Move Like An Athlete, Walk Like a Kangaroo & Use Cool Tools Like *Weighted Vests, Compression Gear & Vibration Platforms* To Transform Your Body, With Dr. Emily Splichal

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, to optimize posture, human movements, movement longevity, you have to have a relationship with gravity. That's at our core what shapes our muscles, our nervous system, our bone density. So that ties into the pelvic floor as our center of gravity, and it's a huge postural muscle, is you have to be connected to your pelvic floor. When you connect to it, you are thinking about it as this anti-gravity muscle, which means there's going to be a lift. So when we talk to gravity, we have to lift into gravity our whole system, not just our pelvic floor. So we are communicating with or being very symbiotic with gravity. People who work against gravity or they're not thinking about gravity are the people who have low back pain, and we are heavy in our posture. We're heavy in our skeleton and in our body. It's all interconnected, and it's really a gravity story.

Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Ben Greenfield: Well, my guest today has probably taught me more about feet than possibly anybody who I have ever talked to. And, we had a great chat, I think the last time you were on the show, Emily, about how to get rid of bunions, which I know plague a lot of people. And then, before that, we did a whole episode on just basically how to get strong feet. But, for those of you not familiar with Dr. Emily Splichal. Splichal. I could spit it out. She's a renowned functional podiatrist. She's a human movement specialist. She really knows the biomechanics of the foot on up very well. And, even though you'd think after 2 episodes, we probably covered everything there ever is to know about proprioceptive training and foot-to-core activation and how to use vibration therapy and all the ways that modern neuroscience and biomechanics applies to the foot. Turns out Emily just wrote this book that I'm holding up, "Sensory Sapiens." I got it last week. I read it. As you can see if you're watching the video, I have all of my pages folded over because once again, Emily, you taught me a whole bunch about the body and the feet. That I didn't know. So, I figured I'd have you back on the show.

Thank you. I am so honored that I taught you some additional stuff that this journey continues to keep exploring the power of the body, the sensory side of the human body.

You ought to see me. I wake up in the morning and even right now, I've got toe spacers on, I'm walking on a textured treadmill. I put my little slackline trainers on top of my vibration platform this morning. Which is super fun, just experimenting. And, I incorporate all of these things that I've learned from you. So, if you're listening to this show, be sure to pair this if you can, make it a holy trilogy. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sensory, I'll link to the other podcast that I did with Emily just so you can really learn everything there is to know and read her other books too. But, I feel like I probably should have grabbed my weighted vest on the way in here, Emily, because of this whole idea of Gravisensing because I always thought you wear a weighted vest, burn a few extra calories, maybe get a little bit extra bone density or whatever, but there's more to it.

There is absolutely so much more to it. And, the way that I think about weighted vest, Gravisensing, gravity is really a way to optimize your perception or your awareness to your physical body in space. And, that is literally the name of the game here, to move well, to move well for many, many years, to live a long and fruitful life as far as it relates to movement, you have to have high perception or awareness of where your body is in space.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, where does the weighted vest fit into this whole body awareness? I think you even call the body schema in the book.

Body schema, yes. So resistance or weight. So we can think about this as it relates to gravity and gravasensing is our perception of gravity. Gravasensing. Gravity is a downward pressure on our shoulders. That's what most people think of it as. But I also like to think of gravity as a proprioceptive or a sensory hug. So anything that is compressive, compressive apparel can increase your perception of your body in space. Weight resistance is also very proprioceptively stimulating. It's almost like turning up the volume to gravity so you can feel your body. Best examples I help people understand this over a weighted vest is going to be a weighted blanket. On the science of weighted blankets to help people sleep, to calm the autonomic nervous system, is that weighted blankets help you feel your body so you know where you are. When you feel your body, you feel safe. Your autonomic nervous system feels safe. You can downregulate. Helps you to sleep easier. Take that same thing, weight, put it on your physical body, and you will be able to feel your body easier. So it's a little bit different than thinking about weight as hypertrophy, muscularly stimulating for a hypertrophy benefit. This is more neurosensory, exteroceptive, connecting to self.

Does it have to be a lot of weight? Are we talking about just a slight nudge here? And, the reason I ask is there's this one weighted vest company, I don't know if you've seen them called ION, and you put on the vest and it doesn't feel like much but it kind of fits pretty tight. So, maybe you're getting a little bit of the effects of the compression that you talked about. Or, there's another company called Omorpho. And again, it's very mild. It's not one of these big Navy SEAL, I'm going rucking weighted vest, but can it be like a little bit of weight that allows you to increase the body awareness?

Yeah. You actually want it to be lighter weight. So, another way outside of weighted vest could be weighted apparel, right? So, that's where Omorpho makes weighted apparel. Also, KiloGear is another one. You are using a vest apparel wrist weights that has probably a couple pounds in it. We're not talking about 15 pounds thrown on your body or something like that. Oftentimes, I will also tell people that if they're doing different exercises or they want to connect to themselves, their schema, holding the phone. So what a cell phone weighs, like an Apple phone. If you shut your eyes and you hold the phone and your arms are by your side and you're trying to connect to your schema, you will notice the power of that added weight of the phone in the hand and what that does to your ability to connect to your arm and your mental picture of your body in space. So, it doesn't have to be a heavy weight.

Ben Greenfield: Do you wear a weighted vest yourself throughout the day or is it just something you put on when you're doing certain forms of proprioceptive awareness training or vibration platform or something like that?

