Your Toes Can Predict If You'll Die Early And Heres's How To Fix Your Plantar Fasciitis! - Dr. Courtney Conley (Foot Expert)

What if the secret to fixing back pain, avoiding dementia, and living longer is…your feet? Dr. Courtney Conley breaks down why your shoes are failing you. Dr Courtney Conley is a physician specialising in foot and gait mechanics. She is the founder of ‘Gait Happens’ and ‘Total Health Solutions’, where she aims to educate people about the importance of the human foot to overall health. She explains: How foot pain leads to emotional distress, depression, and inactivity How 500 extra steps a day can cut heart attack risk by 7% Why 4,000 steps a day can slash dementia risk by 50% How Courtney’s overcame addiction and used movement to save her life Why children’s shoes are sabotaging their future health 00:00 Intro 02:22 Why Care About Feet 06:07 The Most Common Foot Injuries 07:49 What People Get Wrong About Foot Pain 11:48 The Link Between Walking, Longevity, and Depression 19:20 What Shoes Should I Wear to Help My Foot Strength? 25:55 Our Feet vs. Tribe Feet 28:09 Insoles Help Initially but Not Long Term 30:58 1 in 3 People Will Develop Foot Pain 31:36 Pain in the Heel (Plantar Fasciitis) 34:04 Bigger Problems from Foot Issues 35:34 Problems with Wearing Heels 37:54 Characteristics of Good Shoes 39:54 Super-Cushioned Running Shoes: Good or Bad? 43:59 The Shocking Link Between Movement and Dementia 45:16 The Rise of Run Clubs 47:49 The Foot Gym 48:26 Bunion Diagnoses 57:12 Ads 59:16 Importance of Strong Feet at the Gym 1:06:17 What Is a Running Gait? 1:10:02 Are We Supposed to Be Barefoot? 1:17:42 Ads 1:19:42 Should We Wear Socks? 1:21:47 Viewer Comments 1:23:46 What Happens After Ankle Injuries Heal 1:26:58 What You'll Most Likely Regret in 10 Years 👀 DOAC Circle: https://bit.ly/circle-youtube Follow Dr Courtney: Instagram - ⁠https://bit.ly/43mfyoU⁠ Gait Happens - http://doac.gaithappens.com/ The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: ⁠https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt⁠ The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): ⁠https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb⁠ Get email updates: ⁠https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt⁠ Follow Steven: ⁠https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb⁠ Research document: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/DOAC-Courtney-Conley-Independent-Research-further-reading.pdf Sponsors: Vivobarefoot - https://vivobarefoot.com/DOAC with code DIARY20 for 20% offStan Store - Visit https://link.stan.store/joinstanchallenge to join the challenge! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I want people to start thinking about their feet. Because the implications it will have for longevity is massive. But there is plenty of things we can do for foot strength and performance. You can actually do this at home, and I'm going to educate you here. There's a lot we can talk about here.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  That didn't sound like a compliment.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  Dr. Courtney Conley is a world-renowned foot doctor.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Who's making people rethink everything they know about their feet. And the shocking truth about their shoes. One in three people will experience foot pain. And it really starts to deter your physical health, your emotional health, your mental health. Because you can't do most things. And I know this because I was a ballet dancer and then a triathlete. I had all of the diagnoses, bunions, neuromas, heel pain. And not being able to walk and not being able to move, you can go to some pretty dark places. But when you look at the statistics, 5,000 steps a day can reduce the risk of having symptoms of depression. And also reduce your risk of all-cause mortality by 15%.

• 0:56Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Here's a bigger wow. 9,800 steps can reduce the risks of dementia. So it's the most underutilized, easily accessible activity that most of us are not doing.

• 1:06Steven Bartlett?

  What about footwear choices?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Footwear has such a big implication on our function. For example, around 70% of children are wearing shoes that are too narrow.

• 1:16Steven Bartlett?

  I've got a range of footwear here that most people wear. So what do you think of these shoes?

• 1:21Speaker 00

  You shorten the muscles in the back of the leg.

• 1:23Steven Bartlett?

  What is the issue with wearing these?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  So they change the structure of the foot.

• 1:27Steven Bartlett?

  What about this one here?

• 1:29Speaker 00

  You're going to make me start sweating.

• 1:30Steven Bartlett?

  So let's talk about some good shoes then.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so these are the things you want to look for in a functional shoe. First.

• 1:38Steven Bartlett?

  Quick one, just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show. Thank you.

• 2:22Steven Bartlett?

  What are we getting wrong? And at what stage in our life do we get it wrong? It feels like you have a little bit of beef with shoes.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  A little bit.

• 2:31Steven Bartlett?

  A little bit of beef. I've got a range of different shoes here. But what is it that we're being sold or told that is fundamentally not aligned with what it is to be a healthy, strong, happy human?

• 2:42Speaker 00

  I always say that if we started with our children and put them in the right footwear, I'd be out of a job. Because that's when it starts. That's when the foot starts developing. And that's when we start to build strength and, you know, structure to the foot. And from a very young age, we start interfering with what goes on the foot. And when you think about all of the things that the foot can do, it's why I'm obsessed with it. I mean, there's bones and ligaments, and the foot should be designed, it's designed to move. The arch recoils, so it should lengthen, and then it should contract. There's four layers of muscles in here.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  So when we look at the function of the foot, we have to respect that. And I think footwear can deter the function of the foot.

• 3:37Steven Bartlett?

  So is the biggest risk, just to make sure I'm super clear, that I will fall when I'm older? Is that the key risk?

• 3:44Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't, I think that is one of the sequelae of what's going to happen if we don't start paying attention. But when you look at function as a whole, things like walking, one in three people and probably over the ages of 45 will experience foot pain.

• 4:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  So other than low back pain, there's really no other diagnosis that you'll see those types of numbers. And here's the, here's the issue with foot pain. You can't do much. You can't go for a walk. You can't go for a hike. You can't do most things. You can't walk to the mailbox when you have severe foot pain. So it really starts to deter your physical health, your emotional health, your mental health. So it's one of those things I'm extremely passionate about because it's not just about pain. It's about what happens when you can't walk and you can't use your foot.

• 4:47Steven Bartlett?

  And is it, is the foot connected to the ankle, which is connected to the calf, which is connected to the back? Is there a sort of a whole body holistic issue here? Is it all interconnected?

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Yes, 100%. Especially when I see, you know, patients that have bilateral symptoms at their feet. So that would be both sides.

• 5:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  So, for example, if I see someone with bilateral bunions, okay, which would be the bump on the inside of the big toe.

• 5:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Okay. You have to ask yourself, where is this abnormal load coming from?

• 5:27Steven Bartlett?

  Let me just check my bunions. Yeah, check, check, yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Right, where is it coming from? Is it, you know, is it something that has to do with the pelvis? Right? Because when I'm standing, if I tilt my pelvis forward, I should feel my arches drop.

• 5:45Steven Bartlett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  So there's a direct correlation between what's happening at your hips and your pelvis and what happens at your foot. And when I were to tuck my pelvis, you should feel the arches lift. So when we start to see things happen at the foot, it's a window. It's a window to what's going on, not only at the foot, but everywhere else in the kinetic chain.

• 6:07Steven Bartlett?

  When patients come to you, what kind of symptoms do they have that are connected to the foot?

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Bunions, neuromas, hammer toes.

• 6:15Steven Bartlett?

  What's a neuroma and a hammer toe?

• 6:17Speaker 00

  So a neuroma is... A nerve irritation.

• 6:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  In between the toes. So the most common you will hear of is a Morton's neuroma. And that's typically in between the third and fourth toes.

• 6:30Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  And it can be very painful. Remember, we talked about when you go to push off when you're walking.

• 6:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  The wider and the stronger the forefoot is, the more stable it is. So if I have a foot that doesn't have splay, or that looks like this, and you're trying to push off of it, you can irritate the nerves within the forefoot.

• 6:53Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  And you can develop these nerve symptoms at the forefoot. Very painful.

