chiropractors will tend to do is they just look at your lay. Lay on your back and they’ll look. And some of you will have one leg longer than the other. But oftentimes it’s because you have a hip that’s height. If you have a hip that’s hiked up, it draws that heel upwards towards the high hip and gives the illusion that it is a short leg, which we call a functionally short leg. There is structural long and there’s functional long. You can measure this, and I do measure this on people for to met the most. The best way to measure for a structural leg length is you actually take a measurement from the asis, which is the big bump in the front of the hip, and you take that all the way down to your medial malleolus, which is basically a big, big bump on the inside of your ankle. And you measure each side about three times. And you go right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left. And you kind of average those out and you see if there is a. If one side is, you know, maybe between 8 and 20 or 30 millimeters long. Which gets into the point about adding lifts in the shoe. If it is there. And I’m always part. I’m always like, man, I struggle with lifts.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
See the benefit of them. But if you don’t have to. If you don’t use one. Unless you really have to use one. But if you are functionally long on one leg, you are actually you. It is a anatomical variant that you need to learn how to move with the best you can. And not to use that as a detriment, but if you do are limited by your progress with it, I do think there is some value in adding it. But you can also, on the anatomical long leg, if you fix the valgus on the opposite side, it will lift it up for you.
Steven Sashen
Yep. Okay.
Mike Wasilisin
You got back to where we were. Okay. So if you have a high hip,
Steven Sashen
which we’re now showing on a, on, on a spinal skeleton. Not a real one, but yeah, I’d
Mike Wasilisin
like some real ones in here. That’d be awesome.
Steven Sashen
Yeah, they’re pretty cool.
Mike Wasilisin
So if we have a. Let’s just say we. Our right knee drops down, so our right hip becomes low. What happens is if, if we can see this. When the left hip rises or the right hip drops, the lower spine angles up to the right.
Steven Sashen
Yep. Now you got that. You got that left parenthesis going on in the lower.
Mike Wasilisin
And then because your body isn’t. Your body is so good at compensating, the spine leaves the sacrum. Instead of going straight up, it goes up to the right. And then what happens is the body then rotten in the middle back somewhere. Depends on the person. But let’s just say it’s around the central part of the back, it forms another apex, and it starts curving back the other way to balance itself.
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Mike Wasilisin
And so they call that scoliosis, which is, you know, it can come from a functional leg. It comes from a valgus collapse of the leg. It is. But regardless of that, what I teach people to do is to learn the components of aligning your spine. The cool thing is, is you got two levers in your spine. The levers that you have to control your spine are your hips itself. So your. Your spine, it laterally tilts right, laterally tilts left, it rotates right, it rotates left, flexes and it extends. And to control and straighten, the alignment of your low back is mostly done. The lowest portion of your back is done through controlling your pelvis. But to control the central part of your low back and your middle back, the rib cage is your second lever that flexes, extends, tilts, rotates. So essentially, I. I teach you guys the moves on the Rubik’s Cube. If you know the moves in the Rubik’s Cube, you know your misalignment, you have to solve for it. And I do. I can’t help you with this stuff. We actually have a scoliosis program, and we have all the support and everything for that. And we’ve got, like, you can see it. Before I sound like I Invented this, the shth institute, this woman started doing this. I mean, like the 50s. Like, she. I mean, this has been. This isn’t new news. This is. But it’s really hard to get past. Remember big medical device they want? They put the Sherman’s rods in the back and the bolts and this stuff that’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. You think they’re trying to send you to somebody to fix it? Sorry. It’s a money machine.
Steven Sashen
Well, you know, and for. I’m not going to defend everyone in the medical profession, but I also don’t want to demonize them all. Some of it is people just don’t know, you know, they’re not taught in their career. Exactly. This is not in the curriculum, and
Mike Wasilisin
it’s there for a reason. They’re not taught that because it’s funded by.
