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I just got in from a run where I may have received a death threat.

I was out on some trails and I came upon a man in camouflage, sitting on an ATV off to the side of the trees. So I waved and said good evening to him.

His response was, “Watch out for the deer.”

Now, you can take that one of three ways.

1. Maybe he just was worried that there might be some deer out there that might have wanted to trample me; not the most outlandish idea, I have had a friend that was chased by a buck before.
2. The next way that he might have taken it, and if you are a cynic this is what your might think, was that given that hunting season hasn’t started, maybe he was warning me, “Hey! If I had better luck poaching, then I might have had to have shot you.” I don’t think that’s what he meant, but it’s possible.
3. The third and most likely explanation is that he was just warning me that hunting season is just around the corner, and even though I was running after the sun went down, accidents can happen in the woods. So that can be either a more threatening statement, or it could have just been a friendly warning; who knows?

Either way, it’s a good thing to bear in mind:

Know what the local hunting laws are in your area.

If necessary, you might want to avoid certain trails during hunting season. So, just make yourself aware, and be safe out there. If you take a look at this link right here, if you go there, you can see some general safety tips on running during hunting season as well as get a link to where you can see what all of the laws are in your individual state.

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Transcript coming soon…

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Audience: I have a question back to the kids, well with you actually. I have a 7 year old that just started and doing triathlon this year. I want to get her from here until she’s old enough to wear Newtons for example without being trained to wear high heels or whatever is available for her.

John: I can tell you that there are kid’s shoes coming.

I mean Vibram Five Fingers for example are now getting into the kid’s shoes. I’d be interested to see how it’s executed, but they are going to bring out kids shoes.

Jamie: It’s become trendy, fortunately. You just get out there and look. You’re not going to find it advertised as a minimal shoe. It’s just going to be somebody who decided to make a really flat low-profile shoe.

John: And if you’re like my son. He’s 9 and he’s already a size 8. It depends.

Audience: I’ve been wearing Newtons for a couple of years. My question is when do you need a new pair of Newtons?

Danny: Are you getting high mileage?

Audience: Well, yeah!

Danny: Don’t be so shy about that.

Audience: So when do you know? What’s it kind of like? Do you not wear them anymore when they’re kind of gray?

Danny: You know what, the wild thing is you could wear the lugs completely off and it’s still functioning better than any other shoe, because the whole chamber and the membranes are working full-time. So you just don’t have as much propulsion as you did when they were new. Right?

Audience: But they feel great. I wear them for hundreds of miles with no socks. They’re like my blankie.

Danny: Well that’s what happens. They’re actually molding to the way you bend your right and left foot, because that’s different as well. Flexing differently, right and left foot. But try on a new pair, that’s the thing. That’s when you know.

That’s when you know. Because it’s like “Oh my god! These things are like totally loaded with power.”

Audience: In terms of surface, we all in this room probably run year round. And Newton, my blanky, is terrible in the snow. They’re terrible. Or Merrell Brooks in the snow. And it’s so horrible. It’s like I’m wearing spiked heels. So what do you do.

Danny: Well we’re only 3 years old, remember. Now we do have our Guidance here. It’s been our new trail shoe, which is awesome for crappy weather.

John: So we have time for probably 2 more questions.

Audience: I’m a newer runner. I’ve running for about 6 months. I guess apprehensive is the word. I did read Born to Run near the beginning. I wear a neutral shoe. I haven’t had any injuries and I’m running maybe 20 miles a week. I want to make that switch.

And you talked about your website having videos, you talked shortly about you’re going to do some clinics. Just what are the resources out there? I have Danny’s book, but I’m thinking of putting it all together and doing it slowly so I don’t hurt myself. Because I am addicted, and if I lose ability to do this…

Danny: You don’t go trying to go from “A” to “B” so fast. That’s the key. You don’t have enough miles behind you. You’re fresh.

Audience: I guess to follow that up, should I stay in a neutral shoe until I have more miles, or is it a good time to switch now?

Danny: Before you learn too many bad habits that you have to break. And that’s the thing, you don’t have a whole lot of bad habits, probably, right now. Do it when you’re mentally ready. When you’re ready, do it.

Jamie: I have a little different take on it.

As I’ve said earlier, I’m not into absolutisms, and I don’t believe that.

And I think that most of our customers are 15 to 20 mile a week runners. It’s probably 80%.

I think it’s about good form running. I think that Newton can be a tool, and an adaptation process has to take place. You should incorporate it while also wearing your current shoes, because your body is used to that and has adapted to it.

If you’re going to get into the barefoot thing, do what Jamie said. 5 minutes, run. The next week, maybe it’s twice a week initially. See if it’s right for you. It might not be.

And that’s what I truly do believe.

Kirsten: I think, Jamie, I just want to follow up with that. You said this before too. It took a while. It doesn’t just necessarily come in within 2 weeks, or maybe even 2 months. When you talked about it before, it was a year. Before he was kind of getting it and really feeling like it was starting to flow.

John: The other thing is, you trust your current shoes. Correct? So I always tell my customers, do you trust what you’re wearing? And there is some of that.

The adaptation process is part of that trust factor that you have to incorporate. Do you trust this shoe? Are you feeling it’s working for you? I think you have to use that as well.

One more question?

Audience: Do you guys think that the minimalism thing is a fad to some degree. And especially from a shoe perspective, will that eventually kind of go away.

