Episode #110: How Do Newton Running Shoes Work?

In this Newton Running Shoes, quad cramping, running injuries, sleep quality exercising on road trips, vitamin B12, caffeine's effect on your adrenals, greens, supplements and sample aqua jogging workouts.

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Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here with this week's podcast. Episode number one. If you did not get a chance to listen to the brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle podcast last week, go check that out. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. In today's podcast we've got an interview with Danny Abshire from Newton Running Shoes and he'll be talking about how those running shoes were designed and also about some things that I hadn't heard before in terms of what happens when your foot strikes the ground and what some of the things that you need to think about actually are. We're going to have a few special announcements. We have a Q and A and then we're going to move on to that featured topic on Newton Running Shoes with Danny Abshire.

Special Announcements.

Only a couple special announcements for today. The first is that this Sunday, September 5th from 6 to 7:30pm Remember that's going to be the live video Nutrition and Fitness Q and A with me. Come ask your questions. I'll be there live via video. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com at 6pm on Sunday, September 5th, that's 6pm PST Pacific time, there will be a link there that you can click to go attend that free live video Nutrition Fitness Q and A. And then it looks like we've got just four four weeks left for you to sign up and still get the early bird discount price on the 2011 Triathlete Training Camp down in Austin, Texas for all you half Ironman and Ironman triathletes out there. So if you want in on that all inclusive camp, be sure to sign up sometime during the month of September and I can still get you in at a slammin deal. I will put the sign up link in the show notes along with links to everything that I talk about today. We're going to have a special message and then move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

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Listener q and a.

