Are Barefoot Shoes Good For You? | Mark Sisson

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If I could go back in time, I would exercise differently.

Ancestors did not run. The premise of Born to Run, Christopher McDougall's book that you read and that I read, it was a great book. The premise was that we evolved as persistence hunters. But a persistence hunt isn't 2 hours of 7-minute miles.

Yes, not at all.

Chasing a gazelle down. Yeah, every day. And do you think our ancestors on a big day of hunting were like, well, we don't have a hunt today, let's go out for an easy 10-miler? Yeah, it was completely antithetical to health. It was a waste of calories.

If you can't feel the ground, there's a lack of communication there. Your body really, from the feet up now doesn't know what to do. And so now your feet aren't communicating with the ground, so then that's now going to disrupt your knees, your hips, your low back, all the way up through your entire spine. And so that's one of the reasons, just looking at the science or the philosophical idea behind why walking barefoot is so important, is, is that if your feet aren't right, your whole body's not going to be right. I mean, it's really the ground floor, the foundation. Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we've got a friend of mine, someone actually who recently moved in the Nashville area, Mark Sisson. Mark is the founder of Primal Kitchen. I've been following his content for years. In fact, he was one of the first people out there talking about food is medicine, lifestyle medicine, and really, uh, living by, by design. And so today we're going to talk about everything from barefoot— not barefoot running, barefoot walking, okay? We're going to talk about, uh, using food as medicine. We're going to talk about how he is in his 70s, which is blowing my mind because I would have said he could have been in his 50s or younger, and how to reverse your biological age, and so much more on today's show. Mark, welcome.

Thanks for having me, Josh. Good to see you again.

Well, you too. I know we just saw each other a few weeks ago in Austin, Texas, at the great, you know, Health Optimization Summit out. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. And, uh, you know, so many, so many great people there. But it was great just catching up there. I walked up behind you and I saw you and I'm like, well, I, I was like, who's the guy with the giant traps? And man, you're still— it's, it's unbelievable what great shape you're still in it. You just told me 71 years old. Yeah. I mean, what has been, you know, your biggest secret to being able to be this fit and healthy? I mean, I will say, I'm trying to think of— I don't know anyone who is 71 years old who's in as good a shape as you are. I don't know anybody.

You know, I, I would argue there's different metrics that we could use to define that, but sort of overall fitness, I'd probably go up against anybody. And when I say overall fitness, I mean I can't run a 10K like I used to run, and I can't bench press like I used to bench, and I can't— but I— but you know, as a combination of all those things at my age, I put together my own sort of decathlon, if you will, that includes how much, how much I can deadlift, how fast I can run, how long I can hang from a bar, how long I can hold a plank. Yeah. How long you can stand on one one leg with my eyes closed and my arms crossed. I mean, all these different metrics that we use to sort of define not just longevity but robustness, robust vitality. Yeah. So thank you. And I live a, you know, so you say, what do I attribute it to? I mean, I can't overlook genetics, right? I had some parents that contributed a pretty good predisposition toward a kind of ectomorphic, mesomorphic body type. But I've been consistent. I mean, that's really since the age of 12. I've lived this sort of healthy lifestyle with an eye toward, um, you know, being, being strong and lean and fit and happy and healthy and uninjured, uh, for as long as I can.

Well, the last thing you mentioned there, I think this is just huge with so many people. I know quite a few people who, uh, have tried to do what you've done in terms of they've been really conscious about working on mobility and stability and strength and some of those things. Yeah, a lot of times they still get injured. Yeah, I I think that's one of the biggest single things is, is injuries. That was huge. Yeah. So what are some of the biggest things you've done to both prevent injuries, but if also if you've had them, to overcome and heal them, you know, as completely as possible?

Well, I think the biggest thing to preventing injuries is paying attention, and that's also my biggest drawback when I look back at the times I've been injured, is sort of right on the cusp of an injury, I, I sort of knew I would have— I should have known intuitively not to do the one more rep. Yeah. Or the one more lap or whatever it was. So I'm a collection of injuries. I was in the gym the other day showing somebody my hamstring that I tore off the bone in an inline skating accident. I used to be a pretty good distance skater for inline skates. Tripped one night, did a split with my skates on, tore the hamstring. You know, should have had a surgery to repair it, but I didn't. Tore my lat at the age of 35 doing some gymnastic moves. Tore my lat, right? You know, I have like a— my lat was torn. I've torn my patellar tendon. I mean, I've got all these injuries that I've had. That, um, in— again, in retrospect, we're stupid. And, you know, I come from an ancestral point of view. I come from a very sort of Darwinian background. Yeah, of like, what did our ancestors do to get us to here? How did they evolve over, you know, millions of years of, um, behaviors that, that sort of favored certain gene expressions and things like that? And, uh, if you look back at our ancestors, they didn't get injured. I mean, if they did, they died. It was, it was pretty simple. I mean, maybe they got a little bit of an injury, but they weren't like out lifting weights and trying to do one more repetition for a, you know, personal record or something like that, and then, and then tear a bicep tendon or whatever. They didn't, uh, do one more set of, uh, uh, 200s on the track and, you know, tear a hamstring. So we have within us this ability to recognize when things are about to go wrong. And every time I've been injured I've, I've sort of consciously overridden that, that, um, you know, that sense of like, maybe it's— maybe, maybe your workout's done. Maybe it's time to stop this workout and live to fight another day.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think about like, my wife and I, Chelsea, we generally have had very few injuries. But when we got injured, the biggest injuries that I know— I still— affects me today, still affects my wife today— is when we were doing CrossFit. Yeah. And, you know, it was like this sort of competitive nature sort of started overriding what I think we knew was wise in terms of pushing ourselves. And I will say this too, the way that I— if I could go back in time, I would exercise differently than I did, especially in my early 30s, late 20s, because I look at, I look at my body and there are things like I herniated two discs in my back and my wife had an ACL tear from high school that she reinjured. And, you know, if we wouldn't have those injuries, if we would have been doing other things, I don't think we would've had those same problems. I mean, how much of that is true for you where maybe you'd exercise differently as you would in the past?