Steven Sashen
You do what you know, it’s funded
Mike Wasilisin
by the farm and it’s funded by, you know, big device. And there’s hospital systems that have huge influence on this and they’re prophesying. So I think doctors are good, but I think they’re definitely misinformed on the path of what does exist.
Steven Sashen
Well, you know, the other thing about doctors for just to come to their defense to a certain extent is that most doctors are going to. They’re going to. With all the patients that come in, most people are going to have the same, like 80% of the same issues. And so if they can handle the 80% of the things that they see, 80% of the time they’re doing a really good job. And we expect them to be able to know everything about everything, which is just not practical. And so, you know, a lot of these things, you find someone like you or you find someone who actually still has a medical degree of various kinds who’s decided to get into that 20% and. Or in the 10% or the 1%.
Mike Wasilisin
Yes.
Steven Sashen
And that’s a whole other game. So.
Mike Wasilisin
Right. Yeah, even me, I was invited on. There’s this woman, she does all this like gut health stuff. She’s like, will you be like on my. A guest speaker at my event? And I go, yeah. And she’s like, I want to interview. Here’s the questions. She goes, how can the. You know, what vertebral level can be misaligned to cause like sympathetic reflux in the, in the stomach? I go, I don’t know. And that I said that for. I couldn’t answer one out of 20 questions. I. I had Xero answers. I don’t know. I’m biomechanics alignment, like that’s what I love.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
The whole. But I do know peripheral nerves, like for example, the nerves that are impinged like L5 nerve root, which creates L5 radiculopathy. Like I got those. But that comes from biomechanic. So the point is like even me, I’m like very biomechanical because I see it everywhere. I see these misalignment patterns everywhere. And yeah, over time we predict if they improve that the person functions better, they run better, they feel better, they look better, they move better. So it’s really visually like, I like the visual evidence for myself. I’m kind of like a mechanic guy. So that’s the path that I chose.
Steven Sashen
Yeah. So, okay, we have a limited amount of time left. We moved up the. Up the Chain pretty far. Where else do we need to go in our limited time?
Mike Wasilisin
Okay, well, I want to take it back to shoes.
Steven Sashen
Okay.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay. I do want to take it back.
Steven Sashen
You can do that whenever you like.
Mike Wasilisin
All right, let’s. Let’s go up a little higher and take back shoes.
Steven Sashen
Okay.
Mike Wasilisin
So then there is two misalignment patterns that are remaining. One is winging shoulder blade, elevated shoulder. But here’s the difference with shoulder. I want you guys to understand this thing. I’ve made some breakthroughs with this. I want to share them with you. It’s that the scapula itself, the shoulder blade.
Steven Sashen
Okay. This one. If you’re gonna wait, if you’re gonna turn away, then I’m gonna have to do the English to English translation, so keep going. Okay, so now we’re looking at. Looking at the scapula, looking at your shoulder blade, and. Oh, so you can basically, if. Here I’m going to do. I’m going to describe the. The motion you’re doing. You’ve got your. You have. Let’s. Oh, you did your left hand. You take your left hand, put your fingers on your left shoulder, and then kind of rotate everything in. Like. Like. Yeah. So, like, move your elbow if you’re fa. If you’re looking at your arm, turn it clockwise. Or your elbows going up and behind you. And that’s moving your shoulder blade up.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah. Your scapula in the back. It is. If you guys at home can do this, you elevate it. Your shoulder blade elevates. So you can shrug it up, you shrug it down.
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Mike Wasilisin
You press it forward, you pull it back, and then it rotates. But the misalignment here, this one is attributed with nearly every single shoulder issue that you can imagine, from impingement to labral tears to rotator cuff tears to. To neck tightness. Because your neck, the muscles anchor on your shoulder blade, they go to your neck, many of them. But here’s the misalignment. It is. It is a shoulder blade that is tipped forward. It’s not just up. It is anteriorly tilted forward. It is up tilted forward with or without a wing. Winging is when the middle part of your shoulder blade nearest the spine, it starts peeling off of the rib cage. You can get your hand under it. I could smile. I could put drugs underneath there, and we could go across the border and it would be undetected. I think. I think we could do it. They’re not trained to look under the scapula yet.
