Chris Duffin believes in living life at the extremes—extreme performance, extreme competence, and extreme achievement.
A true-to-life mountain man with his story as a best-selling autobiography and upcoming documentary movie Chris has numerous accolades to list. From sitting on the board of OregonTech, where he received his engineering degree, to also on the board of the College of Functional Movement Clinicians. He holds awards and records for his inventions and unduplicated feats of strength.
Using his engineering degree and MBA, he spent nearly 20 years becoming a sought-after turnaround expert in the aerospace, automotive, and industrial equipment manufacturing sectors. But most people know him for his work after moving on from that career, founding his own Education and Manufacturing companies focused on biomechanics, human movement, and personal development. As an award-winning expert in these fields, he holds patents and has been recognized for scientific innovation, and is a desired keynote speaker.
In the sports performance world, Chris’s work is everywhere. His game-changing products are used in nearly every professional sports team in North America, all the big-name colleges and a thousand others, all military branches (white house included), and so many more. His concepts have changed the landscape of strength training in improving performance and the systemized approaches to assessing and correcting human movement dysfunctions.
With extremes again, Chris is not just a recognized thought leader but has held numerous all-time world records and become one of the strongest pound-for-pound powerlifters in the world. He holds the Guinness World Record for the heaviest sumo deadlift of all time, with 1001 pounds for almost three repetitions. He also completed the same feat with a 1001lbs squat making him the only human in history to have Squatted and Deadlifted 1000+lbs for reps. He used these feats of strength to raise money and awareness for charities related to his upbringing.
As for the true-to-life mountain man portion might be best left to his first book, “The Eagle & The Dragon.” Growing up homeless in the wilderness. He was raised in an abusive and chaotic household (tent, shack, tree fort at times) where his childhood was composed of skinning rattlesnakes, foraging for food, and protecting his sisters and mother. With stories of dealing with murderers, drug running and abuse, human trafficking, death, a serial killer, and extreme poverty. He could attend college as a star athlete and valedictorian after graduating high school. In college, he worked full-time to take custody of his three younger siblings and get them out of that toxic environment. It seems pointless even to add the part that he still graduated from college at the top of his class.
Today, Chris is an advisor and Chief Engineer/Visionary to Kabuki Strength & Bearfoot Shoes. He is focused on his passion for personal development with his philosophies and tools around mindset, goal setting, execution, and deep introspection.
He is the father of three wonderful children and husband to an amazing Canadian chef who appears in reality-TV cooking shows. If he’s not with his family, working on himself and his businesses, or remodeling his house, you can find him in his shop perfecting his Mad Max off-road war machines.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Chris Duffin about the truth regarding squat shoes.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How ankle mobility is crucial for optimal positions in weightlifting movements.
– How your footwear choice impacts muscle engagement, biomechanics, and injury prevention.
– Why improving bracing techniques can enhance force output and reduce injury risk.
– How specialized weightlifting shoes can improve performance in specific movements but may hinder overall athletic development.
– How strong feet and ankles are essential for proper alignment, load distribution, and resistance training.
Connect with Chris:
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@ChrisDuffin
Instagram
@mad_scientist_duffin
Links Mentioned:
chrisduffin.com
Connect with Steven:
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@XeroShoes
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@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Chris Duffin:
Welcome to the Movement Movement with Steven Sashen.
Steven Sashen:
And welcome to the Architect of Resilience with Chris Duffin.
Chris Duffin:
Wait, I’m confused. So are we talking feet today or are we going to talk butts? I am all mixed up now.
Steven Sashen:
That was because of something we said privately before here. And just because you’re holding up a foot skeleton, that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to hold up a butt related something. So let’s just move on.
Chris Duffin:
We can stay on topic for sure.
Steven Sashen:
No, we can’t. But that’s a different story altogether. Do you want to tell people why we’re doing this and why we’re doing this together?
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. So we today are going to talk about Olympic weightlifting shoes and the use of squatting in general. People get confused weightlifting thinking it’s the term of everything with regards to lifting weights in the gym when Olympic weightlifting is a sport just like golf and soccer and has a specific set of things, and that has some very specific movements. There’s shoes within that, and those get used in a proliferation of other things. We’re going to talk about that. There actually happened to be a recent friend of mine, someone that we both follow, Dr. Mike Isretel, that did a video on this just a few days ago. We were already planning on doing a video on this so this isn’t really a response video in any way or form, but has certainly added to the context and discussion. So why are the two of us talking about this, Steven?
Steven Sashen:
Well, wait, so first I’m going to do the Reader’s Digest version of what you just said. So whenever people take up some new sport, especially one involving moving your body, the question is always what equipment do I need? And when it comes to lifting weights, people often think, “Hey, I need squat shoes.” You go to a CrossFit gym, you’ll see a whole bunch of them. And so when I was thinking about this and it came up in some conversation, I knew the best person to talk to was you. And not surprisingly, we had very similar opinions about this. And yes, as you said, our friend Mike Isretel did a little something about this and we’ll dive into that. So that’s what we’re talking about. Now let’s talk about the who we are and why. Here, I’m going to do me first, only because your cred is much more interesting in this world.
So I’m Steven, co-founder, I was co-CEO, but now my wife is CEO and I have a new title. I’m the Chief Barefoot Officer at zeroshoes.com. We make footwear design for human feet and we’ve been doing this for about 14 and a half years. We have a complete line of shoes, boots and sandals for casual and performance use that people use for everything from taking a walk to running marathons to playing basketball in the NBA, we might talk about that briefly and we’re at Zeroshoes.com. Off to you.
