The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #288 - Brad Kearns

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Brad Kearns

Humans are born to walk extensively every single day at a very comfortable pace and to sprint once in a while. Walking is like sleep to the human.  Your body automatically determines the stride and the technique to absorb impact in the most efficient manner. As soon as you put on a shoe, all this stuff is compromised because you are cutting yourself off from that neurofeedback on the incredible nerve density that exists on the bottom of the feet. With Peluva, we feel like our unique feature is the articulated toes.

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics blind hearing.  Are you ready? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Okay friends, today's episode has actually changed my life. First of all, I adore Brad Kearns. He is so intelligent, so knowledgeable, so funny, and so talented. And he is co-author with the legendary Mark Sisson on so many incredible books, including their most recent Born to Walk. Here's where the life-changingness comes in. I have changed how I approach walking and shoes. I think a lot of us, especially in this field, intuitively know that walking is good for us, but reading Born to Walk made me realize the extreme, truthful intensity of that statement, as well as how horrible running can be and, perhaps most importantly, the damage we are doing to our bodies with our shoes. And this is a girl who doesn't even like wearing shoes, besides high heels, of course. Since reading this book, I have changed my habits. I now wear palubas, and I am obsessed with them. Who knew I could actually be healing my body by my shoe choices? And what's even crazier is after I interviewed Mark Sisson about this topic as well, that episode is on the Intermittent Fasting podcast, he told me I might have problems putting the shoes on, like they would actually be hard to put on. Oh my goodness, this is so true. Just goes to show how messed up my feet are and how I need to be wearing palubas on the regular. I got the Women's Zen Active Slip-Ons so that I can wear them around my apartment. And then I also got a pair of Women's Strand Sport Mesh, which I wear out in the world. True statement. I cannot recommend getting these for yourselves and everybody you know enough, it will change your life for the better. I was thinking about it, and most people already wear shoes, so why would you not be optimizing your body by just tweaking something that you do every single day anyways? And Mark and Brad are so kind. They have an incredible discount for you guys. You can go to paluva.com slash ifpodcast and use the code ifpodcast that will get you 10% off. So that's paluva.com slash ifpodcast with the code ifpodcast for 10% off. And then as for today's episode, oh my goodness, we talk about so many things. We talk about the aforementioned problems with running, shocking myths surrounding marathons, confusion surrounding calorie burning, whether or not you should do sprint or high intensity interval training, and how to actually change your feet and your body for the better when it comes to shoes.

Melanie Avalon

I love Brad. This episode is so, so fun. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life.  Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love. And then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post. And again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. These show notes for today's episode will be at melanieavilon.com slash born to walk. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. All right. I think that's all the things as a brief reminder, you can get 10% off site wide at paluba.com slash I have podcast with the coupon code I have podcast. I cannot recommend this enough. I am a convert. I literally never thought I would be singing the praises of shoes like this before, especially if they're not heels or flip flops. My life has changed and I bet your life will change for the better as well. Paluba.com slash I have podcast with the code I have podcast and now all right, without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with my dear, dear friend Brad Kearns. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have. It is with both a prior guest, very popular on the show and a guest that I've been on his show and just a really awesome friend of mine. So I'm really excited about this. Oh, and for a new book, which is actually going to change your paradigm, I think most people did for me when it comes to the world of running, jogging, walking shoes, prepare for your mind to be blown. I'm here with Brad Kearns. Like I said, he has been on the show before. He is a New York Times bestselling author. He does a lot of books with Mark Sisson, who you friends are probably familiar with and who we also had on the Intermittent Fasting podcast. So his past books include things like Primal Endurance and the Keto Reset Diet and Two Meals a Day and the Two Meals a Day Cookbook. He is also a former two time US national champion and number three world ranked professional triathlete, which is crazy. And he is currently elite masters with track and field high jumping. He also has the top 10 ranked Apple podcasts. Actually, Brad, is it the B dot rad podcast or is it the Brad podcast?

Brad Kearns

It's be rad because I'm trying to be rad like you and I'm so glad to be back on your show. It's awesome.  And I'm honored and I do have to say you are my favorite host because you're so incredibly well prepared and curious and inquisitive and for the listeners that might not be aware, you know, we do a lot of podcasts. A lot of them you get on and the host says, Hey, so what's your book about? And that's because if you tee me up with a tee, I can throw down with monologues that will last longer than your drive and your commute that you're listening to the show. But it's really great to come to a really well prepared host where we can engage at a really deep level. So I can't wait.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, thank you so much, B-rad. It's funny because in my head when I email you and I type like B.rad with all different combinations of capitalization that I feel at the moment, I always say in my head B.rad. That's why I'm saying it that way.  Thank you so much for the kind words. I appreciate that so much. Oh, and speaking of words, you are a wordsmith with words. Well, A, you just, you speak eloquently as listeners just heard. B, you write eloquently. I had three in my head and then I started talking.

Brad Kearns

video. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

I had three word related things.

Brad Kearns

I don't I don't even have to talk I'll just I'll demonstrate some sprinting drills on a video and that'll be my third that'll be my third leg of the stool.

Melanie Avalon

Perfect. Your newest book, which I have hinted at, is called Born to Walk, the broken promises of the running boom and how to slow down and get healthy one step at a time. And now before I jump into all the questions and all the thoughts and all the things, I'm really curious. I'm always really curious.  Did you workshop a lot of different subtitles? Like the broken promises of the running boom is very epic.

Brad Kearns

We workshop a ton of subtitles, but the title, and this is really fun, as you mentioned, Marxist and I have been writing books together for 16 years straight now without a break. And the process is very organic. We're not subject to the pressure of an agent or publisher saying, when's your next book coming out? And what's the, you know, here's the topics that are trending. We come up with a book idea when it's natural and it compels us. And so this one, boy, it was just an amazing epiphany where we said, we have to write this book.  We're looking around and seeing all the hype that continues with the running boom and the endurance scene getting more and more popular, which is great because it gets people off the couch. But by and large, it's been a health and fitness disaster for many of the enthusiastic participants. So this title, Born to Walk is kind of a play on the perennial bestselling book from 2009. It's still a best seller. It's called Born to Run. And it kind of romanticized the sport of ultra distance endurance running. The author Christopher McDougall traveled down to remote Copper Canyon in Mexico, where the Tarahumara, the native living peoples are there. And these guys are amazing legends where they run all day and, you know, have this have these amazing fitness attributes. And some of the top ultra runners in the world from the West came down there and participated in their community event. And it was credited with really catalyzing not only the the running boom, giving it an extra boost, but also the barefoot shoe movement and how these natives run for 100 miles just wearing flimsy sandals. So it was a really cultural sensation. And we appreciate a lot of the content in the book. But part of this message and part of this fascination that we see in the endurance scene is a misappropriation and a misinterpretation of the evolutionary biology attributes that humans have amazing endurance capabilities, which is true. But as we're going to get into in detail, it's not terribly relevant to the modern day commuting desk working person who wants to get fit and honor his human genetic attributes for endurance and take off running and training for running 26.2 miles on hard pavement with elevated cushioned shoes. So back to the longest answer ever about a question about a subtitle. Yeah, we tried to I should elaborate here because it's really important. The book is kind of a two part book. And so we really struggled with how are we going to best present this message, especially on the cover to get people interested because we don't want to offend runners. But we are coming out pretty strongly against some of the cultural trends. But we do want to embrace healthy active energetic lifestyle and really promote walking as the centerpiece of our human genetic expectation for health. But if you put a book on the shelf, it says walking is great. It's super healthy by this book. Yeah, I already knew that and there's not much to it. There's not a chapter on technique where you where you have a golf book and you're learning the different grips and the swings.

Brad Kearns

And so it had to be a really, really nuanced subtitle where we're taking a slap and we're being controversial and spicy. But we're also setting the stage that you're key to health.  And this is an assertion confirmed by many of the world's leading health experts and people in exercise physiology, that just increasing all aspects of general everyday movement, namely walking or centerpiece walking has is more important and more beneficial to your overall health and longevity than adhering to a devoted fitness regimen. And that's quite a revelation for the gym crowd and the people setting their alarms and heading over to 6am spin class to sweat and blast their heartbeat up to the loud music and then going off to a commute on the subway and many hours in front of a screen and then many hours on the couch and leisure time. So just moving more will give you more return on investment than booking those personal trainer sessions and sweating your butt off doing high intensity interval training at the gym.

Melanie Avalon

I think listeners can now see all of the epicness that is contained within these pages is one of those books that has had a practical effect on my life. And I didn't actually anticipate that because I am not a runner. Like I don't run, I don't jog. So I was like, okay, I'm already just walking anyways, how is this going to affect me?  And it has completely reframed how I view movement, running and jogging, shoes, all the things, foundational question, because you mentioned in there, you know, this, this concept of like a walking technique or, you know, techniques with all of this. So a big thesis in the book is that running, like endurance running, the way people practice it today is not natural. Like we wouldn't be doing that historically. We would only be doing that if we were, I mean, we wouldn't really be doing that. We weren't doing it for fun, that's for sure. So my question is how intuitive is movement? So like walking, and if we do have to run for something or jogging, if we are barefoot, will we just naturally run and walk the right way? Because then on the flip side, you also talk about the importance of if you are running or jogging or doing exercise, how we need to be like monitoring to see what zone we're in. So I'm just wondering, because I don't want to deal with like monitoring and stuff, like how intuitive can I be? Can I just walk barefoot and run if I need to run across the block for something?

