The Barefoot Advantage: Steve Sashen on Minimalist Footwear and Athletic Performance

Guest [00:00:05]: I'm Steve Sashin, and you're listening to the Run to the Top podcast.

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Melancon, and this is the Run to the Top podcast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We're created and produced by the expert team of coaches at runners connect.net, where you can find the best running information on the Internet as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. In this episode of Run to the Top, we are joined by Steve Sashin, the founder CEO of Xero Shoes. We discuss Steve's journey from returning to running in his late forties to becoming a competitive sprinter and building a prominent shoe brand. Our conversation delves into the problems with modern running shoes, the advantages and disadvantages of super shoes, Various biomechanical studies informing the athletic footwear industry in the case for minimalist footwear and barefoot running. Takeaways from this episode include whether modern running shoes negatively impact form and performance, whether barefoot running or minimalist shoes can improve form And reduce injury risk, the pros and cons of super shoes, and the concept of a level playing field in shoe technology, new research on how to implement barefoot running Into your training program and whether the barefoot running movement has lost momentum in recent years.

Finn Melanson [00:01:34]: Steve is an engaging conversationalist with interesting views On ShoeTech and the sport of running as a whole, you will enjoy this one. Steve, it is a pleasure to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Guest [00:01:51]: So far so good. I could use a clone and an assistant, an assistant to my clone, a clone of my assistant. You know, it's busy around here.

Finn Melanson [00:01:57]: Yeah. Maybe we're not too far away given this whole AI revolution that's happening. That that that that wish could be granted very soon.

Guest [00:02:03]: Well, nobody really wants cloning, because as a comic of mine said the last thing you wanna do is be walking down the street and say, oh my god. Who's the idiot with the fat butt nose white oh, that's me. Oh, that's not good.

Finn Melanson [00:02:16]: Well, like I said, it's it's a pleasure to have you here on the show today. I know you were on the show maybe 6 or 7 years ago, but, you know, the folks. The audience has grown, and I think the world changed. A lot of people, you know, curious to hear your story and sort of what What you bring to the table and what you've built, and so I I think the first question I I do wanna ask you goes back to your background, and, I know you returned to running after after quite a long hiatus, and despite that hiatus, Got quite good, and, you were kind of also inspired by the Born to Run book and that whole movement. So, Question I have is, like, why the long hiatus, and and why why get back into it in, like, your, you know, late forties?

Guest [00:03:00]: Oh, well, because I'm not a runner. I'm a sprinter. So I mean, seriously, because, you know, running is something you can just do. Sprinting is something, you know, if you just do it for no reason, you're just a dork. I mean, who would go to a track and just, you know, run a couple 100 meters and go home? That just seems stupid. So it didn't occur to me as as a thing to actually do. I don't know why. And what happened is, one day at brunch, a friend of mine comes in, and he said, I just won my 1st 5 k.

Guest [00:03:25]: And he was a, you know, like, a serious runner. And I said, You know, I love the idea of running, but I'm not a runner. I never enjoyed running anything over, frankly, over a 100 meters. And, And he's well, you know, there's all masters track and field circuit, and they do all the events including the sprints. I'm like, oh, what? And so that's how it all began. So the 30 year hiatus was was just because there wasn't real I didn't know there was an opportunity. And for me, having a reason to do something beyond just, like, being fit or whatever. You know, the competitive thing is important.

Guest [00:03:55]: It's like it gives me a goal. It gives me something to measure against. It gives me Some sense of humility on a very regular basis, because sprinting is it's a tricky one. Like, I'll give you this. At the end of a race, when someone says, how'd you do? I've Gotten to the point where I say, do you just want the number, or can I give you the excuse like we all do? You know, it's always I didn't get out of the blocks. I dragged my foot. I didn't transition. I mean, everyone's You can never do it perfectly.

Guest [00:04:19]: And that kind of addictive intermittent reinforcement thing is also a piece of it. So, you know, that was Sort of the how and the that that was the why I stayed away and that what got me back. And, frankly, I was good enough because it's Sprinting is there's a a guy named Ralph Mann who I think got the silver in the 400 meter hurdles in Munich, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And Ralph wrote a book about sprinting in sprinting form. And he has the 8 things that make a sprinter, and the first 7 are genetic, and the 8th is how well you maximize your genetics. So, you know, I've got some good genetics for sprinting. Not ideal.

Guest [00:04:54]: I'm 55 on a good day, but, you know, the muscle fiber thing and blah blah blah. There's a bunch of things for which, you know, I've got good genes. So I'd I do I did okay. But if I had started out and it was just, like, bad, Then I don't know if I would have stuck it out, you know. I'm, like, I'm at the back of the 1st pack right now. So, Like, I've been an all American for the last 15, 16 years. And, if I if I wasn't in that category, then I don't know if I would stick it out because the goals wouldn't be as interesting.

Finn Melanson [00:05:25]: Do you think it's unusual or is it quite normal to have competitive Fire that late in life and to to want it, you know, compete against your colleagues and stuff.

Guest [00:05:34]: It's a it it it's a Brain Problem. So one of the things that I say one of the reasons that I actually like Masters Track and Field is that and and I tend to say things quite, forthrightly, I just say what's on my mind. So, like, at the beginning of a race, there'll usually be some big jack guy next to me, and he's like, hey, man. Have a good race. And I go, Hey. Look. There's no prize money involved. Just get to the end.

Guest [00:05:57]: Have fun. Don't get hurt. Oh, by the way, I totally wanna kick your ass. And so The thing I say is there's no reason to be this competitive at this age for something that has no real reason for living, but we're old enough to know that That's just the way we are, and we're old enough to admit that in public and to each other. So it's just kinda goofy. It's like you have brain damage, I have brain damage too. Welcome to the club. Let's go have some pie after this race.

Guest [00:06:23]: It's just it is a weird completely irrational thing, but it's just the way we're wired, so away you go.

Finn Melanson [00:06:30]: Do you remember where you were in life and what you were doing when you first came across the book Born to Run?

Guest [00:06:36]: Yes. Paz. One of my best friends is the he's a former world champion 8 k cross country runner, and he handed it to me. And this is right, so I gotta wait. I gotta back up a little bit. So when my friend from brunch said, hey, there's MasterTrack and Field, I I got connected to a local coach, and he was not a sprint coach. He kinda coached everything, which is not a good idea. And one of the guys there, we just hit really hit it off.

Guest [00:07:04]: And in part because one day, he wasn't doing certain drills, and I wasn't doing them either. And so I said, hey. How come you aren't doing these drills? He goes, oh, because they're bullshit. I'm, like, yeah. That's why I'm not doing them. So, you know, they weren't they were something that didn't have any application to what we're actually doing. It's like, okay, maybe you're getting your I don't know. It was stupid.

Guest [00:07:24]: So, we became really fast friends. We actually what cinched our friendship I just remember this. One day, at the end of practice, he said, I can't believe it. I just said a PR, and I wasn't even gonna come to the track today because I was feeling sick. I said, do you ever have that happen before? He goes, Actually, yeah. I said, do you ever have days where you feel great and you can't even move? He goes, yeah. I said, well, we just completely debunked sports psychology. So, so that was a thing that that cinched our relationship.

Guest [00:07:50]: And in that 1st 2 years when I got back into sprinting, I was getting injured all the time And he handed me the book and said, you might wanna consider this whole barefoot running thing to see if you learn something. And to make a long story very short, first of all, I'm not gonna suggest that anyone run barefoot. I'm not even gonna suggest that anyone, you know, wear zero shoes. We'll talk about that in a sec. But For me, that barefoot run, the gist of it is bad form hurts, good form feels good. And I discovered that I had a form problem because of something that was hurting that I couldn't feel in a regular shoe. And the other thing is that if you let yourself get that feedback and start experimenting, You can go from bad form to good form, and you know the difference because good form feels good. And so when I figured out what I was doing, just for people who are geeky enough about this, Sprinters as a group, we tend to land on the ball of our foot, but I was overstriding.