No, 100%. 100%. I mean, look, I am where I am today because of not just what I did and how I did it, but also the mistakes I made and the learnings that I had from those mistakes. So I would say in the last 15 years, my primary drive for exercise is to have fun, to enjoy what I'm doing, to play as much as possible, and to prepare prepare for play by doing things that contribute to the play in very— so a little bit of weightlifting, a little bit of sprints, a little bit of— yeah, a lot of long-distance training, a little bit of mobility work. And then once in a while, in a, in a competition, you know, a friendly competition— like, I play Ultimate Frisbee, right? Put it all together so that all those component parts that I built in the gym or on the track now come together in a, in a functional pattern that allows me to have fun, to play, to get get a tremendous workout out of it and most importantly not get injured. So what I would do is probably— and again, over this last 15 years, the big thing for me is what's the minimum effective dose of exercise that I need to achieve my result, not what's the most I can do, bust my ass, uh, leave the gym exhausted. I think people don't pay attention to how much central nervous system stress there is in certain workouts. And so you'd say, well, my muscles are tired and I'm, you know, I'm out of, I have delayed onset muscle soreness or I have all these things. Many times you also have a central nervous system overload that's gonna take days to recover. And if you don't pay attention to that and you come back the next day and the next day and the next day, much like, you know, not to call out CrossFit for this, but a lot of the CrossFit, protocol was, you know, you know, get kept going and going and going. Yeah, yeah. You know, as much as possible over time. And I think back on those, on those sorts of workouts that I did and said, well, you know, I would have been a better athlete. I would have— my career would have lasted longer as a competitive endurance athlete, for instance, if I'd stepped off the track 2 sprints before the, the workout was over, if, you know, yeah, I said it was over. So those are minimum effective dose. What's the least amount of work I need to do to look fit, because clearly we want to look fit.

Yeah.

But also to be fit as a result of that, to be robust, to be resilient, to come back from that workout stronger, not beat up, but stronger, given enough rest and nutrition, to be able to go into and live my life the rest of the day and then play a game 2 days later or go to the gym and get stronger 3 days later.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I kind of had a similar Well, I had a revelation recently where I, I was taught when weight training that you go until failure, until you're just, you know, and then, you know, and then afterwards you, then you go to failure again, you know. And one of the things I realized is like, once your muscles fatigue, your ligaments, your tendons have to take up more of the, the stress. And, you know, I, I don't know a whole lot of people where long term they, they, they what's actually causing them pain or, or lack of being able to go and do what they want, it's typically less muscle-related. It tends to be more joint and connective tissue, ligament, tendon related, or fascia.

Exactly.

Yeah. So I'm much more now, when I go to the gym and lift weights, I'm not going until I just can't do the last rep. I'll kind of go until that one's hard. That's okay. Yeah, I'm done.

No, that's, that's the metric everyone should use. And it's a, you know, you, you train that to be intuitive about it so that some days I get to the gym and I'm literally 2 or 3 sets into a workout I'm like, you know, it's not, today is not my day to train. I didn't look at my HRV or anything. I just sort of intuitively, 2 or 3 sets in, I'm like, nope, today I should have taken another day off, which I will. Again, central nervous system overload, which happens if you do the workout right sometimes, that gets as involved as just the rote contracting of the muscle tissue.

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people think that, in order to lose weight, maybe the number one thing they can do is exercise. One of the things I've heard you talk about is, no, that's not the case. That's not the number one way you should lose weight. And sometimes the way you exercise is different. Like, I, I know you and I both used to be triathletes. Yeah. So throughout my 20s and early 30s, in fact, in college, I was on a triathlon, uh, you know, on the triathlon team. I know that you were a really high-level triathlete. So we both came out of that world, and I used to think, hey, this is the ultimate way to you know, lose weight and be lean. But I know your philosophy is pretty, pretty different now.

Oh, totally. First of all, exercise is a horrible way to lose weight. I just wrote an entire book, Born to Walk, which the first 100 pages talks about how running in particular is a horrible way— it's a horrible weight loss strategy for most people who engage in it thinking that it is a good weight loss strategy. So what— where I'm coming from is Your body composition is determined probably 80% by diet. So, so when you become metabolically flexible, when you're able to burn your own stored body fat at rest, at low levels of aerobic output, even sometimes at high levels of aerobic output, when you're able to access your own stored body fat, you burn off that fat that you want to lose. That's the weight you want to lose. You don't want to lose muscle. So orchestrating a diet so you become metabolically flexible is, is the holy grail of weight loss. And that's And that has nothing to do with exercise. Now, once you've achieved that metabolic flexibility and you're able to extract energy from whatever substrate the activity that you're engaged in requires, whether it's the fat from your plate of food or the fat on your— stored in your body, whether it's the glycogen in your muscles or the glucose in your bloodstream or the ketones that your liver makes in the absence of glucose, um, this metabolic flexibility gives you— because now you're trending toward your ideal body composition, The good news is, number one, your appetite and cravings and hunger sort of dissipate or disappear in many cases. The other good news is you don't need to do that much in the way of exercise to get toned and strong and powerful and lean. So I tell people, once you've achieved this metabolic flexibility, then the minimum effective dose of exercise becomes walk a lot, as much as you can. Walking is the quintessential human movement, human exercise. Our bodies crave walking. We benefit from it. We get stronger as a result of walking. Go to the gym twice a week and lift weights, not 4, 5, 6 times. Twice a week, go to the gym and lift weights, lift heavy things. And once a week, sprint. Find some way to get to do a maximal effort. It doesn't have to be running. It can be on the Assault Bike, could be on the, on the elliptical trainer, could be swimming, could be whatever it is. But, but once a week, find a way to get a couple of sprint sessions in there. And that's all you need to then tone up that body that you have already carved as a result of losing the stored body fat that you have on you. It's an amazing revelation. It's freeing, it's empowering, and yet too many people, like, fight and they struggle and they want to suffer. They want to go out and run 6 miles a day and then get back from the run and they're exhausted. And because the running was so stressful to their body, they secreted all these stress hormones, this cortisol. The brain said, we've done way too much, we need to sort of compensate and overeat. And so people who start running as a weight loss strategy find that they never really lose the weight. Yeah. And what happens is their body composition shifts because running is catabolic. Running tears muscle tissue down.