You said that a lot of companies are introducing new shoes to their line next Spring. But how long do you think those will last?

John: I don’t think it’s a fad. I think is an evolution.

I think the shoe companies needed a kick in the pants. And the traditional shoes have worked for a number of years for a number of people. It’s a new way to look at running and try to build shoes that can help you with better running form.

And you’re going to see a slew of it. And you’re going to see other shoe companies start to take those heel heights down and incorporate those features into their shoes.

Newton, obviously has a proprietary system that works, that puts you into that natural running state. And it actually helps you.

Getting to good running form is work, and the trouble with a lot of people is, no offense, but we’re all lazy. It takes work, and then you have got to really practice it.

So one of the things that I’ve learned is that we do need to do good form or natural running clinics. Like Saturdays. We’re going to limit it. We’re going to say it’s 10 people. And we’re going to really focus on good running form. And it may only be for half an hour, but people have to learn the mechanics of it and then they have to practice it.

They have to practice it. You can practice it at home while you’re watching TV.

So that’s what it is. It’s repetition. It’s called adaptation for a reason, and you have to let that body adapt to it.

So that’s how I feel. I think use it with caution and use it in the correct manner and let your body adapt, and it will work for you.

Jamie: I think what we’ve seen over the past 30 years is the fad. If you look at it in the context, there’s like 2 million years of evolution. So what’s the fad?

John: All right! That’s it for tonight, and I hope you enjoyed it.

I just want to thank our panel for taking a time out from their busy schedule. And Danny, thank you for coming out, I know you have a big event in Boston this weekend and we’re fortunate enough to have him here.

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John: Question?

Audience: I’m wondering about the…I ran for a lot of years, and I’ve been biking for the last four years and loving it, but I wanted to get back into running. I wear orthotics, and I’m a little bit nervous about not running with orthotics.

I remember I ran the Beach to Beacon about 5 times, and the most fun I had is I juggled the entire race. All the way through the race. And it was easy, and the recovery was amazingly fast because I was forward.

Danny: Yeah!

Audience: Everybody said, “Boy! You must be tired.” I said, “No, I’ve been training for this.” I had to train away from the roads because people kept looking back at me…

(Audience Laughs)

So I trained on a track, but I was ready to run like the next day.

Danny: Yeah! That’s the way it is.

Jamie: It’s funny sometimes. You can take somebody who is superbly fit, and I do a lot of muscle testing evaluation in my office and they’re strong everywhere, and then you get down to the feet and I ask them to hold their foot like that and I push it that way, and for the life of them they can’t hold it. So they’re strong all the way down to their ankles.

And it’s because…the analogy that I use is if you put your arm in a sling every morning when you woke up, and you took it off when you went to bed, and you do that for 6 months, what’s it going to look like when you’re done?

I mean, orthotics, and she could tell us, they don’t actually support your feet as much as you think. They don’t lessen the impact. If anything, they allow you to run in such a way that it heightens the impact. And at the same time it’s making your feet become weaker with time.

So it is hard. You just have to go real slow. When I first got Newtons, I literally ran for like 5 minutes, and then I would come home and put some other shoes on to finish the run, and just really slowly upped…I did just start over. I started with like 1 mile.

John: Erik?

Audience: To followup, with your desire to be more proprioceptive with barefoot, I guess the natural question to ask then is, would you do it on a surface such as sand, or grass or pavement, and that’s a question I asked of Chris McDougal, so I’m curious what your answer would be.

Kirsten: I think it’s interesting. I think that I would almost go on a hard surface. That would be sort of my…just to start with. I don’t know. Just to sort of get that proprioceptive, or on the grass. I know that Jamie’s done it on the grass the whole entire time to get that proprioceptive ability.

I don’t have a good answer on which one I would start with. I think that you can at least see a little bit when you’re starting when you’re going on a hard surface and you’re going to be a little bit more know what the surface is and you know where you are, and if you’re on a track or something flat, you can sort of work with that if you’re starting out type of thing.

But then ultimately, I think you get to a point where if you gained some more strength in the intrinsics of the foot, you can run down to the boulevard and back. It doesn’t really matter so much what the surface is.

Jamie: I think grass is a good place to start. One of the biggest surprises that I had was the road actually, after a while the road became very comfortable because you know what’s on the road generally. You can see. I never got to know trees so well as when I was running barefoot. “Oh, there’s an oak tree. Look out for acorns.”

On the road you can pretty much see. So it comes to be more about the texture of the road, is it freshly or newly paved, is it smooth? That actually feels really nice.

John: Mike?

Audience: I have a question for Danny as far as Newtons on trail. Because of that firm platform, is that going to make trail running unusual.

Danny: No, it’s awesome actually. Because the way the lugs move independently, if you step on a rock in the middle of all that wearing a foam shoe, even if there’s a plate in there, if it has a plate in there, you just kind of roll off the side of it, or it’s going to come up and spear your foot, bruise your foot.

But the Newtons, you have the plate on the top for protection, bio-mechanical. But underneath, the lugs will just bend and morph around whatever you’re stepping on. So the Newtons are awesome off road. I’ve run in our Racers, 50 miles on trail with no problem. It allows you to be more agile and feel what you’re feeling.

Typical Trail Shoes get too overly protective and too stiff, and it’s easier actually to sprain your ankle and things of that nature and stuff. Trying to get the heel out of the way.

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John: Kevin?