Guest [00:08:43]: I was reaching my foot out in front of me, pointing my toes to land on the ball of my foot that was putting excessive force on the wall of my foot, and I got this giant blister on 1 foot, not the other. And that 1 foot, the left one, That was the leg that got injured more often than others. So, paying just paying attention to the good foot on my next barefoot run, My, quote, bad foot, kinda got with the program. And in a stride, my running became faster, easier, lighter. It was just perfect, And that stuck with me, so that's when my injuries went away. That's when I became faster. That's when I became an all American. So, yeah, I remember him handing me the book, and, that was that was a delightful moment.

Finn Melanson [00:09:21]: I know we're gonna get into a lot of this later in the conversation. This is probably a a dumb question, but is there such thing as as bad form, or does every single runner risk?

Guest [00:09:32]: Okay. Absolute so look

Finn Melanson [00:09:33]: There's no there's no, like, there's no, like, default. Like, if someone pushed me and I started to, like, a stride.

Guest [00:09:37]: No, complete nonsense. So, alright, I'm gonna I'm gonna get kind of strident about this. Go watch kids who haven't put on shoes and watch look at their running form. It's identical. They're all doing it correctly. They're landing with their now wait. I don't wanna give away too much. I'm going to pause on that one and come to a make a different point.

Finn Melanson [00:09:57]: Yeah.

Guest [00:09:57]: There are a number of events where it's a bunch of researchers who are looking into running injuries, their cause and cure. And for a while, there were, there was some disparity about what they were saying was causing the problem and definitely some Some disagreements about what the cure was, minor disagreements, frankly, or disagreements that overlap with a big Venn diagram overlap that we can talk about. But in the last couple years, every time there's one of these events where people are talking about the cause of running injuries, they talk about one thing specifically as a root cause. Overstriding, landing with your foot too far in front of your center of mass. Now, you can argue You all day if you like about whether you're supposed to land on your heel or the ball of your foot or your big toe or your left eyelash or whatever, irrelevant for this conversation. Yeah. Overstrating is a problem, and this should be really easy for anyone to understand why. Imagine stand up if you can and put, you know, your right foot out in front of you with, you know, standing on your heel doesn't matter, but ideally, put your right foot in front of you with your heel on the ground, toe in the air.

Guest [00:10:59]: And now imagine if you were sitting down in that position. What would you be doing? You'd be putting the brakes on in your car. Well, the same thing happens if you land with your foot in front of you, you're You're creating negative acceleration. You are slowing down. You're putting on the brakes that you then have to reaccelerate, and one way you reaccelerate is pulling your foot underneath you versus putting your glutes and your hamstrings under strain because that's when they're not in their strongest positions. So overstriding, undeniably bad form. No question about it. Now after that, Nicholas Romanoff, who created what he calls pose method, which is a highly misunderstood thing, It's all about proper form.

Guest [00:11:39]: The whole idea behind Pose method, whether you believe it or not, is not important at this point, but the whole idea is that for any physical activity, Ballet, throwing a baseball, shooting a free throw, there are certain positions that your body will go through certain, quote, poses to do it optimally. The better you get at something, the more you become alike the other people who are really good at it. So you watch the slow motion video of Usain Bolt running a 100 meters, and you look at his form, you go, my god. That's amazing. Then you look at the other 7 guys in the race. They have the same form. Now with minor, minor idiosyncrasies, minor personal differences, but the fundamentals are basically the same. And the key is When your foot hits the ground, I'm gonna I don't I don't wanna get into well, I could get into heel striking or not.

Guest [00:12:28]: You want it as close to underneath your center of mass as possible. And That back leg, the swing leg, you want when your foot touches the ground, you want the knee of your swing leg as close to being aligned with or slightly in front of the stance knee. Those are that's like undeniable the optimal thing to do. And then there's arguments after that.

Finn Melanson [00:12:53]: Is in the case of a of any given shoe, is the shoe only responsible for, removing the the feedback you should be getting, or are there elements of the way the shoe is built a standard shoe That is also causing mechanical problems and, like, things like over striding.

Guest [00:13:10]: Yes. To both of those. So first of all, I love that you said, Is it just reducing the feedback? Because that's the number one thing that anything underneath your foot, any amount of foam, cushioning, whatever, anything between your foot and the ground is reducing the amount of feedback. The question is, how little can you get away with or how much is or how little is too much is the best way to put it. And the answer is, even a little is often too much. And this comes from research from doctor Irene Davis and others. So but the design of the modern athletic shoe It's problematic in a number of other ways, kind of. Depends on your goal.

Guest [00:13:46]: If you are just trying to win a race and you don't Give a crap about whether you can walk or run 10 years from now, whatever. Who cares? But if you wanna have healthy, happy, strong feet, which can lead to happy, healthy, strong ankles, knees, hips, back, neck, etcetera, then the modern athletic shoe has inherent problems that could not be more obvious if you don't talk about shoes. So what I mean is when I just talk about this with shoe about shoes and I, you know, I can Bring out a modern athletic shoe, we can talk about it. People will get really, I don't I don't wanna put it. People will put a stake in the ground and they will do everything they can to hold on to things that they believe. But once in one interesting questions I have to ask people is where did you come to these beliefs you have about the design of modern shoes? And they'll usually say things like, Well, the guy at the shoe store or my doctor or whatever. But, then the question, of course, of where do these people learn this stuff? And most of it comes back to shoe companies who are trying to pitch the idea. So let me take it out of the context of shoes and just ask some really simple questions because because your question in a way It's not about footwear.

Guest [00:14:55]: It's about optimal human functioning. So let's talk about optimal human functioning. I'm gonna ask some questions that are gonna sound really stupid Because They Are.

Finn Melanson [00:15:04]: Please.

Guest [00:15:05]: When is weaker better than stronger?

Finn Melanson [00:15:08]: When is weaker better than stronger? Maybe when you're trying to receive something.

Guest [00:15:15]: Okay. Let me do a better one. When it comes to athletics or performance, is weaker better than stronger?

Finn Melanson [00:15:20]: I wouldn't on first thought, I would not assume so.

Guest [00:15:23]: I would agree with you. It's not. If you want to make your muscles, ligaments and tendons, say, in your arm Weaker. How would you do that?

Finn Melanson [00:15:31]: By not using them.

Guest [00:15:32]: Right. So like if you put it in a cast for example, it gets weaker. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. 8 weeks later, it does not come out looking better than the other one.

Finn Melanson [00:15:39]: Yep.

Guest [00:15:40]: So what happens if you can't move your foot?

Finn Melanson [00:15:43]: It atrophies. All of the muscles that you're supposed to use, I'm guessing, Are unused and, it's like being in a cast?

Guest [00:15:49]: Yeah. What problems might that create?

Finn Melanson [00:15:55]: When you need to use them, they're not available.

Guest [00:15:57]: Yeah. So, if you have a shoe that doesn't let your foot move, that is like putting a cast on your foot. If you add arch support because your arch is a number of bones and joints and ligaments and tendons and muscles, same thing happens. Research from Katrina Protopapas Pop us on other show that putting arch support in the shoes of healthy individuals reduced their muscle size and strength in their feet by up to 17% in under 12 weeks. Now, it doesn't go to 0 over time but it does get asymptotically close asymptotically close. So that's 1. Alright, let's talk about another one. Which is better, being mobile or being restrained? Mobile.