• 6:58Steven Bartlett?

  What are the other types of injuries or symptoms that people come to you with that you then root back to the feet?

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Hammer toes.

• 7:06Steven Bartlett?

  Hammer toes, which is?

• 7:08Speaker 00

  The clawing of the toes.

• 7:10Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  All right, and this is what's cool about the foot, because it's the only place in the body where you can see aberrant loads.

• 7:18Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean?

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Abnormal load, dysfunction. Because you can't see it at the knee, you can't see it at the hip unless you were to take imaging, where you'd start to see structural change. But you can see it at the foot. So you should be asking yourself, man, why am I developing hammer toes? And maybe I should pay attention to that. Because bunions and hammer toes also will increase your risk of falling and also decrease balance. That's a problem.

• 7:49Steven Bartlett?

  I had plantar fasciitis, which meant that I struggled to walk for a couple of weeks a few years ago when I was training for a football match. And that's really what started me on my journey of understanding the foot and trying to understand how to strengthen it.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:03Steven Bartlett?

  So that I could be more active. Because if you've never experienced plantar fasciitis, which I'm sure some of my listeners have, it really is an awful, awful thing. What's the rest of the list of those kinds of injuries that people can get from having a weak foot? Is there anything else that we haven't covered?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Well, plantar fasciopathy is probably the most common. That's your heel pain.

• 8:23Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  And I do think that that is a diagnosis that we need to look at a little bit differently. Achilles tendonopathy, also very, very common.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Other tendon diagnoses, posterior tibialis tendon. So that's the tendon that runs along the inside of the foot. And it's one of the biggest stabilizers of the medial column of the foot. It's a powerhouse. That and the soleus, which is your calf, lower, the calf muscle, powerhouses of the lower leg. And all of these tissues can be strengthened and produce power. And we need to start looking at the foot, just like we look at every other part of the body.

• 9:06Steven Bartlett?

  So what do you do for a living? And who are you?

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Well, I'm a chiropractor by nature. I went to chiropractic school. You know, I knew that I wanted to get into some type of medicine that was proactive. You know, not reactive. I didn't quite have interest in surgeries or pharmaceuticals. Movement has always been a very big part of my life. And so I knew I needed to stay in that, in that arena.

• 9:41Steven Bartlett?

  So what did you do?

• 9:42Speaker 00

  When I was younger, I was a dancer. I was a ballet dancer. And then I shifted gears into being a runner and then a triathlete. And I didn't know at the time why movement was a necessity for me. You know, I certainly wasn't thinking, oh, you know, I need to do this because of longevity or because I'm going to have a better VO2 max. You know, and now in hindsight, when I think about it, it was a means of survival. Movement was survival for me. And in my teens and into my twenties, you know, I had some personal demons that I fought.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  And the one thing that was consistent, that I felt I could control, was making sure that I stayed moving. And the problem is, is when you have foot pain. You can't do that. And because movement was a lifeline for me, it was a mode of survival. There were days where, you know, I was a dancer. I had all of the diagnoses we just talked about. Bunions, neuromas, heel pain. And when you tag on day after day of not being able to walk and not being able to move, you can go to some pretty dark places. And so I just, it was a mission of mine to figure this out and figure out how I can

• 11:04Speaker 00

  personally be able to continue to move, but then also be able to hopefully help other people.

• 11:10Steven Bartlett?

  It got tough for you, didn't it? I can see it in your face.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:16Steven Bartlett?

  Because for this to matter this much to you, then it's, it's personal, to say the least.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  It changed my life. When you're, you know, I think whenever we have a passion, there's always this quest personally behind it. And so I saw what it did for me. And then over the past 20 years, being able to see what it has done for my patients is why I'm even more hard pressed to get this information out there.

• 11:48Steven Bartlett?

  Walking?

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:51Steven 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.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Yes, it's, I always say it's the most underrated, underutilized, easily accessible activity that most of us are not doing. 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 4900. Okay? Which means that there's a lot of us that are taking less than that.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  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. 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%.

• 13:10Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 13:11Speaker 00

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

• 13:22Steven Bartlett?

  Dying of anything?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  All-cause mortality. 15%? That's a big number for 1,000 steps. 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.

• 14:00Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 14:03Speaker 00

  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. 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 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.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  And he's afraid to go above 2,500 steps.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  And he used to tell me, he's like, I cry a lot. I'm depressed. And wouldn't you be if?

• 15:05Speaker 00

  So

• 15:08Speaker 00

  there wasn't any magic exercise that I was gonna 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.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  So we had a conversation.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  And

• 15:25Speaker 00

  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.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  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.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  But you don't load it appropriately and muscles atrophy.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  So I told him, we had a long, long conversation. And I said, we're gonna slowly start to introduce steps.

• 16:01Speaker 00

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

• 16:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 16:17Speaker 00

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

• 16:25Speaker 00

  So a five minute walk is about 500 steps.

• 16:29Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  A 10 minute walk is about a thousand, about a thousand steps.

• 16:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  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.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  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,

• 17:22Speaker 00

  5,000 steps a day can reduce the risk of having symptoms of depression. 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 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. Steven, it was a struggle for him to think about

• 18:07Speaker 00

  good things happening in his life. And I spoke with him probably about a month ago. And his email is like my why. He was like, on average, he's walking between 5,000 and 6,000 steps a day. 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.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  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.

• 19:07Steven 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.

• 19:17Steven Bartlett?

  And it's, and it's not often until we have some kind of injury or issue that we

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:21Steven Bartlett?

  realise that our feet and ankles were, were there.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:25Steven 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 to try and strengthen my feet. One of the things I think most of us get wrong is our footwear choices.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:52Steven Bartlett?

  And I've got a range of footwear on this table in front of me here. These are the types of shoes that most people wear. From a very young age, I think we all wear shoes like this.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:04Steven Bartlett?

  So narrow shoes with a big heel. If anyone can't see our conversation at the moment. So like the, the typical trainer. What is, what is the issue with wearing these from an early age?

• 20:18Speaker 00

  When I was doing research to have this discussion with you, it was fascinating to me when you look at the statistics of, especially with children, with girls, around 70% are wearing shoes that are too narrow.

• 20:33Steven Bartlett?

  Too narrow, the end part?

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Remember, we talked about the widest part of the foot should be the toes. So when you look at a shoe like that, that is not the widest part. It's tapered. See how the toe box looks like it's tapered?

• 20:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's point like.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 20:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  So when you put your foot in there, it's doing this. It changes the structure of the foot. It's like the lowest hanging fruit for me is just wear a shoe that fits your foot.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Because when it's in that position, it changes the structure. If I walked around with my arm in a sling for 10 years, would my bicep get weak?

• 21:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you'd lose your mobility as well.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Correct. If you don't use it, you're gonna lose it. And so that's why I think footwear has such a big implication on our function.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Men's dress shoes.

• 21:31Steven Bartlett?

  Men's dress shoes. I mean, that is crazy, the point on that.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  Yes, it's funny. My brother lives in New York City and we have this conversation all the time. And he's like, "Look at this one, it's wide." I'm like, "Nope, that's not wide."

• 21:47Speaker 00

  And they're stiff and they're, you know, again, changing the structure of the foot. A lot of those shoes also have a little bit of a heel-to-toe drop.

• 21:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Yes. So that is when the heel-to-toe drop, so the heel and the toes sit in one plane. But when you have a higher heel-to-toe drop, it's like you have a mini-high heel on.

• 22:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. What's the problem with that?

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Well, if my foot is supposed to sit flat, I have tissues in the back of my leg that are in a good length-tension relationship. I have even pressures across my foot.

• 22:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  The second I go and change those things, where I go into a heel, you put additional pressure on the front of the foot. You shorten the muscles in the back of the leg. So you start changing the function and the structure of not only the foot, but everything that sits above it.

• 22:43Steven Bartlett?

  Your calf, your hamstring, your back. Do you see a lot of back injuries that are relating to things like heels?

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:53Steven Bartlett?

  You do?

