Episode 630: Dr Sariya Saaybe

0:12Scott McMillan: Welcome to The Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint. Whether you are a brand new runner or you already have a great mustache, we're here to help you increase your running knowledge and present it at a practical level. This is The Running Public.

0:33Scott McMillan: When you're ready to take your training or racing to the next level, go to the runningpublic.com. We have both monthly subscription training plans,$19.99 a month. And Bracken and I both offer one-on-one customized coaching. Again, go to the runningpublic.com and check out our offerings. So it's just me today. I'm supposed to have my co-host and I forgot he's on vacation. So you're stuck with just me. So you're either welcome or I'm sorry. I don't know which one it is yet. We'll find out. Yeah, we will. Sariya Sabai, that is correct, right, Dr. Sariya Sabai? Sabi. Sabi. Okay, Sabi. And you've been in physical therapy and motivational speaking and helping the best of the best rise to the top for a while now, from what I'm understanding.

1:20Scott McMillan: Yes, sir. That's kind of been my calling. Yeah. How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? I am 46. 46. We're not far. I'm 43. So I saw a photo. The reason that you sent a message to the running a public account and I went to your website and I saw a picture of you running barefoot on the roads. Yes. And I was like, I got to talk to this woman. Is that common practice for you? That's all I do if I can help it. But so, you know, and you're going to have to slow me down because I get so excited about this. I will go forever. But yeah, for me, if I can run barefoot, I will. So my philosophy and, you know, there's, of course, a huge history behind this is that footwear is for protection, not correction.

2:13We've kind of gotten away from that over the years and definitely seeing injury rates rise because of it. And I was a horrible, horrible injured runner until I started doing this. So yeah, if I put something on my feet, it is bare minimum what I need to protect myself from the surface.

2:32Scott McMillan: Okay. And you ran, I mean, the one picture I saw was from like an ultra, right? So it was like the end of an ultra, completely barefoot. Yes. Wow. Do you remember, I got in this rabbit, this YouTube rabbit hole of watching like all the Olympic marathons that were videoed. And there was a gentleman in the 50s, an African. Do you know who I'm talking about? Baby Bequila. Who won the marathon? Okay, well, see you no more than I do. Some things I know and some things you'll know. So this will be a good discussion. What do you think of my hokas?

3:11So I'll preface it by saying this. In terms of, I kind of hate anything that is other than just protection. And protection means different things to different people, right? I grew up as a tumbler. So I grew up barefoot. I grew up in the country, on a farm. I barely ever wore shoes. And so barefoot was very natural for me. And then when I started distance running, I was completely peer pressured into it, by the way, and I knew I'd be horrible. But everybody's like, you got to get these shoes. These are the right running shoes. I went to the running shoe store and they fitted me and I'm like, okay.

3:43So I was a world team power tumbler, you know, in the gym six, seven days a week since that from six to 20. And I had never had one knee problem ever. And now I'm doing like a 10, 11 minute mile hamstring around the block and my knees hurt so bad. I couldn't walk down the stairs the next day. And it was ridiculous. So anything that interferes with what our feet naturally do is a problem for me. Now, I wouldn't need as much protection as someone else who did not have that history of barefooting growing up. My feet are very, they're used to it. Also, they're just differences in the way people are made, you know?

4:25So my husband, as I'm short and stocky. I am all fast twitch fibers, like ridiculous amount. And my husband is the exact opposite. So he's got long bony skinny feet. He also was a collegiate tennis player. So he spent his life jamming his feet into very tight shoes. And his feet are actually deformed because of it. And now he switched to barefoot running as well and has done ultra marathons. But his transition was slower and he needs more protections on rocks and things like that than I do.

4:53Scott McMillan: So you were a gymnast basically is when you say tumbler. I see I saw videos and photos of you, you know, working with little gymnasts and such. So are you referring to something different? I am actually. So this is the much lesser known cousin. It's under USA Gymnastics, but it's power tumbling. So if you get a chance, you got to check it out. It is ridiculous. It feels like flying. So it's a 40 by, it's a, yeah, it's a long rod floor, fiberglass rods. And at the elite levels, you don't ever put your hands down. So it'd be eight skills in a row and you never put your hands down. So it's all flying, pounding, flying.

5:30It's all power, 110%. So if you want to know the difference, if you ever put me on a beam or the bars, you'd see. I can't do anything.

5:38Scott McMillan: Because you need your hands to do that, obviously. Yeah, it's a completely different sport. So that's artistic gymnastics versus power tumbling. Yeah, I also did acrobatic gymnastics, which is where you have partners. So would that be like, so you're still doing this flying around thing, but you just have to land on your feet every time and can't use your hands to move you through space. Interesting. Okay. Is that your sport origin? I guess just to get to know you a bit, that's your origin of sport, huh? How does somebody get into that? I had a lot of energy and I was already flipping off everything at home.

6:12So my mom put me in it and I was six. I don't remember a time that I didn't do it. And it was just one of the best things on the planet that ever happened. I had some of the best coaches ever. I'm still in contact with them today. and I still coach and, you know, work with acrobats and gymnasts and I love it.

6:32Scott McMillan: Oh, in St. Louis? In the St. Louis area, yeah. Okay. Kind of all around. And so then I must ask, just so I understand a little bit about where you came from, would be, did you always know, what came first for you, I guess? Did the physical therapy, doctor, physical therapy route come right away out of, like, undergrad into that or was this a later discovery for you? Yeah, that's a great question. I did not know. I think it's kind of crazy that we're supposed to know what we're supposed to do at 18. And I agree. I had no idea. So I just started temping and doing different things and it was fine, but wasn't really going anywhere.

7:12So when I looked at what I could and wanted to do, my whole life had been as an athlete and I had spent a lot of time in physical therapy. And I'd had some amazing PTs that always got me back to doing what I loved. And I thought, well, that would be a really cool thing to get into. So that's how I got into it.

7:29Scott McMillan: Okay. But right out of the gate, so you did go the physical therapy route pretty quickly. No, you didn't. I was 23. Yeah. When I went to PT school. Yeah. So I did some temp work and some other things and coaching, of course. I was a professional hand balancer. So did some different things before I got a meeting. Coaching tumbling at the time. Yes. Okay. And then, so then, where did you go to school out of curiosity? Maryville, Maryville University. Okay. Is that local there? I'm sorry. It is. Yeah. It's a private, it's a private school. We're, we're very, we're very special. Yeah. Very special.

8:05Scott McMillan: They kick out some real high performers. Yeah. So then when did you, when did you discover slash, I think you said got tricked into it or forced into it running. Gymnastic realm and running, I don't see a lot of parallels, at least from the 10 ,000 foot view. So talk me through that. Well, so to put in perspective, when I was in junior high, I got into track and I absolutely loved it. But I did 100 meters. That's it. I did relay. I did hurdles and I did dash. That was it. And if you asked me to do anything over it, it was a real bad show. And I loved it. And I even made varsity as a freshman, but I got shin splints so badly that I couldn't run or tumble.

8:51So I love my coaches. They were doing the best they could, but they were not educated. You know, there were teachers that got put in charge of the track team. So nobody really knew anything about it. So I had to quit. So then in PT school, one of my favorite professors, my exercise phys professor, he was a marathoner. And he would just wax poetic about the joys of marathoning. And I'm like, that's cute. That's not going to happen, though. And he got everybody to do a marathon relay. And I did not want to be the one left out. So I was like, okay, well, that's fine. I'll be horrible at it, but I'll do it because I got a lot of grit and I can push through it and it'll be fine.

9:32So I was horrible at it, really, really tragically horrible. And I thought, well, it's my build.

