Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 691 - The Barefoot Sprinter Graham Tuttle: WEAK FEET Are A HUGE PROBLEM, THIS Is How To STRENGTHEN Them

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

We put on shoes one day and never took them off. Our shoes became narrower, the heels elevated and our feet paid the price for it all. Graham Tuttle, aka The Barefoot Sprinter, educates us on how and why traditional shoes are bad for us, why "jogging" and the commercialization of running has hurt us and most importantly, why going barefoot can help us with are ailments. Follow Graham on IG: https://www.instagram.com/thebarefootsprinter/ Get the best shoes on the market with a wide toe box that don't look ugly: https://vivobarefoot.com/ and use code PowerProject for the best deal available! Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, we have an amazing episode for you today. It's with our homie, the barefoot sprinter, Graham Tuttle. And in this episode, we go over everything feet. Because to be perfectly honest, the foot or the feet are your base. And many individuals are wearing shoes or doing things to their feet that cause their feet to be weak. So we go over what you need to be doing to strengthen your feet in this episode. From your toes, your arches, everything. Because

if you have a strong base, you're going to be a better athlete. You're going to be a better lifter. You're going to be more resilient. You're just going to be overall stronger. So this episode is going to be nothing like you've heard on the Power Project before. Along with that, you have seen myself, Mark, and Andrew wearing these shoes. They're the Vivos. We've been wearing these for the past six to seven months. And we finally have a code for you guys to save some money because we talk about the importance of barefoot minimal shoes in this episode so if you go to vivo barefoot.com and enter the code power project at checkout you can save some dough on your new barefoot shoes they actually look good andrew unlike more other barefoot shoes these look stylish no yeah you don't end up looking

like a clown and they look so good um like, you know what I mean? They look almost like bowling shoes, but like bow out, heck crazy. But they're so good that my wife wears them every day. I wear them every day. And within maybe a span of four months, my feet have gotten extremely stronger to the point where I can walk around barefoot, even in a field in UC Davis with these Savages. So I highly recommend it. Absolutely, guys. And just make sure to check them out because they have all types of shoes from

hiking to shoes you can wear in the gym to shoes that you can wear casually. They have a lot of stuff, a lot of options. So power project to check out. You save yourself some dough. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode. Put the headphones on so that we're making my mix right now. That's why you said,

okay. I'm watching in SEMA OCD. It's all good. Shakes over here. Are we rolling now? Yes, sir. Okay. Watching in SEMA's OCD. It's all good. Shakes over here. Are we rolling now? Yes, sir. Okay. Well, I was talking about Graham because Graham, for some reason, he said something about being

sexy and he said like, sexy like in SEMA. Then I look back at Graham like, motherfucker, you don't think you are sexy? Look at you, Graham. You have boyish, charming looks, right? You got a nice ass tattoo on your left arm. A nice smile. You have an amazing ass. I was going to say, don't forget.

Can we, and Graham, could you turn around real quick and could we get a zoom in on his peach? I don't know how to turn, but there you go. There are booties and then there are booties that are like peachy. This is like, I got a girl. Great legs. Great legs, right? Like, dude, you are a great looking dude. I don't know what you're talking about.

It's kinky. Cakey. Cakey. It's cakey. It's cakey. It's cakey. Pound cake. Yeah. And, and.

Come down, come down. All your content is based off of being barefoot. So you got an audience right there. Barefoot and pregnant. Most of them are normal like us, but then they're the freaks. Well, you've heard of the idea of intersectionalities. And I think of intersectionalities of how I can market my body. Some guys like balding men and tattoos and with big butts and uh nice feet so like hey

has anybody ever tried to sponsor your feet like could we do that could we could i get like a slingshot tattoo on it or something he's like what the fuck how much would it cost wait a tattoo i'm thinking it's not a bad idea. You're off the team face on there? Well, I'd have to be like, you're off the team. Yeah, yeah, right. Oh, man, then I got to pay for a lot of real estate now. Just a heel, just a heel.

Or it could be like the bottom of the toe. Are you amazed at this mixture that Encima's making up? What do you got in there, buddy? It's MCT, salted caramel electrolytes, or Bubz MCC, salted caramel electrolytes, bubs mcc mt uh salted caramel electrolytes and within you vanilla gram you uh you i you were telling me that you eat like testicles and all kinds of crazy stuff liver kidney heart spleen all that stuff right you eat testicles well i mean which context are we talking about animals come on graham balls. Come on, Graham. I had a, this is a side story,

but I had a girl that I was really good friends with and she probably listened to this, so hi. But anyway, so I invited her over. Should we just put her name out? No, I'm joking.

I'm joking. Don't do it. So she goes, I was talking like, hey, you should come over and I'll make you dinner. She goes, well, that depends. Is there testicle and tongue involved?

I'm like, it depends on what you want. But it was, I'm the only person you could have like a double entendre with that question of like, cause she didn't, she knew you like, she knew that you ate those things. That's my point is like, she wasn't saying like, oh, we're going to like hook up. It was like, no, she was though. She was there.

She knew what she was doing. She's trying to get some of that. But I was like, I eat other organs too. It could have been like heart and liver, but like that went testicle and tongue. And I was like, it was perfect. But I just, I, the sheer joy of that moment of like, I am other organs too. It could have been like heart and liver, but like that went Tesco and Tong and I was like, it was perfect. But I just, I, the sheer joy of that moment of like, I am one of the few people you could have that double entendre with.

That's beautiful. Are you a coffee guy? No, I don't. I never, my parents, I watch my parents have coffee and you know, they wake up and it's like the death in their eyes, the coffee breath. And it's just like, they couldn't have function if they didn't have it. I'm like, ah. So I just, yeah, no, I do on occasion, I'm doing like a Kono pre-workout's just like they couldn't have function if they didn't have it i'm like so i just yeah no i do on occasion like a cono pre-workout just like a little like

something uh to get me up in the morning but like that's rare most days i just try to sleep how'd you end up getting into all this you know you're the barefoot sprinter on instagram and uh you're telling me how you eat and uh even just you know working out with you in the gym a little bit there and going over some stuff, it seems like you're very spiritual. What kind of, I guess, what happened along the way that made you want to investigate a lot of this stuff? We're doing the boulet shot. Oh, yeah. Let's do the mind boulet shot real quick.

My bad. Give it a shake. Oh, I didn't think that's a shake. You there already? I'm going to just stuff it down my throat. Mind bullet. You don't shake it. You just go.

Down the old hatch. Down the hatch, man. That does not taste good. We forgot to tell him not to drink the whole thing. It has a nice little sting to it. Oh, wow. Someone moved the basket, though. In your defense.

Yeah. You got to recalibrate. In your defense, I moved it closer. Oh, banked it. Jesus. I didn't call it, though. Dude. I'm out here and winning, man.

Tim Duncan in the house. Holy shit. That was nice. Dude, what the fuck was up with that? He didn't even try. He didn't even look. What the fuck? I moved it closer for him to see, but it was worse.

Anyway, so what happened along the way here? It's a deep-seated insecurity about how unathletic I was, I suppose. But I grew up, played a lot of sports, had horrible eyesight, like horrible. I've never met someone with worse eyesight than me. Like the bottle – the Rexpacks and the bottle-thin glasses. I think of the Christmas story where it's like you shoot your eye out, kid. Like that was me. So I grew up, wanted to play sports, loved it all.

But mom was like, oh, you can't play football, get a concussion. Can't play baseball, get a concussion. Can't play basketball, get a concussion. Can't play soccer when you hit the play football get a concussion can't play baseball get a concussion can't play basketball get a concussion can't play soccer when they had the ball get a can i was like okay mom and she wants to play soccer just because of heading the ball i stopped playing soccer at hr team when it got competitive like it was that was i grew up with that just wear a helmet yeah whoa she's a sweet woman but um the point is we uh you grew up playing sports just love being outside like i just didn't really do well sitting down you know never really i was always asking too many questions as a kid it was pretty obnoxious but is we grew up playing sports, just loved being outside. Like I just didn't really do well sitting down. You know, I was always asking too many questions as a kid.

I was pretty obnoxious. So I grew up playing, and the only sport that I really got into, and this is how bad, I was at a cross-country track, and those are the only sports that don't make cuts on the team. But I was the tent carrier. Like I was always the alternate on the cross-country team. So I'm the guy that's on the bench of the team that doesn't make cuts. But I grew up, and then I kind of didn't really know. I just loved to move because the whole idea of sitting in class and sitting in school all day was just not – it just didn't jive with me well.

So then I go, and I start lifting my senior year of high school, and I actually got stronger. And it was like the first thing. I went to the gym. I had no idea what I was doing, going to bodybuilding.com. The only thing I knew what to do was I think it was Jim Stap thing, I went to the gym, I had no idea what I was doing, you know, going to bodybuilding.com and it's like, the only thing I knew what to do was I think it was Jim Stobani's six week to six arms

and like I did that many, many weeks in a row. So I had 52 weeks to six arms and it was, you know, amazing. So you want to, people are like,

oh, what should I do for cross country training? Don't do six weeks to six arms. It will not make you faster as a cross country runner. But that's a whole different thing. So,

more as I go and I finally start to lift and realize, like, I can change my body. And it was just a huge thing. And it's kind of realizing my identity of, like, I have things I can learn, I can do. Where did your body start, by the way, in terms of, like, weight? Like, when you started lifting? So, I would say that senior year, I was six. I graduated high school.

This is really because I didn't know, you know, I'm going, like, once a week to the gym. The workouts I do, I would go 3x20 squat, 3x20 lunge, 3x20 RDL, and then 3x20 calves. And that was my workout once a week to the gym. The workouts I do, I would go 3x20 squat, 3x20 lunch, 3x20 RDL, and then 3x20 calves. And that was my workout once a week. That was my goal. I don't want to be able to sit tomorrow. I had no idea what I was doing. So I go to college, stop running. I was 165 when I graduate college, and I go to college.

And then by fall break, I was 205, or by spring break, I was 205. So I put on 40 pounds because I could eat. I love my parents, but they did not feed me enough. So I grew up and I was able to eat enough at Unlimited Dining Hall. So the point is I'm going through college, like no idea what I want to do. And I rode crew in other sport where they don't make cuts. But I get more and more into lifting. And I'm like, well, I enjoy this, but you can't be a personal trainer.

Like who does that, right? Like these are the guys that are very poor and just sitting around doing nothing at the gym on their phone. I'm like, I'm supposed to do something with my life if I go to college, I guess. So I think I'll do physical therapy. Because the way I thought about school is you do something that sounds good, so it has a high reputation, it makes money, and it's a high likelihood of consistency. So there's always going to be doctors and physical therapists. It sounds good.

I'm going to do pre-med. It makes a lot of money. It sounds good. Even if you don't do it, it's like, I'm going to do pre-med. Oh, you must be smart. Sounds good to other people. Exactly. You need something to talk about when people ask you what you're doing.

And so the thing was like, well, it seems secure. It's going to make money, and it sounds good. So that's how I thought. And so I go down the list. I'm like, everything just seems miserable to do. And I tried to do med school. And eventually, I did some shadowing as a physical therapist. And I was like, I just hate how retroactive it is.

It's like, oh, you're only here because insurance is paying for it. You don't really care about it. It's like, I'm just here, so don't find me. It's like, that was never something that really struck me. And I was like, why don't we get more proactive with it? So I learned a good paradigm for how the body works and at this time I'm still lifting but problem is like all I'm doing is bodybuilding lifting like you know I get into power lifting a little bit of Olympic lifting a little bit of CrossFit you know the typical strength sports

that are online because if you want to go and do this stuff all the time like what I love doing is playing sports but what I didn't feel like I could do was play sports because so one of the things you don't realize is when you grow up, neither of you wear glasses, right? I used to when I was a kid. What? Did you get LASIK and fix it up? No, no, no. My mom had me playing soccer and two years later my vision was perfect. The doctor said it was just because I was looking out inside the sun and my vision changed.

So that's one of those things. If you look at eyes, the actual shape of your cornea is changed by those intraocular muscles. I don't know the right word for that. But you can actually train those, and you can look at the distance. And this idea of – I forget the – it's not myopia. I think that's slow and farsighted. But there's a word for when you lose eyesight over time, like you get weaker eyes. You literally get weaker eyes. And so going and training and stuff, I actually go walk every day without glasses in the morning and focus my eyes and train them.

It's one of the weird things I do. I haven't seen you with glasses. I got contacts. Ron Penna, remember that? Mark's friend, and I guess he's our friend too, Ron Penna, he's the former CEO of Quest. He mentioned to us how he doesn't

wear sunglasses anymore. And we were asking him, why? He's like, it makes your eyes weak. It doesn't wear that well. Your eyes need the sunlight. Um, he mentioned some weird study that happened in China for like a grade school kids and certain kids that were able to start getting outside, they started needing their glasses less. So I have these glasses, but I don't wear them anymore. Sunglasses. On the other side of that, uh, what they've, they've done research. So obviously you look at kids being on social media on their phone all the time. And they found that actually like there's worse – your eyes get worse.

But the thing that made the difference is if you could go and spend the same amount of time on your phone but go outside and it negated that. So it's like I think there's a lot to be – and there's also – I've heard this. I don't know how true it is. But all of your blood – every single bit of your blood flows through your body. It's not like you get pumped through your circulation system. And so your eyes actually have the capacity for the UV light to filter and it cleans your blood flows through your body. It's not like it gets pumped through your circulation system. And so your eyes actually have the capacity for the UV light to filter and it cleans your blood. So there's something to be except for being out in eye, like with your eyes

in the sunlight or in access to sunlight. But there's also like the setting your photoreceptor. You've talked to Andrew Huberman, but like the blue-yellow hues that your body can see in the morning and at night that kind of set your circadian rhythm.

And then super-chiasmatic, whatever it is. Chiasmatic neucalyptus. Yes. Letting go of the melatonin and the serotonin production. So there's all kinds of stuff there. But the point is when you grow up and you have really bad eyesight, what you don't realize is you don't get peripheral vision. So like I'm wearing glasses and I can't see out to the side.

So I stop learning to depend on that. And that's one of those things from an athletic perspective. Like if you want to be a team sport, like I could play one-on-one basketball or maybe three-on-three, but the second thing started to move quick. Like I can't, I don't know how to, I'd freeze. I don't know how to move. And so always a lot of insecurity around that. So the strength sports I would do were all like very much I can control this, I can run,

I can lift weights. And so I kind of got into that. But the problem is I had no idea what I was doing. So I was just training like a meathead. No offense to meatheads. They're lovely people here that both hurt me. But that ended up getting to the point where my body got weaker. I had a really bad ankle sprain that led to a shift in my hips and my anatomy.

And that turned into hip problems, shoulder dislocations, knee pain, shin splints, plantar fasciitis, turf toe, you name it. It goes down this line. Like I'm 20, 21, 22. I'm like way too young to be feeling all these pains. And so at that point, I started to apply the lens of all the study I'd done for physical therapy in medical school. Like, okay, well, the body's working. But every time I go to a physical therapist and a chiropractor or a doctor, they just say pain pills, orthotics, new shoes, adjustments. And it was like it just seemed so retroactively symptomatic symptom treatment as opposed to looking at the real problem so that kind of got me down this path of looking at the

body and saying well you know what if we kind of step back and understand what's happening how it pieces together and so then that's kind of been the last few years of like looking at what the body's capable of and it got me into i've always enjoyed running but i hated the way running is presented does that make sense what do you mean by that? So running, the most of the conversation about running has been co-opted by like long distance runners and endurance runners. It's like, oh, when I go run, oh, how hard you go run? It's like, well, you know, like running is like not, it's part of it, right? You can go run distances. But for me, running is like, you know, you chase the ball. There's a lot of people who

I hate running, but I'll play. I'll run 10 miles in soccer. I get something to go do. I'm sprinting and I'm recovering. I think there's much more of an athletic sign of like running is really sprinting. It's really being explosive. Like there's running, there's walking, and there's sprinting. I don't believe in jogging, but we can have that conversation in a minute. But when I started to take that back is I've always been a cross-country runner.

But what I love, the 4x4, that was the thing that really made me feel alive. It's like being explosive, going out and really doing it and there is definitely a place for mid and long distance running and that's good but most of the conversation about this has been taken over people that go run ironmans and half marathons and marathons and it's like and that's great but that doesn't always appeal to everybody and when the only thing you hear about running is people with very thick shoes and i don't really do a lot of strength training and you know want to have loss of bone mass in their arms because they want to be light. It's like I wanted to be athletic.

And so this pursuit of like what does it look like to pull these things together? What would it look like? And so we kind of draw from the past for things like how to eat and how to move, how to live, how to engage with one another. So that kind of goes down. So when I started to redefine what running meant for me personally and what it meant for humans. I was like, okay, this is actually very accessible. And so then I started to change that. So the first thing is like, well, my feet, I was having shin splints and it couldn't bend my toe.

My turf toe is like, it's helicus rigidus. So basically you can't really bend that big toe. It's everything from like lunges and everything that like loaded the foot. Jiu-jitsu athletes, new jiu-jitsu athletes complain about turf toe all the time. And that's because they're not getting – they're loading. They don't have enough resiliency in that plantar fascia in the bottom.

They're connected to the bottom of the foot and then they're loading it under pressure. And they're doing one piece without doing the rest of it. They're connected to the body. Those things like if you've had that, you know how painful it is to extend and bend that foot. So the only thing I really knew what to do is like I wanted to kind of get back into feeling like I could use my body and feel like some level of capacity. So I started running again and I didn't know what to do. And I was like, well, I think you're supposed to run on the front of your feet.

So I just did that. And then I got shin splints for a month because it's like you just jump into it. And I was like, well, maybe it's my shoes. So I just changed my shoes right away. And then I gave me plantar fasciitis flared up so bad after that. And so it was this kind of backwards thing. And then I was like, well, maybe my calves are tight. So I started rolling and doing all the calves.

By the way, plantar fasciitis is something that people hear about a lot and people develop a lot. So can you explain to people what plantar fasciitis is? So you've got – so there's things called fascia, right? So fascia is this connective tissue that wraps around all the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones in your body. So if you've ever had a boneless, skinless chicken breast and you get that very thin layer that peels off of it, that's fascia, right? And anatomy is always one of those things that looks much better on the pretty little drawings online as opposed to the, like the, you look at a cadaver,

it's like, yeah, that doesn't look very pretty. But fascia is one of those things where when we think about it, we think, okay, we have bones, we've got muscles. And maybe some people think about tendons as a force multiplier. Tendons would attach bones to muscles. And then we've got ligaments,

which are attached as bones to bones and joints. So fascia is something that wraps around... Oh, there you go. It's beautiful. So your plantar fascia is technically a ligament and that attaches your heel bone, that calcaneus, to the balls of your feet.

And it wraps up to your toes. So basically it's connective tissue, it's collagen, a little bit of water, a little bit of elastin that's innervated so your brain can feel it. up to your toes. So basically it's connective tissue. It's collagen, a little bit of water, a little bit of elastin that's innervated so your brain can feel it. So there's really deep stretches. So if you take your foot and you stretch out the bottom of your foot, so you put your toe on the ground, you stretch into that, or you take your hand overhead and really lean over to the side. Like there's deep kind of like, oh, that feels good stretches where you do like a spinal twist. Those are getting into those deep fascial layers. Now, in order to make actual change to that, you have to actively load it under pressure.

Meaning, if I just – your body is really smart. So our body is much smarter than our mind. It's like, oh, I'm going to go work out. The body is like, I don't think you are. You don't need to do that. But it's like if you're struggling to get up and work out, you kind of sometimes have to set the stakes high. Like, I'm going to go run. It's like, no, you're not.

I'm going to run away from this bear. Yeah, you are. Or, you know, you set out like, I'm going to spend $10,000. I have to pay're not. I'm going to run away from this bear. Yeah, you are. Or, you know, you set out like, I'm going to spend $10,000. I have to pay you $10,000 if I don't go run every day for a year. It's like, you're going to do that. At some point, you have to set the stakes high if you want to. Some people need that external motivation.

That being said, your body works really well. And if you don't load that fascia, if you don't give yourself a reason to do that and then a connected reason, like, okay, we're doing this because we have to support this. The body will not send the message to lengthen and put this. And so you have to get blood flow there. So plantar fasciitis is simply an irritation of the fascia that goes under the foot. More often than not, this is just because we're not moving our feet enough. So if you took your hand and made a, like a, I don't know, the opposite of a fist, like a, you know. A slap hand. A slap hand.

And just held it there rigidly for a long time. We kind of have an understanding that my hand would get stiff in that position. And I'm talking a long time like you put it in a cast and you hold it for months or years and it's like we lose that capacity. But then it's like, okay, what does it look like to move? And so the way back, we can talk about the way to fix that. But simply if you haven't planned a fast shot, it's a signal. It is pain from your body, which is information telling you that, hey, we're missing some piece of feedback here. We're missing some capacity for the body to move, and we need to develop some communication back with this part of the body, right?

So there it goes. I'm getting back into running. I'm trying to, let's say, restore some of this stuff. I try to change the running form without doing the support work. I try to change the shoes without doing the strength work. I try to just roll into the mobility because my calves are tight. And that was just – it was short-sighted because, again, you can press in and give your body a very simple level of – I'm pressing into this thing and it hurts, which is feedback, but what are you doing about it? It's like, okay, I'm scratching a bug bite. That's good short-term, but it's not going to make a – there's not a real reason to change.

So you do that and then I kind of eventually worked out and looked at my feet. I'm like, oh, wait. I had this bad ankle injury a few years ago. And in hindsight, it's a revisionist history. You kind of post-talk understand what happened. I went to physical therapy and they never even took off my shoes. I just did like the calf raises and some ankle circles and stuff and it was like, hmm. And then I look and I'm like, well, my toes don't move and my left foot like turns out and my heart just collapsed.

But that's not on my right foot. I'm like, huh. And then I'm like, well, that makes my – I stand weird. And I had – I'll never forget that I had someone take a video of me walking. I'm like, that doesn't look very good. And he's like kind of wonky going left and right. I'm like, okay. So – and I was like maybe there's some stuff to do.

