Aging Powerfully From Head to Toe with Mark Sisson

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness and from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. I am super excited to welcome Mark Sisson back to the podcast. Full Disclosure Mark is actually my oldest friend. Not that he's old, but my oldest friend in the fitness industry. We have literally known each other for 35, possibly even longer years from the early days in LA. And you know, when we talk about it, we were like, I think Mark Me Body by Jake and Tony Horton were probably the first personal trainers back before there was a name for it. It's so crazy. It was fun. We were recently at a dinner in Miami because he moved to Miami from California with the Chalene Johnson who moved from California to Miami as well. Talking about like what has gone on in the fitness industry. And part of that, and you'll hear in this interview, is, okay, what's going on in the fitness industry and now what are we doing differently? Like, what's, what are some of the changes? Especially as we are now not in our 20s anymore and we're all looking to do what Dr. Peter Attia talks about, that centenarian decathlon, that thinking about the things we want to be able to do in our 60s and 70s and 80s. Mark is now 70, so we've adjusted a few things and we'll be talking about what Mark has shifted and also what he's super passionate about now that could really enhance strength, reduce pain. You'll hear all about it in the interview. I know, it's a tease. It's a tease. We're also going to talk about what are the important things, things to measure because I love, you know, measuring things which you measure and monitor you can prove. But for us as we age, what do we want to be measuring and monitoring that can reduce our risk of all cause, mortality, all the different ways that we could die and more importantly, improve not just our lifespan but really focus on our health span. And there is something that's just not done very often that can make a huge impact with we'll chat about that as well. We will have a very cool guide from Mark that you can get@jjvirgin.com forward/barefoot. So be sure to check that out. And I will be right back with my buddy Mark Sisson. Hey, jj, Virgin here. Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me, travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal this time. Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. Mother Nature is not all sunshine and rainbows. Nature can be hotter than a sauna and colder than an arctic skinny dip. That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever Mark Sisson what is this third.

Fourth. Fifth time on the show.

Third, maybe fourth. I don't know, it feels like a while, but I thought you were going to say it's the third. Fourth or fifth decade that we've known each other.

Fourth.

Yes. Right.

No, sir.

No, fourth decade, fourth decade. Anything after 30 years is the fourth decade. Is that crazy?

That is really weird. I know. It is. It was weird. We were out at dinner last night and we're sitting there with. With you and me and Chalene and I'm like, holy smokes. Like, here we are. But you know what's cool? We all look awesome.

Yes. You know? Yeah.

And we all look fit. And I think one of the interesting things is how we've changed what we do over the years. It's kind of like the. I wish I'd known, you know, now then what I know now. I wouldn't have done like the things you do in your 20s. Your body is different.

Yeah.

And so I think an interesting place to start is now. How old are you now?

I'm 70.

That's what I thought. I'm like, is he really 70?

Wow.

Yeah. That's mind blowing to me.

It's mind blowing to me. You know, that's. I mean, when I first met you, I guess you must have been in early 30s. Yeah, yeah, I was early 20s. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. That's crazy. So here you are, early 70s. And I know that you probably have changed some things over the years. I mean, when I met you, you were like endurance king.

Yes.

And I was always weights queen. You were endurance king. So what do you do now? Like, what have you changed in your routine over the years? Because you're aging really well. Like, look at you.

Well, super fit. Appreciate that. And. And I think right now I'm fit for life. I was fit for competition when we knew each other originally. You know, in. In my late 20s, early 30s, I was an endurance king, as you would say. And. And I was a marathoner. And then I turned into triathlete and did that for years and was always had to have that. That feeling of exhausting myself every single workout. And it was really. It's a bit of a sickness. Now the good news is I developed a strong cardiorespiratory fitness that served me well into my later decades. But I recognized fairly early on in my 30s or 40s, that that amount of stress on my joints in order to try and push the heart every single day was not going to serve me. So I cut back on the amount of miles I was doing. I stopped running entirely. Like, literally, I haven't run a mile in 30 years.

So when, when did you start to notice this? How old were you?