9:38Scott McMillan: What do you mean by that? Oh, my gosh. If you, okay. So let's put it this way. I did it, right? And I got the training regimen. I stuck to it because I can push. I can push my body. For better or for worse, I can push my body. I got through to the race. And in my mind, if I were to walk any of it, that would be like cheating. So I was determined to run the whole thing. And there were people looking at me as I'm going up a hill, just like wheezing like a 10-pack-a-day smoker and looking like I'm about to pass out. And you can just, I can telepathically hear them saying, just walk, girl. You're good.

10:14Just walk. It'd be okay. I'm hurting. And I'm slow. It just, everything was bad. Everything. Everything.

10:23Scott McMillan: How far did you run that day? That was a marathon relay. So that was like six miles. And that was five more than I'd ever run before. And that was in college. That was in college, yeah. That was in college. Okay, well, that doesn't sound like a great first experience. No. But you know, it's a thing with running and you know this and everybody who listens to you knows this. Running is this bizarre thing and it kind of gets in your soul and it hooks you. It's communal. It's something that we are all very naturally designed to do. And I kind of fell in love with it even though I hated it and I thought it hated me back.

11:02So I just kept going.

11:04Scott McMillan: I think the appeal in that situation, I mean, there's a whole sector of people who are going to turn around and never revisit. I think it's just the way it is, right? But then there's that sector of people who tend to sort of finish what they start or they tend to be high performers. And this one thing humbles them quite badly. And it's scalable. And it's obvious that the possibilities are limitless. and so that hook of slight improvement and not letting something like that win and stubbornness like there's a whole sector of people who possess that uh talent or not right i mean but but how many conversations do you have like i mean so i i'm a run coach right and i also work with athletes and just we'll call it gen pop in the gym and half of those people refuse to run won't run i mean this is my life is running and they i mean i cannot get them to no matter what and we've tried and let's just run the block today, I'll go with you.

11:57Scott McMillan: And they still are like, you know, my face is on the dartboard on their wall, right? They won't. So there's something in you probably that didn't know this was resonate with you. Do you think there's any truth to that? I think is what I'm getting at. Oh, 100%. Yeah, there definitely was that I'll show you kind of middle finger to running at the same time. It was like, all right, so this is hard. Well, I'm gonna conquer it because that's what I do. There really, the reasoning didn't go beyond that. But just, you know, it's communal and I want to be with the people who are now doing it because now we have this big group of people doing it and I don't want to be the Yahoo that can't.

12:34Scott McMillan: I use the word idiot endearingly, but Yahoo is a good one too. So what happened after that then? So you trained, I guess it's very interesting because this seems like this is a very big, like, this is where it'll end up merge your career and then sort of one of your personal passions end up merging. So I think this is important to understand. Um, what happened after that? So I did what I had always done up to that point and just worked my butt off. I was, you know, PT at that point. And so I thought I know a lot about the body. I have access to all a huge network of people who are extremely knowledgeable.

13:10I know how to read the research. So I did all the right things and I worked for five years. And over the course of those five years, I got worse.

13:23Scott McMillan: What do you mean? I mean, I went from being able to run that marathon relay to barely being able to run a mile. And it was slower than ever and more painful than ever and just worse. Everything was worse. Due to pain or injuries or setbacks or biomechanical efficiency, really. So this is the same roadblock you ran into in high school. It was, but different way. So I had plantar fasciitis. I had, both of my knees were extremely painful. Cuboid syndrome. Yeah. Stuff I'd never had tumbling, which is interesting because that should be way harder on my body than what I was trying to do. I'm not talking about, you know, a B-B-B-Kila level running here.

14:06We're talking about just an 11 minute mile around the block.

14:09Scott McMillan: And that's what our listeners like to hear about the most. You look at our downloads and you take an elite level runner who people are very interested in hearing from, but then you take somebody who kind of, I don't know, fought for it from the bootstraps and aren't naturally gifted. And it's much more relatable, honestly, uh, and probably even more inspiring. So you look at our downloads and generally our best episodes are, um, the, the people not like you cause you're obviously a top performer, but in a way somebody who wasn't like, yeah, my first mile ever ran was six minutes and I only got faster from there.

14:41Scott McMillan: Like that's, less common and less relatable. So, okay. So then you battled for years and hit roadblocks on the injury front. You talked plantar fasciitis, cuboid syndrome, some other stuff. So walk me through what happened. So huge shift. And my husband got into running the same time as I did because it's what you do when you're suffering. You pull those you love in with you. Totally. Yeah. I did that with my wife, actually. I will say I did that with my wife. And it went swimmingly well for a few years until it didn't. And now we don't run together. Oh, no. Not too late. No, I agree. We tried our best.

15:23Scott McMillan: It didn't go down in flames. It just was like, I don't want to anymore. So we tried. But anyways, I did drag her into it. So continue. I like it. I like it. So we got to the point where we'd go snowboarding every year. So we were getting ready to go. and my husband was like, all right, we take this crazy, we drive from St. Louis to Colorado. So crazy long road trip. He's like, well, I'm going to download some books, some audio books for the trip. I'm like, okay, great. He's like, what about this one? It's called Born to Run. And I'm like, oh, good. A book about running. I'm like, I can sleep through that one.

15:55That'll be fun. Yeah. So, yeah. So, cause I very much had a love hate relationship with this. Well, I couldn't sleep. And as I'm listening to this and I'm sure you're familiar with the book, Have you read it? Yep.

16:10Scott McMillan: Yep. Years ago, yes. Okay. So as I'm listening to it, I thought, this kind of makes sense. This guy is not a PT. He has no science background. He has no running background. But it's making so much more sense than all the things that I've been taught and been trying and everything. And I thought, you know, when I got home from that trip, I really kind of had this come to Jesus moment. I thought, you know, everything I've done has only gotten me worse. So I'm going to burn it all down and I'm going to start from nothing. I'm going to start from just me. So I didn't do any of my prep or any of my things.

16:46That was 2009.

16:49Scott McMillan: Okay. So yeah, 17 years ago. Long. Okay. Yeah. So I didn't do any of my prep, didn't do any of my things, no stretching, no pre-anything. I used to time my eating and all the things, but I just got on my treadmill barefoot and I ran and it was the first time in five years I didn't have any pain. The first time. I was blown away. It changed everything. Were you in pain beforehand or you had taken a break from running and then? Nope. I was in pain all the time because I never took a break from running. I just, the mileage just kept going down and down and down. And I would do all the PT things in between to try to cobble myself back together, but I would just run whatever I could.

17:30So no, I was in pain. I was in pain snowboarding. I was in pain when I got home. I got on, I got on, I started running and it did not hurt. Nothing hurt.

17:38Scott McMillan: Most of your feet, is that what you dealt with a lot of issues with? Feet and knees. Knees were bad. Feet and knees. So interesting. I have this experience. I shared this with our listeners a couple of weeks ago. So, and we are, I am open to anything and learning. You know, we could, the next interview could be the biggest proponent of high stack height shoes. And I'm going to listen just to understand the philosophy. So funny enough, I've been dealing with plantar fasciitis. Um, I just ran a recent couple 50 Ks and, uh, tuned up my vert work and my planners been a non-issue for years, but now it's back pretty full force.

18:16Scott McMillan: And I had a pair of shoes blow up on me in an interval session last week, last week, a pair of Nike, you're going to hate this Nike alpha flies. Okay. And the soles came detached from the upper completely. They blew out to the point where I was wearing like a shoe sock. Just the upper was on my foot. I ripped. So then I'm like, well, I have one shoe on and one basically sock on. Are you following me? Oh, yeah. And they know this has been a theme. I tried to super glue them together. I'm an idiot. So I rip off the other sole of the shoe. Okay. I have the intervals pre-programmed in my watch. Like it's got to happen.