Audience: I was just wondering…hearing the benefits of barefoot running, and these countries that have benefited from barefoot running forever. Will we still keep a policy of recycling our old injury-prone stability shoes to those countries?

(Audience Laughs)

Danny: As long as they promise just to walk in them! What a greaty way to well, you know, we’ll try to slow the Kenyans down…

John: We’re sending them all to Nike so that they grind them up for courts.

Danny: You know, Jamie was right. Abebe Bakila won the ’60 Olympics but here’s the story, he’s a Kenyan runner that never used shoes. Never used shoes in his life. Came to Rome, I mean hey, cobblestones and all kinds of crap. Adidas is going to sponsor you. They gave him a pair shoe that didn’t fit. And he goes, if I get blisters I’m out.

So he said, I forego shoes, I’m running barefoot. The guy won the race. He came back 4 years later, won Mexico wearing a pair of minimalist Asics I believe or New Balance, one or the other. So anyhow, hiss feet were as tough as leather right? That’s the same thing. If we go out on our baby skinned feet on that run that you were just talking about, that’s different if you’ve conditioned them over 2 years, it’s different if you come from a country that you never wear shoes.

Audience: Well let me follow up with a question, I guess.

Do you think the average person here who’s even interested in learning how to change their style of running into a more natural style to do it quicker barefoot or with Newtons?

John: That’s a good question.

Danny: I think you’d do it quicker with Newtons.

Because you’re less apprehensive, like you said, the lady who tried to walk down the hallway barefoot felt totally abnormal, whereas at least the first thing you do with Newtons is you feel the lugs. If you feel the lugs, you can feel the ground.

So the idea is, I know for sure, because I can take all of you in this room right now, and I can teach you how to run in about 5 minutes. And you would be doing it. You just have to practice and break your old habits.

John: I think it’s a combination. I think it’s a combination; I think Danny is correct in terms of Newton really helping you into that position, but I think it takes repetition and practice in order to achieve that. And I don’t have anything against doing both.

Kirsten: I’m going to go against that entirely.

John: Oh god! Would you?

Kirsten: I would.

I would go right straight into the bare feet kind of thing.

For me, and I think it’s from my standpoint of when you have the climate that if you can do it, it’s a proprioceptive piece.

It’s the ability to feel. I think it’s a little bit when you’re trying to teach. There’s some people like Danny who are probably great teachers because he’s been able to do that.

Trying to teach somebody to run lightly, or to run quietly and things like that. And to get their mechanics, or if you’re working with kids type of thing. I think, for me anyway, trying to guess, because somebody asked me that too. Would you go from a shoe to a minimalist then to bare feet? Or would you go to from shoe to bare feet then to minimalist? I probably as a piece of it would go shoe to bare feet, because I like the idea of the proprioceptive piece of things.

Audience: What about mixing it up so you can get accustomed or you can phase into this system…

John: It’s really adaptation. And Danny who took us through Good Form Running or Natural Running out in Boulder, I mean he’s right. Standing tall, shortening your stride, getting into a cadence, it’s alignment, moving forward, those principles exist. And you’re right too. Running barefoot can propel that and bring it on just as well, if not faster sometimes.

Danny: So just as a starter, that’s what we do at all our running clinics. The first thing we do is before we start anything is I make everyone take their shoes off, and we do a couple of easy strides.

And every single person has beautiful form. Serious. You were there, we run up and down the… It’s a beautiful turf field and we know nothing is on it. So let’s run down and back. So everybody was shocked at first with Newton Running was taking our shoes off.

I said this was part of the equation. It’s that whole body kinematics. You snap to it. You snap to it when your shoes are off because you’re neutral with gravity, you have the sensory input. So I say now let’s run. Everybody falls forward, arms come back, tilt forward, high cadence, just there. It doesn’t matter, we all do it. So as soon as you feel that you go, “Oh! That’s part of what it’s about.”

Then you put your shoes on, you mimic that. It’s harder to mimic that with a higher heel I can tell you that much.

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John: Erik?

Audience: I guess I’ve got a question for Jamie. Just because I imagine you’ve probably been pure barefoot running.

Jamie: A year ago I could have said that, but I’ve been eclipsed.

Audience: In your experience barefoot running on the road, have you never run on a piece of glass or caught that thing that everybody is afraid of?

Jamie: I never have. I think the biggest factor there is just building up the callouses in your feet. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing you have working against you in Maine, is you only have a season to do that, and you have to be inclined to want do that.

It can be done. There’s a guy who won Olympic Marathon in 1960 running barefoot. It can be done. It’s just if you feel inclined to want to build your feet up to that level. I think that whole fear is a little overrated in my experience. I run from here down to the boulevard and back, and on the roads in the boulevard and it wasn’t such a big deal if you acclimate yourself to it.

John: Let’s get this one.

Audience: I’m a middle school cross-country coach. And actually my kids see me wearing Newtons. So I’ve switched over. I absolutely love them.

What do I tell my kids about Naturalist Running? They have their own running shoes. We did some barefoot striders before right at the start of practice. But how can I build that more in? A lot of them can’t really… it’s hard for them to go out and throw down 150-175 dollars for a pair of shoes, but I still have to try and emphasise that right now.

Danny: Yeah! Like that gentleman said. Just keep that stride short. Keep a high, forward lean, elbows back, look to the right. The rest of the body posture will be there. Now the only problem there is that the shoes that they have, even the Nike Free, it’s on a traditional pitch. It’s still about 24 to 12. And it’s foam, so it’s like running in sand. So there’s a lot of power that’s wasted when you run in shoes like that. But the biggest waste is not being able to tap into our elastic recoil. So if this is my foot and I’m coming to the surface, and you mentioned running on your toes, it’s not running on your toes. That’s sprinting.