All right, folks, if you have a question, remember you can call toll free to 877-209-9439. Email BenGreenfieldFitness.com or Skype to Pacific Fit. And our first question this week is from listener Cynthia. And Cynthia asks After I finish a bike ride, when I sit to take off my shoes, the tops of my quads begin to cramp up. Even if I stretch my quads a little first, this still happens. What could be causing this and what can I do to alleviate it? Well, anytime that your muscles begin to cramp up, that's basically it's a type of muscle spasm, and it's an involuntary contraction. It's when your brain sends a signal to your muscle to contract. And you're not voluntarily contracting that muscle. It's doing it all on its own. And a lot of times if you put a muscle into a shortened condition for a long period of time, it ends up wanting to essentially stay in that position or involuntarily cramp in that position. Now, granted, cramps could also be due to lack of hydration or not having enough electrolytes on board. But in your case, where it's happening consistently, when you get done with a bike ride and you're sitting down to take off your shoes, it's likely that when you're talking about the tops of your quads, you're referring more to what are called your hip flexors, which end up being in a shortened position when you ride a bike. Now, if you are riding, say, a triathlon bike and you're bent over in the aero position and your hip flexors are in basically a scrunched up kind of low angle, this is something that could easily happen, especially if you're never standing and stretching during your actual ride. It doesn't matter if you stretch before your ride. If you're not stretching during your ride, throwing in a few stands up out of the saddle, it's likely that this could be causing your cramps. In addition, if your seat is too low, it can put you into a position where your hip flexors are constantly cramped as you're bent over. And it can also actually happen when your seat is too high as well. So a bike fit might be something to look into to make sure that your quads are not actually or your hip flexors are not actually in a constantly shortened position. What I would do, and this is something that I'll do, for example, during a triathlon, is about five minutes before I'm getting to the point where I got to get off my bike. I'll start standing frequently and holding a stand and trying to stretch my hip flexors specifically while I'm on the bike. So it's likely that you are experiencing a cramping related to that muscle being in a chronically shortened position during your ride. And that's what I would go after addressing, although I would look into the hydration and the electrolyte intake. But it's more likely that shortened hip flexor condition. Listener Ashley asks I'm 29 years old and I've been running for 10 years. I've run one half marathon and had hopes of running a full marathon, but this past spring I was diagnosed with IT band and runner's knee. This derailed my running plan, to say the least. I worked diligently with a PT and strengthened my quads and glutes. I also started incorporating a lot of stretching and using the foam roller. My IT band and knee are great. Now my latest issue is plantar fasciitis. I never had foot pain before and I'm frustrated that my body keeps putting up roadblocks preventing me from running. I'm a vegetarian and eat very little dairy. I'm diligent about taking my daily multivitamin, flaxseed oil, vitamin C, vitamin D, magnesium, calcium and zinc. Since the plantar fasciitis has come up, I've been rolling my foot and icing it as well as stretching my foot. Can you suggest anything else I could do? It's always good when people include all of the elements that I probably would have suggested in the first place, such as proper nutritional recovery and strengthening of the butt muscles, the glute muscles, the quad muscles with the pt, and the actual treatment in terms of stretching and icing of that plantar fasciitis. Now, the fact that you have struggled with other injuries in the past related to that kinetic chain that's involved when you're running, Ashley, and the fact that you already have strengthened some of the muscles that would be responsible for stabilizing you suggests to me that this may be an issue that we've talked about before on the show. One of two issues, one possibly Being a muscular imbalance, the other possibly being a hip that's rotated essentially in one direction or the other, or basically a sacroiliac joint malrotation. So we had an interview podcast number 97. I interviewed a guy named Tom Vachet and he went into great detail about how your pelvis being out of alignment can affect your knees, your ankles and your hips and result in these chronic injuries that keep on creeping up. I know myself, I used to have a lot more of those injuries before I went through a series of chiropractic adjustments to get my sacroiliac joint back into place. And typically after a race or a hard training week, I'll still see a chiropractic to make sure that my SI joint is staying in place. So that's something that I would look into. I would also look into muscle imbalances, specifically, whether or not you may have hamstring quad imbalances, whether or not you may have a lateral rotation imbalance, tight adductors. There's an entire 40 page free report that I put out a couple weeks ago@bengreenfieldfitness.com about muscle imbalances. And that's something that I'd recommend that you read. It's called the Muscle Imbalances Revealed Report. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But specifically, when you've got an injury and it seems like you're doing everything right and then you keep getting injured, things keep creeping up. It's like when you're trying to squeeze play DOH and it comes out between your knuckles. Then you close your knuckles and it comes out underneath your thumb. Could be the issue with either muscle imbalances or the sacroiliac joint. So. So I'd look at both those factors. Listener Matt asks, do you think longer consistent sleep is more important than the total number of hours slept? And Matt goes into great detail about his current sleep patterns. I'm not going to actually read that part of his question, but essentially his question is whether or not you just need to do all your sleep during the night or can you get away with sleeping less and taking basically just naps? Well, first let's, let's look into sleep and kind of understand deep rapid eye movement and less deep rapid eye movement sleep. Basically, when you're looking at a sleep cycle, there are two different stages, REM sleep and non REM sleep. And the non REM sleep is essentially four different stages where you transition into sleeping and then you go into light sleep sleeping and then you go into deep sleeping, and then you go into more intense deep sleeping. And as you move through those stages, your brain waves begin to slow, you get more and more groggy, it becomes more difficult to wake you up. And usually you're looking at a couple of hours to actually get through those stages. And then you're going to get into your deep, rapid eye movement sleep. And that can occur as little as 70 minutes after you fall asleep. Usually it's a couple of hours. But the deep, rapid eye movement sleep is where you dream. Your eyes begin to move rapidly, your breathing becomes shallow, a lot of times your heart rate and your blood pressure can increase. Your arm and your leg muscles tend to not be able to move. And your body goes through these different stages of sleep through several patterns. And they're actually predictable patterns that you go through as you're asleep. So you move back and forth between this deep sleep, which is where a lot of restoration and muscle recovery occurs, and then these more elite or alert type of, type of sleeping stages, this deep rapid eye movement sleep. And so those form a complete sleep cycle. And technically, if you go through about five of those, which is eight hours of sleep, that's considered an ideal night of sleep. And of course, a lot of people don't get that much sleep. They'll get, you know, six hours, seven hours. I personally do very well on seven and a half to eight. Some folks need nine. It really depends. But the most damaging effects of sleep deprivation are when you don't get enough of time in that deep sleep cycle. Because like I said, that's when you get the repairing of the muscles and the tissues. That's where you get stimulation of growth and development. That's where your immune system becomes boosted. That's where your health can be maintained. And to really be energized and refreshed when you wake up, you have to get into that quality of deep sleep and amass enough time of that at night. And then the idea behind the rapid eye movement sleep is that it's not just so you can dream and have fun, but that's actually where your brain processes a lot of the information that you assimilated during the day. It's where a lot of your neural connections are formed. It strengthens your memory. That's where a lot of your neurotransmitters are replenished. Your body produces a lot of serotonin and dopamine that are going to boost your mood when you wake up. And so the deep, rapid eye movement sleep is just as important as Those deep restorative sleep cycles. Now I know that some people, and this recently happened, there was a study down at University of California in San Francisco that showed that some people are able to sleep on six hours of sleep a night or less because of a gene that they have, but understand that that gene is very rare. It only appears in about 3, 3% of the population. So for 97% of us, we need more than six hours of sleep a night. And for most adults, we're going to need about seven and a half to nine hours of sleep a night. Now there is a field of study that looks into something called polyphasic sleeping, with the