18:57Scott McMillan: The rest time is coming down. I'm like, okay, I'm going to run my next interval basically barefoot on the road. It's what I did. I was notably slower, by the way. And I was like, F this. I'm going to pause the workout. So I ran home, which was only about a half a mile, barefoot, got a different pair of shoes, restarted my watch and resumed. And what I'm asking you is this. So my planner blew up so bad that I could not train the next day. I had to take two days off and now they put me over the edge, limping around. I just found it fascinating because on one hand, I'm talking to you who just said, I went for a barefoot run on the treadmill and I had no pain.

19:39Scott McMillan: And the exact opposite happened to me. Granted, I went from 40 mil a stack to nothing. What do you make of that? I think it makes perfect sense. And if going back to the book, Born to Run, Christopher McDougall, it's a phenomenal read. He actually, when I ended up working with Harvard and starting a running clinic with them, he came to our opening, which was, I didn't want to fangirl on him, be like, you've changed my whole life and scare the man. But I was pretty excited. It makes perfect sense. So when this book came out, there was this huge rush of people like me who were like, oh, my gosh.

20:12So everybody went out and instead of running 13 miles in their elevated cushioned heels and all with all the bells and whistles, they ran 13 miles barefoot and they all got hurt. And they said, there's this barefoot thing doesn't work. And they put their shoes back on, didn't look back. So that makes perfect sense to me. You know, everybody is different. Everybody is different. So even though I was running in the super supportive shoes, the rest of my life was basically still barefoot. So I had a lot of strength. I'm still tumbling all the time. I had a lot of intrinsic foot strength and my feet were tough.

20:45So for me, the transition, my feet were fighting those shoes tooth and nail. They hated every second of it. And they were altering my mechanics. So when somebody is dependent, I don't mean that in a bad way because it's not and everything's transient. But when someone is dependent on those shoes, taking them off and then just going crazy is more than likely going to end up badly. So the first thing I have people do if they are interested and people who come to me for help in it. By the way, this completely changed my approach to the foot and ankle with my patients, with everybody. I started three running clinics after that.

21:28I went from being the girl who couldn't run who was terrible at it to helping all these injured runners and People are giving me their patience if they were foot and ankle They gave them to me and before that I hated when they walked in the door because I didn't I was like I can't get them any better. I can't get me any better. I can't get them any better. This is just the way it is so The first thing when by the time people come to me usually they've tried everything else just like me and They're open to something which sounds crazy. And I think it's interesting it sounds crazy because really it's just using your body without any kind of support, which is what we do with the entire rest of our body.

22:02We treat our feet differently than we treat any other part of our body. And it's fascinating because there are 33 joints in the foot, 33 joints. Anytime we interfere with that, we're blocking out motion in 33 joints. There are 20 muscles just intrinsically in the foot and another nine extrinsically. So there's a lot of genius this machinery in there that we are trying to interfere with. So anytime somebody comes to me, if they're already dependent on shoes, the first thing I have them do is just walk barefoot in their house as much as they can tolerate. And we start there and we go from there.

22:37I don't have them. And then they're doing exercise barefoot as much as they can tolerate. And it just depends on the person. But yes, long-winded answer to your question that, yeah, that makes perfect sense to me that it would blow up your plantar fasciitis doing what you did.

22:52Scott McMillan: Well, okay. Well, I have a lot of questions about this, this whole potential transition, like if people are chronically injured, and I assume does this go for like any, like if you're having hip issues, if you're having soft tissue to bone, to tendon ligament issues, anywhere in the chain, like you believe that this rule can apply for people no matter where the source of the injury is or 110 110 so I've seen this hundreds and hundreds of times over the years in the clinics because I know now I exclusively work with runners I exclusively work with lower chain um that's all I do so when you say lower chain do you mean like SI down hips down knee down primarily I'll do it okay but but I'm very niche um okay is that what's considered the lower chain knee down I don't know you could count hip in there too but okay I don't because I don't, that's not my jam, but I include it in all of it.

23:49But yeah, you get to the spine and I don't, if someone needs spine specific work or up, I, I refer them because that's just not my specialty. But, um, yeah, so, so that, think about it. Okay. So if I'm gonna rewind us back to the seventies, which is really when we started jacking with our shoes, right? We can thank Nike for that one.

24:11Scott McMillan: And really, what was that? I mean, it was basically, I mean, I feel like shoes on the running space, you're more of an expert than I am, but I mean, of course, to provide a little traction, but mostly just to protect your foot from whatever's on the surface of the earth, right? Like really, they were much more minimalist. The old Adidas, even pre-Nike, were just a piece of rubber just to prevent a piece of glass from going through the bottom of your foot more than anything and make it look cool, right? Isn't that how most were made initially? 110 percent we really did not see the elevated heels or any kind of stairs or counters or anything like that until the 70s and that's when it started with nike and they thought we'll put an elevated cushion heel on there and we'll absorb these forces and people can take longer strides so they can run faster and all these wonderful things will happen well nike has phenomenal marketing so it blew up along with our injury rate if you look at the injury rate particularly with patellofemoral pain syndrome which is the number one running related injury it has skyrocketed since the 70s skyrocketed i mean we're like epidemic proportions gymnasts and football players aren't getting hurt as high a rate as recreational runners it's insane so and the more interesting thing is we understand that we've known since, okay, so the 70s is when they really started doing this to the shoes.

25:301980 is when the first research article came out connecting the dots. We know that an elevated cushion heel promotes a rear foot strike. We also know that a rear foot strike is associated with a ground react, increased ground reaction force. So when you hit the ground, it sends a shock up your body. So we know that those two things correlate and we've known that since 1980 when this study came out. So we've been literally studying this for the past 40, 50 years, and we know it. So many studies have come out. Dan Lieberman, who was mentioned in Born to Run, I got to visit his lab up at Harvard.

26:05He's really interesting, did a huge study on this in nature and these ground reactions. So we know that these things are correlated, but again, it's been so widely accepted. It's its own monster now. We're talking about billions of dollars worth of budgeting.

26:22Scott McMillan: so the marketing is strong yeah there's um well first of all i'm not a big fan of high heel to toe drop they don't the the lower the drop they tend to feel much more mechanically fluid to me so i'm i'm team anti large drop the interesting thing is is you either have you have like your two divergence i feel like in footwear and you have you know you have the ultras and you have the vivo barefoot and you have a few others who are pretty much zero drop um but on the other hand of the super shoe you know wave which i'm sure i can't wait to get your take on that um is the stack heights and the heel to toe drop seem to be going up and up my favorite models that used to be a four are now an eight and they don't feel nearly as good as they used to um and so then i have to go find a new model but then that new model goes to a 10 mil drop and i'm like are you kidding me you're a 10 mil drop and so then you start to fight like the if the uh hoka cello x2 is objectively faster in a lab do they care does it matter to people right meaning like well the ones who will survive it will throw a bunch of you at the wall but the ones who can survive is going to be a fast shoe but at what price i guess right so was so i guess what i'm asking is was the was the introduction of stack and heel to toe offset was that purely a speed thing potentially or was it a protection thing by at least their initial intent?

27:50Scott McMillan: Do you know? It was both. It was. It was both. So, you know, and it makes sense if you accept the premise that we are supposed to be landing on our rear foot, which I don't. So, and I know there's debate about that and that's all fine and dandy. But if you come back to it from a purely mechanical standpoint, And you talk about injuries anywhere up the chain. So if I put anything between your foot and the ground, I'm taking away really incredible protective mechanisms, your proprioception, how your joint and everything responds to the ground. That feedback, pain is our best teacher. Because if you hit the ground wrong and you're barefoot, you're going to make an adjustment.

28:32If you hit the ground wrong and you don't feel it, you're going to hit hard. It's going to happen higher up the chain. You're going to feel it higher up the chain because you didn't feel it at your foot. Does that make sense?