Anahita Nazarian: Yeah. So, I do it very specifically with the intent of trying to connect to my movements, the accuracy of my movements. I'll recommend it to patients who have concussions. And when they're doing Pilates is having them really feel and connect. Love weighted vest, weighted apparel, but again, wrist weights is something I'm very big into so that as they're moving their arms or limbs, et cetera. I also love shutting the eyes. So if you shut your eyes and you see your arms or your body as you're moving it and you're using the subtle weight to help you see your body moving easier. So it's an interplay of feel/see in your mind's eye.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, when you were talking about the body schema in the book, you had 3 things that you recommended. You had the added weight, which you mentioned was something like one of these not-too-heavy weighted vests. You have compression. I'd love to hear you explain that a little bit more. And then, you have the thing that we kind of like the horse we kicked to death in the past couple of podcasts, the whole idea of tactile sensation like being barefoot, standing on textured surfaces. I have your Naboso mats still in my sauna, by the way. So, I do all my yoga in the sauna on these tactile sensation mats. But for me, part of it's the knowledge and part of it's kind of like boots in the streets. How's this apply to someone who may not have a ton of time to squeeze compression and a weighted vest and tactile sensations the average day? How do you stack these things together? And also spend a little bit more time on compression because we didn't explore that too much.

Yeah. So again, think of gravity as this proprioceptive hug. Compression, right? Hug, compression apparel. That's where if you injure yourself, so let's say you injure your ankle, your knee, whatever it is, there's something about compression that makes any injury feel a little bit better, right? You're thinking like throw on a good old ACE bandage. A lot of that is because compression is stimulating the proprioceptors, so very specific nerve endings that surround a joint or are interplayed within our muscles. So compression, compression apparel, compression sleeves, et cetera. It's very neurostimulating. So I would say if you respond well to compression, maybe that's the method that you use. If you want to use compression that has some weight in it, like a KiloGear or an Omorfo, you could do that as well. And then I am huge, not just in the feet, but also the hands. So when I'm trying to tap into people's nervous system and their ability to feel or see their schema, I always want something in the hands. This is where the Naboso sensory sticks could be used because they're weighted and they're textured. So you add that stimulation to the hand or any sort of texture, weight, vibration, etc. But as you're doing that, so a great way that you could do it is if anyone does breathwork meditation, I like to do sensory-based breathing, sensory-based breathwork. So you're dialing into these schema, schema, weight, compression, vibration, texture. That's very exteroceptive. Your breath, your heart beating is interoceptive. So if you could bring them together at the same method, then you are being very efficient in the way that you're trying to tap into your nervous system. I'm all about efficiency, so I would say wear your weighted vest with your compression apparel, be on an Aboso mat, and have something in your hand, and then do your breathwork or your meditation.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, if I'm going to go to the gym and I've spaced out, whatever, that 45 minutes anyways, I could say instead of putting on loose-fitting athletic gear, I could have some compression gear, maybe invest in some that's slightly weighted like Amorfo. And, what was the other brand you said? How do you spell that?

KiloGear, like a kilo, K-I-L-O.

KiloGear, okay, or a weighted vest. And then, I'm going to either do something like put in your Naboso insoles or go barefoot, maybe throw some toe spacers into the mix. And, I'm going to go do what I'd be doing anyways in the gym, but I'm doing it compressed, slightly weighted, and preferably incorporating some tactile sensation by if I'm at a home gym being barefoot or maybe if I'm at a commercial gym warming up for each exercise on a vibration plate or something like that. So, you could kind of work this stuff into something you'd be doing anyways, right?

Yes. Now, what I want to add to that, there's a slight caveat, is that you need to direct your mind and your mental focus towards that. So when I teach a lot of practitioners this, the practitioner, the teacher, the coach, they're the one that is guiding the student, the athlete, the client to where is their focus, right? So as you are— let's say you're just doing deadlifts as an example. As you're doing that, I want you very, very present and feel the texture under your feet or feel the wood of the standing platform. As you grab the bar, just take a moment to feel the subtlety. You know, like lifting bars have a slight texture to them, right? Just notice that, right? So it's, it's a little bit of an interplay of how you guide your focus as well. You might need a coach to teach you that, or if you have it intrinsically in the way of where you're focusing, then that, that's a big part of it as well. You have to guide the mind to bring it to the focus.

Yeah, with it, with the handpiece, I think that could be the most difficult because you're not gonna hold something necessarily while the hands are otherwise occupied with gym equipment. A lot of dumbbells are textured, a lot of barbells are textured. But, let's say somebody's lifting the average, I don't know, kettlebell, typically it's a smooth handle or using Nautilus exercise equipment, a lot of the handles on the machines are smooth. Do they make something or do you know of something that would be a gym glove that's textured or something that you could wrap around, say, a kettlebell for your swings that's textured or anything like that?

No, we are working on hand products.

Oh, that's awesome. Alright, I'll be a customer. Yeah. Okay. So, body perception then. We've got compression, we've got some type of weight, and then we have the tactile stimulation for the foot. Yeah. When it comes to all of this awareness between the brain and the body, I thought it was interesting. I'd love to hear you talk about this a little bit more how fascia— I think you even have a chapter titled "Fascia Is an Extension of the Brain." And, it is.