idea being that maybe you don't need to get all this sleep in a row during a 7 1/2 to 9 hour sleep cycle in order to experience a lot of the beneficial restorative effects of sleep. And the idea behind polyphasic sleeping is that you set up sleep cycles and nap cycles to where you're getting just enough sleep to enter into your deep sleep phases for enough time for your muscles to recover and then getting some rapid eye movement sleep at different stages throughout the day. And there's been some studies done that have suggested that this polyphasic sleep actually allows just as much enhancement of recovery and performance as getting the deep rapid eye movement and eight hour phase or seven and a half to nine hour phase sleep cycles. And there's a few different phases that have been studied. And a lot of these studies have been done, of course in the armed forces, the US Military, by NASA, a little bit in the Italian Air Force and by the Canadian marine pilots. But essentially it's scheduling your napping in a specific format to allow your body to get the optimum levels of sleep in both deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. And there's a few different types of polyphasic sleep cycles that you can go to. So here's what they are. One would be to get right around six hours of sleep, so for example, sleep from midnight to 6 and then do one 20 minute nap, for example, after lunch. Another sleep pattern that's been experimented with is, is to get just four and a half hours of that core sleep. So for example, sleeping midnight to 4:30 and then doing two 20 minute naps during the day. Another cycle would be three hours of sleep with three 20 minute naps and then one and a half hours of sleep with four or five 20 minute naps. Now obviously you're getting into the realm there where you would have to be planning your naps very regularly in order to get by in that. And then there's one final phase of polyphasic sleep cycling called the Uberman, where you're actually only sleeping a total of two hours during a 24 hour sleep cycle. But you're doing that via six 20 minute naps. And even with that, under extreme circumstances, you can still maintain alertness and performance for several days. Now, let's say you just want to know if you're getting enough sleep and you want to kind of see if you're sleep deprived or not. There are definitely some things that you're going to notice if you're sleep deprived. So for example, if you're sleep deprived, you're going to need an alarm clock whenever you wake up in the morning. So you're going to have to be pulled out of sleep rather than naturally waking up out of sleep. You're usually going to get drowsy after you have a big meal or when you're driving in your car. You'll feel the need to nap throughout the day. You'll fall asleep, especially like while you're watching TV or relaxing after dinner in the evening, you might really feel like you have to sleep in on the weekends quite a bit. Sometimes you'll fall asleep more quickly after you get into bed. If you're sleep deprived, like you're just out within five minutes, you'll get sleepy in the afternoon, or kind of sluggish, you'll get sleepy when you're in meetings or lectures, or especially if you're in rooms where the temperature is up a little bit and you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. All those things that you would expect to be intuitively signs that you may be sleep deprived. But it goes on. I mean, sleep deprivation research has shown increases your risk of diabetes, of heart disease, of other health problems. You have impaired motor skills, you get weight gain, concentration and memory problems, you get frequent colds and infections because your immune system becomes less strong. Fatigue, lethargy, lack of motivation, lack of self control, more of a propensity to overeat or eat substances that you normally wouldn't. So there's a lot of signs. There's actually a fun little test. I'll put a link to this test in the show notes, but the BBC website in their Science and Nature section has a test that's called the Sleep Sheep test, where you can test your reaction time to see if possibly you may be sleep derived. It's called the sheep dash. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. You can Play around with that and kind of test your own sleep deprivation. But in terms of the root of your question, what it comes down to is, ideally you should be getting seven and a half to nine hours of sleep sleep. If you can't get that, there's still research that shows that you can do okay with a shorter core sleep cycle as long as you're doing some systematic napping throughout that sleep cycle or throughout the rest of the day after that sleep cycle. So, good question. Listener Matt asks, I spend at least four and a half hours every day in the car. Is there anything I can do in that time that will help me achieve my fitness goals? I've heard you suggest jumping jacks every hour, but that would just prolong my journey time. You did mention the power breather recently. Is there anything else of a similar nature that could be used while driving? Well, the power breather that I talked about, I believe in podcast number 109, is a device that is a lung resistance device and you breathe in and out of it and it resists your inspiration expiration. And so it can strengthen your lungs when you're stuck in a sedentary situation like sitting in your car or sitting in traffic. And you still are kind of sort of exercising. Now, if you're on a road trip, I actually do really recommend that every hour or two you stop and stretch if you're able to. And a lot of times if you're by yourself, that works out better. Because if you're traveling with a companion, sometimes it can annoy them if you're always wanting to stop and do jumping jacks. But research has shown that, or has shown that doing short bouts of physical activity throughout the day can keep your metabolism elevated and cause you to oxidize more fat. And so if you're able to, for every hour that you sit, stop and do 100 jumping jacks, that actually is a great way to kind of keep your fitness and your metabolism elevated as you're traveling. Now, if you're not able to do that, there are the stereotypical airplane type of exercises that you can do. You know, squeeze your butt, squeeze your chest muscles, do some isometric contractions of your bicep muscles or your calf muscles, meaning that you can contract and you hold. That typically gets pretty old. I think what you need to realize is that all it takes is a brief burst of energy, a brief sprint, or a brief series of jumping jacks for a minute to actually bump up your metabolism so you can get in and keep going. So for a five hour road trip, that means five total minutes of actually not moving to get your metabolism boosted every hour. And that's almost worth it. So I kind of realized that it doesn't mean you have to stop and do a structured exercise session. So something very short and intense can still help to boost your metabolism. But there's very few structured workouts you can do in your car without risking the lives of other people in your car or people on the road. So I'm not going to suggest that you get like a little bicycle exerciser and put that underneath your feet and put your car in cruise control or anything like that. The only thing I can think of is that if you really want to get funky, you could put an elastic band in your car and do some internal and external shoulder rotation type of work. But even that, it gets a little bit dangerous in my opinion. So you had a follow up question or I'm sorry, you didn't have a follow up question. That was your follow up question to your sleep question. Kim asks My friend and I have been discussing the right time to take vitamin B12. We're both vegan and take a B12 supplement as well as chlorella which has a high amount of vitamin B12. My first question is should we be taking this much vitamin B12? And Kim, the answer to that part of your question is that vitamin B12 doesn't even have really a toxicity limit. That's name because it is a water soluble vitamin will pass through in your urine. There are some side effects that aren't necessarily toxicity side effects but just uncomfortable side effects in terms of how much you can actually tolerate. And some of the things that you'll get when you're really overdosing on vitamin B12 would be you can get diarrhea, you can swell up a little bit, you can get these allergic reactions like hives or rash or itching, especially your lips or your mouth or your throat can swell a bit and you can also get wheezing and almost like an anaphylactic reaction or difficulty breathing. You'd have to take a lot of vitamin B12 to get some of those effects, but it could theoretically happen. Now when you go on to the follow up part of your question, you say recently my friend underwent some blood work which showed her B12 to be low. We've read that vitamin C blocks B12 when taken at the same time, so we avoid taking both vitamins vitamins together. However, we are wondering that since most of the food we consume consists of vitamin C, is it possible that that is blocking the vitamin B12 that we supplement in our diet. Well, first of all, kudos that you are dieting or you are including vitamin B12 supplementation, because if you're vegetarian, you do have a risk of a vitamin B12 deficiency, since meat and dairy foods are two of the primary sources of vitamin B12. And vitamin B12 is necessary for a multitude of metabolic reactions when you are taking that vitamin C supplement. It is true that 500 milligrams of vitamin C can tend to decrease your vitamin B12 absorption. Now, when you look at the vitamin C content of the food that you take in during the day, though, you need to put that in context. So if 500 milligrams of vitamin C is going to block B12 or limit B12 absorption, an apple has about 8 milligrams of