28:42Scott McMillan: Makes perfect sense. I mean, I assume I've run under the philosophy that whatever the issue is, it either probably starts at your foot or it starts at your hip, but it starts, it doesn't, like if your knee hurts, it's probably not your knee. Exactly. So that premise. Right. So that's an incidental joint, right? The knee does nothing. I shouldn't say it does nothing, but in terms of joints, it is pretty darn simple. You know, you look at 33 joints in the foot. The knee is, it does this. That's it. Right. So if it's patellofemoral pain syndrome is literally just pain at the patellofemoral. That's my favorite diagnosis because it's a throwaway.

29:13It doesn't mean anything. It means your knee hurts. And it doesn't, nothing happened to your knee. You don't have a torn ACL. You don't have a torn meniscus. There's nothing going on there. It's just hurts. And it hurts because of something happening below it or above it. More often than not, in my experience, it's below it. So yeah, the sac height and all that, it was to protect. And again, I reject the premise that we're supposed to be landing on our heel. So let's think about that. What is people think of running as fast walking, which of course it's not. So walking is a series of single limb to two limb stance, right?

29:49So you're rocking over your heel. It's what you should be doing. That's what the heel is for. That's why it's rounded at the back. When you're running, it's a series of single limb landings. You're basically landing from a jump every time you hit the ground. So if I were to tell you, I want you to go do a layup. But when you land, I would like you to land your heels. You'd look at me like I was crazy and then fire me and go hire somebody competent. But that's what we're telling people to do. And that was Nike's premise.

30:17Scott McMillan: I mean, I understand the concept, what you're saying. Yeah. It's not an efficient nor safe way to land. And if we're landing single-legged thousands of times in a run, we don't want to be leading with the heel is what you're saying. The reactive forces are too dramatic, right? Exactly. The calcaneus is a giant bone. It can't absorb force. It can't absorb shock. It can't adapt. Okay. So let's rewind for a little bit then. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and then I'll You got to rein me in because I get really excited. No, no. I prefer passion over apathy. So, okay. So you went for this run on the treadmill.

30:54Scott McMillan: It felt, you're like, okay, that was actually nice. I understand how you could get into it a bit more seamlessly than some because it sounds like you spent, I mean, if you were a tumbler, you were barefoot, a lot of force on your feet already to start with growing up, et cetera, running around as a kid. So what happened after that then? Just walk me through like that. And then the self-discovery of transitioning to a specialist in the foot and ankle and all that. I just like to like kind of go through that real quick or not real quick. Yeah. You know, I think it's true with anyone who is in a niche field.

31:28They're in that niche field because they personally benefited from something and they were so excited about it and it changed their lives so much they had to share it. You know, it wasn't even an option anymore. So I was fortunate. I was already in the PT space. So I was already exactly where I needed to be to help other people with it. But for me, it just, it literally, I went from my mileage decreasing for five years straight and being in so much pain that I, a mile was a stretch. And within a year, I was doing barefoot ultra marathons and I had started my own running clinic and I had been recruited to start a running clinic with Harvard within a year.

32:06And I was running, my pace went from an 11 minute mile to seven. Wow.

32:11Scott McMillan: Okay. So in the previous year, let's talk pre-born to run listening, pre that treadmill run, what is the furthest or most time you spent on foot at one crack that previous year before this treadmill run? How far were you able to go? one mile in the year following this uh before uh barefoot after barefoot so like bb and ab we can speak of it that way ab how long did you run in that first year post treadmill run was your furthest run my furthest run in that first year the first year is 28 29 what we would do is we would we stopped kind of tracking we would just i got i got into this ultra circuit up in boston which was really interesting.

32:53I didn't really know it existed before any of this. So I accidentally did a race in the circuit and then they adopted me as one of their own. And they would do this thing where they would just send an email out and say, I'm running from this town to this town tonight who wants to come. And we would just run for hours and you get hungry and you pop into a Whole Foods and eat and go back out and keep running. So that's where the ultras started. Wow.

33:19Scott McMillan: So one mile to 20, let's call it 28. You are frozen. I don't know if I'm frozen for you. You are frozen as well, but it should course correct. Can you hear me at least? Let's see if it comes back around. Okay. I can see you again. Okay. So did you just exit and come back? No, I just... Oh, it's just... Okay. We're good. You good? Yeah, I'm good. Okay, cool. It's probably me. I live sort of in the boonies and we always call this country life internet. And if we have problems, I just fall on the sword for it. So it'll be me. So, okay. So 28-ish miles from one mile the year previously. So walk me through how you transitioned to barefoot running more specifically.

34:02Scott McMillan: Like what did that look like, like more granularly? Well, again, people that come to me are typically not doing much mileage, if any, because they're hurting. So for me, it was the same boat. Those are easier people to rehab, to be honest, because it's harder to take somebody who can still run and they're hurting, but they can still do it. They don't want to pull their mileage back. So to transition from where I was at, I was completely broken. So it was easy. I just started upping my mileage. I didn't even worry about how much I was running. I just did what felt good. Did you run in shoes ever after that?

34:38Only if I had to. So we have really hot summers here. And if the ground is hot enough, then I don't, I blistered my feet one time and that was in Boston. There's no shade in Cambridge, Massachusetts, anywhere. You know, you run around the streets here and there's always grass or something you can hop off onto if you need to wait at a stoplight. But yeah, that didn't happen there. So I just blistered until I could get back to the clinic. So yeah, so if it's too hot, too cold, I would put something on my feet or if I couldn't see. So those are my three, I tell people the reason to wear shoes should be the three S's sight sensation and surface so if you can't see if your sensation is impaired so I don't care how strong you are if you don't have feeling in your foot you need to wear something and then surface so those are the three reasons to wear protective

35:25Scott McMillan: footwear when you say barefoot running do you mean barefoot running right like is it so right if yeah if you say that in the barefoot community people are you're going to get one of these. Barefoot is barefoot. Okay. There's no protect. There's nothing. It is barefoot. Barefoot is barefoot. That's a dumb question, isn't it? I mean, barefoot is pretty explanatory. Most people think the way you think, okay, what kind of shoes should I wear for barefoot running? That's a question I get all the time. So that's because that's where we're conditioned to think, right? Nobody's going to go out and just run barefoot.

36:01Scott McMillan: The possibilities of pebbles and glass and rocks and other stuff. It just obviously crossed. You can't tape a slab of plastic to the bottom of your feet and call it barefoot running. That doesn't work either. You can't. Now, I have run. I ran all over the streets of Boston, everywhere, barefoot. I've stepped on glass. I don't recommend it, but I've never cut my foot. Not once, not ever. If you can see it, most things that are going to do you some damage, you're going to see. So when we would go out on those super long runs, if I knew it was going to be dark before we were done, I would carry, I would wear five fingers at the time.

36:40I would carry them with me. And then when it got too dark to see, I just slip them on, keep going.

36:45Scott McMillan: All right. So you transitioned basically all into barefoot running unless a situation required you to wear some sort of protection, basically, is what I'm understanding. And to you, anything was better than what you were doing previously because you weren't able to run much mileage at all. So this was like an improvement. So somebody comes in then to you and they're frustrated and they've been dealing with, well, actually, you know what? I'm going to slow myself down. What is the foot wanting to do that it can't ensues? What is the foot wanting to do? Well, yeah, help me out. Yeah. What does it want to do?

37:13Scott McMillan: Yeah. So the foot is extremely complex. Like we talked about, 26 bones, 33 joints, 29 muscles. If you count everything, that's a lot. That's a lot happening. More than I could go into, you know, I used to go and teach PTs. We do three-day courses on this. it's that complex. What's what all is happening? But the bottom line is, you're never going to be able to replicate what is going on in the foot and ankle with any kind of tech. It's not possible. And on top of that, your foot and ankle is and your body type and your physiology, mine is made for me. So it's completely cut. It's it's brilliant.