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. It's all, you know, I see mostly people come in for foot pain. And I always say to my patients, "I wish it was just about the foot." "I wish I could just look at your foot and say, 'This is what it is. It's all right here.'" But it's not. Because there's a body that sits on top of the foot. The strength of the hip, for example, controls the foot. It controls how the foot unlocks. So you have to take that into account when you're looking at patients with foot pain.

• 23:28Steven Bartlett?

  But this, this is the shape because it's fashionable, right?

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Yes, it's my biggest, you know, I always tell my daughter, because my daughter, you know, she's like, "You make me wear these platypus shoes." And I'm like, "Listen, it's function over fashion, but I get it." That is my biggest challenge, is making, you know, is looking for shoes. But they've come a long way, they've come a very, very long way. And I think that we're getting there.

• 23:56Steven Bartlett?

  Is there an issue with the thickness of the heel on these shoes? This big, when I say the thickness of the heel, I really mean the thickness of the sole.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  So the cushion and the...

• 24:06Steven Bartlett?

  The cushion, it's, I mean, it's really, really soft, soft and cushioning. There's about, you know, an inch at the back here of sole.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, the cushion conversation is always very interesting. There's always a trade-off. So there's a lot of popular shoes right now that have a lot of cushion on them.

• 24:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  And it's hard to argue when someone goes into a store and they're given this shoe that has this pillow on it, and they're standing on it for three seconds, and they're like, "Man, this feels really good." The problem with cushion is that the more stuff that's between your foot and the ground, the less you feel. So there's a loss of sensory acuity, there's a loss of sensory perception. Remember, the foot is, imagine the foot's a sensory organ, and it is. Because there's thousands of receptors that are, you know, screaming for information to help keep us upright in a biped.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  So when we start interfering with how that foot feels, you can expect there to be problems.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Now, if you have someone that's standing in place all day long, right? On concrete, on man-made surfaces, there's a time and a place. But my non-negotiable is at least keep the foot in its functional position, which means a wide toe box. So you want to stand on concrete all day long? Fine, put some cushion underneath your foot. Help yourself out, that's okay. But at least allow those toes to splay so that you can have balance, you can have your foot in a position that can propel you forward.

• 25:55Steven Bartlett?

  I was just thinking about my foot as you're talking. And I'm pretty sure, like, my, I'm pretty sure that my pinky toe looks... I'm not going to be able to sell pictures on OnlyFans of my feet because my pinky toe is kind of like crumpled in.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  It like curls under, right?

• 26:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's like curled under.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Right, kind of looks like a shoe, like you had a shoe there, like.

• 26:14Steven Bartlett?

  Excuse me. No, no, but you're right, it is, it is like that. It's kind of like been pushed, pushed in and underneath. And I guess that's not natural.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  No, it is not.

• 26:26Steven Bartlett?

  How does a natural foot look? Like, have you been to see a tribe who don't wear these cushioned shoes? Have you seen what like a uncushioned foot looks like?

• 26:36Speaker 00

  I'm obsessed. I watch people's feet all the time. I was just in Belize with my mother and daughter for spring break.

• 26:42Steven Bartlett?

  Slightly creepy. Sorry.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  It is, isn't it?

• 26:48Steven Bartlett?

  And you're looking at people's feet all day.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  I'm always looking at people's feet because it tells a story. It's like someone's gait, you know? Watching someone walk tells a story. You can tell if they just got fired or if they just got promoted, you know? But when you look at someone's foot, I was in Belize and with my mom and daughter. And there were these two guys building a house, a little bit off the beach, barefoot. And I'm looking at their foot and I'm going, wow. It was wide, it looked thick, it looked flat.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  And you know, I think in our society, if you will, when we think of a flat foot, we think, oh, this is bad news. We better go get an orthotic.

• 27:32Steven Bartlett?

  An orthotic is a?

• 27:33Speaker 00

  A device that you put underneath the foot to help modify loads.

• 27:39Steven Bartlett?

  What do they call those in the UK? Insoles?

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Like an insole.

• 27:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Yes. And so I'm watching these guys build this house and they're like coming up on their toes and they have all this, you know, toe range of motion and all this strength and power to their foot. And I'm like, that's, that's what our foot was designed to do, is to be strong, to support. It's like building a house on sand.

• 28:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  You have to have a foundation that you can build upon. And it was really cool to see. It really was.

• 28:09Steven Bartlett?

  When I had that pain in my foot, which they told me was plantar fasciitis, they recommended that I go to some foot doctor person. And this foot doctor person measured me up for insoles.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:22Steven Bartlett?

  And I put the insoles in and then I took the insoles out. And instead of that, I just wore different shoes.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people's first sort of diagnosis and the thing that they're told to do whenever they have foot pain or back pain or whatever is go get some insoles.

• 28:39Steven Bartlett?

  Is this what you think we should be doing?

• 28:42Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's really, really common. It's like, it seems to be the, like in medicine, they throw pills at you. If you have certain symptoms, it seems to be the first thing that we do when someone has a foot problem or an ankle problem.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  First line of intervention is, that's why you want to change how we're viewing the foot. It's either if your foot hurts, here's an orthoses.

• 29:01Steven Bartlett?

  Which is a?

• 29:02Speaker 00

  A foot orthotic, an insert.

• 29:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Or if it hurts worse, get surgery. If you look at the research on plantar fasciitis, okay, so itis being acute, it will tell you that putting an orthoses or something to modify the load underneath the foot can be beneficial.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Initially, because you want to offload something that hurts.

• 29:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  But if you don't use it, you're going to lose it. So what they're not, the part of the conversation that's being missed is the and conversation. It's where this insert and strengthen your foot. Because the goal should be to have an exit strategy for the insert and get your foot back on the ground. Because I have patients, Stephen, they will come in with 20 pairs of orthotics, 20 pairs of inserts. They've tried this one, they've tried that one, they've tried different shoes, higher heel to toe drops, more cushion, and I'm sitting there going, we're missing the boat here.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Let's have the and conversation. One of the muscles that is a good predictor of having heel pain, okay, is it runs parallel to the plantar fascia. So it's flexor digitorum brevis. It basically takes the four toes and presses them down. There's ways you can assess for this. So we'll look at their toe strength and it almost always correlates with the side that has the heel pain on because it shouldn't be one of those conversations you're like, man, I wonder where this came from. No, your foot is weak. Your foot is weak, there's a lot of load going through it and the structures are, you know, getting beat up.

• 30:58Steven Bartlett?

  There's something Daniel Lieberman said to me, which I've never forgotten. He said, if you took a child and you put them in two inch thick gloves from the day that they were born, and then you took those gloves off at 30 years old, can you imagine how deformed their hands would be?

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:14Steven Bartlett?

  And that's like very much the way that we live our lives. We spend pretty much all day wearing these big cushioned shoes that sometimes have these heels on. So it's no wonder that so many people are getting foot problems, ankle problems, back pain.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:26Steven Bartlett?

  So.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  One in three people.

• 31:28Steven Bartlett?

  One in three people.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Foot pain. I mean, it is.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  It really is a statistic that we need to be paying attention to.

• 31:36Steven Bartlett?

  We use this word plantar fasciitis, but we didn't explain what it is and what the symptoms of it are. Is it essentially like pain in the heel of your foot?

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Pain in the heel, yes. And they've played around with, you know, the terminology being it plantar fasciitis. So more of an acute issue versus plantar fasciopathy. Because oftentimes, these cases will turn into, you know, having heel pain for very long periods of time.

• 32:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  So then you have to treat it differently. You don't treat something that's acute, the same as you would treat something that's chronic. And so you have to look at, how can I build the resiliency to the foot?

• 32:15Steven Bartlett?

  How did it happen?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  How did all of this happen?

• 32:19Steven Bartlett?

  How did plantar fasciitis happen? Like, how did I get it? So I'll tell you what I was doing. I was living my life as normal.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:27Steven Bartlett?

  And then I started training to play for this soccer game. And I started training several, maybe twice a week. And then maybe by week four or five or six, I get this horrific, ongoing pain, which lasted throughout the entire day.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:44Steven Bartlett?