So I was in my 40s initially. I got injured as a runner and that was a big red flag to me. Like, okay, I'm only in my late 20s, early 30s, and now I'm injured and I'm not going to be able to compete at the level that I was used to ever again. This was arthritis and tendonitis and a lot of things that were, that were overuse injuries. So you can't train at that level and hope to surpass a level of fitness and overcome those sorts of injuries. Those injuries then are caused by the training. So cut back on the training, started lifting more weights, I cut out sugars. I started looking into the diet, which that informed the rest of my career. My career after the age of 35 was all about the primal blueprint and finding ways in which we could become lean and fit and strong and happy and healthy and productive without all of this pain and suffering and sacrifice. You know, what are the hidden genetic switches that we all have? And so I shifted more toward what I would say more efficient, effective types of training, which was not a lot of mileage, but more weightlifting, real specific training for joints, range of motion, mobility, resilience, being able to come back from a workout, not beat up and be able to go.

Was that mentally hard for you? Really hard?

No, it was almost. It took me five years after I quit competing at a high level. I still coached for 10 years. And even while I was coaching, I trained with my athletes the same way, right? Yes. And so I would go out and do. I was training world class triathletes. And while I wasn't as fit as they were to race at that level, I could do the workouts that they did once in a while. The thing about training at that level is you have to do those workouts every single day. But I still had the ability to do those workouts once in a while and then take three days and recover, obviously, so I could still do the work. So I still had it in my mind that I'm up there. I could still, I could hop in.

A race if I really wanted to.

I could hop in a race, I could win my age group. I could, you know, so that lingered for another five years. So it did take a long time for me to get that kind of thing out of my mind and that. It's almost like a sickness. It's almost like an anorexic type effect. Like you, like you're trying to exert control over your body by doing something every day that's so tough that no one else could do it and then you can come back and do it again the next day and the next day and the next day. So it's, it's, again, it's, it's a bit of a, of a, of a psychological issue that you have to overcome. But once that leaves once, once I got that out of my mind, the good news was it never came back. It was. And if people say, yeah, because I'm pretty fit now and people say, you should, you should race, you should start racing, man, you should. I'm like, no way. I lost that mojo so long ago. And the few times that I've thought about getting back into the ring and competing, I do two days of training. I'm like, no, I don't want to do this anymore. This was a part of my life that I'm very thankful that I did and I'm very thankful I left it behind. And the lessons that I learned, you fight know then what I know now. The lessons that I learned were such that I want to now I want longevity. I want to be able to be fit and look fit and be healthy and look healthy for as long as I can. And that's what really informs my workouts now. So long winded answer, like, what do I do differently? So now my workout week, I do two days in the gym. So today was my cardio day. So today I did an hour and a half hard ride on a fat Tire bike in the sand on a beach.

Yeah, that does not appeal.

And while it does not sound appealing when I describe it like that, it's, you know, you're out in nature, the view is great, there's all people walking along. You know, you're getting the sort of negative ions from the ocean breeze. So now what it looks like is two days a week in the gym, one day, probably a week of this hard bike ride, one day a week of stand up paddling. And so I do that in the bay here an hour hard. I don't go with anyone else because I want to be in the zone. It's meditative for me. And I'm hanging like the last time I went last week, like a 500 pound manatee just below me. Just, you know, just.

We'll go out in the canal to do this and literally dolphins are with us. This is wild.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you do it in California and you're like, is That a shark.

So. So you get. That's the nature part of it. And the point is I'm. And then one day, two days a week now, when I. When I would have normally said, okay, I have to do something, I have to work out something today, and how do I fit it into the. To the overall scheme of things? I'll go to the gym and I'll literally stretch for an hour and I'll just, you know, just easy stretching. Dead hangs. Things that I never would have done and never would have thought are important. But all of a sudden, as I. As I am getting older and as I get out of bed in the morning and things are starting to creak and be stiff, I want that. I want that mobility and flexibility and resilience along with the strength and the cardiovascular fitness.

Have you done the stand to sit to stand test?

Without. Without the. Without. Without the hands?

Yeah, yeah.

I can't do that.

I have the cameraman on me and, you know, I've got the knee replacement, hip replacement from all those old injuries of beating myself up early in my 20s, and there I am, I go, okay, so let's just record this. And this is where you stand with your feet crossed.