So if I run on my toes, I’m going to really stress out my achilles, and my fascia, and my calves are going to get super tight. If I heel-strike then that’s a walking gait and I’m breaking.

Where do you land?

Parallel. You need to land parallel to the Earth, parallel to the surface. That’s ideal. Now if you land parallel and slightly on your forefoot, there’s a phenomenon that happens is that your heel will settle down second, and lightly touch, or at least settle downward towards the earth. At that moment, your calves and achilles and fascia are building up recoil. It’s called elastic recoil. So if I land lightly on my forefoot, allow my heel to settle, boom! I get my energy back. I lift off instead of pushing.

So if you can get them forward enough that they’re lifting quickly, like all the drills, high knees, butt kicks, skipping one and two, all the drills that are ever intended for any runner are to emphasize forefoot striking. That’s the bottom line in the 1800′s. What did the coaches say? Run like you’re running on a hot coals. On the ground off the ground boom boom boom boom boom. Right? Quick cadence. Get forward.

I don’t know. I’m a running coach for 15 years.

John: So I think Danny is absolutely right. I think you need to incorporate those drills more than anything to teach good running form to your kids. So it sounds like you’re already doing that.

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John: Yes, you.

Audience: This is a great discussion, and I have to say my coach is really clever, because he got me to shorten my stride and increase my cadence without any discussion and it worked.

Danny: Simple as that.

Audience: So if you had to explain to me I probably wouldn’t be able to do it, otherwise I’d just do it.

That’s a comment, but my question is, is that the protective features built into Newton, I’m not sure about the other minimalist shoes, do not degrade with time and use. Is that correct?

Danny: That is correct!

John: Yeah!

Danny: Ding!

Yeah! We’ve done a lot of testing. What we’ll do is we’ll test shoes over a thousand miles of impact. Because if it’s on high trail, we’ll only lose a couple of percentages of it’s ability to store and retrieve, over a thousand miles.

So we’ve worked with Doctor Mark Cucuzzella who’s a big marathoner. He’s the guy down in West Virginia. He’ll run in a pair of our basic distance racers, it’s a very light shoe, and he’ll use them like 6-700 miles. One pair of shoes. No problem. And he has the Hallux Rigidus. His first toe joint is completely fused. But because our shoes lever and he lifts of the ground he’s not pushing, he doesn’t continue to damage his arthtritic first metatarsal joint.

So there are a lot of benefits. So even the benefits for people walking, like even in our Guidance series is that, even if you have a bunion or if you have a fused first met, you lever across. You don’t have to bend in the form of the shoe. That’s another beauty about all of our shoes. We have leverage. And we have flexibility in the right place, between your metatarsals and your toes. Most brands don’t even know where to put the flex groove. They put it somewhere directly under your met. That’s not where you’re flexing. You’re flexing between your met and your toes. just look at your foot when you walk across the ground. There is high leverage to your foot when you’re barefoot. We’re just trying to bring all that back, with all the components in our shoes.

But yeah! They’re high mileage shoes. Now the other thing is though, but if you got a pair and you ran in a similar fashion to stabbing the ground and pushing off and pulling back, you’d probably ruin them before their life. But your second pair, you’d probably get it.

So one of our big deals is to get, well they say, “Oh the Newton is so expensive.” They’ll outlast any other shoe. You recover quicker because you have less impact to greater injury turn. So if you want to run faster you will. Those are all benefits that you want them to be. But recovery is huge.

Muscle vibration like, if you take a Vibram and you go out on run on the concrete, then it’s called muscle jiggle or this damage due to micro vibration that occurs when you hit the ground, then all these shockwaves go up to you muscles. So they’re damaging the muscles continuously. If I reduce that, you have less muscle damage. You’re going to recover quicker. So all of our pros have a tough time of running slower, because they’ve always recovered faster. So you have to calm yourself down and say today is a slow easy run, be slow easy. Don’t go out hammering.

John: Yup…

Audience: I’m an old heel striker, but my form improves in a major way running off-road.

Danny: Oh yeah! Sure!

Audience: So I can run on my forefoot off-road.

Danny: Because your brain tells you body you’d better be in balance or you’re going to fall down and bust your lip.

Audience: Right! And it makes a big difference. But on the road, my form will deteriorate back to how I’ve run historically.

Danny: Yeah! You just kind of over-stride, and start that long, slow cadence. But listen to your head. Our bodies know them best. So listen to your head.

So when you get off-road, the first thing you do is shorten up. It’s like, “Okay, there’s rocks, and debris, it’s slick, it’s cross-cant…” All things are going on. Your brain takes over. It’s like shorten up. Light steps. Boom bam! You’re agile all of a sudden. That’s how you’re supposed to run on the road.

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John: But anyway, I’m going to throw it out now and we’ll take questions and direct it to who you want. We’re all here, so please, it’s an open forum now.

Audience: I’ve got a comment and a question.

The comment is, I started running, I’m an old guy, and I started running in the ’70s with minimalist shoes, and they were great, and then I ran a lot. And I was a wear tester for Nike years ago, and they had a research place down in Exeter.