vitamin C in it. An avocado has about 16 milligrams of vitamin C. When you're looking at, like, some of the cherries, the berries, those are usually less than 1 milligram of vitamin C. In the average size serving of those, even something that seems very citrusy, like lemon juice, it's only about 3 milligrams of vitamin C and something like that. If you were to eat watermelon, that tends to get a little bit higher, it's got about 27 milligrams of vitamin C, strawberries about 7 milligrams. So you're still looking at having to eat a lot of fruit, almost like an unhealthy amount of fruit, fruit, in order to get 500 milligrams of vitamin C or enough to actually block your vitamin B12 absorption. If you're taking a vitamin C supplement, that is something that I'd be careful with. You don't necessarily need to take in 500 milligrams of vitamin C on a daily basis and really only need about 200-300mg per day as kind of your average daily intake, optimum intake, you'll get some people to claim that it's around 500 milligrams. I'm not convinced that that's true unless you're doing a lot of muscle tissue damage and you're a heavy exerciser. But as far as the vitamin C, I wouldn't worry too much about the vitamin C content of your food, but I would make sure that you're not taking your vitamin B12 supplement and your vitamin C supplement simultaneously. If you're taking a vitamin C supplement. Listener Robert writes in and he says, I've been told that Caffeine has a huge impact on adrenal glands, since those are provoked all the time and are no longer able to fulfill their mission and ongoing high adrenal levels in the body, which has negative impacts on the body either way. What's your take on this matter and how far can I go in terms of milligrams of caffeine on a daily basis? When you drink caffeine, it is true that your adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys, are basically going to be stimulated to produce epinephrine and norepinephrine. And those are stress hormones. And they can cause you to tense up your muscles. They elevate the blood sugar a little bit, they increase your pulse, they increase your respiration, and those are a lot of the reasons that coffee and tea and caffeinated soda all actually work. They improve your muscle coordination, your mental clarity, your energy levels, they reduce drowsiness, they stimulate your central nervous system, but they do also result in the release of these adrenal based hormones, these adrenalines, this norepinephrine and epinephrine. And yes, if you're constantly stimulating your adrenal glands, you can get adrenal gland exhaustion, which is basically when you begin to become chronically fatigued. Your energy levels drop. Unless you are stimulating those adrenal glands. They require more and more stimulation in order for you to not feel sleepy and demotivated throughout the day. And that's a big issue, I think, especially with kids nowadays and their consumption of energy drinks or foods or drinks that contain caffeine, is the fact that you eventually build up a tolerance to the caffeine and your adrenal glands become less and less able to actually produce the proper amounts of norepinephrine and epinephrine on their own. So as far as the actual amount of milligrams of caffeine, an average cup of coffee, you're looking at about 100 milligrams of caffeine or so. Now, there's no studies that have directly investigated adrenaline, fatigue or adrenal exhaustion from a chronic disease standpoint, and the daily milligrams of caffeine that can be consumed. But in working with my clients, because I have many athletes, especially that I coach, who have to deload from caffeine and then reload onto caffeine in order to use caffeine for something like a race, like a marathon or a triathlon, we found that about a cup of coffee and is doable to be able to quit cold Turkey, not have a lot of the withdrawal effects and be able to come back to without experiencing a high amount of jitteriness or adrenal stimulation or stress. And so that would mean that if you're drinking one cup of coffee, one cup of caffeinated coffee a day, like a 8 to 10 ounce cup of coffee, you probably don't have much to worry about unless you're somebody who has already exhausted their adrenals through a ton of coffee consumption. And if you're in that boat, you may need to quit for a while and allow your body to relax for a couple of months, not get all that adrenal exhaustion going on and then come back and start back into the coffee once you're able to kind of control your adrenals. So cup of coffee a day, you'd be fine. If you're doing a lot more than 100 milligrams of caffeine a day, you're, you could be risking adrenal exhaustion, withdrawal symptoms and a lot of the negative stress producing effects that caffeine can give you. Now we have a question from listener Lee. And Lee says if you get the chance, would you mind having a look at the supplement Vital Greens? I'm unable to get some of the supplements you mention here in Australia and wondered what you get from the ingredients list on the site. So I took a list at this Vital Greens that Lee is asking about and it's basically like any green supplement, a blend of a bunch of different superfoods and they also include some omega 3 and some omega 6 fatty acids in there, some digestive enzymes and some probiotics. And because that supplement doesn't really have any artificial sweeteners that I can see, artificial ingredients, artificial colors, it actually looks like a pretty solid choice bit. On the spendy side, it looks like it's about 90 bucks for a month's supply. But if you can afford it, then it's something that would probably be okay to take. There's no red flags in it. Now the stuff of course that I recommend typically is called Ener prime and that can be shipped to Australia, but it's the only one that I'll actually vouch for in terms of me having tried multiple types of green supplements and the only one that I've ever, never gotten sick while I'm taking in terms of I've gone for two and three year stints on enerprime and never gotten a cold, flu, nothing. That's why I recommend that and that's why I'll vouch for it and the quality of the ingredients that they use in this Enerprime. I'll put a link to Enerprime in the show, notes Lee but this Vital Greens looks okay. And again, when you're inspecting it like a green supplement, just look for the presence of artificial sweeteners, look for the presence of artificial colors and added preservatives. And then if you're able to try and find out if it's a certified good Manufacturing practices facility or if it's WADA certified, I wasn't able to ascertain any of that information. For Vital Greens, I can tell you the ingredient list looks okay. It's a bit spendy compared to the $40 a month for the enterprime, but it definitely doesn't raise any red flags for me. So the last thing that I'd leave you with is if you're taking any medications or prescriptions, make sure that you've cleared the consumption of this with your doc. And then the last question that we have is from listener Jeff and Jeff asks I'm taking up aqua jogging to overcome plantar fasciitis. I'm a runner and begin marathon training in late November. I want to knock out this demon for good and stay off the roads until I do. I'll be in the pool with a free range of motion that is not touching the pool. Bottom can you recommend some aqua jogging workouts? Yeah, absolutely. A couple of my favorite aqua jogging workouts. One is you get in and you put on this aqua jogging belt and hopefully an underwater MP3 player so you don't get too bored and you jog back and forth in the pool. And once you're warmed up for about five to 10 minutes, you do a series of sprints from one end of the pool to the next. And these sprints, sprints only need to last about 15 to 20 seconds for you to reach complete exhaustion. And then you do a full recovery between each sprint. And in an aqua jogging session, I'll usually shoot for anywhere from 10 to 20 of these sprints. Another one of my favorite workouts that I'll do for aqua jogging is I'll do drills. So I'll run down with a normal kind of high cadence jogging pattern and then I'll go back doing heel to butt kicks and then I'll run down again and I'll come back doing high knees. Then I'll run down again and I'll come back doing like a straight leg kind of Frankenstein style walk and then I'll run down again and come back doing more of like a bicycling, full range of motion, kind of exaggerated motion cadence. So you can do longer intervals, 510 minute tempo intervals at like a 2 to 1 work to rest ratio. You can do shorter sprints like I mentioned earlier, or you can just do one long aerobic aqua jogging session where you're just jogging for anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes if you really need to replicate a long run. The other thing that I'll do occasionally with aqua jogging is I'll combine it with swimming. So for example, I'll swim 500 meters and then do five 25 meter aqua jog sprints and then go back to swimming. That's actually great cross training for triathlon. If you don't want to get out of the pool and get on your bike and you just want to do your swim bike repeats right there in the pool, that actually works pretty well. I talk in detail about aqua jogging and how you can use it to reduce injury risk, along with a ton of other cross training modes to help you train through a marathon and still not have to worry about not being able to train when you have injuries. At the program. At marathondominator.com, one of the long audio interviews. Interviews included in there is reducing the risk of injuries and also training through injuries and maintaining fitness through injuries. So that's@marathon dominator.com now next we have an interview with Newton running shoes inventor Danny Abshire. So we're going to have a message and then move on to that interview.