Yes.

And you deduct a point for any time you have to use a. An appendage, you know, so I'm like going down and I go, boom. And I'm like. I'm pre. That doesn't count. That you just crash to the floor. But trying to get up off the floor with your feet crossed, I'm like, how on earth is someone able to do.

I mean, I mean, I think it's. You train for it. And that's the metric that I've heard. Like, if you're over 50, you can.

Do one down, one up, and you still are good.

Yeah. And. And I could easily get. Get off the ground with one. One hand. So that's. That's a nothing thing. But. But I'm also, again, as you. As you get older, like, I have this. Peter Attia has this list. What do you call it?

Centenary.

Centenary decant.

So resonated with me.

Yeah, yeah. So I wrote this list of things down that I want to do. Oh, so a lot of things are like a minute and a half dead hang. Right. Just hanging from a bar.

Tell people why that's important. Because you'd hear that and go, why would I want to hang from a bar?

You know, it's just one metric of resilience of the joints and flexibility and grip strength. It's mostly Grip strength.

Yeah. Which by the. I'm sure you've seen that research where they. To 2 million people and people with poor grip strength had the highest all cause mortality. That and VO2 max.

They say that the grip strength is the proxy for that. I'm going to beg to differ on that because I think certainly VO2 max is a much better proxy. But you can't test well.

You do all of those like you do VO2 max. I just did an interview with Andy Galpin. He's like leg strength, which I think we really have to focus on. But VO2 Max you can still do. I did a predicted one. I have to go do the real one. I just don't want it.

And I'm, and I'm training right now to do a real one because I, I, because I wrote, I wrote this list down. Yeah. So, so the dead hang. I want to be able to stand with my arms crossed, eyes closed on one leg for 30 seconds on each, on each foot.

Can't you do that now?

You try it with your. No, you could do it like this. But, but if, but if you do it with your, with your, with your eyes closed and your arms. We'll do it after the show.

Do you do yoga?

No.

See, yoga, like. And I, I will tell you, I hate every minute of it. And I watch the clock. Yeah, but what it makes you do is all about balance stuff.

Yes.

That is so horrible and hard. And so I think I probably could beat you on this one.

Okay, so what? Okay. All right. Okay, so we're going to try this. We're going to try this. But, but the so, so 30s. Because what they'll say is if you're, if you're 60 or 70, like it's, it's five seconds on all. If you can do, if you do five seconds on, on each foot, then you're in the percentage. Top percentage. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. So. So then I want to be able to deadlift one and a half times my body weight 10 times. Okay. I want to be able to bench press my body weight 10 times. I want to be able to remain in zone 4 on a bike for.

An hour, tell people what zone four is.

So, you know, there's five training zones. Zone one is basically, you know, rest, rest up to slow walk. Zone two is what every, all of the guys are. A little breath and you can, you, you're working out, but you can still carry on a conversation. Zone three becomes, you know, you're a little bit out of breath. You know, Zone four is basically a race pace. If you're racing an hour, plus or minus. And then zone 5 is high end stuff. It's the high, it's up to your max heart rate, so you can't exceed zone five. So I'll do that on a, you know, on a bike I've got, you know, what are some of the other things? Oh, plank, three minute plank, you know. Yeah, but I'm just saying. No, no, I want to keep at it. I want to. And for me, I'm not, I'm not saying I want to. This is a, this is a, a goal list as much as it's. This is what I either can do or want to be able to do or should be able to do based on my current training. Like I should be able to do all those based on my current training right now.

Okay, so 80 and it, like, we'll.

See, we'll see what 80 looks like. I mean, we'll see but at 80. But I just want to, I just want to get my baseline of really exceptional stuff at 70. Like I want a VO2 max of.

45 and ask you what you're going.

I'm going for 45.

And this is the reason that these are all important. When he talks about the centenary of DECAP on, it's like picking up your grandkids, running up the stairs, you know, doing these life things that we don't even think about.

Right.

And I always tell people, Mike, you go do the lake press so you do not have to call your husband to get off the toilet.

Yes.

I never want to be that.

Yeah.

Ever.