Chris Duffin:
All right, so I’m Chris Duffin. I’m an inventor and an author around things related to human resilience. The things that I’ve developed are used in nearly every professional sports team in North America, close to a thousand colleges, all branches of the military, even the White House. When I talk about physical resilience, I’ve lifted a lot of weights in the past, so I was known for that. I did 1000 pound squat for reps and 1000 pound deadlift for reps was kind of unique, especially considering my weight when I did it. But I’m very passionate about the subjects of human resilience. That passion developed in my very unique upbringing when I developed a lot of mental models around how to use challenge and the struggles around us in all realms to become stronger and more resilient and capable human being. So here we are today.
Steven Sashen:
I left out-
Chris Duffin:
And so I own a part of Kabuki Strength, premier equipment provider related biomechanics as well as Bearfoot shoes, B-E-A-R. And I guess we’d say Steve and I are somewhat competitors, but I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter in our views of things we do.
Steven Sashen:
No, we both hold the belief that the more the merrier. And in fact, I missed you at the Bearfoot Shoe Expo two weekends ago. That was super, super fun with a couple thousand people who showed up walking around crying and thanking us for what we’ve done for their lives. Hey, I didn’t leave out my only bit of street cred. Well, currently I’m a Masters All-American sprinter, which I have been for the last 15 years. So that means for men in my age group, I’m one of the 20 of the fastest guys in the country. So does not hold a candle to lifting thousands of pounds over and over and over. But hey, it’s something for a 62-year-old short guy.
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. What races do you run?
Steven Sashen:
100 meter outdoor, 60 meter indoor.
Chris Duffin:
Nice. What’s your times on those?
Steven Sashen:
Well, the season just started, so I don’t know yet. In theory, as you get older, things get slower, but I had some improvements to my form recently that feel like I’m faster. So I’m looking forward to the first time race in just a couple of weeks.
Chris Duffin:
I know you put on some additional strength too, you were talking about, or at least some hypertrophy of the running muscles.
Steven Sashen:
Yes, I have worked on the running muscles. You can debate what those are. So all of that-
Chris Duffin:
That’s why I left that as that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I’m not going to don’t want to get into that. So anyway, yeah, I’m looking forward to this season to see what happens. Last time I ran indoors, I ran the 60 in about 8.5, which is All-American time for people five years younger than me. So I was pretty happy about that.
Chris Duffin:
Nice.
Steven Sashen:
Anyway, let’s go on to the thing. So what started, I don’t remember what was the thing that inspired me to reach out to you and say, “Hey, I have some opinions about squat shoes and if anybody’s going to know more about this, it’s you.” And we started chatting. So let’s dive into that. And why don’t we start with the simple thing. Do you have any idea… Well, let’s describe what they are and we can talk about history and applications.
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. So a squat shoe, well, it’s actually not a squat shoe and it’s Olympic lifting shoe.
Steven Sashen:
In the same way that what we make are not technically barefoot shoes because that is quote an oxymoron, you can’t be barefoot and in shoes. Squat shoe, it’s just the term that people use more often, especially when they’re not Olympic lifters AKA ollie lifters.
Chris Duffin:
Yes, exactly. So it is a shoe with a significant heel raise in it. It’s very solid, which you do need a solid base within any lifting environment if you’re going to maximize your performance. And the goal of that is to be able to get in a position. So when you’re throwing a weight up overhead with a snatch. So from the floor up and above your head-
Steven Sashen:
We’re not there yet. Let’s stay on the anatomy of the squat shoe. So elevated heels, stiff-
Chris Duffin:
Elevated heels.
Steven Sashen:
… often made of wood or something approximating wood. One thing that’s important for you and I is they tend to have pointy toe boxes. They’re again very, very stiff. They lock your foot down into the shoe arguably nicely. But I can’t remember what, if anything, are they doing for any traction on the ground itself?
Chris Duffin:
The primary piece of the shoe is the elevation. If you don’t have those and you’re trying to do those movements, people often stand on a weight or something like that. They’re trying to get in a better position where they would lack mobility due to ankle dorsal flexion to be able to get into the positions to perform lifts to make it easier.
Steven Sashen:
But backing up a half a step, do you know why or when the first squat shoe came out or how that all started?
Chris Duffin:
I did pull up the history on that when we first started doing the plan on this before I canceled on you, I think three times. So for context of my constant canceling on Steven, I had a pretty challenging month with my mother passing and a few other things going on. And I do not remember. So the Olympic lifting did start without the shoe and then that was something that came later and it came after. So originally people were doing more of the split catch snatches and something around the evolution of that. There was some timing that was when the shoes came in, I believe. I’m not an expert in this area.
Steven Sashen:
Nor am I. I looked it up as well. And similarly, if I was smarter, I would’ve pulled up whatever link it was I sent to you. So what someone told me was that there was some early lifter, and I don’t remember if it was something that he made to accommodate the fact that he had either longer femurs or shorter femurs, I don’t recall which, and I can’t seem to get in my head, which would make sense if either of those, but let’s just say many things, something caught on in one world and then everyone just assumed and arguably for a particular type of person, and then it just expanded. Now anyone who’s lifting anything, whether they’re doing Olympic lifting or if they’re dead lifting or squatting across the gym or whatever else, it’s like, oh, you’ve got to have these and you have to have that heel lift. And why would that heel lift be important? Let’s do it this way. Why would that heel lift be important for people doing Olympic lifting and why would it be completely useless for anybody not?