And we’d go down there and we’d have our gait analyzed and they’d look at our feet. And they designed these shoes in the ’80s, the high-heeled shoes. And I find it comical, and no offense, but here we are going back to where we were after 30 years of high tech, lots of research, and of the running boom too.

It’s just really amazing! I’ve run for many years, and now I’m to the point where I have all these problems. I can’t run anymore. I have been running barefoot. I ran on the beach this Spring. And it was the first time I could run with no pain in my hip. I think I have some other issues going on here that may not be related to running in high-heels or something. But I’ve found that I felt better barefoot and then I’ve been running in the Vibram shoes a little bit. That was my comment.

Now my question is, I know this is better for me, this will be better for me, and I started running barefoot and with the Vibram shoes. But I had all sorts of issues with my achilles, and just I think what you were talking about. And also, I’m an old guy, I used to run on my toes, because I was faster. But I can’t really do that anymore.

So how do you get to the point where you can get to this? Because I know it’s going to be better for me. If I’m running uphill, my hip doesn’t hurt. If I’m running on the beach, my hip doesn’t hurt. But I’m having a hard time making that leap of faith. But I guess it really is a leap of faith.

Now I don’t have any doubts that this is the right thing to do, but I’m having a hard time moving myself so I can take advantage of this. How do you get to that point where you’re really changing your running style. And I’ve got 50 thousand miles of bad memories, or good memories.

John: Well my point of view on that based on what I’ve seen and heard, and Danny you can answer that as well, I’m sure it’s going to be similar, but you gotta practice it.

And you got to buy again a tool help like Newton, or buy a Vibram. and if the shoe is working for you, that’s great! And as I said before, they’re going to evolve to help with good running form.

One of the things that I know that we’re going to do, and this is been a long time coming, there’s a website called GoodFormRunning.com. And they, no offense, but they are being supported by New Balance and a store called Play Makers out in East Landing I believe, and he’s a big proponent of Good Form Running which is forefoot strike. We’re actually going to be conducting Good Form Running clinics, small groups, as we move forward to help teach that proponent. But like anything, it’s repetition, it’s adaptation, and it’s continue to work at it with the proper tools.

One of the reasons we have shoes is because of our environment. You’re not going to run barefoot on pavement. You’re not going to run barefoot in zero degree weathers. So it’s finding that optimum opportunity to practice and practice and practice, and that’s what Good Form Running is about.

Danny: Well you said it right there, when you run uphill you have no pain, that’s how you run. Slight forward lean. You get your upper body slightly forward, you have to land underneath your mass. And when you land underneath your mass, you don’t push off, you lift your foot off the ground. You’re in a coiled position. Your whole lower body is like a shock absorber.

So we really focused a lot tonight on foot strike, and position of the foot strike, and the lightness of the foot strike, and so forth and so on, but guess what, you run with your whole body. That’s where everybody is missing the picture.

Like the brands. It’s all about the feet. It’s all about the strike. We will guide you from heel strike to toe-off, because we’ve created this over-pronation, we’ve got to guide you from heel strike to toe-off.

It’s about running with your whole body. You have to look to the horizon. You have to be tall through the torso. Good Form Running, that is Newton Running. It’s what we’ve been teaching for the past few years.

Everybody has their variation on Chi Running. Danny Dryer started it many years ago. I’ve started it 15 years ago. Nobody heard about it because I didn’t have a loudspeaker, but I was working with Paul and ? Frasier’s camps right down in San Diego, and we’ve taught thousands of people to run this way. Simply shortening your stride. Simply. Okay, that’s the starter point, shortening your stride.

Tall from your belly button. Because it’s physics and gravity again. Tall from your belly button to your chin; very tall. A lot of coaches used to say run tall, but that’s the tall position, but now tilted all forward. You want to move that way, so you got to tilt that way.

Gravity does not work for or against us, we work against ourselves. So with that statement, gravity is not helping you to get pulled forward, but you’re in a position to just lift your foot off the ground and less of a break in that position.

And the less that you bounce up and down vertically, it’s called vertical oscillation, the less you bounce up and down, the more you’re going to move smoothly or efficiently forward. So as you heel-strike, you’re way low and your upper body is back. You come over your center of mass, then you push, you’re going like this. Okay, so gravity takes more energy to go up, you get slammed down harder. When we’re up, slammed harder. Power out, get slammed. When you run efficiently, you just tilt forward and you slow forward.

Everybody goes, “Wow! Those Kenyans they look like gazelles, they’re just floating across.” You can do the same thing. You have to think light. You have to be relaxed, such as don’t fall forward. Your arms draw back. When you draw your arms back, you put your upper body, your heavy upper body over your running mass. So drawing your arms back, you look into the horizon, tall, lean, high cadence.

I just told you how to do it.

Audience: You can do that. And I was trying to do some of that. And I look like an old man with these short little shuffles.

John: Be careful. We’ve reached a point of no return.

Danny: But there’s a happy place. Your stride might be too short. So you gotta find the stride length, the turnover rate of what makes speed. Turnover rate and stride length, it’s a combo. So when you see the Kenyans they look like they’re stretched out and they’re going to land out in front of their body mass, no! They’re still airborne.

They’re like a foot off the ground. By the time they get to the ground, it’s underneath their mass. So when you see people really over-striding, they’re running 4:50 mile pace. It’s like, “Wow! They have such a long stride.” Yeah, yeah! Hip extension. But they’re landing right underneath their body.