So, yeah, I made a, I set a goal years ago. So like, like one of my life goals is I want to be able to beat my 7 year old grandchild in a hundred yard dash. Well, so my granddaughter's four now. So in three years when I'm 73 and she's seven, am I going to be able to beat her in a, you know, in 100 yard dash?

Is she aware of this?

No, she's not. I can't, I can't, I can't ever have her trained. I know she can't be sleep training on me.

Yeah, Just have to do some dancing or something.

Right, right.

Bring it on.

Yeah, yeah.

So when do you start the Mark's Daily Apple thing and really get deep into the nutrition side of things and start to shift?

Well, I started March Daily Apple in 2006 and it was, it was basically because I was selling supplements at the time and I had been on Television and had a successful television business, direct to consumer. And then with the advent of the Internet and with 300 dish and direct television broadcast channels, things got tough for direct selling on television and operators were no longer standing by to take your call. Yes. So I created Mark's Daily Apple in 2006 as a platform to espouse my ideas on fitness and health and diet and exercise and all the things that I feel I have a strong background in. And it took off pretty quickly. Within a few years, it was the number one ancestral blog of its kind in the world. And then I wrote the Primal Blueprint, which is my seminal book on putting all of those ideas that, you know, millions of words of blog posts together into that, into that book. I was a carb centric guy for a long time and I, I read all of the research. I mean, there were most of the books of, of the day were continuing to argue that carbohydrate management was the, was the key to successful athletics. Well, then it shifted over the years and I, and I realized because I wasn't training as much, that I didn't need to eat 700 grams of carbs a day. And then I started adding more fat to my diet and realizing fat is not the enemy. So one of the things you learn, I learned, and this is part of my journey, was that endurance pursuits, like whether it's running or cycling or aerobics classes, they're all catabolic. They're catabolic, they burn, they burn glucose, primarily not a lot of fat. And then they burn muscle tissues. They cannibalize muscle tissue, which is the reason that even though I was a top marathon runner, so I lifted weights aggressively like I was the biggest marathoner in my group. I was five ambitious athletes. I was the biggest marathoner in my group, and I was 5 10, 138 pounds.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I weigh 174 now, same body fat. And I weigh literally 34 pounds more than when I was a marathoner. You didn't know me when I was a marathoner. I was in Northern California. But by the time I moved to LA and you saw me, I was up, up to 152, which is still.

What I was weighing, which is still.

20 pounds less than I weigh now. And again, all, and all of the difference is muscle mass. So even though I was working out hard and I was training hard and I had low body fat, I couldn't keep muscle on because it's catabolic and all that, all that stuff tears up Muscle mass. And as you get older, we realize that your aerobic capacity doesn't need to be way up here, but your muscle mass does need to be as high as you can possibly get it.

Yes. That's what I've been. I'm like, let's pack on as much as possible. Now back over to what we were talking about. So the focus on muscle mass. And here's the thing. Since VO2 max is such a predictor of all cause mortality, I think the important thing is you can train VO2 max by lifting weights.

Yes.

By doing high intensity. So what's cool is all these things impact VO2 max. It doesn't mean that you have to go out and run.

Exactly. In fact, the. You know what we say is every exercise is cardio, all exercise is cardio.

So that's the whole thing. I'm like, except for this extreme sprint training, it's all cardio. You're using oxygen. But even, I mean, I'm thinking now, oxygen system. But all. Everything involves your heart.

Even sprinting is cardio because it just doesn't involve oxygen. Yeah, but it's still. It's still working your heart muscle, everything and building a heart, strong heart muscle to be able to keep up with the demands of the body. See, we choose to put the body into a certain situation. Our cognition says, I'm going to go do a heavy leg day or I'm going to do a sprint day. And so we do it, and the heart goes, all right, I guess I got to keep up with the demands. Whatever. The heart has no say in the matter. The heart doesn't have a. It doesn't have nerve endings to go, oh, it hurts. Like if you go to the gym and you lift, if you do 300 repetitions of 80 pounds on the curl, your biceps are going to go, no, jj, we're done. Stop. Heart goes, okay, it's whatever.

Let's keep going.