Yeah.

There's no doubt about this. Running hard tears muscle tissue down. Not sprinting, we'll talk about that, but running metronomically, 6, 7, 8-minute miles, you know, uh, all of that is, is catabolic. And then the stress hormones are, are, uh, they promote fat storage. And so over time you lose a little bit of muscle, you gain a little bit of fat, even though you weigh the same.

Yeah.

And you haven't lost any weight.

Well, you know what, one of the keys, and this is why having the right diet and exercise together so powerful is when you can get your hormones at their optimal levels. And this is why— I mean, this is, you know, I did an episode on the testosterone crisis, and I've done another episode on just women's hormones, thyroid hormones, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, just being so, so off. And how when you have those issues, uh, you're just getting less bang for your buck with everything you do. But diet is one of the greatest things to fix this. You know, in Chinese medicine, they would recommend eating, you know, a lot more yang-building foods, which is pretty much really lean red meat, you know, lots of lean red meat. Yes. And then other things that— I mean, they have other things like deer antler and Panax ginseng and fenugreek and other herbs that are somewhat helpful. But it's, it's primarily almost all diet in these ancient forms of medicine of how you fix your hormones.

Right. And to that point, um, running, uh, metronomically, you know, lots of, lots of high-end aerobic stuff, either to triathlon training, lowers testosterone. Yeah. And, you know, the reason that the guys in the Tour de France used to supplement with testosterone and try not to get caught was not because they wanted to build huge muscles. They wanted to have enough testosterone to wake up the next morning and feel like they're alive. Their testosterone levels were so low as a result of the inordinate amount of work they were doing. So that is another aspect of what happens to men in particular who are long-term, you know, distance runners, is testosterone tends to lower. Conversely, if you're a weight trainer or you do occasional sprints, it raises testosterone, it raises growth hormone. So once again, you know, we're talking about a complex system here where we're talking about, about testosterone, uh, we're talking about estrogen for women, we're talking about, um, you know, leptin and ghrelin and insulin and glucagon and all these different things that are literally controlling how the, how the genes in our bodies upregulate or downregulate, how they, how they tell our bodies to build this protein or store that fat or do It's, it's all about this hormone control. And, you know, orchestrating the, uh, a diet that optimizes for that is part one, and then orchestrating a, a training program that optimizes for the building of muscle, the increase of power and speed, but doesn't become catabolic is another part of that.

Have you ever done a biological age test?

I don't— I'm sorry, I don't believe in those things.

You know what, you don't need to. Here's what I would say if you did. Yeah. It would be much younger than your age. And I think part of that is what you just said, is really dialing in, uh, what the ideal foods are, what the ideal movement is in order to optimize your hormones biologically. I mean, you've probably seen this data on— I mean, men in their late 20s today have the same level of testosterone that men did 50 years ago in their 60s. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's dropped, uh, 33% over the last 50 to 70 years. I mean, male testosterone levels. So I mean, it is really really an issue. Yet again, one of the things— and then I see all these men, the first thing they're doing is running and getting testosterone replacement therapy. Yeah. Versus using movement medicine, food medicine, all these things that they could do to optimize their hormonal levels. Yeah.

Now let's be clear, I've been doing TRT, I've been doing testosterone replacement therapy for about 10 years. I started my mid-60s, and I, I make no, you know, uh, apologies for that. You know, um, it's— I'm not doing, you know, tren, I'm not doing, you know— yeah, I mean, clearly I'm not, I'm not a bodybuilder type, but it's, it's been a a very integral part of my, you know, being able to keep up with my schedule that I set for myself, which is, you know, it's aggressive for someone my age, clearly. Um, when I say a minimum effective dose of exercise, it's still— I've still titrated it to the, the things that I want to achieve. I still want to go out and play Ultimate Frisbee with 20-somethings.

Yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah. And again, I'm not, I'm not trying to put down hormone replacement therapy. I will say my philosophy is put it off as long as you can. Yes, use herbs, even use things like peptides. Let's do some things to put it off because right now I don't know if you know how many men are getting on them in their 30s already and sort of relying on those. It's just, it's, it's too early. In fact, in Chinese medicine they recommend start doing stuff typically in your mid-60s, you know, and it's a lot of, uh, but all that being said, you know, one of the other things that, um, I love that you talk about, and by the way, I just want to kind of show off my shoes here. So these are my Peluvas. This is Awesome shoe company. Yeah. So I gotta tell you a quick story. My wife and I literally met because of barefoot shoes. So my wife was online watching videos of, uh, of, of people of this barefoot running trend, and I posted a video forever ago on YouTube of barefoot shoes. Now, at the time, those were Vibrams. These are 10 times better. Yes. And I want to share why. But, uh, Chelsea sort of, you know, learned about me, then she came to visit my clinic, and we, we met and we hit it off because of, because of barefoot shoes. But I, I've I've been wearing some form of barefoot shoes for— see, that would have been in 2011. I mean, probably 2010, 2009. I mean, a long time ago. And part of me, I read a study on how much traditional shoes cause torque in your knees, in your hips, and all the issues related to that. Talk to me a little bit about— one other thing I just want to mention with these shoes, why I love them. Most of the shoes today, they have far too much A lot of the barefoot shoes, they have no cushioning, right? I found that really bothered my joints. Yes. If I wore them too much, or when you're wearing regular shoes, most of them have the cushioning is too soft, right? So then that was causing issues. The thing I love about these is it's a good amount of cushioning, yet it's a barefoot shoe, yet the, the actual— it's a very, very high-level rubber, uh, cushioning to where you're not kind of— it's throwing off your running gait. It's not causing other issues there. So, I mean, the way that they've been— these have been designed are just kind of extraordinary.