37:52So one of the things I guess, you know, one of the things that we can talk about a couple things, so many things. One of things that kind of gets a bad name is pronation, right? That's kind of an evil word in the shoe industry, right? Overpronation. And I know there are shoe stores out there that prescribe things based on standing posture. Okay, your arch height is this and that. I'm hoping people aren't encountering that as much anymore. There have been massive studies to debunk that. But what we're really looking for, I don't really care what your foot looks like when you're standing still. I care what happens dynamically when you're moving.

38:32So your foot has to pronate. It's going to pronate and then it's going to resupinate. That's what we really want to see. How much resupination do we have because you want to engage all the muscles when you're lifting that foot off the ground. So the pronation is not such a bad thing. The bigger deal is the resupination. Are are all the foot and ankle muscles engaging and giving you good push-off and good lift. So that's one of the big things. Then there are other things that happen, and again, in line with pronation. So there's something that's really common. Cuboid syndrome, have you encountered that with your clients?

39:09Scott McMillan: Yeah, I've also had a cuboidal stress fracture, so I could say I'm somewhat versed, yes. And sesamoid and metatarsals. I can list them off. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And all your tech shoes didn't prevent any of that. They did not. No, they did not. Yeah. I was just, you know, on a plug for barefoot all day. Well, if you're going to stand on a rock, stand on the damn rock, right? Right. Don't rock, right? Yeah. So is the pronation, does our foot pronate? Is that a measure of shock absorption mostly? is like that our way of taking impact? Pronation is a good thing in a sense. It's our natural way of absorbing the plant, I assume, correct?

39:55Scott McMillan: Is that - A hundred percent. Okay. A hundred percent. That's what it's there for. Right. Okay. Just making sure. Yeah. If you were to hit on a high rigid arch, you may as well hit on your calcaneus. There's no shock absorption happening. The pronation is essential. And not just any pronation, but what amount of pronation does your body need versus mine? Well, your foot can adapt to that. You know, the tech doesn't know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's doing a lot of things that the shoe is, shoes in general, which makes sense. I mean, you're breaking it down, but it's having your foot roll in a certain pattern, strike in a certain way and put you where it wants you versus where your foot wants to be.

40:33Scott McMillan: I can understand that. All right. So somebody comes in and they have these chronic issues. What does that process look like? Where do you begin? I do try to take everybody down to zero mileage. which I have I have one ultramarathoner that I'm working with right now she's ridiculous, she's amazing she did 334 mile races last year one was Badwater and she just was running through all the injuries now she can run through the injuries she's tough as nails but taking her back down to zero was something she didn't really want to do so I will work with them, you know, if that's, if that's what they want to do.

41:20And I, I'm very upfront the whole time that this is not really the optimal path, but what matters most is their goals, their, their experiences, their values, you know, what is, what does their path look like? There's, you know, textbook and there's research studies, and then there's the person and their values and what they're wanting to do. So I will try to take them down to nothing, but she, she went down a fair bit. We got rid of two of her three injuries, the third one we're still working on.

41:48Scott McMillan: So why down to zero? Because again, if you're, okay, let's think about retraining movement patterns, right? And that's, you know, you're an expert in that. So movement patterns are so deeply ingrained, you know, things that, and everything that we do, everything that, say you had bad vision when you were a kiddo, that's going to play into your movement patterns. If you broke your ankle when you were 15, that's going to play into your movement patterns. If you played a certain sport, you know, people can watch me walk and they can tell that I'm from the gymnastics world. You know, you watch tennis players and they had this early heel rise.

42:21My daughter plays soccer and she has an Irish dancer on her team. It's the funniest thing on the planet. Her arms are by her sides when she runs. It's hilarious. So movement patterns are very deeply ingrained and to change those is difficult. So when we're transitioning someone from an inefficient movement pattern gait cycle to an efficient one, if they're switching back and forth and back and forth, it's going to take five times as long. Your body doesn't know if it's coming or going, and you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot both ways. You're never quite making the change to the new pattern.

42:53Now your old pattern feels a little funky too, and you're living on a line without ever committing. It's like kind of trying to ride two horses with one butt.

43:03Scott McMillan: shooting yourself in the foot both ways. There's a pun in there. Um, yeah, didn't even know it. So, okay, I got it. So, uh, is there backtracking at any point? Meaning like, does, is it a two steps back to end up taking many steps forward? Clearly with no mileage, that would be seem like you're taking something away from somebody. But, um, what, what is, what is, I know there's probably not a 100 % standard protocol, but like, okay, so you took somebody who's fighting the uphill battle. We're going to strip them down and say, we're starting from ground zero. Like what types of things, what the heck, what are you doing?

43:40What are you doing with them? I actually do have, over the course of the years, I've developed a protocol and it is, I've taken everything that I have seen and done and I've made all the mistakes myself and with other people. I've seen what works and I have stripped it down to it's a three-step process. That's it. There are some minor tweaks that are allowed at the end. But in terms of if you master these three things, your injury risk, I call it injury resistant running. I can't ever say you're never going to get hurt. Of course, acute injuries, you roll your ankle, whatever, that's going to be a thing.

44:16But the chronic stuff, the shin splints, the stress fractures, the knee pain, all that kind of stuff, your risk drops. I can't say zero, but dramatically if you master those three things. And then you're still going to have your weirdness with running. And that's everybody. And people can try to nitpick it all day long. I don't really care about those other things. You know, if your shoulder is up here and this arm swings out more, I don't really care. I don't care if they look like a textbook. I care about those three things. So I actually do have an algorithm that I take them through. And, you know, then they can tweak it from there.

44:49But I really try to teach people to listen to their bodies again, because we've been so trained out of that. So as they're going through the algorithm, there's room in there for how do you feel, you know, take it back a step, push it up a notch, spend at least this much time here. But if you're feeling good, then, you know, progress. So I have room in there for variation, but I really want to put people back in touch with their own bodies, back in touch with their own feet. Wearing shoes all the time, it's basically like, okay, say you were in a car accident and I gave you a cervical collar after for whiplash and I said okay great you're gonna wear that the rest of your life because the neck is not strong enough to do what you're asking it to do that's

45:31Scott McMillan: the way we treat the feet point made yeah with that analogy so without giving away the farm is it foot getting in touch uh with your feet and body I understand but are there focal points like Is it foot strength? Is it proprioception? Is it balance and coordination? Is it all of the above? Like, what are the things that we're lacking? What is the thing that most are lacking the most? It is all the above. And I'm glad you brought that up because there is, when I work with people, I am very specific. I'm technique. That's all I'm doing. The things that you do, the periodization, all that stuff to, you know, the performance stuff, I don't do it.

46:11So that's something I refer them out on every single time. And I'm very clear. You mentioned, it seems like you're taking something away from them and you're right. And I'm very cognizant of that. I've been through it myself and it does something to your psyche when you can't do your thing. So my runners would always leave the clinic sweaty and happy. Even if they only spent, you know, five minutes on the treadmill and that was all that was allowed for their gait training that day, I beat the heck out of them in every other way. So I really emphasize they need to be doing lots of cross training.

46:45And as you know, one of the main problems with runners is that they're runners. They don't want to do anything else. Just like your other clients that you said, they won't run. A lot of runners don't do anything else, which is a recipe for disaster. So what I give them and everything that I do in my business is focused around minimalism. So I give them a handful of big bang for your buck exercises, all functional strength and mobility stuff, and kind of some nerve gliding built in, all rolled into a few different things. And they do those as maintenance and functional training, in addition to their gait training.

47:25But beyond that, I really emphasize that they need to be working out. And I give a big list of things to do, but it's pretty limitless.

