Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.KATY: Okay, this is Katy again, and the only reason I’m opening this show, this 2nd part of our foot show is because I got to start the first – I got to do the introduction to the first show and I’m kind of addicted to it now. So, Dani, are you ready to start the second part of the show?
DANI: I totally am. And you can start anytime. You’re good at it.
KATY: Okay. Well, I’m not – I’m not -
DANI: All right, let’s go.
KATY: All right, let’s do it.
DANI: Leg length discrepancy. Leg length. A lot of people say they’ve been told they have it; if they have had a person interpret an x-ray and told them they actually have that, what does that mean for them if they want to transition to minimal footwear? The person that asked this question noted that they are currently wearing orthotics to compensate for that discrepancy, but they’re not really sure if it’s helping or hurting them. The question, I guess, is what does that mean if you have that?
KATY: Well, I would say that, like leg length discrepancy is very common, but at the same time, leg length is made of lots of different things. So, again, it’s going to be a bigger whole-body answer. Let me just prep you with that. So your leg length is not just the sum total of your bone length. So most people get a leg length diagnosis from a two-dimensional x-ray.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: Usually while they’re lying down, but anyhow. The position, when your joints articulate – when two separate bones come together to form a joint, so if you think of the upper thigh bone and then the two lower leg bones coming together to form what we call the knee. Let’s say the distance of the foot; the base of the foot from the pelvis, from the hip socket itself changes based on how your upper and your lower leg bones are rotating relative to each other. So I think of length as this linear, 2-dimensional measurement and it is, but length is affected by these rotational motions that are not considered. Meaning that if you’ve got internally rotated hip, so the femur is internally rotated and then you’ve got external rotation of the lower leg, all this is covered in Whole Body Barefoot. You’re going to measure a different leg length. If you pronate more on one side than the other side, your legs are different lengths, but that length is functional. It can be functional, meaning that your leg can become longer based on how you hold the position of all of your parts throughout all of your body, or in this case, from the top of the thigh bone or the femur, all the way down to the sole of your foot. That that is a dynamic measurement so that’s why, again, we don’t just change our shoes. If you want to start wearing minimal shoes, get rid of these plastic devices that you have put into an onto your body to perform basic, biological function, you have to be willing to restore your basic biological function, your basic, you know, physiological motions. Biomechanical motions. And so, so I would say that you would want to start with the exercises and whole body alignment and learning how your thigh can rotate and your lower shank can rotate and how every day things that you do, how you sit when you drive and how you walk, and how all of those things are affecting and are affected by what you put on your feet. The end.
DANI: You are on fire today, man. That was such a good answer. You don’t even need me to do this show with you today. You could just do the whole thing sole-o, badump. (Ding!)
KATY: Podcast-itis.
DANI: Aw, such a great answer. Thanks!
KATY: Thanks! You’re welcome!
DANI: It’s getting warm in here. Okay. Do young, as in like 5 and 7, around that age, kids need to transition to minimal?
KATY: You mean should they be wearing minimal shoes?
DANI: If they are going to be, you know, do they need a transition period when they’re so young?
KATY: Not so much. Not so much. However, the transition period – because they’re very supple, they’re supple and their tissues are in a different state and they’re light and low to the ground, so they don’t – if you imagine, if you think of your foot, all of our feet are still in their infant stages for people who have been, like, sitting the bulk of the time. If you’ve logged so many miles over your whole entire life, and then you look at, you know, what a child – how many unshod miles you’ve logged on your feet, kids just don’t have – they don’t have the resistance in their tissues as much as we do. Nor do they have the heavy loads, because they don’t – their weight is still pretty light of what they’re carrying on their feet. That all being said, because I get this question a lot about kids, is foot position and turnouts and turn-ins and strength and arch height is affected more by more than just what shoes they’ve worn. It’s again, it’s how much did they sit on the couch, how much do they walk a day, and all of those things are they’re usually sitting way too much and they’re usually walking way too less and I’m not talking about how much exercise they get, and I’m not talking about how much they play outside. I’m talking about how many miles have they walked forward on natural terrain in their bare feet without tissues that have adapted to car seats and buckets and couches and televisions – all of that is affecting their foot health as well. Foot health is whole body. You know what? We should name that book, Whole Body Barefoot.