And so then over the next few years, I kind of walked in this process and did all the research, looking at like different options and what does it mean to have your feet back and to move and to move? We don't think about feet much. There's this weird emotional reaction where some people love feet and some people hate feet. Some people really love feet. Especially when you say it with that silky

voice. I'll do an OnlyFans if you do the voiceover. I'm totally down. See that big toe? You see that big toe? That cleavage right there? You can get right in there. I see you. Stick your finger right there.

Maybe something else. Yeah. Wrap that pinky. So you keep going. Like, all right. How far can we take this? I'm sorry. Let's get the podcast going.

Let's go. So that's the point of this is like you start to look at this and you want to restore your feet. And so, you know, when you look at this, it's building back up. So I did the research and I was like, okay, maybe I can move the feet. And then I started to notice that like, oh, actually, like my – I literally created a functional leg length discrepancy, meaning like one foot, the foundation on one side had just slumped over. So my hips sank over. My back was uneven. That caused this chronic back pain and it eventually led to uneven upper body posture, which led to shoulder dislocations. But the foundation on one side had just slumped over. So my hips sank over. My back was uneven.

That caused this chronic back pain. And it eventually led to uneven upper body posture, which led to shoulder dislocations. And it's like, oh, okay. So maybe there's something here. And so I just started to restore that. And it's frustrating because, like, how do I move my toes? And it's like you're looking at it. It's like every muscle in your body is firing except for the toes. And it's like, you know, as Mark said, it's like Uma Thurman.

You're staring at your toes trying to get that big toe to wiggle. And so you build that back up and you start to restore that. And then what you realize is it's a snowballing process because for so many people, it's really frustrating, right? Because it's like they just get told, oh, you've got flat feet. Oh, you've got bad feet. And it's just like they identify with it. But if you think about this from a perspective, well, there's two things. One is people overemphasize the aesthetic of the arch, right?

There's – you can look at this like a low volume, a high volume, and then there's technically an average volume, which would be like a quote-unquote healthy arch. But people under – some people have long feet, just have a lower volume. So like the space, if you look at your foot from the side, like how much volume is literally under the arch. A high volume would be a higher arch. So, you know, you can have low volume people and – or high volume people, high arches. That's basically determined by the length of the arch. A high volume would be a higher arch. So, you know, you can have low volume people and or high volume people, high arches, that's basically determined by the length of the foot. You can have long feet with a lower volume

and shorter feet with higher volume. And if you have function and capacity over your feet, you're fine. We don't necessarily need to judge by the aesthetic of the foot. So, but the point is that no one is born with arches, right? All little kids have mush ball feet. And so they develop over time.

The problem is if you, we start putting, wearing shoes and we kind of inhibit this, we treat our feet like nowhere else in the body. Basically, we just put them in shoes and then limit their capacity. And it's little by little, we lose that function over time. And then what ends up happening is we identify with this thing, our feet start to hurt because surprise, when we don't use them, they don't function well. And then they start to hurt. with this thing, our feet start to hurt because, surprise, when we don't use them, they don't function well, and then they start to hurt. And then we get told, oh, you need an orthotic. You need a fancy shoe. You have flat feet.

You have turf toe, whatever. Just don't do this. And it's a lot of this fear of – and it makes sense, right? If you're talking to a medical professional, which is different from a health professional, they don't have an incentive. Their risk-reward, if they get you back to doing something like, let's say, above pain, that's nice. But their risk is a lot lower if they don't, right? So their only incentive is just to like minimize. So they'll just say, we're going to cut out all this bottom risky stuff instead of saying, what can we do to get you back to a positive, right? So they're always thinking,

what's the lowest risk thing I can get you to do, which is almost always, and the schools are funded by medical product, it's their medical product companies, and it's no fault of their own if they believe in the product, but when the first line of defense has put you in orthotic, and there's no line of egress, there's never a plan to get out of that, I get people that walk in, they come see me, and I take your shoes off, and I pick up the shoes, and I look at them, and I go, you're getting orthotic, and I'm like, oh, yeah, one of the doctors told me to put that in. I'm like, how long ago?

Five years? Did they ever tell you to take it out? Nope. I'm going to cut you off just for a second. When you kind of hear people, you know, maybe, maybe you talk to somebody on the phone or via some text and then you get to see them in person. Can you almost already tell what their feet are going to look like before they take their shoe off at this point? Like, can you kind of almost see it? And yes, and you can too. So there is, this is one of those things where you look at like how we are aesthetically drawn to people. So there's symmetry, right?

So you look at someone's eyes are symmetrical. That means generally that their shoulders and their hips are symmetrical. They're evenly developed on both sides. That there's people that smile. Everything goes into that. And then you look at the way we walk. If you look at people, there's a reason there's duck-footed people. There's pigeon-toed people, there's things that look good.

That was called the eye test. If you look at someone that's running and it looks good, it's probably good. I was like, what's the simplest metric? It's like we all have an attunement. That's why we love watching. The first Olympic competitions were running. For the first 50 years, all they did was running. They had the stadion, which was like 260 to 200 meters.

Then they had the double stadion, like the aisle, I forget the exact Greek word for it. There was like the 400, then the stadion, which was like 260 to 200 meters. Then they had the double stadion, like the Iolo, and I forget the exact Greek word for it. There was like the 400, then the 800 meter, then they did the 5K, and then they did the rucking. That was what it was. Maryland didn't even happen until 1896. When you think about this, like we all – we enjoy watching running. It's the first recorded competition for humans were running. And this is like 2,000 years before. When you're a kid, you race your friend.

That's like your favorite thing to do when you're a little kid. Yeah, I'll just run around. Yeah, like I'm going to race you or try to tag you or whatever, right? And we should really think it's really weird that as we get older, we stop doing that, especially if we get into a single athletic sport that doesn't have anything to do with running. We don't do it at all. Yeah.

We don't even think about doing it. We don't. Yeah, and think of how many parent coaches are on the side. Oh, he's looking fast. Like, here's the thing. You don't think it at all. Yeah. We don't even think about doing it. We don't. Yeah. And think of how many parent coaches are on the side. Oh, he's looking fast. Like, here's the thing. You don't think you watch running form? Anybody that watches sports can say that guy looks athletic. Yeah.

We don't think about it. That person's attractive. You know, you're not thinking about those wide hips and large-breasted women are, like, fertile and look healthy. Like, that's what it is. Keep going. What else? You're not looking at Mark's big toe and thinking, that guy could lift some weight. You know, it's like, you look at, like, broad, so women look at the shoulder-to-hip some weight. It's like you're looking at broads for women looking at the shoulder to hip weight ratio.

It's like there's different sizes of stuff, but it's like there's symmetry. We have this like intuitive thing. It's like we understand what it looks like. So you can look at someone when they walk in. So if I see someone and you can look at the direction where their ankles, if their toes point out, if their archs collapse in, if their knees are down, if their hips are in, they're slumped over. Like there's a few tells you can see, but a lot of it, like do they sweep or do they turn their feet out and sweep when they walk, meaning they step

or they pick their feet, they push off the toe and kind of stay within this line or do they kind of shuffle out to the side you can watch this stuff and you intuitively know, if you put this but the hard thing is most people can't necessarily do that in isolation, they can say, that looks off but if you compare that to like Nassima walking,

this beautiful, gorgeous man, and then you look at someone else, I'm like, okay, I see that one, but we don't always know exactly what it is. So you can start to pick that apart. But the point of all this is like I wanted, I just kept going back to the question of like, how does this connect? This has got, it's so fundamental for humans,

like walking and running. It's like for 4.5 million years ago, our ancestors started sitting on two feet. That begins a change where we shift from basically having four paws on the ground to having two, and then we start to develop the heel. So the bones of the foot, the calcaneus. I'm going to cover Jesus' ears while you talk about this theory of yours.

I'm sorry. In day two of creation. The Lord said, let there be heel bones we need to get little earmuffs for Jesus you know that would be so cute that would be cute

5,782 years ago there you go the so the this is where you get too far my parents when we grew up there was like

Ken Hubbard videos of the science where like you sit there like you go through the body of the Bible of science like legitimately I believe like You go through the Bible of science. Legitimately, I believe there is still a part of me that I'm like, do they really know the world? It's not – part of it is jarring, but it's one of the – I went home and I was talking to my parents.

They still have the videos. I'm like, mom, this might not be accurate. I have a cool question. Do not forget what you're about to talk about but how do your parents feel that you're when you've opened up your ideas to different things? They're like

our son has a foot fetish. My mom always said this and one of those was good. The three things she said is you know always wear a helmet I don't care if she says she's on birth control wear a condom

and if you're gay we'll still love you. I'm like alright thanks mom and this is one of those things where she would tell me all the time over and over and over again

I'm like I got it mom but it's like she was very supportive hey mama knew about that birth control thing good for her

I don't get what she says and I'm like mom this is such a negative way to look at women I'm like 13 and now we're all women are liars like oh gosh

so but I've kind of introduced so like me, just to rip the bandaid off, like, mushrooms have been just an integral part. Mushrooms, therapy, coaching, journaling, like, it's been an integral part of, like, seeing the world differently. Because you get so used to just going through your daily life. Like, oh, my feet hurt. I've got bad feet. Like, the thing is we go through life and we are externally validated. It's just how we function as kids, right? Everybody is because we learn, Hey, it's not safe to go across

that road. Hey, it's not, you know, you do this, you're rewarded when you're nice, when you're not rewarded, when you punch somebody else, like be a good brother, don't kick your sister in the head. Like, um, neither, not from real, maybe, um, the, and you learn this stuff, you get extra validation. But the problem is, is like at a certain point that only serves you so well, and you get stuck in this cycle of what it means to be you so to speak. And so sometimes like you can get to this point with strenuous physical practice, meditation. Mushrooms are kind of like taking the ferry to the island because once you know you're there, like people say, oh, you can meditate and get there. It's like, well, how do you know you're there?

It's like I've been there and I came back. Now I can meditate and get to these places and do this. But the point is it allows you to kind of shake things up and see things from a different perspective. And that gets you – if you're in pain for a long period of time, I'm not telling you to go take mushrooms because I'm just a personal trainer. What do I know? But like if you're in pain for so long, we identify with that pain. If I have a bad back – I'm not looking at anybody. But if I have a back that hurts and my knee hurts.

You guys all right? Need more water? There it goes. This idea of chronic, right? So there's acute pain and chronic. When things become chronic, it's part of an identity for us. And we get limited by what we find significance about what we can't do as opposed to who we could be. And so that's so much of this pain thing that we get stuck in as people. Straight up. I was like that after I had my knee surgery. I was like, oh, my knees just hurt. My knees just hurt. So yeah, you're totally right. And it's very hard to shake

because it is not a quote unquote bad thing. It's just a protection mechanism that our brain puts together to try and keep us safe. Yet it doesn't always serve us, right? It's like having crutches. After your knee surgery, probably on a little scooter or crutches for a minute. And it's like, we get that, right? But if I saw you five years later, you're selling crutches. I'd be like, oh, did you have another one? Oh no, I just, you know, I want to play it safe. You know, it's like, that's kind of what we do, but we're doing it emotionally and psychologically all the time. And so-

Andrew, give him a yeah, but. Throw a yeah, but his way. But literally everything I do, every waking moment, I'm in pain. So how do I say it's like, oh, it's psychological or whatever it may be.

So this is the thing. How do you quantify pain? Well, it's the shit that's preventing me from doing literally anything you guys you guys saw me struggling just walking backwards that's your that's your subjective experience i'm just saying how do you quantify how could you measure pain i don't know i have no idea so and i'm not saying pain because there are people that will psychomaniac like to say it's a psychosomatic thing it doesn't really matter it's not that important like no, no, no. Like pain exists.

Yet there is no blood marker. There is no measure to quantify pain. Therefore, it's an entirely subjective thing. And this is the thing. The most painful thing you've ever been is the most painful thing you've ever been in. But sometimes we get so used to – like you have a belief that everything you're going to do is in pain. And that's a belief you have. Yeah, but it's when you butt up against – like my perspective and worldview but ups butts up against your

perspective and worldview and again like in orders like i'm not saying the hard part is having these conversations without being patronizing saying oh you know it doesn't matter your pain's not real like your pain really is real and you can sit there and your body is telling you something but it's not always sometimes the body is telling us a message it's kind of like saying hey their kitchens on fire hey the kitchen is on fire. Hey, the kitchen is on fire. And you keep bringing it up. You want a bagel?

You want to go for a walk? It's like, no, the kitchen is on fire. And it's like sometimes with the body there are these physical things that are a psychological expression of a physiological expression of a psychological thing that can go as an identity and something that is just a learned behavior because it's safer for you to think I have a bad back. I can't do this. Everything hurts than it is for you to think about what that does. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying sometimes if we create a space within ourselves to say, all right, I have this idea. I can always go back. My back will still hurt if I want to go back to it. That's always there. But what if my back didn't hurt?

And what if it's part of me accepting an opportunity that's there, which is an opportunity for things like mushrooms or doing different parts of self-work, so to speak. And I know that that's hard because there's a lot of people that are giving up control and doing that stuff. And I'm not saying everyone needs to go do mushrooms because people get very passionate about that. But I'm just saying there are things that, so for example, when you first held your son,

did you back hurt that moment? I don't remember. That's my point. You weren't thinking about it and so sometimes having something that connects us to a bigger thing can create a just even a little bit of gap and say oh and it gives you hope and that hope like you can see love and that love allows you to see things as they are and when you get so like i think for some people you know like they did the study the the john Hopkins study, I forget what, the MAPS study, and they looked at people that did it and ranked their psychedelic experiences as one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their life.

Which shows you how boring life is. These fucking mushrooms, this fucking fungus that's growing in the earth is the most exciting thing that ever happens to us, right? People are my favorite animals. I love that. You know, you think about that. But it does mark the subjective experience. And there is a part of that where you say, okay, this thing ranked up there with the birth of a loved one or birth of a loved one or like a death of a loved one. It's like meaningful things.

And what they mean by that is this thing was so transcendent. Meaning I'm still here physically, but it took me away from this subjective experience. It is of being me, of being Andrew, of being Nassim, of being Mark that I'm so used to this trench I'm always in for just a moment. I could see something different. And in that moment, I, you know, let go of these attachments I have. I let go of the fact that like, oh, this is how I've identified myself. This is what I do. I was just, I was just there. And that's, I think some of the beauty beauty is like you see people that are like think bigger, kind of get out of that stuff. They have more experiences with this kind of, I don't want to call it transcendent, but it's like enlightening.

It is somewhat transcendent when you're in it. Yeah, it is. Because what are you transcending? You're stepping. So there are these safety mechanisms or attachments that basically, think about trust. Trust is this ability to feel and engage and integrate with the world around you. Like I trust that this table is here because I – my sense that I feel proprioceptive feedback, that this is reflective of a hard surface that is there, has been working for me for 28 years, almost 29, getting older. It's been working.

So I kind of have trust that this is there. So if I have feedback that my feet are on the ground, that's good, which is why injuries can be so disrupting because it's like you can no longer trust that your back won't just give out and you no longer, so that trust contracts us. Pain contracts and pulls in. So that's what we're transcending is you can think of pain broadly. So pain is a physical pain, a psychological pain, is emotional pain, there's all kinds of pain, so to speak, but a pain is something that contracts and pulls you in. It's a safety mechanism, right? And things that transcend allow you to step, you let go, you enlighten, like enlighten, you let, you unencumber, right?

You step away. And so that doesn't always mean, that's why people talk about like mushrooms and meaningful experiences. It doesn't have to be that. It could be literally, like, and I think we were talking about it, you having that child is a transcendent, like world-changing experience because you just, for a moment, you let go of this thing you've held onto for so long and then just in the brief moment,

something is sneaking away. Oh, maybe it doesn't always have to be like that and then you look at the way your son looks at you and say, oh, maybe it's not always how I think.

It's like, that's beauty and it could be like love, it could be like, there are just these simple things that I didn't really go back to love but like, that's part of it

and so once you kind of get that crack in there, so for me, it was like, you get a few of these things and a lot of times it can be like things like going through divorce or going through a um losing a dear friend it's like like losing a job having a pandemic whatever it is that like sometimes it can be a positive thing like i think mushroom chips can be positive or negative uh like let's say transcend like having a child meeting somebody

like they can be good but it can also be negative things like the thing i was you, I'm sure you've had like back pain or knee pains. Like I just kept grinding through it, grinding through it, grinding through it. And then all of a sudden I didn't listen and all of a sudden pop, something went and it's like, all right, I got ripped out of this thing. It can be, you know, like for example, going through, like I mentioned the divorce or something difficult that anything that those can be not fun, but transcendent experiences. But the point is that when you have things in your life that separate you from this trench you're in of being you, you get the chance. And some people are terrified from that. And they immediately – like just think about somebody you know that's in a bad relationship.

They're with an abusive partner and they know what to do. And like, why don't you leave it? Why don't you leave it? And they're like – it's like they'd rather deal with the devil they know, so to speak, this kind of fear, than step away because we're not afraid of the unknown. We're afraid of the loss of the known. And so if you don't have trust in yourself, that's not amicra. That's Anthony DeMello, greatest mind out there. I know, but it's so true.

We all can probably remember shit where we were in that. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is that— Even losing something that doesn't even mean that much to you anymore. Like in the case of—we've talked about this on the show before, two little kids playing with toys, and one kid discards a toy. You see it with your eyes like the kid doesn't care.

That toy has been sitting there for a while. And the other kid, the smaller kid usually, the younger kid, goes to play with that toy. The guy wants it back right away, right? So it's a lot like that. And so this is, we have two options, right? Whenever things like this happen, as the Viktor Frankl, like you can't control what happens to you,

but you can't control how you respond to it. Like we always have that choice. And eventually, if there's difference – I don't know anything, but the idea is like there are different thoughts around this that life is going to continue to teach you the same circle. Like whether or not that's a belief I hold and whether or not it's actually representative

of reality is second to the fact that it's a useful mental model to think about what if there was a unifying force in life that was teaching you things and what if you keep

kind of going through the same bad relationships. That's been my experience that it is a circle, yeah. Until you learn that lesson. I think of it as a spiral lesson. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say

the same thing. It's like for me it feels like a circle that is connected like, like maybe like rings. You know, I feel like I'm still moving forward, but it's like, you know,

like, for example, when we have people on, this just happened, like the shoes he was wearing when he walked in, you know. Oh, the Vibrams. Yeah, and he had that two days in a row. He had Brandon on.

And then someone else will come on the show and they will seem like they're not anything like the previous guest. But then they'll mention the same exact thing that we just heard from somebody else. So yeah, I feel like there's these repeated, like I want to stop for a second and be like, I'm in the Matrix?

Because there's these repeated patterns that kind of happen over and over and over. And I told Andrew from the time that we started, when we'd go to trade shows and stuff and when we'd meet people, I don't know if you remember me telling you this, but I'm like, all this works in a circular motion. You'll see. We ran into Ron Penna.

He's really cool. We're going to run into him again. And this guy is going to be a part of this. We're going to run into Bruce Cardenas. We're going to see him again and so on. And it just kind of keeps going and you're like holy shit yeah well i got told two times in as many weeks that it's more like on the mental side than it is the physical side of my back problems it was you and jl holdsworth i encourage you to stop using the word of problem though it's like you don't have problems. Your body is offering you feedback

for something that's there. Because when you think of yourself as a problem, my body's a problem, my brain's a problem, you're just going to trade it and say people that go, you know, some people have back pain, some people are just depressed. I meet a girl who goes, I have anxiety. It's like, that's an interesting belief you have. Like, you think about that, but that's just a challenge

in the words. The words you speak mean a lot in terms of how you think about it. Fire! I think the awesome part about it, Andrew, is that you're doing stuff about it. You're constantly working on it. And so you're going to find relief. And I think sometimes when we're in something, we feel like we're so stuck there. We'll say always, never. Good, bad, should, can't i've tried i've tried

everything but i'm in pain all the time and then you say well what what about uh what about last night when you you know had sex with your wife or something like that like well i was feeling pretty good then actually you know you you kind of forget so here's a good point though think about what i had to put her butt on a pillow and then i was good yeah let's go let's go did what orgasm is. I had to put her butt on a pillow and then I was good. Yeah. But think about that. That's great. Let's go. Let's go. Did you orgasm?

Yeah, of course. So you, what orgasm is, it's the French word for mini death. It's like. Oh, shit. It's like literally, it's an ego dissolution. I didn't know you spoke French. I don't. Just the love languages for the ladies.

Mini death. You can look this up, just to double check, but it has to do with, it's you can look this up just to double check but it has to do with like it's the uh the orgasm is like there's the idea of the death and so the point is that you are dissolving that ego for just a moment so this is part of the reason like you look at sexual performance i guess as a topic but it's just like you think about this as like if you're la petit mort yes i don't know if that's how you say it but it's beautiful that's how I'm in Spanish yeah so like

but that's the point it's that can be a transcendent experience too which is why a lot of guys chase porn because they're literally stuck and it's the only thing they do is like if they kind of

do this thing and rub the skin a little bit it's like they get this brief moment of letting go and it's like I die and in that brief moment and that's where like when a really when you're really like in it with somebody that's meaningful they get this brief moment of letting go, and it's like I die. And in that brief moment, and that's where like when you're really like in it with somebody that's meaningful, you have this connection.

Like that's one of the most – which is interesting how life is created in that way. But another thing is orgasm and ejaculation are different neural circuits, so they're not the same thing. But the point is it's like you might have been thinking in the whole time, you know, you're there. It's like, okay, I'm there. Like my back hurts, my this, my this. And then it's like you finally let go. Like this is why pain can affect sexual performance because it doesn't let you let go of that in order to orgasm you have to let go of this thing

unfortunately for a lot of men they've trained themselves to be a fucking sprinter with that stuff like a pouring and you know let me go move on that's so stop looking at porn just like it just stop it's like andrew doesn't porn. Oh, we're talking to the general public now. I'm talking to you right now. You, the viewer. Andrew, is the camera on us? Look at, yeah, it is, but you can look at your camera over here. Which one? That one right there.

