Most Replayed Moment: Foot Health Expert Reveals the Best Shoes for Strength and Mobility!

Courtney Conley is a renowned foot health expert who combines science with practical advice to help people lead pain-free, active lives. In this Moment, Courtney dives into the surprising impact of our everyday footwear on both our physical and mental health. Discover the best kind of shoes to wear, and how crucial footwear is in enhancing movement, preventing pain, and supporting long-term strength. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/WeoZX42ycZb Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/tXqCmi6ycZb Watch the Episodes On YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Courtney’s clinic: https://gaithappens.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  Walking.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  We don't do much of that these days. It seems to have gone out of fashion with all the Ubers and the other ways to get around and all the sedentary behavior that we do living and working in offices. What should we know about walking and how important it is? Because I'll be honest, I don't walk that much.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Yes, it's, I always say it's the most underrated, underutilized, easily accessible activity that most of us are not doing.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  If you think about, if you look at the research on average step count that most people globally are taking, it's about 45 to 4,900. Okay? Which means that there's a lot of us that are taking less than that.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  So when I'm working with my patients, we always look at baseline numbers. What's your baseline? So for example, if you had a person who was walking 2,500 steps a day, I mean, some of us would be like, wow, that's not a lot. But for a lot of us, it is.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  If you were to walk an additional 500 steps in a day, your baseline's 2,500, you can reduce your risk of cardiovascular mortality by 7%.

• 1:25Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Here's a bigger wow. If you have a thousand step increase, you can reduce your risk of all-cause mortality by 15%.

• 1:38Steven Bartlett?

  Dying of anything?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  All-cause mortality. 15%? That's a big number for a thousand steps.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  So I have a story for you. This is a patient of mine and it just, you know, warms my heart to talk about him because when I saw him, he was two years into a diagnosis of heel pain, 27 years old. So he had gone to see a bunch of people and the last doctor that he had seen told him to limit his step count to 2,500 steps a day.

• 2:16Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  To rest, to rest the foot. Now, this is chronic pain now. We're not talking acute heel pain. We are two years into this song and dance. And he's being told at 27 years old to take 2,500 steps a day.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  So he comes into my office. We're talking about all of this. And he's also a quadruplet. So it was one of the first quadruplets I think I've ever treated. So he has, you know, which, why I think pain is so difficult. It's so complicated because now you have this 27 year old who's seeing his siblings, who are at 27, like enjoy their life and doing all of these things. And he's being told he can take 2,500 steps a day. So he's now living in his father's basement.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  And he's afraid to go above 2,500 steps. And he used to tell me, he's like, I cry a lot. I'm depressed.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  And wouldn't you be if?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  So there wasn't any magic exercise that I was going to give him two years into this. There wasn't any magic orthotic or magic shoe. He had done all of that. Shame on me if I would have done the same thing.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  So we had a conversation. And I knew I needed to get him outside and I needed to get him walking. That was my goal. Forget about the heel pain. We didn't even focus. We didn't even talk about the heel pain. I knew I needed to get him outside and start loading his foot.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Two years, this foot, by the way, when you're walking, four to six times your body weight, it can handle four to six times your body weight when you're walking. But you don't load it appropriately and muscles atrophy. So I told him, we had a long, long conversation. And I said, we're going to slowly start to introduce steps.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  And if you think about this, if we were to say, add 1,000 steps a day.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  To some people, that might not sound like a lot. But to someone who's taking 2,500 steps, that's almost 50% of what they're doing.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  So we introduced the concept of a micro walk, which is a five-minute walk.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  So a five-minute walk is about 500 steps.

• 4:45Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  A 10-minute walk is about 1,000, about 1,000 steps.

• 4:52Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Right? So that makes it like a little more digestible, right? So you're talking to him, you're like, listen, all I need is five minutes.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And so we started five-minute walks. And for the first couple of weeks, it was, you know, there were good days, there were bad days, and there still are. But we were starting to build his confidence in movement. We were starting to get him comfortable on his foot again. And it was, you know, it was one of those cases where I just like, I really enjoyed working with him and watching what had happened. Because if you look at step counts, I knew what number I was trying to get to. Because if you look at depression, for example,

• 5:38Speaker 01

  5,000 steps a day can reduce the risk of having symptoms of depression.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  If you get to 7,500 steps per day, it can reduce the prevalence of the diagnosis of depression. So that was, in the back of my head, I'm like, we just gotta keep working towards these numbers. So while we were doing that, we were strengthening his foot. I had him in different footwear. And at the end of each week, we were also talking about

• 6:12Speaker 01

  three good things. Tell me three good things that happened to you this week. And in the beginning of treatment, it was, it was a struggle. Stephen, it was a struggle for him to think about good things happening in his life.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  And I spoke with him probably about a month ago.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  And his email is like my why. He was like, um, on average, he's walking between 5,000 and 6,000 steps a day.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  He still has good days, or still has bad days. More good days than bad days. But he said to me, he's like, I haven't, I can't tell you the last time I cried. He's going to church. He's spending time with his dad, you know, and it's not, it's not the step count. It's the person behind the step count. And that's why I think this stuff is so powerful. I saw it change my life. I saw what it does to my patients. I mean, it has the capacity to improve not just your physical health, but how you interact with the world.