DANI: Brilliant idea!
KATY: Yeah. So, so think about, you know, if you’re kind of going, I don’t know, kids’ feet are again, it’s a whole body, whole lifestyle issue, feet health is. Are.
DANI: Are. Dangit.
KATY: Feet health are?
DANI: Hmm.
KATY: This is going to be tricky.
DANI: (Yoda’s voice) Talk good, you do.
DANI: Okay, I forgot to tell you. I wrote a ditty for you this morning on my morning walk. I totally forgot!
KATY: Okay, sing it.
DANI: Can I?
KATY: Yes.
DANI: Because my walking buddy leaves me halfway through the five miles, because she has to –
KATY: When you start singing? Oh, oh, okay.
DANI: As soon as she knows I’m there. No, I – and so, she’s a nurse, she has to go off and work or whatever.
KATY: You know, it’s not a walking buddy if you didn’t make a pre-arranged meeting to walk. If you’re just following someone around, technically that’s not a walking buddy.
DANI: Yeah, but I have a new walking buddy every day! Okay, so –
KATY: Ee- go ahead.
DANI: So I’m thinking a lot in my head when I’m by myself and sometimes out loud. I’m in the woods, so it’s okay. So it’s really short, but I got kind of a kick out of it. (ding!) And the show is, I’m all about that base, right? (Sings) I’m all about that base, about that base, no heels, I’m all about that base, about that base, no heels, I’m all about the base, about the base, no heels, I’m all about that base, about that base. (ding!) Listen to what I say: you’re gonna need new shoes, you do what K-Bow says, and you can never lose. You put stilettos on, your foot will sing the blues. Those dogs are barking now, those dogs are barking now. That’s all.
KATY: Wow, this new podcast, Dani Sings, is rad.
DANI: Isn’t it awesome?
KATY: It’s pretty good. Do we have to pay a licensing fee now?
DANI: I don’t know. We’ll have to talk to our podcast ninja about that. You may have to shave a few seconds off that song.
KATY: It’s like the Happy Birthday Song in movies, they only play, like, “to you!” and that’s it.
DANI: Yup. All right. Well, just pick the good parts, Brock.
KATY: It’d be a very short show. He’s like, I edit it down to 7 and a half minutes, ladies.
DANI: My song, my ditty! Okay. Here is a question from a reader – I will read her question. She has transitioned from wearing orthotics and then she went to running shoes, now she’s wearing no orthotics and she’s into negative heel shoes, some flats, and some barefoot, all the way barefoot. She’s always barefoot outside in her yard, in her house she has hard, ceramic floors with mats at the stove and sink or whatever, and she’s wondering if it’s okay to go barefoot on such hard surfaces.
KATY: I mean, is it okay? It’s your comfort, it’s your comfort level. It sounds like she’s getting enough barefoot time elsewhere, you know, trying to stay objective. It’s hard, because we all feel like, oh, I get plenty of – it’s like, but how much? People say, oh, I get plenty of fat in my diet, and it’s like, how much? How about just give me the numbers, not your interpretation of ‘plenty.’ Yes, hard surfaces – hard, flat surfaces are unnatural environments so things like socks, or if you want to wear something in the house that gives you a little bit of cushion, especially if you notice discomfort from flat and level. But a lot of times it’s not just walking on your flat – through your house, it’s standing. So standing in one place is an unnatural movement. So standing at your work desk is not natural. Or standing to cook, or cut. I notice that if I’m working at the counter for a long period of time, your feet can start to ache when they’re bare, which is why those cushions in front of where you occupy your most time are helpful on your feet. So yeah, I think that that is definitely a valid point that needs to be part of this minimal shoe discussion that seems to end where the shoe ends and you’re not considering the environment or the context that you’re putting your foot in if it’s hard and flat and uncomfortable then modify it by making it a little softer. Either by slipping something onto your foot – you know, that doesn’t affect the motion of your foot – or standing on basically different versions of fatigue mats, or anti-fatigue mats. Your folded cloth in front of your kitchen sink or wherever you spend time, or your standing work desk.