Chris Duffin:
So you can do Olympic lifting without it, and there are some top-level, top-placing world athletes doing it. There’s a number of tremendous CrossFit athletes doing Olympic lifting movements and competing at a high level without wearing Olympic lifting shoes. So let’s clarify that. But the positions in that are very sport-specific. They are very demanding of ankle mobility, particularly given limb lengths can play a role in that making that much worse. So again, if we get into sport-specific type things, there’s always some level of is that the reality of the way we function within the world? So saying that that’s a reasonable shoe to wear in that environment does not mean that that should be across the board as you lift weights per se. We’re talking about an overhead movement with several hundred pounds directly overhead coming off the floor. And that is something that does put a lot of challenge on that.
And so those people want to maximize the results, it’s about moving that weight as best as possible within that, not the context of their overall physical development, not the context of their overall athletic development and injury risk. It is how do I maximize that? And that means being an athlete doesn’t mean being healthy. It doesn’t mean being safe, it means winning.
Steven Sashen:
Accomplishing your goal, yeah.
Chris Duffin:
Exactly. Anything that’s going to help accomplish that goal is going to be positive.
Steven Sashen:
So there’s two things that pop through my mind. One is in the running world, there’s the same thing. Everyone’s like, “Oh, I got to get those super shoes, those highly cushioned maximalist super shoes of the carbon plate.” And I’m actually going to do a video about this. I don’t know if you’ve seen these videos where it’s referred to as two cameras, one light, so you’re looking to the left and you say something and then it’s you in a different outfit looking to the right that’s talking with yourself basically. And I’m going to do once, like, “Hey, I got a marathon coming up and I wonder which of these super shoes should I get?” And then it’s me on the other side going, “Well, I don’t know, are you 110 pound Kenyan running slightly over two hour marathon?” “No.” “Well, that’s who they’re made for.”
So in a similar vein, people are wearing some of those shoes and actually it’s similar to a couple ways. So let’s say you’re one of the top five runners in the world and one day one of the guys who you’re neck and neck with shows up in a new pair of shoes and he beats you, what do you think you’re going to buy the next day? And so I think there’s some of that with lifting shoes as well, like someone did well and everyone started doing it and then it becomes somewhat ubiquitous. But highlighting two things, and the third point that occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of before, that you’ll get a kick out of. So when you are again in that position where you’ve got a whole bunch of weight over your head, a whole bunch of weight over your head and the proper form, your shoulders are slightly hyper extended, and if you don’t have the right ankle mobility, which you mentioned, then to balance that slight overextension by elevating your heels could be advantageous for some people. And that’s the geometry. But I was just thinking about the clean-
Chris Duffin:
Yeah, because actually going, so people may not realize this, but to lock that in, you’re going into quite a bit of flexion with the shoulder. That’s the very far overhead, almost a little bit behind you. And you’ll see the same thing in strongman athletes. That’s another one where we’ll see, and I do promote the use or maybe not promote, but I have no argument against and I see the evidence of why doing an overhead lift, an overhead press of 500 pounds, 400 pounds, what these incredible human beings do, and you have to go into that flexion. If you’ve got it out in front, you’ve got a whole lot more of your stable, your triceps, your pecs, your risking injury of maintaining that position, being leaned back, which being leaning back like that, it’s going to put a lot of more stress on extension within the disc, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yep.
Chris Duffin:
So being able to get into this nice flexion of the shoulder to get in that position, if we elevate the heels that’s going to drive your pelvis forward, lock you back into that back position much easier.
Steven Sashen:
Well, here’s the thing that struck me as so funny though. If you are doing a clean and jerk when you’ve done the clean and often, so you’re sitting there with the bar in front of you basically on your shoulders for lack of a better term, and you’re squatting down, because you had to squat to get the bar or to get under the bar, ironically, it seems to me that that would be the time where you don’t want your heels elevated because that would be shoving you forward. So where you get the advantage in the lockout at the last part of the lift, you’re having a disadvantage at the beginning of that lift.
Chris Duffin:
Yes, exactly. So just like raising a heel, if you’re doing a snatch, you’re still dead lifting the bar off the ground, right?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Chris Duffin:
But you are much physically stronger for that with that given load than you are at the point of the lockout, and the lockout is the keys. You’re actually carrying momentum at the lockout. You’re not even really strong enough necessarily to get that into position a lot of times. You’re carrying that through. And so are balancing your strengths through the total movement. So yes, you may be disadvantaging other times, but let’s just take that example of the strongman doing an overhead press for example. Does that mean I should wear those shoes if I’m doing overhead pressing? Well, no. If I want to overhead press, I want to have as much time on tension of the muscle tissue as possible. And actually being in the lock position is actually when I’m not.
Steven Sashen:
Relaxed.
Chris Duffin:
Right, relaxed. And I’m also behind, it’s not actually the pressing movement. So it doesn’t necessarily mean if I want to develop pressing ability and pressing strength, should I be putting those on? No, possibly not. It’s going to put the back in a little bit more hyperextension. I’m going to have the weight behind me instead of actually pressing in front and engaging those delts and triceps and pecs and things to develop it. And coming up right as I touch lock, but then going right back into the descent of the eccentric to maintain my time under tension on.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a very interesting thing. Because I’m just remembering when the overhead press, or for lack of a better term, a military press was part of powerlifting, the way that people would cheat that, if you will, is by leaning back. So it was almost like a bench press without a bench. So you’re engaging much more of those muscles, which now it’s a very different story, but as you get to that lockout, getting your arms behind you is going to allow you to lock out. So back to a question number one, so is there anything in a typical Olympic lifting shoe that is about giving you any sort of grip or traction at all?
Chris Duffin:
So I have not worn Olympic lifting shoes.
Steven Sashen:
Me either. I saw a pair, but I can’t remember. That’s why I asked.