Yeah. Until. Until you encounter problems, which I did as a result of 30 years of training. I have heart issues. They're not life threatening, but they're. They're disruptive because I ran my heart to max four times a week for 30 years and sometimes for 10 minutes or. Or 30 minutes at a time. So again, it's just you. You want to. If. If what you're doing in the gym is contemplated to give you either more power, make you faster, improve in some regard, or live longer, then you got to pick the right ways to do that and not sabotage yourself by doing too much, for example, which is what you and I tended to do.

Yeah, and I was, like, a little upset. Some study came out. I'm like, going, this study needs to be picked apart. Because it was like, strength training can kill you. I go, okay, you know what? I'm sure that there is that outlier human that if they lifted weights all day, every day. But considering that maybe 10% of us, 50 plus, are actually doing what we need to do, I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about what we're not doing and that we are getting sarcopenia. We're losing muscle mass. So what would you say would be a great fitness cocktail to put together for someone who's 50 plus? They want to be able to be, you know, aging powerfully in their 70s, 80s, 90s. They want to be able to, you know, run up the stairs, get the groceries, all the stuff that they take for granted. Now, how would you kind of put that program together?

Well, so I'd start with food. I start with diet. You know, cut out the sugars, cut out the sweetened beverages, pies, cakes, candies, cookies. I cut out industrial seed oils. I'd have, you know, basically a protein kitchen.

Yes. That was such a. When you did that, I'm like, oh, thank God. Like, we finally have this. The biggest place I find people get in trouble with, especially sugar put on the food and fats is the dressings and the sauces. Like, then you came up with this.

That was the whole point. That was, you know, when I wrote the primal blueprint and I started talking more and more about food and. And what happens when you eliminate certain foods. You come down to kind of a small list of foods that you could actually eat. And what makes the difference is, you know, the sauces and the dressings and the toppings and the herbs and the spices, the methods of preparation that can give it an infinite variety, but you need to know what you can put on certain things. And when we realized that there wasn't really anything in the market that you could put on with reckless abandon and make a food taste better or taste different, that was the opening that we saw.

Having mayonnaise was like, oh, it was game changer.

It was the Holy Grail. Because everybody who was Paleo or CrossFit stopped eating chicken salad, tuna salad, potato salad, whatever, because they. Because mayonnaise was the key to that. And everybody said, no, you can't have the. You can't have the mayonnaise. You can't have the industrial seed oils. So we kind of. And it was just luck that. That was the first product.

Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah, that was amazing. Okay, so.

So I would say start with food, because that's really going to define 80% of your body composition. Then walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Walking is the best thing a human can do. And walk barefoot and walk in the appropriate footwear.

Yeah, let's talk about that. This is your new venture.

Yeah.

I think this is so funny that you retired for, like a minute. You know, he's like, we're having so much fun, and like, boom, onto the next thing. I'm like, you're not gonna be able to retire.

Yeah. Ever.

Me either. I get it.

So. So I sold Primal Kitchen, and I. And I was able to turn my attention to this thing that had nagged me for decades, which was crappy footwear. Like, I never liked the shoes that I ran in. I. I think that part of my injuries from overuse in running were a result of thick, cushioned running shoes that only came on the scene when Phil Knight and Nike started in the mid-70s. And then they got thicker and thicker and more cushioned and became more and more problematic. I've never liked dress shoes. We talked about this before we started taping today. But men's dress shoes are just ridiculous. First of all, they don't even look that good. Second of all, they crunch your toes together. And God bless you women for wearing.

Oh, boy.

Yes. So you think, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. So heels and, you know, pointy shoes and stilettos and all, all these things there. It's a travesty. And the human foot is designed to be barefoot. Well, we can't. We have pavement, concrete, glass, tile, marble, hardwood floors, linoleum, all these surfaces that we're not.

We.