Brad Kearns

Oh, sure. I mean, it's kind of a two-part question, and I'll answer the barefoot thing first in the intuitive part. There's not much technique, nuance to walking, nor running, actually. And so if you were to have to take off, let's do a primal-time example. If everyone had to take off and run for their lives, you would take off, and you would soon exhibit excellent form, because you'd be compelled to in order to land and absorb the impact of running gracefully. And this is an amazing attribute that's been proven by the great research of Dr. Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University that the human foot is superior for impact absorption and generating forward propulsion to the most high-tech running shoe, even the new super shoes, which we may talk about. But the human foot, DaVinci said, it's a work of art at a master of engineering both. It has all these attributes like spongy shock-absorpting type of ligaments and connective tissue, the structure of the bones where there's a quarter of all the bones in the human body are in the foot, and the way that the foot goes through its amazing range of motion in order to, basically, three things. Absorb shock, balance moving body weight, and generate forward propulsion. So those three things, when you put on any shoe, are compromised and they're inferior to the human foot.  Here's a fun anecdote or an example. We had this guy, Barefoot Ted, at our primal con retreats, and he gave seminars on natural barefoot-style running. And the first thing he did to the novices that have never done any such thing, he walked them over to the nearest stretch of smooth concrete, and he says, okay, everyone take off your shoes right now, and I want you to run at a decent pace for whatever, 50 or 80 or 100 meters on the hard cement. And what happens when anyone does this, even a novice who's unfit or overweight or whatever, is your body automatically determines the stride and the technique to absorb impact in a most efficient manner. The principles at hand are called pre-activation and muscle tuning. This is exercise physiology talk, but what it means is, depending on the hardness of the surface, you flex your ankle and your knee appropriately to absorb the impact most optimally, and you also kind of tense your muscles pre-activation before you land so that you can create sort of a, you know, a shock absorbing limb to do it correctly. And then if you were to jog on soft grass or the beach, you'd have a slightly different technique with your brain adjusting immediately due to the neural feedback coming from the barefoot into the central nervous system. Now, the reason I'm going to detail here is because as soon as you put on a shoe, all this stuff is compromised because you are cutting yourself off from that neurofeedback on the incredible nerve density that exists on the bottom of your feet. That's why it's a centerpiece of acupuncture and acupressure. So the barefoot is a key thing. We're going to, we're getting into that later. But the other thing I wanted to address from the start of your question is running natural and are humans meant to do so.

Brad Kearns

And going back to our past, you know, we evolved for, we have those split offs on the evolutionary chain five million years ago, we became erect. And then I think it's about two million years ago, we started to branch off from our ape cousins. And during all that time, we were known for most of that time, we were known as opportunistic scavengers, transitioning into persistence hunters. And the persistence hunters is when we got smart, and we started sharpening up the spears, and we're able to, you know, take down bigger game and better bounty. But before that, we would simply go around and take what the apex predators discarded. And so we'd drag the bones away to a safe spot. And we'd figure out how to crack the bones open and have bone marrow, and whatever we could. Opportunistic scavengers are just people hiking around and looking around and trying to be safe away from whatever the lions killed, right.  But then persistence hunting is still glorified to this day. And if we paused and started doing some Google searches, we'd see how the amazing human body has these litany of endurance attributes that make us the greatest persistence hunters that have ever lived and the very top of the food chain. And it's all true. And it's all highly validated by next week's guest, your evolutionary biology career person that has spent their life's work studying why the human has amazing endurance attributes. But as I said earlier, that has f all to do with the modern citizen, who is basically suppressed most of our genetic attributes for anything like strength and power and endurance, because of this comfortable modern lifestyle. So we have to have a really nuanced approach to getting into it. If you want me to discuss some of those attributes, we can kind of list them off because it's fascinating.

Melanie Avalon

I would love to. And it's interesting.  I was just thinking it's kind of like we reverted back. Not that we're opportunistic scavengers today, but now we go to the grocery store and we scavenge for dead meat.

Brad Kearns

where this we've gone full circle to five million years ago we're seeing what's around yeah crazy oh so the persistence hunter here's the here's one of the big flaws and misinterpretations and we have a section in the book called Professor Sisson's evolutionary anthropology 2.0 class when you glorify persistence hunting what you see for example there's a documentary on YouTube called the great dance and it's the first known filmed account of a humans doing persistence hunting so what we've done for two million years is now available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube award-winning documentary what the the kung bushman did in the documentary is they tracked a kudu antelope in 109 degree heat in the Kalahari desert for four hours and finally the antelope just succumbed to exhaustion and it was just standing there it couldn't go any further and they ceremonially you know drove the spear through the heart and then carried it back to camp and so the humans were able to outlast even the most amazing endurance creature the antelope with this you know long distance run over many miles but if you look at the big picture what persistence hunting is is mostly teamwork and using our superior brains to trick and wear out these beasts and take them down it is absolutely not running and running and running day after day putting in 50 miles a week and 40 miles a week like modern-day runners talk about in order to prevail at the top of the food chain and we can easily reference this because if you go out on a on your next hunt when you get invited to the the Texas Hill country with you know some of your health optimization people and they say hey we're gonna go we're gonna go hunt they're usually taking a gun or bow and arrow and there's no way you're gonna chase down an antelope and spirit or a deer or whatever and so it was all about we have this the longest dash word in the book it's walking scouting foraging hiking climbing sprinting jogging walking out thinking that is our genetic heritage not amazing endurance machines that can run and run all day in the hundred and nine degree heat and furthermore when the Bushman got their score and carried it back to camp they were stoked for weeks and they didn't have to wake up the next day and go run an easy six miles like a modern-day marathon training person thinks is then is the necessary approach so it's very much these endurance genetic gifts exist but we're using them wrong here's some since I'm on the roll here we know we stand upright so that's the biggest one right we have we have we're bi-pedal instead of quad and so we're way faster naturally as soon as we stood up off the ground a couple or five million years ago we have narrow hips we have sweat glands we have this obscure new call ligament that's up by the head that allows the head to be stabilized while we're running at speed and we have a big toe which is one of the primary evolutionary adaptations along with the Achilles tendon there's a primatologist named Bill Sellers that we quote in the book and he says the Achilles tendon is a distinguishing evolutionary feature from our ape cousins I should repeat that the distinguishing feature is the Achilles tendon by science and so if you think of how freaking important the Achilles tendon is to our to our existence as humans and our evolution and are branching off from the gorilla and the chimps who have no Achilles tendon and when you see him at the zoo and they hustle across the the camp they're running with this stiff leg thing that dramatically slows them down and so just to conclude my my rant here if the Achilles tendon is so important as soon as you slip on a shoe with an elevated heel you greatly compromise the function of one of our distinguishing features of our anatomy that allows us to run

Melanie Avalon

Wow. Okay.  So many things here going back to the evolutionary misconceptions that maybe we have of what they are versus what they were versus what we think they are on the flip side of us thinking they're actually no related to it that thinking that they're just running and running and running and running and running. You also talk about in the book how the Hudson or like these different hunter gatherer societies actually like they're burning a similar amount of calories as we are.  Yeah. That blows my mind.

Brad Kearns

That's crazy, huh?

Melanie Avalon

So what's happening with that? They're not moving around as much as we think.

Brad Kearns

Well, it's sort of an aside, and it's the great work of Dr. Herman Ponser, author of Burn. The book is titled Burn, and he's one of the world's leading experts on caloric expenditure, not only among humans, but amongst all the apes. And there are studies from all over the world that determine what modern humans burn daily calories, right? Basal metabolic rate. And then we try to add on like, oh, if you go to a spinning class, you burn 600 calories in the 45-minute class, add that to your 2157 that you put into your internet calculator, and you're burning around 2,700. And a lot of this stuff is deeply flawed. It's almost ridiculous how flawed it is. On both sides of the food measurement calories is not accurate. I'm sure you've had many experts on that can tell why a twinkie of 200 calories is not the same as a patty of ground beef that I just ate, that's mostly protein, right?  It has different effects on the body, and you can't even count them on the same scale. And so we have a really poor way of interpreting and appreciating how calorie burning relates to body composition. And so the mind blowing insight from Dr. Ponser's work is that these really active Hadza burn around the same number of calories as the average daily couch potato. And it comes down to things like the brain being the most ravenous organ by far burns 20% of all our daily calories is the brain. And the brain burns a similar amount of calories, whether you're studying for the bar exam or just binging on Netflix, it's like the brain just inhales energy 24 seven. So there's 20% right there, whether you're a marathon runner, pushing your body hard every day, or whether you're just a couch potato. And then we go down the line like the liver is extremely calorie burning with something like 15% of all daily calories. And what happens if you do indeed burn those 600 calories at your morning spin class, guess what happens? It's, it's a scientific concept known as the compensation theory of exercise. This is where your body engages in an assortment of compensatory mechanisms to kind of regulate calorie burning at rest or make yourself more efficient at rest. So that the end of the day, you're burning the same number of calories as your neighbor who sleeps in for two more hours and walks the dog around the block.  And that's their whole daily exercise habit. And even more sort of concerning, we talk a lot about chronic inflammation or systemic inflammation as this really undesirable disease state. And it's strongly driven by inactivity. So when you have these undesirable inflammatory processes going on, because you are inactive, and because you eat crappy food, you are actually burning a lot of calories from system wide inflammation, rather than being healthy. And so you two are in the running, just like your super fit neighbor, who does all the exercise in the morning, these are an undesirable way to burn calories as opposed to, for example, challenging the muscle with resistance exercise, and then recovering and refueling.

Brad Kearns

What's also interesting to note is the fitter you get, the fewer calories you're burning during your workout, because you're so fit. And so like Kip Choge, the greatest marathon runner of all time, Elwood Kip Choge from Kenya, he's mentioned many times in the book and his training patterns are mentioned.  But if you saw him running down the street in New York when he was showing up for the marathon, and he ran by you, he would be running at a very high rate of speed visually. And he's probably going out for 10 miles, right, which is a long way to go. But him running 10 miles at six minute pace is directly equivalent to you and I walking for 25 minutes at a very slow chit chat pace, because he's so efficient that the 10 mile run at six minute pace is nothing to him. And this can be validated by measuring his heart rate, or any elite athlete like the Tour de France cycle is trained for five to seven hours a day. But for them, pedaling three hours up the mountain is like someone doing a 30 minute spin class in terms of, you know, the effect on the on the metabolic function and the calorie burning. So we need to step away from this obsession with doing workouts in order to burn calories in order to shed body fat and instead focus on hormone optimization overall, with healthy lifestyle habits and an appropriate fitness regimen that's not overly stressful.