  Where I couldn't walk easily. It was especially bad in the mornings. And, uh, yeah, I thought I'd like broken something or ripped something in my foot. And when they told me that it was plantar fasciitis, I'd never had that term before. But understanding what I did there, how did I get it?

• 33:00Speaker 00

  When I see, I hear very similar stories with that diagnosis. There's always, there always seems to be some impetus of, I added load too fast, too soon. I went on a longer hike. I, this is one of my favorites. I went barefoot during COVID around my house. And everybody wanted to blame the fact that, you know, don't ever go barefoot. And I was like, hmm, maybe it's just because your foot was weak and you weren't ready to handle these loads. You add loads too fast, too soon. And the foot just says, you know what? You weren't ready to give me this amount of load this quickly.

• 33:41Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  And that's, you know, when you asked me earlier about, um,

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Why do we need to pay attention to our foot strength? Is it just because, you know, we're gonna, we want to prevent falls when we're 70? This is the why. Because we want to have healthy feet, strong feet, so you can say, hey, I want to go play a soccer game and I don't want to worry about having plantar fasciitis in my 30s.

• 34:05Steven Bartlett?

  Or, I mean, now with this ankle sprain that I have.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:09Steven Bartlett?

  Pulling my ligaments, which takes you out of activity for so long, which is horrific. That's like a big part of this, which is if you get an injury.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:16Steven Bartlett?

  If you get a bad injury, if you get like an Achilles tendon issue, or you tear a ligament like I have, or even plantar fasciitis, the inactivity that stems from that causes a bunch of downstream.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:28Steven Bartlett?

  Issues, so my muscles are going to atrophy. I'm going to lose muscle over this next couple of weeks in my lower half. I'm going to get probably a little bit lopsided because the injury is on my right side. So now my left side's having more of the burden. My lower legs, my upper legs, my lower back is probably susceptible now to some kind of injury as well. And it feels like, you know, this downward spiral of injury, just because I didn't strengthen my foot. 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?

• 35:04Speaker 00

  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 moderation.

• 35:34Steven Bartlett?

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

• 35:40Speaker 00

  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, 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?

• 36:22Steven Bartlett?

  The lengths we go to to look good, they're right.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 36:24Steven Bartlett?

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

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 36:27Steven Bartlett?

  I've got two pairs of shoes here.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 36:31Steven Bartlett?

  One of them is Vivo Barefoot.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:33Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 36:41Speaker 00

  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.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  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.

• 37:12Speaker 00

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

• 37:19Speaker 00

  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.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Now, you have to earn your right.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  This is the plantar fasciopathy conversation. You can't go from wearing a aggressive, high cushion shoe.

• 37:55Steven Bartlett?

  Like this one here?

• 37:57Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:07Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 38:07Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  And I also like the mesh upper because you can, the toes can expand in here. I still have zero drop.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  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.

• 39:11Steven Bartlett?

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

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:20Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, and it's got a good toe box.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:22Steven Bartlett?

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

• 39:28Speaker 00

  It's elevated off the ground.

• 39:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  But the heel and toe are in the same plane.

• 39:32Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, fine. But it's, it's still elevated though. They're still like quite a thick.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:37Steven Bartlett?

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

• 39:41Speaker 00

  It depends on what your goals are.

• 39:42Steven Bartlett?

  From running.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 39:54Steven Bartlett?

  What about the Nike Alpha Flies?

• 40:00Speaker 00

  You're gonna make me start sweating.

• 40:02Steven Bartlett?

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

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yes, I mean, you know, it is.

• 40:10Steven Bartlett?

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

• 40:15Speaker 00

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

• 40:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  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?

• 40:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 40:34Steven Bartlett?

  This part here, yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  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 2% to 4% running economy. People run faster because the shoe has the technology to facilitate gait.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  But if you train in that all the time 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.

• 41:47Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like I can bounce in these.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  I mean, you probably can.

• 41:52Steven Bartlett?

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

• 41:54Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 41:55Steven Bartlett?

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

• 41:57Speaker 00

  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 2% to 4%. So my conversation I have with my patients is, listen, what if we stacked therapies, right? What if you did plyometric work?

• 42:25Steven Bartlett?

  Which is?

• 42:26Speaker 00

  Jumping.

• 42:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  You know, once or twice a week.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  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, you gotta earn your right.

• 42:57Steven 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?

• 43:12Speaker 00

  I think that it's more about movement.

• 43:15Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  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.

• 43:59Steven Bartlett?

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

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:05Steven Bartlett?

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

• 44:09Speaker 00

  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 maximum benefit.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  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.

• 45:16Steven 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?

• 45:22Speaker 00

  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

• 46:07Speaker 00

  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.

• 46:17Steven Bartlett?

  You brought me a box, which I have here in front of me. Foot health kit.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:25Steven Bartlett?

  That's what it says on the front of the box. A foot health kit. I mean, what is in this box?

• 46:32Speaker 00

  It's like my little like bag of treats. You know, when I started doing this, it was funny.

• 46:37Steven Bartlett?

  This is what you give people is a bag of treats?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 46:40Steven Bartlett?

  For their birthdays and stuff.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  I want people to start thinking about their feet. Because I think there's such implications for their health. And I wanted to make it easy. Because when we think about all the things we need to do to stay healthy. It's like, I have to strength train. I have to, you know, eat this. I need a VO2 max. I need my cardio respiratory fitness. There's a lot. So I wanted to make it easy. So I, first, what, one of the things that is in there are toe strengtheners.

• 47:16Steven Bartlett?

  So I'll pull them out of the box. So.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Those are toe spacers.

• 47:21Steven Bartlett?

  Toe spacers?

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:23Steven Bartlett?

  So is this all the same thing, right?

• 47:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:25Steven Bartlett?

  So these are toe spacers?

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 47:28Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's this.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:31Steven Bartlett?

  What's this?

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Those are toe strengtheners.

• 47:33Steven Bartlett?

  Toe strengtheners, okay. So that's my toe workout. There is this thing.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  A band.

• 47:38Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's this ball.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:42Steven Bartlett?

  So this is like, this is my foot gym.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 47:46Steven Bartlett?

  Can you show me how this stuff works?

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 47:49Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so these are my feet. And these are my ankles. So I had plantar fasciitis in, I believe it was this foot, actually. And then, right now, I've got a high ankle sprain, which is some kind of ligament here has been torn. And they told me that it's torn on all three sides. So I've been in a boot for the last couple of weeks, but I've taken it off over the last week or two. And I was on crutches as well. What are you, the minute I took my socks off, you became fixated on my feet?

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:19Steven Bartlett?

  What, what do I need to be thinking about? And what can you see just by looking at my feet?

• 48:23Speaker 00

  You know, when you're looking at this foot here, you can start to see this little, see this little bump here. You can start to see bumps on the top of the big toe. Okay, and the diagnosis is a halix limitus or a halix rigidus. And basically, what that means is that you have formed arthritis on the top of the toe. So it prevents you from getting that full range of motion that we need when we walk and run.

• 48:52Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 48:55Speaker 00

  If the bump goes out to the side,

• 48:58Speaker 00

  that's what we call halix valgus. That's the bunion.

• 49:01Steven Bartlett?

  The bunion, okay.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Okay. So, that's why the foot is a window to mechanics. Because you can see loads, aberrant loads, right? Why is this forming here? So, you know, one of the first things I want to look at is how much range of motion. The big toe, it's all about the big toe. When we're walking, we put a lot of loads and force that go through the big toe when we walk. You should have about 40 to 45 degrees to walk out of that big toe. So here's Eddie. Here's 45 degrees.

• 49:41Steven Bartlett?

  Up.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Up.

• 49:42Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  So, yes. So what I want to see is how much range of motion. Can you see how he's off the ground, though? I want the ball of the big toe on the ground. That's a good amount of range.

• 49:55Steven Bartlett?