A lot of times there’s a really funky visual when you look at good runners, you’d think they’re over-striding, but they have to do that to run at that pace. But they’re not over-striding, they’re landing under the mass. And you’ll notice huge forward lean and huge arm drawback.

Jamie: I just want to add one quick thing. My rule of thumb is very basic. Most injuries from knees down probably don’t happen in countries where people don’t wear shoes. Half of injuries knees up relate to footwear, but the other half relates to other factors. I feel like my joke is I spend all day in my office just undoing the effects of sitting and wearing shoes.

Danny: Standing is the same.

Jamie: Do everything that he said. And there’s a phenomenon where you can kind of get yourself pinned in a corner if you’ve been running like that for so many years, things can kind of get to the point where you can’t just undo it by changing your stride.

Danny: That’s right.

John: Some people are lazy too.

Danny: You have to have minimum range of flexibility to your hip. You’ve probably really tightened your hip flexors, which makes your hamstrings tight. Almost inevitably correct, anytime you have a pain on one side, the other side is the problem.

If your calf is so tight that you have to use your anterior tibialis to lift your foot up to heel strike, you get the problem in your shin, but the problem was that your calf was too tight and you had to use your anterior tibialis to lift.

So this fore and aft, and you said it beautifully earlier, when we do clinics, the first thing we do is get your posture. It’s called posturing. You got to get your hips level like a bucket. You got to get in an athletic stance. You got to get tall. You have to have posture. And that’s part of it.

And then if you don’t have minimum range of flexibility, yeah, your calves got super tight. Yeah, you weren’t prepared. So all of these things where your achilles got strained, yeah, you were pushing off instead of lifting. So running form is a huge thing, and it’s the whole body. You can’t just strap a pair of shoes on and go, “I’m going to be a natural runner today.”

Because you’ll go out and it feels so free that you’ll overdo it.

Jamie: In other words, don’t run like the logo from the Maine Running Company.

(Audience laughter)

Danny: Well that’s just so classic though. You just pull it off the website and there it is. It’s so classic.

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John: Okay, well my perspective is that, as I’ve stated earlier, is that the industry has waken up and they’re taken minimalism, natural running and barefoot running.

I think what Newton has done has changed the way the industry is thinking. You’ve got Nike Free. We have Vibram Five Fingers. We have a slew of shoes coming out in spring ’11 that are all going to be geared towards minimalism. We have the Saucony Kinvara. They’re all different, but they’re all moving in that direction.

You’re going to see heel heights, the heel and toe ratio, level off. And you’re going to see designs incorporated into the foot strike pattern to try and force people a little bit more on their forefoot; I don’t know how they’re going to do it. But the Nike Free, the next evolution of that is quite interesting.

So we’ve had minimalism shoes around for years. Racing flats as Danny said. In the 70′s, when we were running, we would always run barefoot. Either on the beach or on the grass for 20 minutes after practice. To what? To help us learn better running form.

So I really think what it’s done is it’s not going to change some of the traditional shoes, but it’s going to evolve those traditional shoes. And you’re going to see new interpretations, and new designs, and new elements put into the new products based on this trend that’s going on.

I think it’s wonderful for the category. I think it’s really helping stimulate it. It’s helping the shoe companies re-think how they look at things, and I think that’s a good thing. I don’t have any reservations about that at all. I can tell you that if we didn’t believe in it, that we wouldn’t carry it. And I know for a fact that we were one of the first running stores in New England that had Newton. Maybe the first, I don’t know. But that’s my take on it.

We’re definitely the first store that had Vibram Five Fingers in New England, and as I’ve said before, we’ve been carrying that product for 5 years.

So our biggest proponent is continuing to educate our staff on how to position it correctly to the consumer. And making sure that they’re educated on the process, so that they don’t get hurt, and that they use it for what it is. It’s another tool in the toolbox to help prevent injuries, produce better running form, and become better aligned. And that’s our take on it.

So it’s an exciting time in the industry, and I’m looking forward to what’s coming out. We even have a barefoot race here in our market. Eric Boucher and the Pineland Farms group, they had 75, 50 people? 60? I was right in somewhere in there.

And next year they’re predicting a fairly large crowd and I think it’s one of the first ones that we had on
the East Coast. So what do you know, forward thinking in Portland, Maine.

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John: So looking ahead Danny, where do you see the evolution of footwear coming or going, from a bio-mechanical standpoint or design. Futuristic. I’ve seen a lot in the past year, definitely changing the way footwear is being implemented, at least in the running world.

Danny: Yeah! Well we talk about soccer earlier, I think there are a lot of sports that have influenced, I mean soccer is one. Soccer it’s a level shoe. It’s not not a high-heel fit shoe. So you can see how whether it’s adults or kids, they sprint, they stand upright and they slow down, and they lean back and run backwards, and go sideways because they’re perfectly balanced.

So a lot of athletic footwear was not influenced by the high heel. So when you watch the world cup, look how agile and how beautiful those guys run in all directions. And that’s the influence right there if you think about that, number one.

You know, you’re asking me about where things are going…and I do appreciate the first thing you said about Newtons. We are the innovators. Vibram had a water sock, and Nike did that years ago. There’s a lot of brands that have had basically the same thing as a Vibram. They just didn’t… I never really caught… I don’t understand why they call it Five Fingers. I thought it was like Five Toes. Sorry about that. Just trying to be a logical thinker

John: You’re not competitive though…

Danny: Of what? When we came on the market everybody was like, “Are you guys insane? You’re going to go up against people like Nike, and Adi, and Asics and whatever” and we’re like, “No, we’re not”. But that’s kind of nice being naive like that too. And that’s the way we think.