Melanie Avalon

A theme in reading your book obviously for me was realizing all these myths that I am saturated in, in this world. And we keep talking about marathon runners.  So the idea of the marathon, for example, where did that come from? And how is it a myth?

Brad Kearns

You're going to get me going now. I was calm and relaxed until now.  But it's one of my favorite anecdotes, because I really didn't understand it fully until digging deep into the research, and it's pretty shocking. So most people are familiar that the marathon is this signature event, and it's regarded as the ultimate achievement for the everyday jogger to sign up and run the full distance instead of a half or a quarter. And the marathon is 26.2 miles, right? And it emerged first in the reenactment of the Olympic Games. So the modern Olympic Games started in 1896, and this was an ode to the ancient Greek Olympic Games, which went on for about 800 or 1,000 years, a couple thousand years ago.  And so everyone's familiar with the Olympic Games today, but it started in 1896. And one of the events they threw in there was the marathon run of 26 miles. And it was in honor of this amazing, legendary Greek soldier named Fidipides. And there's a chain of running shoe stores today called Fidipides. And if you Google this difficult to spell Greek name, you'll see magazines and brands and things like that. So Fidipides was a real person, and he was a foot messenger in the Greek army. They called him a haemorrhodromus, or haemorrhodromi would be the plural. And so the Greek army had these foot messengers that would send messages for strategic battle issues and running amongst the different settlements and military groups. They were very, very important members of the Greek army. And this guy was an absolute legend and performed these amazing feats that in Dean Carnassus's book, he talks about how he literally was one of the most influential people in the development of Western civilization with these heroic feats that changed the course of history because of the influence on the battles.  But as the legend goes, Fidipides ran from the city of Marathon to the headquarters in Athens, which is around 26 miles. You can probably Google map it right now. The legend said that he ran to report victory in battle to the important people gathered in Athens and then dropped dead as soon as he delivered the message. The quote is, Nike, Nike, Nenikayem, it means rejoice, we conquer. And that's why the brand Nike is called that. It's a Greek goddess of victory. That was the story. And that is why today we run 26 miles for the marathon.  We actually run 26.2 because the Queen of England wanted to see the start of the marathon in the 1908 games in London. And she said, I want to start in front of Windsor Castle and we need to finish at the stadium. And so it went from 26 to 26.2, which is now standardized. That's the crazy anecdote there. Here's the punchline. The amazing legendary run never happened. It was fabricated in an 1879 poem by Robert Browning, where he took his liberties with actual Greek history and just described this whimsical event where the soldier ran and said rejoice, we conquer and dropped dead. So it got lost in the shuffle that this whole story was made up. And so we're basically picking an arbitrary distance. We're now today putting billions of marketing dollars behind it and these major, major events.

Brad Kearns

The New York City Marathon just set an all time record where they had, I think it was like 54,000 finishers of one race last November through the streets of New York City. So it's big business.  It's a big movement. There's like 2 million people that finish a marathon. I think 2 million people have run a marathon in the last decades all told. And it's all based on a fabrication. And then more interestingly is the true soldier Fadipides. His true running feet of note was that he ran from Athens to Sparta 153 miles in 36 hours, which today is an amazing elite level performance. So this guy was awesome. And the reason he ran to Sparta was to request their help in battle for the Battle of Marathon, true story, right?  So he ran 153 miles, he got to Sparta and he found out they were on vacation and they couldn't come to battle right away. So what does he have to do? He has to turn around and run back to Athens after a short break and report the news to Athens that we need to delay going to battle with the Persians because we don't have the help of the Spartans yet. So in six days, 72 hours, in four days, he ran 306 miles. Dean Carnassus says one of the great athletic achievements of all time in the history of humanity and changed the course of Western civilization as we know it today. So that's the real Fadipides. And I wanna finish with the conclusion that if we really wanna honor this amazing Greek Hemorrhodromus, the marathon should be 153 miles or 306 miles, not 26. And so now it opens up the idea of what if we called today's marathon a half marathon, we'd all be better off because 13.1 miles is an incredibly long way to run for almost all the participants and it's a great physical achievement, but it's not stupid like running 26 miles is for most people.

Melanie Avalon

Whoa. So when he ran the 150 something and back, did he die?

Brad Kearns

No, that's why he changed the course of Western civilization, is that the Greeks prevailed in this strategic battle, and if they hadn't, you history buffs know that if the others were able to conquer, I don't have the details here, but it was a major, major military strategy event, this messaging.

Melanie Avalon

Just as a side note, because I recently did an episode on the pyramids, the Greeks also wrote stuff about the pyramids and that's where we get a lot of our information about the pyramids. And it's like from poems that might not be accurate.  So it seems to be a theme in history.

Brad Kearns

It's fun to tell the story, I hope you all appreciated it, but it is a very, very serious repercussions because what we're doing now is we are trying to honor and emulate these genetic freaks who are genetically adapted for running. The Tarahumara got best-selling book status because we went down there and were amazed by their achievements. Little known in the background is that the main reason they run is because they're impoverished.  If we gave them mopeds and built roads, they wouldn't be so interested as running 50 miles to the next village. Same with the great East African long-distance runners who are the single most dominant athletic population in any sport ever known in the history of sports. 80% of all the top marathon times in the history of running come from people who hail from East Africa and in fact a really small area, not a small area of the globe, but it's the great Rift Valley. Runners from this small pocket in East Africa absolutely dominate on the world stage. There's many books about it and videos and you can learn why are these Africans so dominant in the marathon. They have some genetic attributes, it's very interesting. They are incredibly distinct from West African ancestry people who dominate in the sprint events so it's like completely different than the marathon. The 100 meter sprint is 496 of the top 500 times in history come from athletes who trace their ancestry to West Africa, a lot of them from America or from Jamaica, the great sprinters from whatever country, but it's West African ancestry with a different build and more muscular power versus the extremely lean physique that's more genetically adapted to endurance for those hailing from East Africa and that's great for them, but it's not a wise idea to emulate the most genetically fortunate people and think that you should be doing the same thing they're doing, that is the 54,000 people that are running the same race as the dudes in front who are going for the prize purse and have been training their entire lives and living at altitude and have all those genetic attributes.  So when we have a book title like Born to Run, we're joking a little bit in the book, but what if we put Born to Sumo Wrestle, would everyone embrace that idea? Of course not because the sumo wrestlers are average, they average like 335 pounds and they are genetically selected for their participation in this event and we're also not born to skydive or race motorcycles around the track and it's no different than saying Born to Run on all these other examples. It's a very select population that is genetically adapted to actually thrive and benefit and be healthy from running and guess what? Shout out to all those people who are in that group and a lot of them are my old friends.

Brad Kearns

I'm a long time endurance athlete and a couple of my buddies in particular from high school, they're both named Steve, they're running 40 years later and feeling great and it's a great part of their lives and they wake up in the morning and they put on their shoes and they go jog 5 miles or 10 miles or 12 miles and they're better for it because they have the tremendous conditioning and musculoskeletal resilience and the mindset and they're training at the correct heart rate levels which we're going to talk about later, but if running is working for you, that's great. But for a lot of people in those big packs and these events and the people jogging down the parks and sidewalks and trails of America and the world, a lot of them are frustrated because one of the main reasons that people run is to burn calories and reduce excess body fat and we cite a tremendous amount of research and science in the book that it simply doesn't work and fitness can contribute wonderfully to shape the physique of your dreams, but endurance running will not help you get lean and mean and ripped.  It actually promotes fat storage as well as muscle loss.

Melanie Avalon

something just to add to that on top of that with the marathon running and everything. This had never occurred to me until I read your book, but if we were endorsing, like use the sumo wrestling as an example, if we were endorsing some sort of other physical activities that people take part in, they have barriers to entry. Like even if we're saying like everybody do it, not everybody can just easily do it.  Like the sumo wrestling or joining like football or there's barriers. And then you talk about how with marathons and running, like anybody can seemingly do it. Like you can just, you know, get some shoes, go out, go running, sign up for a marathon. And it never occurred to me that that would be actually like dangerous, like the easy barrier of entry and then shoes adding to that as well. Quick question, if people are, you know, surpassing this invisible barrier to entry, putting on their shoes, not healthy, and then trying to run a marathon, like how bad is it? Like what happens to your body when you're doing that?

Brad Kearns

Yeah, that's a super important point to present and you said it beautifully, like, you know, if you want to go play high school football, those kids are out there grinding all summer and doing drills in order to take their first tackle and not knock their block off. And so there's tremendous entry barriers to the most dangerous stuff, like the motorcycle racing and the skydiving and all that stuff that where most people are like, no, thanks, I'm not going to do that.  But with running, and here's the funny thing is there's a tremendous entry barrier, because the sport is so difficult, stressful and challenging. But the entry barrier was removed in the mid 70s when Nike invented the elevated cushioned running shoe. Because prior to that, if you wanted to do endurance running, you had a really crappy, simple shoe with no padding, and it was all that was available. And there's pictures of all these early shoes in the book. And you can see them just with internet searches where, you know, the pre Nike running shoe was something that only the very most resilient and highly adapted overall fitness specimens could could even attempt. Because if you took off running down the street, after a mile or two miles or whatever, your feet would start to hurt, your Achilles tendon will start to burn up, your calves would get sore and tight, because it's too difficult to actually do the human act of running. Quick compare and contrast to walking. There's no impact trauma with walking because it's one times bodyweight is your maximum impact. The definition of walking, or the distinguishing feature is that one foot is always on the ground, right? So in the walking stride, one foot is always on the ground. Therefore, there's no impact trauma beyond your bodyweight. With running, even a slow jog immediately initiates a two to three times bodyweight impact. And it goes all the way up to five times bodyweight when you see the Olympic sprinters in the hundred meters. Okay, so back to the the impact trauma. This is something that has always prevented people from going out there and running themselves into the ground, so to speak, with illness injuries, burnout and all the things that we detail in the chapters. But as soon as that shoe came out, now, anyone could put on the magical shoe and take off shuffling down the road, not proper running with the proper technique, which is characterized by a midfoot landing over a balance center of gravity, but rather with this kind of ill adapted shuffling stride as exhibited by someone who's not super fit and doesn't go very fast. But they're still generating impact trauma with every stride because they're leaving the ground and they're in the air, even when they're jogging. And so the shoes, the title of chapter one is opening the floodgates with one fell swoosh like the Nike swoosh. Get it? Get it? Okay, thank you. So when the floodgates opened, that's when you saw joggers populating the sidewalks, roads, and trails of America, for better or for worse. And the better part is any kind of fitness boom that gets people off the couch, like Jane Fonda started doing her VHS tapes in the 70s.