• 7:23Steven Bartlett?

  It has a completely different meaning when you understand the real sort of human consequences it can have on someone's life, for better or for worse. And it's, and it's not often until we have some kind of injury or issue that we

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:37Steven Bartlett?

  realize that our feet and ankles were, were there.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:40Steven Bartlett?

  And that's certainly been the case in my life. It wasn't until I got plantar fasciitis that I was like, oh my God, I should have been doing something about this sooner. And then, as I told you before we started recording, I've currently got a high ankle sprain. So I've pulled some ligaments in my, the top of my ankle, training for this game called Soccer Aid. So I'm now going through the whole process once again of like figuring out what I did wrong and what, what I should have been doing as a preventative measure

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:01Steven Bartlett?

  to try and strengthen my feet. One of the things I think most of us get wrong is our footwear choices.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:08Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think of these shoes? These are women's heels, but listen, anyone can wear them. It's 2025. What do you think of these shoes?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Well, it doesn't look like a foot. Your foot in that position is not the position it is supposed to be in. Now, with that being said, there is a time and a place. You know, I don't think I'm going to win the battle of, you know, you need to wear, you know, functional footwear 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Time in those shoes should be limited. Just like with, you know, other things, it's

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Moderation.

• 8:46Steven Bartlett?

  Do you see a lot of women getting injuries because they spend too long wearing heels?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  I don't know if acute injury, but a weakening of tissue, yes. Because, you know, I live in Colorado now, so I don't have that. There's not too many women in Colorado that are wearing heels. However, when I go to New York City, it's a different conversation, different environment. So, you know, I have to say, I have to use the, that is not the position that you want to keep your foot in. It's changing the structure of your tissues, changing the pressures in the foot. Not to mention, that, those are, I don't care what anybody says, that's not comfortable to walk around in. People will be like, oh, I'm really comfortable in heels. I'm like, are you really, though?

• 9:34Steven Bartlett?

  The lengths we go to to look good, though, right?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 9:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so let's talk about some good shoes, then.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:40Steven Bartlett?

  I've got two pairs of shoes here.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:43Steven Bartlett?

  One of them is Vivo Barefoot, who are actually a sponsor of mine. Ever since I started talking about feet. And then, I don't know this brand, what is this brand?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  That is ultra running. So, let's talk about the things you want to look for in a functional shoe. My non-negotiable is the wide toe box.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  The toes have to be able to splay. When you think of all the diagnoses that we talked about, bunions, neuromas, hammer toes, when the forefoot can splay, the foot's going to function better. So that's number one. Number two is having the heel and the toe in the same plane.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  And number three is having a shoe that is thin and flexible.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  When you wear this type of footwear, I call this a workhorse shoe. Because there is more loads going through all of your tissues, through your bones, through your ligaments, through your tendons, through your muscles. So your foot gets stronger when you wear this type of footwear. There's research on that.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Now, you have to earn your right. This is the plantar fasciopathy conversation. You can't go from wearing a aggressive, high cushion shoe.

• 11:07Steven Bartlett?

  Like this one here?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  With, I'm, yes, with an insert, for example, and say, oh, this stuff makes sense. I'm gonna go take that off and I'm gonna go wear this 24 hours a day. You won't like me.

• 11:19Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Because you'll say, hey, my heel's hurting. Because you haven't done the work. It's, hey, let's do these foot exercises. Let's wear this for 10 minutes a day. And then people are like, wow, that does feel better. And then it's a transition into wearing this more often. Now, when you have patients that have had a very weak foot, or clients that have had a very weak foot with different diagnoses, this is a hard, you know, shoe to walk around in for extended periods of time. So that's when we'll talk about footwear that still puts the foot in a wide position, wide toe box. I love this shoe.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  And I also like the mesh upper because you can, the toes can expand in here. I still have zero drop, right? Where the heel and the toe sit in the same plane, but you'll notice the difference between the two shoes is the amount of stack height or the amount of cushion. There's more stuff.

• 12:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So on this, on this shoe, the, it does look like the, you call it a plane, looks level.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:32Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. And it's got a good toe box.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:35Steven Bartlett?

  You can see from this side that the toe box is wide, so you can splay, but it is elevated.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  It's elevated off the ground.

• 12:42Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  But the heel and toe are in the same plane.

• 12:44Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, fine. But it can, it's, it's still elevated, though.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:48Steven Bartlett?

  They're still like quite a thick.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:50Steven Bartlett?

  And that's not too much of a problem because it's still flat.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  It depends on what your goals are.

• 12:54Steven Bartlett?

  From running.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  That is, that is, I think, a great shoe to run on, to run with, right? If you're running on concrete, if you're running on asphalt, you want a little something underneath the foot.