Guest [00:16:38]: Yeah. Especially because, you know, in your feet, a quarter of your entire the bones and joints of your whole body are in your feet and ankles. If you can't move them, that, a, creates weakness, and b makes it so you don't have the ability to be balanced and agile and mobile and, responsive. So if you're in a shoe that doesn't let your foot move because the sole is thick or stiff, that's problematic. You know, I mean, here. So if you if all those bones and joints can't move, what problems might that create?

Finn Melanson [00:17:09]: A lot of the stuff we just talked about.

Guest [00:17:10]: Yeah. Plus agility, mobility, balance, etcetera.

Finn Melanson [00:17:13]: Yep.

Guest [00:17:13]: Okay. Let me give you another one. Which is better, numbness or being able to feel things?

Finn Melanson [00:17:19]: Being able to feel things.

Guest [00:17:21]: Yeah. So if you put something between your foot and the ground, like now an inch to 2 inches of foam, how much can you feel?

Finn Melanson [00:17:30]: Little to none.

Guest [00:17:31]: What problems might that create?

Finn Melanson [00:17:34]: Again, just like the The growth and maintenance of all of those muscles and bones and and joints?

Guest [00:17:41]: Well and you have 200,000 nerve endings in the sole of each foot. So those are there to tell your brain what you're stepping on or in so it can respond quickly because some of those nerves actually just go to the base of your spine and right back to your feet. Yeah. So that's about being very hyper responsive. And if you can't be responsive, that's the kind of thing that can easily lead to ankle sprains and twists and, you know, falling over stuff and Tripping and Breaking a Clavicle, etcetera, etcetera.

Finn Melanson [00:18:05]: Well, let let me ask you this, because, again, I I don't really have a dog in in a fight here. In your world view, what are the worthwhile use cases for a Helica or a Nike install?

Guest [00:18:16]: I'll get there I'll get there in one moment. Yeah. Let me just do, let me do 2 more. Yeah. Because these are again, these questions should be so self evident that when you then look and apply them to footwear as we're doing, it should make you go At at the very least, it should make you go, And then ask the question that you asked which is well, is there a use for shoes? So, better to be properly Fully aligned or misaligned?

Finn Melanson [00:18:39]: I just fixed this in my car the other day. Be aligned.

Guest [00:18:43]: Yeah. Perfect. So when you elevate your heel with mo which most shoes are doing, that tips you forward even just a little bit and then you have to adjust. You gotta lean back somehow with an adjustment in your ankles, your knees, your hip, and your back. So the problems that can create, I'll answer it for you. At the end of the day, you can't, you know, you've got Foot, hip, ankle, knee, back, etcetera, problems because you're making these minor adjustments. If you have something flat, then you're not misaligning to begin with, Doesn't Create a Problem.

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Guest [00:21:43]: Better to be Constrained or Be Free.

Finn Melanson [00:21:47]: I think there's arguments for both, but I lean in the freedom camp.

Guest [00:21:50]: So, here's a typical athletic shoe. The shape of the toe box It's Pointy. This is not the shape of a human foot. Or more accurately, if that is the shape of your foot, it ain't supposed to be. And what problems could it create? Well, the simplest one is, you know, things like bunions. Or if you squeeze your big toe in, you can't actually use your arch properly, which is the strongest part of that foot. So, what's the point of squeezing your toes together? It makes no sense. And literally, that's the only thing in the design of the modern athletic shoe I don't have an explanation for.

Guest [00:22:20]: All the rest, I know how they happened and why they happened and they were all designed to correct previous bad decisions, but that's not important. The point is, We just talked about like 5 things about what should allow a body to work correctly and the 5 ways that shoes get in the way of that. Now again, if you have a good reason to do something where you don't care about that, knock yourself out. I'm not going to complain. So, the reason for wearing a HOKA, or one of the quote new super shoes and there's arguments about whether they really are super Is that if you are the right person who runs at the right speed and is the right weight, They can suck less than other shoes. So what I mean by that is all foam sucks energy out of the system. There's no such thing as energy return. Okay? Yeah.

Guest [00:23:15]: You you now we need to do a quick little physics, lesson. It's an easy one. And hopefully people will Know the reference I'm gonna make. Do you ever see it's it was one of the 1st slow motion videos of this big fat guy getting a cannonball to the stomach and just, you know, like, throws him back into it. Yeah. So This is the difference between pressure and force. K? The guy gets hit with a cannonball. The pressure gets spread out by his kind of folding around the ball and the rolls of fat that you see rippling in slow motion.

Guest [00:23:43]: So that's what keeps him alive. The force sends like a 3 50 pound guy practically flying into the air. So if you don't care about foot strength and feeling things and being agile, etcetera, When you have a shoe with a bunch of padding and it feels, quote, really comfortable, I get it, the pressure is being spread out so your foot doesn't feel the impact forces, but the force is still going into your body. So if you don't care, if you just want to win a race, knock yourself out. But the problem is this Like I kind of alluded to before, you need to be the right weight and the right speed. All foam is essentially tuned to a particular weight and speed. So the amount of energy loss that you have so Iim trying to think of how to do this easily different amounts of foam suck a different amount of energy out of the system, but only if you're the right weight and speed. So I'll have to do a weird analogy.

Guest [00:24:37]: The Harvard track, the indoor track, is well known for people setting personal bests, but only if they're like an 800 meter who runs about, 150. If you run a 15,800, that track is literally tuned To your weight and speed, the physics paper that the Harvard guys did about it is we just we need to make the track bouncy but slightly stiffer than the stiffness of the athlete. And the stiffness of the athlete is about their weight, their speed, and proper form. So if you're again, right weight, right speed, proper form, you're gonna set up PR. So one use if you're the right weight and speed is for, you know, that may help you run faster, but not necessarily for the reasons that any of the shoe companies give. The reason that they quote super shoes and HOKA is not one of them actually the reason that this quote super shoes are Helping some people do better, the ones who are the right weight running at the right speed seems to be not because of the carbon fiber because that's all bullshit. That's just there Structurally, it's not not doing anything other than being a structural component. It's not a spring.

Guest [00:25:39]: It's not a shock absorber. That's, you know, springs need to be compressed and then expand, Shock absorbers need to actually do the same thing, but slowly. It's there structurally. That foam will just fall apart if you didn't have a layer of Carbon Fiber in the Middle of It. What's happening is those shoes are so lightweight, they're not interfering with your gait pattern. They're not interfering with your cadence, your steps per minute. In fact, they may allow you to have slightly better cadence because they're not weighing your feet down or slightly faster cadence because they're not weighing your feet down. And because they're so high, it can be increasing your stride length slightly.

Guest [00:26:16]: So if your cadence is the Same, number of steps per minute is the same, but you're getting an extra inch out of every step that makes you faster. So there's an advantage there, But there's other disadvantages. They're unstable, they break down very quickly, they're super expensive, and they're Jada Sherry, who's a research physical therapist.

Finn Melanson [00:26:38]: I know Jay.

Guest [00:26:39]: You know, yeah, Jay talks a lot about, you know, the good and bad of them. They're also just the way they have the The way they have to build in the toe spring is creating some problems around the, the MTP joint. So there's a handful of things. But again, If you're all you need to do is try to win a race and you're the right weight and speed. Have I said that enough times? It can be helpful, but here's the joke. There's still people who are beating people who are wearing their shoes, who are not wearing super shoes. There's still people setting PRs who are not wearing super shoes. So what people leave out in the whole question of are these things being and are they advantageous little on creating an unfair advantage is the in a way back to your question about is it right to be this competitive, let's imagine you're one of the top 5 runners in the world.