I appreciate that. I mean, that's 2 years of R&D before we even launched our first product. But going back to my experience, I started running with these same 5-toed shoes in 2007, and I was an immediate adopter. I'm like, this is amazing. I get this. I've hated shoes my whole life as a career runner. I did not like the shoes I ran in. I got injured as a result of the thick cushion shoes because my knees, you know, Feet need to feel the ground. Feet need to feel what's underneath so that by the time you weight that front foot, when you're walking or running or jumping or whatever, the brain has all the information it needs on how to orchestrate the entire kinetic chain. How much to scrunch the arch, how much to allow the toes to articulate individually around that rock or that stick, how much to roll the ankle outside to accommodate the tilt or the texture of the ground you're walking on so that it does not tweak the knee. How deeply to be able to bend the knee to offset some of the, the, the, the jump that you're making or whatever. All that information instantaneously hits the brain by the time you weight that front foot if you're barefoot, which is how we spent millions of years of, as humans evolving. Like, we evolved with these feet as a primary sensory organ. It's our connection with the universe is our feet. Yeah. And then only in the last couple of hundred years have we had these thick cushion padded shoes that negate all of that input, all that sense. So Understanding how feet work, the fact that there's thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of nerve endings in the feet that want to feel the ground, we had to create a shoe that allows for individual toe articulation. So even though you can get a, a shoe that has a wide toe box, for instance, if you've been scrunched up in a, in a shoe your entire life and your feet are deformed, misformed, as there's overlapping toes sometimes, yeah, feet You don't then automatically find this wonderful display outward when you take off those shoes. It's a reason tens of millions of toe spacers have been sold over the last couple years. People recognize their feet are messed up. So we create a shoe that has these individual toe slots that allows for the ground feel. So just enough, just enough padding, like an extra 3 millimeters of padding beyond what the previous shoes had to give you the sense of like walking, like if you're walking on a sidewalk or concrete, it feels like you're walking barefoot on a putting green. Okay, just enough, but also thin enough that you can still feel every cobblestone you walk on, every, every hole you step in, the dimples on the, on the manhole covers. You can feel all that, and it feels wonderful. It feels amazing. The foot wants to feel that. So, so we combined this ground feel with toe splay, toe articulation. The big toe wants to be out. It wants to be away from the other toes because it is the is the primary driver of every push-off, whether you're walking or running or sprinting or jumping or dancing. It's the primary driver. It's the last thing to hit the ground, and you want that to be there. You don't want it folded up against the other toes. Yeah. And then, and then over time have your feet like become more duck-footed because you're trying to roll off that big toe and you can't because it's not there. So we've— we're now 2 years into this experience, you know, many tens of thousands of customers who are like, oh my God, this is the greatest, you know, I had no idea I was messing my feet this way until I put these on.

Yeah, it's really the first time that I've worn barefoot shoes and actually said these are, these are perfect in terms of the cushioning, in terms of the ground feel. You know, I'm, I'm currently, uh, working on a book, um, on cellular healing and reversing biological age and a number of things. And in this book, one of the things I've discovered in writing this is that the first breakdown that happens in the body physiologically is cellular communication. And, and then it's so like circadian rhythms is a great example of this. If you're getting too much blue light at night or not getting enough light in the morning, there's this sort of confusion by the body and there's this sometimes this communication issue that happens also when you eat toxic food or lack nutrients and you lack nutrient signaling. So communication is key. It's key for relationships. You know, if you want to have a great marriage or a great friendship, you got to have great communication. I think about walking barefoot or wearing barefoot shoes in a very similar way. If you can't feel the ground, there's a lack of communication there. Your body really, from the feet up now, doesn't know what to do. And so now your, your feet aren't communicating with the ground. So then that's now going to disrupt your knees, your hips, your low back, all the way up through your entire spine. And so that's one of the reasons, just looking at the science or the philosophical idea behind why walking barefoot is so important, is, is that if you don't— if your feet aren't right, your whole body's not going to be right. I mean, it's really the ground floor, the foundation.

Absolutely. We talk about the, you know, the entire kinetic chain, the posterior chain, and again, all of it depending on this communication with Earth. Now clearly we can't go barefoot all the time. By the way, I would prefer everyone go barefoot all the time.

Yeah.

So if we could get away with that, and if we had the surfaces to walk on that we could do that, then I would be barefoot most of the time. But we've created this environment that is pavement and concrete and hardwood floors and marble floors and tile floors.

Yeah. And all this other stuff, not to mention all the stuff we could be stepping in.

So we need some kind of footwear. So my design was, okay, I want to come up with the optimal footwear, the optimal shoe that allows the foot to do what the foot wants to do, what the foot is designed to do, without compromising the ground feel, without compromising the toe splay, and, and have it be, you know, a good-looking shoe, because that was also important.

Hey, what is your view on this? Because there, there are a lot of practitioners that have pushed for or pushing for now, like things like orthotics. You know, I remember all the way back in college when I was doing triathlons, I started getting just terrible shin splints. And so, I mean, I tried orthotics first. It might have helped by like 5 or 10%. It never really helped fix the issue. But what's your view on orthotics?

Oh, so let me tell you, I go back to my original adoption of the Nike, the thick Nike trainers, and I went to running, from running 50 miles a week in Chuck Taylors, because that's all we could do with those minimalist shoes, to 80, 90, 100, 110 miles a week in the thick training shoes. And I got horrible knee pain. I got chondromalacia, okay? And that's from lack of ground feel. So I couldn't run for almost a season, and I was, I was catatonic. I was miserable walking around with a cane because of this. I go to see this guy, the one of the first guys, Stephen, Stephen Sabotnik in Hayward. Miracle cure, made these hard acrylic orthotics for me that prevented overpronation of my feet and kept me, my feet always in a slight supinated position. Okay, my knee pain went away and I ran for 3 more years until my hips went out.

Yeah.

So this is, this is a perfect example of not fixing the original issue but putting a shim in one part of the kinetic chain.

Yeah.