Chris Duffin:
No, but I know where you’re coming from because that was something that was, I think addressed in Dr. Mike’s video that he hit on quite a bit, was the grip or traction. And I did not go do, as he suggested, looking for barefoot squat accidents.
Steven Sashen:
No, I haven’t done that either.
Chris Duffin:
But yeah, there’s certainly the sheer gripping force on the floor is substantial. And I have encountered times when I’m not wearing any shoes that my grip is not good on a synthetic surface where putting my barefoot shoes on, plug, plug plug that have the low durometer sole on it has really great gripping power within it.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I know what he was saying. So Mike’s point was you have better traction with your foot in the shoe than you would have if your foot was on just whatever surface you’re lifting on.
Chris Duffin:
Correct. And I would say that that is a correct statement in my-
Steven Sashen:
I would say possible depends on, I mean, because he keeps bringing up the term sweaty feet, so it depends on your feet. If you chalk up your feet, that’s going to be a different story depending on the surface, it’s a different story. And depending on when I got back into sprinting and I said, “What do I need for shoes?” Everyone said, “Whatever you buy, buy it a size and a half too small.” And I’m guessing the only way you could really lock your foot in fully, other than the straps that people are using in that shoe, is to have something that’s squeezing your foot together, which we can dive into how non-optimal that is.
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. And that is an issue too with some of the shoes that want to roll over. So I have experience with what Mike’s talking about. And so when you have those high level of loads and you have maybe a wood or concrete or a slight bit of dust on a rubber floor and you’ve got four or 500 pounds on legs slightly spread maybe to do a squat or deadlift, there’s times that yes, your feet, if I’m climbing a tree or going over rocks or doing stuff, my bare foot is the best. But that’s because I also have that proprioception, that awareness of my environment, the ability to grip and move and can deform my foot. But when I’m on that flat surface with maybe a little bit of something on there, there is time rubber is going to stick to that better, even though I may feel really great if I’m going to run or something like that on it. But the forces aren’t as high, as that.
So is that a potential issue? Yeah. And I think we’ve got a number of other potential issues there. If we’re talking about just wearing no shoes in a gym around an environment where if you were not taking care and cleaning yourself and you’ve got some potential disease transfer, you’re going into the back… I think that in a public environment, in a training space where somebody may be, I would agree that you should put on some zero shoes or some barefoot shoes or something like that, unless it’s an environment that people are okay with that, then it’s fine as well.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. Getting some disease thing. Well, first of all, I love it when people say that my gym won’t let me in there because they say that what happens if I drop a weight on my foot? I go, “The same thing that happens-
Chris Duffin:
The same thing if you have your shoe on.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly.
Chris Duffin:
I know.
Steven Sashen:
That little bit of nylon is not going to make a difference. I had that when I walked into a grocery store in bare feet and they said, “You need shoes?” I said, “Why?” They said, “Well, sanitary purposes.” I said, “It’s cool if my feet get dirty.” And they were like, wait, no, wait, what? I said, “Oh wait, do you mean the other way around? Wait, are you suggesting that my feet are dirtier or somehow worse than whatever people have been walking around in in their shoes? That seems absurd.”
Chris Duffin:
All right guys, we talk a lot about mental resilience on this podcast, but let’s talk about another type of resilience. That’s movement resilience. We want to move well, recover better and do it for life. And it starts with your feet. And you can start today with Naboso. Naboso is a sensory technology company founded by a functional podiatrist and all their products feature a texture to stimulate, strengthen and awaken your feet. I use their splay toe spacers and neuroball to release my feet at the end of every day. They also have these textured recovery socks that feel like a mini massage when you walk around. If you’re looking for an effective way to bulletproof your feet, head to naboso.com, that’s N-A-B-O-S-O.com and use code RESILIENCE for 20% off.
Yeah, no, I agree with that because it’s like what’s the difference of your foot walking on the ground and transferring something then? It makes no logical sense. But I think that there’s some societal norms and stuff as well if it’s an environment. I used to be a hardcore in that manner. My gym is shoes optional and a lot of people choose not to.
Steven Sashen:
Great.
Chris Duffin:
So it has been that way for forever.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll tell you one day I was walking into our office and I’m wearing a pair of ratty shorts. My zero shoes T-shirt was not as pristine as the one I’m wearing to talk with you. My hair was particularly big on that rarely humid day in Colorado. And I’m in bare feet and I catch my reflection in the window as I’m walking into the office and I just stopped dead in my tracks went, “Oh, I’m that guy. Oh.” So be it. Well, let’s talk about my, and I think perhaps your favorite part as well, which we mentioned, and that is… So hold on one sec, backing up, is there-
Chris Duffin:
Well, you had a question. When did it peripherate beyond Olympic lifting?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Chris Duffin:
So I think more of that started, so powerlifting was a flat-soled shoe environment for ages. You look back in the ’70s and its boots and converse. People have known not to wear an elevated heel or a running shoe, at least. There have been some occasions of people in certain environments wearing that elevated shoe. And I think starting strength, Mark Riptoe, I believe he’s a promoter of that as well. And then the CrossFit would also be a role because CrossFit’s been pretty closely tied with Olympic lifting.
Steven Sashen:
And Mark as well.