  That's the first nice thing you've said about my feet.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  We're just getting started. I'll find something else. And then you want to look at toe dexterity. So in other words, can you isolate your toes? So can you lift just your big toe on the right? Good.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  And then on the left?

• 50:15Steven Bartlett?

  That's actually quite hard, like, I've never had to do that before.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  It's funny, because when you'll see people that have poor awareness to their feet, when they try to lift their toes, you'll see them like, their hands, I'm like, your back isn't going to extend your toe. Okay, and then put your big toe down, and then extend your four toes.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:36Steven Bartlett?

  No, that pinky is not, that's not listening.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  There you go. And here.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Okay, and then what I want you to do is you're going to lift up all of your toes

• 50:48Speaker 00

  and spread them.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  And you can see, two, three, and four, right? They don't want to spread as much.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Earlier, we talked about those neuromas. The neuromas live within the toes here, right? Within, right in between the toes.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  So, if we have issues with nerve problems here, you gotta be able to splay.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  So you wear Vivos. You know, when you allow your foot to be in a shoe, where the feet can actually splay, you'll start to see changes. But imagine if you, you know, were in a shoe where your foot, I mean, I had a, I was at an expo, working a couple of weeks ago. And this woman came up to me and she's like, "Man, I can't figure out why my foot hurts." And I took her shoe off, and I'm telling you, her foot looked like this. It looked like a shoe. And I took a picture and I showed it to her and I was like, "Did your foot look like a foot? Or does it look like a shoe?"

• 51:48Steven Bartlett?

  We don't really know the difference these days.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  No. Because remember, the widest part of the foot should be the toes. So that's what we want to look for in the front of the foot. We also talked about that muscle. What side did you have the heel pain on?

• 52:06Steven Bartlett?

  I believe it was the right side.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  So one of the things we'll do, and you can actually do this at home, you could use like a credit card. So in my office, we can actually measure that. But if you were to do it at home, you just take a card and put it underneath the toe. Okay, and make sure you're lined up here. And some people will also do that. See how you're like, holding your leg? Just the toe. And then I'll try to pull the card out from under you. And I shouldn't be able to do that. I should feel some tension. And then I'll ask the patient, "Where do you feel this? What's working?" And if they say, "My hip, my quad." It's the wrong guy. We're talking about the foot.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  So you should feel that in the arch of the foot, and maybe into the calf. Okay, big toe. Flexor hallucis longus. This guy, by the way, this muscle starts over here. It's very important to strengthen this muscle when you have a history of ankle sprains. Starts on the fibula, which is the outside of the leg. It comes down the foot, crosses under, and inserts into the big toe. Then I'm going to take the card and I'm going to put it underneath the four toes. The muscle that we're looking for, yes, that's beautiful. See how you got that little... See, that's the second compliment I gave you.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  I'm gonna put this underneath your toes.

• 53:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Right? Little, yep. And then, don't let me pull the card out. And you should feel that in the arch of your foot. Patients that have...

• 53:50Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not really feeling it, to be honest. I'm not feeling it in the arch.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Okay, oh, what?

• 53:54Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  There you go. Roll the bottom of the foot.

• 53:57Steven Bartlett?

  Like this?

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Yes. Just wake it up a little bit. There's a bunch of receptors on the bottoms of the foot. So when we can't feel things, and it shouldn't surprise us. You know, if we've been walking around in footwear that compromises the function of the foot, or we've had injuries, you start to lack what we can feel. So just wake it up a little bit.

• 54:16Steven Bartlett?

  And how long would you do that for in the morning?

• 54:19Speaker 00

  Sixty, ninety seconds.

• 54:20Steven Bartlett?

  Do you do this every day?

• 54:21Speaker 00

  Uh, I do. I'll tell you when I, like, if I'm standing at my desk, I'll keep the ball there.

• 54:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  When I come back from a run, I do this whole little setup. But I wear these all day.

• 54:35Steven Bartlett?

  What is that that you're wearing there?

• 54:37Speaker 00

  So these are toe spacers. So they do exactly that. They splay the foot.

• 54:42Steven Bartlett?

  And why are you wearing that?

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Hey, remember when I was telling you about my years of being a ballet dancer? Okay? In pointe shoes, I wore orthotics for a long period of time. I wore ill-fitting footwear, and my foot was weak and things hurt. Okay, and we talked about why I needed to fix all of that. You can see my bunion here. Okay? So I work on all of this stuff all the time. And toe splay is a big part of that. So when I have these toe spacers in,

• 55:20Speaker 00

  they splay the foot for me. Every pair of shoes that I wear is compatible with a toe spacer.

• 55:29Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so you don't wear any narrow shoes?

• 55:31Speaker 00

  No. Non-negotiable. That's my non-negotiable.

• 55:35Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  And this is important. There is a difference between a wide toe box and a wide shoe. So people will say, "Well, I ordered the wide."

• 55:47Speaker 00

  The width will come here.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  That's where they change the width. But if the toes are still tapered, the width has to extend into where the toes are. So that's where you gotta be careful. It's a wide shoe is not a wide toe box shoe. And if you try to wear these in just a wide shoe, you're not going to be comfortable.

• 56:10Steven Bartlett?

  So if I wore this for one year, what promise could you make me? What could you tell me the benefit and the upside would be?

• 56:17Speaker 00

  You would definitely see improvement of the splay of your foot.

• 56:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  And when you have the tissues, the splay, you can start to improve the strength of the foot.

• 56:33Steven Bartlett?

  And what's downstream from strong foot?

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Go up the chain. You have better toe strength. You're going to build a better platform. You're going to have a jet engine on a jet engine. So your ankle mobility, then your knee extension, your hip extension, because your foot is doing what it was designed to do, which is be mobile and be strong.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  We need to pay attention. If you, if things go south from here,

• 57:02Speaker 00

  you can expect there to be changes up the chain. I see it all the time.

• 57:08Steven Bartlett?

  This one change has transformed how my team and I move, train and think about our bodies. When Dr. Daniel Lieberman came on the Diary of a CEO, he explained how modern shoes with their cushioning and support are making our feet weaker and less capable of doing what nature intended them to do. We've lost the natural strength and mobility in our feet, and this is leading to issues like back pain and knee pain. I'd already purchased a pair of Vivo Barefoot shoes, so I showed them to Daniel Lieberman, and he told me that they were exactly the type of shoe that would help me restore natural foot movement and rebuild my strength. But I think it was plantar fasciitis that I had, where suddenly my feet started hurting all the time. And after that, I decided to start strengthening my own foot by using the Vivo Barefoots. And research from Liverpool University has backed this up. They've shown that wearing Vivo Barefoot shoes

• 57:53Steven Bartlett?

  for six months can increase foot strength by up to 60%. Visit vivobarefoot.com/DOAC and use code DARI20 from my sponsor for 20% off. A strong body starts with strong feet. Is there anything else that we need to be aware of? What is this other stuff here? You've got like toe strengtheners as well.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  So before we get to those, with you know, the big toe and the four toes? This is when you can use that band. Right, so you just put your heel on there. Okay, you grab your four toes.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Right? It's like you're doing a bicep curl, but you're doing it with your toes. And you press into the band. And you lift up. And you press it into the band. There is research, four sets, 12 reps. I mean, these are some of the things that they work on to improve function of the foot that helps with plantar fasciitis.

• 58:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  And then you go around the house and you grab the big toe. Keep that ball of the big toe on the floor. And then press.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  Right, and it's, it's a good place to start. You're building strength in your foot.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  And if you want to, if you want to really get after it, go for just the little guy.

• 59:07Steven Bartlett?

  Oh my gosh. Little piggy. Let's have a look.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  It's really wild because the abductor digiti minimi, the muscle that abducts the little toe is just as big as the big one. We like just sort of like, oh, that toe is just there to, you know, hit furniture. It stabilizes the outside of the foot.

• 59:28Steven Bartlett?

  What is the difference between someone that does this and doesn't do this?

• 59:32Speaker 00

  Well, let's start with pain.