And then having the kinetic chain, having the weakest link be the next thing to break. Which in my case was my hips, which ultimately ended my career. So my hip tendonitis was so bad that I went from qualifying for the US Olympic trials in the marathon, 1980, to not being able to run. And as a result of that, I wound up learning how to cycle and swim a little bit, and that started my triathlon career. But it was, it was the shoes that ultimately caused me all these problems, and it was the orthotics that just put a Band-Aid on one of the problems and then put it further up the kinetic chain.

It's almost like taking a medication, right? Yeah, you get one symptom, but over time it's going to cause a whole other symptom. You're not getting to the root of the issue, you're just, you're just creating symptoms.

Feet want to pronate. They, you know, our foot is this multiplanar device that lands in a certain way and then folds and rolls and, and, and, uh, you know, supinates, pronates, and does all these amazing things that involve torque, that involve, um, loading of certain coils. The Achilles is one of the greatest loading mechanisms there is. And the people who are sprinters have, you know, this great ability that you— they don't use their calf muscles when they sprint. They're always coiled, right? They're always just landing and pushing and landing and pushing. So feet are the integral part of that. And if you start to mess with the— that structure by scrunching the big toe over and forcing, forcing the, the foot to kind of compensate for how it wants to— it wants to pronate off the big toe. Well, when you can't pronate off the big toe, you roll, you sort of roll inward, and now your arch becomes a little bit flatter maybe. And because you've been wearing supportive shoes that don't allow your arch to even work, because most of the footwear that we wear today has an arch support in it, your arch gets weak, weaker and weaker. So you lose all of this. Like, I know runners who run 50, 60 miles a week have the weakest foot muscles I've ever seen because they're always locked into this, encased in this supportive springy box-like trampoline. And yeah, their lungs are fit and their whatever, you know, their quads are fit and whatever, but they're not functioning appropriately as a total human being using the entire kinetic chain. And then you put them in minimalist shoes, train them appropriately, and they go, "Oh my God, I found a whole new lease on life. My running improved immensely because now I finally learned how to run the way the foot is involved." The foot should be absorbing most of the impact of the landing. The foot muscles should be absorbing most the impact of a landing of every time you stride if you're a midfoot strider. But if you're a heel striker, you wear these thick cushion shoes and the shoes forgive this bad form, and then you get injured. 50% of runners get injured every year. Like, that's worse than the NFL. 50% of all runners get injured every year. The, the so-called high-tech running shoes, the, of the running boom of the last 50, haven't, haven't altered that one iota.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, one other thing that happens with a lot of shoes, and another reason why I love these, is that there is such a dramatic heel-to-toe drop. Yeah, on a lot of these shoes today, and that's going to disengage your posterior chain, right? As there were a lot of people, they're walking around, and, and I always had this issue because I played soccer and I did triathlons and cycled a lot, so I became incredibly quad— it's like everything I do, like my quads want to just take over for the rest of my body. And so I've really focused on, in terms of— in one of the reasons why I believe even doing CrossFit, I ended up herniating two of those discs in my back, was my posterior chain was weak. So now I've spent the last 10 years since then really focusing on rehabbing, healing my posterior chain. But one of the last things to really click for me was realizing, oh well, I'm wearing shoes where I, I'm at this massive disadvantage when, you know, you shorten your calf muscle, right?

Which, which which is, is a strong component of that kinetic chain. And in shortening the calf muscle, you put more pressure on the Achilles, and it wraps around, and then the plantar fascia. And then because you squish the, the big, the big toe against the other toes, if you've been wearing regular shoes to train in, um, people talk about plantar fasciitis because it's an -itis, it's an inflammation, but it's been rediagnosed in many cases as plantar fasciosis, a lack of blood flow as a result of scrunching that big toe over. And that plantar fascia area does not have much blood flow to begin with, and now you've you've, you've cut it off even further. So many people who are trying to roll out plantar fascia problems or, or stretch them out, that's not the issue. The issue is let the big toe abduct away, let that area give more blood flow to that area. Yeah, yeah.

So one of the biggest things I've done, like, now if I have somebody with plantar fasciitis now, the first thing I have them do is get barefoot shoes. And then for a period of time, I typically have them— don't know if you know what Softwave is, but you know, something to kind of help get blood flow and break up some of the, you know, that, that fascia. It is blood flow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very cool.

Yeah, that's great. Well, again, you know, I think just— and if everybody's— everybody who's listening or watching this, I want to encourage you, consider going barefoot. Uh, the health benefits are numerous. I'm going to have Mark talk about that now, but I just want to say, for me, it's been so good for my back. It's been so good for engaging my butt, my hamstrings, my entire posterior chain. Um, I can tell my feet are much stronger. Improved balance. And stability. So there's loads and loads of benefits here of going barefoot. Listen, you don't have to be barefoot all the time if you don't want, you know. If you're on a hospital floor for 12-hour shifts, you might need some cushioning a little bit there. I don't know, Mark probably has an opinion on that. But overall, I wear these, you know, probably 50% of the time, you know. I wear them when I'm working out every time, um, and just when I'm going around the house or running errands or doing a lot of stuff. But I mean, these are the shoes I wear most of the time. Yeah. You know, most people don't think twice about what they put on their feet, but they should. Conventional shoes with raised heels squishing your toes and these thick soles can actually cause pain. Think things like plantar fasciitis, bunions, and more. In fact, 83% of Americans suffer from chronic foot-related issues. And the biggest remedy I could ever recommend is Peluva. That's why I wear Peluva. Peluva is a 5-toe, minimalist shoe that mimics barefoot movement, restoring natural alignment while looking stylish with just enough cushioning for daily life and athletic training. Peluvas let each toe move independently the way God intended us to walk. When I wear mine, which is almost every day, I feel grounded, connected, and like I'm actively supporting my body's healing. Your feet are your foundation. Start taking care of them with Peluva shoes. Ready to take the first step towards better movement and foundational health? Visit peluva.com. And use the code Axe at checkout for 15% off your first pair.

Well, again, if you can't go barefoot, I would say wearing a 5-toed shoe is the next best thing. To your point about in the hospital, people on their feet 12 hours a day, a lot of nurses are now wearing Peluvas and singing the praises.