It is an extension of the brain. The reason is that it has over 100 million nerves, 100 million nerves. So, to me, I consider it an extension of the brain partly because of how many nerve endings it has, but it is really sensory seeking. And you cannot move without influencing your fascia. I mean, we know that our fascia is enveloped in everything. It surrounds every aspect of the human body, all the muscles, into the muscle fibers, into the muscle fascicles, into the tendons, the periosteum, retinaculum. Your body is one continuous connective tissue spiderweb. And then within that connective tissue spiderweb, is 100 million nerve endings, right? So really understanding the interplay between fascial stimulation— I'm a big believer in fascial tension, like the tensegrity. That's a big fascial term, right? But how to create tension in your system, in your myofascial system, to create stability, but to also feel and connect to where your body is. My background is I was a gymnast, then I became an aerialist, and now I do ballroom. And all of it is about really being in tune with where your body is in space, the lines that your body is creating. So to create tension or activation, even as simple as how you're reaching your arm out, but as I reach my arm out, I'm going to imagine that I'm trying to touch the wall. So there's this continuity of fascial tension, but energy that extends extends beyond my body. That's a fascial brain-body connection or way to use our fascial system. I think way beyond just foam rolling or bodywork. Sometimes, that's how people think about fascia. But, fascia is deeply integrated into everything we do from a human movement perspective.

Ben Greenfield: I was interviewing a guy, and this is a little bit of a rabbit hole about pain. And, he was discussing the importance of the interaction between— this is going to get a little woo maybe— structured water and light when it comes to fascial integrity and how important hydration and light, particularly light from the red light spectrum, is to fascial health. I know you don't talk about this in your book, but have you come across this type of concept as far as the interaction of light and water and fascia?

I mean, I would believe that. So here's the part of healthy fascia is hydrated. Healthy fascia has to be able to transmit quickly. So when I talk about the way that the body stabilizes fascially, that means that that stabilization pathway is fast. So to kind of answer your question, I could absolutely see that, that a well-hydrated fascial system that responds to light in a certain way is supporting the fast communication method that fascia is designed to provide. So, I could see that light travels very fast. The communication happens within the body is electrical, which is very fast. It's light-based. Our cells vibrate. So, vibration is a huge communication method within our body as well. So, absolutely.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I've heard some people say, "Well, your mitochondria communicate with light or the fascia responds to vibrations or the cells communicate via electrical signals, which is it? But, as you've just noted, it's all three in an ideal scenario. Yeah. Yeah. So, in terms of, again, kind of the practicalities for folks, I think even though some people might not be able to do this right now if they're driving or working out or whatever, you have an interesting exercise in the chapter on Fashion the Brain called the anti-gravity pelvic floor exercise. A lot of people, I think, are aware of the importance of the pelvic floor, but can you get into what that— describe what that exercise is and how to do it?

Yes. So, as you had said, we all hopefully understand and appreciate the pelvic floor as our anti-gravity muscle. This connects back to the first chapter, which is Gravis Sensing, which is really establishing that to optimize posture, human movement, movement longevity, you have to have a relationship with gravity. That's at our core what shapes our muscles, our nervous system, our bone density. In that chapter, I talk about astronauts, and you can understand the effect of being removed from gravity and what does it do to these astronauts' systems very quickly. So, that's an important part of it. So, that ties into the pelvic floor as our center of gravity, and it's a huge postural muscle is you have to be connected to your pelvic floor. When you connect to it, you are thinking about it as this anti-gravity muscle, which means there's going to be a lift. Your pelvic floor is also very fascially dense. When things are fascially dense, that means there's very, very sensory-based or a lot of nerve endings within that tissue, and it creates a little bit of tension or tone. So it's— I want people to kind of be a little bit abstract of how they're thinking about the pelvic floor. So when we talk to gravity, we have to lift into gravity our whole system, not just our pelvic floor. So we are communicating with or being very symbiotic with gravity. People who work against gravity or they're not thinking about gravity are the people who have low back pain, and we are heavy in our posture, we're heavy in our skeleton and in our body. These are people who have diffuse foot pain and they say, "It hurts nowhere, but the whole bottom of my foot just hurts. I can't stand." That's telling me that they have a broken relationship with gravity in their feet, in their pelvic floor, and in their entire myofascial system. We have to connect and say hello to gravity, which is a lift. So the anti-gravity pelvic floor exercise is essentially lifting the anterior and the posterior pelvic floor, saying hello to the pelvic floor in a, like, 5 to 10% of your actual strength. That's why I call it hello. And then we do that while simultaneously pushing the toes down. So when you push the toes down, again, you say hello to the toes. This is not a aggressive grip into the ground. You're saying hello to the toes, hello to the pelvic floor with a slight lift of the anterior and posterior pelvic floor. This is like stopping your pee, stopping your poo kind of sensation in the pelvic floor. And then there's something with your tongue that you have just a little bit of a hello to your tongue. Your tongue placement, I'm sure you've spoken to many people of this on your podcast, but the proper placement of your tongue is not down. It's actually a little bit elevated and it's behind the front teeth, but you're just having slight tone in your tongue, which then affects your neck and the way that you breathe. It's all interconnected and it's really a gravity story is what it is.

Okay. So, this sounds like something I could literally do while somebody's in front of me in line at the grocery store, for example. I'm just kind of pushing my toes down a little bit. Like you say, not super hard, but saying hello to the floor, slight squeezing of the pelvic musculature. Again, I'm assuming it shouldn't feel like I'm just doing a full-on hard Kegel but just an awareness there. And then, tongue against the roof of the mouth. And am I just taking a few breaths in that position?