• 59:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  They, and I use the word prevent injury. That's tough for me. You want to create an environment where you can have the best opportunity for function. So when people strengthen their foot, they are going to have a foundation that's going to have resilience to the rest of their system. This is what we, we walk on. You cannot build a jet engine on a paper airplane. I'm working with a lot of, you know, athletes right now are getting bigger, they're getting stronger, they're getting faster. And if you look at the rates of injuries at the foot, they're going up.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  Because we know the amount of loads that go through the foot when we walk and when we run. So if we want to do a bunch of squats and do a bunch of deadlifts and do all the sexy stuff, but not pay attention to the foundation on which we're putting all of this on, you're going to run into problems. So from a function perspective, you're improving your function from the ground up. You're providing a better environment for your body to decrease pain. And when we get older, it's, you know, you don't want to be chasing your tail with this stuff.

• 1:00:44Steven Bartlett?

  How does this stuff turn into mobility and flexibility? Because that's something I'm thinking a little about at the moment. I realize that as I do a lot of upper body workouts and stuff like that, when you watch me like pick up the weights and stuff, put them back down, I look like I'm, I've got the mobility of someone that you would think was double whaled. And I wondered if it, a lot of it starts with our feet.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  So, we talked about the big toe. When you're walking, the big toe has to extend a certain amount, okay? I'm gonna show you here. Okay? So when I'm walking, I have to have a certain range of motion out of my toe. And that gives me range of motion out of my knee and out of my hip. If I cheat the system, so let's say this is the only amount of range I have. Let's say I have a big toe that's only going to extend 20 degrees. You're gonna compensate. You might shorten your stride. You might take shorter steps. You might not get access to hip extension because your toe isn't going into full extension.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  So you will see some type of compensation. You know, the other one I think about is ankle mobility. You know, I was listening to one of your podcasts and you were talking about the story of you rafting in Bali, I think?

• 1:02:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  And how you were, you know, walking down the stairs? And how it's something that you want to be able to do? And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, if you were to ask someone...

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  If you wanted to continue to be able to do that as you age, what would you wear?

• 1:02:22Steven Bartlett?

  Probably a V2 max.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Endurance?

• 1:02:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Your hip strength, maybe?

• 1:02:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Right? Your core strength, your hip mobility? I think very few people would say ankle mobility and toe strength. But here's the deal. If you don't have a good toe strength, where are you going? You could be falling. If you don't have a good ankle mobility, same thing.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  So ankle mobility is a big one. Also, it gives us access when we squat, when we go up and down a stair, even walking.

• 1:02:58Steven Bartlett?

  So what do you mean by ankle mobility? Do you mean my ability to go like this?

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  This dorsiflexion.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  The ankle also plantar flexes, and it inverts and everts. But the one I'm talking about when you're, you know, this ankle dorsiflexion is something I look at with all of my patients.

• 1:03:19Steven Bartlett?

  And it's not stood up, is it? Sorry, it's not sat down, is it stood up? Like, he would...

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  If you, you can do, you look at it seated, yes, but you want to keep that heel on the ground.

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 1:03:31Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, that's, that's all we've got there.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  Okay. And we're looking for about, you know, between 20, 30 degrees. But this range of motion is very restricted. Remember the high heel conversation?

• 1:03:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  You walk around in a high heel for a long time, ankle dorsiflexion is affected.

• 1:03:51Steven Bartlett?

  And

• 1:03:53Steven Bartlett?

  what can I do to improve my ankle mobility to prevent myself getting injured or getting pains or issues with my lower leg, upper leg, back?

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  You know, I think joints, you have to look at joints from two perspectives, both mobility and stability. How well does it move? And how well can you control that motion?

• 1:04:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  Right? So you can work on static stretching, dynamic stretching. The other thing I would be looking at here, though, is the strength of one of my favorite muscles, which is the soleus, this big calf muscle back here. Okay? Because it's the soleus, right, that helps control this motion.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  And, you know, if you had a seated calf raise machine here,

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  and we wanted to look at baseline, like what can you do with your single leg seated calf raise?

• 1:04:51Steven Bartlett?

  Which is this one, right?

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  The capacity that the soleus can produce is it can put eight times your body weight going through your forefoot. That's a lot.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  So, there was a study that looked at return to run. So, they were looking at how much strength, if you will, can we produce out of a seated, single leg calf raise?

• 1:05:19Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  One and a half times your body weight, six times.

• 1:05:24Steven Bartlett?

  Well, six reps?

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Yes, single leg.

• 1:05:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  So you would put one and a half times your body weight plates, six times. That's a lot.

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  If you were to do it standing, holding half your body weight, six reps. But we don't train the lower leg like we do everywhere else.

• 1:05:46Steven Bartlett?

  No, especially men.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:49Steven Bartlett?

  And don't care about legs.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I always say it's, you know, the, the machine at the gym that should have the longest weight line is the seated calf raise machine and it's always open.

• 1:06:01Steven Bartlett?

  What do you see the biggest mistakes that runners make outside of the Alpha Flight issue, wearing those big cushion shoes? Is there a certain way that we run that is causing us problems? And also, are we running too much? Because some people, they really get hooked on running.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  I mean, I love it. I think running is one of the best forms of activity. I think if we wanted to keep it very simple, overstriding is the enemy.

• 1:06:28Steven Bartlett?

  Overstriding?

• 1:06:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:29Steven Bartlett?

  What's an overstride?

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  So if I'm running, right, here's my foot.

• 1:06:34Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  I want my foot to strike as close to my center of mass as possible.

• 1:06:38Steven Bartlett?

  As in, as close to your body as possible?

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:40Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:06:41Speaker 00

  So overstride would be as if I landed with my foot all the way out here.

• 1:06:45Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:47Steven Bartlett?

  Got you.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Our calcaneus, this heel bone, was beautifully designed to absorb shock. Okay? When I overstride and I can feel it, what am I gonna do? That's gonna hurt. So you're not gonna do it anymore. You're gonna overstride and you're like, "Ah, that hurts." So I'm gonna adopt my gait pattern and I might not overstride and bring that foot closer to me so you strike differently.

• 1:07:17Steven Bartlett?

  You want the foot to hit in line with your body?

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  A little bit in front of the body.

• 1:07:21Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  It's the heavy overstride you wanna avoid.

• 1:07:23Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  But if I can't feel anything,

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  you will know. That's the... The more stuff on the shoe, you can overstride hot and heavy and because you have all this cushion there, you're like, "Well..."

• 1:07:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  So that's, you know, the argument of allowing your foot to be able to feel things.

• 1:07:44Steven Bartlett?

  What about this whole thing with gates and stuff? Because sometimes when... When I was videoed from the back and someone in the comment section was like, "Your gait is wrong," or something, when you run, Steve. So I don't know what he meant. I couldn't see his qualifications. So I kept it moving, but...

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  Everybody has a certain gait.

• 1:08:03Steven Bartlett?

  What is a gait?

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  You have a running gait or a walking gait. It's just your... What happens when your foot strikes the ground to the time it hits the ground again. So you have certain stride lengths and step lengths. Okay? So when I'm... If you were... If we had a treadmill here

• 1:08:19Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  and I would have you start running,

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  that would be your running gait. I'd be looking at you from the back, from the side, from the front, and seeing what happens when your foot hits the ground, when it comes back up into swing phase, what's happening above the foot. So what are your hips doing? What is your pelvis doing? So you're really looking at the person and then you're also looking at, you know, what am I seeing that I think could be,

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  you know, a factor in either pain or poor performance?

• 1:08:54Speaker 00

  And then you see those things and you're like, okay, let's start working on this. But this is the interesting thing with gait, right? Someone will see something and they'll say, okay, you need to start doing calf raises.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  If they also don't cue gait, right? Or let's work on your cadence. Let's work on some type of skill. Strength and skill light up different parts of your brain.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  So you can get really good at calf raises and great. But if you want to be a good runner, you have to look at different things.

• 1:09:30Steven Bartlett?

  So what's the most common issue with someone's gait?

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  The overstride?

• 1:09:34Steven Bartlett?