Brad Kearns

And so people started doing aerobics. And the running boom started in the 70s, thanks to a confluence of a bunch of different cultural influences, especially Nike's shoes and their advertising that followed that glorified the just do it and all those, the greatest advertising campaign of all time.  Okay, so all this is great. But running is enabled by elevated cushion shoes, and it enables poorly adapted people who should not be running to run

Melanie Avalon

And what is actually happening in people's bodies when they do this? From like a physiological, could you talk about how it kind of looks like you're having a heart attack if you run a marathon?

Brad Kearns

Oh, yeah, that's uh, I mean first we'll talk about the impact trauma and then the extreme acute damage to the body that comes when you do an extreme endurance event, but when you put on these shoes and are able to neutralize that immediate penalty of a jarring landing When you're are poorly adapted Now you can kind of pound your body for two miles five miles 10 miles or 26 miles Without that immediate penalty whereby the example I gave where if I asked you to take your shoes off and run down a paved sidewalk You're going to be able to do it beautifully and you're actually going to feel fine.  I encourage anyone to try this for Whatever you want 50 50 meters 100 meters, but you certainly can't go and run your usual five mile loop bare feet Because pretty soon after a mile or two your legs are going to blow up.  So when you put the shoes on you Destroy your proprioception.  That's your awareness of your body moving through space and you no longer feel the penalty Of the impact trauma from landing with an inefficient stride and so the shoes enable poor form To occur when you're running and it's characterized 80 to 95 percent of all recreational runners according to dr Lieberman exhibit this heel striking Overstriding jarring braking stride and so if you look closely it's hard to see I look all over Whenever I see someone running down the street if you you know film them on high speed motion camera capture They're landing on their heel and that impact is inappropriately dispersed throughout the lower extremities whereby over time it's going to lead to Achilles tendinitis plantar fasciitis is going to lead to Calf tightness soreness and injury knee injuries all the way up to hip and even into the lower back Now if you took off the shoes and had the people shuffle along with that crappy form what would happen with a heel strike Go try that for two strides and you will immediately see how painful it is to run landing on your heel It's virtually impossible You can't do it for I mean if you so much as step off one stair and land heel first You'll see how painful it is.  So the running shoes were like a a crutch to bypass that pain gateway that prevented people from running more than you know a minute or two at a time And then turn them into marathon runners

Melanie Avalon

And so when you are bypassing that, that pain signal, you're still getting the residual, you're getting all the other impact forces of bad form and the rest of your body.

Brad Kearns

Right, because if you're running barefoot, and you have good form, and you take off down the road, you're going to go for a mile or two, and then just be like, Oh, my gosh, my toes hurt, my feet hurt, my arch hurts, my Achilles hurts, my calves are getting tight, because you're feeling everything. And you're feeling how difficult the movement is.  But with the shoes, oh my gosh, these shoes are so comfortable. And the great brands that have risen in recent years, like Hoka with the super cushion shoes, where you see more and more padding, and people wear these to the gym, they wear them to the supermarket, and your feet feel so comfortable in your brand new elevated cushion shoes. And the reason they feel comfortable is they're they're well built to feel like you're walking on pillows. However, what they are doing is they're muting or they're disengaging you from the proprioception of what it feels like to land on the ground, balance body weight and take off.  Remember, I said those three things. And so it's kind of like, it's kind of like going to the dentist, and getting a tooth extraction, they shoot you up with novocaine, they give you whatever else they give you right the laughing gas.

Melanie Avalon

Nitrous, my favorite.

Brad Kearns

Yeah, nitrous, everything feels great, the tooth comes out and you say goodbye and you say thank you and you're fine. And then the medicine wears off and you have a throbbing pain where you have to cry yourself to sleep for the next three days, especially in my case when I wanted to be a badass and I denied the pain medication because I'm so healthy after my wisdom tooth extraction and boy did I pay for it later and was like give me more, whatever drug you got.  It was rough, but when you are under the influence of Novocaine, you don't realize how painful it is for someone to grab a pair of pliers and yank something out of your mouth, you only experience it later. And that is exactly what's going on with the chronic rate of overuse injuries amongst regular runners. The stats are stunning and embarrassing and indicative of how poorly the general mainstream approach is. Yale University says that 50% of regular runners are injured annually. Wake Forest said 73%, you know, worldwide research anywhere from 36 to 73%. So if you're a runner, you're getting injured, guaranteed getting injured at some point. And it's because it's so traumatic, but you don't experience that immediate penalty. So what you do is you accumulate even a simple five mile run by someone 150 pounds at a slow jogging pace, two to three times body weight impact. So let's say 2.5 is incurring 2 million pounds of impact load over that five mile run and feeling fine because they're running in these puffy cushioned shoes that diffuse and mute the pain like your novocaine. Compare contrast to a five mile walk. What's the accumulated impact load beyond 1g or one times body weight? There's none. So you can walk, get fit, enjoy the outdoors, not overstress your heart, or you can insist upon jogging and incur that 2.3 million pounds of force.

Melanie Avalon

This is crazy. And actually my anecdote, and I talked about this when I had Mark on the other show, my experience of realizing that shoes were doing something funky with how force was impacting my body was when I got a pair of tone-ups in like high school, I think.  Do you remember tone-ups?

Brad Kearns

No, sorry.

Melanie Avalon

So he actually was super he was really excited because he was like he literally knew the entire history of this shoe. So it was a mo it was a moment for me because it was something I've been wondering my whole life, not my whole life ever since I got those shoes, which was why did they make me feel this way and basically they were Skechers and they were shoes that the way they marketed them was they were supposed to create instability in your like, I don't know, adjusting your muscles to the shoe.  So it was it would tone up your muscles.

Brad Kearns

Oh yeah, interesting.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And I remember I got these shoes. I was so excited.  I'm like, oh, I'm like toning up my muscles just walking. And then I started getting really weird pains, like not in my shoes, like in my knees, I think. And I was like, that's weird because I never had the experience of putting on shoes and then just later getting random pains. And now I know why he knew the whole history of like why those shoes came out and everything. I thought it was a good example of not realizing in the moment that you are creating tension and wear and tear and other places of your body, thanks to shoes. And again, these were shoes that were made to like throw you off a little.

Brad Kearns

bit. This is a good time to for public service announcement to say like this book and this message today is not about convincing you to toss your big cushion shoes in the garbage can and go barefoot and go to minimalist shoes because what happened in 2009 when the Born to Run book was published and the glorification of these amazing natural barefoot runners in the in the canyons is people started to gravitate over to the original five-toe minimalist shoe and yes indeed they allow your foot to function better they allow your Achilles tendon and your arch everything to go through their full range of motion and isn't it wonderful just like my story of running down the sidewalk you're gonna run with perfect form but people were incredibly poorly adapted for a cold turkey switch over from a lifetime reliance on these restrictive elevated cushion shoes and so what happened was widespread injuries and big backlash against the company that came out with the five-toe shoes including a high-profile class action lawsuit where someone sued them because these flimsy little five-toe shoes actually caused them to get injured running like duh you think you know so running and the running shoes allow you to do something that is incredibly unnatural and quite difficult but if you do it right of course these shoes can be a wonderful tool because they'll you know help you to perform just like when you want to play basketball you're not gonna go on the court barefoot you're gonna put on basketball shoes or when I want to high jump I have shoes with a steel plate and spikes in them so I can plant forcefully on the ground and launch my body into the air that's not a natural human movement that's part of our genetics and our abilities that's something that's kind of crazy especially at my age to try to keep doing and it brings a high injury risk and all that stuff and I just want to you know we need to popularize the idea that running is a very very risky and dangerous sport even for someone shuffling along well-meaning and trying to get in shape and that's why the compare and contrast to walking without the impact load and at a more appropriate heart rate range can be a huge breakthrough for people that have been frustrated by the overly stressful and injurious nature of jogging.

Melanie Avalon

Thank you so much for drawing attention to that. And I was actually gonna ask you questions related to that. So that was perfect.  Segue, segue, yeah. I have another quick shoe question. I'm dying to know, you said in the book, because in the book there's a whole history of shoes, which, well, actually not all shoes, but running shoes. A lot of little fun facts I didn't know. Like the reason we have shoes that are too narrow was because of like the peasants and they would wear, I think, wide shoes.

Brad Kearns

Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. To look like a sophisticated elite member of society, you had these ill-fitting shoes because that proved that you weren't a manual laborer, I guess.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, there were spray-on shoes though. Oh yeah. I just must know like what these are.