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Folks, you may be familiar with the running shoe called the Newton running shoe. And the Newton shoes were conceived and designed by a guy named Danny Abshire, who was a runner and a designer of customers Orthotics and Danny actually started working with elite athletes and wanted to create a shoe that would help runners of all levels get back to their natural running technique. He's been a running coach and the director of Biomechanics and injury prevention for multi sports since 1993. And he is a consultant in orthotics and something called pedorthic training. Danny is a runner himself and his wife manages the Newton running lab. And today we're going to learn a little bit more about what goes into shoe design and where the idea for the Newtons actually began. So, Danny, thanks for coming on the call.

Thank you, Vin.

Oh, go ahead. Where did the idea for Newtons actually start?

Well, kind of way back. It's not been any kind of overnight sensation, that's for sure. We've, we've been working on it for about 15 years. We filed for our first patent back in 1996, but it was actually conceived by a fellow runner of mine and friend of mine who had an idea of being able to capture and store energy that's normally lost in a shoe, in a membrane which works like muscle and tendon. So he had the idea and we worked on that. And then as time evolved, he kind of stepped out and did some other projects. And then I ended up having to try to see if we could manufacture the shoe because all of our hand built prototypes were working really great with a lot of great runners that were coming into our store here in Boulder, Colorado. And everybody loved the way it felt and the responsiveness and being more neutral to the ground. But that process took quite a while, you know, evolution of testing over so many years. And then finally, once we decided to do it on our own, we tried to, you know, see if other major brands might like to license the technology because we didn't really know how to build shoes. We had a concept that was working well and we had patents on it, but the issue was trying to manufacture it. So I spent about four years figuring out how we could manufacture the shoes.

Interesting. So in terms of the biomechanics of the Newtons, what was the general concept behind the design that you put into the shoe?

Well, first of all, instead of studying animals or the way humans move with high heeled shoes on, or current technology shoes on, we studied more how humans run without footwear and without the influence of footwear. And of course, you know, the Dr. Lieberman study out of Harvard and many other studies since then have shown that, you know, we run quite differently if we have no influence on our feet, because basically we have to deal with gravity. And it's all about standing, even just the standing position being level with gravity and how our feet are level and how we can have high sensory input and it's all about the balance just Being a two legged human, once we put something, let's just say even if I put something under your forefoot, let's say I put a ballet slipper on you, you're going to walk around on your toes. So the influence underneath your foot, the body has to rebalance to anything that's underneath the foot. So one of the very first things is getting back to a level piece of footwear which is very healthy for the whole body. The ankle, knee, hip, spine, even up to the neck. So that's the way we were intended to move around, by understanding that first. And the secondary thing that really is super important is we have over 200,000 nerve endings in our feet. If we have a medium such as foam that really mask that down, it gives you good shock absorbency and it's soft to run on concrete. But what it does, it masks down all these sensors in the feet. Thus you'll find a lot of people now hitting the ground very loudly and pushing off very hard after that initial impact. If you can't sense the ground, then you'll hit the ground harder trying to sense the ground. But if you can sense the ground, you'll touch the ground lighter and self regulate your impact. Those were the two biggest things that we were studying, is a more level piece of footwear and a technology that could allow you to run on concrete and asphalt, but without the harsh impact. That could also allow you to sense the ground and self regulate your impact. So that was then. The shoe is also segmented into the sections of the feet and it flexes and levers in the right place as your foot does so. Those other concepts of simply even not restricting your natural foot movement, that was also a big part of it as well.

Interesting. Your response kind of brought up two questions for me. The first is you mentioned that you mentioned the phrase the way we were designed to run or the way we were meant to run. What kind of studies or what kind of research kind of clued you into the fact that maybe a traditional running shoe doesn't allow someone to run the way that the human body is designed to run? Or how was the human body designed to run that you noticed that something was holding it back?