DANI: Thank you.
KATY: And that question can go for all of you who have standing workstations who wonder the same thing. It’s all the – it’s the same answer.
DANI: It’s a good one. Thank you. Okay. A zero-rise shoe, like an old Converse Chuck Taylor – well, it doesn’t have to be old, but the old style Converse. One of the fellas measured the insert in it and found that it was 5-6mm and he wondered if that’s enough rise to throw off the geometry.
KATY: Well, the thing about geometry – if there’s a value there that’s greater than the other side of the shoe, that changes your geometry, right? That’s not my opinion, that’s just math. Like, if it’s not zero and it’s 1, it’s a different geometry.
DANI: Right.
KATY: So – so but maybe the question is, is it too much?
DANI: Well, that is the question.
KATY: Yeah. Your bo-again, in the book, there’s nothing wrong with having your heel positioned above your toe. You can go downhill, right? It’s a perfectly natural position; it’s just the frequency of it is not natural. If you’re wearing your Chuck Taylors – or I used to have purple Converse, how about you? Converse were my first pair of shoes that came in a box that I chose because it was my desire to have purple high top Converse. Just a little bit of, like, that’s a throwback Thursday right there.
DANI: It was, and it’s only Tuesday, so.
KATY: Well, make sure you release this on a Thursday so it’s in context.
DANI: You’re going to have to sing something from the ‘80s, too, so you’re going to have to think on that.
KATY: Can I do it in a little bit?
DANI: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give you time to warm up.
KATY: So for the Converse, it’s not – it’s not too much. I mean, that’s a nice, small amount. Just making sure that your program – you’re thinking bigger than your shoe. How much of just that 4-5mm do you ever get to experience in the other direction? Like, how much uphill are you doing?
DANI: Okay.
KATY: You’re just trying to train all of your body. That’s all this is about. All this is about, especially with the geometry argument of the heel is that you neglect certain ranges of motion in your body, so just make sure that you vary up your surface, so that you do some uphill walking where you get some dorsiflexion that you’re spending some time walking up and downhill without any sort of rise, even if it’s tiny. Or constantly varying rise, you know? Or if you’ve got 2 pairs of shoes, cycle through 2 pairs of shoes. At least you’re cross training a little bit, you know?
DANI: I thought you were going to say put them both on at once. That doesn’t make any sense. Yes, cycle through them. You’re right.
KATY: One day I wore two different shoes to school because I was trying them on with my outfit: which one am I going to wear? And then I was at school, my senior year in high school, before I realized I had two different shoes on.
DANI: Were they totally different? Like, same style, or?
KATY: I don’t – I actually can’t remember what shoes they were. It wasn’t that big of a deal, because I wasn’t – I just noticed at like 1:00 in the afternoon, so it wasn’t a huge, but still.
DANI: Okay. Arches, am I right? Lots of people worry about arch support, like, not having it. And in Whole Body Barefoot does a great job of explaining the arch structure and how to strengthen the arches, but one of the questions we got was, can my unshod arches and heels take hard wood floor or should I wear something with more support? So. Really, you technically already answered that question elsewhere.
KATY: Yeah, there is no arch in your – I mean, the arch is just a shape.
DANI: But a lot of people don’t know that.