Guest [00:27:26]: On any given Sunday, 1 of you guys is gonna win a race. You know, maybe it's maybe the top 1 or 2 guys, you know, go jockey for position, but let's say the number 4 guy who's usually number 4 or 5 puts on a new pair of shoes and wins a race. And maybe it's just because he was having a really good day, doesn't matter, but he wins that race in a new pair of shoes. What do you think the other 4 of those top 5 guys are gonna do the next day?

Finn Melanson [00:27:50]: Change their equipment?

Guest [00:27:51]: Yeah, buy their shoes. Because any little thing that might give you an advantage, you need to have it just in case. Remember hologram bracelets?

Finn Melanson [00:28:00]: Yeah.

Guest [00:28:01]: Everybody wore them. They did not do anything for anyone. There are some insoles that are being promoted as, you know, giving you extra spring They don't, but, you know, 1 guy wore them, and then everyone else in that top tier of Olympians, they started wearing them too just in case. And There's also, you know, a good placebo factor. So you put on something that is supposed to make you faster, maybe you're gonna put out a little more effort at those moments where you would normally get a little tired. I I mean, there's so many things that are unmeasurable, but the measurable thing is they're higher, they don't weigh as much as the previous shoes, They're not impacting your cadence. They may make you have a slightly higher stride length. Here's the real joke about that.

Guest [00:28:43]: That's an easy thing to measure. Easy thing to test, why hasn't it been done? And the argument I would give for why it hasn't been done is because it would take all the mystique out of it. It was like, oh, itis just theyire theyire light and tall. Well, then then, oh, it just doesnit make it special. And it makes it harder to sell them. It makes it harder for everyone just to jump on a story that is clearly, not as magic as people want it to be. Okay. Okay.

Finn Melanson [00:29:12]: I have a couple of questions and that was that was an excellent, sort of summary of the landscape. Right.

Guest [00:29:17]: It was a long rant,

Finn Melanson [00:29:18]: my Questions. 1 1 question I have, because you mentioned a moment ago that for the for certain body compositions, There could be certain advantages by wearing traditional shoes. And and 1 question I have off that is

Guest [00:29:33]: Traditional traditional shoes basically, look, It's the other way around. If you get out of the way, then everyone's you know, first of all, there's no level playing field. Just to be clear about that one, that's the whole idea of level playing field as a joke. I mean, there are genetic differences between human beings, and if you're a genetic freak, you're a genetic freak. If you just happen to have perfect form from day 1, you know, different thing. But If you I mean, regular shoes cause problems as well because again, the foam in the regular shoes sucks energy out of the system, mess up your posture, blah blah blah. But if you and again, I'm not suggesting people run barefoot, but if you had people running barefoot, then there would be the closest thing to a level playing field in that There's no amount of cushioning sucking out the energy from the system regardless of how much you weigh, regardless of how fast you run. There's nothing that's getting worse if you are a little heavier, a little lighter, or a little faster, a little slower.

Finn Melanson [00:30:24]: But as a thought experiment, if you if you built shoes custom to The body composition of each runner on a given line

Guest [00:30:32]: Yeah.

Finn Melanson [00:30:32]: Wouldn't that theoretically be a level playing field?

Guest [00:30:36]: That's a really interesting question. So, I'm going to try and think about it for a split second rather than pull something totally out of my butt.

Finn Melanson [00:30:44]: And again, I'm asking for a position of ignorance. True. I don't know the answer here.

Guest [00:30:48]: Yeah. I don't know and I would argue not only because it depends on it would depend on the race for 1, because during races, Different people let's talk about the 800 for the sake of argument. Different people get slower at different rates. Or let's talk about the 400. There's a guy, Gil Roberts. Gil Roberts' basic strategy for running the 4 is go balls to the wall from the moment the gun goes off and then hope that he's so far ahead of everyone they don't catch up to him. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. He would need a different shoe just because of the way he's running, not even just about his his mass and his speed.

Guest [00:31:27]: And and again, if you're slowing down from lap 1 to lap 2, which is what almost anyone everyone in fact, everyone does in 400 or in the 800, then that would change what the shoe would be doing. So I don't know, But, my argument would be that it really doesn't matter simply because In that top tier of runners, they're all so close to the same I mean, take a look at, you know, the 1500. They've got the same body type, they've got the same whatever. I can't and I explicitly said the 1500 not sprinting because sprinting botting types have changed lately in part because a lot of sprinters used to come out of football. That was their thing that got them the scholarships. Yep. And then they be they were track athletes as well. Sprinters now are much smaller than they used to be.

Guest [00:32:14]: And that's also some, because of some of the drugs they're no longer taking.

Finn Melanson [00:32:17]: Yeah.

Guest [00:32:17]: But, but so I don't know. It's a really interesting question.

Finn Melanson [00:32:22]: Another question I have and I kind of well, actually I'm going to ask this one first. When you think about like the the origin of the modern shoe, when When designers were building what we know as the modern shoe, what did they hope would be achieved In creating something that wasn't essentially barefoot and like truly like responsive to the ground or you know, foot shape like, what did they believe They were building was going to benefit people.

Guest [00:32:50]: Oh, it was going to benefit them and their shareholders. That's all they care about.

Finn Melanson [00:32:53]: That's it?

Guest [00:32:54]: Well, I

Finn Melanson [00:32:55]: Do you have an idea from, like, research that, like, if there was some padding or foam like

Guest [00:32:59]: Oh, you're so cute. No. So look at the original Nike waffle trainer. It's a minimalist too. It's about 10 millifoam, it's basically flat. It did something very clever. It did something that Allfer then actually did. So it was a zero drop shoe, But the in the forefoot so imagine just a slab of foam that's the equal equal thickness all along.

Guest [00:33:19]: But then in the forefoot, they just shaved it so it kind of, you know, became whatever that shape is, I can't think of how to describe that. So as you start to lean forward to kinda put you on your toes, I was I'm a double 13. Yeah. That'll work. So it's thinner at the toe than it is at the ball of the foot, and then it's consistent from the ball of the foot to the heel.

Finn Melanson [00:33:37]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest [00:33:38]: When I put that shoe on when I was like 12 years old and as a sprinter, I lean forward. That was a an era where they'd let you go run outside and see if you like the shoe. I start to lean forward to start running and it put me on my toes. I literally remember thinking, this is how I run. Couldn't have been more excited. Everything after that, not based on research. So the first thing that happened after that was elevating the heel, not based on research. It actually came from some orthopedic podiatrists or surgical podiatrists or sports podiatrists, I can't remember, who were in the same building as, Nike in the early days, and they Bowerman has said, we're getting a bunch of new runners with Achilles tendinitis, what do you recommend? And they said, oh, Clearly, their Achilles have shortened from wearing higher heeled dress shoes.

Guest [00:34:20]: What does that have to do with running regardless? Higher heeled dress shoes, so, you need to make a wedge heel to accommodate their shortened Achilles. Cut to 30 years later when one of these doctors was at a track meet with a friend of mine who worked directly with Barrowman for a long time, And my friend said, what do you think about the fact that your elevated heel thing became the design of every modern athletic shoe? And the doctor said it was the biggest mistake we ever made. We had no evidence for this Achilles shortening thing, we had no evidence that putting a wedged heel would be good, we didn't realize how bad it would be. And once you put in a wedged heel, you end up landing on your heel because the heel then gets in the way of where you would normally land, And now your heel's a ball and your ball is unstable. So then they started building in motion control to try and create stability. PS, sideline, tangent, Pronation is not a problem. The research is very clear on this. Pronation is not the cause of problems, but it's being sold as a problem that needs to be cured with a shoe.