Well, you should be able to hold it. So, if I kind of mimic it seated, I have my toes, Here's the other thing that I want to add. Your toes are actually more connected to your posterior pelvic floor than the anterior pelvic floor. A lot of people get a little bit too wrapped into the anterior pelvic floor, which is a classic Kegel. That's like stopping your pee. And then they forget that we have a posterior pelvic floor, and the posterior pelvic floor is the part that blends into your glutes. So we have to have that stability. That's critical to how we walk. But so we have little tone, little tone, just the awareness of your tongue. But I can breathe through my nose, so I could still breathe and I could still maintain things, right? Because it's, again, a 5% hello. Yes, it could be done in line in the grocery store. Yes, it could be done every once in a while if you use a standing desk. It could be in the morning. I have people do this when they're getting ready. When you're waiting for the coffee, do your little postural check and just wake up your nervous system to gravity. And, I don't think people think about that that they just kind of wake up and here we go, but we have to kind of warm up and wake up our gravitational system and the way that your myofascial system and nervous system talks to gravity throughout the day.

Yeah. Even though it might be a little bit hard with the tongue piece almost like one of those do it while you brush your teeth type of exercises. Oh, and by the way, you could do a textured toothbrush handle, Emily. There's another idea for you.

Here we go. Thank you.

Might as well work it into what people are doing anyways. Okay. So, the foot piece is interesting. Obviously, we've talked a lot about foot awareness in previous shows, but I don't think I came across the word plantigrade in your other books. You talk about the plantigrade foot and you kind of describe the different features of what a plantigrade foot is. So, describe to me this whole plantigrade thing.

Yeah. So a plantigrade foot is like a human foot where we have a tripod. So you have your first met head, fifth met head, heel. So we have a tripod. What a tripod creates in the foot is arches. What's very unique to the human foot versus, let's say, a primate foot are the arches. We have a medial arch, we have a lateral arch, we have these longitudinal arches. We have a transverse arch. The transverse arch is also extremely important. So that is the shape of a human foot— tripod with arches. Your toes are long, straight, and flat into the ground so that you can create a good lever. And a lever is the push-off position of the foot. For the listeners, if you think of you're doing like a calf raise, look down at foot. It's kind of that stiletto position. That's a lever, a rigid lever. For a human foot to create a lever, you have to have arches. In feet that lose the arch, they drop down, they overpronate, they have a midfoot drop, navicular drop, any of that sort of presentation, they lose their ability to create a powerful rigid lever. Which means they will never release energy in the way that the human foot was designed to release energy. Can you walk still? Absolutely. Your body will find a way. But will you achieve peak power output? No, because that's dependent on the lever. And it starts with the Plantigrade Foot, which again, tripod, arches. You have to do a slight lift of the arches. Toes long, straight, and flat. That fourth one is you have to connect into your digits. You have to say hello to your digits, which is called digit purchase.

Digit purchase.

Purchase. They're purchasing or touching the ground.

Okay. So, is there an exercise besides the anti-gravity pelvic floor exercise that kind of teaches you to be aware of those four components?

Well, I teach people forward lean. And that is my go-to for activating the digits. Otherwise, this finding a plantar grade foot, I call it setting your base. So just when I teach a large group of people in movement and I'm doing different progressive exercises, I will then just say, set your base. They should know exactly what that means. That means foot tripod, slight external rotation of the hips to lift your arch, spread your toes nice and wide, and just purchase or say hello to the ground. That is setting your base. To do forward lean, you are standing nice and tall. Imagine you're stiff as a board. Stay stiff as a board. You're going to slightly lean forward. When your center of mass slightly leans forward, your toes are going to activate or grip into the ground. That's a postural reflex. That's kind of that same thing as that anti-gravity, but we're not doing this exaggerated lean to try to find it.

Right. Do you think that if you were to do the forward-leaning exercise with a weighted vest that you would enhance the efficacy of it?

Well, so what we could do is have something in your hands, make sure you're barefoot, have compression or a weighted vest on, yes. Shut your eyes if you feel comfortable and you're really focusing on the coordination of your breath when you're doing this. Where you time your breath is as you lean forward, that is the exhale. Many people think the exhale would be on the return from the forward lean.

Because you'd be exerting yourself as you return. A lot of people have heard from their personal trainer, exhale when you exert. But, you're saying exhale as you're leaning forward.

Yes. And, the reason is that when your toes anchor, you lift the pelvic floor, that was your anti-gravity, but you exhale to lift the diaphragm. So we are essentially trying to stack domes in the body or bandhas if people are familiar with yoga. Toes down, arch lift. Exhale, diaphragm lift. As your diaphragm lifts, your pelvic floor lifts, that's the anti-gravity, tongue to palate. So you are stacking, that's why when we lean, toes go down, exhale.

What's so important about the tongue to the palate?

You just got to be doing something with your tongue. Your tongue is part of your deep front fascia line. So your fascia continues all the way through your tongue. So that is very, very important. I'm not an expert on airway and breathing, but I have dentists and airway specialists who reach out to me who use the Naboso products, who talk about feet and say this, there's this powerful connection between the way that we support our diaphragm into our tongue and our jaw and posturally, right? Jaw position is huge to alignment and how we relate to the world, that there is a powerful interplay between tongue position, tongue tension, and diaphragm, pelvic floor, feet.

I had this guy, Dr. Neil Bulkiandi. I don't know if you ever heard of him before. He came on my podcast, but he came to my house to record the podcast. And, he does a ton of work on the body through the nostrils, the mouth, and the tongue. And, he'll do things like unlock a knee issue by working on your tongue based on that fascial connection that you were just talking about. It was just a fascinating interview and kind of an uncomfortable series of treatments, but Crazy what he can do just with the mouth and the tongue.

For anyone who's intrigued with what we're talking about in the feet, and obviously my specialty is feet, they should definitely listen to that podcast then because there is this interconnected continuity between what's down there and what's up here and we have to be able to tap into that.