This one? Yep, there it is. Guys, take your hand off your meat. I know you're watching the podcast and you're enjoying it, but take your hand off your meat right now. Stop masturbating to us. Yeah, why are you squeezing your cock right now? Take your hand off your cock.

No more porn. All right right graham let's go you just this is one of the things is like the word like this is bad as opposed to you it's your when you accept you leak that energy into processed sex so to speak it's like processed food i don't need to not eat cheat meals it's like i just need to realize i'd rather have real food like the difference between going like a gas station and getting like a uh like one of those little mini things that are like wrapped up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I'd rather

just have the real thing. And once you realize that you're trading, you're never going to like hold your standards higher. It's like when you watch porn, you're just saying, yep, this is what I'll settle for.

And then women fucking pick up on that shit. They go, oh, this is one of those guys that will settle for whatever is free. Eh, okay. Like just think about

the message you're sending yourself where it's like, yeah, whatever. So like think about your body will change when you is free. Okay. Just think about the message you're sending yourself. It's like, yeah, whatever. So think about it. Your body will change when you stop accepting processed foods. I have higher standards for myself. Your mind will change when you stop accepting processed information. I'm not just going to look at TikTok for three hours. I'm going to read a book or find a podcast and educate myself.

Your relationships change when you stop accepting processed junk, basically, whatever someone else is projecting on their baggage. Like I don't accept that. I'm not going to move on. You just move on. But it's not like – that doesn't have to be a good or bad thing. It's just like I just choose better for myself because I internally see myself as someone that is worthy of better. And it's like once you live – when you bring the external environment in line with the internal, whatever direction it needs to change.

That's why sometimes like if you want to change your body, starting with the external action. So like I'm surrounding myself with better people. I'm joining a gym membership. I'm finding a coach to hold me accountable. That change externally allows you to start to adjust the internal. But you can also just think like what would a healthy person do? So for Andrew, what would someone whose back didn't hurt do?

You know, what would like, and it's hard, right? But you know, you don't want to jump too much. Like I'm going to go do a 500 pound deadlift. But it's like, okay, would they worry just as simple? Like, would they worry about bending over to pick something off the ground? No. So then like, try that on.

And it's always just remembering you can step through this. And that's why having a coach, having someone, because when you hire a coach, what you're really doing is hiring their belief in you. And that's the most important part is it's not about, you know, oh, this coach is going to tell me the secret to lose 10 pounds. Like, no, I'm just hiring someone that will, I can trust and lean on their confidence while I develop my own. And being around people is like – and there's no rules. We're all making it up.

But when you surround yourself with people who have that – and you can get confidence through lived experience. But if you don't have lived experience, you don't have the capacity to go and do that yet, you can surround yourself with people that do. That's why a coach who generally demonstrates it, like, you know, looking at you, if I want to learn how to wrestle, it's like – or to grapple, it's like I would surround myself and be around you do that's why a coach who generally demonstrates it like you know looking at you if i wouldn't learn how to wrestle it's like or to grapple it's like i would surround myself and be around you and hire you as a coach because like this guy demonstrates that with his body which is why there's the whole bodybuilding and like you know if you look at let's say i think steroids can be a great opportunity to extend man maximize your body but like if you look at someone that's like undercutting that process and not actually saying i'm not putting in the work i just think this pill is going to do it.

And that's the thing is the biggest joke of people think that steroids do the work for you. They let you train harder. So it's like, motherfucker, you know, I think you're talking about with Lex Friedman and the grapplers. It's like his light week was 28 sessions a week. It's like, yeah, like this is letting me work harder. It's like basically it's like if I had something, oh, I work too much. I'm not making enough money. It's like, oh, yeah, someone else is taking a pill.

They give them four hours a day so they can work more. That's the kind of thing. But let's rewind real quick back to when you were talking about the belief and people around you. Because as Mark was mentioning, it is funny how things work in circles because we've been talking about belief on this podcast for a while now and getting into it. And then after that, we start having all these individuals and finding all this content about how big your belief affects your actions, affects your physiology, affects all of that stuff. But specifically when you're talking about those people that surround you, it is quite crazy how when I came to super training in 2015 and I started training and I wasn't the strongest person, but at the gym I was training at before I was, my strength jacked up immediately because I had eyes

like Mark, Marcus, Mike, a bunch of other people that were taking a look at the shit I was, my strength jacked up immediately because I had eyes like Mark, Marcus, Mike, a bunch of other people that were taking a look at the shit I was doing and telling me, hey, try this, try this, try this. And boom, I got stronger. And I believed in them and I trusted them. And boom, I got stronger. So you walk in with an entrenched thing. I can do this.

I'm this strong. I'm this big. I can bench this stuff. And you walk in with someone. And for a second, the amount, the proportion to which you can grow as an individual with a coach is the amount that you let go of control. You can have freedom or you can have control. And when you want to grow and expand past this into the stretch zone, so to speak, you got around people who said, you know, he doesn't have a predisposition. Let's say you can bench 300 pounds.

He doesn't think, oh, that's a lot of weight. He goes, I got to get a 700. And so his perspective is bigger. And so when you let go of and you trust a coach, which is what people do, they pay money and they kind of get the money stored energy. So it's not like I'm making money off you. I'm giving you stored energy in a way that I'm investing energy in you and therefore you invest energy in me.

It's an exchange of energy. And when he goes and says, you know, he doesn't even have to say 300 is not that much. He just holds, he talks the way he talks about it, the way he demonstrated, the way he surrounds other people. It's like, there's not that big of a difference. It's just it.

That's exactly the kind of shit he says. He's like, oh, you could do that in a few weeks or you could do that in a few months. And that changes, you let go for a second and how much you can trust him. I watched him learn a handstand yesterday.

Yeah. And you'll be walking all the way across the fucking gym in a couple weeks. In a bit. There is a fear of success. And this sounds like the most silly thing if you think about it at face value,

but there's a fear of failure we all get. Like, I don't want to mess up. I don't want to lose this. Because it's fear of risk. It's loss aversion. If I try this thing and hurt myself, then I'm going to get eaten. So that's deeply ingrained.

But there's also a fear of success that's, I don't know if it's a modern day thing. I just, I don't know where it came from. But it's like, there is this, maybe it's like an enculturation as a kid. Like, don't be too good. You know, it's like, well, what's someone else think? If everyone did this, would we all have enough to go around?

There's a fear of success because then you have to like perform that again. You're now responsible. I think fear of success – maybe this is – I'm just making stuff up. But fear of success is future fear of failure. Like, okay, fear of failure. Like I know what's safe. I can do all this stuff right now, and that's okay. I can deal with this because I've lowered my failure risk as much as possible in

many ways i'm risk averse right but if i have fear of success means now that i'm successful fuck i've got this many more followers i've got this much more when i've got this much and it's like then i could really mess that up so i'm just gonna stop that whole thing so maybe it's fear of future failure but i think that's the thing is you let go of this like fear of future failure you're just a present and there is this is like one of the most uh i think someone said we're not afraid of we're afraid of how powerful we are this is you let go of this like fear of future failure and you're just a present. And there is – this is like one of the most – I think someone said it. We're not afraid of – we're afraid of how powerful we are. This is like a quote of somebody said that thing. It's like our greatest fear is that we are too strong.

And you can look that up. There's something like our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond belief. That's what I think it is. We'll take it. Let's look it up. Yeah. Whatever is different, you just quote me. Hold on. Let me try it uh our greatest

fear is not in falling so it's that one right a great yes our greatest fear is not in falling but yeah something how powerful we could be yeah that sounds right something i got that part right if you really think about what that means, there is – like if whatever you let go of and you just let go of and you step into, you have capacity to do. And so this is the hard thing. It's like I realize when you start talking, it's very intangible and like out there. But let's say, for example, this idea of like the people you surround yourself impact you. So think about – it goes down to your physiology, right? The way you – your nervous system.

So I've got a sympathetic, which is my fight or flight, and a parasympathetic, which is my rest and digest. So whichever one I'm feeding, and that gets the way you're standing, your posture, your breathing, the people you're around. Like when you are around people that are high anxiety, you're going to be higher anxiety. And it's not – like it can go simply as like the cues they're putting themselves off, the way they're looking, the fact that they're open up, their posture, their breathing. And this is where you look at generational know generational curses and families and stuff like that well a lot of that has to do with like the habits they manifest do they have a fair fame inside like we need to get this right now are they worried about things and like we can it's like the sixth sense we can tell a lot of that by looking at other people but it's not necessarily overtly

aware like it's hard to say oh he's doing that thing and i'm going to quantify this and it's like that's what it is it's like there's more to it. Also, let me, let me talk about this real quick. And you guys chime in if this has happened to you. Like the reason why I talk about a relationship I had recent, uh, before for four years, the reason why I referenced that so much is because when I was in that four years, Andrew could see the difference in who I am now versus who I am then. When I was in that, I was still working. I was still doing

the things I needed to do, but I don't want to, I don't like blaming people. I take responsibility for staying in a situation I knew I shouldn't be staying in. So I did. I purposefully did that. I shouldn't have. But the effect that it had on like my growth. Oh, okay.

What should I have said instead? You're doing the best you can with what you have. I have a very strong belief. I truly don't believe I should have done. I mean, I'm grateful that I did that because I learned. You're doing the best you can

with what you have. If you knew better, you would do better. So the should is implying that there is something you, like, should implies a sacrifice. A sacrifice is trading something of greater value

for lesser value. I don't think anybody makes sacrifices, but should is this fake thing that implies that you would have gone back and sacrificed something. But at that time, you valued safety, consistency. There was something you saw about like a good boyfriend doesn't quit, a good boyfriend stays in there.

You were doing the best you can with what you have. You could have compassion for yourself and say, hey, I'm doing the best I could with what I had. I was learning and growing. I think that's just a different way because should is still – it's blame and it's like you're thinking backwards and you're rejecting a part. And you can't love your past. You can't trust yourself now if you reject your past. And if you reject your past because I should have done this, I was so stupid, I was so bad, it's like, I did the best I could. That's where he was at.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay, so I actually want to flesh that out in my mind a little bit. I agree with you. I look back at it. And the reason why I don't regret it is because I know I learned so much. So I'm like, I'm grateful. I'm literally grateful for all of that.

Beautiful. But when I say I shouldn't have, like I do think that I knew I shouldn't have kept in that setting. I did know better. But like you said, there was like a good boyfriend, but what I was trying to get to was

once that, once I got that out of my life, once I stopped that relationship right there, literally the trajectory of my life was like here. I wasn't down but i was like here and then it just went like that immediately because literally everyone else in my life like was encouraging believed in me good right i don't want to say that person was a bad person but that was quite literally the only negative influence i had in my life and once that one negative influence that was the one, the closest person to me was cut out.

My life went in a totally different direction. And that's why I, when, when we talk, when we talk about, cause we've mentioned before that you really need to guard your circle. And I truly believe that like whoever's listening to this, you really need to assess the people you keep very close to you.

It's hard to say because I don't think that you need to cut out everybody i don't think you need to cut out everybody that you believe is because like some people you can't but at the same time you need to maybe limit the amount of time you allow that energy and the how close you allow that energy to be to you because it really can meld who you are this is what like the visual i was thinking about this was the idea of a walled garden right and you look at like the masculine feminine interplay there's like the masculine

we all have this within ourselves but then there's also a different compare this in a relationship but the masculine energy is the ability to set boundaries and say no the feminine is to be able

to enjoy and bring that so think about this as like when you say cut out it's like I don't have to cut you out as much as just set a boundary and it's like this is the wall

around the garden and within this space that is sacred you look at the archetype of like the garden of eden right like there is a wall there's obviously you have to have a container of this and i don't know if it goes in specifics but like there is a wall and then there's a garden and most people get too busy focusing on the wall those are very like rejected their fear base thinking outward and too many people just were like you know well you have to have you can't have a garden if you don't have a wall so you started

to create and this is for me it was growing up of learning to say no, learning to trust yourself and to have that confidence in yourself. It's like learning to set up a wall. But then once you set the wall, some people get really good at setting up a wall. Like your back pain is a wall. Because in order to have the then, it's like, okay, that's good. You got the wall. You set up your space. You're doing the morning routine.

You're doing all the workout. You're doing the mobility stuff. What about the garden? So the thing about this is like the wall could be the structure i'm at the gym i have the membership i have the program have this stuff the garden is playing it's like you think about this as like there's art and science there's there's uh science and curiosity right there's like there's the beauty of something and then there's like the logistics about it and this is everything is these fractals you go down this path it's like what does it look like to bring that into it and i think that's where

some people just want to love and want to do this and it's like a little naivety for a childhood it's like they they're good at like creating that positive that's for me i was always good at like being positive optimistic want to go do this stuff and play but i never really did a good job of setting the garden and i always overextended myself i would say yes to people who didn't necessarily value that and i would let in a lot of negativity let the serpent into the garden so to speak i'm thinking the allegory right there you let the serpent in and then what does the serpent do? It causes chaos, and it ruins it. So that's part of it. For me, it was learning to set the wall, and it sounds like

maybe for you it was the same thing. It's like, yeah, think of people that are higher compassion, lower polite, or they're higher compassion. They tend to have trouble setting that boundary. And so then for them to move in the direction of grossing, I'm like, I'm being mean. I don't want to say no to them, because then what if they think I'm a bad person? And then the other side is like, okay, so understanding what direction you need to grow into. But then once you grow in that direction, sometimes we get so identified with like, I'm growing, I'm doing my self work. I'm growing, I'm setting boundaries. I'm saying no, that's what I'm doing. It's like, you get so much identifying that way that you forget like, hey, the whole fucking point in

life is to play and have fun. And it's like, it's where like, I want to be this idea of like, yeah, we can fix your feet. Yeah. Like the point is like, people, what should I do to fix my feet? What are the rules? What shoes should I wear? What should I eat? And it's like, yeah, we can fix your feet. Yeah. Like the point is like people, what should I do to fix my feet? What are the rules? What shoes should I wear? What should I eat? And it's like, good. I can give you some guidelines around that, the wall, so to speak around your body, but I can never help you restore that play and say, the point is to have fun because no one gets out of life alive. So that's like, it's just understanding that thing. And as you're growing and you're saying that when you set the wall, guess what the wall does? It allows the garden to grow. And I think this is part of the skill component of like like when you're looking to move your toes, for example, or you're

learning to like to juggle, you're learning to ride a skateboard. It's like there are these tiny sub perceptual changes that are happening in your brain as you learn the stuff, you make new mental maps and you're like developing this stuff that aren't necessarily reflected all the time externally. And so you have to stay with this and you can get little tiny changes that are happening that then create a big breakthrough and you get like a hockey stick of improvement. And those are the things that like, you just have to, I mean, this is an idea. If a process is not an ends in and of itself, it can never be a means to anything else. If a process, if the process is not an ends E and DS to, if the process is not an ends in and of itself, it can never be a means to anything else.

Meaning, I'm not working out just to be strong. I'm working out because I'm working out to work out. I find the beauty in this stuff. I'm not being a good parent so that my kid will love me. Fitness is never ending. Nutrition is never ending. Exactly. Until you die.

Exactly. And so that's the thing is you have to identify that. You bring the internal environment to match the external, which is I'm a healthy person. Healthy people eat real food. Healthy people set high standards for themselves for what they put in their body. I think that's what makes social media a little bit unhealthy at times. Yes, processed. Because we don't really recognize that it's like in perpetuity.

Like you're going to be doing this for a really long time. There's two sides of that too, which is your consumption of this is like, okay, why am I doing this? Well, let me learn. If I don't have anything set there, I'm just doing this. And that's like it's a leak of energy. But from a business perspective too, it's like, you know, sure, I could go and post every day for three hours a day. But it's like what does this look like to really personalize this and say it feels right for me to post once a week and just to put a lot of time and energy into it. Or like maybe a podcast and like we do all these things.

It's like, you know, like for example, you have a very and just to put a lot of time and energy into it or like maybe a podcast and like we do all these things it's like you know like for example you have a very different style and you talk about this you just post things they come and it's just a flow and it fits right for you

but someone's like Mark you have to engage your click through rate and you want to get people to look at this and shouldn't you do a little bit better of a clip art

it's like maybe but it's like I think part of maturing and becoming an adult is being more comfortable with who we are with who we are

so you start to pull these pieces together and it's like when you identify – you change and you realize like who – this is why – because the thing about this is like why would you be having this conversation? Well, you notice and identify something in your life isn't working, right? And that's pain. That's feedback, which is why I think the shoes we wear, the clothes we wear, the drugs we take, the work we do, those are all things that block feedback. And if we don't like feedback, there's people that can't handle the noise, right? So like you look at their mental names or conditions for those names. It's like they need a specific like – and this is why I hate all this idea of like I have anxiety. I've got ADD.

There's self-limiting things because like I just can't handle a lot of feedback. It's like maybe, but that's also an interesting belief you have. And it's like I'm not saying it doesn't – I got diagnosed with ADD at one point. But it's the idea of like I just don't have good confidence in how to decipher and do this. I can't figure out the signal for the noise. So you go and you start to look at this feedback. What is this feedback telling me? And if I don't sit down and just quiet with no music, no nothing, just to sit there and think and just listen.

It's like what meditation is, what journaling is, working with a therapist. Just ask you – The value of therapy is that they ask you questions and they force you to be introspective and you, because you pay for it, you put energy into that.

Did you mention that you got therapy? Oh yeah, fuck yeah. That was, I started the whole thing. My first thing, relationship wasn't working

in many ways. It was this idea, I built my whole identity around it. I was like, I'm going to be a good Christian boy and be married forever and it just like, I was,

I got married when I was 21. Oh, you were married before? Oh yeah, well, yeah, so, I'm still working. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah,'s just like I got married when I was 21. Oh, you were married before. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. So I'm still working. Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, married.

So I met him when I was 19, got married when I was 21, and separated after six years. Wow. Yeah, I know. It's interesting. But so much of that was identified as like I desperately wanted security and certainty in my life. So when I was young, I was like, this is what I believe. And then you go and fight that. This is why it's wrong to do this thing. You shouldn't do this thing.

There's a lot of shoulds, goods, bads. I wanted to know what I believe, what I was going to do, who I was going to marry, what my life was going to look like, where I was going to live. I wanted as much certainty as possible. Now you're taking mushrooms and running with no shoes on. Exactly. Literally. And you think about that. So this is the idea of like play. I was thinking about this the other day. Play involves, so why are there sports you play and sports you don't? You don't play jiu-jitsu. You play tennis.

Now think about the difference is you involve vulnerability. You let chance come in. So like if I have a ball or a teammate, I can't control everything. Therefore, I'm playing because there's an interplay of like I don't know what's going to happen. But disciplines like running, swimming, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, et cetera, those are things that I go lifting. I go and practice this because I control all the variables, which is why some people are drawn, more creative, are drawn to play and things.

You can have play within this. It's like snowboarding, for example. Playing is when I say, I'm on top of a mountain, I've got to get down. A sport, a competition, the discipline is, this is a half pipe and I'm doing this. The best people are always, the best athletes are always able to say, can I go into play? Can I play in this?

Can I bring in creativity? Can I do this? The more you can bring play into a podcast, can I go into play? Can I play in this? Can I bring in creativity? Can I do this? And the more you can bring play into a podcast, right? You're like, some people go, this is what I'm doing. The nightly news. Like so much of the structure, they go and say, this is what's going to happen. This is what did happen. This is what I think about it.

And it's like, no, the play and this is what people have podcast because it's like, this is happening. This is magic happening as you go. So that's part of it is like, I realized that this, every time I would go and create certainty, it was a limiting thing. And that limiting was okay because at that point, my worldview was always like I need to be safe. I don't want to lose this stuff, and I held on to it. So this idea of like this is my faith. This is what I do. This is why I don't do drugs.

This is why I had a reason for everything. And then as a – what happened for me, and I like to say I was enlightened. I had all these good conversations. Like no, that shit fell apart because guess what? You build a little structure. Just like going on the beach. I'm building a sandcastle. I'm like, yeah, I got this shit locked down because I used the thing, the upside down

cup to make the steeples on the side. The sandcastles. And I put a moat around it. Fuck you, ocean. And it's like, that's the whole point of you look at God, if you were to think and expand that into all consciousness and nature and everything that is. It's like, that's why God laughs in and nature and everything that is, it's like, that's why the God laughs in that sense.

Like, here's the notion, by the way, Oh, here's a tsunami, you know, and that shit happens. And so this is the point is like,

COVID happened. Well, here's war. COVID disappears. And so you go down these lines. It's like, okay, there's all,

that's a whole fear mongering conversation. I'm not even just saying, but I'm not saying the COVID part. I'm just saying legitimately the news cycle. If you're watching the news, you've got better things to do because they are trying to, it's fear, it's fear, and they want to get you there. It's one thing after the next after the next. Let me know when they did a positive thing on the news and we'll talk. The point is every time I would try to have this God, so to speak, or the universe, whatever you want to call it, or just even life, or the fact that like I'm in, you know, let's say if you want to go on the other side where there's nihilism, I'm just an insignificant bag of carbon with a brain that can think about things.

It floats in the world and then this is just nature. And whatever you want to call it comes and says, hey, the thing you thought you had, it's a shambles. It's like it's a fake intimation of what actually you're looking for. And so in those processes – and I'm stubborn as fuck. So I stayed in things that were not good for me for long periods of time. And eventually you just beat yourself down but eventually you get the opportunity so like you're working

with therapy, your coaches are taking mushrooms or doing something that like you just trust and for me it was starting to let in things. I listen a little more like Joe Rogan

or Tim Ferriss talking about the stuff like oh well they smoke weed and they do mushrooms and they're not bad people so maybe in a few years of that and it's like these baby steps and people judge themselves

because they're, when I was at the first, the greatest thing I just like didn't have a lot of comparison to say oh well you know mark bell is so transcendent and beautiful and amazing and he's all the successes like i wasn't even ready to think about that stuff yet and so for whatever reason i just like this is so what you're going back to this idea of circles right you could say that oh the universe is bringing me something so i always think about like how do i you know how do you phrase this in a way that's not just like oh this is my is my worldview thing, so you have to believe this. You could also just say that something in your body, there's an intelligence in your body.