Wow.

I've got a couple of surgeons who are doing— and when you do surgery, you are standing in one place for hours, right? And I've got surgeons wearing, um, a Yeah, this is, this is a little bit thicker version. It's a leather, it's called the Nappa, the, the Paluva Nappa. It's a 5-toe shoe. Even though it looks like it's really thick, it's still only 12 millimeters total stack height. Wow. But just enough so that when you're standing on concrete all day long. So, so benefits of going barefoot. First of all, you know, from Chinese medicine, the big toe is wired directly to the brain. Okay, so I want to do an experiment with, uh, pre-dementia, you know, people early, early onset dementia barefoot and minimalist footwear to see if there's any connection there. That's, that's one of my goals. Um, in the gym you'll hear all the bodybuilders go great toe— the big, the big toe is called the great toe— great toe, great ass. The great toe is directly connected to the glute. Wow. And so the reason guys and girls will train barefoot in the gym on leg day, they want that big toe to be abducted away to plant into the ground, to press it into the ground, to fully activate the glute when they're doing squats or lunges or even deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, or whatever. So, so there's a tremendous benefit to engage— you've, you've felt it, the, the increased engagement of muscles in the leg just by having the feet splay outward.

Well, and think about how important this is for men, because your glute is probably the— is your, you know, your largest muscle And it's probably the most important for building testosterone. I mean, we know that building up, you know, these muscles is going to support testosterone. And so men, if you have low testosterone, going barefoot, especially on butt day and leg day, that's important. For women, very same thing. If you want to build healthier, a better backside, again, you know, going barefoot is going to help.

So, you know, you walk barefoot in your house and you walk up the stairs. Let's say you have some hardwood floors or whatever, and you walk up, notice that you step on the metatarsal head and your feet splay. That's probably the most your feet will ever splay outward is when you are stepping up onto a step. Or if you're sprinting down the beach at low tide on the, on the wet sand, you go back and look at your, your footprints. That's the greatest amount of splay your toe— your feet want to splay. They, they would— they, they're, they're designed to splay outward, not just to improve stability because that's a greater, a more stable platform, but to enhance the strength of each of the component parts of that foot. So every toe should be strong and independent on its own. Clearly the great toe, the big toe, should be the most. Courtney Conley— do you know Courtney? No. Okay, she's a chiropractor. She's probably, I think, one of the most knowledgeable people about feet and foot health and foot strength in the country. And she will tell you that one of the greater predictors of mortality in people over 65 is foot strength, and particularly big toe strength. That ability to not trip and fall because of either balance or this— and/or the strength that you have in your foot to recover if you do trip. Because, you know, if you trip, you don't have to fall. It's not obligatory that you fall and, you know, and break a wrist or break hip. The number of times I trip hiking, for instance, you know, over the years with a backpack on, but never fall, I catch myself, you know.

Yeah.

So I think the ability to, to engage that big toe to build the foot strength so that your, your feet are stronger, they're more mobile, they're more resilient, your balance is better. You want to, you want to go barefoot for that to get that, that toe splay. I encourage people to do that test where you're, you're maybe barefoot in your your living room and close your eyes, cross your arms, and then stand on one foot and see how long you can hold that. Well, some of that's balance in the brain. Most of that is foot dexterity, the ability to recognize— the brain to recognize exactly how much off you are, and then to be able to apply pressure to either the heel or the toe or the little toe and to be able to maintain that stability. It's a great— I do that between sets when I'm in the gym. It's a, it's an easy way to, to recover and yet do another sort of form of exercise. While you're waiting for the next set to come up.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that I'm very, very thoughtful of now is not just exercise. You know, when I was in my 20s and even a good part of my 30s, I was much more thoughtful about how do I look good? I mean, you know, and feel good, but overall I wanted to feel good in the short term. It wasn't, I wasn't thinking about as much, hey, in my 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s, and how can I be, my height of my, you know, be very fit and active, right, during those times. And so a lot of times, you know, today people have, uh, maybe one form of exercise they do and they've only focused on that. It might just be weight training, it might just be running. But I think having a real sense now about things like stability, right, balance, like you're talking about, is just so important. I know that when I think about the people that I know that are the most fit in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, those people do— there's a couple things in mind. One, they tend to walk a lot, you know, and a lot of times they hike. They do a lot of uphill and downhill.

It's the best.

And then the next thing is, sometimes I'll see these guys at the gym. I remember I walked up to this guy, he's actually a doctor, he's in his 70s, and he gets on one of those kind of half balls, you know, in the gym, the Bosu balls, and he's always doing appropriate, you know, balance stuff. And, and he says, this is what keeps me from injury. It's what's, you know, he, he, he attested that as being a big part of him being so fit, you know, at that, at that point in life.

Yeah, I mean, one of my, um, I used to have a slackline in my backyard in Malibu. I'm trying to figure out where to put it in my house in Franklin right now. Yeah, but a slackline is a great way to develop that sort of balance, and it becomes fine motor skills because a slackline isn't about, isn't about, you know, like a trap, a tightrope walking kind of balance. With a slackline, everything happens below the waist, and you're trying to bring the line back underneath you. You're not trying to stand on top of, say, a metal pipe or something like that. So slacklining is a great way to do that. Again, those, those one-leg exercises, the balance exercises. But I mean, uh, so, so many of the, of the little things that we used to not think were valuable, like planks or whatever, they're incredibly valuable. And so I throw— we do a lot of these mix and match, a lot of these different workouts these days. Like, I, like, part of one One of my other routines in between sets at the gym is just a dead hang from a pipe, from a, you know, from a, from a bar, because grip strength is another way of, uh, another metric for longevity.

And as I said, interesting, foot strength and grip strength, your hands and feet.