47:32Scott McMillan: Okay. How long is the zero run going on for in general? Oh, it depends. If I have somebody who can't, if I have somebody who cannot walk around their house barefoot without pain, we got to get them to that point first. But for most people, they're doing it day one. Okay. And then, but like, let's say somebody were to come in, like how long generally before you're like, all right, let's go for our first run. How long is that after we're down to zero? Yeah. Like literally first day, typically. Most people are doing it on their first day. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Okay. That's quick. So then what happens there?

48:16Scott McMillan: So then are all runs done that way to tolerance or is there a mix of both? You said that might be bad. So yeah, my preference is not a mix of both. My preference is you do your protocol in your barefoot run. And I prefer to get people on the treadmill when they start out because you can control all the variables. You're not worried about what you might be stepping on. You're not worried about how fast it's going. And you can really focus on sound. You know, that's one of the big things and all the feedback cues that I give you. So I've also learned that over the years when I would explain the different mechanics, different things that I want people to do.

48:56And most runners, again, I work with a lot of high performers. We overthink things. We're going to make it happen no matter what. So if I tell you, this is what I want you to do and here's why and blah, blah, blah, blah. They go out and they mutilate it and they do something crazy and they hurt themselves and they overshoot the mark. right it's like if i told you to hit a basket and i explain the the trajectory and the angles and all the things you're going to be thinking so much that you do do you understand that have you heard of the centipedes centipedes dilemma uh no okay so this is an old old poem and i can't quote the poem but basically there's a centipede going along and i believe it's an ant and he asks him with so many legs like which leg moves and does what first and the centipede gets so focused on And what leg does what?

49:42He falls over because he can't. What he was doing automatically before, now he's thinking about so much. He can't do it at all. So I give incredibly simple cues. I give one cue at a time. And I don't tell them what I'm seeing. Because we used to do that, too. When we first started with the clinic up in Harvard, we would video them. And then we would go through the video with them in slow motion and pick apart every little thing. And they can't unhear that. And nine out of those ten things are incidental. They don't matter, but they're going to focus on all of them when all they need to focus on is one and in a very specific way, a very simple way.

50:20So I don't do that anymore.

50:22Scott McMillan: So then what happens? Then are you, not to use the word stuck, committed to only bare, like if this is the way, then are you committed? That's that. Like now we're a barefoot runner? Now we're a barefoot runner. So no, you know, unless you want to be on the treadmill 24-7, which I don't recommend. I got into trail running. That was with that crazy ultra circuit up there. Once I got into trails, oh my gosh, they ruined me for roads. Yeah. So great. That was the question I was hanging on to here, but since you brought it up, what happens when terrain – Well, no, yeah, it was just in my brain as one of the next – I wanted to ask is when terrain becomes involved, I would assume, gosh, I bet you our listeners are at least 50 % trail predominant runners, maybe more.

51:10Scott McMillan: and predominantly ultra runners as well. And most of those happen on trails. They don't happen on roads as accessible, right? So what about when terrain is involved? When terrain is involved, again, you go back to protection. And what does that mean to you? It's not going to be the same thing for everybody. So when you're choosing a shoe, so I don't run trails barefoot ever. I know people who do. I know people who run in haraches, you know, that are just a sandal. And I'm not a fan. I get the rocks stuck in between the bottom. Yeah. I don't like it, but I've run races with people that do it and they're great.

51:44So again, it comes back to protection over correction. So if it's all going to be hard packed dirt, I don't need much of anything. If it's going to be more technical, rocky, that kind of thing, creek crossing, things like that. I have shoes that have a little more grip. I should have brought some down here, but I have some that have a little bit thicker, but first things first, when everybody's looking for a shoe, the first thing I recommend is, yeah, I'll give you my three F's too, but the first things first, and that's, I gave you my three S's, the sight surface and sensation. My three F's, the way people choose shoes, which I have a problem with, are fashion, fix, and fear.

52:29And we have a huge fear culture built around running and running shoes. We really do. If you told people, I'm going to have you do a run in just a minimalist shoe, or I'm going to have you put on a Converse and go out and run, they would flip out on you. Because that's been, yeah, so that's been really instilled. So the first thing you want to look at when you're buying a shoe, a good, what I call a good shoe is, is it shaped like a foot? A surprising amount of shoes, not shaped like a foot.

52:56Scott McMillan: Yeah, most of them. What brands or what types do you tend to gravitate towards if somebody is going to, I mean, maybe this isn't your philosophy, but like what somebody's like, I have been chronically in pain, like going to like a minimalist type shoe, is that beneficial or does it have to be all the way stripped down or is there a middle ground? So what I tell people is long term, what is essential, what cannot be missed is barefoot training. You have to barefoot. Some running barefoot, even if it's just a little bit around the house, but definitely exercise barefoot, lifting, lunging, squatting, functional mobility, ATG squats, that kind of stuff.

53:40You need to be doing that. You have to train barefoot. You have to. heel raises are money everybody on the planet should be doing heel raises constantly plantar fasciitis that will fix plantar fasciitis in nine out of ten people just heel raises barefoot heel raises so zeros I like zeros they're good I tend to run in I don't know what they they're called if you Google minimalist or barefoot not Google but if you go on Amazon and search minimalist or barefoot shoes, you're going to come up with$20 to$40 shoes. That's what I run in. And I run them until they fall apart. I've run in ultras. They have a little more meat to them than I would like.

54:24But yeah, it's just because what I need on a trail might not be what you need on a trail. So it's all very personal.

54:31Scott McMillan: Okay. Yeah, zero. I see more and more zero. I don't know if I want to call them advertisements, but I'm seeing them more places right now. So it's clearly on the uprise. Have you experimented with Vivo Barefoot at all much? Topo? Vivo Barefoot is my, yeah, if I wear a gym shoe, they're Vivo Barefoots. Merrill makes a Minimus. That's pretty good. A Vapor Glove, a Trail Glove, they're pretty good. The problem you get into is if you're beating it up on a trail, the Vivo Barefoots do not last. They fall apart very quickly and they're expensive. so I can get a$40 pair of shoes,$20,$40 pair of shoes that lasts longer.

55:13They're not as cute, but they do a good job and they're going to last.

55:18Scott McMillan: Okay. So let's talk performance then. Can you hear me right now? I think we're frozen again. I can. Okay. Yeah, I can hear you. Okay, cool. Let's talk performance because I think the one area I think it would be hard to refute or rebut would be the propulsion factor of carbon plate super foam maybe even that dreaded heel lift performance wise um what are we leaving on the table there if is the risk worth the reward is there a place where yes there could be a benefit but like I need to run my road marathon fast and this shoe makes me faster Is there like any middle ground here? And if so, what would that look like?

56:03So I am admittedly not the expert on performance, but I will say this. If you're hurt, you're going to be slower. So that is kind of the first kicker. That's the first kicker for performance. When I just got out of pain, my speed went way up. So that is the first thing. In terms of carbon plating those things, it's interesting. So you need to look at the research, right? You need to look at the research with a really, really skeptical eye. Pick it apart. The first thing you want to look at when you're looking at research is who is funding the research. If the shoe company is funding the research, I'm much more skeptical of that.

56:40Their job is to sell shoes. And their job is to make you believe these are going to make you run faster, jump higher, be stronger, all the things. And so that, you know, take it with a grain of salt. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. But who is funding the research? So in terms of the carbon plating, I've seen research that suggests that it makes you faster. I've also seen research that shows that it actually makes you slower and takes away your biomechanical advantage. So if you just go strictly based on research, now you're going to have a lot of anecdotal evidence, you know, your own personal experience and your clients who are going to say, yeah, I know when I switch to this, I'm faster and it helps.