We did not evolve to walk barefoot on those. So we need some sort of footwear. But the ideal footwear is. Would be a shoe that you could feel the ground underneath. Because when your foot lands when you walk, your brain is supposed to know instantly every surface, every change of texture, so that it knows exactly how much to bend the ankle outward, how to flex the foot, how to bend the knee, how to torque the hip, and how to absorb the shock. So by the time you weight that foot, the entire kinetic chain has been engaged appropriately and in alignment. Well, now we put these thick shoes on, all of that haptic input, that sensory input is gone. And I watch slow motion videos of people walking with, like, thick shoes on, and I watch their knees tweak, bend inward to accommodate what the brain is trying to figure out to do. All of this is fixed by going barefoot. But if you can't go barefoot, then you have to pick the appropriate shoe. And the appropriate shoe is one, it's a minimalist shoe. It's wide, thin, flat and flexible. So it's wide. It has to be have a wide toe box to accommodate toe splay. It has to have enough be thin enough to feel the ground zero drop from the heel to the toe. Because when you have most shoes have a, have a raised heel, if you'll notice. And that raised heel, many other things, shortens the calf muscle, which puts tension on the Achilles and can cause plantar fascia problems. So you want it to be flat. And then ultimately what we did was we designed a five toed shoe that allows the toes to articulate because you want the toe, especially the great toe, the big toe, to push off on its own, separate from the other toes if necessary to get the proper gait and the proper stride. So when you walk in the right shoes, you're reinforcing this powerful kinetic chain that you have when you don't walk in the right shoes. A lot of people say, I'd love to walk, but I can't because it hurts my lower back or it hurts my knees or whatever. It's not because of anything wrong with you. It's the footwear that you've chosen that is putting you in an, in a compromised position and only exacerbating Braunft.

And here's what's cool about this, although. And I'm going to share my story because you're going to overcome it. Make a proclamation that I'll have to do because I said so. Yeah. So these are the ugliest. Not yours, but like, you know, these shoes before I would always look at and go, those are the ugliest shoes I've ever seen. Like, and for, for women, no way. No way are you getting ugly shoes on our feet. Like, no chance. You're already telling us to take our heels off. Now this is easier post pandemic. I will tell you, I have a whole closet of high heels. And like, what was I thinking?

Yeah.

You know, I mean, now my body's like, don't wear that. Just don't do that.

Yeah.

So you overcame the ugly. Like, these things are really cute. Yeah, Now I get them. And I'd gone to a movement therapist. He goes, you need to start wearing yoga toes. Oh my gosh. Those are the most painful things ever. Like, super painful. And then of course, I did it for a month and forgot he forgot or made myself sick. But I get your shoes and I can't get my little feet in there. And I'm highly impatient. If in 30 seconds my feet go and don't go in the shoe, I'm like, yeah, I'm out. So walk through someone trying these shoes, like kind of walk through the experience. Like, like me going now and trying them again. What would I, what would I expect over the course of, say, a month? And what things would I notice changing by wearing them?

Well, so first of all, you have to get the toes in. For people who are watching.

You'll want to check this out.

Yeah, so this is, this is the first of all.

Look how cute this is.

All right, so this is, this is the trainer. This is a blue, blue men's trainer. We have pink for women and black and white for women. But it's got five toes. And you want to get the toes into each individual toe box. That's the first. Yeah, that was the first thing. And as, as we say, if you're, if your toes slide right into these shoes, you want these shoes. If your toes don't slide right into these, you need these shoes. So a lot of people will take 10 minutes sometimes to like finally get their toes in. And then at that point, I would say you lace the shoes up, you wear them around the house for an hour or two, whatever is comfortable, you take them off. Most people will notice that their toes are tired. That's because they haven't worked their toes for decades. They haven't really worked their toes. Even when they're walking barefoot. Most people don't walk barefoot enough to really work their toes. So then the next day, go through the process again, put them on, walk around, do some errands, drive around town, pick the kids up at school, go to Whole Foods or wherever you go. And get used to that sensation. It's a good sensation. And get used to like, we do these events at running shoe stores. We're in a bunch of running shoe stores now and we, it's called Wednesday Walk and Wine and Dry Farms is.

One of our sponsors.

Oh, this is so good.

We'll do this.

Yeah, so, so what we do is we have people come, we bring try on samples, and so everybody gets to wear a pair for the walk. And we have, you know, we have five foot socks. You can, you can wear the socks.

Yes, the socks are key. I have the socks.