KATY: They do not know, no. There is no – no, if you cut out, there is no arch bone in your body. There is no arch structure. Arch is a position of your foot that is created, um, through – it’s like space, it’s like a void, it’s like a donut hole. The donut hole only exists because of the donut around it. And frankly, I’m craving a donut right now, I don’t know if you are. But we eat it with our feet, so it’d be okay. Um, your – the same thing with your arch, but – your arch is going to be, again, a dynamic. The amount of arch changes as you stroll over your foot, so really an arch is not a fixed end point. It’s strength in the feet to support not only the rest of the weight and the parts above you, but to support ever-changing loads through moving all of the time. We are not after this end shape of “high” or “low” or “just right.” You are after – you are after a body that facilitates movement well. The end. And then movement, meaning all the way down onto a cellular level. You are trying to move well! You are trying to accomplish all of your tasks including the biological ones, so your arches are not going to collapse. If your arches collapse as soon as you take your shoe off, then we are having an orthotic joint position situation, meaning that you don’t have any strength in your own body to maintain the position of your body that the external support has been doing the work. You’ve been outsourcing your body’s work to the device. You remove the device and the body collapses. So we don’t want that – we want the opposite of that. Or we want that outcome in a different way, we want to have, you want to have a strong enough foot that doesn’t automatically translate to an arch of a certain height, but there are definite parameters of foot position and arch position that should be there at rest, that kind of correlate well to someone who does or does not have foot health or knee health or hip health or whatever’s migrating away from the base issue, or root issue, if you will. So it’s not bad on – your hardwood floors are not a foot health destroyer, it’s only if that’s the only environment you expose your feet to. You know, instead of focusing on this small percentage of the surface of your house – like, the surface of your house is your cage. Don’t think about your foot health being made so much inside your cage. You’re going to have to get out of your cage and you’re going to have to get out of your foot cage, the shoe, and your house cage, and interact with some more movement. The portion of that movement can be done within your cage, right? Because you are the zookeeper, you’re trying to come up with some exercises to give your little caged tigers, to keep them happy, to get them a little bit of exercise, but that is like step 1 in terms of thinking about it. Step 2 is thinking about, like, how would this tiger be if it wasn’t even in this cage? So you’re trying to re-introduce your feet into the wild. There’s a cage protocol, we’ve got that for you, but then we’ve got the slowly spending a little bit more time in the wild with your wild cousin, you know, and then coming back in, sleeping in your cage until you slowly develop the senses, and then we’ll reintroduce you, and it could take 20 years or it could take, I mean, who knows how long it takes? There’s very few people who have done the full transition into the wild, year-round or whatnot.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: But we’re all just making steps. (ding!) You’ve still got to keep the big picture in mind, and yes, your zoo environment is affecting your health, but I wouldn’t focus so much on that, because unless you’re going to rip out the floors of your house, it’s better to focus on the things that you can change which are the frequency with which you do your exercises and take your feet out.
DANI: Yes.
KATY: in every way possible.
DANI: Thank you.
KATY: You’re welcome.
DANI: Um, what would you recommend, and I’m not asking for shoes suggestions, but what would you recommend for folks who cannot wear appropriately minimal footwear, like people in industrial situations? Um, for work. Like, I worked for UPS for maybe a hard 3 months once, and I had to wear shoes – they wouldn’t let me wear, like, my Converse Chuck Taylors. You know, like – that’s my toe protection! They’re like, no, so I had to wear these big, old steel-toed –
KATY: Steel-toed, yeah.
DANI: --hunkin things and at the end of the day my back would just be like, (makes noise) but some folks just can’t. So what is your – and I think I know your answer for this, what is your prescription for them?
KATY: Well, okay, so the first thing is: if your – if it is totally impossible for you to change shoes, then don’t worry about the time it’s totally impossible for you to change shoes, and change everything else that you do all of the other time, okay? So your foot exercises have nothing to do with your shoes that you wear at work, it’s a completely separate issue, so do that. And then make sure you’re in whatever minimal you can stand right now all of the other time. You could quit your job, you know, or – what this guy, this is very funny. When Whole Body Barefoot the books ship from the printer, they ship to my house, because we actually mailed all the presales out here – we actually packaged up 1,000 books and labeled them and walked them to the post office one load at a time. So the guy backed up – so it was a huge freight truck with stuff on pallets. It’s not UPS, it’s not FedEx, it’s freight. And so they actually had miniature forklifts. So he came out and was like, there’s a lot of authors that live out here! He’s like, I deliver all these books – and you know, it’s a pallet with cases of books stacked on top – and I was like, really, where? And he was like, over here, and I was like, yeah, that was my old house. And he was like, oh, it turns out there’s one author out here! So just from my old house – he was like, was your mom accepting your books? And I was like, yeah, we were out of town. But anyway! Long story to say that he – he said, let me see these books, so he cracked them open, and he’s like, look at my shoes! And he pulled up his shoe and he had essentially like a Converse. He was like, these are so flat and flexible. He said, I’m not allowed to wear these for work, so I wear the other ones in where I load my truck, and then, he said, when I go out on the road he just leaves and does his deliveries, he said I put these on my feet because I know the rules and I’m not going to sue anyone for anything, but my knees and my back and my feet would ache at the end of every day.