Yeah. I'll link to it in the show notes. Show notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sensory. And again, Emily's book is "Sensory Sapiens" found wherever books are found. So, the cha— Cha assessment, fun name. What's that one do?

Yes. So, the Cha-Cha is looking at how your pelvis moves. A big part of the Sensory Sapiens is not just talking about the feet where most people think I'm going to talk about, but also a lot about the uniqueness of the human pelvis, the way that the pelvis moves or needs to move to optimize walking, which is really at the end of the day, what I'm talking about is how do we walk optimally to move a long life is really walking. So your pelvis is designed to move in a triplanar mechanism. It has to be able to go forward and back, has to be able to lift side to side, and it has to be able to rotate. So by doing the Cha-Cha assessment, you are able to feel how your pelvis is moving and is it moving appropriately on your right side and on your left side to allow you to take long steps. The cha-cha to do it, it's in the books. I don't want to give the spoiler, but I'll still tell you. You stand with your feet together. Your hands are on your pelvis. So it's your ASIS. So it's kind of the bumps on your pelvis. And you are bending one knee and then straightening it. And you're just noticing the way that your pelvis moves as you bend one knee only. Then you do the other side. And then you essentially alternate bending. And it's mimicking how your pelvis moves during the gait cycle during walking. And you want to be able to feel that your pelvis is doing this. This is kind of a nutation rotation that we have to be able to have in our pelvis. That is the cha-cha. What I find is that when people start to get SI joint pain, sometimes piriformis, low back pain, what's happening is their pelvis is stuck. And then if our pelvis is stuck, obviously there's stress that kind of gets bottled up. So it has to go somewhere, right? Ground reaction forces, et cetera. But oftentimes it will also lock up your rib cage, so your T-spine. And in order to live a long and healthy life, you have to be able to walk fast enough. To walk fast enough, you have to take long steps. To take long steps, you have to be able to counter-rotate. So you have to decouple your spine. Decoupling your spine, pelvis moves one way, rib cage moves the opposite. That's part of that arm swing with step length that is happening is it's a decoupling of the spine. You can't do that if your pelvis is stuck and the cha-cha is a way to start to feel it.

Yeah. So, it's almost like you're doing kind of slow motion walking in place with the awareness being of the dropping and rising of the pelvis each time you bend and extend the left knee or the right knee.

Yep. And a rotation. So, your pelvis also rotates forward. So, we rotate towards our midline with the leg that theoretically would be swinging or stepping forward.

Yeah. Whenever I interview you, if I'm walking on my treadmill, I get all self-conscious about my walking circuit. Selfie.

I can't see you, so I'll—

Smoke coming out my ears. You must run into this a lot. I was thinking that it would be cool if there were QR codes in your book. But, do you video demonstrate just about all this on your YouTube channel?

How to do different assessments?

Yes. Okay. So, if somebody goes— what's your YouTube channel?

So, I have several. It probably is the easiest to search my name in YouTube and have— there's probably over 500 videos on there that are educational.

Okay. And, the Cha-Cha assessment is on there? Yes. Okay, great. You mentioned walking speed. And obviously, I just interviewed Mark Sisson who wrote the book "Born to Walk," which is great. And, I'm a huge fan of walking. I've become a much bigger fan of walking than running. But, I've kind of alluded to the fact a few times that there is this link between walking speed and longevity. You seem to agree based on what's in the book.

Absolutely. And I mean, there's also research showing that walking speed should be considered the 6th vital sign, and that as our walking speed slows, you see a correlation of increased morbidity mortality. So I, this is, I did not make this up. This is research-based showing that there is a trend in that. And I think that the listeners could, would agree just intrinsically that, yeah, I noticed that when there's a shift in the rate at which people move, you know that there's the decline of their morbidity or their mortality, you could say decline.

Ben Greenfield: So, is there like— I mean, obviously, it's going to change from person to person based on their leg length, I would imagine. But, is there kind of based on this research an actual walking speed? I don't know if I even just want to test it on treadmill to see what it felt like. That is best correlated with being fast enough for the longevity?

Yes. So, I'm going to actually describe it in a different way because I think that is hard to find the ideal walking speed on a treadmill to feel what I'm going to talk about. Okay. Now, walking is designed as a series of falls. That's one way that you could think of it, right, that we're swinging one leg forward, we fall, we strike the ground, the leg goes behind us. We essentially potentiate, or you load the bow and arrow. That's how I kind of explain it. So you're loading the bow and arrow, then you release it. That is your leg swinging forward, hits the ground. The leg that's coming behind you, you're essentially reloading the bow and arrow, and then you recoil it forward. So that's how we can think about walking. It's called the pendulum theory of locomotion, where your leg is weighted and you keep falling forward. This is important because it'll make sense when I talk about how we want to find our ideal walking speed. Your ideal walking speed is based around you feeling like you are catching momentum, that there suddenly becomes this effortless ease at which you're walking. That's momentum. Okay, so we're riding the momentum. We feel we're walking fast enough that one leg is just effortlessly recoiling forward. And, when you find that, because I used to find this when I lived in New York City, I was there for 20 years and as soon as I would come home from a trip of flying and being in hotels and not doing my normal movement, come back to New York City and I would find my fast momentous state and any stiffness in my lower back, my shoulders, wherever it was in my body would just kind of all dissipate because of the fluidity of finding momentous walking speed. Okay, so you have it. If you are in that momentum and you are truly riding the momentum at your speed, if someone were to come in front of you, you would not be able to stop fast enough. Like, you would barrel into them, right? Because that's momentum. You have kind of this wave of energy that is following you with every step that you are taking. That's what I want people to find. And the reason why I want you to find that is because that's demonstrating that you are now moving fascially. You're not moving muscularly. I need people to find the fascial side of their movement.