But we, but we'll take people a one mile walk with a, a glass of wine and we talk and, but, but we Walk over manhole covers and we walk on curbs and we walk in, in divots on the ground and say, feel that. Feel what's going on with your foot and your toe. And you get to the point where you go, oh my God. Like my whole life I've. I've been oblivious to what's going on underneath my feet. And now all of a sudden my feet are informing my brain of exactly how to bend my ankle and bend my knee and whatever. So, so the third day in, your feet will slide in a little bit easier. Now you'll start to feel like, oh my God. This is like, this is really comfortable. Like this is the most comfortable shoe I've ever worn. And you can take, you know, people go to the. We have a lot of people in the gym doing leg days with them and you know, kind of specific workouts. But my next door neighbor walks eight miles a day. We got a repair early on. She's like, I'm not touching them. It's not. I have bunions. And she's walking eight, nine miles a day in paluvas now. They're the best walking shoes she's ever had. And her bunions are being fixed.

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Yeah, so it's a, it's a process. You have to. The. The three things that we talk about with beluga shoes are relax, realign and strengthen. You want to relax your feet. You want to because you're being crushed by these shoes. Normal shoes realign. So even if you have like a wide toe box shoe, like a VivoBarefoot or a zero shoe or any other minimalist shoe, do you think your scrunched feet are going to seek a level, they're going to splay out on their own?

No, you can't even get them to do that.

Because you haven't worked those muscles individually ever your whole life. So now we're doing it. So now we're. So when I say it's important that we have the ground feel underneath, this is like 9 millimeters, less than a centimeter of distance between your heel and the ground Most of it is cushioning. We want you to have the effect of like. Like walking barefoot on a putting green, for instance. That's the feel that we want to get. So I can, like, I can walk 10, 12 miles on pavement in these, and it feels great. But you want. Then you want the toes to splay outwardly. You want. You want them to be like this, not like this, not scrunched together. And ultimately, you want the articulation. You want the toes to work individually. So if you step on a. On a little rock or a pebble or a bump on a. A log or something like that, you want every toe to respond differently so that they wind up reclaiming their strength. And over time, you rebuild the feet, you rebuild the arch, rebuild the small muscles of the feet now become resilient, strong. I've got one of the top professional athletes, trains in palubas in the off season, and you watch him move on the field, and he's got more ankle mobility than anybody I've ever seen.

Wow.

The notion that football players, for instance, would tape their ankles up, no wonder they get a high ankle sprain or they get. Or they tear their Achilles off their calf muscle. Because the foot is supposed to be doing 20 to 30% of the work before any of the other forces work their way up the leg. The foot should be resilient and strong and be able to. And so now we say, well, when I'm 70 or 80, and I want to be able to climb stairs. Well, you can't climb stairs if you have feet that are compromised. If you've got feet that are weak from years of misuse or being scrunched together or not being developed. Because the shoe industry has this secret, which is we would rather address your pain if you have plantar fasciitis or if you have arch pain or kid's pain or Morton's neuroma or a bunion, let's fix it. Let's. Let's put an arch support in there so your little arch doesn't hurt. Well, if you said, my biceps are weak and they. And I, you know, we wouldn't say, we're going to give you a brace and never, never use your biceps.

It'll be great.

Yeah, where. Yeah, it'll. Yeah, we'll give you sling and it'll look like it. And if you go like this, it'll look like a bicep. But that's what we're doing with feet, where we. Because we encase and embrace our feet in these, what we think are Modern, orthopedically sound shoes, we're doing the exact opposite.

And it strikes me that, you know, when you think about strength training, you can never go past your weakest sling and bingo.

And feet are the weakest link for a lot of people. Like if you can't get your ass to the gym because your feet are messed up, you're screwed. It's just a downhill grip for you, right? So feet. People don't realize that feet are, they are our connection to this universe, to this world, without our feet being anchored to the ground and our ability to walk and be mob and, and, and run and jump and play every athlete. Feet. Most important if you're a golfer. Feet important if you're a three point shooter. Feet, you got to set, plant the feet. If you're a runner, if you're a jump, whatever, you, you, you get it. But if, and look at some of these athletes feet. Like, have you seen pictures of LeBron James feet? They're so gnarly.