• 13:06Steven Bartlett?

  What about the Nike Alpha Flies?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  You're gonna make me start sweating.

• 13:14Steven Bartlett?

  Really? This is my current running shoe and I bought it because it looks great.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, you know, it is.

• 13:22Steven Bartlett?

  I have torn the ligaments in my ankle, but I look good.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Here's the super shoe, right? So here's this shoe, right? And here's your super shoe over here.

• 13:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Okay, when you look at that shoe, there's certain characteristics to that shoe that you definitely do not see in this shoe. One of them being the toe spring. So see how it kind of lips on the front of the shoe?

• 13:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Okay?

• 13:46Steven Bartlett?

  This part here, yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yes. So if I had that shoe on this table and I went like this to the front of the shoe, it would literally rocker for me. So it facilitates the rocker of the foot. Sounds great. You put that on, you're like, man, this is great. I can fly. If you don't use it, you're gonna lose it. So there is research that shows when you put your foot in a position with toe spring, you will weaken the intrinsic muscles of the foot. So I'm not saying don't have race day and wear that shoe, right? You get, the research will tell you two to 4% running economy. People run faster because the shoe has the technology to facilitate gait. But if you train in that all the time

• 14:31Speaker 01

  and you never let your foot get stronger, it's just a matter of time. You're gonna say, my hamstring, my foot, my this, my that. And it's like, that's why the conversation has to happen is this is the shoe that you're gonna get stronger in. Spend time in your training shoe and then that's your speed day. That's your race day. So it's having this shoe spectrum, knowing when to dance along the spectrum.

• 14:59Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like I can bounce in these.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I mean, you probably can.

• 15:04Steven Bartlett?

  I literally, when I put it on, I was like, wow, I can bounce.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 15:07Steven Bartlett?

  I think it has like a piece of metal going through the middle of it.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's carbon in there. You know what another fun fact is, though? Certain plyometrics, so plyometric is training the spring of the body. So think like jumping. There's research that will show you that plyometrics also increase capacity in running by two to 4%. So my conversation I have with my patients is, listen, what if we stacked therapies, right? What if you did plyometric work?

• 15:37Steven Bartlett?

  Which is?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Uh, jumping.

• 15:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  You know, once or twice a week.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And we worked on your strength and I had you in these shoes the majority of the time. And then on race day, you want to throw that shoe on? It's like you're, you're running, you're like a running fairy. You're like running and things look beautiful and everything is, you know, because you have a strong body on top of the shoe. But if you put a weak body and a weak foot in that shoe,

• 16:07Speaker 01

  you gotta earn your right.

• 16:09Steven Bartlett?

  Should we be standing more often? Because most of us work and live in offices now and we sit at desks and I, you know, I do this podcast sat down. Do you think much about standing desks or how often we should spend bipedal? Or I think that's what you referred to as?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I think that it's more about movement.

• 16:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  I don't know if standing in one place is any better than sitting in one place, other than when you're standing, you can actually like, you know, move around and, you know, make it more active standing. But it is a matter of taking movement breaks. Like that's, I call them, you know, movement snacks. All of us spend a lot of time either sitting all day long or, you know, standing at our desks. If we were to take micro walks, a five-minute walk, a couple of times a day, the system stays moving, you're staying active and you're slowly, you know, inching up that step count that we know is so important for not only physical health, but emotional and mental health. That's what I like about it.

• 17:11Steven Bartlett?

  I think you mentioned there was an association with movement, walking and dementia.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:17Steven Bartlett?

  Alzheimer's risk. What does the science say there?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  You know, when you look at step counts, if that was going to be our baseline, 9,800 steps per day can reduce the risks of dementia. But what I think is the cool part with that is 3,800 steps. You get 50% of the maximal benefit.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  So if you were to, let's just call it 4,000, shoot for 4,000 steps, you're going to get a benefit, a 50% benefit. And some of my favorite research on looking at that population with walking as relationship walking. There's really cool studies looking at walking in groups for the elderly population and how that has a social connection. And it improves their emotional health. And it combats loneliness and feelings of isolation. And that is the beauty of a walk.

• 18:28Steven Bartlett?

  Running clubs are getting incredibly popular at the moment, aren't they, all around the world? Are you seeing more and more people come to you as a result of that?

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yes, I think also, you know, it was interesting. I was working at the running event in Austin, Texas, and I was teaching there. And so a lot of the shoe stores were there. And one of the bigger shoe stores had said that the majority of their clients now are actually walkers and not runners. And I thought that was pretty interesting. And I'm thinking to myself, I wonder why that is. Like, are more people reverting to walking because they're getting injured when they're running? Are they, you know, I'm making all these conclusions in my head. I'm like, well, is it because we're going in the wrong direction with footwear? Because we're creating the shoe that is basically doing the work for us

• 19:19Speaker 01

  and it feels so good? And, you know, people aren't putting the work in anymore? I don't know. But I'm certainly going to do my best to change that.

• 19:29Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.