57:16I'm not going to dispute that because I don't know that personal lived experience. I've never run an issue like that. I don't intend to. I'm also not trying to break any kind of records with anything. So there's that aspect. But if you're just strictly going by the research and the claims that they're making, they're very debatable.

57:35Scott McMillan: Well, I felt that. I mean, I've talked about like, um, one of my least favorite shoes of all time. I mean, I would burn that shoe every time. If that shoe entered my house, I'm shooting it full of holes and lighting it on fire because it's a, it's the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro. And talk about a plate that works against my stride type. I mean, it absolutely makes me slower. It tore me up more than any shoe I've ever worn in my entire life. It was like awful. and then there's a bunch that are not as awful but bad and then there's a few in the middle and then there's a few that just seem to work with your natural predisposition so it's very subjective I can a shoe can really work for you really work against you in that space in my experience I mean I bought them all right and so it is what you know so I had a follow-up question to that and now it's slipping my mind.

58:22Scott McMillan: Okay. But so I guess I think what I was really asking is, is there a way to not be all in all the time? Or is it only going to, if injury is really the thing we're trying to solve and keeping ourselves available to run, are we swimming upstream if we're trying to do a little of everything or no? In my opinion, yes. I believe very firmly that there is no tech that you can put on your foot that's going to make you... Oh, I was telling my camera stop to move around. That's why I got a very fancy camera. I'm done. Okay.

59:03Scott McMillan: Disregard. Yeah. No, continue. Yeah. No. So I very firmly believe there is absolutely zero tech that you can ever get that is going to trump what your body is capable of, what you were born with. I think it's all going to interfere. And again, I come back to the way the rest of your body is designed to work. We do not treat any other part of the body like that. Yeah, it's hard to argue against that. I just have such little experience personally, right? I suppose then I should ask you, you have a book that you've written, Stay Ahead of the Reaper. What is it? Will it help you beat the Reaper? Will it help you beat the Reaper?

59:45Scott McMillan: Is that Is that separate from the barefoot philosophy? Are they one in the same? Can you help me? I'm just curious about that. Yeah, connect the dots for sure. So my business, my company centers around minimalist mindset and movement. So beating the reaper is the mindset arm and follow the white rabbit. White rabbit running is the movement arm. And I also do inverted warrior, which is hand balancing and some other things like that. Everything comes around to minimalism. But Beat the Reaper came about because of the running experience. My whole shift to minimalism, I mean, growing up was that type A overachiever and had disordered eating and didn't sleep and depression, suicidal thoughts, the whole nine yards and do it harder, do it better, do it more.

1:00:34and it wasn't until the shift to running, that change didn't just change my form, it changed how I thought. It changed everything. And then I started applying it to everything else. So the Beat the Reaper, that's the mindset piece kind of started. And Beat the Reaper came in when I had seen this article in a magazine of this gorgeous river and it just kind of stuck with me to the point where I ripped it out and kept it for like seven years. And we have a race in Missouri and it's called the MR340. I don't know if you've heard of it.

1:01:05Scott McMillan: Well, I have because I did my research on you and I saw this on your website. I know the story you're about to tell, but I want you to tell it. Yes. Oh, okay. All right. So Missouri River 340 is the longest nonstop boat race in the world. So I had never been in a kayak, so I thought it would probably be a good idea if I did this race. Yeah. I don't know. I just, yeah. It just kind of stuck with me. Yeah. I thought, you know. Is that on the Mississippi or is it on the - Or is it on the Missouri? Missouri. It's on Missouri. Big Muddy. Yeah. So, yeah. So I thought there was no way I could do it. I'm not an endurance athlete.

1:01:45I'm not a kayaker. I'm not all these things. Of course, I became an endurance athlete. But so I finally one day I just signed up. I thought, you know, that's literally all I'm qualified to do is to sign up. And then cross that bridge. And then it was kind of an oh shoot moment. And now what? and then everything came piling in on me. All these people, you've got to buy this, you've got to do that, you've got to learn this, you've got to do all these training runs days and days and days on the river and it's like so complicated. I had to buy a 17 and a half foot kayak. I thought, you know, kayaking is a little bitty thing and I could just hold, no, it's a massive thing that I need multiple people to load then got to have people like there at the end of the river to get you and bring you back to, it was so complicated and all the overwhelm was swimming and that's where the minimalist philosophy kicked in from all the running, everything I had been doing in that space.

1:02:36So I pulled myself back, I burned it all down just like I'd done with running. And I thought, okay, I just wanna finish this race. I wanna be a women's solo that finishes the race. It's my only goal. I'm not trying to set any records or, you know, I just wanna finish the race. So what do I need to do to do that? What's the simplest way I can put that? Well, there's a pacer boat in the race and it's called the Reaper. It's job simple and it's to move through the race at the minimum pace. If it beats you to a checkpoint, you're out. So all I had to do to finish the race was beat the Reaper. So I knew I was not going to wind my whole life up into this crazy realm of complexity to do this thing.

1:03:12So instead, I shifted my mindset to everything in my life revolving around that question in the months leading up to the race. Will it help me beat the Reaper? And if it didn't, I didn't do it. And I became one of only 35 women solos that year to finish the race. and I did it. I had four hours of kayak experience and two of those hours, they don't count because I was spinning in circles on a lake looking crazy. And then the other two hours I got a coach who was a 340 veteran and a kayak expert. And that was like gold.

1:03:42Scott McMillan: I love that. They call the sweet boat, the Reaper. Yes. Or whatever you want to call the boat. He flies a flag. It's black and And it's a skull and paddle crossbones. It's the best logo. Don't let them catch you. How long did that race take? They give you 85 hours and it took me 82. Oh my goodness. 82 hours. I mean, so basically simplifying it down, like will you beat the reaper, simplifying it down to will this, is this moving me towards accomplishing this task or is it not? and then only sticking to the things that are pushing you, pulling you that direction? Exactly. If I have this conversation with you, will it help me beat the Reaper?

1:04:27If I stay up an extra hour, skip my workout or eat that pizza, will it help me beat the Reaper? And it's incredible what you can get by with, what you don't have to do when you're driving everything towards that goal.

1:04:40Scott McMillan: It's a prioritization system. Exactly. But simple. Really, really simple. Huh. And this can be, you could take this, the learnings from this book or this concept and apply it to many avenues of life. I'm assuming not just sport, correct? Right. So I speak on that and I, organizations, entrepreneurs, athletes. So I teach this race framework that was really born out of the 340 and help people put anything that they're trying to do into that framework and get their goals. okay so i think the biggest um the biggest question left for me would be um how do you when would you know that you're injured enough or i hate to use the word broken but it's the right word or broken enough to entertain this because there's a sector of our audience who's doing great and there's a sector that's in an injury bout and there's a sector that has this thing pop up once in a while and then there's people sitting on their thumbs crying in their lap because they're so injured they can't run.

1:05:40Scott McMillan: And this is the only way to relate to running right now is listening to this silly podcast. So I can't imagine it's for everybody, although I know your philosophy firmly believes like this is probably the way we were meant to move. And I can get on board with that 100%. All that to say, when should somebody entertain this all, I guess is like a better way to phrase it. Yeah. So the people who are doing great, They're very happy with things. You know, I would say for them, knowing what the research says, knowing how the biomechanics actually work, there's an argument to be made that they're taking time bomb, that they're going to get away with this for so long and then it's going to catch up to them.

1:06:18That being said, do you mess with somebody who's happily doing their thing? I wouldn't. That's a personal choice. I do have people who come to me and they say, yeah, I believe in this philosophy, so I want to learn how to do it because I don't believe it has longevity, what I'm doing. So those people, the people who are down and out, they should do it. They should do it. That's an easy one. That's an easy yes, they should do it. The people who are kind of able to do it, you know, kind of, there's one thing I want those people to understand. So again, I'm a PT. I've been a personal trainer, coach tumbling forever.