Chris Duffin:
So for the last 25 years or 20 years or so, there’s been more influences to bring the Olympic lifting shoe in as a squat shoe into the strength sports and over prior times. Again, I believe that those are the primary influences. Now I think we’ve seen a lot of change within that. We’re actually seeing a lot of use of minimalist shoes or barefoot shoes or being barefoot entirely, which is where Mike’s video was really against just not wearing any shoes at all. And then I think we should apply, I do think his view is a bit of a reductionist view as it relates to it because I didn’t get fully enough through to see if he was citing any research, but it seemed to be-
Steven Sashen:
I didn’t hear any. And in fact, I just realized, I’ve watched a bunch of videos he’s done about being on a leg press machine or not so much in a hack squat, but his leg press machine where he’s basically, if he’s not wearing his, again, I’m going to use the term badly squat shoes, which I think he is. The foot plate that he’s on is angled so that it’s also elevating your heel even more and he’s a big fan of that. And there’s reasons where that might be beneficial for the hypertrophic effect that he’s looking for in certain muscles. But he’s clearly got a preference for this. And while he is often a very research-backed guy, similarly, I don’t recall seeing much research on that. In fact, I just found a thing on simplifaster.com, S-I-M-P-L-Ifaster.com about the science behind weightlifting shoes. And I’m perusing, and by and large the research is iffy.
Chris Duffin:
And actually I’ve got a ton of research citations to go through. Typically I don’t go through because biomechanics, it’s related to physics and attachment points and so there’s not necessarily research that needs to go into an engineering discussion per se. And that’s where I said I felt for Mike, it was a fairly reductionist kind of view. At the same time, we have to understand perspectives. Mike’s looking at this very much from the bodybuilding hypertrophy angle, and we’re both looking at this from an athletic development perspective.
Steven Sashen:
Good point.
Chris Duffin:
So these are very different perspectives at the end of the day. But I would also temper that I could go talk to Ben Pakulski, who’s a really known biomechanist IFBB pro and he would 100% tell you all about barefoot or minimalist shoes for these reasons around development. And the key thing here is we’re developing all the muscles within the foot. And sure, Mike doesn’t want a jacked foot, he’s already got a jacked forehead.
Steven Sashen:
That was the first semi-mean thing we’ve said about Mike, who we both adore.
Chris Duffin:
I did that one for the social media snippet maybe I just can. Since I started saying jacked foot, I thought about the pulsing jacked forehead. So anyway, I think understanding the viewpoints is really, really critical here. But again, I know I’ve had discussions with Ben Pokulski around this, around muscle engagement and anytime that we can have improved function of a tissue, if I’ve got a weak foot, I don’t believe the tissue is going to work effectively upstream. And we have potential injury mechanisms, and I could list off a number of pieces of research to do so.
Steven Sashen:
Well, even more if you are… The other thing is, one of the ways that I describe a lifting shoe is you’ve just taken the floor and put it in an angle. And so one of the other things is that you’re not really getting all of the feedback in your feet from feeling anything really, especially with your toes squeezed together. Some of that information goes straight from your foot to the base of your spinal cord and back down to your lower extremities to help you figure out how to move. Some of it goes all the way to your brain and back but some of it’s more reflex arc level stuff. And if you’re not getting the right amount of neurofeedback, you are not functioning optimally.
It maybe just think, we have a couple of cycling teams that we’ve sponsored and one of them in the early days after a training race, no training ride, that’s the word I couldn’t find, got out of their cleats and put on our shoes, just a regular sneaker. And one of the guys noticed on his ride home that he was putting up more watts in our shoe than when he was clipped in. And I contended, we still want to prove it, that by actually using your foot, rather than having your foot being a dumb lever, you’re not only getting that little bit of extra force possibly, but the biggest thing is you’re probably just sending signals up into your, again, spinal cord and back to activate things better and faster. It’s a thing, there’s a-
Chris Duffin:
Force set 2011 show that changing plant or loads and strength can also alter your foot upstream biomechanics as well.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So there’s that thing where I think about… This reminds me a lot of the research that’s sort of anti barefoot or anti barefoot shoes, they talk about how they’ve taken people who are used to running in shoes and they’ve given them time to acclimate to barefoot shoes by having them run in a treadmill for five minutes. At which point I facepalm the hell out of myself. It’s like, no, that’s not getting acclimated. And in a similar vein, I can’t imagine there’s been research where it’s the right kind of comparison of someone who has gotten used to either condition and seeing how they perform.
And of course there’s no way to do a double blinded test because you can tell if your heels are jacked up or not. It’s such a tricky thing. And I wonder how much is also in the same way that some of the super shoe stuff is placebo, because there are still people winning races who aren’t wearing their shoes. I wonder how much of it is when you know have a shoe that’s supposed to improve your performance, your performance has improved because of what your brain is doing.
Chris Duffin:
More 2016, and this was actually on discussing potentials for a risk development because you have this psychological dependence on the equipment, and this is specific to Olympic lifting shoes, by the way, and the perceived performance enhancement. So I think we could extrapolate that. But yeah, it’s around increasing athletic performance based on the psychological effects of the shoes.
Steven Sashen:
I had a hard one when I was an non-American gymnast way back when, and I had a TMJ issue, and this was before they were doing TMJ research on athletes. So I was one of the first, this was back in 1976, ’77. And so when I got this mouthpiece to adjust my TMJ, that joint, which basically by the way, it’s your jaw. There’s some arguments that if you have your jaw in a particular position, it can either make you weaker or stronger. And I couldn’t tell, I was wondering about this when I was in high school, if this was placebo or not, but I could hold an iron cross longer with the mouthpiece than I could with it out. And it seemed like it wasn’t a placebo effect, because I tend to be a bit immune to placebos. But it was interesting.
Chris Duffin:
And you can mimic the same thing by pressing your tongue to the top of your mouth as well. So there’s an impact on the diaphragm. And so the diaphragm then thus impacts the stabilization, which then thus impacts the neurological output. So this is how improving your bracing methodology, for example, increases your force output because your body quits down regulating due to potential injury risk situations. And that becomes also the same mechanism that we see as well as it relates to the foot or any unstable environment where we have that slippage or interference where it’s a safety mechanism to reduce your force output.