Yeah, so hands, I mean, feet are just hands that we developed in a different way, but many people who don't have— this is the, I mean, it's best example. People who don't have arms use their feet with very much dexterity. They can do lots of things with their toes. Yeah, um, they just— we, most of us, never have that occasion to do that. And so we wrap them up in these attractive pointy Italian fashion wear, you know, and, and, and try to attract the opposite sex and, and, and use that as a means of passing the genes along to the next generation. But we evolved surviving as a result of using using that contact that we have with the ground as, as the, as the primary focus. Like, everything we do, whether you walk or sprint or jump or dance or get out of a chair or get out of a sofa or get up off your desk, everything you do starts with contact with the ground. And you should— why you would not optimize that? Like athletes, I just, I get— I'm blown away by how little attention world-class athletes and, and, you know, NBA players, NFL players, baseball players don't pay attention to their, to their foot health and their foot strength.

Okay, can Can I tell you one of the next big things I think we're gonna see in pro sports in the future is customized shoes for athletes and they're gonna be barefoot. I mean, they're actually gonna be customized for the individual in that way.

Yeah, no, I mean, so you mentioned two things that I find fascinating. So you played soccer and you did triathlons. So soccer, a soccer cleat wants to mold your foot into a bat so you can strike the ball. For whatever reason, a cycling cleat athlete wants to do the same thing. Cycling cleats are the— some of the most uncomfortable shoes you'll ever wear, certainly going back to the days of, of you and I competing in triathlons. Yeah, me even before you. And I remember those days when I would get back from 100— so you know the term the brick, right?

Yeah.

All right, so I, I coined that phrase. I don't know if you know that. No, that's my English. Yeah, yeah. So if you go back through history, so I used to coach a professional triathlon team in the late, mid to late '80s, and I would have him do a brick every week, and it was 100 a 100-mile run, sorry, 100-mile ride followed by a 10-mile run. That's the original brick. And, but we would do these rides and I'd get off the bike and I could not feel my feet after 100 miles. And then I'd put on running shoes and be expected to, you know, hit the ground literally running and go do 10 miles. So I've always been fascinated by whoever it was that said a cycling foot is much more efficient when you scrunch it all together, bind it all together, together, wrap it tight, and then apply it to a cleat and, and start applying.

Well, can I tell you what's interesting is, one, I, I, I— even though that's the way it's been done, I don't know that that is actually the best way. Now, maybe with striking a ball, because that's a little bit unorthodox in terms of a movement. We're not going to do that often. But I will say there's no doubt that if you are wearing something that's more barefoot, you should be able to cut laterally better. Yes. And the other thing I would say is the most common— from what I remember, the most common injury in soccer players is hamstring tears. Why is that? Well, you get so quad dominant that now your hamstrings are weak, and so they're just, you know, there's such an imbalance there, it's easy to, easy to tear.

Well, and you get quad dominant— great point— you get quad dominant because you've bypassed 30% of the forces generated from running or jumping or should be created or absorbed by the muscles in the feet. 30% of that should start and be, and be allocated to stronger foot muscles, whether it's again a strong arch, a plantar fascia that's, that's been coiled and pushed off, the ankle rolling a little bit. And what do we do? We tape those feet up, we tape the shoes up, and we wear these thick restricted things. And then all, all of that force now has to be— has to begin, has to emanate from the ankles up. And that's how we become that quad dominant. If we were able to— this is one of the things I've said for a long time— but if we were able to retrain the feet and develop a wide, flatter, certainly stiff cleat for athletes like that that could absorb some of that initial shock. We would offset, we wouldn't tear the ACL because of that. We wouldn't pop the Achilles because the entire foot was taped up. And the first point of release was where the calf and the Achilles come together. Boom. It totally makes sense to me. And yet that's what's happening. And yet we're back into these, trainers that are, you know, 30 years behind the scene or 35 years behind as they tape their athletes up.

Yeah. You know, you wrote a book here, it's called Born to Walk.

Yeah.

So I remember reading Born to Run years ago, you know, and I think that it's so funny 'cause if I would've heard this in my 20s or 30s or my 20s, I would've thought, yeah, eh, you know. Waste of time. Waste of time. Or that's not that exciting.

Right.

But the reality is, is that when you, we go and look at these blue zones, and we— and, and now working with people that are, uh, you know, and really studying longevity, there's no doubt that walking is one of the optimal things you can do. And you can mix it up. You could wear a weighted vest. You can do hiking, of course, up and down. I mean, it's amazing if you go up and down some pretty steep stuff, what an amazing workout— work that is. It's, it's really—

well, not only is it— you're right, so it's good cardiovascular work, it's good muscular work, and if you do it in minimalist footwear, it's also amazing foot strength work because every step you take on a hike lands you in a different position. Now, if you're running and you're landing in a different position, unless you're really well trained, it's a gamble. If you're walking, again, if you're walking, as I say, by the time your foot lands, the brain already knows. I already feel this rock. I already know I should like slide to the outside. I should roll the ankle a little bit. I already know how deeply to bend my knee. And so one of my favorite workouts to do— I'm going to the south of France for July and August. I do every year. I do a lot of hiking there. One of the reasons I designed this shoe was to enable me to walk 10 to 12 miles a day in the South of France, because that's sort of our yearly pilgrimage. And I do, I hike until I find a meadow or some 200 yards, then I jog or I run or I sprint, then I, with good form, and then I regain, resume my hiking. And so it's a combination of hiking and a little bit of running and put it together. And it's— I think it's the ideal workout. It's what we used to call it fartlek in the old days, right? Speed play. Oh yeah, speed play. But it's, it's an incredible workout. Um, I'm not running— I'm not running metronomically 7-minute miles. It doesn't appeal to me anymore. And it— and there's no, there's no goal for me to do that. Why would I do that? I'm not— again, horrible way to lose weight. I don't need to lose weight. I don't want to lose weight. It's catabolic to run that often. That far. Yeah, if you want to run once a week, fine, but most people— the only people who should be running are ectomorphs with great lung capacity, uh, who are genetically gifted with their VO2 max and who have a high pain tolerance. Those are the only people who should be running, and they shouldn't even be running, but if they want to compete, then, yeah, then let them compete. Yeah, but our ancestors did not run. The premise of Born to Run, Christopher McDougall's book that you read and that I read, it was a great book. The premise was that we evolved as persistence hunters, right? But a persistence hunt isn't 2 hours of 7-minute miles chasing a gazelle down every day. No, a persistence hunt is, uh, crouching and stalking and jogging and sprinting and hiding and tracking for 2 hours until the beast is like overwhelmed. And we have this, you know, cooling system, this evaporative cooling system, our sweat glands, um, enable us to go up and jab a spear in it, which we, you know, that's our weapon. And then not do it every day, you know, every once in a week. You didn't do a persistence hunt every day. So my whole premise here is lots of walking, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, lifting heavy things. And our ancestors lifted rocks and stones and they built shelters and they carried babies and they carried carcasses and they climbed trees, lifting heavy things. And then sprinting once in a while. Our ancestors had to sprint for their lives once in a while, not every day, but once in a while. Those component parts allowed the men to go out and do a persistent hunt once a week, once every 4 days, whatever it was. And do you think that our ancestors, after they'd had a big day of hunting, were like, "Well, we don't have a hunt today. Let's go out for an easy 10-miler." No. It was completely antithetical to health. It was a waste of calories.