I think that's fair, right? Your body, you're hungry, you're thirsty. Your body knows shit, right? It doesn't have to be God. It could be, but the other side is your body has awareness. And it's starting to attune to things. So you're paying attention to feet, and you happen to notice it. There are probably multiple times where someone walked in with Nike Air Boost 15 times in a row and you didn't think twice about it, right? So,

you are attuning to words and things around you. And language is, it's like the verbal expression of our inner consciousness. So, there's like, there are the subconscious, which are things that exist, facts, so to speak. Then there's our body, our behaviors, our physical awareness as we are attuned to. Then there's our dreams, which are a sub-conscious ability to express these things. And then there's our conscious, or how we actually manifest this in a words, thoughts, form, et cetera. And so we attune to this stuff. And so in this process, people will judge themselves. I'm not there.

I'm not all the way in yet. It's like you're taking baby, baby steps. You look at little kids. Like, Andrew, your kid is like, you tell them, hey, you can't even jump on the fucking box. Look at you. You little mush ball. Stand up. Like, you know, you're not doing that. You realize, hey, you're at the beginning of a process. In the hardest ways, we compare ourselves to people who are so far down the line instead of thinking like, hey, this is what I'm at. And when, this is why I said, you were talking like, I should

have done this. It's like, no, you shouldn't have. When you, you should do something when you do it. The day you do something, the shouldn't have. When you, you should do something when you do it. The day you do something, the action is the signal that you're ready for something. And even if you do it, quote unquote, and you freak out and you go back, that was your first step of learning. Like whatever actions you do. And the hard part is saying like, okay, well, how do you, you know, I think that there's, there's most of people don't think. And so there's, this is the idea of like, can we create, can we actually manifest anything?

When you say most people don't think, what do you mean? I mean, they don't intentionally step back and remove themselves. So think about this idea of like, if you, if you, there's reaction and then there's responding. And so that's what Viktor Frankl was talking about is, you know, you always, every person has the opportunity to think how you respond to something. And so like, we are almost always just reacting. Like, once I start the day, I was going. And in many ways, we don't even think about how we're reacting. It's like Sam Harris will talk about ideas like, oh, we're just, it's predetermined,

everything's going to happen. You know, the only reason you're talking to me is because you think you've learned or you've been, your behaviorisms and mannerisms, how you smile and how you engage with me are because you were positively reinforced that as a kid and you grew up and it's how you identify yourself and now you think of yourself as a positive guy and if I do this

and people like me and deeply if you go down all the way it's a very self-serving independent thing or like that's part of it you can be very pessimistic regardless of that like that's part of it right there's the nature nurture thing but I think what separates humans as individual things that allow us to be unique among the animal kingdom

is the fact that we can pause and think of ourselves as objective. Like, I think that's, it's very rare. Even, even like for enlightened people, enlightened people may think 1% of the time, but like the most, the people you really look up to, like, wow, that person's got a lot of stuff. They're very introspective. It's like, you know, they, they set apart and they do this stuff. They're still react, responding 90% of the time.

But it's like, and as you get more towards enlightenment, so to speak, you probably see more time where you actually are not attached to things. This is where the Buddhism idea of attachment is. It can be good, but it's like when you have no attachments, you're just kind of like flowing around, you're doing this stuff. But attachments are how you get shit done. If Mark wasn't attached

to the idea of making money, being successful, changing lives, and helping people, he would not be pushing himself and busting ass. If you weren't attached to the idea of, I want to be a world-class grappler, you wouldn't fucking do anything. Attachments are what motivate us, but they also become a limiting thing that keeps us stuck. And so then it's like, okay, what does it look like to create space in my week, in my month, in my

quarter, in my year to non-attach? And that's where you look at therapy and coaching and journaling and mushroom trips. And it's like, sponsored by Big Mushroom. If we don't do that, that's what we think. And you think about this. When is the last time you thought, like you as a listener,

when is the last time you sat down and thought? And it's a skill, just like everything. If I put you under the monolith to watch you squat, and you've never squatted before, it's going to suck. So just like everything else, it's like the first things you're doing, and every now and then we get this awakening. So you think about this idea of, it's like Wanted, I think, the one where they bend the bullets.

Oh, that movie was called Wanted. But it's also an archetype of the Matrix, right? Where he's sitting there and he's just going through the stuff. And this is the hero's journey, which is why an archetype that sticks with us. There's a call to the extraordinary. And sometimes that's what pain does for us. Sometimes we just like, you know, the wisdom has always been there, but we just need something to shake us up to listen to it. And it could be you lose a job.

You have a health scare. You lose a relationship. Something shakes you up. And at some point, you can say – this is what a lot of people just – it's an ingrained thing. And we breathe this out of kids. It's like, I don't know if I want to do this. It's like we just sit down, shut up, wear these shoes, and go to school. We don't teach them to trust and listen to that.

And then eventually, they stop listening to it. And then we become kid, grown-up adults, and then we never do that. So, it is an unlearning thing. And I think it becomes a snowballing thing, but when these things happen to you in life, good, bad, indifferent, whatever it is, and they give a brief call to something new, you can step into that. And it will look so small and

insignificant. Think about Neo in The Matrix. You know, at the end, he's like, the one. Like, you're the one, Neo. It's funny if you go, like, you know, i get high sometimes and watch movies i ruin movies for myself because i'm like this is fake you're not a real person you're acting this is scripted this is real um i can't watch movies anymore because i'm like you're just a real person that's acting it's not even a real thing you don't feel that that's a fake failing um but his first thing was just like if you go watch he's and i don't know if this is a keanu reeves mannerism but he's just like what uh and it's like all of his movies but it starts off

just like things get forced and he's like oh i'm here and then you go in the next thing he's people shooting he's running away it's like we want to think that you know in a revisionist history i always look back and say oh i knew my feet were going to be the secret of the world and i was going to be god coming incarnate and figure this out. Like no. Jeff Bezos, all these guys, they have an idea what they can do. And then as they get snowballing confidence, but it starts with that simple, simple step of like if you sit and think. And that could be as simple – like the thing that changed my life is – well, this is why – like actually I got diagnosed with ADHD by this therapist who was an ADHD specialist. And so I did a little bit of medication. And this is actually

after a mushroom trip. So it's an interesting thing you think about this, but sometimes it's hard to say this one thing helped. So I never just say, go take mushrooms and figure out your problems. Go take ADHD medication and it'll help. And I'm off that now. I changed that. It's a different conversation. We'll come back to that.

But the point is, I was going to therapy, I was journaling, journaling i was doing this stuff and it's like that becomes the next thing and so i started just one morning got up and said you know what like i was feedback i'm like i'm stressed i'm tired i'm burnt out and i'm doing this thing where i'm working all the time like 60 hours a week doing personal training and this is relationships falling apart i'm tired i'm not feeling i'm making the impact and i can do the numbers and said this is not going to support me to have a family life if i want and so then i was like okay i don't know what to do so i just like something i had to do just get up i met someone that inspired me to have a family life if I want. And so then I was like, okay, I don't know what to do. So I just, like, something I had to do, just get up. I met someone that inspired me to go write this thing. And I was like, I got up.

I was just driving around trying to get business for the place I was working at. And I met this, he's a chiropractor. So I went to like a hundred different physical therapists and chiropractors saying, hey, you know, if you have business referrals, you come and send your people. And this guy was like, oh, yeah, he started his own business. So he's kind of thinking about that. And so, like, the things I was attuning to, I'm driving around listening to business podcasts, starting to think about marketing and stuff. I'm like, oh, I can do some of this stuff. And I meet this guy and he's like, yeah, you know, I was thinking about doing the seminars.

I don't play golf. I've never played golf, but I was like, I'll write a golf performance manual. We'll do this together. And I just got excited. I don't play golf. I have no business doing that. But the fact that it was like any right-minded person said, that's a stupid fucking idea. No one's going to believe you. But I got up at 6 a.m. the next few weeks and just started writing. And that turned into the next thing. So then when I had another conversation

a few weeks with somebody else, that thing I was doing kind of morphed into the next thing and the next thing. And it's so easy to talk yourself out of making a change because like, what do I know? I'm just this person. I'm an employee. I work for someone else.

I don't have, I'm not creative. I'm not strong. I'm not healthy. I'm not creative. I'm not attractive. These are all limiting beliefs. Anything is I'm not.. I'm not strong. I'm not healthy. I'm not creative. I'm not attractive. These are all limiting beliefs. Anything is I'm not. You just choose not to build up and do that thing.

Sometimes there are inborn things. Like I'm not going to be Usain Bolt. I don't want to, but it's like there are things that are there. But instead of focusing and identifying off what you can do, what can you do? And taking that just – but it all starts with the idea of I have to sit and practice this skill of just listening. Like think about a little kid. They don't talk. They can maybe like goo-goo-ga-ga, make some like vocal soothing things.

But they're literally – they're listening and they're developing and tuning their things. So it's like I can't have a conversation until I learn how to understand language. And I have to understand language by listening. And so the first day you start to pay attention like, hey, this kind of hurts. That's your body saying, hey, this is a feedback. And that's like, it could be shame. It could be blame. It could be guilt. It could be a physical pain. It could be any of these things. Like I feel bloated. I don't feel healthy. That's feedback. Your body's telling you something and you're like, Hmm, what is this? And you sit with it and you just kind of listen. Just like a kid is going to listen for a few months, a few years. And then they get to

say, I like dog. I like dad, you know, whatever it is like their baby language. Then then they keep doing that they get the skill and then they go and say oh i can have words and when i can understand oh i can learn words it becomes a snowballing thing and it becomes this as long as you stay on this growth thing and lean into it it's like and you you have to let go of this stuff right yeah i have to let go of the fact that i can't say words if let's say they don't have a belief it's a it's a here it's like they don't have a belief i can't learn words i just like pay attention they start doing it it's like here. It's like they don't have a belief. I can't learn words. I just like pay attention. They start doing it. It's like you have to let go of these limiting beliefs as you grow out.

Like as you lose weight, you have to redefine who you are, right? It's like, you know, you're powerlifting, you're a big guy. It's like we're talking about you've had multiple lives. It's like I have to let go of this identity I have as a overweight person in order to make room for an emerge. I have to let go of the old skin I've molted to make room for something else. Does that make sense? So the point is just like, all of these things can happen.

It's just a matter of, do you, so when you were saying you're doing the words, I'm sure whether it's therapy, whether they're talking to people, whether you're just getting more in touch with this stuff, you have this ongoing language of talking to yourself. There's dialogos. So like between the logos, the knowledge is word,

and there's dialogos, which is a conversation between two or a third thing can be known. You can have a dialogos with yourself. Maybe it's your thoughts. Maybe you're just paying attention to yourself. So that when that thing happened, you were able to say, oh, maybe I could go do this thing. And that's what it takes off. So it's like that's why you go back to it.

I should have done better. No, you didn't. No, you shouldn't have. You didn't know better because if you knew better, you would have done better. And therefore, you were still learning, learning, learning along this path. And then, but you're developing the skill. And then when you have a crack in that foundation, something happens good, bad, otherwise, oh, I go this way. And that's the thing is, and that's just like the point of, you have to reflect. We were talking this idea of like this idea of love. This is another belief I

have, which I don't know if it's real or not or true or not. Don't, do not lose what you're about to say right there. I want to mention how when you're talking about the individual that's trying to break out of that, that's trying to, let's say they want to start a business or they've been living on structure, they've been going to school, they just know what they know. The best way, if you can't just get yourself around people

who believe things differently, listen. Like you mentioned, you listen to a disgusting amount of podcasts and just so much content of people who potentially hold belief systems that you, you think that's sick, that you want to, you, you, you want to replicate. You probably follow people. Like, I don't know how much time you spend on social media, but you're, you're what you probably have on your feed is probably curated also to the things that you are interested in, the things that you're interested in getting to or goals that you have. And that is a simple way to be able to potentially get yourself around those people that you want to be able to achieve something like they achieve.

Start listening to what the hell they're doing. Like, and this is, I walked in and he's like, this is the first time meeting Mark this morning. I know a fuck ton about Mark. I listen to a lot of Mark's podcasts. I know all of his little secrets and fun stuff. And it's the same for you. It's like thinking about it, it's like there's the old meme where the two people having a conversation. There's an empty chair in the middle and it's just like your face and the arms in the chair.

It's like I'm in the room with him. It's like thousands of hours of podcasts. I've become best friends with a lot of these people that don't even know me. And it's like that's the beautiful thing. And so never before has it been so ubiquitously available and so that's the part of it is like never underestimate like this is what i'm saying it it sounds silly to think about but we're driving around this very limited thing like drugs are bad you should never do these things it's like i had reason for everything and it was very self-limiting but then i started listening

you know became good friends with all rogan and tim ferris and some of the early guys the barbell shrug guys and it's like oh yeah and then it's like kind of like yeah that makes sense and you like there's i had a belief that if you do drugs you're a bad person you know if you smoke weed you're dumb i like to believe that if you do steroids you're dumb yeah like i used to think like that's cheating as opposed to realize like hey this shit actually lets you work so much fucking harder that it's unbelievable and for certain sports they like that's not a problem for those sports exactly so one of the things and this is to go back to that like you can catch it if you're wondering that it's unbelievable. And for certain sports, that's not a problem for those sports. Exactly. So one of the things,

and this is to go back to that, you can catch it if you're wondering, how do I do this? How do I pay attention to what I'm doing? The first and most important thing you can do is to listen to the language

you use. And this is the joke, as Marcus said earlier, it's like, well, where's the yeah, but? Yeah, but? Yeah, but is literally you saying,

I don't like what you said. It butted up against a worldview I have. Now I'm going to reject that. I am, yeah, but is literally you saying, I don't like what you said. It butted up against a worldview I have. Now I'm going to reject that. I am, yeah, but this. Anytime you say, yeah, but, you have not heard the other person. There's listening and there's hearing. I don't know which one comes up. But it's like you can, the words came in.

Maybe you heard them, but I did not listen to you. And something you said bumped into, I'm sure many of the things I've said, the language I'll use is going to trigger some people and they go, well, you know, if I said bumped into, I'm sure many of the things I've said, the language I'll use is going to trigger some people and they go, well, you know, if I'm a Christian, I believe this. Or I'm a Buddhist, I believe this. Or I'm an atheist, I believe this. And all of a sudden, you're going to feel this. When you feel like clenching your chest and he goes, yeah, but.

Yeah, but. It's like, yeah, but if he didn't understand this, but yeah, but there's this thing in the Bible that's like, look, just hear that. Just hear that. Because when you start to acknowledge and say, my beliefs are my assumptions in the Bible that's like, oh, look, just hear that. Just hear that. Because like when you start to acknowledge and say my beliefs are my assumptions that are based off my experience, they can be as true and as meaningful as whatever it is that serves you. But the question is do you – like there's two roads here. You can either continue to hold on to your beliefs and go down that path, in which case you are putting up blinders to things that are outside of that.

And that is 100 percent fine. The question is, is that serving you? to things that are outside of that. And that is 100% fine. The question is, is that serving you? So if you're happy, if you're fulfilled, if you know deep down that you're living your life, you're passing your purpose,

and you put up these blinders and it's just too disrupting to think outside of that, fucking great. If your body feels good, if you're healthy, you're wealthy, you're doing whatever it is, fucking great. There's no judgment. I don't care what you do as long as it's serving you. The other side of that is saying,

yeah, but, and then it's like, wait, that was valuable insight. Maybe something I do, maybe a self-limiting belief I'm holding is actually keeping me stuck. So let me lean into this. For example, I have a very strong belief. I like to think of, I'm thinking of this idea of like strong beliefs loosely held, this idea of like pushing with an open hand. Where's that from? Yeah, I used, ah, there's a book that was from, whatever, keep going. So the idea of like, I have a very strong belief that there's meaning, that there's purpose, that the things I do are connected with a greater consciousness, that we all exist,

and the subconscious of all of us is God, and we have this ability to influence and grow one another in our maturation through this generations and species is us growing towards it like this, an openness and understanding of God, that everything happens, meaning that if we die and we create positivity in the world, it leads to heaven, which is a continued growth of the consciousness that we all exist with, and hell is when we understand that negativity and the pain we brought into the world and we have to deal with that. I don't know if it's true. It's an assumption of mine. It helps me orient, and it's a belief I hold. That being said,

it orients me in a way that says I can get up and go do this stuff. I'm learning a lot of Alex Ramosi right now. He is a self-proclaimed nihilist, and his belief is that we're all just insignificant specks of dust. Is he actually, though? It's what he said. I think when you don't have kids, sometimes, this is why I'm now justified because he popped up to give my belief of like, well, we're nihilists.

He doesn't understand we have purpose and we were – like I felt that in my chest. I'm like, well – but, yeah, but – and so I sat with that. And I was like I think that there is something about having kids that is the – for many times, I think there's self-proclaimed atheists that people don't have a belief in anything. It's easy to kind of – it's the logical perspective. If you really think about it logically, it's like, yeah, it's intelligent. It's smart. You can look at science. Science has to prove this.

Where's the study? Like, yeah, okay, sure. But when you have kids – you can see this. I think kids are the first time for a lot of people that they really ground themselves like, fuck, like you depend on me. And what I do makes a difference for you because I want the world to be a better place. But the yeah button there is that that still doesn't mean that we have a higher purpose. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't verify anything.

And that's all I was saying is like just the ability to really say like nothing matters at all, right? I think, okay, well, like sure. But what I'm getting at like – It's a feel. It's an experience. You had a kid. Now you think that you have a larger purpose because you have another responsibility.

And I don't have a kid. Therefore, that's just a, another assumption in life. But it was, I'm just thinking about this as like, what would lead someone to maintain and hold that position? But it is like,

I hear him say that. And that puts up against my, yeah, but there's a meaning and we're all special and everything matters because that underlies a lot of the fact that I go out and I learn a lot and I push myself and I want to go and like create content that helps people and like and get out of pain because otherwise, why the fuck would I care? That's when I sat with this and I was like, this is a big growth for me of stepping and saying, well, I have this orienting belief that gets me up and motivates me because then that gets me up and then that gives me something to do. And when I do that thing consistently, I get better at it.

When I get better at it, it gets attention. When I get attention, people look back and I get more followers and that makes me feel good, a little bit dopamine rush. And it's like, oh, I feel good. I'm special. I'm important. I'm the barefoot sprinter. In this case, do you think that there's anything further is going to happen by... Just because there's

no point in life that anybody can really verify, why would that control or why would that matter to you? Why would that structure the way that you live your life fucking perfect question because like for me i don't for me personally like i just don't give a fuck i don't care either way now this is what so this is the inside i broke through which is like i just sat with that because normally i'd be like well he's stupid i don't listen to him because he said a bad thing and he said the thing i don't like and i don't like that so you're a bad person i'm gonna just shut you off i'm canceling you internally right but i sat

with i was like why does this bump up against me like why does that annoy me why do i feel if i feel the need to change you you've bumped up against me and that's the thing is like i can't be wrong therefore you have to be different so i sat with that and i was like this morning affirmation this thing i'm doing and then i get up and i like orient myself and i feel the consciousness of the world like huh well if that's just a belief, then it also means I can believe something else. And it's like I said, it's very uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. But I realized, and his whole point is that belief, it just allows him to say, I'm going to get rid of the judgment and the shame around these things I should do.

Meaning, I don't have to get up and do my affirmations because that's what a good, because I'll be better as a business person. I don't have to go be nice to people because then they'll like me. I don't have to go and work out because then I'll be in shape. I can just do whatever the fuck I want. And it's like, but like doing what seems obvious and real to you that is meaningful without shame allows you to bring, so you can still do all the things. You can eat the food, you can go do this stuff, but if you're aware of it, you don't think I'm eating this to be that I'm doing this to be that I'm doing this. So that, and it's's like if the process is not an end in and of itself it can't be a means anything else and it allows you to just enjoy that fucking process

because no amount of money no i mean there's obviously money things will help improve life in many ways but it's like money can only solve money problems and this is a guy who's made copious millions of dollars it's like oh all right it's he still a person that exists. And so that's where I was like, you do the things that are meaningful to you and then you can start to explore that and you have the freedom to do that, to create. Like I just get up and go say my affirmations because I like to and it makes me feel grounded.

I enjoy the way it feels. But I don't have to do this because the thing is if I get up and I don't do that, does that mean the universe is going to punish me and that I'm going to be a bad person and I'm going to be rejected or that if I don't say, jump through the ho, because if you get rid of the so that you can't and just do the thing simply because you do it, you're going to be better at that thing and be more grounded

and you're going to start bringing judgment. And that judgment is what pulls you out of the moment. Does that make sense? So I learned that. Yeah, I think what might serve one person might be the total opposite for something that might serve somebody else. Somebody might think that we have this existence and that we have to live through God. Somebody else might not even believe in God, but like whatever you're using, like whatever's working,

whatever is allowing you to, I guess, uh, live the way that you want to live is the most important thing. And it's very disconcerting for, even for me, for anybody, because like the loss of the world,

like think about it. Like if you're a little kid and you lose your parent, that's your world. That's your God. That is that is your worldview so to speak and it's like there's so many people hold on so tightly to this and it's like what does it look like without that and this is the thing it's like you know whether or not you could go down this idea of like just on one hand you could say in a long enough time span we came from nothing we'll go back to nothing like everything is just a cosmic blip maybe but i would look and say like no one can prove anything either way so the idea of holding on to like there's nothing and that there's something like so strongly it's like that ends up being a limiting thing it's like whatever you feel like

lets you orient yourself in the best possible way even from a pragmatic level and the totally nihilistic saying i just believe that if i'm nice to you you're gonna be nice to me like and i the belief is saying like it's represented by the fact it's worked for me so long in general if i punch you you're gonna knock the shit out of me. It's like therefore I'm not going to. And so that belief is saying that it's reciprocity of goodwill that I'm trading back and forth. That it's like you can look at it very pragmatically and say, okay, I don't have to believe that there is this huge massive thing called God so to speak. But I can say that there is – I don't even know if you do have consciousness.