Guest [00:35:18]: Think about this, when you hit the ground if you weigh a 150 pounds and you're, you know, jogging along, you're hitting the ground between 4 500 pounds of force. What amount of posting do your medial heel, the inside of your heel can handle 4 to 500 pounds of force? And the answer is nothing that's in a shoe. Yeah. But regardless, not a problem. Anyway, motion control didn't really work. But the other thing that happens if you land on your heel with your foot in front of you Is your foot your toes are kind of up towards your knee, pointing towards your knee, and there's so you're stretching out the plantar fascia, then you're putting your foot flat on the ground. This is the spot where your foot is Supposed to be in a strong position, which means using the arch, engaging, having the plantar fascia fully engaged. We're going back to our analogy of your arm in a cast versus not.

Guest [00:36:04]: Yeah. If you bend your arms to 90 degrees and I put a weight in your hand, you can hold more weight than you could curl if I put it in your arm when your arm is straight. Follow that one? Yep. So similar idea, if you align the bones in your foot so the arch is functional, Doesn't matter if you have a high arch or flat foot or low arch, if you're if everything is aligned, the muscles and ligaments and tendons are in the strongest position like your arm at roughly 90 degrees. If they're stretched out, they're being forced to try to work when they're in a weak position. This leads to things like plantar fasciitis, so then they build an arch support so you don't need to use your arch, which again makes it weaker. So, that's how these things evolved. Now, there was an idea that if you put an elevated heel on a shoe and your foot is landing further out in front of you, Your stride length is a little longer and that might make you faster except your ground contact time is longer when you do that which slows you down again.

Guest [00:37:02]: So There was ways of basically, what shoe companies have done for 50 years is misuse physics to convince people of things that are patently false cause but we're not, you know, most of us are not smart enough to know how to do it. Look, let's go back to energy return. I'm gonna name names because that's the kind of guy that I am. So Adidas came out and if you wanna be pretentious by the way and say it correctly, adidas, because it's adidasler. Anyway, so but you can only do that if you wanna be pretentious or you're in Europe, which is kinda pretentious. So, just or you're in Europe, which is kind of pretentious. So it's not. I don't know what that joke meant.

Guest [00:37:34]: Anyway, they came up with their Boost Foam, and the way they showed how bouncy it was is they took a steel ball, I don't know, 2 or £3. They showed that it barely bounces off of concrete. It bounces a little bit off of, quote, the other company's foam. Nobody used that foam. And then it bounced like 10 times. The first bounce was maybe 30% of the height they dropped it from, It bounces like 10 times on the boost foam. I don't I don't know how I knew this, but I instantly knew to go to the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco to their website because I knew they had an exhibit where they have a plexiglass plate with a hole in it, horizontal plexiglass plate with a hole in it and you could drop a steel ball onto a steel plate with concrete underneath it. So, the boost foam and I'm I'm I'm not getting the number correctly, I'm sure, Let's assume the boost foam, you drop it from 1 meter, and it comes back up, you know, like 30%, 30 centimeters.

Guest [00:38:28]: When you drop a steel ball onto a steel plate with concrete underneath it, how where does that 1st bounce take you? Higher or lower than that 30 centimeters?

Finn Melanson [00:38:37]: Lower?

Guest [00:38:39]: Cool. It actually takes you the 1st bounce hits the plexiglass plate. It's 99.5% response. So, this is a misuse of misunderstanding of physics. What they were showing was the energy lost. You lost Roughly 70% of the energy they got put into the system. That ain't good, but the way it was pitched is look at this energy return, it's bouncing higher and everyone's like, I'm in. It sucks 70% of the energy out with every step.

Guest [00:39:06]: How's that good? I mean, but I gotta give you one more related to that for the fun of it. Sure. Nike in an ad, they talk about, you know, their new foam and how and they were very smart about this. They said it gives you the feeling of propelling you forward. It gives you the feeling of propelling you forward, because when you walk in it or if you're running slowly enough, as your heel is coming off the ground, The foam is uncompressing quickly enough that you literally feel it kinda tapping your heel. But it's not doing anything because there's nothing on the other side of the foam where that tapping of your heel would move your heel faster. So it feels like something's happening. It's not happening.

Guest [00:39:42]: It's not doing anything.

Finn Melanson [00:39:45]: One thing I'm curious about, when you think about the totality of a barefoot esque shoe versus Like the Nikes and the Adeduses and the Hokas that we're talking about, generally speaking, where does the majority of, You know, biomechanics, academia stand on all of this.

Guest [00:40:04]: Oh, boy. And why? It's a tricky question because I have to answer I have to answer it this way. I read 2 studies recently that we're looking at aspects of regular shoes versus, quote, barefoot shoes or even barefoot running. And They said, the way they what they did is they took the regular, you know, runners in their regular shoes and they did whatever measurements and then they took the runners and they wanted to see what the difference is barefoot. So they had them get acclimated to running barefoot By running for 5 minutes on a treadmill barefoot, that is not getting acclimated to running barefoot. I was at a panel discussion with a bunch of science y people the 14 and a half years ago, 14 years ago. And all these science y people then where there was no research at that time really. Actually, there was.

Guest [00:40:57]: There was research on the Nike Free that showed that it reduced injury compared to a regular shoe at the time. That's a whole other story. And, and and All these people were saying, you know, it was going to take years years years to adapt to be able to run barefoot. And I said, it took me 2 weeks. They're like, I said, said, well, let me just ask you a question. Have any of you even tried to run barefoot on a hard surface like the side of a road for at least a mile? No one had. None. So they were just pulling stuff totally out of their butts for this opinion that they had.

Guest [00:41:31]: So the research, I'll give you another one. This actually came out of the University of Colorado, Roger Kroms' lab way back when comparing running with some cushioning to running barefoot with no cushioning, And Roger, I'm trying to think of how I want to say this, what he showed was that people had better VO2 max when they were cushioned, And he said that he had accomplished barefoot runners for the other test for part of the cohort. And I bought him a beer the last time he talked to Mike talked to me in public And I said, I know all the barefoot runners in town. I am one of them. Neither I nor anyone that I know was in your lab for that test. I think I know the runners that you used. They're really good runners who do a little bit of barefoot training on the grass when they're done. It's not the same.

Guest [00:42:18]: So the problem is that many times what people are using for the barefoot part of the study It's just the wrong cohort. It's the wrong people. It's they haven't, you know, these are not accomplished barefoot runners by any stretch of the imagination. Or None of these things look at back to at the beginning of our conversation, the form. Are they running with decent form or not? Because the whole idea about barefoot, whether you're talking about, you know, quote barefoot shoes or barefoot running, it's not about the footwear, it's about the form. Are you running with the form that is biomechanically optimal for you or not, and the argument is that it's about form, not footwear, but footwear Impacts the Form. And I say that because I spent some time in the lab with doctor Bill Sands when he was out in Colorado. Bill, was the former, I think, head of biomechanics and engineering for the U.

Guest [00:43:13]: S. Olympic team, something like or U. S. Olympic Committee. And what Bill would do in his lab is he'd have you get on a giant treadmill, it's like 5 feet wide, 10 feet long in your favorite shoes and he'd film you at 500 frames a second from the side and from the back And then he'd have you run barefoot after that and then he'd have you try in every other pair of shoes you ever like to run-in. And from almost all runners, Every pair of shoes and barefoot changed your gait in some way, and even more interestingly, the people didn't know it. They had no idea that it had changed. So, the problem with the studies, there's no no one is landing in one camp or the other well because many of the studies are so poorly designed and people don't realize it because they're I don't know why actually.

Guest [00:43:59]: I mean, you know, this idea that You could adapt to it running barefoot in 5 minutes on a treadmill. You can't adapt to the same version of the same shoe that you're wearing if it's a new one versus one you've been wearing for 2 years in 5 minutes. Your gait will be different. You know, you won't be you won't be adjusted. And if and if the change in the condition, Barefoot, new shoe, old shoe leads to a new movement pattern, youire going to be less efficient until you get used to that or till you adapt in some way. So the studies are all like all over the place and the problem is that they're not being well analyzed when people want to make a point. I'm the 1st one to say if you find me a study that shows that what I'm doing is bullshit, I'm I'm all in, you know, let me have it. But if you're showing me one of those studies, Let's get really, really clear about what they're doing.