DANI: So he knew what was best for him.
KATY: So not to break the rules – well, the thing is: there are rules, and you understand why the rules are there. And he was willing to accept personal responsibility for his health, and he did it. So there’s that.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: There’s also – there’s also a pair of steel-toed tennis shoes now on the market
DANI: What?
KATY: which might have been – so, I just sent a link – I just sent a link to someone. It’s not like a Sketcher or whatever. It’s like some New Balance or some, like, mainstream tennis shoe company that is now making steel toe. So, boom. That might be your solution right there. And we’ll see, maybe we can put it in the show notes if we can find it.
DANI: Yes. Or even the show description at some point during this month of podcasts.
KATY: Yes, we will absolutely – we will absolutely post it.
DANI: Because we’re going to have a work day, right?
KATY: A professional day!
DANI: A professional day. That was good. Well, I just quit my job. I didn’t like my shoes, so.
KATY: Oh, there you go.
DANI: Okay. If a beloved activity is particularly hard on your feet, like roller skate or soccer with their pointy little shoes, is compensating with the exercises in the program and minimal footwear the rest of the time good enough? I mean, is it – you keep – you don’t have to worry about what you’re doing to your feet, which I guess is kind of the same thing as working.
KATY: It sounds a lot like my brother, who likes to run after he’s done smoking because he swears that – that his endurance training is offsetting the damage to his lungs brought about by smoking. Like, that’s his health program. He’s like, I love to smoke so I started to run. And now, I run, and he feels okay about smoking. He still has lung problems, but he’s an excellent runner. So of course, so yeah. I always like to throw out a ridiculous – like where everyone would be like, that’s ridiculous. The body does not work that way, it’s like you just kind of binged on crème brulee so you’re going to eat a salad to balance what you just consumed as dessert.
DANI: Oh, man!
KATY: It’s all input. You do not remove input. Right?
DANI: Right.
KATY: I just want to make sure everyone understands that basic physiological guideline. You do not want to think about ‘balancing out’ one behavior with another, because it does not work that way. You don’t binge eat and then go jog it off. Although we do, right? We say that all the time.
DANI: Right.
KATY: So we’re thinking – because we think in those terms, because magazine articles are presented like, this workout is worth this many calories, so if you overindulge, make sure you do this workout so that your net energy is zero. It’s like – what is going on right now in the world?
DANI: Like turkey trots, you know? The turkey trots every Thanksgiving. Everybody’s like, I’m going to sign up for my 5K so I can go eat Thanksgiving dinner.