We don’t think like, “No we’re not.” We have something completely different. We have no competition, because we’re trying to… we’re the first brand that’s going to try and help you learn how to run correctly. You go to our website, look at our videos, we’re trying to teach you how to re-train to run more naturally, get under your mass, instead of out in front and breaking and heel striking.

So we wanted to be unlike everybody else, which we are. Our colors are wild. So when you look at the shoes you’re like, “Wow! What is that?”, “Oh! It must be that crazy brand from Boulder, that Newton thing. Sir Isaac, you know.” We’ve even put Sir Isaac in one of our Newton shoes.

It is all about being different and taking a step out, because it’s what you would have maybe right now if we weren’t around. You’d have “Born to Run”, you’d have everybody trying to run in Vibram. So we have tons of people that run in Vibram and try to practice with barefoot form, but they migrate to Newton and go, “Wow! I can run this way, but I don’t feel like this huge possible stress fracture to my
foot.”

I don’t know where were we? Future of Shoes?

John: Evolution.

Danny: So I just got back from China like 2 days ago and so we’re making a 5 and a half ounce, we want to call minimalist. It’s a racing flat, but with Newton technology.

Again, minimal; super-minimal, but with protection. So that’s been our whole thought this whole time of Newton. It’s going to let the shoe work more like the foot and with the foot, but with protection for modern day services.

Even cave men put a wrap around as he killed the mastodon, and they were like, “I’m going to put something on my foot, it’s cold. We’ll put the fur to the inside”.

The brain separates us from everything. And the brain will continue to do it. So for me to go back to something so simple like a water sock, that’s good for training or Five Fingers is good for a training effect on natural surfaces where you get enough cushion to do so, to train yourself. So we’ve built a shoe that you can actually go run a marathon, 50 miles, 100 miles on concrete if you want to and be
protected, and recover faster too. because our science shows, impact is stored in the forefoot. That we’re about 30% less shock than foam can ever be because of that travel in the membrane. We’ve created a different animal, which is much more like muscle and tendon.

John: Kirsten?

Kirsten: I think the evolution, I think you all can speak certainly most to the evolution of the shoes and things like that.

John: I wanna hear every word.

Kirsten: I think that it’s interesting. I think the minimalist piece of things certainly has a place. And I think that it has a place in everybody’s training.

To what degree, I don’t know. And I’m still looking at it from a standpoint of the biomechanics as it
comes up the system as well. Because I think that on a transverse plane, and Danny here has sort of talked about it or touched on it before, I think when you start to put a shim or something under one side, and not under the other, or you have a leg length difference or whatever; it starts to make a difference all the way up your system. And your lower back, and your hip and the way you move, and the mio-kinematics, so the muscle kinematics is what’s really going on. It’s really interesting to me.

And how you stand. Like when you guys are standing back there, you’re standing on one side more than the other. Do you find yourself shifting? Just on your right leg? Have you been hanging out on that
left side the whole time?

So it’s interesting to me, so yes I think from the standpoint of the shoes, and where those are going to go and how we’re going to use that, but also how we’re going to utilize that to help us all the way up and throughout the entire…because I think we want to try and balance ourselves, and I don’t know that you can do it entirely, certainly with a shoe, but I think just starting to know where those differences are and then trying to adjust for those differences is going to be really important. And I don’t think we can measure that really well right now. We can hardly measure… when you start talking about the history, we’re just differentiating shoes right and left in the 1800′s.

And the whole… when you start measuring kinematics and using some really good tools to do that. A Vicon and some of these bio-mechanical tools, that’s the 80′s that that starts. So we’re really early in being able to measure on a transverse plan or measuring in 3D. I don’t know that we’re quite there yet to do it really well, but I think that’s sort of where it’s going.

John: Jamie?

Jamie: Well the short answer is I don’t know.

Until technology catches up, I think you don’t have to wait. I encourage people. If you like to run, to me it seems closed minded to meet people saying, “I would never run barefoot, I should never do that.”

I don’t get that, to be honest with you. If you’re really into running, it’s just part of the full spectrum. And just get out there and try it. You don’t need to wait for whatever is coming down the line.

You don’t need to wait for it. I think there’s enough on the shelves right here to satisfy everybody’s
needs. You just have to kind of get out there and try it out in small doses and see what works for you.

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Danny: When you go from running in traditional shoes, most traditionally built shoes are anywhere between 12 millimeters and up to 22 millimeters higher in the heel than the forefoot. That’s a half inch to an inch higher in your heel than your forefoot.

So your calf contracts, it gets tight, and you don’t even realize it. It just gets shortened, and everything is contracted. And then you come down to a level platform and take away your half inch or your inch, you’d have to like elongate that and stretch it out, and that’s the process of adaptation.

Whereas for instance if you had a Tarahumari Indian here, you read Born to Run? A lot of you guys maybe read Born to Run. So I ran in those races in Leadville that the Tarahumara ran. He didn’t.

And I ran those races. And the opposite of what we’re saying in here today, they ran in no shoes, but the
first year, they forced him to run in shoes. And I passed every one of them at 13 miles, and I urged them to throw their shoes away. Because they had blisters and abnormal problems with their feet because they weren’t used to being confined. That’s the story he didn’t tell.