Well, you know, my wife and I, you know, I'd been living up in Aspen, you know, as a ski instructor and as a professional boot fitter, making, you know, ski boot inserts. What we found is, you know, ski boots are very level and firm, right? And you have to have your foot on a level plane inside those boots to have performance. So you need, you know, it all started there with thinking about, okay, when we're skiing, we've got to be centered with gravity here because we're on this slippery slope. So people, you know, we started working with footbeds to level off people's biomechanics because everybody has a different mechanic in their feet. And then sometimes one foot's way different than the other foot. So number one, starting to be balanced is super key. And we stand on our feet, so we have to balance our feet. If there's an imbalance, then being in an athletic position, you look at every other type of sport. A lot of people saw the World cup not too long ago. And soccer cleats are not altered. They're flat, they're level, and they have cleats for traction. So you can run backwards, you can move sideways, you can turn on a dime, you can sprint, you can jog. When you're centered with gravity, you can do anything. But if your body's out of balance and it influences you to do something different, you're going to do that and get actually pretty good at it. One phrase that I've coined as well is people become efficient at running inefficiently. It is all about being efficient. Now, the early research was just coming off of basic common sense. Jennifer and I saw thousands of people, thousands of runners and triathletes, and just everyday folks. And it all came back to, even if you're just standing around all day on a high heeled shoe, your hips are tipped, you're putting more. Instead of a 50, 50 split between the ball of the foot and the heel, you're putting more like 80% or 70% of the weight on your heel. Then your hips have to tilt forward to accommodate that. And then your upper body has to reposition over your highest point, which is your heel, so the whole body gets contorted. There was no research back then about it, except for what we were viewing as postural changes from an influence of a wedge underneath your heel. Now, we're not blaming the shoe companies for anything. My thought is they thought, wow, those poor runners, you know, they're out there running on concrete and asphalt. We better try to figure a way to cushion them. So if we build up the heel more, you know, and put some technologies in there, then they can land on the heel and then roll through their step. But what they didn't realize is the consequence of altering the body position and imposing a braking force when we're trying to move, you know, in a forward direction. If I Put my foot out in front of my body, I'm breaking my momentum. So then it comes all back to physics and gravity again. And then the ankle is a loose adapter. So if I put it in front of my body, it's going to pronate and supinate and I'm breaking as well, shocking my knee, hip and back. Now I waste time getting over my center of mass. Thus, when I've wasted time and I'm trying to move forward, I now have to push off with a great amount of power. So the injuries that we were seeing even 20 something years ago were from that braking moment where the foot is a loose adapter and it's shocking the system because we're trying to move forward. Then the other set of injuries where pushing off too hard, the hamstring, calf, Achilles and plantar fascia. So this is a constant stop and start once you impose a heel strike. Now, even if you have a really, really trained runner and they're trying to land parallel to the ground or underneath their body mass, because the heel protrudes from the shoe, even if my foot is parallel and the heel is protruding from the shoe, it will double my impact both in my heel and forefoot. Our early studies just basically showed that there was some need to get the heel out of the way. And that's definitely not the only thing. There's about seven other things that the Newton does that works with the body. But number one is getting more on a level platform. And I think a lot of other shoe companies are trying to rush to do that. But if you do that with just foam or just a harder medium, then again, we're talking about concrete and asphalt, man made surfaces that are very hard.

In your explanation of the shoe, you also mentioned the ability to sense the, the ground. Are you saying that we sense the ground a little bit better because the front of our foot is striking the ground earlier?

Yeah. You know, when we, you know, again, you know, when you have a walking gait, you know, because I have an upcoming book in November, it's called Natural Running Unnatural World when you walk. Let me just quickly explain the walking gait. You know, walking gait is heel strike, mid stance and toe off. And at that walking speed, it's very, very safe because we're levering from the hip and then we're rolling and centering the mass and we're adapting to the surface and that's what we're set up to do. Then if we go all the way on the far end, sprinting is way up on the forefoot and toes very forward, and we can only hold that position for 100 meters or so, and then we're completely exhausted. It's a flight mechanism. And then people go, well, Danny, then what's long distance running? Well, it's true. It's not walking and it's not sprinting. It's right in the middle. It's mid stance. So you've heard coaches like myself and Danny Dreier and evolution running, Ken Merkle and Joe Friel and coaches all over the world, even Nicholas Romanoff pose method and Malcolm Bach master the art of running book. All coaches from around the world saw the same thing I was seeing many, many years ago is that people were running with a really abnormal gait. And the basic thing that we started to try to tell them is to shorten your stride and get under your landing mass and stop the braking moment and stop pushing so much. So it was very much a thought of how we were seeing that shoes were causing people to alter the way they truly run. Now, the cool thing is, if you just take your shoes off and you run down the concrete barefoot, you're going to sense with your forefoot, you're going to sense with your forefoot. Again, the highest concentration of sensors are in your forefoot, not your heel. Because think about when you walk up and down steps, you don't put your heel down first, you put your forefoot down because that's the balance of the body and that's high sensory input. So you can tell if the step is made out of slippery concrete. I mean, even through your shoes, you can feel that. So the high sensory input is in your forefoot. That was our biggest study. It's called afferent feedback. Afferent feedback is the feedback that your sensors in your forefoot get from the ground that tells you. Those sensors. Now, if they're masked too much, then you don't have any input. That's why people hit the ground really hard now, because they're landing on their heel, which is a low sensory area, and it's very cushioned with the shoes. And then we roll through and push off. So we're bypassing two things being neutral with gravity, for starters, and then this enormously high sensory input from the forefoot. Even at that, if you're standing barefoot and you lean backwards and try to run backwards, well, you'll run on your forefoot because that's where you're going to balance. And then if you lean forward, just sort of like you're on a Segway without The Segway. If you lean back, you'll sense and balance with your forefoot. You don't land on your heel and then as you lean forward, same thing, you'll get up on your forefoot very lightly. And this is not on your toes. Your foot will come down parallel to the ground. After you initially touch your forefoot, you lean forward, then you're leaning forward and you'll be on your midfoot forefoot and you'll sense the ground and touch lightly again. So our whole body is set up just to regulate and deal with gravity. And the sensory input has to be there to then say, okay, what's underneath me? Is it rough, is it unstable, is it smooth, is it wet, dry? I mean this is just part of the whole the way the body works.