Because if you have momentum, there's almost like an elastic rebound type of component.

Yes. You are now in the rubber band of your body. The rubber band effect of the human body is where you find movement efficiency. That is where you find a grace and ease in your movement. Think the way that dancers move or children. Children are very fascial-based in their movement, probably because they're super hydrated, but that is part of how we're trying to find it. How most people move is very muscular. So if I get out of sitting in this chair where I've been for several hours, I'm going to be a little stiff or kind of robotic in the way that I'm moving because I'm moving very muscularly until we hit that certain pace. What also happens, which is so beautiful and magical and why I'm obsessed with walking as a secret to longevity, is that when you walk fast enough in this pace, you activate this, this circulatory pump. So a pump that goes through your body that makes sure that enough blood, oxygen, and nutrients is getting to your brain. When you get enough oxygen to your brain, you stimulate brain-derived neurogrowth factors. So it's very cognitive protecting, but you are decoupling and coupling your spine. You're constantly wringing out your spine like a rag and twisting it as well as all the cross-body fascial slings. So, it's very hydrating to walk at that pace. So, for neurostimulation, for circulatory, for muscles, for fascia, for everything, we have to be able to walk at that specific speed.

Ben Greenfield: Is there a way to kind of train your body or your brain to walk faster? Because I mentioned treadmill, I thought, well, you just put treadmill at a slightly faster speed than what you want to walk at, but it's still, as you noted, it doesn't simulate true ground reaction forces and biomechanics off the treadmill.

What I do want to mention on the treadmill walking though, which is important, which is where you will find that people will turn it up to go a little bit faster and then suddenly you can feel that you don't have the flexibility in your body, meaning your big toe, your ankle, your hips, your pelvis. Something where biomechanically you do not have sufficient joint mobility to sustain that level of speed, you'll feel it in your body, right? And that, that's a little bit why I'm, I'm hesitant around recommending people to do it on a treadmill, because then you just like dial it up and you try to keep up with it, and then almost—

or you grab the rails and start cheating, right?

Um, so what I would tell my patients Because again, this— I was a really big believer in walking speed for the entire decade that I was practicing, uh, podiatry in New York. It was easy, right? Because everyone walks everywhere. Yeah. But here's the downside of walking in a city like New York as part of your life is you have a bag. So I— you either have like a purse that weighs 30 pounds on one side. So we have this reality to how we're doing things. Well, obviously do not be texting texting and walking, right? That's not going to support it. So I would tell people, especially in New York, exactly right, leave your bag at home, leave the backpack, leave whatever it is. And if you need to put on music to find the rhythm, to find a faster pace, something where walking is also rhythmic— that's where we first learned rhythm is in utero, in utero from our mother walking. That is part of when people look at the research of the human nervous system and why we're so gravitated towards music and rhythm is because of that side of our mother's walking. So it's very, very fascinating. But I would essentially tell people, leave it all home, put some earbuds in if you need, go to a mall if you are not in New York City or a city that has walking or somewhere— or the weather really cold, really hot. Go somewhere, an indoor track, maybe do something like that and see if you can find this more momentous state. Obviously, it's going to be a little bit cardiovascularly inducing, so you have to make sure you have the aerobic capacity for it. You have to make sure you have the flexibility for it or the joint mobility for it. But once you find it, it is a beautiful exercise in hydrating your fascia and your physical therapy, in a sense, or your therapy for movement longevity. It should not be seen as a movement or an exercise for burning calories because by design, walking is not supposed to burn a lot of calories.

No, you got to walk for like an hour and a half to burn like one little chocolate chip cookie, medium size.

But, it's a means of locomotion. It's not supposed to be where you burn your calories because that's not the point of walking, right? If you think of evolutionarily, where were we walking? Well, we needed to get from point A to point B. If I burn all my calories doing that, well, now I have nothing to support brain health, or digest my food, et cetera.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah. You'd be a very, very sloppy caveman. I discovered a few years ago this device that's based off the devices they use for cardiovascular rehab in hospitals called Enhanced External Counterpulsation. And this little heart rate monitor strap syncs to an app called the CounterPace, and it trains you to sync your walking in correlation to the diastolic phase of the heart. So, it's almost like in simplistic terms matching your heart rate to your walking speed or gait. And, I walked with that thing because you can hear the beep of it. You can play your music, your podcast, your audiobook, but then it'll layer the beep of it in the background. And, it's very interesting in terms of almost increasing body awareness of walking speed and heart rate and how the two can be linked together. And apparently, there's some very good cardiovascular applications to timing almost the pumping action of the foot and the circulatory muscles or the circulatory action from the muscles that you were just talking about to the actual diastolic phase of the heart. It's called the CounterPace.

Oh, my God. Yes. Listeners, go back and listen to that again because that is a mic drop thing that is a huge part of what I'm also trying to advocate.

Yeah. I haven't used it for a few years. I literally wore it religiously for a couple of years and I'm like, I think My brain knows now my walking speeds because I'm kind of there. There's a whole book written, it was called "Unplugged." I forget the author's fantastic book about how technology can be used kind of like as a training wheel, but then you don't want to become too married or entangled to the idea that say, whatever, I feel great, I slept well. You look at your ring or your wearable, it tells you you got a shitty sleep score and then you're like, "No, I guess I don't feel all that well." You want to get to the point where you can intuit a little bit within reason. I think heart rate variability, for example, even if you feel good and it's consistently low, can be a pretty good predictor of injury or illness before it actually occurs. Similar for, say, frequent rises in body temperature and your potential for getting the cold or the flu. But, I think for a lot of exercise-based modalities, using technology to develop the awareness and then unplugging yourself from the technology is a decent idea.