Brad Kearns

like silicon-style, you know, form-fitting material like you might see in a neoprene water sock shoe or something. So they're a form-fitting custom design shoe where they kind of shape right to your feet.  You can look at photos of the athletes running the Olympic Marathon in Paris, for example, and they were, you know, busting out this newfangled shoe. But I think the greatest innovation in running shoes in the last 50 years occurred a few years ago with Nike inventing the super shoe. So this is a carbon-plated, lightweight, special EVA foam shoe that is purported to actually provide a significant performance advantage against all previous shoes. And it's been validated in laboratory research where, because of this carbon plate, people call them like the springy shoes or the, it's not a spring, it's not generating more energy than your body's generating when it hits the ground and takes off. But the today's super shoe absorbs less of the energy and returns it more to be dedicated to forward propulsion. And so you can envision this rigid carbon plate embedded inside the foam sole so that when you land and take off, it feels like you're running on springs or a very bouncy shoe in comparison to a nice cushioned shoe with foam where you just land and it feels comfortable, it's not jarring. And so the athletes have been breaking records left and right with these carbon-plated shoes in the endurance sports. And it's kind of been a whole upheaval because now we can't compare to the old marathon times of the past because these guys are shattering all the records.  But they do have a decided advantage with these spring-loaded carbon-plated shoes. And the other feature of the shoes is the contour of the sole is preformed or preloads your foot into the takeoff position. So at the toe part, it's called toe spring. And you can put the shoe on the ground or Google toe spring. And when the shoe is just sitting there not worn, the toe is off the ground. And so what it does is it mimics that takeoff position that you have to work hard and bend your tarsals and engage your big toe to help your body launch off the ground. So if your foot is placed in this preloaded position, it's going to be easier to run and generate energy. That's great when you're trying to break the record and win the gold in the Olympics.  However, when you wear these types of shoes over time, what they do is cause weakening atrophy and dysfunction of the feet because it's kind of like a back brace is not going to make your abs stronger. It's going to make them weaker because guess what? You're no longer burdened with holding up your torso by engaging the abs lightly throughout the day. Now you can kind of relax into these orthopedic devices that are so popular. Same with a wrist brace. If you have carpal tunnel, you're not going to strengthen your wrist muscles by wearing the brace. I promise you, it's just a brace to help help you continue to operate without the pain. But over time, the long-term effects are disastrous when it comes to wearing these elevated cushion shoes, particularly the super shoes.

Melanie Avalon

Have you tried these carbon plated shoe things? I'm just wondering what this feels like.

Brad Kearns

Mark and I are heavily involved in launching this new company, Peluva, which is the modern version of the five toe minimalist shoe that has sufficient padding. So it's an easier transition away from a lifetime in the other shoes.  And so I've thrown away or given away about 40 pairs of shoes. I'm kind of a shoe guy. I like to go shopping on eBay and I get a shoe for basketball and I get a shoe for hiking and I get three different shoes for running. But now my five toe Peluva shoe, which gives me the most barefoot authentic experience throughout the day, I basically wear that all the time for everything except for my sprint workouts. And like I said, with my high jumping as well as my sprinting, it's such a difficult, challenging and high impact activity that I take advantage of specialized shoes to allow my body to perform the workout and get fit without that extra strain and trauma on the tendons that might come if I did the whole workout barefoot because I'm barefoot guy. So I make a compromise because I have these modern day sophisticated athletic goals. And the rest of my life is spent in a barefoot or barefoot simulated state so I can get my feet and my arches and my Achilles strong enough to withstand the adverse effects of wearing these fancy shoes that I sprint in.

Melanie Avalon

when you sprint for that brief amount of time in these other shoes, it's just time-wise not enough time to have those residual negative effects later of the shoes.

Brad Kearns

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, yeah, that's, that's well said. It's like, I'm not the real problem comes the further and further away we get from, let's say, an ancestrally optimized lifestyle. So blue light after dark is really bad for you. And it gets dark at five o'clock in the winter. So we should just turn off all our lights from five to 1030 every night for five months a year.  That's not going to happen. And so what we want to do is try to get as close as possible to, you know, circadian optimal experience by perhaps relying on red or softer lighting the later it gets and then just mellowing things out and toning things down and trying your best to, you know, to stay connected with your human genetic expectations for health. And this might be an interesting little segue because our genetic expectation for health is to be engaged in near constant everyday movement all the time. That's the human genetic blueprint for health. And the best way to really impress the importance of this is compare and contrast to the species known as the Pantera Leo, the African lion, the lion's genetic blueprint and the way the lion lives is to sleep for around 20 hours per day and then launch a brief all out attack as the apex predator to get their prey. Their attacks last no longer than 30 seconds. And if they're successful and they feast, they are known to sleep for 24 hours after their feast, but their daily baseline existence is sleeping for 20 hours a day. Very similar to your common house cat or even your dog, that's them living their best life. In contrast, and we know this from research of modern day hunter gatherers like the Hadza where all the research is coming from, a lot of research is coming from, we need to be in movement or we suffer adverse consequences really quickly. And so there's research showing that even a period of stillness for as short as 20 minutes will generate a noticeable decrease in glucose tolerance and an increase in insulin resistance in 20 minutes of sitting. There's also brain research showing that we can only focus on a peak cognitive task for around 20 minutes before we start to drift. And so if we don't take a movement break every 20 minutes or so, we start to compromise our health. It's just a genetic observation of how the human operates, compare contrast to the lion and whatever other animals. So our need is always to be moving. And that includes fidgeting at your desk with your foot, doing a stand up desk or switching from stand up to sit down, doing something relating to movement rather than stillness.

Melanie Avalon

So I was going to say we should have done three of these movement sessions so far in our podcast interview.

Brad Kearns

That's right. The listeners can pause and, well, hopefully you're listening to this while you're walking or doing something. But, you know, walking is the centerpiece of the human genetic expectation for near constant movement, but anything counts. So if, you know, if you're doing pilates or you're doing some yoga stretches at your desk or you're doing a set of 20 deep squats in your cubicle, because you don't have time to work out, these things add up over time to a tremendous improvement in health and fitness.  So I mean, one of the things we talked about before recording, you're asking me, you know, is little walks help, are little walks helpful? Just like the big weekend grand outing with your Camelback backpack and you're going to go hike two hours to the highest peak in your county. That's great. But a five minute walk or a two minute walk or rushing up the staircase just for fun during the day, all these things contribute to this movement requirement. You know, you hear about the step count, the 10,000 steps a day, and that's great that this stuff is being promoted. But I don't want anyone to get psyched out or think that if they're not walking for a minimum 30 minutes or a minimum hour, it's not a big health boost. Anything contributes to the huge health boost overall of being more active.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, and the 10K step count, that was also another myth.

Brad Kearns

That's funny, huh?

Melanie Avalon

Right? Completely arbitrary number.

Brad Kearns

Yeah, so how did we get this 10,000 steps a day? It goes from a, it originates not from science, but from a 1960s era magazine ad from a Japanese pedometer company that was selling the pedometer to help you measure your steps. And so they wanted to encourage people to do more walking in the course of selling the pedometer. And it turns out the Japanese character for 10,000 resembles the lower body of a walking person. And so that's right there smack on the ad. It looks like someone taking a stride. And so they said 10,000 steps a day. And it's, it's filtered all the way to, to present day health recommendation.  And there's nothing wrong with it, except I see in the fitness world for a long time, the potential for the average busy everyday person to get discouraged at this all or nothing, no pain, no gain mentality. And so we need to unwind some of these notions that, for example, in the running community, they're obsessed with counting up their weekly mileage. And if you're going to do a marathon, you should be averaging 50 miles every week. Otherwise you're no good. And so we need to do away with this all or nothing black and white mentality. No pain, no gain is absolutely refuted, especially by the elite athletes who know how to take care of their bodies, perhaps even better than the average recreational person, and just get out there and enjoy movement for the sake of movement, not for even counting steps or counting calories.

Melanie Avalon

And I also love and want to touch on Palluva. I'm so excited to tell you this, because I don't think I've updated you on my Palluva experience, BRAD, because you, okay. So you first sent me a pair around the time that you launched. And admittedly, this was before I had read your book and had my mind blown and truly realized the importance. I think I got a size too small as well. And I, as well, I don't know, I think listeners might know this. I'm not, I don't wear shoes a lot. I wear like sandals typically. And I've just, I'm not, like I said before, I'm not really a runner and not really a jogger. So I don't really wear closed toed shoes much. Except on the red carpet, baby. Heels, oh yes, heels, which we circle back to.  So when I first got the pair of Palluva, it's like I said, I think I got too small. And I didn't really realize the importance. Then when I interviewed Mark about a month ago, I was like, whoa. And when I read your book, I was like, okay, I got a, we got to change my habits here. Even like walking around my apartment, I, you know, I should be barefoot. I shouldn't be wearing, because I'll wear like sandals around the apartment or like slip on things. I was like, we got to change things. So I got a pair of, now you have so many more options. I got a pair of the Zen slip on, or they can be slip on, which speaks to my heart. And then he also sent, or whoever sent to me, also sent a pair of, I think some of the new women's ones that you can wear like outdoors. So I have started wearing both of these, and I am so excited. And I feel like, I literally feel like I'm doing therapy for my feet when I put them on, because I've become so acutely aware of A, the problems with shoes in general, even things like sandals. B, I've noticed how, because Mark was saying when I first put them on, that it probably will not just naturally slip on. And that's because our feet have become contorted due to our modern habits, which I also experienced. It literally, I'm not kidding, Brad. It took me like three minutes to put it on the first time, because I couldn't get each toe into the individual slot. I was like, this is telling.

Brad Kearns

Yeah, it's funny like at trade shows when we're doing a fitting event and Mark will say, are you finding some difficulty putting them on the person will be like, yeah, and Mark says great, because your feet desperately need to be stretched out because they're so difficult to put on. And then it's great feeling over time for it to get easier and easier.  But you said it feels like a therapy effect. And in fact, research validates that these are toe spacers that you're wearing. And toe spacers are very popular. It's like a multi billion dollar industry, because people have so much pain and suffering in the foot, 78% of Americans complain of chronic foot pain. So you are actually wearing an active toe spacer. And the barefoot type construction of the foot is basically you're doing foot strengthening exercises, every step that you take with a barefoot inspired shoe.

Melanie Avalon

It's incredible. I'm really not kidding with that first try on experience. And I had some wine in me and I was literally sitting there and I was like, why can I not? I kept like putting my toes in, but I couldn't put one in each one. I put like two in one. I was like, I can't figure this puzzle out. It doesn't make sense.  But now I can do it. I'm just so thrilled and excited. And I'm excited to see how much your line I think has expanded. There's so many options.