I mean you could be non-player characters for all I know. That's my favorite thing. I walk, there's a guy who runs every morning and I'm like, I wave to him every single morning

and he never even once looked at me. I'm like, maybe he is an NPC. Maybe life is a simulation. Well, to every individual, every other individual is an NPC, so yeah.

But this is the thing is like most people you can look in their eyes and see when someone's like thinking and they're connected and they're in there. And it's like,

you know, there's people that will resonate with that. And so I just like, I don't know the answer. No one does know the answers, but there is something you could even go and say, like, if we all look at nature,

for example, like we think of nature as like, oh, well, there's a problem where we bifurcate nature and say there's man and there's nature. Well, man is nature.

We're all part of the same thing. But it was like, if you look at the definition of what God means, it's like, what God is like, not a person that's sitting up in a cloud in heaven it's like god would be if god like as a conscious like it would be the combined consciousness of all things so you know look at like mushrooms the plant consciousness you look at animals you can see in the eyes of a dolphin or another person

there's something in there right and whatever that consciousness is is probably not mirrored in here but the combined of like you think about this we're talking about this idea we had the idea earlier about the collaborations like that right there is a shared consciousness and just the fact that i can you can look in your kids eyes they can grow and learn it's like there's something there and even if that combined thing is something that i have the ability to notice and see i can contribute to that positively i can encourage think about this you talk about this part of what you do and you share is like i want to bring love and i want to your positive messages and like just give people the positivity with no shame and guilt and tell people that. You do that from a reason of like even if maybe you haven't thought about it.

Like, okay, sure, maybe there's a complete thing that you do that people will like you. They'll buy your shit. You get more money and you can rule the world. Maybe that's the deepest underlying level. Or there's probably the other part is like if an end is not a process, if a process is not an end in and of itself, it can't be a means to anything else. The process is meaningful enough for you to do. What is the process? Sharing positivity, sharing knowledge, improving things.

Why would you do that? Okay, well, because there's some party that says that either it just creates a better society, creates a world, or alleviates suffering. It is love in and of itself. Therefore, love is the expression of you giving externally from an open area, from a full tank. Love is the expression of you giving externally from an open area, from a full tank. Therefore, I would assume it sounds like there's some type of a belief that there is a thing you're contributing to that is greater than yourself. Otherwise, you would just orient yourself in just a way to get that thing. But the process is meaningful enough for you, and there's something that fulfills you.

When you do the things that you feel God smiling, so to speak. The guy says, when I run, I feel God smiling. It's like, that thing is like, when I share people information, when I give information and teach people, when I love people and I bring positivity, that makes me feel like that feeling good that we call it serotonin or dopamine. It's like, you can get very pragmatic and think about it, but like, yeah, but the feeling of love, the feeling of this thing is a connection to this. And sure, you can all just walk down and say like, there's different ties. You can go there, but at some point we're still orienting ourselves. People that tend to be happiest that I've seen are the ones that orient themselves externally from a full tank. They're happy, they're fulfilled, they address the pain and problems in their life, and they're giving. And when they give, that is an expression

of orienting themselves towards, quote unquote, God, and that allows them to be more fulfilled, enlightened, and grow. So whether or not you want to say that this is a pragmatically written down thing, or these are the steps, and this is the the book and you need to read this and believe this, I don't know. And I think sometimes when we get the science of things, like you have looked at the studies, like, well, where's the curiosity? Do we get all the facts? Or you'd look at the religion, which is like, this is what the thing says in this book. It's like, yeah, but where's the love? Where's the faith? It's like, there are these themes that I think that when we lose that, we lose the capacity to see other people clearly, see ourselves clearly, to trust and have faith that there will be a future that's powerful. You know, there's a lot

there, but whether like, that's the hard part is just to be able to see that honesty and say, okay, you know, I don't know it all. These are just beliefs I have. And it's like, I can still appreciate and love you whether or not you say the things I say too. Does that make sense? I'm out here just doing this pop star dance. These legendary pop-tarts are so great. Power Project family, I hope you guys are doing well today, but I want to show you guys from Legendary Foods, we have the Tasty Pastry.

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Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I think that we're not supposed to know why we're here. I think there's a lot of things like that. We don't even understand how people talk, like how I'm fucking able to talk right now without really – it doesn't seem like I'm thinking about it. There's just a lot of weird things in life. And a lot of things are people talk so often about how hard things are.

And I find that to be really interesting because your heart just beats on its own. Your eyes just do their own thing on their own. Like all your senses, like you don't have to do anything for them. There's a lot of things like that. that um one of the things that i i like about you know your message and seeing the stuff that you do on instagram with running it's like if we just go if we reverse engineer everything right and we just say like if you make a statement and say running is healthy period right well that's kind of a that's not a great statement because running just like we, we all love to lift. We love lifting. Lifting is healthy, period.

You know, there's different, there's different kinds of lifting. There's power lifting, there's bodybuilding, there's CrossFit. Now we're starting to talk about like competitive lifting, strongman. That doesn't seem very, like, it seems like a great endeavor. It seems like a great thing to chase and a good thing to help build some personal development, but doesn't necessarily seem healthy. And then same thing with running, as you were mentioning, some of these athletes, you know, they restrict their calories, they stay really light, like, you know, they do a lot of unhealthy practices to try to run as far as they possibly can. But if we're to kind of like just backtrack

and put it in its simplest terms, running probably is one of the most healthy things that you could possibly do. Because if you think about like, you know, jumping and running, they're basically the same thing. You know, you're just going back and forth between one foot and another foot. Somebody that possesses the ability to run,

and I'm not talking about like run, I'm not talking about like someone just taken off off i'm just talking about some capacity to run even just a little bit it's pretty obvious that if someone can run especially if they can kind of sprint they're probably pretty healthy yeah and it i know like you talked a lot of a lot of philosophical stuff there but when somebody goes off and takes a sprint, it's quite obvious they have let go of at least a lot of physical stuff. And you can make some arguments. Maybe there's been some other things they let go of too,

but definitely the physiology is there for them to be able to perform that run. And so I've been getting into running more recently, and so now it kind of seems like I've been getting into running more recently. And so now it kind of seems like I've been converted runner or something like that, but I'm not even speaking from that term. I just, I never really looked at it this way before. I'm never really, once I started to run and I didn't have a great capacity to run, I was like, man, I'm actually, I'm a fool. Like I'm pretty foolish. Like I love to train. I love to lift.

But now here I am, I can't even really run that well. I'm like, that's pretty lame. Like that's a, there's a lot of people that could fly right past me, you know, when I just started running. But I'm like, I was like trying to be this high level athlete. I was lifting all these big weights. I was doing these things, right?

And so sometimes as we chase something, we kind of lose capacities for other things. But I do think that there is something to running. And I think that anyone that's listening to this right now, if you do not possess the ability to run, I just think that you should investigate it. I'm not talking about like that you got to run four miles, five miles, 10 miles. I'm not talking about any of got to run four miles, five miles, ten miles. I'm not talking

about any of that. I just think you should have a capacity to run forward. You should have a capacity to run backwards. All right. Perfect. Good reframe. We'll bring it back up. I promise we'll talk about pragmatic things. We'll fix the running. Oh, guys. Guys, I hope you guys listen to everything you just mentioned, but we're going to get into some meaty feet stuff that's going to

change your fucking life. So stay here. Feet is not a euphemism. do we have it set up at the url we could it was hard to get the dot com i think we got the oh we got the dot net and the dot me right okay cool dot feet so you got a really good thing so and i think if you look at running so this is the two parts one of which is like there's a limited definition we think about running when i say running something is going to pop in your head right now. It may be ultramarathon, it may be mid-distance, it may be long-distance, it may be sprinting, whatever you perceive that to be. The point is running is all of those.

There's walking, there's running, and there's sprinting. Sprinting is like a max effort. Walking is just our way to integrate with the ground. Then there's running. Running is this capacity that can fill any of those things. You can make the argument that to run is to be human. So in order to run, literally, we would have gotten away from things. We would have searched for water and we would have hunted.

Like that's running. So without that, we do not evolve as people. Run, throw, jump, push, pull, right? Exactly. Like what you think of as an athlete. So this idea of athletes play sports is a limited – it's co-opted. Athletes have physical dominion over their body and those are the things. What can you do?

And if you think about running would have been – running and jumping, which is great. That's a great pull. It's really the same thing as jumping from one foot to the other. Running and jumping are the way we've trained our legs. So you think about like a run or a walk would be a volume. We get a lot of volume. We develop resiliency and we develop strength in the tissues to build a foundation. And then sprinting and jumping are how we maximize the ceiling we strain and we do that stuff so if you can't think about this

running i would i would make the argument to be able to broad jump and to be able to sprint or the maximum like the maximum expressions of athleticism for people and people would say well you know i can't do that it hurts that's feedback and so that goes back to this thing of like, if you are not listening to the feedback, you end up losing capacity. And so that's really what hurts. Okay, my hamstrings are pulled. My hip flexors train. My feet hurt.

My knees aren't strong enough. Good, let's lean into that. And that's where you step back and say, what does it look like to train? You know, I happen to be a very big fan of ATG and what Ben Patrick's doing and that philosophy. But anything that gets you to train and break these components down

to build that strength back up to remember, build trust in your body because pain focuses you and constricts you. And that means you no longer able to trust. If you're in pain, you don't trust. If you hurt me, I don't trust you with this back and forth interplay. And if I'm in pain and my knees hurt, I don't trust my body. If I'm not afraid, if I feel like my feet are going to break or my hamstring is going to pull, I don't trust my body. People say, well, it's just because I'm not meant to sprint. Or, yeah, it's just because I have flat feet. Or, yeah, it's just because I'm wearing these hokas or whatever the shoes are.

You go back to this belief, right? What does it look like to let go of that belief and to build trust and to say, okay, I don't just say I'm going to go believe I can sprint. I'm going to go trust. And that's where I go to say, let me go and what does it mean to build trust? It means to do concrete actions that then manifest the capacity to have trust. I trust this table is here. For example, we're talking about you. You lift.

You train. You move. You get under bar. You know your body is going to organize. That's the discipline part. I can't play if I don't have the discipline, the walled garden. You go all ties together. You can't go play jujitsu if you're worried your shoulder is going to come out.

You can't play that. You can't go and play sprinting and running and jumping and sports if you feel like your body is going to fail. So then what does it mean to develop confidence? I have to go back to the discipline. I have to create. I have to peel off. If you're in really bad pain, you have to peel back all the variables to just a basic little thing.

I have to now move my big toe again. I have to push a sled. I have to do a squat. I have to do this stuff to develop. But over time, that capacity gets you more and more trust in your body. And when you have trust, you can express that through playing, and that's human movement, and that's what it means to sprint and to run. Now, we can talk about exactly what that looks like with feet, but this is the thing is far too many people – the conversation about running has been co-opted by people who go and run distance. And they just think – because think about it.

When you can't sprint, you just start – when we lose this trust, we start to lower our expectations for what we think we can do. And he goes from I can sprint. Well, now I can run. Now I can jog. Now I can walk. And now I can walk on a treadmill with hokas. And so we lose that. And then eventually there's pain around psychologically of all the things I can't do. And then that makes me feel shame.

Then I say I don't like feeling this. So you're wrong. I'm not supposed to be able to sprint. I've got bad feet. I've got weak ankles. I need these shoes. I need an orthotic because my doctor says so. Let me high pin real quick on what you're saying right here because so many people listening right now to this episode, a lot of us are lifters.

Sometimes when I would talk to individuals who are runners who would like run long distances and they are in shape, they tell me that. I'm like, man, that's super impressive. It sounds like torture. But it's a harmless thing. I'm very impressed at what they're doing. And I'm not trying to diss them. But more so that's a belief on if I did that, that would be torture. I believe that if I do that, that would be torture.

So why the fuck would I even do that? So I limit myself with my words and what I'm saying. But that also takes an effect on the actions I take because I'll never take that action. Yeah. When this is the thing is like the commercialization of running, it's so hard to understand running without understanding the history of where it comes from. So think about this. The companies that have shaped how we think of running were not around until the mid-19th century, no, 20th century. So think about this. Running as a sport did not really happen until 1896 with the first modern Olympics in Greece or Athens, one of those two.

I think Athens is in Greece. That probably made me look dumb. Whatever it is. I don't know geography, bro. I'm a personal trainer. Don't expect much from me. So 1896, first marathon. 1897, we have the first Boston Marathon.

The next year, there are five marathons. People start to pick this stuff up. In the early 20th century, we get what? The World War, Great World War. World War, where we need millions of young men at the time. Sorry. We need millions of young men to go fight. And guess what?

People at that time, the activities of daily life were sufficient to keep them healthy. And this is something people talk about. Nutrition, what you eat while you're overweight. It's like, well, you can look at the fact that we made foods that weren't around 100 years ago. But 100 years ago, people weren't overweight. They were just out of shape. They're weak. They couldn't go and do this stuff because they were just kind of living their stuff.

We're just in the beginning of the industrial revolution. The revolution where it takes over. We have technology. It's replacing some of the stuff we do. People are out of shape. So they create the presidential fitness thing where they knew we need you to be able to go and do the standardized testing and jump and run this stuff. So you create that and get people engaged. World War II happens. We need millions of people and these young men and women are enlisted and so we get in this

area, right? So most of the literature we have around training and exercise comes from military because applications of the president, the people don't believe that we're strong enough to go and be able to like hold and pick up things and go do things and fight a war. So then it goes, okay, well, now we'll get to the mid 1950s, 1960s. We have fake food. The first heart attacks, the first real beginning of this predictable metabolic disease epidemic picks up and then people are out of shape. And then we think we need something to change this.

So the common cultural narrative is like we're now getting overweight. We're having diseases. Something needs to happen. So you get 1967, Bill Bowerman, who's the founder of Nike, eventually was Blue Ribbon Sport or first was Blue Ribbon Sports, goes down to New Zealand, meets a guy named Coach Lilliard, who is then the Olympic coach there. And he's created something called jogging. Jogging is supposed to be done on your heels, the heel or toe. And it's meant to be a specific transition technique where you're getting people develop stronger, right? It's this thing, Bill Bowerman

fucking loves it. He eats it up, he comes back, writes this book called Jogging, and he introduces it. Then in the 1970s, you get President Nixon, you get 25 million Americans to take off, it's a fair faucet, all the people were there. It just becomes this natural thing. Now, you've got to think, that's the first time we've commercialized, we've

created something popular doing that. Because in the past, before this idea of marathons, some people would do as a fringe sport thing, or people that were athletes, people would go to college, they would run, they would do this stuff. But it was never like, oh, Mark, did you go for a run today? And you're like, why the fuck did you do that? Is your car broken? You know, or like, is your bike broken? It was like, you know, there are people that either worked and their life was hard, or the people that didn't work and their life is still hard. They had to go do, you know, work at the meat processing plant. So you get these people, it takes off. There's, you know, 25 million Americans are going to do this stuff. In step with that, Bill Bowerman, who's coaching an Oregon track, has this shoe, I think it's the Nike

Cortez or whatever. There's the first version of that. The first time he's putting foam under shoes. And so he's selling them out of the back of his car. He goes, writes this book, Jogging Takes Off. Nike releases the Nike Cortez in 1972, which is the first to use ethylene vinyl acetate EVA as the first foam, which is still in use in most shoes now. That big guy pops out. In 1974, they have the Waffle Trainer, which he takes a rubber thing, makes it on a waffle iron in his kitchen with his wife. So he's one of those, like the first Mark Bell. He's out there making products like, hey, we can do this. It's stretchy. It's a slingshot. He's starting to do this and it's like,

that's actually a great analogy. I'll come back to that. Then you get 1970, you get Brooks. You get some of these companies. New Balance is 1890. I think Converse is 1910. You get Adidas and Puma, which are 1917, somewhere in there. You get Nike, which is 1972.

You get Asics, which is 1977. They were actually a conglomerate of Japanese companies that came together and formed it. They're super interesting. You want to look at something, go look at their history of shoe models. I'm just looking at it. Yeah, I just looked up the Nike Cortez, too, also. So now if you actually go back, that's such a great example. If you go and put shoes in reverse for what we have now, now pull up a Nike Alpha Fly as a comparison.

If you can do a split screen. You look at that as an interesting thing. The story from 1972 is that these companies, Brooks, Asics, Saucony, Nike, start to just throw different technology. They're all trying to get their different things. So Nike, first, I think, Vinyl Acidate, that's the modern. So if you take a reverse story from that all the way to that, you get a shoe. Those things are amazing. You fold them in half.

If you have them on the ground, they'll jump forward. That shoe alone. There's carbon footplate in there. That actually made the Olympic, the IOC, create rules around what they can put in shoes. It couldn't be more than 40 millimeters tall. You couldn't have more than one fiber plate. You couldn't have, like. And it rocks, too. You see how the back end of it is, like, you know, stitched than one fiber plate. You couldn't have like. And it rocks too.

You see how the back end of it is like, you know. We can talk about that stuff too. Oh my gosh. I wear something similar when I run. It's not quite as cushiony as that. But my thought process was like, I don't know anything about running. So I'm just going to get a shoe that assists me because with every, I just was not accustomed to it. Let me flip this around.

I don't know anything about squatting. So I'm going to get a belt and then I'm going to go and squat. It's like, you hear that as a coach. I don't know anything about powerlifting, so I'm going to get this right. It's not like that. It feels more like a slingshot. It feels assisting. You know what I mean?

Now you can see how that can be good. So we'll come back to that. And I also can understand how it can be bad. Yeah. Now you look at, so 1970s ago, and so these companies go back and that. And I also can understand how it can be bad. Yeah. Now, you look at, so 1970s ago, and so these companies go back and forth. ASICS has their gel, Shockany has their carbon fiber wave thing, Nike, or Nike

had, or Adidas has their boost technology in 2013, Nike has their Zoom, you get Hoka, all these companies. It is literally a gimmick back and forth. It's the same thing. It's just one company's trying to say, hey, this is our technology. This is what we do. We go back and forth, back and forth. And since you start in 1972 with the Cortez, it's pretty flat, pretty minimal. And now you get all the way up. So the problem is 1970s,

people start jogging and they're jogging. They're literally being told, like, it's funny, there's a girl, a coach sent a video of like jogging form from her PE class in college, and it's literally a girl heel strike. And they're being taught that. And it's not that was wrong. It's jogging is meant to be on your heels. The question is before 1970, we all knew that running was running and walking was walking and there was no in the middle. And if you're like, oh, I'm supposed to do this and I'm running. But the question is, you go and tell me how slow you need to run in order to land on your heels barefoot. And the thing, if it doesn't, you got to remember, there are billions of people in the world right now that do not have shoes. They're

surviving. It's not that we need to do this. It's just that the form that has enabled us. So the technology should support our human function. If the technology fundamentally changes the way we function, that's when technology is no longer a supplement for us. And you go look at this. So now Nike has created the shoe, and it's convenient because we get millions of Americans that are running. So then you get in and say, well, let me give you this shoe shoe and to fix it. But then the problem is it just prolongs this. And now my energy, my injury happens because what those shoes do is they limit feedback,

just like drugs, like everything else we're talking. I'm not getting that pain feedback to say maybe something isn't right. And so I get a thicker shoe and Nike says, oh, it's not your running form. It's your shoe. Guess what? You've run through your shoes, 200 miles. Time to get a new one. It's like, that's a horrible product. You know, it's like, think about this. They're making the gel nimblest 23 is not different than the gel nimblest 22. It's not technically better. Is the gel nimblest an actual shoe? Yes, it's the Asics.

Oh, okay. There's a 24, I think is what they're at. That's not a joke. Oh. Like, that's Asics. And so they're making these shoes every year. And they tell you, you can't run through it. You can't run too much.

You need to place it out. You need support shoes. We're going to fit you for this stuff. And guess what? People are still getting injured. There's a reason upwards of 50% of people who run every year will suffer a significant injury that causes them to stop running. And some estimates say up to 90% of people

that run marathons will get injured. So something's happening. A big reason why people get hurt running though is just because they're really heavy. So there's two parts of the heavy. Because you can be be heavy but your feet and body are still able to do it the question is are you heavy and out of decondition because you can be heavy and move right there's offensive alignment yeah these are people that probably haven't moved in forever and that's the thing is i'm gonna lose weight i'm gonna go run that's what they think and guess what walking is a

phenomenal thing and people would have done that colloquially it was called pedestrianism was the way we just they walked for sport. People would go watch people walk for days. It was a sport. People would have done that and they would have just been moving. But then it was like, oh, we need you to jog and you can only jog in this shoe. That's like saying, oh, I need you to bench because it's the best thing you can do. But you can only bench with a slingshot.

Mark Bell slingshot. It's convenient. Oh, wait, your arms hurt? You need a better slingshot. Oh, this is the slingshot version too. Obviously, this is the slingshot version too. And obviously it's not your product, but I'm saying that's what we don't think about is... There you go. It's a 23. So what's funny is

like, okay, that's a 23. What's a 22? And then now here's a 24. Oh, they got the 24? Yeah. I got the wrong one. Sorry. Hold on. They're like literally identical. But you need it because now there's... Oh, wow. No, but it's a new carbon fiber on the bottom or something like that. And so this is the thing is these companies, it's like if you went to Ford and you got a car,

and then the next year is like, yeah, but that car is bad. Actually, you've driven too much in the car. You need to sell and get another one. They're trying to get you to buy the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And look, I don't want to sound like this consumerism and capitalism is all to swear you. It's like, no, but that's the point is in order to support the narrative that you need these shoes, they can't say that maybe you shouldn't run this way, right? And should.