Steven Sashen
No, no. Who thought of that?
Mike Wasilisin
You so this misalignment shoulder pattern, this anteriorly tilted wingy shoulder blade position, what it does is it tilts the whole shoulder complex into a forward position and you’ve got the roof on the shoulder blade, which is called your acromion. That sucker starts rotating forward and downward over your, almost over your chest. So when you lift your arm, it starts colliding. Your arm bone will collide with the roof of the shoulder. And in between the roof and your arm bone is one tendon and it’s your supraspinatus or your, you guys might call this your rotator cuff. There’s actually four of them, but it is the one that is injured the most. And because it’s pinched, there’s a little, you should have space in there for your arm to push and pull without that tendon that slid in between to collide. But it gets squished and sandwiched. It’s like a, it’s almost like a head on collision where you got the person that two cars hit. It’s like. And then they do that enough and it starts fraying like a rope. 40% hair. 50, 60, 70, 80.
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Mike Wasilisin
Surgeons will reattach it. You know what they do? They cut part of the roof. Off they go. There you go. So but that misalignment pattern is related very much with the anterior tilt of the pelvis. And here’s why. If we have. I’m just going to go, here’s what anterior tilt is for you guys.
Steven Sashen
Anterior tilt is tucking your butt underneath you, tucking your tail other way. Oh, anterior, sorry, sorry. Other way.
Mike Wasilisin
So it’s when the tailbone lifts up and increase arch in the back. But here’s what else happens. The sternum in the front where your, where your breastbone is, it also lifts up. But if both of those did that, you would be staring at the sky. So what the body does is it folds the upper body and shoulders downward so that your eyes can stay focused on a horizon straight ahead. So that’s why each one of these patterns is connected with another one. Everyone has a counterbalance point somewhere else. So is I’m always like, which one? I tend to help people start with aligning their core for the most part. There’s one exception only. It is valgus knee. I start people at the echo the order. This is the most successful order. After taking 15,000 patients through workshops, seminars. 100,000. I’ve had 100,000 members. This is the order that works ankle first, then thigh rotation, then foot third and then knee tracking fourth like that order of Addressing each one of those is it produces the most predictable positive outcomes. So let’s just tap on the last misalignment pattern and it goes. And you know, I consider tying it in with the scapula because when the scapula tilts forward, the head goes with it. Right guys, your neck is this little tiny thing. It just sits on this upper back of yours. It sits there. So it, this, when the scapulas rotate, the head juts itself forward. And when it does that, now the pressures distribute the lower part of your neck. And now you get everything imaginable in the lower neck. So that right there, that forward head and ever just, you know, anybody has neck issues. I always start people with upper back scapula position. It’s the only movement I’ve ever trademarked. It’s called the scap scoop. It’s where you actually scoop. So the scapula rotates anterior. The scoop is where it scoops under posterior. It doesn’t is a combination of pulling it down, but it’s down. And then the lower tip of the shoulder blade pulls under. If you guys want to feel this when you stick your arm to the side, you guys aren’t going to be able to get in 10 seconds, but this is kind of the 10 second effort. You got to reach away from you, but you actually pull the shoulder blade down and then rotate the armpit forward in front of you. Get the armpit and rotate the armpit forward. That is a two second hack to getting the scapula in position. So we have, we actually have one more that, you know, I should be in there. It’s reverse breathing. I mean it is actually where I start everybody from the hips up, I start them with the breathing. Because our body is designed just like a car is designed when you have a cylinder, car gas, you know, one of your, one of your, you know, pistons, and then the other, then three, then four. There’s a firing order. Well, your breath, firing order should go diaphragm. It should be, I call it a core breath because people just do this like diaphragm breath. I’m like, okay, that’s, that is step one. But the core breath is when you can diaphragm breathe, lift your pelvic floor, engage your transverse and do that powerfully every breath. And so but that misalignment pattern, that like that opposite breathing pattern. Holy shit. I mean complete deactivate. If you can’t core breathe, you can’t use your core. Many people are like, they think their core is like the six pack. I’m like, you have 12 muscles in there. The rectus on top is like 1/12, and it truly is 1/12. It’s not like it’s one of the 12, but it does 40%. It is a 12th. It is a 1/12.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