Brad Kearns

Yeah, the response has been amazing. And also interesting, you made me think of, you know, so we make these beautiful barefoot shoes. And then it was like, well, people like socks in life. And so we had to make barefoot socks. And it was kind of like a, an afterthought, in case people wanted to wear socks. And the socks are selling like crazy.  Because when you put on a five toe sock, you realize that even a sock is pinching your toes together and contributing to the foot dysfunction, pain and suffering and atrophy. So even when you're, I mean, when you're barefoot, that's, that's obviously the ultimate. But even if you're wearing another shoe, individualizing the toe slots for the socks is going to feel really comfortable. And kind of, you know, make your foot feel different at the end of the day, than when it's been, people know the feeling of taking off socks and like, you know, your blood's been constricted a little, you can see the line on halfway up your ankle and all that stuff. So I use the Paluva's barefoot, because again, if you're individualizing your toe slots, you're not going to get a blister, because your toes aren't rubbing against each other and getting squished with every step. And so it's kind of cool to have that barefoot feel. But then if you want some more warmth, or you just prefer socks, you slide your individual toe socks into the individual five toes. And now you have a great barefoot experience when you need footwear.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm literally, I'm so excited and I will, I'll mention this again at the end. But if listeners would like to get Puluvas, which literally I, I'm kind of shocked, honestly, Brad, because you know me, like I'm not, I think I've been very transparent that I'm not a shoe person historically. So my excitement around this is very telling. Also these would make really great gifts for people, I'm just thinking because you can like people love shoes and now you can actually like help their health.  So if listeners go to puluva.com slash ifvpodcast, so that's p-e-l-u-v-a.com slash ifvpodcast, you will get 10% off with the code ifvpodcast. And yes, I am using our code from the other show, but that will get you the discount. So puluva.com slash ifvpodcast with the code ifvpodcast for 10% off. And something else I'm really excited about is, and you talk about this in the book, but I always thought, for example, that bunions are like predestiny and my grandmother had them, my dad had them. So I've always been like, Hmm, am I going to get them? And I reading the book, I learned that a lot of that has to do with our shoes.

Brad Kearns

Sure. I mean this goes back to the the bigger original presentation of the prime primal blueprint that your genes are not your destiny but I get into talks with like family members especially about this and People refuting the notion knee-jerk reaction saying oh, you don't understand my whole family on my on my side There's heart attacks and there's heart disease and obesity and that is very very relevant and our familial genetic predispositions are very relevant However, they're not going to be expressed without the necessary Lifestyle inputs so I have a lot of alcoholism in my extended family just as probably every single person does But I don't drink and so I'm a hundred percent certain that I won't become an alcoholic Because I don't drink even though I might be incredibly predisposed to same with many other predispositions But I think we like conflate our you know our our family height pattern or eye Color or you know, everyone's got flat feet including all my uncles and and my brother and my dad But that's a little different where we have tremendous influence over for example our metabolic health regardless of familial genetic predispositions because if you don't eat crappy nutrient-deficient processed foods You're gonna have a lot better chance against whatever those predispositions are that you have to you know, not handle adverse lifestyle impact

Melanie Avalon

Exactly. So, I mean, this is really just so empowering for people. So if bunions is something you're concerned about, start wearing blue buzz.

Brad Kearns

and all the other above, bunions, corns, neuromas, chronic pain, plantar fasciitis, achilles tendonitis, these are all emanating from wearing modern shoes.

Melanie Avalon

How quickly, so if somebody's been wearing, which is most people, normal shoes their whole life, how quickly do things start to change in the body when you switch over to this, to Palubas?

Brad Kearns

Interesting question. I think it brings up the incredible necessity to proceed gradually.  And I have a beautiful PDF, a free handbook that you can download. It's 88 pages of extensive information about how to transition gracefully to a more barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle. So just go to Paluva.com. And in fact, your first visit, the thing will pop up and says get a free ebook. But it's filled with step by step protocols to help you make this transition safely and gracefully rather than give up because your arches started hurting the first day you wore the shoes. It needs to be gradual and it needs to be sensible. So what happens is if you start to formulate the idea that barefoot is the way to go and that shoes are harmful, maybe that's a new insight that we can, you know, pound the drum and convince you that it's definitely true, right? Then you just start to make an effort to go barefoot around the house, pick up a pair of Paluvas and try them out, walk down the block for a half a mile and come back and monitor for things like soreness and inflammation a day after and even two days after because especially health freaks like us that listen to a lot of podcasts and dabble in all the biohacking opportunities. Sometimes we get overly enthusiastic and we take off on a six mile hike in our brand new awesome barefoot shoes and then the next day our arches are not happy and then you form an idea like well maybe I should, you know, switch back to more cushioned shoes. So we have to again respect the research life's work of people like Dr. Lieberman who prove without a doubt that bare feet absorb impact more efficiently than the most fancy cushioned shoe ever developed and the best material ever developed by mankind. Dr. Courtney Conley, she was, had a great show on Dr. Peter Tia's podcast recently and she's talking about the composition of the padding and the fat cells and the way that they're intertwined in the fascia. We basically have little pads under our heels and under our midfoot. You can feel down and feel the tissue and these are beautiful shock absorbent human tissue that is measured superior to the fancy pantsy sole that they throw on these running shoes.

Melanie Avalon

Incredible. I'm actually super curious because you have an insane athletic history involving running as well with your triathlete and all the things.  And for listeners, if you would like to hear more of Brad's story, I'll put a link in the show notes to the first time he was on this show. We talked all about Desert Princess, right? Or something like that.

Brad Kearns

The older I get, the faster I was is how I think about it now.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, I love that. Did you have an epiphany one day or did you slowly transition over? Do you remember the first time you tried barefoot style shoes?

Brad Kearns

Oh yeah, I mean Mark especially has been obsessed with barefoot shoes since the day that the first barefoot shoe came out around 2005 and he got me connected with the company and they sponsored me in my endeavors and my races and I remember getting my first pair and I put them on and took off and I ran a couple miles and they were amazing because you know you've never seen anything like it before and then the next day my calves were really sore which is a natural expected result but I've been doing this for you know 15-16 years now so I'm extremely sensitive to the sensitivity of someone who's just putting these on for the first time and we have to convince people hey it might feel funny at first but you know you'll get used to them the toe boxes will stretch out where they feel like they're you know they're part of your bare feet now I don't even feel like my my peluvus are on my body they're just an extension of my feet where I don't have to step on a thorn that's basically what they're for is protection otherwise we might as well go barefoot all the time 24-7 like a truly ancestral living person that the only reason is to protect against debris and weather and so forth or allow for complex athletic activity so I'm I'm integrating them to the maximum level but again when I mentioned that example with my sprint workouts I'm also sensitive to overuse injury and things like that so the specialized shoes come into play when you need them and if you're going to be on the red carpet you're wearing your heels for two or three hours and your feet are going to ache at the end and you're going to get relief as soon as you transition over to bare feet or for example slipping into those sliders and so with the athletes that we're associating with now we just signed someone on the Oakland Raiders famous longtime NFL player Amir Abdullah and you can find content on our instagram of him doing workouts in his Palouva shoes because the football cleats are brutal on your feet they pinch those toes in there so tightly and have that you know really firm plate to take off on and so you're generating the impact trauma and all the things I discussed with the the impact loads inappropriately because your foot are taken out of the picture because when you're on the field someone's going to tackle you and step on your foot and you're going to you can't very well wear barefoot toe shoes in the NFL so it's all about you know regaining foot functionality foot strength foot mobility and adaptability for those times when hey if you're in the the the trades and you're a construction worker the guys that are working on my house i'm not dangling the shoes in front of them and begging them to switch from their construction boots because they're going to hit a pipe and the construction boot is going to boot it away safely you know what i mean

Melanie Avalon

Yes. And congrats on that, by the way, with a signing.  One other question about Piluvas, because there are some other barefoot style brands out there. When you guys sat down to create this company, was there something you were looking to distinguish yourselves or were there any particular challenges or did you have a particular goal that you wanted to make Piluvas unique in, in this space?

Brad Kearns

Yeah, thanks for the thanks for the tee up. I mean, it's we're overjoyed to see the tremendous popularity of minimalist shoes. And we are friends with everyone in the game. We don't see this as competition.  Steven Sachin, the CEO of zero shoes, one of the fastest growing zero of minimalist shoe companies. He's been on my podcast. We have a lot of fun hanging out at the trade shows. And I support everything he's doing. And he he's he supports us as well. And same with the other brands that are, you know, battling against the true enemy here. It's just like in the the diet game. Oh, the carnivores are arguing with the time restricted feeding people and the and the true paleo versus modified paleo. It's like, come on, we should be battling against the US Food and Drug Administration and the USDA. So any step away from the elevated constrictive shoe is a great step forward to your health.  With Palluva, we feel like our unique feature is the articulated toes. And a true barefoot experience requires that individual articulation of the toe so they can move through multiple planes independently and dynamically, especially the big toe. Remember, I called this not I, but I'm quoting that the big toe is one of the preeminent human features that distinguishes us from the apes. And it's very, very important. On every walking stride, Melanie, the big toe supports your entire body weight. At one point in the stride, it loads over the big toe in running, especially a little bit in walking. But in running, the distinguishing feature is the big toe is that it is the primary trigger for the activation of the gluteal muscle to power the running stride. And the big toe needs to dorsiflex independently and powerfully. It cannot be pushed together with the other toes or the function will be inhibited. What's so important about the glutes, the largest and most powerful muscle in the body, they are the preeminent driver of running power and impact forward propulsion. And a lot of people have dysfunctional glutes mainly because of sitting all the time, because the glutes are deactivated in a chair, unlike when you're squatting or doing other things where you know, the glutes are involved. But when we start to get weak, deactivated glutes during everyday life, and then we wear an elevated cushion running shoe where the big toe is not allowed to trigger glute activation, that's how we shuffle along with this poor form that causes injuries.  So again, I just to go back and close that idea that we talked about earlier, the running shoe enables poor form, it does not cause poor form, it's an innate object sitting on sitting on the table. And it's not, it's not the cause of your shitty form. But it's allowing you to proceed with that shuffling, breaking, over striding heel striking pattern, which would otherwise be impossible if you tried to run and bare feet. Now, that brings the question, well, what is the cause of poor form?