KATY: Yeah, well, and it’s not to say that – you know, large bouts of – I mean, we even try to offset sedentary with active, right? So you just –
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So the sedentary was input just like the active. The toes smushed together was input just like the toes spreading. That all being said, if you – you have to also, what you do have to balance is the enjoyment of your life. You know, if foot health is so bad, whatever ailment that you have is so bad that you can’t enjoy your day-to-day activities, then it would make sense to cut back on the activities that are causing you to not enjoy other aspects of your life. That being said, if you can’t imagine enjoying your life without activity X, then you understand and negotiate some sort of sacrifice. Keeping in mind, though, that the enjoyment of your life is going to be broader, perhaps, than the next 2 weeks. You know, so sometimes we have a hard time looking past 2 weeks. That all being said – I’ve said, “that all being said” a lot of times – that all being said, you don’t know when your life is going to be over! So is it better to play it safe through your entire life, never doing the things that would cause some sort of – I mean, are you worried so much about protecting your health that you never do anything with it? So it’s a very big philosophical question about your life. So if someone is going, this plantar fasciitis won’t go away, and I don’t take walks with my children and I don’t go outside into nature and all these other things that I want to do, but I can muster up enough foot whatever to play my game of soccer or to go rock climbing – I’m just thinking of, like, really tight shoes or whatever – then those are – that’s a question for yourself. You can also play around with it. If you’ve been playing soccer – I’m just using soccer as an example – if you’re playing soccer and your feet and your back are killing you after every game and it takes a few days to recover, and you don’t get to do other things – play around with the exercises. And if the exercises, doing them before and after a few times for the week allow you to play soccer and have healthy feet, then boom, you just found your solution.
DANI: Yeah. That’s what I do with roller skates. I love my skating, but I have to do foot exercises after to make sure my toes don’t feel too smushed.
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: Well, speaking of soccer, that’s actually one of the questions, and I know you could possibly speak to this, since your husband is a super duper soccer guy.
KATY: Um, that’s actually his name.
DANI: Really? I’ve been calling him the wrong name all this time! How embarrassing. Well, just tell him I follow people in the woods and he’ll know that I’m a loon.
KATY: He’s like, Dani’s been walking with me every morning, it’s really weird, like 12 feet behind me?
DANI: Following me? Calling me something different than Super Soccer Guy? So cleats – are they necessary? Because a lot of kids, it’s soccer season right now, and adults still like to play soccer. Can you speak to that from his perspective, or what he’s learned? Are cleats necessary for playing the game of soccer?
KATY: Well, that answer is easy to find an objective answer to by finding any example of any people who play soccer without cleats, which you could do easily on YouTube. People play soccer all over the world without cleats. Correct?
DANI: Yes.
KATY: So –
DANI: You know, I never thought about that.
KATY: Yeah, it’s like, you have to – many times you can answer your own question just by thinking about it yourself for a second, and trying to find any example that answers that question with a resounding, “Yes!” or, “No!” Just one example, and then you begin to refine your question. I think as there are children – I mean, soccer is a global phenomenon – and the ability to afford soccer cleats is not a global phenomenon, and many people play soccer. The best soccer players are actually – globally – tend to be those who played barefoot for a very long period of time. Because, of course, what do you end up getting? Stronger feet, knees, and ankles. Better skills, better sensory input, etc. They’re just – if you have street kids and village kids playing in dirt piles in whatever they can and playing extremely well, certainly compared to, say, me. But – so no, they’re not required, but they’re going to be “required” by any club that you’re in. So my basic – we have kids, because of Super Duper Soccer Player, which is my husband’s name. Our children also “play soccer” meaning you – they get the development of the skills and the trapping and passing but they’ve never once done it with shoes on, because they don’t so any real movement activities with shoes on. So they’re already playing – they’re already playing family soccer and kicking and passing and all that stuff doesn’t happen with shoes. So that could be a really cool, fun thing, is let’s play barefoot soccer. That’s a really great way to introduce unshod motion and family time is just to go take a soccer ball out to a field, right? Because fields tend to not be full of broken – broken – like, an actual sport field. And just play a family game! Like, what are your skills like? You know, you’re not doing – you’re not running, I’m not saying go out and play with a bunch of aggressive players where you’re doing a lot more agility moves where suddenly getting rid of your shoe would be huge. But if you’re already playing and your kids are already playing, just go out and start kicking the ball around and having these little kind of fun, low pace, low skill games. Low challenge, and boom, there was your barefoot time. So, there’s that. But cleats – you know, cleats are a part of the shoe end. If everyone else has cleats on, you certainly want to be wearing cleats if you want to be competitive because everyone’s going to have a traction advantage on you as well as you don’t want to get stepped on –
DANI: No!