See, I even catch myself there. It's something I believe, but it's like, it's evidenced by the fact that if you listen to the feedback, it's not ideal for your body. We can talk about the ideal running form, but it's something that every human has the capacity to do it. The whole point is that you look at these last 50 years where we get this bigger and bigger thing. You get 2006, 2008, Lieberman. It's a guy who did some studies at the Harvard Spinal Mechanics Lab, did some stuff with Vibram, and he was looking at comparing

barefoot shoes. And what you notice is there's two things that matter when you look at running. There's the total force, there's transient force, but there's force of impact, and there's on speed of landing. So when you look at it and you land, when you, every foot step you take as I walk is 125% of your body weight or four. So like it's 1.2 times your body weight going into each foot as you step. When you run, it's 2.75. So 270% of your body weight. That is the same. If you forefoot strike or heel strike, it's the same. And people say, oh, I could midfoot strike. Midfoot strike happens less than 4% of the time. It's when you land perfectly flat. The middle of your foot is your time. It's when you land perfectly flat.

The middle of your foot is your arch. It is not meant to load bear. You can't actually land on your arch. It's not a realistic thing to demonstrate and work to do. So your only options are heel striking and forefoot striking. And heel striking is just not feasible. And I don't want to sound patronizing with this stuff either because if you go out and walk, even walking in your heels too firmly can be painful because you are landing into bone. walk, even walking in your heels too firmly can be painful because you were landing into bone. Now, what these thicker heels sold shoes do is they spread out this impact. So instead of landing,

if you go watch the force plates, you land on your heel, it's a big shot up. And that rapid force is what creates the load on our body. Now, you can do that with shoes and you roll across. And what it does is it slows down. So instead of being a straight up, it's a little bit less of steep of an incline. But compared that to a barefoot forefoot strike where it's a slow up and a slow down, you're still getting that 2.75% to 2.7 times body mass force of impact, but it's a much slower onboarding. And now, yes, you can go and run correctly. But you run a lot faster in the shoes, right?

Think about it. Have you ever seen a sprinter? People line up. Usain Bolt and all the other guys line up, and women, and their various thing. Do they wear hokas when they go do a 100-meter sprint? No, but they're wearing shoes. Exactly. So this is where there's two things.

And I don't want to come off as being shoes are bad, because we could do like two more hours of this stuff but people don't give a fuck. But shoes are a competition advantage. You're fucking awesome, Graham. I got to tell you, man. We love you, bro. Thank you. Thank you.

And so shoes are a competition advantage. So you people say, well, I've got these victory insoles or these super feet. It's like what those do is when you wear shoes that have a stiff midsole – so there's real four components of shoes you want to think about. So there's how wide is the toe box, how flat is the sole, how thick is the sole, and how bendable is the sole. So think about this. There are differences and there are times when you would maybe want to have something like this and not have something like this. Meaning like if you have a thick midsole, that actually resists bending and acts like a spring so that you can be explosive and jump off.

And so that resists bending. And so if I'm sprinting and I'm grabbing the ground, I want that plastic piece helps me to project myself forward. It's like a spring. Now, when you have big, thick foam under the shoe, that spreads out force. So, oh, God, I can't. Those are the – I just wanted to pull up thick shoes.

I just want to point out a couple of things. I'm just being, like, contradictory just to be a – Please do. Just to, like – just so the audience can get more out of this. So, why Hussein Bolt and those guys at Sprint, they obviously wear – they wear a way different style shoe. That's pretty obvious. But you do run a lot faster in shoes. You run a lot faster in shoes on a track.

Do you? And additionally, yeah. How so? That's a belief you have, but tell me more. Well, what's the fastest 100 meter? So here's the thing, the grip. So what you think about is what helps you on the going with shoes, right, is the spikes that go into the ground and the starting block. But think about is what helps you on the the going with shoes right is the spikes that go into the

ground and the starting block but think about that it's like the shoe is a manifestation or the shoe is a physical thing that gives you spikes that grip the ground but that doesn't necessarily mean you're running faster means you have better grip on the ground right the point is that like it's it's uh the shoes actually are able if the grip wasn't a factor it's like does that shoe allow you to run you can make up whatever you want but people are faster when they wear a shoe at the time okay right it's a faster time but technical time like if we're thinking times then yeah okay i will i hear what you're saying which is that the shoe is a technology that allows you to create a better faster output i'm just so let's keep going there right uh and what i was going to say is the reason why the shoes were made illegal the ones

that have more foam on them and the carbon footplate is because a lot of the records were getting like destroyed so the shoes work they do help make people go faster and that's what people are obsessed with people are they get into some of these things they get a certain time and then they get a better time and they get a better time they're like man, man, I wonder if I could. And then all the attention. If you go on YouTube and type in carbon fiber shoes, it's like a fucking thing. I mean, it's a giant rabbit hole. So these things will assist you to get better times. But I do agree with everything you're saying here.

It's like, I think this should be explored. People should look into how it feels to run in a minimalist shoe. People should explore what it feels like even just to walk on the ground and feel how that is and to run and sprint barefoot. So the qualifier, I would say, is that correct running form in shoes is going to be faster because you don't have to worry about stepping on things. You get more grip on the ground. So, yes, shoes are a technological event. I do not want to come off as saying I'm not doing that. The question is if the shoe changes the fundamental way you're

running, then, so correct running form in shoes was faster than I would, you'd end up losing force capacity, meaning you can get away with this. So you look at like the guy who ran the sub two hour marathon, Ilyud Kipchoge, forgive me for my butchering the name. You know, he runs in those Nike Alpha flies, those massive ones, but he forefoot strikes. So the thing is, it's just whether or not the shoe makes it harder for you to run. It's not, I don't want to get out there and say everyone should be barefoot. That's not a realistic thing. It's not what I care. I still wear shoes when I go and live and run and do whatever it's, but it's the point of saying the foot is the main motor. It's the main thing. And if the shoe is actually inhibiting, and I'm not saying all the time, because what you're

talking about is a specific output of like, I in a competition setting I'm trying to do this just like saying does wearing a lifting belt help you like straps and belts and singlets and all this stuff help you get more space absolutely because we didn't get that point but if I go this is the thing is like I show up my first coach you're going to train me how to lift and I show up and I got my

singlet and my fucking strong belt that I can't even pull because it's so big I got my chalk and smack myself in the face and I got my smelling salts. You got it down pretty good. I've been following you for a while. You think about this. I show up on day one. You're like, have you squatted before?

No, no, no, but I'm ready. Let's fucking go. It's like I got the stuff. For the first time, most people, they're sitting around and maybe they play sports, they've been around, they put on some weight and they go, I'm going to go run. What do they do? They go to the shoe store and get fit by some pimply faced kid who doesn't know how to run, put someone on a treadmill and say, I think you have a pronate. And I was like, then guess what? Day one, I'm learning to squat in a thick fucking belt with chalk and a singlet. And I was like, I don't even know how to bend my knees.

And all that stuff can be helpful, but you got to peel that back and say, am I doing it right at the first place? Can I even bend my knee? And that's what I'm saying is that when you get to that top percentage, fuck yeah, do whatever you can. But I'm saying everything up there, being the shoe, like there's a reason. Think of a kid coach. He grew up a poor farmer running two miles of school every day back and forth, and they don't have Nike outlet stores wherever in Ethiopia. I forget. I think it's Kenya.

I forget where it is. Ethiopia? I think it's Ethiopia. They don't have Nike outlet stores on the corner over there. So, he's doing it either barefoot or in minimalist shoes, and he's just doing it. So, his feet get strong. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they have stores there? Because aren't they the best runners? No, because China, America's pulled out of Africa

and China's putting in their debts, so China's, whatever China's Nike will be there eventually. But you see this. The commercialization of running has changed the way we fundamentally think of it. And instead of saying my feet are strong and capable and can do this, I say, what running shoes should I have? And it's like it's been so beaten into us that it's hard to think about that, which is all I really want people to say. It's like your feet, if anything in your body should be nailed, should be correct, like nailed down by your evolution, it's your feet. They're how we interact with the world. What can your feet if anything in your body should be nailed should be correct like nailed down by your evolution it's your feet they're how we interact with the world what can your feet fix are you seeing like because you're doing a lot of stuff you're helping a lot of people i think the knee is probably obvious but what about the lower back what about the hips what

about shoulders do you think there's room to help people with all kinds of different things from the feet what's the most important part of a skyscraper? The base. Yeah, the base. Why is that? It's what everything is sitting on top of, yeah. Exactly. So if your arches are collapsed, think about it just as a stacking process. If this leans just a little bit over too much,

it falls over. That is what happens. I'm holding a water bottle to bring it over. Now, I want to say this too. Think about this for everyone. Everyone here is a lifter, right? Imagine that right now he's going to be talking to us about how we can strengthen and build our feet, your base, the thing that you reproduce force through, that's taking care of this foundation. If you can build the strength of your feet, imagine how much more you're going to be able to squat.

Imagine how much more force you're going to be able to create through your feet when you deadlift. The amount of leg drive you're going to be able to squat. Imagine how much more force you're going to be able to create through your feet when you deadlift. The amount of leg drive you're going to be able to create when you bench. Imagine how it's going to translate to those numbers just by having – The dexterity. Your mobility. Jesus Christ. There's everything. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm so intangible in this way out here, and I get what you're saying. Think about this. How much can you deadlift if you don't work on your grip, like you don't hold on to the bar just as much as your grip can handle exactly but unless you use straps if you don't train your grip you can't engage with things and you're holding on you're the heart of your grip so the same thing with your feet if you lose that first off the pain is there so if you have collapsed arches that almost represents by like turf toe plantar fasciitis achilles pain shin spl shin splints, your knees hurt, whatever it is.

That's going to be an irritation. The body is not pliable and flexible and moving from the feet down. And that throws everything else up the chain. Your feet have 26 bones, 33 joints, hundreds of muscles, ligaments, and tendons. They're meant to orient and feel the ground and move and engage. They're how we balance. The big toe is the primary glute engager. There is nothing you would ever use your glutes for.

If something's hurt, your back hurts, you go to physical therapy, whatever, it's like, you need stronger glutes, you need stronger core, you need to stretch more. Well, guess what? You can't use your glutes if you can't move your big toe. That big toe is how we signal to the body. Just like, I can't pick this water bottle up if I can't grab it with my fingers. Everyone who wants a bigger ass,

I want you to think about this. Stronger big toe, think about, this is why you got such a peachy booty, Graham. You should see my big toe. This is the reason why. You got that big toe strength. It is the equivalent of grab the ground, squeeze the ground, screw your feet into the ground.

It means grab with your toes, engage, feel your feet on the ground. And if you don't do that, you're not engaging those muscles. And when you don't do that, that's when you get stapled in a squat or you can't pick things up. Even from a bench, you are driving into it it your feet are how you orient with the ground and if the foundation is not strong it's not there if you have pain you will be inhibited you will not be able to use your feet you will not be able to create that strong foundation you will not be able to orient yourself to the world that you are on and that will limit everything else so you know

we could talk about a few things we go like the five layers like how to fix that and anything else like tangible stuff so like you know what do you want to hear things we could go like the five layers like how to fix that and anything else like tangible stuff so like you know what do you want to hear what do you want to I could just talk for hours since those shoes are

Mark's like this is a horrible idea no I'd like to just add that anyone that's listening to this like there's some people that maybe are still working

on their diet they still are a little bit heavy there's you know, so I think sometimes people are just like, man, I don't even know where to start with walking,

but yeah, I think walking is excellent. I, and I also think that I think that running Hills is a really great place to start or, or even just pushing a sled, not running with a sled, but just pushing a sled.

Josh Bryant does a lot of programming for a lot of power lifters will have people sometimes run with a sled and he'll have them go like 70 percent and just use very lightweight because most people that are bigger they need to be slowed down because they haven't been practicing running a lot of people haven't been practicing running like it's it's odd when you when you're myself and you go out and run, you're like, I don't really think I've run much in like 20 something years. Like strange. Like I should have never, there you go. It's something that I wasn't paying enough attention to. Didn't feel, here's the thing. The reason you weren't doing it is because you're saying I have goals, meaning I went to go, sorry, I'm talking to the thing. I have goals I want to do.

This, I don't feel confident to do. And if the risk of me going and doing this thing is not worth blowing on hamstring and knee, therefore, I don't trust myself. Therefore, I don't do it. And there were some versions of that that I would do, because we did the stairs out near the beach, and I would run hills a little bit, but I'd always walk downhill, and I'd always walk the flat parts parts because I'm like, I think I'm going to F myself up.

But people listening that aren't confident in themselves, I would encourage you to go to a field, get barefoot, just walk, see how that feels, maybe try to run backwards, or I'm going to say just jog slowly backwards, and maybe just see what you can do when you go to run backwards or I'm going to say just like jog slowly backwards. Yeah. And maybe just see what you can do when you go to run because you're logically, your eyes are going to map out the ground that you're on. Your body is going to be feeling every step that you take and you're only going to run as fast as your feet will allow you to run.

Yeah. So let's break this to tangible things. What can you do if you're a lifter? Like part of this expressing, so think about if you have more power, if you can run and jump and sprint, that's going to be you being more athletic, stronger, more capable, right? So the higher your ceiling is, the more force you can put through your body, the more force you can put through your body, the more strength you have. Three things at the start. You want to think low-risk things I really can't fuck myself up doing. First, sled.

It's just like really going slow, intentional, pushing that. And then if you want that to go – so all these things regress. They regress and go up. So the lowest form of a sled is pulling. The next step is pushing, very slowly walking, feeling the ground, thinking about making love with the ground, with your feet. It's just like really engaging with that. If you want to scale it up to the top level and be explosive, push as hard and fast as you can for 10 meters. So that's the regression if you have pain, the easy intro and the up thing or the top level.

Progression. The progression. Then the same thing and the up thing or the the top level progression yeah the progression um then the same thing the next thing would be backwards so walking backwards if you have pain pulling a sled is good jogging backwards to try and get a little bit more of this elasticity and bouncing and then explosive running backwards you really can't hurt the only thing you're going to hurt yourself going backwards is tripping and falling to make sure you're in a safe space to do that hill sprints you can walk backwards up a hill as a very simple way if you're in pain you can just even simply walking up a hill as a very simple way. If you're in pain, you can just even simply walking up the hill as just like the developed strength there,

but then like jogging up the hill and then hill sprint, you really like, I'm telling you, backward sprinting, sled pushing, uphill sprints. Those are the three things that you really can't fuck yourself up, but you can scale those up. You can run as hard as you want up a hill. You can push that as hard as you want and you can back pedal sprint as hard as you want. And assuming you don't step on a rock or you don't like do the, like the, the outlier things, those things allow you onboarding ramps to add the stuff in. And slowly you start to develop because those are all strengthening the muscles you use for running and explosiveness as well. And then you get more confident. And then if you want to go, you do not have to, I think everyone should be able to. If you cannot go and run at least 80% sprints, you probably should not.

You probably – it is probably best that you don't go and run. It's like saying if you have a blown out tire in a car and I put the spare on there. This is your reminder to go blow up your spare tire because it's probably too flat. I put it on. They say don't drive over 45 miles an hour. Why? Well, because it's not rated for that. So you could say, well, that's stupid.

I'm going to go to this one. I should be able to do this. It's like, no, no, no. Let's back up and say, you would want to go and get real tires that are rated for that speed. So if you don't go, let's say you don't go sprint because you don't feel like your body can maintain that and do that safely, then let's say, all right, what do I need to do to address this and to change out the tires, so to speak, to build up that trust? And these are things you could do. And then once you do that, then you start to get more confident i think doing some

barefoot strides really give you good feedback so you're going to run correctly you're going to not over stride most injuries happen people over stride they reach too far out because they're heel striking instead of shorting that stride which happens naturally when you're barefoot and you just do what a build-up strides you slowly build up maybe get to 60 and you slowly build back down you walk back for rest you walk backwards if you want then you do it you go to 70 and you just stay well within this area and then as you get more and more confident you slowly build back down. You walk back for rest. You walk backwards if you want. Then you do it. You go to 70% and you just stay well within this area. And then as you get more and more confident, you can do that stuff. And this is the expression of that. And as we get older, I don't need my 70-year-old mother to – 64-year-old mother, sorry, mom – to go and sprint max effort.

But I do want her to be able to have some of that capacity. Even if it's just getting up to 60%, it's like we all have the capacity to run. Everyone does. The question is whether or not we have the tissue strength and resiliency to be able to maintain that for the distance we want to do. So that's what you build up. And as I build, as I go from being able to not run at all, to being able to just barely, you know, stride and do some jogging, running, then to being able to go 60%, 70%, what I'm doing is I'm raising up the ceiling. So I raise up the ceiling for how much force my body can maintain at the top, meaning how much, you know, the weight, the bridge can hold at any one time.

And as I pair that with strength work, with walking and with, let's say, jogging that's intentional. So think of like jump roping or like very slow, easy, watch like Ilu, Kipchoge, when he does his long distance stuff, it's very slow. Well, one of the things is like that develops the resiliency and the volume. So I raise the ceiling and then I develop the volume. It's, I build the base of the pyramid, then I raise the height. I build the base, build the height. Is that all Louis Simmons' pyramid is only as tall as his base? So that's the big picture.

And then within that, that develops. Think about this. From an ancestral, so to use a broad word, but from a perspective of how we would have trained, upper body would have been developed by carrying, by pushing, by pulling, by picking things up, by fighting, wrestling. Lower body would have been developed by running and jumping. The Greeks would have done a lot of jumping, like broad jump into a sand pit. If you have a pit, you go jump and you land.

Something that takes that soft balance of the force away. Running would have been, I sprint to build strength and explosiveness. You want to see strong pound for pound guys? Sprinters are what you want. The amount of force they can put in their pound relative to their body weight is insane. And then you think, okay, that's part of the equation, but what about the volume? I'm bouncing back and forth. I'm developing this. Think about this. Walking, the form of walking where you land, you slightly invert your foot, you walk, you roll up through the fourth and fifth minute, cross the big toe and push off the big toe is the same thing as sprinting or as running minus the heel to heel part. You just land and you

pronate across. But the same function and motion you have with this stuff develops the tissue resiliency. So after 100, so you go and you do 10,000 steps. That's 5,000 steps each foot that you're developing that, right? Think about that. If you're intentional, and this is the thing, is you go and wear like a big, none of these are the hokas. If you're wearing shoes that let you kind of flap the ground

every single time, down every single time, and you're not getting the feedback, you're not getting those feet stronger, then you can go walk 20,000 steps and actually be loading your body in a way that's not helpful but is still volume and you're not developing the resiliency. So you can make your feet stronger with just like some minimalist shoes, you think? Think about this from a perspective. Your feet, I want to make this as simple as easy of an onboard

for anyone listening as possible. It does not go do my process. It does not. I do have a process if you're in pain, just so you know. But it is not like you need to do my technique. You need to do my philosophy. It's like your feet need a bare minimum. There's five steps we can go over to just like barely get your feet moving.

And once you get that started and you move with feedback, it is a snowballing thing. It's so accessible. Everything. There is like, think about this. Kids are born with no arches. And somehow, over the first two to three years of their life, they make arches. No one knows how to, like, no woman knows how to make a baby. They just happen.

No kid knows how to make an arch. They just build. You never see a baby getting pushed around in the stroller. Their little toes are always going. Yeah. They're thinking. They're feeling. So if a kid can do it, it's doing itself.

It's literally like a battery of a car. The more you drive it, the more it gets charged. So if a kid can engage and do this, you can do it too. So the question is if your feet are hurting in minimalist shoes, if they're not strong, if they're – let's say they're weak and you're in pain, then something isn't getting that snowballing process. But once you get the beginning foot introduction, it's a snowballing thing that continues to build momentum and they get stronger and stronger by doing it. This is not something you're like, you need to spend 40 minutes every day doing active release therapy for your feet and then do all my specific motions before you even think about putting on a shoe and before you even think about squatting. It's like that's overwhelming. So just changing into a shoe like this guy here might help?

That's one of the best things you could do. But please be mindful. There's three mistakes people make, one of which is they just changed the shoe. So that's like, I just changed the shoe. My foot has been in a shoe like this, where you see there's a very narrow toe box. Nike just doesn't like the fact that people have pinky toes.

But it's like that, or thick socks and smashing them together. This has inhibited you. It's like if you've been in a bad relationship your whole life for a bad job, you've never thought about yourself as an individual, guess what? You're not going to just be able to be in a good relationship. It's like you've got to learn that pattern. Let me add this in real quick. It's funny.

I like those shoes, like the Nikes. I like wearing them just like if I don't wear them a lot of the time, but when I'm podcasting or something and I want a shoe that looks good, I like wearing those. The problem is, though, it's funny. When I walk in those, I feel the ground. When I walk in these, I feel like I walk differently. I walk stiffer.

And the crazy thing is there are people that walk around without 100% of their day, and I would never put my three feet through that after understanding what my feet should be feeling. And that's part of it, which is how do you get this message? Because one of the things I hear is that it's very easy for foot nerds to get out and say, your feet are being trapped and destroyed by the shoes you wear. Stop wearing shoes. It's like, yeah, but I like to look good when I go on a date and some people like to wear Jordans. So your feet are strong and resilient. It's just no different than, the way I want you to think about it is with the right strength and the right foundation, your feet are very strong. And that means they can be in a shoe like that for a few hours and be totally fine. But just like if you're going on an airplane and I was sitting for hours yesterday, if

you're just sitting down for hours at a time, we kind of get that, okay, maybe I should do some movement and open that up and undo that. So if you are wearing those shoes, that's totally fine. If you have to wear shoes, I mean, there's things you can do, right? So like even these Air Jordans, I don't hate them all. Like they're obviously a narrow toe box, but relatively they're kind of flat. Okay. I don't love these.

But the point is like if you can have a shoe with a wider toe box, there are dress shoes that look, if you have to be in shoes all the time, and it's totally fine, wear shoes. I'm not out here. A lot of times, dress shoe has a pretty wide toe box. Yes, and you can get dress shoes that look like they have a heel, but they're actually down, they're flatter.

Those are great options, and Anya's reviews is the best for the amount of research she's done for men and women, different types of shoes and European shoes and stuff. The point is that like if you have to be in a shoe all the time because there are a lot of guys in the military. There are people that work construction, have steel toe boots. It's tough, right? So there are choices you can make to have better options. So flatter, more flexible, wider in the toe box. What's the other one?