Brad Kearns

It's weak deactivated glutes, it's weak, weak tight hamstrings, it's insufficient forward lean of the trunk, insufficient ankle mobility to dorsiflex, you know, poor flexibility. And so all these things come together to present the shuffler rather than the graceful runner that we can watch on the Olympics running along like a deer with beautiful transition between impact load and propulsion.

Melanie Avalon

crazy. My mind is being blown in so many ways. One more intuition question, just while we're talking about, you know, transitioning and, you know, embracing this new form of movement and new form of shoes and all the things. So at the very, very beginning, I was asking about will we just naturally, you know, walk the right way or run the right way? And you're talking about how form can get deformed. A big part of the book or a significant part of the book does talk about training and how to train and how to actually exercise in the most healthy way. It is so helpful.  So people are looking into having training in their life when it does come to any sort of cardio and muscle building as well. Like check out this book because it's in there. Question about the intuition aspect, the heart rates. And so when we are moving through like running, walking, jogging, do we need to be monitoring the zones and the heart rates? Or can I just not? Like how intuitive can it be?

Brad Kearns

Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. And I think one of the most important takeaways of the book, and one of the most important concepts in the entire world of cardiovascular exercise is exercise heart rate, that is the best way to measure intensity, and the relative degree of difficulty of the workout, as well as the metabolic impact of the workout.  And so there's this concept, I want to try to make it simple and, you know, concise, but there's this concept called fat max heart rate. And this is the number of beats per minute, where you are oxidizing the maximum fat calories per minute. So it's your maximum rate of fat burning. Let's say it's nine calories per minute for an elite athlete. So we need to identify fat max heart rate, because there's a tremendous distinction between the metabolic impacts of the workout when it's over fat max heart rate versus when it's at or below fat max heart rate. So you've heard the term fat burning workout most of us where they might have a chart on the gym and you look at the zones and it says the fat burning zone and then it gets harder and harder. And you've heard about the zone one zone two zone three zone four zone five exercise zone two is being popularized these days. And that's great to see because the upper limit of zone two is your fat max heart rate. So zone one and zone two are really easy comfortably paced zones. And then when you go to zone three, four, and five, you're doing things like high intensity interval training or sprinting. So when you're doing steady state cardio, which is, it seems like the predominant form of exercise when you go in the gyms and the roads and trails of America, people are out shuffling along or working on the stair climber, the exercise bike or the treadmill. When you're doing these steady state exercise, you have the distinction between a nourishing, energizing, health boosting, longevity promoting fat burning workout versus a workout that can easily become slightly too significantly too stressful when it's done in a repeating pattern. And so the reason we picked the spicy subtitle is the vast majority of runners are running at a slightly too significantly too stressful of a pace, and it is inhibiting their ability to burn fat around the clock. It is driving appetite, dysregulation, and increased caloric intake as a consequence of a workout that's overly stressful. Thereby, it is driving the accumulation of fat rather than loss of fat. And it's also driving the loss of lean muscle tissue because of the stressful nature of the workout. And not only is it driving fat accumulation, it's specifically driving the accumulation of the health destructive visceral fat at an extreme level because training too hard relates to chronic overproduction of stress hormones, just like an overly stressful life. And you lead to spinning out on your dietary ambitions, overeating, being lazy, both consciously and subconsciously through the rest of the day when your workout is slightly too significantly too stressful.

Brad Kearns

And this can all be measured by the heart rate that you're training at. So what's fat max heart rate? There's been a lot of research, there's laboratory values that you can go and get a gas exchange test and put a mask on and do all that fancy stuff. Or you can just take the formula 180 minus your age in beats per minute. 180 minus age is approximately your fat max heart rate. It's a really accurate formula developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone, aerobic training pioneer. And it's a simple way to regulate your training intensity so that you don't plunge into these chronic patterns that are so health destructive.  So someone who's 40, 180 minus 40, their fat max heart rate is 140 beats per minute. As soon as you exceed fat max, here's what happens. Of course, you burn more calories, right? The faster you go, you burn more calories. So if you did a chart where it said calorie burning during exercise, and here's your speed, you're going to burn more and more and more and more calories until you're sprinting. But if you graph fat max, and we have a nice graph in the book, we'll put it on social media shortly because it's a super important graph, you're going to see, as your pace increases from from sitting, right, you're burning fat while you're at your desk, predominantly. And then as you start to move, you burn a greater, you burn fat at a greater rate, a greater rate, a greater rate, and then you hit fat max. And then what happens is fat burning declines in favor of glucose burning and a significant spike in glucose burning when you cross that fat max threshold. Now, there's nothing wrong with that if you're doing a properly conducted hit session once or twice a week or whatever your training patterns are. So it's not like glucose burning is bad and fat burning is good. It's not anything like that. It's just regulating the overall stress impact of your exercise program. And when you're doing prolonged exercise, it's absolutely essential for the vast majority of that exercise to be at fat burning heart rates, or it's going to bomb you out at some point. So if you're going on a weekend hike to the tallest peak in your county, you want to keep that heart rate at or below 140 as a 40 year old, so that you feel refreshed and energized and you don't feel like crap when you're halfway back to the car and you can't wait to stop at the nearest ice cream store and inhale a pint of ice cream. That's a sign that the workout was too stressful. It drifted into the high glucose burning zones and you're bonking or you're depleting glycogen and depleting glucose to the brain and you feel tired, cranky and hangry.

Melanie Avalon

I will say one of my favorite parts of the book was the very nuanced breakdown you have of after how much amount of time at certain intensities, you know, what are you burning? Like you switch from this to this and I find it completely fascinating.  I've always wondered that. So to answer the intuition question, if I'm not the type of person that is going to the gym and doing an actual concentrated workout, but I just want to in my life not exceed this Fat Max heart rate thing, is it the talking test? Like, is it like you should always be able to comfortably carry on a conversation?

Brad Kearns

Yeah, so I'm talking about heart rate, which requires the use of a heart rate monitor. The best ones are a wireless chest-strapped emitting signal to a wristwatch. The smartwatches will show you heart rate and they're pretty accurate and they're getting better but they're not super accurate. So the more serious you are with your training, the more you want to get a proper heart rate monitor.  And if you don't have a heart rate monitor, you're going on an extended aerobic exercise session, you want to be at conversational pace, which means you're not going to get out of breath if you're telling a breezy story of what happened at work yesterday with your buddy while you're walking. There's also the nose breathing test where there's a lot of benefits to nasal diaphragmatic breathing during exercise. You've probably had some guests that have touched on this wonderful subject. But if you can breathe through your nose only, you're almost assuredly at a comfortable fat burning base. But if you have to kind of open up the mouth to get enough air, that's an indication that you're drifting toward what's an overly stressful pace. And again, I want to back up a second and say, we're talking about patterns here. So if you go out and do a hard play session with your niece and nephew and you're running around the park for 45 minutes and you're out of breath, that's a great part of having fun and enjoying life. You don't have to watch your heart rate and keep it lower when you're chasing the little rat up the slide.  But what happens to the devoted cardiovascular fitness enthusiasts is they show up at the gym or they show up at the trailhead to run and they're drifting over that 140 in the example day after day after day. So they become what we call a sugar burner and a sugar chomper in the diet aspect because it's really stressful to deplete glycogen day after day after day with a workout that's slightly to significantly too elevated of a pace.  In contrast, when you do a true fat burning session where you discipline, keep your heart rate in that 140 zone or below, you come back to life and you feel refreshed and energized and appetite regulated and you're teaching your body to become efficient at burning fat which kicks in around the clock whereby if you are a workout freak where you push yourself too hard, you're kind of teaching your body to become reliant on regular doses of carbohydrate to fuel even at rest. It's kind of like what an unfit person does too when they don't have any fitness capability. They're burning more carbohydrates than they should just from going up one flight of stairs.

Melanie Avalon

Yes. Thank you so much for clarifying all of that. Amazing. Amazing, amazing.  Oh, I will put a link in the show notes for listeners speaking of the nasal breathing too. It's been a while, but I interviewed James Nestor on the show a long time ago and he's the author of the book Breath and he talks a lot about breathing through your nose versus your mouth. So I will link to that. Was there anything else, Brad, that you there's so much in this book? Was there any other topics you wanted to draw attention to for listeners and listeners, friends? Stop what you're doing right now. You can pause and go by Born to Walk, the book, because all of this information is in there. If you enjoyed this conversation today, there's so much more in the book. You'll be blown away and definitely get some paluba shoes and all the things. But yes, was there anything else you want to draw attention to?