Steven Sashen:
How ironic that training on unstable surfaces became some hip thing. Like, ooh, this is going to make you stronger. It’s going to work on the “stabilizer muscles”, to which I say there are no such thing as stabilizer muscles, there are just muscles. And the research is very clear that training on an unstable surface is not better for building strength than training on something stable, because you’re not actually using everything fully.
Chris Duffin:
But there are times and places for it as well. I think David Weck has some interesting stuff. I don’t buy everything that he says, but he was the inventor of the BOSU ball and the way that he uses the BOSU ball I think is highly effective. How it got used is a whole other story.
Steven Sashen:
Literally upside down. Well, do we want to say anything more about the problems about squeezing your toes together and the benefits?
Chris Duffin:
Yeah, I do. But I wanted to reference, so this is actually direct to Mike’s statement. So Needham, 2023, I had this one pulled up.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I’m totally glad you said, I have this one pulled up and you weren’t just pulling these out of brain because that’s pretty good because I’m horrible at remembering names. So if I have to remember names with the people in the study, I’m out of luck.
Chris Duffin:
So specific to weightlifting and Olympic shifting shoes. So they allow deeper squats and more upright trunk posture crucial for lifts like the snatch and clean and jerk. And then I can see where Mike’s argument, because Mike is an astrographs full range of motion squatter. And so to do the type of lift that he recommends, I could see that being a positive aspect of that. Where for me, I’m going, I work with a lot of athletes or strength athletes and going to your butt on the ground, not often in those environments, certainly not for a competitive squat as well. And that’s where we have the other research that I was referring to. This is Versec 2023 effects of four week Olympic weightlifting training on speed and power performance and recreational athletes may hinder performance in nonlifting activities such as sports requiring agility and speed. We’ve got, here’s another one, this 1985, but suggests that Olympic lifting shoes, the rigid design of Olympic shifting shoes can increase injury risk during nonlifting activities. Helen 2017, indicates Olympic lifting shoes may provide significant benefits over other training modalities for experienced athletes.
So that gets back to my statement again, how is it helping a strong man with a lockout but not necessarily helping with those other pieces? So I think that there’s a lot of context around this and I could list off a bunch of other ones as well. But then we get back to having a functional athletic being able to use everything, change direction, all of this. The foot itself is incredibly useful. And the Olympic lifting shoes, by the way, they’re also, the research shows that it can increase plantar pressure by the way, but not in the way that we’re talking where we need to actually develop and strengthen that tissue by using it itself. And that tight, do you want to talk about the tight toe? That’s very clear research at this point in time about what happens when we pull that large toe in and the restriction of blood flow. We’ve got-
Steven Sashen:
The simplest one is actually here. I can do this one, but I don’t know the year. So Katrina Proust, her research, not so much on squeezing your toes together as arch support, which is related to this actually, and we haven’t even brought that up, but it occurred to me where she took healthy people, put arch support in their shoes, they hadn’t been wearing it previously .and in 12 weeks they lost up to 17% of the strength and muscle mass in their foot. And as I like to say, I can’t think of a time when weaker is better than stronger. But yes, I think when she was at BYU doing the research, just taking that big toe and moving it in the way that it happens when you squeeze your toes into a shoe that’s got a pointy toe box is reducing the ability to use your longitudinal arch and reducing blood flow into your foot as well.
The simplest thing I can do, the anecdotal stuff is getting out of Olympic lifting into power lifting. We’ve just seen so many lifters who when they’re able to use their foot by not having their toes squeezed together, are lifting better. We were at one power lifting competition and a woman’s trying on our shoes and they call her for the bench and she’s like, “Oh, I got to go. Can I wear these shoes?” And she’s like, runs over and then comes back two minutes later saying, “I just had a 20 pound PR because I felt like my feet were screwed into the ground for the first time.” And most people who aren’t power lifters don’t even realize that a good bench press starts with your feet.
Chris Duffin:
So our lifters that are coming at it from your side wearing minimalist shoes has really started taking over the power lifting environments. I started pushing this, oh gosh, I can’t remember. I think the first big piece I did was an hour and a half at SWIS, Society for Weightlifting and Interprevention in Sports in 2016, but I’ve been pushing it for years before that. But we’ve seen so many top lifters just excelling with working on training their foot using minimalist footwear. And I don’t have the research pulled up in this one, but I did a keynote at Parisi, and I think I posted this one online. I’ve got the research, a bunch of it on my Instagram, I think on a post related to this.
But with the restrictive shoes, the lack of planter or the support of the planter not using it, pulling the large toe in what we see, I can’t remember if the percentage is 96 or 98%, somewhere in that range though, of all plantar fasciitis cases are not plantar fasciitis. Now I say that loosely because yeah, there’s still an issue, but the issue is due to the atrophied muscle and degeneration of the tendons as it related to that, it’s lack of use injury. And so everybody’s then trying to fix it by finding more orthotics, more support, more lockdown shoes to give rest to fix it when it is. It’s shown in ultrasound, it’s shown in, what’s the other image?
Steven Sashen:
MRI or catheter.
Chris Duffin:
MRI. And they’re seeing it in biopsies as well. I think I only pulled the research for the MRIs and ultrasound in the piece, but I’ve talked to a few doctors that have confirmed this on the biopsies as well. It’s dejected lack of use. And so we have a significant, as soon as you pull that big toe in, you can imagine, just grab your hand and pull it in. What happens? The blood flow stops happening, we stop using the muscles. And then there’s this really basic stuff.