I love that. What was the name of that product again that you use, that heart rate monitor?

CounterPace.

CounterPace. Yes. I actually had met them at a conference, a healthy aging, active aging conference.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it was Dr. Mercola who turned me onto it. Okay. So anyways, The circulatory piece is also interesting. We touched on that, but you even talk about microcirculation in the feet. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. I'm also just curious also if it is something that could be applied to the hands as well. A lot of people listening, I think they have poor hand and foot circulation or Raynaud's or anything else like that. So, where does the circulatory component fit in?

Yeah. So, circulation is everything. Obviously, circulation is a huge part of recovery. That's why NormaTec boots and different things like that are popular on the market. Lymphatics is becoming more and more popular, yes. But one thing that I appreciate being in podiatry is this concept of microcirculation. And I don't hear a lot of people differentiating that or speaking about it so that consumers understand there's a difference, right? We have macrocirculation, that's your heart beating, your aorta. We're thinking large blood vessels, right? Blood vessels you can kind of see pulses, you can feel, but then there's a deeper layer or a smaller layer of circulation, which is the microcirculation. This is not just your capillaries, but it's the itty-bitty blood vessels that supply the skin. So, it's your cutaneous circulation. It's the small blood vessels that supply nerves. So, your peripheral nerves have to have a nerve supply to keep them repaired and healthy, et cetera. Same thing with your fascial tissue, your muscle, et cetera. And that microcirculation side is a big part of foot health. Yes, you could say hand health as well. This is where neuropathy comes in. Actually, diabetic neuropathy is considered a microvascular disease. So that's really where that term first came up for me within podiatry was neuropathy is microvascular. Retinopathy and things in the eye or, issues in your kidneys are also microvascular. So we can think of, we have layers and depth to our circulatory system, and we need to make sure that we are doing things that support all aspects of the circulatory system. What supports microcirculation is movement, is a great one, right? They show after just 50 steps, you have an increase in your foot temperature. Foot temperature translates to increased microcirculation to the skin, to the muscles, to the nerves.

Texture, of course. Yeah, which rabbit hole, by the way, is why paradoxically wearing socks to bed can assist with cooling of the rest of the body. It's like a little hack to cause a slight decrease in body temp and maybe give you a few extra deep sleep points.

Yes, exactly. So, there we go. Recommend the Naboso socks for that. And then, vibration. So, using a vibration platform is Another great way to do that. You can use different vibration devices and things like that. If people are using percussive therapy, I tell them to just like paint or tickle the skin. Don't pound into the tissue. You're going very light to hit the microvasculature. But yeah, a lot of people don't realize that inflammation, stickiness, high blood sugar, AGEs, right, different free radicals affect your microcirculatory system. First. And then, that's why your nervous system gets affected, your peripheral nerves. So, because I'm such an advocate of peripheral nerve health, that means I have to talk about microcirculation and the effect of your diet or inflammation or sleep or stress autonomic state on microcirculation.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. It reminds me of the time I was at a conference and now I own one of these tools, but I was at this booth called the Rapid Recovery. Booth. They make this— it's not a percussive gun, it's almost like a vibration gun that vibrates at a super high hertz frequency compared to the percussion. And, the lady at the booth grabbed my hand, she's like, "Your hands are cold." And then, she goes, "Watch this." And, she did this vibrating tool, this rapid recovery tool up and down my forearms. And, as I watched, I could see my hands getting pink and then reddish, And then, she grabbed them and they were warm. And, this was just 2 minutes per side. Have you seen this thing, this Rapid Recovery Vibration Tool?

That is awesome though.

It'd be right up your alley. You should check it out.

Okay. Yeah, that totally makes sense along the same lines as what I was just saying, vibration. In the foot, so a Power Plate or a whole body platform, putting your foot on something that's vibrating is inducing a lot of muscle contractions, which is inducing some of this circulatory effect.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I pay my son. I'll lay down on the floor on my stomach and I'll slip him a 10 to just work on me for— I'll tell him a dollar a minute and he'll just work on me for about 10 minutes with that thing in any tight spots. And, I'm almost beginning to like it more than a percussion gun because it feels like more of a relaxing microcirculatory effect and a little bit of an endorphin-releasing painkiller type of effect from using it. It's very interesting. What do you think about the bike that vibrates? Power Plate, which we've talked about, I know you're a fan of that thing, but you can probably see it behind me. It's in my office now. They have this REV bike and the pedals vibrate. I ride it barefoot because you get a little bit more tactile sensation. But, have you been on that thing?

So, my distributor in Japan, used to distribute Power Plate for Japan. So, I tried it when I was in Tokyo, I think a year ago, and I was intrigued. And then, as soon as they turned on the vibration component, yes, loved it through the feet. I was barefoot as well on it. And then, it definitely hit the muscles in a completely different way. So, I'm intrigued by it. I don't know too much of the science of how they use it with pro athletes and stuff like that, but I definitely felt it. And, it's something that I would be intrigued by and I absolutely love vibration. Anything that's inducing the vibratory system, I find very powerful.

Ben Greenfield: I like anything like that, especially for when I'm sore or on a recovery day because as anybody has probably felt, if you do a bodyweight squat on a non-vibrating platform, then you do a bodyweight squat on a vibrating platform, you're not necessarily taxing the muscles more, but there's just way more cues, way more of the microcirculation we talked about. A little bit more difficulty. And, it's similar on the bike. On a regular bike, I could push 250 watts and it wouldn't feel that hard. On that thing, it's almost impossible because there's so much additional tactile stimulation going on, your body's vibrating, kind of like BFR bands. You put them on, you can do bodyweight training, not beat up the muscles too much but feel like you got a pretty good workout. I feel like that with the vibrating plate and the Vibrating bike.