So the breathing pattern is the last misalignment pattern that there is. But if we put all of those misalignment patterns, you guys, you guys might have one of them. You could have every one of those, but if you sequentially improve each. I, I found through work in my, my experience is you have people focus on one region at a time, improve that region and move to the next region, then sync it up with the one below it. Because people go on my shoulder blade and I do my core. It’s too much. It’s like me going to golf less. He’s like, all right, get your wrist. Good, good. Okay, get your stance here. Good. Take it back. Point the club down. And then I, I just shank it off the right and hit somebody. So it’s too much, too much to do. So.
Steven Sashen
All right, we’re gonna take it back to shoes and we can wrap it up.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay, let’s take my shoes. And this is why I’m on the phone with Stephen too. And I’m just a fan of all minimalists. All minimalist shoes is because this, especially with Valgus collapse. Think of it this way. An suv, all right? Super high off the ground. And if you take a turn in an suv, center of gravity is high, right? It’ll tip over. It’s, it’s, it’s more unstable side to side. Now you go, let’s take a sports car. Low center of gravity, more stable. And yeah, sports car, though the challenge with sports car is it’s, you know, it’s, it, it doesn’t take bumps as well. But the difference is with when you go low to the ground like a sports car, you start using your calves to shock absorb. And so shock absorption aside, the higher the cushion you have, the more exaggerated your misalignment is. With the navalgus period, it is more. The higher the cushion, the more exaggerated your knee. It’s a trade off. You’re trading some, some cushion which is in theoretically is great to have it, but it disconnects you. It. That cushion. You’re now compressing unevenly into that cushion. You’re not compressing evenly. You’re taking your improper weight distribution patterns and compressing unequally into foam. And so you are going to exaggerate your misalignment Pattern your valgus knee, your hip drop will become misaligned. And you’re also. I don’t know about you, Steven. I don’t know. Almost anybody’s ever sprained their ankle barefoot before. Have you?
Steven Sashen
Nope.
Mike Wasilisin
No.
Steven Sashen
I don’t know actually, wait, I did, I did once, but it was because I was jumping down a flight of stairs. Okay, wait, I was jumping down a flight of stairs and then I noticed the ceiling above me was a fire. Whatever the hell I’m looking for, you know, fire thing. Anyway, and I was about to hit my head, so I ducked and then I caught both of my feet on the stair and I spray my ankles. But that was a little extreme.
Mike Wasilisin
School, High school.
Steven Sashen
No, it was actually on the way to a comedy club. It was in the basement and I was wearing, I was basically wearing nothing and just did this really stupid thing. So this is like in normal life? No, in exaggerated crazy life. Yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
Like just. So my wife, she’s been minimalist shoe for years, right. But she, someone sent her some like, some like of course, Nikes, they were cute. And she’s a dance teacher and we went on turf and she completely sprained her ankle within five minutes.
Steven Sashen
The best, the best thing I can say this comes from Dr. Irene Davis who said on a panel discussion that I was on against some guys from Brooks and Adidas. He said in the 60s and early 70s we were playing basketball and running in thin soled running shoes and we weren’t seeing the kind of injuries, the severity of injuries or number of injuries, injuries we’ve seen ever since. So she’s asked what problem were you guys trying to solve and why didn’t it work? Dead silence.