  Overstride.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  And then also kind of the crossover.

• 1:09:38Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that a bad thing?

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  It takes away some of that efficiency. So oftentimes you can see, you know, if someone's crossing over, when they land, they'll have more of this kind of collapse through the extremity, if you will.

• 1:09:52Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  Okay, we want to control the foot when it hits the ground. That's why the hip conversation, right? The hip controls what happens at the foot.

• 1:10:02Steven Bartlett?

  Are we supposed to be barefoot?

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  We are supposed to let our foot function how it was designed. And that is letting the foot feel the ground. Now, we live on man-made surfaces and we walk around on concrete. So for me to say, yes, we should all be walking around barefoot. That's a conversation that's difficult to have. But the stronger that your foot becomes and the more resilient that it becomes, you can handle these things a lot better. And it makes interacting with your environment so much more fun and easy.

• 1:10:37Steven Bartlett?

  One of these.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  My daughter was a rock climber. And she was up in her room one day and she had the bands around her fingers. And she was like strengthening her hands. And I was looking at it and I was like, man, I'm like, I want one of those for the foot. And I'm looking for them and I couldn't find them. So I said, well, here we go. So I designed these and they're different resistances. So it's the same concept as you would with your hands. You just put them around your toes.

• 1:11:07Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 1:11:08Steven Bartlett?

  Give me the easy one. Which one's easy?

• 1:11:09Speaker 00

  That's the easy one.

• 1:11:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, here we go. Are they all the same size? Would you need different sizes for different size feet?

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  Nope. So when your toes splay... You can slide those on a little easier.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  My little piggy is completely redundant. It's doing nothing. It feels like it feels like it's disabled.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  Well, we're gonna change that. Okay?

• 1:11:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Speaker 00

  So, when you lift up all your toes, try to get your big toe to touch my finger. Yes. That's abductor hallucis. That's this muscle right here. So people that have like bunions, it's like just strengthen that muscle. Right? So you, that guy goes in and you hold right there. So now you're strengthening inside of the foot. You're strengthening the muscles inside the arch of the foot. If you can get that little guy to go out, you're gonna strengthen this guy. So you're just gonna lift all your toes? Good. And then spread? Reach him forward. Try to keep the tripod of the foot, though.

• 1:12:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I'm trying to...

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  Lift all your toes, but keep that tripod. One, two, center of the heel.

• 1:12:16Steven Bartlett?

  So lift?

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes, yes. And split, yes. Now press those toes to the ground as you spread them. Lift,

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  spread, reach. Oh, that's pretty.

• 1:12:31Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:12:33Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so, and that goes, you've got ones that get incrementally harder.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this would be harder, this would be hardest.

• 1:12:39Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:12:40Speaker 00

  So we're doing like thirty, forty reps a day. That's how you'll know if someone needs to work on this because they can't keep those points. So they're kind of like, it looks like their foot's on an ice skate.

• 1:12:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  So that's the front of the foot.

• 1:12:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  When you get into this part of the foot, the rear foot,

• 1:13:01Speaker 00

  there's certain things you want to pay attention to. We already talked about mobility at the ankle.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  But you also want to look at what happens when that heel comes off the ground? Because this is when all the magic happens. Because the foot engages, the intrinsic muscles engage. It's basically like I'm getting ready to, to propel forward. So there's certain muscles that you want to have some good capacity to be able to get your foot in this ready position.

• 1:13:33Speaker 00

  So two we can talk about is one that runs along the inside.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  And then, this is posterior tibialis, one of the very big stabilizers of the arch of the foot.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  And his best friend, which is the soleus. Those guys help do this to the foot, help invert the foot.

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  Okay? So go ahead and stand up for me.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Put your foot in here.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  I'm gonna put this around your ankles.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  There you go. Okay. Spread your feet a little bit. Toes pointing straight ahead. Which, by the way,

• 1:14:18Speaker 00

  we want to talk about gates. When I'm moving from point A to point B, my feet should also look like they're moving in this direction. If someone's walking like this...

• 1:14:30Steven Bartlett?

  With their feet pointed out?

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:14:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  I want to know why.

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  Do they have a bone in their lower leg that's rotated out? Which could happen. But if not, you don't get to walk like that.

• 1:14:49Speaker 00

  So, we want the toes pointing straight ahead as long as there's no compromise structurally.

• 1:14:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  Okay? So, what I want you to do here is you're gonna keep the ball of the foot on the floor. And I want you to drive your ankles almost like you were gonna sprain your ankle, right? So you're gonna push into that range out. So you're gonna take your ankles and drive them into the band.

• 1:15:15Steven Bartlett?

  Into the band?

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  Yep. Watch me here.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  Okay, so here. This way.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  Yes, now keep that big toe on the ground.

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. See, there's your other compliment.

• 1:15:32Steven Bartlett?

  That didn't sound like a compliment.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  But what you should feel here is that when you increase the arch of the foot, you should feel it also in the hips.

• 1:15:42Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like I just don't have an arch in my foot. I don't know, it's weird. I don't feel like I can...

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  How about this? Put your hands on your chest. Rotate to your left as far as you can. Keep your feet on the ground. See, that's pretty. See that arch?

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  Yes, now go this way. So that's another way to work on how the foot feels. Because the foot should change shape. It should lower and it should increase the arch.

• 1:16:10Steven Bartlett?

  So you recommend people do these types of exercise frequently?

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I mean, you're standing at your desk. You know, here's your movement break. You rotate 20 times. Let your foot change shape. Do your toe yoga. Big toe, four toes. Lift all your toes, spread them and reach them forward.

• 1:16:34Steven Bartlett?

  My physio gave me a towel and he put it on the floor and he said I have to like grab it and pull it up and grab it and pull it up as part of my recovery from my injury. Have you, do you, do you ever tell people to do that? You know that towel thing?

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't.

• 1:16:46Steven Bartlett?

  You don't?

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:16:47Steven Bartlett?

  What?

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  I don't want to get anybody in trouble here.

• 1:16:51Steven Bartlett?

  No, call him out.

• 1:16:52Speaker 00

  Okay. When do you ever do this?

• 1:16:55Steven Bartlett?

  Never.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  Correct. So unless you were, you know, and maybe in your initial phases of rehab, where you are just trying to wake up the foot. You want to, you know, towel scrunch, pick up marbles like they, you know, that's a very common foot exercise. But from a functional perspective, that never happens in the gate cycle. When you're walking and you're running, your toes never do this, or they shouldn't. Most people, when their foot is weak, that's one of the biggest compensations that you will see. They toe grip. You'll see them walking and it's like, you know, they start gripping the ground.

• 1:17:38Steven Bartlett?

  Feet are weak.

• 1:17:40Speaker 00

  Feet are weak.

• 1:17:40Steven Bartlett?

  That compensates something.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:43Steven Bartlett?

  I made the biggest investment I've ever made in a company because of my girlfriend. I came home one night and my lovely girlfriend was up at 1 a.m. in the morning, pulling her hair out as she tried to piece together her own online store for her business. And in that moment, I remembered an email I'd had from a guy called John, the founder of Stan Store, our new sponsor and a company I've invested incredibly heavily in. And Stan Store helps creators to sell digital products, courses, coaching and memberships, all through a simple customizable link-in-bios system. And it handles everything: payments, bookings, emails, community engagement, and even links with Shopify. And I believe in it so much that I'm going to launch... A Stan challenge.

• 1:18:26Steven Bartlett?

  And as part of this challenge, I'm going to give away $100,000 to one of you. If you want to take part in this challenge, if you want to monetize the knowledge that you have, visit stevenbartlett.stan.store to sign up. And you'll also get an extended 30 day free trial of Stan's store if you use that link. Your next move could quite frankly change everything. Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released.

• 1:19:08Steven Bartlett?

  We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released. And so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to doacircle.com. I will speak to you then.

• 1:19:42Steven Bartlett?

  Do you wear socks?

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  I do not wear socks.