Yeah. So, I agree with you. I like things that can get more myofascial neuromuscular stimulation. I played a little bit with some of the EMS suits on that and curious on the depth at which muscles can be activated to then help with posture, post-injury rehab, et cetera. So, yeah, I find that something like that is a Powerful tool.

You got to be careful with those muscle stim suits. If you jack up the intensity too high on those, you are sore for days. I have one, the Katalyst, and yeah, I've made the mistake before. The muscle tuning theory, what is that?

So, the muscle tuning theory is a theory by Dr. Ben O'Neill who is out of Calgary in Canada. He's now retired, but he has done so much research. He dedicated his career to focusing on gravity. Ground reaction forces and the way that your foot interplays with it, and how things like surfaces, shoes, different footwear, socks— which is the interplay between ground, foot, nervous system, gravity, and ground reaction forces. So the Muscle Tuning Theory is essentially how we respond to ground reaction forces. Ground reaction forces are perceived by your nervous system as vibration. Vibration, as we were just talking about, the vibration bike has a certain frequency. Frequency, think like an instrument. So the tuning is that you would tune your muscles to a certain frequency of the vibration of the ground reaction force that you are encountering. And that has to do with surfaces that you're interplaying on is an important part of it. The way that your muscles respond to vibration is that they stiffen or contract and create stiffness and/or compartment pressure. So the way that we react and interplay with vibration is a stiffness compartment pressure interplay, which allows you to then put the potential energy from the ground into your connective tissue and then release it as elastic energy. So again, that, that story of ground reaction forces, energy, energy for your body, how do we use that energy the most efficiently, making sure that we don't get injured because vibration coming into your system that's uncontrolled can cause plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, stress fractures, shin splints. So that's kind of an uncontrolled vibration story, how do we interplay with that or damp appropriately to then use that energy? That's the muscle tuning theory.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So basically, the way I'm interpreting this is that my body, my brain, my feet are sensing and anticipating the ground even before I say strike the ground while walking or running or sprinting or performing or whatever. And, I can tune or train that anticipatory stiffness by basically doing some of the stuff we've just talked about like the cha-cha, the pelvic floor activation, using vibration, et cetera. So, if I want to get to the point where, pardon the rough analogy, but I'm walking or running like I got a couple of baby kangaroos attached to my legs, those exercises would assist with that anticipatory stiffness and hence the elastic rebound. And the ability to be able to walk faster, run faster, change direction in sports, etc.

Yes. So, exactly how we interplay with gravity and we have this symbiotic relationship with gravity, meaning posturally, gravity to the ground is ground reaction forces, which means you have to have a symbiotic relationship with the ground and ground reaction forces. It's the same story. And yes, it is exactly what you were saying is to really utilize the, the gift from gravity and the ground, which is ground reaction forces. You have to understand how to perceive it, how to anticipate it, how to damp it, how to load it in your fascial tissue, and then how to release it effectively. So that's, that's this. Um, the more tuned in that you are— tuned in meaning focused or connected to the ground— the more efficient and effortless you will move. Oftentimes, and in the book I do talk about kangaroos, that kangaroos are studied as an example of very efficient movers of how they are able to tap into their tendon, their Achilles tendon essentially, to very much demonstrate peak elastic recoil is what they're demonstrating. A lot of athletes who will, will use this muscle tuning theory are runners. And indoor tracks are actually tuned. One of the best tracks is in Pennsylvania and it is tuned to this frequency for optimizing running speed and really the energy transfer during running.

Oh, do they set records on that track? Mm-hmm. Wow. Interesting. Alright, cool. If I want to run a fast mile, I know where to buy my plane ticket to Pennsylvania. To throw my mile time down on Instagram. It was all me, not the track. So, if you have a home gym, obviously, I think good investment, get a vibration platform, maybe get some of Emily's textured mats, mess around with a weighted vest. I almost said a gravity blanket. Don't bring a gravity blanket to the gym. Save that one for the bed. A weighted vest for the gravity piece, maybe some compression gear, If you're going to a gym, obviously you can't bring all that equipment with you, but you could at least maybe wear a gravity vest and some toe shoes or some of Emily's textured insoles or something that allows you to just do this stuff on the go. I never like to throw way too much extra homework on people who can't magically create a 25th hour in the day, but these are things that you could work into what you're already doing. And, the book is called "Sensory Sapiens," by the way. It's fantastic. I recommend you pair this podcast, like I mentioned, with the other ones. I'll link to it, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sensory. Emily, as usual, you're a wealth of knowledge.

Thank you. That means so much to me because I know you have many guests and you are very wise yourself, Ben. So, thank you so much.

I have a soft spot in my heart for anything kind of biomechanics and fascial related probably because, well, my master's degree is in exercise physiology and biomechanics and I've just always loved anything that relates to how our body interacts with gravity and the ground. So, thanks so much, Emily.

Thank you. It was a pleasure as always. And, I'm actually thinking back, my first book launched 10 years ago. That was probably when we did our first podcast. Wow.

Crazy. Yeah. You're a 3-peter now. Alright, the book is "Sensory Sapiens." You get on Amazon or wherever. The shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sensory. And, until next time. Hopefully, there will be a 4Pete. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Emily Spleckle signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an incredible week. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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