Steven Sashen:
Well, everything that you and I talk about is somewhat self-evident if you think about it and you’re not swayed by the misuse of physics and advertising by big shoe companies. But to your point, for most people, and I’ll do it this way, they don’t have plantar fasciitis. If they have anything, they have plantar fasciosis. So anitis is an inflammation and osis is a degeneration. And I met a guy once who said, “I can’t wear your shoes because I’ve had plantar fasciitis for 20 years.” I said, “That’s not possible.” He’s like, “What are you talking about? My doctor said so.” I said, “Yeah, it’s not possible. You can’t have an inflammation for 20 years.” And he said, “Well, it went away for a year and a half out of nowhere.” I said, yeah, so you don’t even have plantar fasci… You probably have a little plantar, but what you really have is tight calves.”
He’s like, “What?” I said, “Yeah, so your calf is pulling on the plantar fascia from the proximal side. It gives you similar symptoms of heel pain, but I bet you don’t even have plantar fasciosis.” And I’ve had this happen with, I was at a trade show and I met a guy, special forces guy, 6’5, 260, 6% body fat. The guy was a machine. And he said, “Yeah, we all switched to these minimalist shoes and we got plantar fasciitis.” And I took one look at him. I went, “I don’t think so.” He’s like, “What?” I said, “Can I stick my finger in your calf?” He goes, “Sure.” So I could just see the spot from a mile away, and I just dug my thumb into it and this giant guy fell like a tree, and I just sat there rubbing the crap out of his calf for a few minutes.
I said, “Stand up, see how that feels?” He goes, “Holy shit, that’s like 90% better.” I said, “Right, go back to the base, have your physical therapist do that for a week or so and tell me how it goes.” I see him a year later. He goes, “Well, just so you know, that solved it for everybody.” So in addition to your point that most people don’t have an inflammation, they have a degeneration. Most of those actually, it’s also starting from the proximal side, not from the source or the place where they’re feeling the pain. And ironically, it’s actually one other thing back to arch support, it’s the arch support that’s also making that happen.
Because again, if it’s just a weakening and non-use, the arch support is there so you don’t have to use your plantar fascia, you don’t have to use your foot. And it’s in there because an elevated heel shoe, by the time your foot hits the ground, you’re putting your plantar fascia under strain. And rather than trying to get rid of the elevated heel in the regular shoe as well, the shoe companies went, “Ah, why don’t we just put something in there to immobilize the anyway, so that way they can’t over strain them.” It’s like, holy crap. I can’t even think of it-
Chris Duffin:
No, that’s the original story too. If anybody doesn’t know that, that’s actually what happened.
Steven Sashen:
Oh yeah, you thought I was pulling it on my butt? No, that’s really what happened.
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. So if we’re using the tissue there, we’re going to get better engagement with the tissue around it. Now the problem with that, like you said, if they all started wearing those and didn’t treat it like a strength training program, you don’t walk into the gym and do 225 for 50 reps your first day and then again your next day and then the next day. That’s not a training plan. It’s progressive. It’s just like strengthening. The shoe is not the fix, you are the fix. You need to get stronger there. And if you do so, you’re going to have better engagement of the tissues around it as well, because why are we starting to lack… I talked about the tongue to the mouth and zero diaphragm, the neuro, the inhibitions. Well, what else do we do? If we’ve got weakness around a joint, the body starts restricting mobility around the joint to protect it. So you lose, what do we lose? Ankle dorsiflexion if you’ve got a weak foot. Shall I say that again? You lose ankle dorsiflexion if you have a weak foot.
Steven Sashen:
We’ll turn it upside down because most people think, oh, I need these squat shoes because I don’t have good ankle dorsiflexion. By the way, pulling your toes towards your knees, they have it upside down.
Chris Duffin:
It’s a process. So if I get a strong foot and then I get better engagement of those muscles and the muscle around it, I’m going to reduce my injury risk. I’m also going to have enhanced proprioception, enhanced neuromuscular control. I would argue that that’s going to give you at the end a better hypertrophic effect, which is I think where Ben Pakulski stands as well. But I do see this very specific position with these high depth squats and what Mike’s talking about. And again, anybody that’s using those types of shoes and seeing success-
Steven Sashen:
Do it.
Chris Duffin:
Do it. Do it. But get a stronger foot to put inside of it and minimize the use. So wear it-
Steven Sashen:
Now you’re onto it. So I was going to say, let’s go to a suggestion. This is kind of like what I say to people who are wearing those “super shoes”. I go, cool, if you’re going to run in them or race in them, but as soon as you can get out of them and into something that lets you use your foot naturally and build up strength, and there’s research showing that wearing a minimalist shoe, yours or mine builds foot strength as much as doing an exercise program for your feet. There’s research from Isabel Sacco showing that that improvement in strength relates or correlates to a 250% reduction in running injuries over the course of a year. So yeah, so get your feet strong, don’t stay in something that makes them weak. Get your feet strong. And then you’re in a position where you can experiment.
And my God, if you’ve got a serious competition coming up, don’t do it then, do it when you got time to do the experiment and see how you feel. And if it feels like you want to make that adjustment because you think it could be better in some way, great. But in the same way, don’t switch to a new pair of shoes the day before a race, even the same shoe you’re wearing.
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. Like I said, so no argument with Mike going, we have a specific shoe that we want to wear this, do that. But very clear, the more that we use that specialized footwear, and I’ve quoted the research that I referenced in this discussion, but it will restrict performance and activities in other areas that require high levels of agility and flexibility. It’s going to increase your potential injury risk as it relates to that. It increases plantar pressure leading to, again, to potential stress injuries. And again, we talked about too much time, none use of the foot is going to, what? And we’ve got tons of MRI, imaging-
Steven Sashen:
And biopsy.