Mike Wasilisin
Really?
Steven Sashen
Dead silence. Really? Yeah. So, and, and you know, now we have.
Mike Wasilisin
What were they trying to solve?
Steven Sashen
They didn’t have an answer. So, you know, now we’ve got our X1 basketball shoe on, on players who are in the NBA and WNBA who are coming back going, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been and I’m not getting all that ankle torque and knee torque and all those other things. I mean it’s, it’s, this is not rocket science.
Mike Wasilisin
It’s not. And so, and also the second effect is the actual connection. Right. And you, we talk about this, Stephen. Is that what has so many receptors in it?
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Mike Wasilisin
And it is about as many receptors as your fingers. And the further you, you put your foot from the earth, the more disconnected you, your those sensors are with your foot impact position, meaning the slower the reaction time.
Steven Sashen
Yep.
Mike Wasilisin
And you saw the Reaction time. And you combine that with unequal pressure distribution into foam, you are in a very unstable environment for the trade off of what, smushing your foot more. Switch cushion. So this is why I’m here with Steven and Xero. And I’ve been such a big fan of. Of Xero. And I’ve been in a contract with Vivo for like five, six years. Vivo’s hardcore barefoot. I think Xero is going to have. I like, Xero is having personally. Personally, after all these years. What I do now is like with my Vivos, I put a 5.5 millimeter lens insole in them. Not all of them, but when I’m hiking and hunting, I just Taking the. It’s just. For me, it’s the jabs from rocks and sticks that get me. So I give myself a little bit more, but. And then, of course, you had the white toe.
Steven Sashen
Well, the thing. The thing that I say is we want you to be as close to barefoot as possible given the activity that you’re engaged in, given where you are. So there’s certain. Certain situations. Like we have a fully waterproof snow boot. You can’t make that 4 millimeters thick because then they’d freeze your feet off. So but we’re always. The number one thing is natural motion, and then the number two thing is as much feedback as you can possibly get. So, I mean, everything from the speed force, which I’m wearing, which is as minimal as anything else that you’re going to find, to something like, you know, a fully waterproof snow boot, and maybe
Mike Wasilisin
you have feedback on this. And so what we just did was I did some product testing up on my mountain up here, where I took my Danner hunting boots. I took another pair of hunting boots. I took some Vivo boots. I actually, I only have your white tennis you sent me a few years ago. But what we did was, is there is this misconception where, let me just say the more cushion in the shoe, the more the tread matters on the shoe.
Steven Sashen
Yeah.
Mike Wasilisin
Because the less cushion you have, the more your foot wraps around an object. And now you have. You have a stickiness just from maximal surface contact where you don’t have that with a stiff shoe. So you’re relying on like meat treads to do it. I personally love wrapping my foot around objects. It’s one of the best feelings ever. I love it. I can’t put words on.
Steven Sashen
I agree. You’re preaching the choir. Well, okay, so we’ve done a bunch of preaching. We got to wrap this up. I mean, we don’t have to you and I could do this for the next five hours.
Mike Wasilisin
Let me check. I think I have a patient at 4. Let me make sure.
Steven Sashen
Well, you got a patient of four. I got to get home to a dog and then I’ve got an event. There’s a big birthday party. So that’s my. That’s my time constraint. So do me a favor. Remind people how they can find you and where they can go and to experience more of what we’ve been talking about and experience it instead of just hear about it and kind of imagine it and then we go from there.
