Speaker argues that foot health is a critical, under-appreciated contributor to both longevity and athletic performance. Strong, resilient feet with good ground feel, toe splay/articulation, and ankle mobility enable force generation and impact absorption, preserve bone and muscle through weight-bearing activities, and maintain balance needed to recover from trips; the speaker recommends routine, dedicated foot training (e.g., a weekly "foot day") and warns that loss of these capacities with age increases fall risk.
Chapters
So to me, I mean, and I know you're, you're understanding this in a big way now. You know that the, the, the idea that foot health is probably the lowest hanging fruit in the world of longevity right now. It's, it's like every, everybody over 60 or 65 should be like completely dialed in on, on re accessing a strong foot, a strong gait, better balance, and that's what's going to improve the quality of life from that point on. I mean, these are all these sorts of weight bearing activities which are necessary to prevent the bone loss and the muscle loss, require strong feet and resilient feet. So every athlete, every person in the world, but particularly athletes, you know, everything you do starts with your feet. Whether you walk or jump or run or dance or set up for a slap shot in hockey, or hit a golf ball or a baseball. You know, it's the contact with Earth that, where all of the forces get initiated. And over a lifetime you want to retain that connection with Earth. You want to retain that ability to generate force and to absorb impact forces through the feet, which requires this input, this ground feel, toe splay, toe articulation, ankle mobility and all the things that we talk about. So I'm wondering why every athlete doesn't have like, you know, people go to the gym and they go, well, you know, Monday is back and byes and Thursdays is chest and tries. And I'm like, okay, what day is foot day for you? And they're like, what do you mean foot day? Well, no, it's probably the most important part of you being a healthy athlete. And so many injuries could be prevented if these people spent literally just one day a week focusing on foothills. Yeah, Peter Attia said it the other day, he said, you know, every day as a 20 year old or a 30 year old, you know, you encounter little disruptions where you trip or you, something happens and then you catch yourself. You know, there's a certain amount of, you're not paying attention, you stub your toe, you trip or something happens, but you have enough strength and enough force to be able to generate immediately and enough balance to catch yourself. So throughout your 20s and 30s and 40s or whatever, you're able to overcome these little otherwise life threatening mishaps that are all around us every day. Because your feet are strong enough, you have balance enough to withstand that. As you get older, if you lose this ability to even recover from a trip, in other words, you don't have enough force production to be able to swing that right foot forward and stop yourself from tripping or falling. Now you just fall.