Thinner sole. what's the other one thinner sole like you know of those like being flat is the most important being flexible is the second or widen the toe box is the most important flat so same heel to toe

is the next most and then you get like a what's it toe box there's toe box it's flat it's widen the toe box it's

height yeah there's the thinness there's one more it's gonna flat flexible widen the toe box. It's height. Yeah, there's the thinness. There's one more. It's going to be flat, flexible, widen the toe box. Flat, flexible, widen. I said it all. Oh, yeah, thin sole, yeah. That's the least important.

So if you can get it flat, if you can get it flexible, and if you can widen the toe box, you're good. And the next part, the thinness in the sole is about comfort. So if you're not ready for that, that's totally fine. But the thinness allows you, like, not sprain your ankle when you're walking on an even even surface and it lets you feel the ground. But remember, it's not about being perfect. This is not about the right shoe. It's just understanding your feet are strong and capable. And if you do the work underneath them, and then, hey, when you have to go on a date, you don't have to. If you want to go on a date and you want to, you know, like when I wear my six inch stiletto pumps and I go on a date and look cute, it makes my butt look really good. When I do that, it's like,

oh, okay, let me just do a little bit of work afterwards. But one of the things I love is that I go through this running program and I get clients that always give me feedback

and I get a 20-day process which you do this and your feet continue to go and one of the ladies that was doing it said, I had to go out and wear dress shoes, like six-inch heels,

something heels and she goes, normally my feet ache for days after doing that but like I woke up today and it felt great. I was like, that's what I want.

Your feet should be able to go and do whatever and bounce back. You should be able to go run, play basketball, lift, and feel great the next day. You know what's funny? When it comes to like heels, whenever I like with my exes, whenever I'd see them in heels, I'd be like, do you like wearing that? It just looks really painful. And the reason why is because when I wore cleats when I played college soccer, I am thankful this happened to me because I wouldn't be doing what i'm doing uh but since i wore cleats

all growing up my feet let's say this is my pinky toe my my pinky toe came in and it would compact my feet and they had to shave off the bunny and net bone from my pinky toe and stick a screw in and that's the thing that i was in crutches for six actually seven months i went back to try and run on the field and i couldn couldn't, so I got cut. And that's what stopped my soccer career. But I'm thankful that happened. But either way, I know the problems that narrow shoes can have because I have a wide foot. Yeah, and most people, even people of narrow feet, their toes, no foot.

So there's two things. People look at, like you saw the Alpha Fly where there's the raised toe on the front and the back. They say that pretenses your toe for the next try and allows you to roll into it. But it actually is just an aesthetic thing. Nike's narrow toe box that comes together like an elf is just an aesthetic thing. The only reason there's a raised heel is just an aesthetic thing to make you look taller. So these three things that are so common, like the curve under the shoe, the narrow toe box, the raised heel, are literally only for aesthetics, which is fine. If you want a shoe that looks good, that's absolutely fine.

But the important thing is to understand that these things have an impact on your function and your health. And over time, that degrades the quality of your foot and you literally lose the capacity to move. And then when that can't work, all of the muscles in your calf, your shin, your lower leg, your knee, your hip that are engaged by those feet aren't working. And then that creates long-term functionality that's lost at those up your body. And then you get weaker. I don't know who it was that came on to the podcast and said it, but there's somebody we were talking to recently that said that top-level professional athletes are just the highest level and the best compensators for issues.

Because as we're talking about all this, I think about all the NBA players that have been running and playing in basketball shoes all their life. And typical basketball shoes are pretty narrow. And these guys are jumping, sprinting, going side to side, playing defense, getting low. You see, I mean, I'm not going to say this is what happened to him. But Kevin Durant, who had that Achilles injury that, like, that fucked him for a year. And he's back on the court.

But these players are doing these amazing athletic movements. Most of them don't give a fuck about the shoe they're wearing. Even Jordan. In Jordans. They do. Because they sell them. They sell them, yeah. Here's a good example of this.

Because what you want to think about is people go, well, why do they wear that? First off, most of the shoes that these athletes wear are bespoke models. They're specifically made and built around the foot. Oh, okay. They're not like the version. Ilyud Kipchoge is running that marathon. I'm probably saying his name wrong. Ilyud Kipchoge is how some people say it. But I, yeah. Ilyud Kipchoge is running that marathon. I'm probably saying his name wrong. Ilyud Kipchoge is how some people say it. Ilyud Kipchoge.

Right. Well, I'm going to just now every time I say Ilyud Kipchoge, put his voice over me. The real salty, deep, you know, so when he's running, he's actually running that marathon in a bespoke version of the Nike Alpha Flight

that's not for sale these athletes are making generally speaking bespoke versions of this stuff and then they go and pump it out and the other thing you have to think

is that these shoes are made if you were like me where my shoe size is the same as my age for a while 12, 13 they made that shoe

I had the LeBron the first one and two LeBrons I loved basketball shoes when I was younger and I also was a little as fuck because I couldn't

pick my feet up that shoe Jordan is made for 200 or 250 to 300 pound First one and two LeBrons. I loved basketball shoes when I was younger, and I also was a little as fuck because I couldn't pick my feet up. That shoe, this Jordan, is made for a 200 to 300-pound basketball player and me who happened to buy it because my parents wanted to buy it for Christmas. So the thing about that is that shoe that you're wearing, they're made to 200,000 pairs because they've got to ship this all out and send it to you. That's not made for you. That's one thing to keep in mind is that when you do see this, they're not necessarily, it's not what you see. And they were trying to get a shoe that looks different, that looks cool so that you'll buy it.

It's a business thing as well. So it's not about functionality. And it's, you know, like, does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Power Project family, how's it going? You guys probably have watched a lot of Mark's lifting videos and some of my lifting videos. And you've probably noticed that our shorts never go past our knees. Nope.

There's a reason for that. Y'all got to show those quads off, baby. And the shorts that we're always wearing are from a company called Viore. That's spelled V-U-O-R-I. But Viore has amazing clothes for the gym that we wear, but also outside the gym. So you can wear them to dinner parties, dates, gatherings, all that good stuff.

But all their clothes fit well, like fit amazing. This is a shirt from Viore, by the way. Look at that shoulder. Just look at this. It fits so well for people in fitness. And even if you're not, just check them out. Andrew, how did they get it? Yeah, clothes that look good inside and outside of the gym

and work just as well inside and outside of the gym. Head over to Viore.com slash power project that's v-u-o-r-i.com slash power project to receive 20 off your first order links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes so there's a lot of controversy over that when you look up like racing times and and you dig into some of this shoe stuff people are like it's not the exact same shoe that's on the market. It doesn't do, you know, for this guy what it's doing for the average person. So just to make sure that I don't,

because it's easy for me, if you haven't figured it out, I can talk a lot. Just to make sure I'm not like, are there any, like, I'm trying to rapid fire, common objections, things that you would think, like what would someone think about this? I'll try to be as quick as possible because I want this to be actionable.

Like what do people walk away and take this? Because there's a lot of things. How can someone get their arch back? So the first thing you want to think about if you have, there's five steps. I'm going to walk through this. Five steps to restore your feet and ankles. And this is if your feet are quote unquote healthy, meaning you're not actively in pain. If you're actively in pain, it's still the step, but we may need to put like a step one sub article A, sub article B. So that's a process. If you have pain issues, it may just take a little bit longer,

but it's still the same thing. Step one, differentiate the toes. So think about your hand. Your hand and feet generally came from the same thing. They've evolved. If I couldn't move my hand and I said, oh, my wrist hurts. Well, the first thing is like,

let me peel these things apart, right? So what you want to do is something called a hand-foot glove. You literally take your fingers, you sit down and you put your fingers in through your toes. I guess no one can see that, but you literally go and you work your fingers in through your toes. I guess no one can see that. But you literally go and you work your fingers in through your toes, and you just sit there. Start with a minute as you're watching TV or whatever you're doing. You sit there and you just work.

Oh, look at that. So you can do circles. You can go lateral. You can start to move. But feel these things. You're trying to differentiate your toes and get movement to that. Exactly, right? So think about this.

Chris Duffin used to do this a lot. He actually did it to that. Exactly, right? So think about this. Your bones... Chris Duffin used to do this a lot. He actually did it to me when I went up to his place. You haven't let me in for two... Oh, that's the next level. We're going to go get to the next level of relationship next.

It helped a lot with my squat. It took pain away from my knee. As you guys are listening, you should do this. It feels amazing. Unless you're driving, in which case, do it with one hand on the wheel.

So what you think about is there are bones in the meat of the foot, the metatarsals, that should be pliable. And so we're starting to get motion to them. Toe spreaders can be good for this, but toe spreaders by themselves are not sufficient because they are just a passive way of moving and loading. If you were just using toe spreaders,

what you end up doing is you just shove it open, just like an arch in orthotic. It just says, hey, lift your foot up. But what you want to do is bring awareness to feel your toes and differentiate those. So first step is differentiate the toes. Start with that 60 seconds or two minutes a day each side. Just start to do that. It'll feel really painful at first. Your fingers are going to hurt. And yes, it's going to feel like that until it starts to open up. Two or three times, you're going to feel better. Step two, restore that big toe. If you think about your hand to your thumb, your big toe is to your foot, which your thumb is

to your hand. So if I couldn't move, there's a camera. If your thumb was attached to the side of your hand and you couldn't move it, how much different would your hand function? That's what happens with a big toe. So we want to create that gap that between that big toe and the rest of the toes, a little bit more of that splay. So this is what I call the big toe thumbs up. You take down, so let's say your left or your left foot, you take your right hand and you fold the little toes down. And then you take your left hand and you pull the big toe apart. And you just use that big toe like a joystick and you just pull it left, you pull it across, you lift and you create your adduction and you pull. There you go. And then you lift and you

start to work there. Start to feel that. And then as you can let go of your left hand and let those, hold those toes down, your goal is to be able to do a big toe thumbs up. So you flex your toe and you lift up and you extend those toes. So you're literally doing a thumbs up with your foot. When people feel crampiness, what's that? When your feet cramp, that is muscle confusion. And by muscle confusion, what I mean is your brain does not know how to distinguish between all the muscles that are working and is therefore firing them all. And it just – it seizes up.

It spazzes. There's like charley horses and there's cramps. And cramps are a great opportunity for your body to learn and reorient how it feels. So when you have cramps, don't come after me with technicalities of the exact words for this stuff. When you have cramps, understand that my body is confused about what to do. Therefore, I'm going to sit with that cramp, sit with it and then squeeze and engage the muscles. And you're saying, hey, this is, it's like when you have a kid, I don't have a kid. So I'm just going to speak for example, and you're trying to get them to load the dishwasher. And it's so painful because I just don't get that the knife shouldn't stick up. And it's like, whatever it is, it's like, yeah,

you have to sit with them and just let them make that mistake. So sit with it. It will go away because that's muscle cramps. And when you have cramps, it's a great thing because that means your body's hope sometimes working. Let me sit and learn from this. Okay. Step one, differentiate the toes. Step two, restore the big toe. Step three, we want to restore the arch and the muscles underneath the foot. So now what I want you to think about is your pinkies. So the balls of your feet, if you feel those, the ball that is connected to the big toe is called your first metatarsal phalange joint. Doesn't matter as much, but that's what it is. So you feel that. The ball on the outside of the foot is your fourth and fifth. So that's, you're on the fourth and fifth.

Andrew, will you pull up? Jamie, will you pull up this? Andrew's jacked. Just do anatomy of foot, like bone, foot anatomy. This is Jamie, but better. His name is Zaddy Zaragoza. There you go. Perfect.

So the fourth and fifth minute tarsal and the big toe. So we want to restore this rotation. So there are three arches, one on the inside of the foot called the medial longitudinal, one on the outside of the foot called the lateral longitudinal, and then one called the transverse that goes across. We want to restore the motion there. So you will literally, so you see the pinky toes, that little, the bottom of the fourth and fifth metatarsal. So where the long bone goes right up to the toes, right in there, that's your metatarsal. So you shift your weight up to that. You pronate.

So you shift your weight up on that and your calves. You lift the big toe off the ground. So you're literally just in that position. And you can hold on to something to help balance. Then you shift all the way across. A little more in SEMA with a little bit harder. You lift your big toe off the ground? Yeah, like that. Yeah, that's a good.

You shift up. So your foot is inverted. So the bottom is lifted up. Your big toe is off the ground. Then you pronate across. You might want to be your feet a little hips wider. You shift across to your big toe, that first metatarsal, and then your heels are off, so your pinky toes off the ground.

Then you lower down your heels. You raise back up on that first metatarsal, that big toe, and you pronate all the way across, and you lower back down. So you're up on the pinky toe, big toes off the ground. Shift across, the big toes on the ground, the pinky toes are off, and you lower back down. It feels amazing. There are all kinds of variations we can do to develop that, but that is essentially how

we restore the motion around the bottom of the leg. So your fibularis peroneum muscles on the outside, posterior tibialis muscles on the inside, and you start to restore the arch underneath your foot. And if you guys are just listening, we are showing this stuff on YouTube currently. So come over. Literally right now. I don't know if it'll be when you're listening, but right now we have it. And it'll be up on our YouTube channel too.

Perfect. Yeah, we'll have a video on this. Step four is we want to restore the pronation on the top of the foot. So this is the extensor muscle. So everyone talks about tibialis now as the all the rage, but there are multiple things. There are extensor digitoris minimized so that lift the toes up. We have an extensor for the big toe. We have a tibialis anterior which lifts the whole foot up.

We also have the tibialis posterior. So what we want to do is you would sit against the wall, and you can do this. You sit against the wall, put your hips against the wall, and do a tib raise, so where you lay and pull your toes up. But now you're just going to rotate. So you turn and put the outside bone of your foot, the fourth and fifth metatarsal, touch the ground, lift it back up, and then rotate. So it's like if I were to, if you're leaning against the wall, you lift your foot up, and I put a lacrosse ball under the balls of your feet. And now I say,

hey, touch the outside and the inside of your foot down, but don't touch the ball. You make an arc over the ball back and forth. Now you'd start, you do this with one foot, just do 25 to 50 reps

and you can even make partial ranges of motion. But what we're now restoring is the pronation to the ankle. And I'm getting that restored with the muscles that, when I make contact, these muscles absorb force. So I'm pronating left and right. I'm lifting and I'm rotating back and

forth, back and forth. That's step four. Cause we want to get the bottom of the foot and then the top of the foot, the muscles that extend. And then step five is to integrate it all together. The best thing you could do is sled. So slow, sensual, feeling, love making, just melting into the ground, sled pushes. Exactly. And just imagine that voice in your head. You're walking, you're feeling, because we want to. None of this matters if I can't integrate and put my feet into the ground and feel that. So that's when you can go for a walk, you can walk backwards, but a sled is very slow.

You have to really push into the ground. That would be step five is put it all together. Now, if you have pain, if you have dysfunction, or the pieces, that's what I've got. That's my ready-to-run program that spreads it apart into a 28-day process because it's doing that. But from a healthy perspective, that right there restores your feet. And when you restore your feet, it's a snowballing thing. As long as your shoes don't impact your performance, in which case if you are, let's say, a team sport player, you're lifting, doing some barefoot jogging before and after, doing some of these foot exercises to go and get to the hand-foot glove and some of these things before and after.

That'll restore the capacity. And when you do that, that gets your feet back on your brain's map. And then you'll be amazed at how much more you lift up and you feel connected and you're able to operate and orient that way. Does that make sense? Makes absolute sense.

Yeah, that's great. I was going to say, guys, when he, I don't know, did you talk about gripping the ground and creating an artificial arch? Well, it's not an artificial arch. Or not artificial, but creating. One of the things – there's a great exercise called an arch builder.

So think about this. If I were to grab something and make a fist, right? Essentially, when you make a fist, it's kind of what you're doing with the arch. But the difference in making a fist – so if I lift my foot up and I squeeze the toes, it's called – we call them foot crunches, right? Now, the difference of this making a fist and this where I'm grabbing something, so if I pick up a water bottle and I'm connecting is I'm connecting, I can make a fist and do this all day.

But if I connect that to a surface and I pick something up, that connects it to the rest of my body, my shoulders, my core, except everything else. Now, what you can do is when you stand, take your toes, so you put three points of contact, heel, pinky toe, big toe. And then I take the toes and I grab the ground. And I literally, you know, it helps if you're on on a carpet if you're on a t-shirt uh like a balled up t-shirt or if you're on turf or something that kind of gives you things to grab just sit there and then you make this are you short and you lift the foot up so you're literally just squeezing and grabbing

the ground and it's called arch builders you're picking up just over and over and over and over again and doing sets of 25 and 50 those will turn it on so before you lift if you can find something squeeze and grab and engage you can even do this in your shoe but that's what you feel the glutes engage you start to turn that on and that's when you start to really feel engaged and that's like you feel like fuck yeah i'm grounded i want to explode i want to do all this shit your knees are going outwards but i wanted to i wanted you to say that because a lot of we've mentioned this many times on different episodes of the podcast rooting your foot into the ground or grabbing the ground.

When a lot of people think about squatting and knees out, et cetera, what they'll do is they'll purposefully push their knees out. But if you're in the right squatting position and you do what you just spoke about there, not only will you get all the activation through the legs, the knees will naturally start to point outwards. And if you squat maintaining that and go to depth and maintain that grip coming up, you will not have valgus knee, which is the error of the knees coming inwards. So this is an important thing. When you look at this, so we'll tie a lot of these pieces together because a lot of there's different training methods that are popular. You know, you look at like the old school CrossFit knees out and Kelly's to rat. I remember he's talking about

that. Like Kelly talks about rooting the foot though. No, Kelly didn't talk about it. I'm saying this is, this is my saying this is my poor interpretation when I was younger I was like oh knees out I just shift my knees out if your big toes are lifting off the ground you're just abducting so abduction and adduction when the knees go valgus and varus is very different

and what I realized after listening to Kelly Moore and started to really understand this is it's screwing your feet in the ground and that's where you have to grab and you twist and that creates torsion which is is torque, this angular force around something. You're rotating and doing this. Now, this is something to go to where they talk about this high ankle. What does that mean?

You're grabbing and lifting up. But the point is if you just say high ankle but you don't say root with that big toe, spread and grab and lift up, you lose context, and you can easily get through the knees out abduction. And then you look at like the ATG where they're really engaging and pushing off the ground for the squats, the ATG where they're really engaging and pushing off the ground for the squats, the ATG. Split squat, you're feeling in the ground, you're doing this stuff.

That's where you have to engage with the ground. So when you feel this stuff, it all connects. So the ATG, we're talking the sled and really pushing. You have to feel and you push and you drive through. It's this rotational force. That starts when you root with the big toe. So that big toe lifts and when you do that, you feel support underneath. So you literally, if I lift, so I'm not just lifting the bottom of the foot up with the big toe. So that big toe lifts. And when you do that, you feel support underneath. So you literally, if I lift, so I'm not lifting the bottom of the foot up with the pinky toes,

I'm grabbing and lifting up and it's a slight rotational force. And that creates a little bit of tension. So if you braid a hair, braids are stronger than just straight fabric or straight line. So I'm rotating, I'm lifting up. That creates a strong force where I'm underneath myself. And that's the root of it all. So it starts with the feet. But remember, if you can't, this is why no amount of training will do. It doesn't matter how beautiful floors two through 49 are if the foundation is fucked. So if you can't move that big toe, none of this matters. And if you wear, you do the fancy boards, if you wear the fancy shoes, if you get the orthotics in, do the toe spreaders. But if you cannot engage that big toe, nothing else matters. So you start there.

And when you can do that and you feel that, you are just – you're lifting, you're strength, you're squat, everything gets better. And it's like – think about it. You don't have to go and do all this stuff intentionally. When you engage the right few cues, like your toe is the key to your body, when you do that, it becomes a snowballing thing that then builds and grows and grows and grows. And all of a sudden, I am moving. I am more explosive. I'm naturally a little bit more pigeon-toed when I'm sprinting and I snowballing thing that then builds and grows and grows and grows and all of a sudden I am moving I am more explosive

I'm naturally a little bit more pigeon-toed when I'm sprinting and I'm pushing off that big toe like all these things come together and then people go

oh you look athletic I'm like that's a fucking change because you should have seen me 10 years ago and that's the beauty of it all it's like it really

what does it all mean it means you have your body back you can go sprint and then you know yeah what about sandals and flip flops and shit like that?

All right. I can do a short answer on this. When you walk – I can't. When you walk naturally, your toes splay. You literally are splaying. You're grabbing the ground you're feeling. When you wear shoes that have – and that happens naturally when you have a shoe with a heel strap. When you have shoes that don't have a heel strap, your toes have to clench down and keep that from flying off your foot.

That's how I feel when I wear flip-flops. So I do not recommend people wear open-heeled shoes. You can do it, but understand it affects your gait. Open-toed shoes? Open-heeled. Open-heeled. Meaning the toes can be open. So you can have a sandal that goes through and wraps around the back of the heel.

Yeah, I see. That's like the quintessential. But if something doesn't hold onto your heel, your foot has to hold onto it. Instead of splaying and moving every time you're squeezing down, that can create a shortened you're no longer, it's kind of like if all I do is grip and grip and grip and push and bench press and jack off it's like I'm not actually getting the extension

and it gets a shortened, tightened thing on the elbow and it creates elbow tendonitis. No different than Achilles tendonitis that I have in plantar fasciitis. It happens when I don't spread the toes. So just think that those impact your gait. And I know they're cool, but guess what? Crocs are also cool for some people. So flip those Crocs around and put the thing on the back if you're going to wear that. You don't have to look ugly. You do what he says, but that's also more functional.

I just wear barefoot. I've got the Jesus sandals that wrap around the heels. I've given up all odds of ever finding a girlfriend. So it's just like, so I put up a post. Boy, don't say that. Don't put that in universe. You know,

that's not true. I know. I know. It's tongue in cheek. I know. I know. So I put up a post and I was like, like three pictures.