Guest [00:44:46]: I've seen studies that were that were about barefoot shoes and the shoe they were using, demonstrably not anything close to barefoot. So, there's just a lot of people like to say I'm trying to think how to say this. The problem with science is not Science, it's just it's bad science and it's really easy to do bad science and not know it.

Finn Melanson [00:45:09]: So maybe one of the The bottlenecks in all this is, how the research is designed and how the training subjects are selected, stuff like that?

Guest [00:45:19]: Yeah, the Holy Grail study would be we take 3 randomly selected groups of a few 100 people. 1 just stays running in whatever they're running in like an, you know, quote normal shoe. One gets a quote, barefoot shoe that is agreed by everyone to be, you know, very barefooty. And the 2nd group gets the Same thing, but they also get a little bit of instruction about, you know, how to run differently. And then you just watch them over a year and see what the difference is between these groups. Doesn't exist, but I'm gonna answer your question in a different way we don't need to prove this shit we're not the intervention This is what human beings what we're doing is what human beings have been doing for 99.9% of human history. The intervention is the modern athletic shoe. And why do I say that we don't need to prove it? Because the big companies have already proven the problem with their product.

Guest [00:46:07]: So

Finn Melanson [00:46:09]: Isn't isn't isn't there a lot of stuff that humans have been doing inefficiently for a long time?

Guest [00:46:14]: The the reason why

Finn Melanson [00:46:15]: we have inventions is To make things either more efficient or you know, easier to do?

Guest [00:46:19]: Well, perfect segue to where I was gonna go. Go to the Nike website. Look on their Run Fearless We can put it in the show notes if you want. Go to the bottom of the page where they publish a portion of an abstract from a study that they did that they promoted about 4 years ago.

Finn Melanson [00:46:35]: Yeah.

Guest [00:46:36]: Right before right before the pandemic, actually. The way they promoted it was new shoe reduces injury rate by 52%. And it did and they published that part of the abstract. By the way, the entire study hasn't been published for a lot of reasons because it wouldn't look it would make what I'm about to say look even worse than what I'm about to say. So the new shoe reduced injury by 52%. Awesome. Well, let's look at the actual numbers because percentages can hide thing. Going from 1 to 2 is a 100% change.

Guest [00:47:03]: So in the 12 week study designed by Nike, paid for by Nike, but done by someone who's not Nike, so they called it an independent study. I'm cool with that. In In a 12 that 12 week study, the person the people running in the regular shoe, which is their best selling shoe at the time, the Zoom Structure 22, 30.3% of the people got injured in 12 weeks. An injury was called anything that keeps you from running for at least 3 training sessions in a row. In the new shoe, the React Infinity Run, only 14.5% got injured. Okay, that's 52%. But if that's the best you can do after 50 years of R and D Injured between 14.5 and 30% of the people running in your shoes I would say that's a problem. If we injured 14 a half to 30% of the people running in our shoes over any time period, not just 12 weeks.

Guest [00:47:59]: We'd be having this conversation. I'd be in my jail cell. But it also raises some questions. A, well, if that other shoe is twice as bad, Why are you still selling the Zoom Structure 22 or any other shoe like it? If the new shoe is so much better, why aren't you making all the shoes like that? As of now, they updated the website So they now have 2 styles that are using that same technology, which raises the next question, what'd you do to make that shoe better? This is the part that's in the study that hasn't been published. I happen to have a copy of the public of the study without that didn't get published. The quote was, They removed many of the protective features. They made it more like a minimalist or barefoot shoe, but frankly not enough. So again, if their own research shows and by the way, inurier range don't stay consistent over time, they go up over time.

Guest [00:48:48]: So they just proved that runners in regular shoes what we know anecdotally that 80% of sorry, 50% of runners, 80% of marathoners tend to get injured every year. They just showed you it's the goddamn shoes. Okay. To quote Spike Lee or just quote Spike Lee. And sorry, look, I mean, I gotta tell you why I get so wrapped up about this. I don't know why it's a psychological issue that I have. As a person who has created and marketed various products over my lifetime, I find it morally unacceptable when people make money by lying to their customers. And I would argue that's what they're doing.

Guest [00:49:31]: I would argue that in part because he

Finn Melanson [00:49:33]: likes people. Does he like Purdue Pharma, but for the shoe industry?

Guest [00:49:36]: You know, I almost wish that running shoes killed people, because then we'd have a Philip Morris case and people would find out Truth.

Finn Melanson [00:49:41]: The Merchants of Doubt.

Guest [00:49:43]: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know, the the and I'm being glib when I say that, of course.

Finn Melanson [00:49:48]: But I'm joking completely, yeah.

Guest [00:49:50]: Well, both of us, but, you know, it's hard not to when you see something like that in your face. I mean, we've had people from major footwear brands Say directly to a friend of mine who is looking to invest in our company, and then he didn't simply because he got the opportunity to make a phone call and make $1,000,000,000. And, so he's like, I'm out of here. I'm not talking to anybody ever again. No more business. But he when he was investigating us, he called all of his former Harvard Business School friends who were at executive positions at major footwear brands. And so what do you think about this whole, you know, natural movement, barefoot running thing? And they all came back with basically the same quote. Oh, it's for real, but if we did that, we'd be admitting we've been lying for 50 years.

Guest [00:50:29]: This is not a secret in the, you know, in the world. I want to back up a giant step to when, Nike put a wedged heel in a shoe. Couple of interesting things about that. The footwear world is a bunch of people who are not really creative and who are perpetually terrified. If a new thing comes out and starts to catch on, They are afraid that they are never gonna sell another one of their products again. So when HOKA came out and HOKA's been out for quite a while, but they didn't hear popular popular till a couple years ago, when everyone started going super maximalist because they were afraid no one was ever going to buy a regular shoe again. When the barefoot thing got I

Finn Melanson [00:51:05]: think that's a fair statement to make that they're not innovative?

Guest [00:51:09]: Yes. There's an event called The Running Event. It's a trade show. Oh, yeah. I was

Finn Melanson [00:51:12]: just there.

Guest [00:51:13]: Yeah. Didn't you notice every shoe looked exactly the

Finn Melanson [00:51:16]: same? I feel like The trend that I noticed is that when a brand gets popular, you start to see the other brands coalesce around the designs from that brand. It's kind of Circular and every brand kind of has a moment, but yeah, yes, to some extent, yes. But

Guest [00:51:32]: Come on, be honest. You could replace you could Twat the logos on those shoes and nobody would know the difference.

Finn Melanson [00:51:36]: Sometimes, yeah.

Guest [00:51:38]: Most of the time.

Finn Melanson [00:51:39]: Yeah. I don't know. No, I hesitate to make the broad based statement that there that there's unimaginative designers, you know? No,

Guest [00:51:46]: no, no. Well, I can I can I will make it because I've been actually dealing with designers for almost for 15 years now? It's not that they're unimaginative. It's that they Like you said, they coalesce around an idea, and they think that that's the truth. Look, we're not really good at history. We don't remember what came before us. We forget that literally it was as little as 50 years ago that most shoes looked like mine. When the when the wedge deal came out, Perhaps the greatest coach ever Arthur Liddiard out of New Zealand, head coach more world champions and more Olympians than anyone else from a tiny little country, said to Bowerman, those shoes are gonna kill people. Barron's response was we're selling a shitload of them.