Now, is this type of shoe designed for any distance or for specific distances for runners?

Well, the way we launched the company, I had built custom orthotics for over 13 Ironman world champions dating back to 1988 with Scott Molina and then the current Ironman world champion, Craig Alexander. They come to us Active Imprints is our company name that Jennifer and I developed in 1988. They come to us for advice about micro balancing their feet, whether it's in their cycling shoe and their running shoe because they put in so many miles and at the super elite level, any kind of rotational forces coming out of your forefoot, it's lost energy on the bike and it could cause some little medial knee strain or it band strain if you have a rotational force coming out of your forefoot repeatedly. And there's only a few things that could be unstable in your forefoot. So with all of these folks coming to us, we figured, well our as a company, we did shop it around. We said to several major brands, do you want to look at this technology? And they go, well, it's based in the forefoot. The technology seems sound. It certainly is a great absorber of impact. And you do look like you can retrieve more or lose less energy or retrieve more energy from the initial impact. They basically said to us, people don't run on their forefoot. We were like, of course they do. You just had 30 or 40 years of people saying we're going to build heel striking shoes. And you got everybody believing that that's the right thing to do. Once we got shut down by several brands, we said, well, I guess we have to make the shoes and we have to have a target market. So our first shoes that came out were what we call racing shoes, which we've had a US record set in 50 kilometers. So that's 31 miles. Josh Cox set that back a year ago or so in our shoes. And then of course we've had two time Ironman world champion Craig Alexander running the full Ironman distance, the marathon after the swim bike. So they are long distance shoes. But we also have people that will run 800 meters in the shoes. And we do studies at MIT where athletes will just have a steady state heart rate. They'll hold the same heart rate with their favorite shoe and the Newtons and they'll run the same distance in a controlled atmosphere, the indoor track. And they'll run anywhere from half mile to mile repeats. And the this report will be coming out sometime this fall that everybody will run faster in our shoes. And the reason being over most distances or any distance because you will be more neutral or efficient. That's the thing. There's less braking forces and our shoes lose less energy. The way the technology is set up, our shoes are for all distances. We don't have a track shoe yet or a cross country shoe type. But yeah, you could run anywhere from 800 meters to 100 miles in our shoes. We've had several people. Ian Adamson just finished the Badwater 135mile race using our shoes. So yes, they are long distance shoes. And I think being only three years in the market, there's a lot of misconceptions about what the shoes are and are they durable? Can you run far or can you run fast? Yes, all those questions. Yeah, it's a shoe that once you learn how to get centered and run more efficiently like you were set up to do, you can run any distance.

One of the most common questions and comments that I see about Newtons is that people are worried about injuring their foot because of a completely different shoe than what they've run on for the past five, five years or 10 years. Or they think that the bones towards the front of the foot might be.

Too weak for this type of shoe.

Now is there an explanation of injury risk or precautions that people should take when it comes to using something like the Newtons?

Well, like everything, even if you wanted to go run in a Vibram or if you wanted to start running barefoot on the concrete, you have the same risk. The problem is no other company has been bold enough to say this is actually how we do it. This is actually how the body is set up. We're the first company to kind of teach you how to relearn how to run. Now you can experience yourself all you have to do is go to a track or a nice smooth running surface, a nice smooth grass surface, and just go out, take your shoes off and see that you sense every blade of grass underneath your foot. You will. If you close your eyes, you will sense every blade of grass under your foot. That's the high sensory input number two. You're standing neutral with gravity. The problem is most people, they've blocked all that out of their mind. The way they're running right now. They've got efficient at running inefficiently. They've got efficient as using the heel strike to hit the ground and using the sprinting gait to leave the ground. So there's an immense impact and an immense muscle power usage. So what happens when they think they're going to go try something different is they try to run with the same form, they try to run with the same form, and if not, they'll go to the forefoot and land with a tremendous impact and push off as if they're sprinting again. So there's an adaptation period to anything you want to do. If you want to adapt to anything, it's the same thing as going to the gym. If you want to go to the gym and say, all right, today I haven't lifted weights in a year and I'm going to start lifting weights today. Well, you're not adapted for that and you're sore as all get out and you probably could strain something really bad because you're thinking in your mind, wow, way back in high school, I could bench press £130. Get £130 on there and start bench pressing. You're like, yeah, I'm struggling, I'm struggling. Yeah, but I'm doing it. Yeah, the next day, next week, you're really hurting. So the body has to adapt. You have to take time and you have to re. You have to relax and not use so much power. Right now, everybody's using all this super power to run and they don't even realize it. Their calf muscles are extremely overworked and tired. So is the hamstrings and all the propulsive muscles. They're overused, overused, and they don't even realize it. So what you have to do is you have to make sure that your musculature is loose enough that you can reposition your foot. Because if you always heel strike and you always push off, then you don't know where midfoot is. You don't even know where midfoot is. You don't know how to get there. So what we try to do is get people to feel like that they're jumping rope in place and landing very lightly. Because I do clinics almost every day somewhere in the country, and we do a running clinic here in Boulder every Saturday morning. One of the biggest things is to get people to relax. Like, running should be all about relaxation and having your whole body. We're using our whole body, but almost everybody's been running with just using their leg muscles. So now if you stand in an athletic position where your ankles and knees are flexed, your spine is tall, now you're centered with gravity. All you really have to do at that moment is lift your foot off the ground and drop it directly underneath you. You lean forward slightly with your upper body. Now you're moving forward without using all this muscle power. But it's very difficult to be a new player in the industry and to teach people how to run because they think they already know how to run, but they're running with a super altered gait. So a lot of people look at our videos online. They'll read the literature or they won't, and they'll just go out and run. And almost everybody will call in, they'll say, well, you know, my calves are really tight, or my Achilles feels strained or something like that. And we'll go, did you read the info? Or did you take like an easy 15 minute run or something like that? And they'll go, no, I did my regular five mile run. And we will say, you know, were you running faster? Oh, yeah, I was running like 30 seconds, 40 seconds faster per mile. You know, it's like, wow, that's kind of like race pace, you know, so it's just getting people to open their minds and really realize how you're supposed to move and then gradually making changes to get yourself underneath your center of mass with your landing foot as opposed to this break and push. So again, it is an adaptation period that we would do with any other sport. But runners and triathletes in general, people want to go from A to Z too quickly. And, you know, we talk a lot about that in the book. It's, you know, first of all, get the information, then you have to feel it. Because people come from all over the world and go, danny, I want to be a better runner. Help me. It's like, well, if you want to be a good runner and you want to be a good athlete, the first thing you have to do is listen to yourself and understand your body, body and understand the needs and understand how we move but until, if you want, if, you know, if you're not there with that, then, you know, it's a longer process because people have locked out all this, you know, saying things like, no pain, no gain, and I'm going to do or die, you know, I'm going to do this marathon if it kills me. And all that stuff is crazy because as soon as you just say, all right, relax, look for forward, lean forward, touch my foot to the ground instead of pound it, and lift my foot off the ground instead of pushing off, once I'm doing these things that are very natural and very relaxed and I can relax mentally and physically, then I can go farther and I can go faster. But if I tense up, grip and grip my teeth and just say, I'm going to muscle through it, that's where all the injury, pressure, pain, impact, rotation, you know, it's just magnified. Yeah.