KATY: --your bare foot with cleats on. But I am also going to reveal what my husband did with his soccer cleats – to his soccer cleats.
DANI: Super Soccer Guy?
KATY: What Super Soccer Guy did to his soccer cleats because he can no longer wear a positive heel. He’s like, it’s like shoving a stick up my spine to go play on the field where before he would just play really hard and then have raging back pain. Like, he would throw out his back every game. He’s a phenomenal player and has played for decades, but his game would jack him up in his 20s and his 30s and now he’s back to playing now, but I’ll reveal a post and a picture about that. You can check out my blog or the Facebook page and I’ll give you a hint. It involves a knife.
DANI: Oooh, I cannot wait! Okay, two more quick questions. Hammer toes: do they ever straighten back out if somebody quits the input that created them in the first place?
KATY: We have. We’ve had a lot of people who have had their hammer or curly toes change. So yeah, it’s just a soft tissue change, yeah?
DANI: Cool. Well, that’s going to make that person happy that asked that. Okay.
KATY: Or did you mean toes that were made out of hammers?
DANI: Well, no. That’s what I have, and I’m really uncomfortable right now. But –
KATY: No, but your carpentry skills are amazing.
DANI: I can’t eat a donut with my feet, though. You’re going to have to feed me one with yours.
KATY: I can pound it into oblivion!
DANI: Um, okay. I didn’t ask this, but boy do I want to know the answer.
KATY: Oh, jeez.
DANI: So – washable minimals, like Vibram Five Fingers tend to fall apart when washed multiple times. Do you personally, Katy Bowman, have any tips for keeping the stink off them?
KATY: Really? I’ve washed mine many times. So maybe 1) put them on a gentle setting, right? So if you’re throwing them in an aggressive setting, I’m not sure what multiple times means – multiple could mean anywhere from 4 to 400. But this was the tip that I got a long time ago with Vibrams, and what I’ve always used is to soak them with an Alka Seltzer. That the effervescent breaks it up.
DANI: The effervescent action breaks it up.
KATY: Yeah. And what did we always used to do here? We would soak – we would soak them – the washing would be soaking them with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. So we didn’t actually wash them, I guess we would just – just, uh –
DANI: Well, then that makes sense because they’re not getting pulled.
KATY: Right, they’re not getting agitated.
DANI: Right.
KATY: It’s the agitation that would break them up, so baking soda, hydrogen peroxide soak, rinse them out with water, and then the key is you have to not wear them long enough where everything that feeds on animal matter dies. So just a personal story: I went kayaking in my Vibrams and fell out of my kayak within seconds. Maybe a minute. I’ll give myself a minute, just like – and so I stepped in, um, really life-filled water. Like, the water was very – it was up here, so just lots of –
DANI: Sea spooge.
KATY: Yeah, it was full of splooge. Then I wore them for the five-mile walk home. So then you feed it, feed it, and then I put them in a bag. I put them in a bag.
DANI: Oh, no.
KATY: I put them in a plastic bag, and then flew home, because it was before I lived here, probably 7 or 8 years ago. And, um.
DANI: That’s like a science experiment right there.
KATY: It was! Oh my god, so when I took them out of the bag like 30 hours later they smelled like I had stuffed them with – with – bloated, dead cattle, which is the only smell that I’ve actually been behind a truck of bloated, dead cattle. Yay, for living in the valley of California! And that’s what it smelled like – cow – it was awful.
DANI: Were they toast, or were you able to recover them?
KATY: Well, like many things that I’m going to do, I just put them in – like, in a bucket, in a dry bucket on my porch for like a year and a half, and –
DANI: Another science experiment.