Mike Wasilisin
Cool. So you guys can find me. I’m move you move university, move letter U everywhere. Move you on Instagram, move you on YouTube, move you dot com, use them. Because I paid tens of thousands of dollars to have those five letter domains everywhere. Use them. Okay, so I’m M O V E U everywhere. You can find my free stuff on Insta. I’m in the app store. But you know, if you go to the website, you can learn more about different program. Like I have a full program for Valgus knee. It is the most comprehensive and most thorough on planet earth. You will not find a more. It is actually I have nine months of programing planned and the reason why no one’s ever done that much is because planning nine months of program is fudgeing, exhausting. Okay. It is painful to do this. I’m not saying you. It’s like anything in life though. It’s like if you were to do like week one, you will be 6% better for life. If you do week two, you’re 9%. So it’s a. They’re progressive training plans to help you stack skills on top of skills and reinforce those. Very proud of the programming for that. But you can find my free stuff everywhere. YouTube move you get on the email stuff we send out monthly things about different blogs that we write. I got blogs everywhere. So just move you. I’m all over the place. Follow me on all channels and I’ll help you fix your shit.
Steven Sashen
Well, first of all, thank you, thank you, thank you as always. It’s a pleasure for everyone else. You can tell that Mike is very restrained. Not at all. Has no opinions about anything that he’s. That is usually really holding back. And so if you can’t tolerate how much he’s just not willing to share, you know, you’ll have. You’ll have to deal with it.
Mike Wasilisin
I try to give it all away. I’m like, how can I make this simpler?
Steven Sashen
Exactly. No, no, it’s Brilliant that you do so. And just a reminder for everybody else, first of all, thanks for being here. Secondly, head over to www.jointhemovementmovement do to find previous episodes. How you can find us on social media. If you want to find a different place to get the podcast, you can do that. If you want to reach out for suggestions, recommendations, complaints, or saying thank you or anything, including, you know, if you know someone who you think I should talk to on the show. I’m still trying to find someone who thinks I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome to have a conversation with them. That’d be a whole lot of fun. Either way, you can find me by emailing. Move m o v e jointhemovementmovement.com but most importantly, with whatever you’re going to go to and do next, go out and have fun and live life feet first.
Mike Wasilisin
Wait, epilogue. Epilogue. Epilog.
Steven Sashen
Quick, quick.
Mike Wasilisin
Okay, Stephen. Now the guys. Eight years ago, I was down to Xero headquarters in Denver and I was working through like a chronic. I forget what it was like. It was like a. It was like a tibialis issue with my lower leg. I was working through it and Stephen literally sees me and he goes, I see your problem. And he goes in, just literally pushes and does like trigger point on this thing. And I’m not. Guys, I’m not kidding you. It resolved it instantly. Still to this day, I want to know, really, Steven, I’m going to hold you right now. What did you see and what did you. What were you doing? I mean, to me, I can’t. Therapy?
Steven Sashen
Yeah. I can’t answer the question because, well, it would take a while. You know, we all are perceiving information, much of it unconsciously. And there’s certain kinds of things that I quote. See, it’s not magic. It’s not like, you know, or whatever. It’s just there’s a certain feeling I get in my body when I’m scanning and seeing something where I go, oh, that’s out of whack, basically. I do that with intellectual things, too. It’s like something feels a little off there and that’s the gist of it. And sometimes for a lot of those,
Mike Wasilisin
it’s because I’ve been for years.
Steven Sashen
Well, it’s either something that isn’t. That’s being held too tightly or something that just needs a little wake up and then I do that and that’s all I know. It’s not something that I, you know, not making a profession out of it. It’s just a weird thing. Like, I had a friend going through acupuncture school, and every now and then he’s working on someone and he’s like, I’m not sure where this point is. I went, it’s right there because how do you know that? I went, because it’s right there. I don’t have a better answer than that.
Mike Wasilisin
I guess I’ll just have to rest in peace knowing that it just isn’t. I guess as long as it helped,
Steven Sashen
that’s all that matters. The rest of it is a story.
Mike Wasilisin
Yeah, it was actually, guys, it was very impressive. I seriously, to this day, I was still like, what the hell? He saw something. So there’s the epilogue.
Steven Sashen
All right, thank you again. See you all later. Go out, have fun and live life feet first.
Mike Wasilisin
Live at feet first, baby.