1:06:59I'm in this space. I'm a big fan of exercise. But one of the things that we know is that if you have a chronic issue and you've gone to PT and you're in this cycle, you run, you get hurt, you go to PT, gets better. You come back, you run, you get hurt, go to PT, gets better. That cycle is not likely to change until you change your biomechanics. So there is this kind of common misconception out there that if I have hip drop and I strengthen my abductors, my hip drop is going to go away. We know that's not true. The research has shown it. We had a multimillion dollar lab up at Harvard. We've proved that many times.

1:07:37It's in the literature and I've seen that in my own runners. It doesn't change. Is it a good thing to do? Absolutely. Is it going to change your biomechanics? No, because we're talking about movement patterns. So think about this in terms of, as a tumbler, we did tons of conditioning, right? I could be super, super strong, but then I can't go do a double back unless I train a double back. right the only way to do it i need to have the strength to be able to do it but i'm not going to get the skill unless i train the skill so for those folks who are kind of in and out and in and out of injury there's something that needs to change in your biomechanics and it will not change until you change your biomechanics and that can't be done with tools strapped to your foot nope yeah that's external yeah so what about somebody like me who um

1:08:23Scott McMillan: Um, uh, in bouts, like, like, so I'm still chasing high performance is really all I care about. I'm still chasing times and wins, uh, and the 1%. Okay. So I am trying to win the race for lack of a better way to put it. And it's true. They all, everybody listening knows that. Um, so I have some plantar fasciitis. I limp out of bed in the morning. Uh, sometimes the first 10 minutes of my run suck, but I figure it out. This is a new thing that's been cropping up here in the last month or two. But like running fast is all I care about. Okay. So what do you say to that person, i.e. me? I'd say he was your best friend.

1:09:07If that's your value and that's what you want to do, then I would do everything to help you. I think you know that to calm it down, it'd be better to take some time off and to pull back for a little bit. For sure.

1:09:20Scott McMillan: Oh, yeah, for sure. But can it be done? It can be done. You can do it and you can get rid of the plantar fasciitis at the same time. But I would be training hardcore barefoot, you know, your other workouts, your lifts, heel raises, tons of heel raises. I would be barefoot as much as you possibly can be because all plantar fasciitis is, the plantar fascia is a secondary restraint. It was never designed to take on the full weight of the arch. So again, you have all those muscles I keep talking about to do that job as well. Well, if you're constantly putting an external support on them, they're going to say, that's fine.

1:09:54I'll chill. I don't need to do the work. You're going to do it for me. So then it falls on the plantar fascia. The plantar fascia can't take that load. It can't. So if the muscles are weak, and again, this is really overlooked because like shoes, the orthotic industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and they sell hard. You can go into Walmart and get on the Dr. Scholl thing and it'll tell you what orthotic you need. I do that every time I go in there. It's so funny. And it's so convenient because then you need this blue one. Okay, great. And I can pull the blue one out. It's inexpensive. It's all it's going to do is weaken your foot.

1:10:24And we know that it's the foot weakness that causes the plantar fasciitis. People don't talk about that. They want to give it external support. It's the weakness.

1:10:34Scott McMillan: When you say heel lifts, do you mean like a calf raise or do you mean something different? A calf raise, yeah, exactly. Okay. Okay. Like big range, like big stretch on the bottom, big squeeze on top, dipping below parallel, or does that not matter? It only matters in terms of Achilles tendonitis. Ah, sure. Okay. Like the eccentric load range type deal. Right. Interesting. Yeah, I have some selfish curiosities here with this, but I'm like, you know, I've been doing that. I'm 43. I've been training for three decades full on as a runner. And so old habits are hard to break. I'm sure you have people that come in that have a lot of habits to break.

1:11:11Scott McMillan: Yeah, I can imagine. So something like, just say planner. Let's say walk. I am barefoot right now in my home and I have hardwood floors, but it doesn't feel as good as if I put my Birkenstocks on, for example, and walk around the house. So what would, in that case, doing things barefoot, I totally agree with that. And I think there's a lot that I could get on board with that. But like, let's say like symptom management, would it still be better, even though I'm dealing with this, to walk around hardwood floors barefoot versus something that feels a little nicer in the moment? Right. So it's kind of a, does it make the pain worse and does that worsened pain last?

1:11:50So if you're walking around and yeah, the more I walk, the more it hurts and then it's hurting worse the next day, it's probably not ready for that. The only time I am in favor of external support is just like you would use a C collar. and that is very temporarily to let something calm down and then you get rid of it as as quickly as possible and i'm i don't you know we talk about like rice you know i i hate rice and that's one of those other things that caught on stuck and even the the person who the sports medicine guy he's walked it back the guy that said it originally but we're still hanging on to that so move is is what i advocate um instead of rice but it's yeah so you you got to listen to your symptoms.

1:12:31But if you, some people will need a little support, just long enough to let it calm down. But even as you're doing that, you're going to find things that you can do, even if it's taking a TheraBand and doing, you know, plantar flexions, that TheraBand, things like that. The answer is never just rest.

1:12:48Scott McMillan: Yeah. And I agree with that. Definitely. Yeah. Use the tolerance, right? Always. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, this has been very interesting. There's going to probably be a sector of our audience that resonates with some of this. And I think there should be, and I hate to say the word, but desperate enough to try something different, right? That's sort of how you land in trying something new like this, right? Or something very old, depending on how you look at it. Something new for them, but something that probably should have known. Yeah, right. We were designed to use our feet barefoot. So if people are curious about this, So they want to learn more.

1:13:29Scott McMillan: You work with people remotely, correct? I do. As well? Okay. Which I think the world works that way now. Although I do. I have two athletes I coach who live in St. Louis. So they aren't far from you. Yeah. Both healthy right now, luckily. Yay. So if people are interested in reaching out or learning more about either being the Reaper or this whole barefoot thing, we will call it. You're living proof, right? I mean, I've seen the videos and pictures. You're doing the thing and now you're running a lot and you used to not be able to. So like there's no stronger testimony than that. Where can they reach out to you?

1:14:03Scott McMillan: How should they reach out all that? So again, with my minimalist philosophy, I'm not a big social media gal, but I am on LinkedIn and people can email me directly at drsaria at sariasabi.com and I will personally email them back. Okay. Well, I guess they'll see your name in the episode title so they'll know how to spell it. Right? Good luck. But your website as well is where they can also get in touch with you, right? Which is where I did my digging on you. What is that? That's sariasabi.com. Okay, perfect. I like that you're not on all the social media. I find it a massive energy suck. And honestly, I much prefer having a conversation like this with somebody like you than posting constantly the same things over and over again and throwing my thoughts out into a vacuum and getting likes and shares.

1:14:48And no hate to anybody that does that. But for me, it drains.

1:14:51Scott McMillan: Our running public Instagram account, we were making it a point to post two or three times a week. And I don't think we posted on it in almost a year now. I don't even have an Instagram account. I feel you. As a business owner, some would say it's foolish, but it seems to be more of a stressor than anything. Yeah. It's not helping me the Reaper. No. All right. Where can people get that book? I assume anywhere. Amazon. Yeah. It's on Amazon. on? All right, Dr. Serea. Well, this has been good. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. I've enjoyed the conversation and gave me some things to think about.

1:15:25Scott McMillan: And I have a feeling a few people end up reaching out. I'd be surprised if they don't. So hopefully you get a few emails and people inquire. I'm happy to help anybody along this journey. And I love what you guys do. So thanks for having me on today. There is an intrigue. I'm so reliant on my shoes and there's Such an intrigue in the polar opposite of that. I'm not there yet, but pre-contemplation is a place. Train barefoot. Just do some training. Let your body tell you what it likes. Fair.