Well, you know, even if we go back even 100 years ago when most jobs, I think maybe it's even 200 years ago, 50 years ago, but 50% of jobs were agriculture-related. And you had blacksmiths and everything else. And it's like, we were spending so much time outside. Yes. So much time in the sun, barefoot in the sun, fresh air. Yeah, very, very—

in the soil. Uh, the, you know, the germ theory of disease, all of that, right?

Exactly. And so, so much of sickness today is just living out of tune with nature. Yeah. You know, it's just living out of tune. You know, I, I believe that in order to optimize health, one of the things that I've taught is it's all about connection. And one of those things is, uh, you know, on this show we talk about physical, mental, spiritual. One is connection to God, the other is connection and love of other people, having those relationships. And then it's really living in tune and connection with the earth— when the sun goes up, when it goes down, just living in tune with nature. And so that's one of the reasons I've been such a big fan of your work and all the things you've done. I know that, you know, you're the founder of Primal Kitchen and some amazing, amazing food products and then now with Peluva. Again, and so much of this, one of the things that I— and I've been— I read your newsletter back and probably started in probably right when you— I don't know when you started. I was gonna say 2008 is when I started reading it. So I've been reading it for a long time, and you're putting out great content. But a lot of it is living in tune, you know, eating things in their most natural form possible, walking in your most natural form possible. And, um, and I love that you've done this with this new shoe brand, Peluva. And it's just awesome. So I want to encourage everybody to go out and check out these shoes, and they're stylish. That's another thing, you know, I love— we've got some leather here, we've got some, uh, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that.

So this is, this is a loafer. This is the Miami Loafer.

This is a casual shoe. Um, and then nice to slip on, that's great.

Thank you. This is a, um, this is our ATR. This is the Terrain shoe. This is a trekking shoe. I have a lot of people trekking in this, a lot of people rucking in this, a lot people who are training for, um, trail running. And by the way, most trail runners don't run, they just hike fast.

Yeah, you know that. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the, the fast ones do, but most people just hike fast. Perfect shoe for that. It's got an increased tread on it. Um, we just launched, uh, this is my own personal one, this— we just launched a golf shoe.

Wow, really?

It's going to crush. Yeah, I mean, you know, some of the top golfers who have always felt like they need the ground feel. Yeah, not had that with the, with the, with the shoes that they have. And I've already I have 600— because I wear test all my shoes, I've already worn some of this off just walking on concrete and pavement and stuff like a lot. But it's an amazing shoe. So we are so excited about the possibility of changing the way the world thinks about foot health, foot strength, and how that integrates with the entire, again, with the entire physical body, the kinetic chain, hormonal systems, all of this. It all starts with the feet.

Feet. Wow, it's so powerful. Well, again, I'm a huge fan here, and I wear these constantly all the time. And again, you know, I think for so many of you, um, you'd be blown away at just the benefits of just wearing barefoot shoes 50% of the time and during your workouts and wearing these types of shoes. And as I mentioned, this is the best brand out there in terms of the foam is perfect, the fit is perfect. Um, just the way you've done it, it's just so fantastic.

Thank you, I appreciate that. And what I'll tell people is I think this is the most comfortable shoe you've ever worn. Yeah, once you, you know, Some people—

it takes about 2 weeks, I think, to fully adapt. Yeah.

But overall, yeah, yeah, within a couple of days you go, oh my God, like, I can't believe, like, like, how, how dexterous my toes are and how great this feels, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. And especially if you've got chondromalacia patella, if you have plantar fasciitis, if you have back pain, if you have knee pain, if you need to rehab your ankles, it's great for that. But also it's great to prevent all those things for longevity, for your health fan. So I want to encourage you guys, go and check out Peluva here by Mark Sisson. These shoes are amazing.

And hey, should we talk about that?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. No, so we have a 15% off introductory deal for any of your viewers, listeners, um, and it's Axe.

Code Axe.

Code Axe.

And so, so go to peluva.com, okay? That's P-E-L-U-V-A.com. Use the code Axe, that's A-X-E, and 15% off. So, Mark, that's so kind of you to do that.

No, it's my pleasure. I want, I want the world to experiences.

Yeah, yeah, I do as well. We're so grateful for you, for everybody who subscribed to the show, who shares this podcast out there. And again, every— everybody I bring on here, like Mark, it's because I want you to take your health to the next level. No matter what you're doing, I want you to prevent the injuries. I want you to be 90 years old playing with your grandkids, bringing them to Disney World, or rucking and hiking here, you know, traveling through Europe or France, like, like Mark here is able to to do. Uh, and so anyway, just thanks so much for watching, everybody. And hey, if you're watching on YouTube, what was the biggest piece of advice that Mark shared today, or that piece of wisdom that you thought, wow, I didn't know that? Or, or, and have you worn barefoot shoes before? Have you worn peluvas? Hey, we'd love to hear from you on YouTube in the comments section there as well. Hey, thanks so much for watching. We'll see you on the next episode.