It looked like, I just think ballet dancer feats. Like I was a point like this ridiculous, but I was a point. I was a point ballerina briefly for my acl. Yeah, but boy, you have bad feet when you do that.

Yes.

Shove all that in on tosho and stand up.

No, no.

Yeah. No, I could just imagine, but just imagine. I mean, we're talking athletes and then I think of everyday life and just even the shoes that Chalene and Carrie were wearing last night. Not me, but what they were wearing and just what we all do in.

The, in the name of fashion.

Right?

In the name of looking good. It should, you know, Chalene, I mean, I get it. Chalene wants to appear, you know, statuesque. That's great. And they shoes do look good, but that doesn't mean, and it doesn't mean you can't wear those shoes. Carrie wears palooas all the time. She was barefoot in the house. She wears blue all the time. But when she goes out, she wears heels. Now, but I'll be clear. Like last night, we live a block and a half from the restaurant that we ate at. We took a golf cart because she didn't walk. She could not walk in those heels.

Wondering about that.

She could not walk in, go, how.

Is she gonna walk home in those? And Tim's like, they live a block and a half away. I go, honey, no, those are never worn.

No, no, no. She has, she literally has 50 yard heels and 150 yard heels.

We all understand. Every woman listening is like, huh? Of course.

Yeah.

You know there's the ones where, you know, you're just going somewhere and you're going to sit.

Right. Are you gonna leave the car and walk through the lobby?

Yeah, right. That's it. I mean, I have very specific shoes.

I get it. But, you know, it doesn't make it right. It makes. It makes it hot, but it doesn't make it right.

Well, this is super cool because I love the things that when you put them in, it can have a major shift, which is what this sounds like. It can do, like, you could literally become 10, 20, 30% stronger by doing this and improving your gait speed. That's so cool. And all we're doing is saying, hey, instead of the shoes you were buying, just get these and wear them to the gym. Wear them when you walk.

Correct.

That's it. Just a little shift. And they're not expensive. It's not like we're saying, hey, buy.

$1,000 shoes right now. These are. These. This is $139. And, you know, as we go up, we have a. You know, we have a loafer.

This is very fancy.

Yeah. So this is an interesting shoe. It looks thick. It's made to look like other shoes on the market, you know, sort of stylish shoes. It's still only 1cm of height, so it's a. It's a trompe l', oeil, if you will. And then we have this. This is the men's desert. That's so desert.

Those are so cool.

Yeah. So that's a desert boot. And, you know, the. The idea was, once you understand the. The joy of toe freedom and the. And the experience of having your toes, you know, being able to live freely and do what they're supposed to do, you won't want to wear other shoes again. Now you wear the heels, whatever, right? You earn your feels, you earn your heels. But for people like me, who I just don't. I. I can't wear any other shoes because every time I put on a, you know, on running shoes or. Or any other Nikes or whatever. Yeah, they're wide at the metatarsal, but my toes still want to keep going out from there, which, like, they're supposed to. And then the shoes just scrunch them back together again. So.

But it would be off brand. So.

So, so. So I wear. So I. We make shoe, as we say, a paluva for all occasions.

There you go. You've got this nailed.

Yeah.

And you're giving everybody a guide on something around feet. Yeah, some foot guide. Yeah. Let Me see what it is. I'm going to put it at jjvirgin.com forward/barefoot.

Okay, great. Yeah.

Now it's B A R E bare, not bear.

Like bear.

You have building, strong, resilient feet.

Yes.

Yes. Okay, cool.

So it's like it's a 75 page book on how to, you know, on the importance of what we just talked about and achieving, you know, strong, resilient feet. Whether or not you, you even use Paluba, you're still going to want to do some of these exercises and understand the importance of walking barefoot and in your house, walking up and down stairs barefoot. One of the best things you can do, right?

Cool. I do a lot of that, but I haven't gone to the gym yet. Now I'm doing this. Now I'm explained.

That's right.

All right, that is cool. Again, jjburgeon.com barefoot and we will be doing that video, so you'll have to also check that out wherever we end up putting the video of us doing our closed eyes.

30 seconds.

Okay. Dang it.

Yeah.

All right, thank you. So awesome. Appreciate you.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetojay.com See you next time. Hey, JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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