Now, one final question for you, Danny. In terms of barefoot running, I know that obviously if everybody were barefoot running.

All the shoe companies we put out.

Of business, and there is a reason to wear shoes, but do you see a place for barefoot running in a runner or endurance athletes training program?

Yeah, almost all elite people do that. I do it myself. I teach it at the training camps because that's how you relearn how to run. Now, here's the thought. Humans evolved to run barefoot on natural surfaces. So that's where we should be practicing barefoot running. If you want to run in a Vibram or even just total barefoot, that's where you should do it. You should do it on a really awesome track surface or an infield that is perfectly groomed. And you just start out by doing. Just stand there, feel the blades of grass under you, and just notice how you move. I don't even have to tell you how you're going to move. Everybody's going to do it perfectly, whether you're 14 years old or you're 80 years old. If you're £100 or if you're £300, you're going to run the same way. You're going to take short steps. You're going to land under your body mass, you're going to lean slightly and your arms are going to swing freely. You're going to run that way automatically because you don't have the influence of something on your foot. The idea is that when I talk to Dr. Lieberman from Harvard, the idea is that we want to learn how to relearn how to run with the barefoot running style. And that's what Newton's been proposing. And a lot of times we're misunderstood because people go, well, I can't run a marathon on my toes. No one from Newton ever said, we wanted you to do that. We want you to find your midfoot, forefoot, landing, whichever is most comfortable. Chi running is total midfoot, where you just land level to the ground right under your body. And your ankles and knees are flexed. Your lower body is like a spring. You absorb that shock forefoot, you actually tap into your own natural energy return. So if you're doing again that pretend jump rope, if you land lightly on your forefoot when your heel settles, you'll get a burst of energy back from your own spring ligaments, your elastic recoil out of your calf, your plantar fascia, and your Achilles tendon. If you land in the right position like humans will barefoot, then you'll start to realize where you should run with footwear. So barefoot is running now. Even caveman started making moccasins and coverings for the feet thousands and thousands of years ago. And it's for a reason, because we have a brain. Our brain says, if I run out there, you think there would be a race like Badwater if we didn't have some coverings for our feet? The road temperature is over 200 degrees. You think we would be out running the Antarctic marathon barefoot? No, it's 70 below. Right. We have a brain. We want to protect ourselves, but we want to also be able to move as if we're barefoot running. So we have to understand what the body form is. And barefoot running is one of the best ways to do it. But you need to do it same thing, adapt very slowly. Maybe you just run two or three strides of 20 yards just feeling what it feels like. Because people's feet, like you said earlier, it's like, do the bones in my foot, can the bones accept that kind of impact? Well, it depends on what you're talking about. If you're talking about concrete and asphalt, you have to regulate. This is a man made surface. It's hard. So by understanding how you move when you're barefoot and heightening that sensory input and practicing the way you lift instead of push, yeah, that's a very great thing to do. But I don't. Unlike Christopher McDougall and some of the other people, Michael Sandler and some other people around the country, they want to run on every surface barefoot. Now, you can toughen up, but you're also going to be set up for a different set of injuries than the injuries that are occurring from heel strike and push off. So we're trying to get people to be sort of not way out there and running with a heel strike and not way over here, running barefoot on concrete and asphalt. But learn how to run underneath yourself, right? Learn to run naturally and run that way and mimic that barefoot running style. So that's the basic there on barefoot.

Gotcha.

Well, folks, if you were interested in these new running shoes, if you were interested in the Newtons, if you're interested in barefoot running or just the biomechanics of running, now, hopefully you have a little bit more knowledge to make your decision about how you run and what you run in. So, Danny, thanks for coming on the call today.

No problem, Ben. Thanks for having me.

All right, this is Ben Greenfield and Danny Abshire signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Well.

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Sa.