Chris Duffin:
… biopsies to show that it’s causing atrophy of muscle and tendinopathy issues relating to problems. So this is just summarizing this in a short period of time.
Steven Sashen:
And even backing up to Mike, and to give him credit, there are situations where that would be good, but in the same way that the Olympic lifters we’re talking about where they might need this product or lifting serious weight, when Mike is working with his serious bodybuilders, these guys are pushing serious weight. This is not your average Jim bro, who even with, I mean, my God, look, I’m five, what am I? I’m 5’5, 145 and put me on a leg press with 450 and I can just push that all day long. But I’m fine doing that barefoot. But you get your average person who is not lifting that kind of weight or proportionally lifting more. It’s my big beef with CrossFit. It’s like, wait, I got to deadlift the same thing as a guy who’s six foot 195. That doesn’t make any sense.
But anyway, the point being that even Mike’s athletes are not necessarily you, although anybody watching his videos wants to imagine that they are one of those guys who is in the off season 325 pounds and just a complete monster. So that’s actually a whole other comical thing about how, back to my point about being 105 pound Kenyan, what do you care what that guy’s doing? You’re not that guy. So there’s some of that that’s still an issue where we want to pretend to be that person and do what they’re doing when that’s just completely inappropriate from every level I can possibly imagine.
Chris Duffin:
So yeah, like I said, nothing’s saying that he’s wrong at all in his statements, but it’s like we need to look at those with a level of context because they appear to be relating to anyone stepping in the gym to do a squat, which is certainly not the case. We’re talking about a very specific goal and adaptation that’s needed from that. And in a lot of other environments, it’s actually going to be quite disadvantageous. And there we’ve come.
Steven Sashen:
Yes. I think we have reached a clear end point. Is there anything that we need to say in one to two sentences tops to wrap it up or do we just pretty much nail it in 10 to 12 sentences in the last two minutes? I got nothing.
Chris Duffin:
Again, this is coming from our perspective, but if we want to think about our long-term, musculoskeletal health and our greater training, versatility and adaptation, please give those a thoughts. And I think that that can help temper at least where we’re coming from in this discussion. And I hope that the citations around the research and the discussion around the mechanics side of it helped elucidate our viewpoint.
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Steven Sashen:
I’m going to just echo that and say beyond lifting, similar thing for people running, if all you’re doing is road running, then you’re not putting your body under the kind of positive stresses you stress that is helpful if you’re just doing single plane movement over and over and over. So get on a trail, do some other things, jump rope, do whatever you can think of that’s actually using all those muscles, ligaments, and tendons at different joint angles, different actual angle angles from the torque and moment arm perspective, all that physics-y stuff. And I think this is something, what you just said is something people overlook. It’s like it’s one thing to be able to do that activity that you like. Well, it’s another thing to be a well-rounded, healthy person slash athlete. And ultimately we’re all athletes. Just some of us do something about it and some of us don’t.
Chris Duffin:
Yeah. So stronger feet and ankle complex is going to allow you to work in a lot of different training environments and challenges. And over the course of your life, you’re probably going to start engaging in different things and your ability to move into different sport-specific trainings and needs and be able to adapt to that and push comprehensive training programs and all that. You want to improve your overall athletic performance. And when it comes to long-term muscle cellular health, strong foot and ankle complexes lead to better alignment, better load distribution of the lower body, which alleviates stress on joints like knees, hips, low back when you’re doing resistance training. Boom.
Steven Sashen:
And there’s research coming out shortly, I can’t cite it specifically because it’s not published yet, but I know the lead researcher about balancing the elderly from just minimalist footwear. And the rumor is that the research is going to be very positive for what we’ve been talking about. So speaking as someone whose father died nine years ago because he had crappy balance from wearing shitty shoes and tripped on something tiny, fell down, broke his hip and was dead two weeks later, I have a vested interest in helping that go away. And this is another thing, strong feet leading to strong ankles and all the proprioception that goes along with that, and just the neuroreceptive as well.
You don’t want to lose that because you don’t want to be one of those people who is shuffling, shuffling, shuffling, and then you trip on a piece of gum on the sidewalk and then you’re done. So think long-term, which is something humans are very bad at, but to the extent that you can, the healthier you are now, the healthier you’re going to be when you’re at a point where most people aren’t. Cool. So here, let’s do the sign off point people to your thing, I’ll point people to my thing. You go first.
Chris Duffin:
You can find all our podcasts episodes. I’ve got a new community, free community that I’ve got. It’s linked on there. Everything’s chrisduffin.com. Just go there, type my name in the internet or the socials, I’ll pop up. It’s not complicated. Chris Duffin like muffin, but with a D, D-U-F-F-I-N.
Steven Sashen:
And you can find our stuff in two places. My podcast, this is my joke, everyone’s got a podcast, I’m getting really sick of it. Find out more on my podcast. So we’ve got the Movement Movement podcast is at www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Nothing you need to do to join, that’s just where we have everything. You’ll find all the previous episodes, all the places you engage with us, and of course you can go to Zeroshoes.com to find out more about what we’re doing for the footwear that just gets out of the way to let you do what your body and feet are meant to do, like we’ve been talking about for the last 50 minutes and 53 seconds.
Chris Duffin:
Yep. That was a good discussion. We wandered around a few things, but I felt we covered it pretty well.
Steven Sashen:
You and me just going on tangents, what a show?
Chris Duffin:
Can you imagine that?
Steven Sashen:
Who knew? Thanks everybody.
Chris Duffin:
We did.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Cheers everyone.