Brad Kearns

Well, since you asked me at the start about the subtitle, I should also cheeky point out here that if there were a subtitle to the title, humans are really born to walk and sprint. And I'm a huge enthusiast of sprinting, especially here in my older age groups as I transition away from my extreme endurance lifestyle that we talked about in the other show and how unhealthy that really was.  Now, you know, sprinting is like the quintessential, use it or lose it human capability. And the quintessential human movement is an explosive, powerful movement. It's part of it's a huge part of being fit. And it's the thing that we lose at the greatest, most accelerated rate as we age. So when we go to the elementary school playground, we see the kids sprinting over to get the ball and sprinting back to the the circle to continue the game. It's a natural human ability that has been just, you know, dismissed as we get older, and most people haven't sprinted since they finished their high school sporting activities. Now, I'm not saying to go take off down the running track and join me for my next workout, because you might not be adapted to do so. But there are ways to sprint with no, or low impact like a stationary bike or a rowing machine, or sprinting up a hill or sprinting upstairs where you can do it without that risk of injury from impact trauma. But when you can become competent at sprinting, it delivers by far the best return on investment of any exercise in terms of fat reduction, sculpting the body building muscle, generating brain derived neurotropic factor for a brain boost, anti aging, adaptive hormone flowing into the bloodstream. And so we have a critical obligation as humans, not just to move around more all day, but also to remain powerful and explosive. The number one cause of injury and demise and death in Americans over age 65 is falling and related health consequences. So you fall, you break your hip, you're hospitalized for six weeks, but a lot of people get pneumonia, and they never come back. Peter Attia's book outlive 38% of people who break a hip are dead within a year. So what is falling, but it's that inability to catch your balance on that one critical misstep. And so basically, it's a sprint or it's a it's a single rep maximum deadlift effort in the gym to catch your balance on one leg when you're off balance, instead of falling to catch yourself. We were moving my mom out of her house for the first time in 60 years, and my 73 year old brother was helping, you know, the younger, stronger guys. And he was carrying a heavy couch over to the truck. And he backed up into a pile of blankets that were there for the cushioning of the furniture. And he spun away from the couch, we caught it did a couple pirouettes and caught himself without falling. And everyone's like, hey, well, are you okay? And he's like, yeah, I'm okay. And I said, you know, that was, that was a fork in the road right there. And what you just did was awesome. And you possibly altered the course of your next decade right there, catching yourself.

Brad Kearns

Because if someone who's 73 falls and breaks an ankle, and then they don't rehab properly, so they're not doing their pickleball anymore. And then they get out of shape, and then they get discouraged, and then they stop going to the gym. And it's a slippery slope downhill just from a simple ordinary fall that could be prevented with some, you know, explosive training.  And the cool thing is, like, we're not asking you to add like another five hours to your workout budget every week, because sprint workouts are very, very short in duration, and you do them infrequently. That's how the body responds and adapts best to high intensity training, you don't have to do it day after day after day. So basically, humans are born to walk extensively every single day at a very comfortable pace and to sprint once in a while.

Melanie Avalon

I love that. I have that thought. Every time I slip and almost fall, it's like, whoa, you know, like that could have been...

Brad Kearns

Whoa, your future flashed in front of your eyes.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And maybe there's a parallel parallel universe that just split off right there. No, I'm so glad you, you drew attention to that.  And, and, and just to clarify really quickly, because you, you do, you do talk about sprinting and the book, is that comparable to high intensity interval training or is that a little bit different?

Brad Kearns

Oh, good question. Yeah, because true sprinting, like you've mentioned the energy systems at use, where the body transitions from using pure ATP stored in the muscle cell to generating the energy product of lactate when you're sprinting for more than seven seconds. But to make a quick reference, when you're truly sprinting and giving maximum explosive power, the human can only do so for seven seconds.  So when we watch the Olympic 100 meters gold medal, Noah Lyles, running 9.79, they're actually slowing down a little because the human can only go full speed for seven seconds. And then the energy in the cell is exhausted, the ATP, and you have to kick into other energy systems. And it goes on up the list from 30 seconds to two minutes is anaerobic glycolysis. And then over two minutes, you're using the aerobic system more and more and more until you get up to even something like a mile run in the Olympics is only around four minutes, they're 79% aerobic system and only 21% anaerobic system. So true sprinting is a very, very short duration maximum effort. And anything else would be transitioning into the category of high intensity interval training, which is asking for repeat efforts of high intensity, but not maximum intensity, and then distinct rest periods in between them. That's what the term interval really refers to is the rest interval between your hard efforts. And those can look like anything I like doing a workout called six times three minutes with 30 seconds rest on my bike. And I do this and that on the track. So the hit category, and all the programming that's involved there, there are many scientific benefits. And that's why you see all the great articles and books about hit. And it's why it's so popular. But I do want to caution people that hit sessions can be quite stressful to the body because they're more prolonged than a true sprint workout. So if if you were asking me, what's the best thing that I could add to my fitness regimen, if I'm already doing this and doing that, I would say, you know, go over to that stationary bike and warm up a bit and then initiate a series of 10 second sprints. And after each sprint, you rest for a long time pedal easily for a minute or a minute and a half or two minutes, and then gun it again. And you'll feel a really exhilarating workout. But you won't be tired and exhausted like you would be from doing a classic, you know, peloton session or spin class where they're doing 30 seconds sprints with 30 seconds rest. And we're going to do 10. And after eight, everyone's tongues hanging out because they're just getting exhausted and depleted. And they're able to put out less and less power with sprinting workout, you do short sprints, you rest for a long time. And then your next effort is just as powerful as the first one, because it didn't last that long. And you had plenty of rest to, you know, to reboot again. And so that's a proper sprint session in comparison to hit training.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Oh, and I should ask, I think the answer is pretty intuitive, but we can use Pulivas on those bikes.

Brad Kearns

Ideally, a true bike shoe has a steel plate embedded inside because when you're pushing down on a pedal, you don't want any energy to go into the sole. You want it to all go to pushing the pedal forward.  If you're doing casual riding and you're just getting into it, any shoe will be fine in the bike. The Paluva will give your toes a little break as opposed to a lot of cycling shoes pinch those toes together again. The best use of Paluva is for encouraging you to walk more in everyday life and getting that full range of motion and foot functionality going. You're basically doing foot strengthening exercises when you walk down the block to the market like you do every day for fresh food.

Melanie Avalon

Okay, awesome. So not so intuitive. I should learn that I know nothing about this world.  This is incredible. Okay, so friends, listeners, go to paluba.com slash I a podcast, use the coupon code I a podcast that will get you 10% off site wide. They have so many options. They have a really cool like app or like taking a picture thing that you do to size you up for the shoe, which is, it's kind of fun. So check that out and definitely get the book born to walk the broken promises of the running boom and how to slow down and get healthy one step at a time. And yeah, all the things. Anything else you wanted to put out there?

Brad Kearns

Oh, that's great. Yeah, the book website has a bunch of incentives and bonus items when you preorder and we'll keep those going even after the official release date, so you can download some PDFs and get some shopping discounts.  But even if you're not a runner and you're not a super cardio freak and not a fitness freak, I think the book gives you sufficient clarity and motivation about what being human is all about and how important it is to walk and move more because we have so many opportunities to not walk and, you know, we have our like goals and to-do lists and things that we want to do and things that we want to add to our life to make it better. But I kind of put walking in this this obligatory category rather than like a new thing to add to your fitness regimen. I'm doing Pilates and now I'm going to do walking. It's it's it's what makes us human. So it's sort of like sleep. We're not, you know, setting a goal of going to sleep. We do go to sleep every night. Maybe we don't sleep enough hours and that's a good goal. But walking is like sleep to the human.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that is so true. Like this is something that everybody is doing all the time and should be doing more of, and it's speaking of low barrier to entry, like we can change this. Like you can fix this and it will have so much of an effect. You have to put on shoes anyway, so you might as well, you might as well.  I mean, you don't have to, you can go barefoot all the time, but you're probably going to be putting on shoes anyway, so why not completely optimize that and change your body and your life for the better? Awesome. The last question that I ask every single guest on this show, you might remember it from last time. I don't know, but it's just because I realize more and more each day, how important mindset is, so what is something that you are grateful for?

Brad Kearns

Oh my gosh. I remember how I answered last time. So I already gave you enough compliments at your hosting skills, but I was grateful that you took the time to interview me and get the full story. It was really a wonderful experience.  And I agree the same for this show. I'm sitting here visiting Los Angeles and looking at the smoke of the devastating fires. So it's pretty easy to be grateful for our health. And you look at the pictures and you look at people's lives turned upside down by natural disaster in this case. But number one is our health and everything else is just fun and games. And boy, that's that's really all we should focus on before we start, you know, aspiring to or getting frustrated by what's not going perfectly in life. And I say that and I'm a work in progress every day, but I am grateful for my health and my fitness. And I I'm grateful how I am able to prioritize it and share my passion with others.

Melanie Avalon

I could not agree more. Events like these really, really put things in perspective and I'm so grateful for all of that as well.  And I am truly so grateful for everything that you do, Brad. The multiple books that you've done have changed so many people's lives and this book in particular, it's so needed. Like there's no other book like this, like people aren't really talking about this. And so reading it through my eyes were just so open and I just want everybody to hear this and have the ability to really change their life. So thank you. And also thank you for our friendship. So for listeners, for friends, Brad is like the type of person where if I just, if you like pop into my head, I just like smile and laugh because you're just like, you're so, you're such a genuine, fun, funny, kind human. I just really adore you.  And so thank you. Thank you for being you.

Brad Kearns

Oh, thank you. It goes back at you, and especially this wonderful show, which you put so much heart and soul into. It's incredible.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, well, wouldn't be here without people like you. So we'll have to have you back in the future for the next book. Are you are you writing another one?

Brad Kearns

Oh yeah, the gun is usually loaded and then like I said at the outset, we really strongly believe in doing things at the right time in organic and flowing matter because when you try to force things or compromise your values and integrity because there's economic consequences to what you're doing, fortunately, we're in a position where Mark waited and waited and waited to launch because he wanted to make sure that things were right. And it wasn't about the launch and the fundraising and all the things that we see as necessary evils in the economy.  So this is a book that's really pure and coming from our hearts. And what's interesting, we didn't get into this, but like Mark and I are both old time endurance freaks who lived and breathed running for years and years. And so every time if you're reading the book and you're getting chapped because of all the criticism and all the cheeky stuff we're saying about running, we were there. We were those people that did that and getting too far into it and too far wrapped up and kind of getting obsessed with it and getting injured and getting sad because you couldn't do your mileage that you wanted to do. We've lived through all that. We just want you to kind of learn from our mistakes and our experience and adopt a more healthy perspective to all your fitness endeavors.

Melanie Avalon

Awesome. Well, I love all of it so much. Thank you so much for your time and all that you're doing and I Will have to have you back in the future

Brad Kearns

Oh, for sure.

Melanie Avalon

Alright, thanks Brad. Bye!