• 1:19:45Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:19:47Speaker 00

  I just haven't found any that I, you know, love. My second and third toes, personal information here, are webbed. So basically, there's skin that comes up in between two and three. So as far as socks are concerned, most of the socks out there, like if you look at a compression sock,

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  when someone puts it on their foot, it literally like, with my bunion, you'll see my foot look like this. Because it's just suctioning my foot together and it's so uncomfortable. So my option would be a toe sock.

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  So a sock that, you know, just fits over your toes. But because my toes are webbed, I can't wear them.

• 1:20:31Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think is the most important thing that we haven't talked about yet that we should have talked about as it relates to foot health? And everything downstream from foot health?

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  I mean, I think, you know, big picture, like what I hope to do, like my passion is to bring awareness to the foot. Because when we start doing that and we pay attention from getting stronger from the ground up, things, life gets easier. And I mean that not just physically, but just like we talked about wellness, because you're able to move and get out there and walk and run and move like you want to. So that's kind of the big, the big picture here. I think we talked about the importance of foot strength and foot mobility and driving home the importance of footwear. I think the biggest, you know, or maybe the lowest hanging fruit for people is if

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  this kind of work seems overwhelming, like I have to strengthen my toe and do all this stuff, just wear a shoe where your foot can feel the ground and your foot can be in its functional position. Start there. Because the research will tell you just doing that, you will start to improve the strength of your foot. And I think that's, that's key. And start small, transition.

• 1:21:53Steven Bartlett?

  It's so interesting listening to so many of these, the comments on some of your previous work, people of all ages, but often people that are slightly older, talking about how transformative finding out more information about their feet has been and changing their footwear in particular. Reading this one comment here from this guy says, he's 65 years old, and when he discovered the zero drop wide box toe shoes, he lost all the pain in his feet, ankles, knees and hips within a couple of months.

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  I hear it all the time.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  I hear it all the time and it's, it seems so counterintuitive to us because I think we've been, you know, trained to think that our foot needs stuff. It needs support. It needs cushion. It needs spring. And that changes the dynamics of how your foot interfaces with the ground. So when you bring it back to what it was designed to do, those comments you'll hear, you will hear all the time. And it's, it's a wonderful thing. It's literally why I do this.

• 1:23:02Steven Bartlett?

  Is there anything else we should have talked about that we didn't? That you think is pertinent to anyone that's trying to get control of their foot health?

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I think, you know, I just want to make sure that we highlight the conversation of transition because I think that's where we lose people. Is this, when people listen to this, there's bells going off in their brains going, man, this makes sense. This makes sense. They want to go home, burn all their shoes and like go buy a pair of barefoot shoes and call it a day. You gotta earn your right. So there has to be that transition. There has to be that, I'm going to step. I'm going to build. I'm going to have a shoe spectrum. And that, that conversation of a shoe spectrum, there's a time and a place. You have your workhorse shoe. You have your cheat shoe.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  And you know when to wear what.

• 1:23:57Steven Bartlett?

  Where am I now? I'm, I think I'm in the workhorse shoe. I'm trying not to wear any cushion shoes as much as I possibly can.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Well, when you think about it with ankle sprains, this is what I find fascinating, right? When that thing heals, when your ankle heals, and you say, well, I'm going to go into a cushion shoe. Some of these shoes are getting, getting high. So you put the sole of your foot on a shoe that has a high cushion. You see the distance you have from your foot to the ground?

• 1:24:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:30Speaker 00

  So let's say you step on a rock. And you have poor proprioception because your foot can't feel real well because you have a history of ankle sprains. And you step on a rock and you have this far to go. Where do you think that ankle's going? So my ankle sprain patients, I want them close to the ground. I want them to feel. Right? So it's, it's pretty wild when people are like, I want to wear, you know, all this stuff.

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  You know, hiking boots, another conversation.

• 1:25:00Steven Bartlett?

  What's wrong with hiking boots?

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  Well, people will say, I need a hiking boot because I want my ankles to feel stable.

• 1:25:09Speaker 00

  And that's not what they do. It might be a, and there will be research coming out on this. When you wear a hiking boot, it's like a neurological hug. It kind of feels like, you know, I'm going to have this thing around my ankle.

• 1:25:23Steven Bartlett?

  And it's going to protect me.

• 1:25:24Speaker 00

  It's going to protect me. It doesn't. And when you walk down a mountain,

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  this foot has to do, remember, we talked about this, ankle dorsiflexion. If you have something that's going to restrict ankle dorsiflexion, you have transfer loads. So you end up transferring load to the knee.

• 1:25:46Speaker 00

  So, you know, when my patients say to me, I need a hiking boot, I say to them, listen, why don't we just work on getting your ankle more stable? Improving your mobility.

• 1:25:58Speaker 00

  So then you won't need to feel like you need this thing around your ankle. And that takes time.

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  But in the long run.

• 1:26:08Steven Bartlett?

  Is there an issue if I'm wearing the barefoot shoes at the moment? And then I start wearing like football boots again, or I think you guys call them cleats.

• 1:26:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a chance of me getting injured because I spent so long in the barefoot shoes? Now I'm.

• 1:26:22Speaker 00

  No, it's your, sometimes you can't do anything about the environment of the shoe. So think of a cleat, an ice skate, a ski boot. There's certain, you know, sports that require the stiffness. And so when you pay attention to your foot health, and then you put that foot in the cleat, you just make sure that when you get your foot out of the cleat, you do all the stuff. You take that kit, you roll the bottom of the foot. When I get out of my cycling shoes, even though they are wider now, they have wide toe box cycling shoes, I'm always doing stuff for my foot.

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  Because it's a, the Clet is an environment for the sport. So, you know, you pay attention before and you pay attention after.

• 1:27:09Steven Bartlett?

  Courtney, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that has been left for you.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  Oh, this is gonna be good, huh?

• 1:27:19Steven Bartlett?

  It is a good one. What do you fear you will most likely regret 10 years from now?

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  This is a battle that I have in my head pretty much all the time. I love my work so much. It is, it's just the reason that I feel that, you know, there's so much I want to do. There's so much I want to learn. There's so many ways I want to help people. And I work a lot. But I don't look at it as work. I, I enjoy it. But I'm also a mother. And I need to find that work-life balance. Where I, I don't want to fear in 10 years that I look back and said, man, I worked

• 1:28:07Speaker 00

  a lot, but I really wished I would have gone to her soccer game. So I've created this life for me where I can say, I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to her soccer game. And she gets mad at me all the time, but I tell her, I'm like, this is what happens when you own your own business. She's like, Mom, quit saying that. I mean, she knows I work my ass off, but at the same time, she also knows that I can drop anything and go be there for her at any time. And so that's what I really want to work on and make sure that in 10 years, I don't look back and say, gosh, I missed some of that.

• 1:28:51Steven Bartlett?

  As I'm often told, you don't get that time back either, do you?

• 1:28:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:55Steven Bartlett?

  It's not something that's very easy to correct.

• 1:28:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:58Steven Bartlett?

  Courtney, thank you so much for doing what you're doing. I am very much looking forward to your book because it's been a bit of a black box. I think my feet, my foot health up until more recently, when I discovered your work, but also just from this conversation today, it feels like I now have a better understanding of how this thing that I thought was largely irrelevant is having a big downstream impact on a bunch of things that I really, really care about. But also maybe most importantly is just having a set of actions that I can take on a daily basis, on a weekly basis to prevent finding myself in a situation where I'm older and I fall, or where I lose my mobility or movement, or the meaning in my life because I have something wrong with my foundations.

• 1:29:40Steven Bartlett?

  Hopefully, next time we see each other, I will have the strongest feet you've ever seen.

• 1:29:44Speaker 00

  I was just thinking, the next time we see each other, there's going to be so many more compliments.

• 1:29:48Steven Bartlett?

  On my feet.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  On your feet.

• 1:29:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, one can only hope. Courtney, thank you so much.

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:29:53Steven Bartlett?

  An honour, thank you.

• 1:29:57Steven Bartlett?

  Quick one, just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show. Thank you.