I got these old marbles. I love big holes in the side. Cause I like ripped them out. My feet finally fit them. I got my Vibrams and I got these like the Jesus handles and I put up a review and I was like giving up. I basically said that and the owner of the shoe coat said,

they're not that bad looking. I was like, okay. But so this is the point. It's like if you want to wear those like your Yeezys that you want to spend $400 on, it's like,

just give me the $400 and I'll save you some foot pain. It's just simply by not doing that. What's the program again? Give me your shoes. Okay, that's good. But just remember the shoes you wear, like if you're going to practice and you're wearing socks and doing this stuff basically you're inhibiting all of that stuff so think of it it's like if you're a quarterback you're gonna go work on throng and it's like

i show up to practice i'm my hands in the oven mitt and it's like slinging an oven mitt and then i'm like yep all right i'm ready to go it's like no no you need to engage and move that because it's not just going to go on full speed other short rapid fire questions that i can't answer we have time man this is a long i will literally sit for hours but i think actually you know what people can stop and go so literally we can talk like transitioning shoes you name it well you how do you train personally because i see you doing a lot of like you're you know running barefoot and stuff but you're not just running like you're doing like a lot of drills you're doing you know, running barefoot and stuff, but you're not just running. Like you're doing like a lot of drills. You're doing like almost stuff that you would sometimes see like a football player do or basketball player do.

So I would look at the way I move. I like to have, I like to play sports. That's my favorite thing. So beach volleyball, basketball, tennis, running. So for me, like going out and doing one or two days a week of track workout, so to speak of just like, I'm going to sprint as fast as I can. I'm at a 200, 400. That's fun to me.

I enjoy that. But that's something like, I'm going to sprint as fast as I can. I'm at 200, 400. That's fun to me. I enjoy that. But that's something like, those are very high, high ceiling things. Like you don't, you know, go run four by 400 as fast as you can and take as long as rest and eat. Like that's one of the hardest workouts you can do. It is like, you will be dead. What do you wear if you do that? Like if you run on a track, what do you personally wear?

I wear silkies. Silkies? What's that? They're very short. You can pull them up. They're very short pants. Oh, I know. Yeah. I know you're very short. You can pull them up. They're very short pants. Oh, I know. Yeah, I know you have short shorts.

I meant on your feet. I wear silkies. I don't wear anything else. And you're barefoot. Okay. I knew I made it. I knew I made it when I went out. It was just to work out.

Because I have the luxury of, I live near a college campus that has a very big turf field. So it's got like a track on the turf field. But even, yeah. So you see this. Those are actually, these are those shorts. Those are, see, that was a, I turf field. So it's got like a track on the turf field. But even, yeah. So you see this. Those are actually, these are those shorts. Those are, see, that was a, I love the aesthetic of that.

So do you, that first one looked really good. You don't run on a track. You run on a field. I do. So the problem, it's, I'll go home and run on a track and I'll still run barefoot. It's just a, it's still, I'm actually faster barefoot than I am with that just because my feet can engage. That being said, it's not, I prefer to find a field and turf to go do that stuff. I just happen to have the luxury of being near this.

It has a massive track. So I'll go and do that because why not? But if I go, I'll still run on a track and I'll still go and do this stuff because just to kind of prove and show that your body can go and do these things. And on occasion, like if I have to do very – we can talk about cleats in a second because it's not like I'm dogmatic about what you have to wear. But when I go run, so I went out and I was doing like a 400-meter workout at a few. And there's the women's rugby team was warming up. And one of them goes, hey, look, it's the barefoot. It's the TikTok sprinter.

I was like, I have fucking made it. I have made it. So you start to see like that's a fun thing. This is just going through that. So those are silkies, by the way. Oh, the shorts? Yeah, they're like made special ops ops military they wear they're so comfortable those oh my gosh they're so comfortable i like short shorts i can't wait to yeah oh yeah i'll

hook you up with yori yori make some short shorts like that they're called silkies and their sophies make them with a nice thick band and then they wrap everything together oh it's beautiful wow so you know that's the point but if i'm gonna go let's say if i'm gonna run on like you know let's say if i'm not wearing this, I'd wear my vibrams. So like middle of my toes spread out, um, you know, just engage in that, like, uh, there's five finger toes. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, you can still go, there's, um, now let's talk about cleats. For example, there are times where you would go, I do all my training and stuff. It's either barefoot or in those vibrams. Um, there are times let's talk about cleats do all my training and stuff. It's either barefoot or in those vibrams.

There are times, let's talk about cleats and then go back to the way I train. When you have to do very short, so think about like if I'm doing very short, quick turns, that's where cleats, because they give you traction. There's a reason these things are there. So I'm never like, oh, don't, you know, I don't expect you to go into a barefoot competition because you're going to, it protects your feet and allows you to grip. Change direction, it's huge. If I step and I want to turn and my foot slides, that puts me at risk for injury, right, because I can't grip. So if I'm doing short agility work and explosive stuff to try and go left and right, then, yeah, wear those.

But the hard part is finding shoes that don't smash your feet. So the guys at Code Footwear are working on a prototype with a wider toe box and some toe spacers in there that I think is phenomenal. I'm really excited for them to get that out. Is it Code? C-O-D-E underscore F-T-W-R. Solving cleats for athletes is one of the most lucrative shoes you could have. Think about this. They're already paying $300 for shoes that are hurting your feet.

But it's like, what does it look like to have something that's wide enough? Because it's not just a matter of preventing injury. It's also, when I can't move my toes, I can't run as fast. So you are not performing as well as you can and you're at worst risk for injury. It blows my mind. And yet everyone's like, well, Adidas has the market. People think the market's cornered. They don't realize that you need two or three guys that are just desperate around the outside that have been fucked up by injury for years and they're willing to try something.

And then they go in to do this and all of a sudden their feet work because it's not like you're not good. It's like your body – how many LeBron James and Michael Jordans are out there that just got fucked up and injured like hey and that's the reality and so like so much of that comes from your feet and if we don't develop the strength and capacity around that we end up underperforming so that's one thing so i'll also wear them my favorite cleats i like lacrosse cleats because they tend to be for whatever reason they're more flexible they bend that so the new balance specifically i like the burn and the freeze but they'll rotate and twist left and right and actually fold up pretty much out the box. Some of these kids show up like Adidas football cleats. It's like they're clear plastic.

They're gold plastic on the bottom. I couldn't bend that thing with my life dependent on it. I'm like, there's a reason your knee just got blown up. So that's all there. But the point is I like to orient my training around playing in sports. I'll play volleyball, whatever it is, and try to do that stuff. But I do two or four days of lifting, one day of sled, active conditioning, and then I layer some sports on top of that.

But one day is like really get out and get after it with sprinting, which I think we'll get to do tomorrow. It should be fun. But I do a lot of ATG style training, I guess, which is really just like loading through long ranges of motion. So split squats, step-ups. I'll still do a little bit of like all of the things. I think there's beauty in all of it, right?

Power lifting is really loading that spinal column and getting under some weight that gets the brain potentiated. You look at ATG split squat, which is really good for creating movement across a range of motion to start to work on some of these asymmetries and building from the ground up and engaging this stuff. Body building to get blood flow and get everything engaged there. Olympic lifting for the explosive stuff. It's like there's all beauty and magic in all those pieces,

and it's like what does that look like wrapped together? And I think I do this. I don't know if I made up. It's probably not me, but it just seems true, like a tri-set thing. So I do a main mover, an agonist, and a tag, so a main mover, and then the opposite. So a push, then a pull, and a stabilizer. So one, two, three.

So like a bench press, a dumbbell row, and then like a shoulder a stabilizer so one two three so like a bench press a dumbbell row and then like a shoulder blade stabilizer or a squat and then like you know like a hinge a squat movement and then a l-sit hold for the hip flexor just stuff like that because it's like at the end of the day training is supposed to train you for something right it's like if my sport is to be athletic so to speak then yeah i want to do this but i'm not necessarily chasing anything so you know with shoulders i try to go really, really high volume, lower intensity, lower weight just to get a lot of blow flow there. Hips and feet are a lot of, you know, sometimes trap bar deadlifts, RDLs,

foot squats, front squats, a lot of VMO elevated squats, stuff like that. So, you know, try to get the best of all the worlds in there. Cool. I think we covered a lot. Well, how about you guys? Man, I just, there's something we're going to attack via video at some point, but I want everyone to know this episode, I've been talking to you like we got to get some people coming on here and talk about feet. Because when I started paying attention to more of the foot stuff last year, and I started strengthening my feet, I saw the difference. And man, I'm like, God, if every athlete just started focusing on getting better feet, just like when like when ben came here and we're like if every athlete just got better knees they'll see a difference this is the same thing but this is actually even easier to implement because all it

takes for you to do is potentially maybe take your shoes off maybe take a walk get yourself acclimated i mean andrew has an amazing story with how his feet used to feel on normal ground. Yeah. So I was wearing normal shoes just like you see there on the table. But then I got a pair of the Vivo barefoot shoes, but with a little bit more support than what I have currently on right now. But before that, I couldn't even walk on my kitchen floor without having to gingerly move around. It hurt.

Was it ticklish or was it over sensitization? Yeah, it just felt like I was bruised everywhere all the time. So even with shoes on, I couldn't walk on those caution bubbles on the sidewalks. I'd have to avoid them. The place that sucked the most was Walmart because they had the biggest one. And I would think about that before we'd go in.

It's been probably, it's got to be at least four months now that I've been wearing Vivo barefoot shoes exclusively and I'm so much more confident. Like I wouldn't have been able to walk around in the gym today the way I did without getting my feet used to wearing these shoes now.

So two thoughts on that. One of which is you can think about like going out in the sun after being inside for a long day. Like we're over sensitized, over something. I don't know what to do with all this stuff. And the other thing, the guy who had the men's sexual health expert you can think about like going out in the sun after being inside for a long day. Like we're oversensitized, oversensitized. I don't know what to do with all this stuff. And the other thing,

the guy who had the, the men's sexual health expert that was on a few days ago, Justin Brandes. Yep. He was talking about the two places that don't get the most blood flow, penis in your feet, your toes, I should say.

Well, people are like, well, you put socks on, but it's like, oh, actually you could just, if you're,

if you're cold, you move. And so thinking about that, if your toes, we get this like this neuropathy, this oversensitization surfaces, we're walking because we don't have a lot of sensation to that. We don't know how to – like our body is overly sensitized to that. So then you feel everything and it feels engaged.

So kind of that's part of like fixing pain. It can be if you're really sensitive to stuff. If your feet are really ticklish, it's just like getting more exposure to stuff. I used to have the same thing. It was so sensitive. And now I can actually – I go out in the morning and walk on rocks every – I know this sounds silly. But like I jump and walk on rocks, like river rocks. That's a great idea.

But now it's like going and walking outside. You feel this. It's a fun feedback. But he talks about like, okay, if your toes aren't getting blood, they're not getting movement. And then that creates a loss of function to them. So if your toes are cold, think about that. Going and moving and flexing and getting blood flow to them makes a big, big difference. So there's all these reasons to really engage with that stuff.

After you mentioned it today, too, I am going to buy some toe socks. Yeah, no asks. Yeah. As you mentioned that, I'm like, well, I put on my socks and I put on those Vivo shoes. But at the same time, yeah, I can feel my toes moving. But I do feel limited because of the socks, even though it's just fabric. Toe socks, they look a little weird. They're pain in the ass. They're hard to get on.

The first time I had to sit down and get my toe in and wiggle that one into the toe cleavage every single one. It's better. Toe socks, even if you just stay in the same shoes, toe socks make a big difference because it's starting to differentiate your toes and getting something in between them. And Jinji makes one

that I think a lot of runners wear. I-N-J-I-N-J. I-N-J-I-N-J. I-N-J-I-N-J. I got a pair. They're nice. Yeah. So I get the cheap ones off Amazon, supporting the corporate conglomerates.

But the grabbing the ground and feeling that, like it doesn't have to be anything crazy, but just even getting something that can work well. So think about like those Nike Elite socks that have a lot of like, you know, they're compression socks. Like, oh, those are good. Another gimmick.

It's like, I need to have socks too. It's like, it's even smashing your feet together so the socks you wear matter a lot that's a great point and um shit i lost my train of thought god damn it oh the toe spreaders um even if you're saying like to get our fingers in there is actually works better but what if like uh i don't know i'm gonna sit down and eat dinner i'm not gonna mess with my feet for everybody a confession is I've actually never used them. I've had two companies that sent them to me, so I'm going to give them a fair shot and try them because I always, A, wanted to be able to see like what can – this should be able to be done without products, right? And I want to see what I could do without that to say like, all right, this is available with no equipment, no nothing.

You can go and do this stuff. But I will say that – so there's two sides of this. One is they can be helpful to start to restore that because you do have these tissues that need to start to get there. That being said, if you – it's – I think they – again, this is not – this is a belief I have. This is not an educated opinion, so I'm working towards that. But just from what I've seen, people that put them on have a loss of circulation because I think they can be a little bit – people chase the toe spread. But it's like, okay, great. Your toes can spread.

But if only – it's like are they functional? It's like wearing orthotic. It lifts lifts your arch up but does it actually impede you being able to move and so our toes you don't think about this like that's like if i had hand spreaders and i get my look look how cool my hand is this is really cool see this guy's hey it's funny so i'll follow some of the feet people and they're like hey picture my feet like how cool it spreads out look at this yeah guess what it does this too it's like but if it keeps you from doing that like there is a use case for it i think it's valuable it's a step in the right direction but i would not be personally using more than 20 30 minutes a day

and i would use it with some intention like if i'm going to sit down to eat maybe even only just two minutes like if your toes aren't used to being you know splashed out like that and just a couple minutes might work well so let's say you let's say you wake up in the morning and you've got to brush your teeth. You put them on. People, like, wear them all the time, wear them to sleep, and it's like, yeah, I think that's too much. Because now you're passively stretching things out, and that creates other problems because you don't have the strength. If your feet look like that, it's because they are like that. It's like getting to look.

It's like a push-up brawl. It's like, girlfriend, you don't have to. It's just like where the guy that I've got a kid who I trained, give shout out to him but i'm not gonna say his name he walks in with these shoes he got like an inch heel on them and then inside i took them off and i'm like wait what are these he's got heel lifts in his shoe and i'm like that gives me he's like an inch half taller and i'm like buddy they're gonna love you for who they are college coaches want me to be taller it's like your girlfriend's gonna love you for who she if you are it's like yeah you know like the point is what can your feet do not not how do they look.

And this is where people get caught up in like I got flat feet, I got low arches, they don't look pretty. It's like that's not as important as how functional they are. So I think they're good. And as Mark, that's a great point, like two minutes, 10 minutes and do that. Like, and then I would get in after that and actively do some like hand foot glove and start to work on some of the other stuff. You know, like say you're driving to the gym, you put them on in your shoe.

You get to the gym, you do some stuff and then you go like, and the other cool thing I will say about this is, and if you guys do any lifting today, it's like, once you turn this switch on, you can still put shoes on and still feel better. It's like you turn the switch on and it keeps going. It's not like I did all my, this is the problem you'd have. Like you go do foam rolling, you do all this mobility stuff. Well, back in the day. And then it's like, like i do that and then the second i get up it's like i get stiff and tight again it's like no your feet turn on and then i get people feedback to go through my program and they're like oh my running felt light my lifting was good i felt more balanced i felt more engaged and when i do this stuff i do some foot stuff right before i lift it's like i feel

engaged i can stand on one foot i have this total body turn on so it is one of those things where when you turn your feet on they stay on it makes total sense because it's like when a lot of people talk about warming up before a lift, some people will literally just sit in foam roll. Some people will actually do squats. Some people will do preactivation of the certain muscle groups so that they can feel it before they lift, so they can feel their triceps before they bench press. So you actually use your toes before you lift. And guys, with what we did, it's going to come out via video. You guys will feel a very big difference in your feet. And I do want to say I've used toe spreaders and I use them for a bit. I was walking around with toe spreaders inside the office,

quite literally putting my fingers in between my toes, moving them around, doing those exercises. Not that toe spreaders aren't useful, but these are free things that I think are more useful to do than having my toes spread in the toe spreaders for a prolonged period of time. I think they still have their place and maybe they can be put on for a bit and it's good, but it's not as useful as putting your fingers in between, manually moving them around, doing the exercises, and then going and doing the work you need to do. That's more useful than walking around in toe spreaders. And you know what's even better than that? Give him some lotion in the market and let him put his fingers between your toes. Oh, actually, yeah.

Got a partner hand glove. It's like, ooh. You were supposed to do that, right? You were supposed to pull out the... It happened already. You missed it. I was supposed to lotion up my legs. Go ahead.

So this is actually... Actually, I know this sounds satirical, but this is actually a great idea. So a few people in one of the second and third classes were like, you know, they couldn't get it in their hands. Like literally people couldn't get their hands clean their gloves, but they were like, oh, if you put some lotion on it, it makes a big difference. Yeah, it makes a big difference. I was like, I didn't fucking think about that. That's what she said.

Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Sure thing. I dropped my pen. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. We sincerely appreciate it. Make sure you guys like today's episode and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. We gave you a shit ton of things to talk about, so we want to hear your guys' comments down below in the comment section. If you're on iTunes or Spotify, come over to the YouTube and make sure you guys drop a comment on anything you found interesting on today's podcast.

Follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter my Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and Seema where you at? this is such a good episode man you killed it man

this is a lot of good info I didn't see my ending on Instagram and YouTube I didn't see my ending on TikTok and Twitter I'm excited for all y'all Graham where can people find you?

so Instagram and TikTok is the barefoot sprinter no what do you call it punctuation YouTube is Graham Tuttle but they'll probably link to that and then I think that's it yeah and TikTok is The Barefoot Sprinter. No, what do you call it? Punctuation. YouTube is Graham Tuttle, but they'll probably link to that. And then I think that's it.

Yeah. Sick. Yeah. Where can people buy some of your programming and stuff? So if you go, well, grahamtuttle.com, but simply if you go to Instagram or TikTok,

like the link and bio will take there. So if you, I truly want you to know that if you do the stuff we talked about here, watch the video and your feet are not in pain right now, that is sufficient. That is enough to go and be better. But if your feet are in pain, if you want to learn how to run, if you want to get that back, I've got a program. It's a 28-day program that will walk you through. It's a 36,000-word e-book that's broken down into fun little sections and little bite-sized morsels of information.

And there are day-by-day training, and you get coaching, and it walks through this. And the program that fix your pain in your body gets you back to that that's something you can find it's my website graham t-u-t-t-l-e.com or simply just go and dm me or follow me on tiktok and instagram and i have all that stuff there so yeah we have some sort of code for the vivo thing or not yet oh well you know what by the time this is out we probably should so if you guys want to save some money on vivos the code is power project i probably should. So if you guys want to save some money on Vivos, the code is PowerProject. I don't know how much it's going to save you, but it'll be active by that point. It'll save you a fuck ton because if you wear shoes, it'll fuck your feet up.

You can knock out a goddamn orthopedic surgeon, physical therapist, chirogine, miss goddamn practice time. That's how much it'll fucking save you. Sorry. Yeah. That was great. Guys, if you guys go check out the Vivo website, we actually like – we've been wearing these for a while now, a long time, and there are a lot of barefoot shoes out there that are good. Don't get me wrong. They're good.

But the reason why we chose them, they actually look good. Vivo barefoot. I love – I've done a lot of stuff in there. I'm telling you, Vivo barefoot are the – for whatever reason, the style and they got it down, they are the ones that look good. So Vivo barefoot, flip it around. You got to show the outside. Sorry, I gave you the wrong shoe. No, that's fine.

That's a Primus Lite. It's very minimal. It's actually, it's also, I think it's one of their more minimal training shoes. They got the Prio and the Primus. This is the trail. I got this guy here. Yeah. That's the white version of this one.

Why are we doing this, Mark? Give me that one. This is the white version of that one. I got the black one. This is the same one. But one I got the black one this is the pink one but I have these in hiking shoes like I have the hiking shoe versions of these which I fucking love

they have casual shoes too that you can just wear out if you want to go to dinner or whatever and they're making a ton of different types so that you can have good looking shoes that are minimal and wear them everywhere and now notice with this what matters and I know I know you want to go so why these things are good they are flat that are minimal and wear them everywhere. And now notice, with this, what matters? And I know, I know you want to go, but like, you'll forgive me.

So why these things are good. They are flat. If you take your shoes off, guess what? Your feet and your toes are on the same level. That means your feet are flat. So these match that. They are wide in the toe box, which is unbelievable that no other shoe company can make them look athletic or attractive on the side. But they're wider in the toe box, right?

Then they are flexible, meaning you can do this. And when your shoes are flexible, again, if you're in pain right now, you need to build they are flexible, meaning you can do this. And when your shoes are flexible, again, if you're in pain right now, you need to build up to this, but you can do this. Trust me, I've been on the other side. I can't even move my toe to now being able to be the barefoot sprinter. Like the flexible matters. When this happens, that lets your feet get the little, it's thousands. So Mark took 10, you ran, he does this 400,000 steps a day. So 400 divided by two is 200,000 steps each foot. 200,000 little baby steps of

getting a little bit more motion, get your feet stronger. That's how you build up resiliency. So flexible matters and they're thin so you can feel the ground. If you're going on hiking, if you're going out on outdoor terrain, if you're stepping on things and you have big, thick soled shoes and you step on something that isn't perfect, you're at a higher, you have a higher leverage that is more likely to sprain an ankle.

These are flat. The amount of people I say that I get them go through the stuff, they change their shoes, they go on a hike is more likely to sprain an ankle. These are flat. The amount of people I say that I get them go through the stuff, they change their shoes, they go on a hike. I didn't sprain my ankles for the first time. I didn't roll, you know, I didn't trip. I felt more engaged with the ground. When you step with the ground, you have those 26 bones, 33 joints, hundreds of muscles, ligaments, and tendons in your body that are actually creating thousands of micro adjustments. Every time you step to the temperature, to the ground, to the texture of the ground, to the firmness, to the, like, you know, what speed you're going. You're making these tiny little adjustments.

And if the sole, the sole. If you're wearing this thick sole shoe, guess what? You get none of that feedback. And then your feet and ankles can't adjust and can't move. And then all that goes right up into your knees. Your shins get stiff, your knees. It makes a fucking difference. So wear some goddamn shoes.

There you go. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.