Guest [00:52:27]: So the thing that they'll say

Finn Melanson [00:52:31]: He said that they were gonna kill him?

Guest [00:52:33]: Yeah. Wow. Bowerman, Liddiard made footwear. It looked like ours. So in fact, I I've been dealing with a lot of people who are Littiard runners and Littiard Foundation ever since, but that's a whole other story. But what I can tell you let's ignore whether the people are creative or not. They are they I I don't wanna ignore it totally. I said to some designers that I know who've been footwear designers for 50 years.

Guest [00:52:58]: I said I have a couple patents for design ideas that I can't believe no one thought of until I did. And they said that's because you knew nothing about footwear when you got into the industry. Everyone else is working in a with a very small toolbox. We have to make something with cushioning. We have to make something with an art sport. We have to make something with motion control. We have to make something with and that limits you dramatically.

Finn Melanson [00:53:18]: But I will say I do agree with that mind. Like, the outsider mindset can help in terms of innovation. I agree with that totally.

Guest [00:53:23]: Yeah. Yeah. Well but I will say the terror thing of we're never gonna sell another shoes, that's what makes them all coalesce. Because in the early Barefoot days, There was articles coming out that were saying, oh my god. If you run barefoot, you know, you're gonna get a ball and you're stepping on hypodermic deals. Your kids won't get into college. Your car is not gonna start your I mean, it was like crazy town. And then 9 months later, they stopped saying that because that's when they came out with their own minimalist shoe that according to the research was not actually even close to minimalist.

Guest [00:53:50]: So, there was one other part that went along with that. The I don't know.

Finn Melanson [00:53:55]: Well, I have 2 questions that I want to make sure I Steve, before we go, one of them is more academic and one of them is more like historical timelines. And with the historical one, I'm not asking this tongue in cheek. I'm I'm truly like Fascinating to get your perspective. I'm old enough to remember that there was that moment between like 2009 and in 2012 ish where Barefoot was all the rage. There There was

Guest [00:54:17]: a lot

Finn Melanson [00:54:18]: of momentum behind it. It seemed like it was going to take off. Again, this is just my perception. It seems like it's lost steam a little bit. Why do you why is that the case in your opinion?

Guest [00:54:28]: You're wrong. Really? Yeah. Go to go to trends, t r e n d s. Google.com. Okay. Do you want to do it now? Go to trends. Google.com and do a search for barefoot shoes. And so, what it's showing you is the search volume for what you're searching And and do, like all time, like 2004 till the present.

Guest [00:54:48]: Yeah. And you'll see something really interesting. Do it for you can search for the USA and search worldwide. Do the USA search and tell tell me what you notice about the interest in barefoot shoes, the number of people searching for.

Finn Melanson [00:54:58]: I'm doing 2004 to present. Yeah. I'm seeing from about 4 to 8, it was, you know, kind of like flat line

Guest [00:55:06]: and then I saw a

Finn Melanson [00:55:07]: A pretty big jump up to 2010 and then from 2010 to about 17, I saw a decline And you're right. I mean, from 2017 to about now, we're seeing a similar, rise.

Guest [00:55:21]: Switch to worldwide. Look at the worldwide search upper left.

Finn Melanson [00:55:27]: Similar.

Guest [00:55:29]: If you look if you leave out the fact Fact that we're now in December, January where, you know, things slow down for everybody. The amount of interest in Barefoot Shoes has grown organically in recent times like you said and it's at an all time high.

Finn Melanson [00:55:41]: Yeah.

Guest [00:55:42]: So, no, it's higher than it was during the boom.

Finn Melanson [00:55:44]: That's correct.

Guest [00:55:45]: Yeah.

Finn Melanson [00:55:45]: Yeah, I stand corrected.

Guest [00:55:47]: Yeah. So, the the What caused

Finn Melanson [00:55:49]: the drop off though until 2017?

Guest [00:55:51]: Well, first of all, it's the Mark Twain line, you know, or Paraphrasing the stories of the Barefoot Chew demise have been greatly overrated. So what happened there are a couple of things. So, ay ay ay. The boom was a boom for all the reasons that things become faddish. You know, just one of those things. It started to peter out for a couple of reasons. 1, the biggest thing that was driving the boom was the 5 fingers and now is a problematic product for a lot of reasons. The lawsuit in 2012 against Vibram which was not proving that Barefoot was bullshit but just saying that they made a claim They're just wearing these shoes would build foot strength and a couple of other things that they didn't have some research with their product backing that up.

Guest [00:56:36]: The big companies promoted the class action lawsuit settlement as a proof as proof that those things were bad for you. It was just a legal thing. I mean, Vibram frankly just didn't care for $3,750,000. They were thrilled to just be be able to get out of it. So Other companies like Merrell, they were seeing tremendous growth with the, the trail glove, etcetera, and when she was like that I

Finn Melanson [00:56:58]: used the Merrell Trail Glove back in the day. Yeah.

Guest [00:57:00]: Yeah. And New Balance with De Minimus, they were pulling out because they were having a hard time telling 2 stories. How do we tell the minimal story and the cushion story? So they were pulling out of retail. So, it just kind of it lost the momentum as most fads do and it became just a bunch of, you know, true believers. Now, during that time, FYI, Those of us who stuck to our guns, we're still seeing 50% growth year over year over year, but the buzz was less Buzzy. If you ask people in a now, if you look in Europe alone, that peak and trough didn't happen. So because they never had the idea, they never just the same things weren't happening. They had a different relationship to the idea of natural movement.

Guest [00:57:41]: They, you know, they weren't as Fond of the 5 fingers anyway because of style, so it just didn't happen the same way. So the the trough was Almost inevitable, on the the broad scheme of things, but it was also misrepresented. Yeah. So like when sorry, I'll do this quickly. When For example, when Merrell was pulling out and not providing product to retailers, then the retail groups like the NPD Group or the analysts were saying, oh, people don't want these. It's like, no, no, no. You're looking at the effect. People can't buy them because they're not in the store.

Guest [00:58:13]: That doesn't mean they don't want them. So there was just a, you know, a bunch of upside down thinking at the same time.

Finn Melanson [00:58:20]: What's responsible for the resurgence in in your opinion?

Guest [00:58:23]: The experience. You put on a shoe that doesn't squeeze your toes together, that that's, like, 90% of the holy crap feel feeling. You put on a shoe that doesn't mess with your posture, that's, like, another giant percent of it. You put on a shoe that lets you safely feel the ground and give you that feedback that your brain has been looking for, that's another piece of the puzzle. You You put on something so lightweight, you forget to take it off before you go to bed, that's another one. So the experience is is significant.

Finn Melanson [00:58:48]: Now, I

Guest [00:58:49]: don't want to be I don't want to either be falsely humble or falsely self aggrandizing, but it's also that I've created, you know, a few tens of thousands of pieces of content and have Something close to 2,000,000 people who bought our shoes. Yeah. And half of our orders come from repeat customers And out of the other half, half of those come from people who met those that first half. So the experience is so significant, people tell their friends and they tell 2 friends and so on. So it's just it's grassroots. It's just totally grassroots.

Finn Melanson [00:59:21]: The last question this has been awesome by the way. I really appreciate your time. The last Question is probably more academic, but one thing you said early in the conversation that has stuck with me is, Go watch young kids exercise. Look at their gait, look at their form. It's intuitive. It's innate. That's the way.

Guest [00:59:39]: It's beautiful.

Finn Melanson [00:59:39]: It's beautiful, right? And so What I'm curious about is like if we're thinking about like the cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition, if we're thinking about the nervous system's role in all of this, What is involved when it comes to like adapting to this type of shoe Yeah. Or even getting like how quickly can you get into those bad movement patterns versus getting out of them? Like, I'm curious about I know it's a broad based question, but I'm curious about all that.