KATY: Well, everything in there will die. It needs to be fed. The only reason it’s smelling is because it’s alive. So once you’ve stopped feeding it, then it all dies out and then they were fine. And so that’s – if you could have shoes in general, when you wear multiple shoes – like if you have a pair of shoes that you wear every single day, you will wear through that pair of shoes faster than if you have two of the same pair of shoes using them every other day. Because there’s a recovery period of time for a shoe that allows it to kind of regain its form back – and it seems like it shouldn’t be, like, logically it’s like, who cares? There’s a certain amount of miles, because loading rate has an impact: recovery time, dry out time. You begin to change other character – other characteristics of a shoe that affect its function. And the easiest way to explain this is like, time is one of those. So if you have a couch and you put your couch on the carpet, it smashes the carpet down, right? So when you move your couch after your couch being there, like you’re going to vacuum every 3 months under your couch, when you slide your couch there’s divots there. But if you just put your couch on for a day or a few minutes and took it off, even though it’s the exact same weight, the exact same shape, the deformation to the carpet is different, yes? Have you ever experienced that?
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: Great. So time is another variable. So recovery time for your shoes – not just your body, but for your shoes – if you can cycle through a couple pairs of Vibrams it would, of course, require that you can invest in a couple pairs, or if you have one really old pair that you keep around just for the recovery day or days of your other shoe it wouldn’t matter if they were wet. After you’ve washed them, let them fully dry before putting them on or else you’re going to create a stank environment a lot faster. So that would be my Martha Stewart tips.
DANI: That was great.
KATY: For stinky Vibrams.
DANI: Thank you. Thank you, that’s a good thing.
KATY: Surprisingly enough, she hasn’t covered that on her blog.
DANI: Yeah. I’ll write in. I’ll write it right now. Thank you, that helps.
KATY: Okay, good.
DANI: That’s a pretty good tip, actually.
KATY: Was that your husband’s question?
DANI: No!
KATY: Okay, good.
DANI: I have several pair but I cycle through, so.
KATY: Good.
DANI: Okay, well, I don’t want to be a heel, (ding!) but we’re out of time.
KATY: You’ve been waiting all day to use that pun.
DANI: I have. I had a couple of announcements, little shout outs. First of all, a big, full-on shout-out to Brock Skywalker Armstrong who is our new podcast ninja/audio engineer with Frozen Puck. He is awesome.
KATY: Yeah, well, he’s going to give us some serious help, because we used to record this just in a closet, it sounded like, in our house in a closet. But now it sounds like fancy studio.
DANI: Well, we’re still each in a closet, but at least it sounds a lot better. At least I’m in a closet. Not really, but my office is really small. And also: if you enjoy listening to Katy Says, would you please go on to iTunes and give it a review? Because the more reviews we get, the higher we go in the visibility, and then more and more people get suggested to listen to Katy Says. You know, people that are looking for this sort of thing, they see it and they go, oh, what’s that? So it’s good for us. So if you enjoy it, we would be so super grateful if you could go onto iTunes and give us a quick review.
KATY: It doesn’t have to be a good review. Like, it’s not even if you enjoy it, because iTunes doesn’t care. I mean, liking something or not is a very subjective experience, so it’s just nice to know that people are listening to it, and if there’s things you don’t like, like that’s why we fixed the audio, right?
DANI: Right.
KATY: It’s like, oh, that’s a - that is something that we objectively can – you can’t do anything about your puns, and I can’t do anything about my gravel voice, but we could definitely do something about the audio.
DANI: Yes. So – so tips and huzzahs and we’ll take it all.
KATY: Bless you.
DANI: Thank you. And also, this Whole Body Barefoot, we’ve said it before and I’m going to say it one more time – maybe a couple more – it is available online, Amazon.com, at your local Barnes & Noble, and is it on your site yet?
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: On Restorative Exercise®?
KATY: It’s there.
DANI: Perfect.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DANI: So go to RestorativeExercise.com and you can get it. Thank you for the great intro, Katy.
KATY: For the first show, I bet that would have been from the last show.
DANI: And I hope everybody has enjoyed this month of foot goodness so far.
KATY: #footgoodness
DANI: Hashtag. #WholeBodyBarefoot.
KATY: #WholeBodyBarefoot
DANI: And thank you, thanks for your time. Thanks, everyone, for listening.
KATY: Yeah, thanks everybody!
DANI: Take care, see you next time.
SHOW NOTES
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