Guest [01:00:09]: Do you know that and did I mention my undergraduate research at Duke was on cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition? No. Yeah. That was what I that's what I was spending you're doing. Yeah. So, I came up with a whole map for exactly the answer to your question. So I'll try and do the shorter version, but let me back up to the kids thing because kids have one other aspect, they're running. They They get this weird look on their face when they do it. It's called, what's that word? Smiling.

Guest [01:00:33]: They're having a good time. They're laughing. They're giggling. They're playing. They stop when they're tired. They sit down. They get back up. They do it again.

Guest [01:00:40]: There's races that we have here in Boulder where, you know, we have these tiny little kids. The only thing cuter than those kids would be puppies and they run the 400. And I've literally watched kids like sit down in the middle of the 4 and then stand up and finish the race because, you know, like, they don't know any better. It's awesome. So the simple answer is feedback, and it's got to be the right amount of feedback, you know. It's got to be just enough so that your brain is Getting the sense that something needs to change, but not so much that it's overwhelming. And ideally Boy, it's a trickier one. I gotta I'll do the shorter version of this.

Guest [01:01:16]: I think there's 4 neurological types, if you will. Some people, They really can't even feel the feedback because they have they have shut down the amount of information their brain is getting from their feet for so long that their brain literally changes its Chape. There's a book called The Brain That Changes Its Chape or The Brain Yeah, I think that's it. And it talks a lot from, about a guy named doctor Mike Merzenich who who actually talks about how Barefoot would be better for this very reason. So they can't really feel, and they need to start walking around just to wake up that nervous system again So their brain is going, oh, you're giving me information? Beautiful. I'll take it. Some people are good. They can feel that feedback, but they don't have great proprioceptive Tceptive Skills, which by the way means where your joints are in relation to them the limbs and the things Proximal and distal to that joint and the and space, it's not feeling the ground, it's just, you know, back where your body is.

Guest [01:02:10]: Some people don't have great proprioceptive skills, most of us in fact. These are people who will tell me that the rubber on the heel of my shoes is not made correctly and I say, well, we can't violate the laws of physics, you're over striding and heel striking and creating excessive horizontal force called friction. They go, I don't think I do that. I go, send me a video. They send me a video and after 20 minutes of drawing lines on the screen, They'll finally go, okay, well, that you're that video showing over striding and heel striking, but I don't do that. So these people just need more video feedback too because we're not really good at knowing what our body is doing not as good as we think we are. The 3rd group, they just need some cues because they can feel things and they're Pretty good with proprioception, so if you give them some cues, like, one of the best cues I've ever gotten was from my friend Doug Adams from Run DNA. They do gait analysis.

Guest [01:02:57]: They have a gait analysis system, which is, as your foot is coming off the ground, think about kneeing a soccer ball to somebody in front of you. And what's so clever about that cue is it's not about lifting your knee. It's not about knees high, you know, get your knees up. It's actually to knee the soccer ball to someone in front of you. It changes the way your foot contacts the ground and comes off the ground, And it makes it so it's harder to overstride. It's a weird thing, but it's a beautiful cue. But then there's other cues, like pretend you're Fred Flintstone trying to start his car. His feet are always behind him.

Guest [01:03:32]: You know, you can't really do that, but it's a good cue. Or pretend your feet are on a wheel, they barely touch the ground. Or imagine that you want to lift your foot off the ground before it even touches the ground. There's all these little cues that really they just speed up the learning process. The 4th group of people, they are naturals. They just pick it up really quickly. The problem with them is It's so much fun typically that they do too much too soon and get tired and revert to one of those previous levels without realizing it. But all of these things that I just mentioned are fundamentally different kinds of feedback, and so what I say if you want to learn to run barefoot or learn to have great form, which is again kind of 1 in the same, Take off your shoes or if you want to wear ours, that's fine, but ideally, look, take off your shoes, find a nice smooth hard surface.

Guest [01:04:16]: It's gonna give you better feedback than the ground or the grass, which is kinda like having cushioning out of your shoe and everywhere else on the ground. Besides, like, I don't do sprinting training on the grass because there's little divots or there's stuff you could step on. Yeah. So I don't like the grass. Nice smooth hard surface. If If you wanna watch a barefoot runner get misty eyed, talk about a freshly painted white line on the side of a road. Holy crap, is that thing awesome. Go for a super short run.

Guest [01:04:40]: Really short. 20 seconds. Maybe 30 if you're really good. And see how you feel the next day. If you feel great, then add 10 seconds the next time. If you feel a little sore like you just went to the gym and did a little too much, wait till you don't feel sore, go back and do that 20 seconds again until you can do that and you feel fine the next day, then add 10 seconds. If you feel sore like you did something wrong, then a, wait till you feel fine again. And Then when you got the next time, you need to use one of those cues.

Guest [01:05:07]: Get your feet underneath you. Pay attention to whether you're over striding. Don't reach out your don't reach your foot out in front of you and point your toes. Think about lifting your foot off the ground instead of pushing your foot off the ground. There's a handful of you know, pick up your cadence a little bit. Not there's no magic number, but pick up your cadence just a tiny bit. Make sure you're leaning forward from your ankles just a tiny bit. You know, there's like a handful of little things It can get you until when you can do this 20 seconds good and go out the next time and add 10 seconds and then, you know, lather, rinse and

Finn Melanson [01:05:36]: repeat. Awesome. Stephen, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I've learned a lot for sure. You've given me a lot to think about. I do want to make sure that we give you a chance to provide any calls to action to listeners on the web of your your company.

Guest [01:05:50]: Both of that.

Finn Melanson [01:05:51]: Yeah. So so

Guest [01:05:52]: I appreciate it. I'll give

Finn Melanson [01:05:53]: you a minute here just a quick pitch on what you do and and what you're selling and all that stuff. Sure.

Guest [01:05:58]: So when I discovered all of this for myself, The combination of wanting that natural movement experience, that Barefoot like experience, and my wife wanting me to not drag my dirty ass feet into the house led to us first creating a do it yourself sandal making kit based on the way human beings have been making sandals since the beginning of human beings. It's now evolved to a line of 52 Casual and performance shoes, boots and sandals styles that people use from everything from taking a walk to running ultra marathons to trudging through the snow to climbing Kilimanjaro, Doing, you know, workouts of every sort to playing professional athletics in, like, 5 different sports that I can mention, and everything in between. And again, You don't need to switch to our shoes at xeroshoes, xeroshoes.com, for everything you do, although we make shoes for almost everything you do. If you're happy in what you're doing, Great. But the research is a very clear, unequivocally clear, repeated often. Just walking in shoes like ours builds foot muscle strength as much as doing an exercise program. Research from doctor Isabel Sacco doctor Isabel Sacco showed that if you did that exercise program, Your risk of running injuries over the course of a year is reduced by 250%. So running whatever you want if you're a runner, but then get out of those shoes, switch into something like that or just to walk around for active recovery, Build up foot strength, build balance, build agility, build mobility, and reduce your potential risk of injury.

Guest [01:07:19]: And then youire also making those expensive shoes last a lot longer, which is not gonna make your shoe store happy, but it'll make your wallet a lot happier. So we're here to help people feel what they've been missing, which is natural comfort, natural performance, natural health. And our line is, you know, we just wanna help you live life feet first. So you can go to xeroshoes.com or find us online at at xeroshoesor/zeroshoes wherever you at or slash.

Finn Melanson [01:07:58]: Thanks for listening to the run to the top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch Finn and the rest of our team at runners connect. Also consider Reporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple Podcast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences With our guests and premier access to contests and giveaways, you can subscribe to our newsletter by going to runnersconnect.net backslash podcast. Until next time. Happy trading.