So likewise, so if you come from being barefoot your whole life and you put shoes on, you’re probably going to get some problems. We’ve been wearing these high-heeled products and we’re try to go more minimalist, we’re going to have some problems unless you take it easy.

Kirsten: When you look at it, history of these shoes in general, I mean they just differentiated shoes between right and left in the 1800′s

Danny: Ha ha! That’s right!

Kirsten: You know we’re not talking about like a massive history so the caveman ages kind of thing. We’re just talking recent stuff. I mean we’re talking 1960′s and 70′s when they started adding the shoe. It’s really recent! So now we’re really getting back to a little bit maybe more of what we’ve been doing for a long time like you were saying to Jamie.

Jamie: It can be funny. I had a woman a couple years ago when I was first getting into this. And she probably weighed 90 pounds. And she looked like your ideal runner, and she had plantar fascitis.

And she had these big gunboats she was running in. And I was trying to talk to her about, I had just read Born To Run, I know your heel striking, you’re probably not going to… unless you find a different shoe you’re not going to get away from the heel strike and consequently you’re just going to keep landing where it hurts.

I had her come out in the hallway of our office and just take her shoes off, and walk up and down the hall. And she had had this problem for like 2 years. I don’t think she ever stepped foot out of her bed without her shoes on. And she’s like, “Oh, this is so weird. I don’t know what this…” It was funny and sad all at once I guess.

Danny: You laughed and then you cried.

Jamie: Kirsten and I were just talking about our kids. I mean if you have kids or had kids and you’ve watched them run around the backyard barefoot, it’s perfect! They’re perfect! And it’s interesting to watch as they get older and start wearing shoes. And I took them school shopping this year, and they don’t make minimalist shoes for kids, but it’s kind of become a trendy thing, and have like Pumas. It’s interesting. My kids hate built up shoes. They just refuse on wearing them.

John: Don’t worry. The kids’ shoes are coming.

Kirsten: It’s funny, I assistant coached my son’s soccer team.

Jamie: Cleats?

Kirsten: No, I just took them all out. I had them start the whole season this year in barefoot shoes, and I’m sure the parents think I’m crazy. But I’m like, “We’re starting this in your bare feet people. And then we’ll get up and do your warm up, and were going to do some touching. I mean your going to get a better feel for the ball even, if your running around in you bare feet.”

And that’s what we do on the field, and then tried to make sure that they washed their feet at the end of the day. And they loved it.

Danny: Oh! Why bother.

Kirsten: Yeah!

Danny: That’s great! Of course, as a parent when you have kids, they just run and run and run and run and run all day right? Remember? We used to do that too. Never ran out of energy right? Because they were falling. They weren’t pushing. They weren’t really using that much energy. They’re falling forward.

So if you’re doing that all day properly, you really don’t get tired. You can run all day if you do it properly and you won’t get tired.

John: Danny, I want my kids to get tired.

Danny: That’s what I’m going back to, that’s what I’m going back to. As a parent you’re going, “Dear Lord, please let them rest, because I’m so exhausted,” right? But they don’t get tired.

Of many things, metabolism, but number one, it looks like they’re just sprinting around all day, but it’s
no effort or very little effort.

We’ve just made it very difficult. We view running as we get addicted to it. All you guys are here for a reason. You wanna learn about this stuff. I’ve run a hundred miles in a day, and it’s not that easy. But running in general is not a hard thing if we totally relax. We’ve made it this no pain no gain proposition.

And we’ve made it this do or die proposition, that’s why you’re working against yourself. You have to totally relax, because I’ve worked with a lot of Kenyan runners. I’ve had the privilege to run with a lot of world class athletes. And I’ll do this with my best Kenyan voice. So a friend of mine, Charles, I said Charles, “When you think about running a 5 minute pace for a marathon, what do you think about?”

“Danny, I think about relaxing. I think I must be relaxed. Because if I don’t then I can’t run so fast.”

Right? Because you tense up. Your muscles are tense or you have a mental tenseness about “I’m going to go out there and do this today.” Running angry and whatever, there’s been articles on that before, that’s totally BS. You gotta run relaxed. Why do we do it? We do it as a stress reliever. If you’re injured and you’re PO’ed and all this is another stress in your life, give it up. Go play golf. Go do something else.

Yeah that’s stressful too right? When I go play golf, I try to get everybody just “It’s okay! It’s a game. It’s just a stupid game.”

John: It’s not complicated.

Danny: Okay, I’m sorry.

John: No, that’s alright!

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John: Kirsten?

Kirsten: My thinking about what’s the difference between barefoot, natural and minimalist, I think natural running and barefoot to me is the same thing; like Danny said, if you’re barefoot or natural running, to me natural is barefoot. And so that’s the same thing, and I think minimalist is just a gradation of that category.

Everything like Danny was saying, everything from self-made huarachi sandal kind of a thing, or a flip flop, to more of a minimalist shoe. I think of the Nike Free sometimes, I guess it’s a minimalist shoe, but it’s got still a pretty decent heel piece underneath.

And I think that when you start adding something underneath your foot, you take away some of you proprioceptive pieces. Obviously in Maine you need to put something between yourself and some of the hard surfaces. So you’ve got to start thinking about what your best choices, time of year, when to do that type of thing.

I think from a research perspective it’s interesting when you look at some of the shoes. Because you take people who have run; I believe this is reasearch by Doctor Liebberman at Harvard, but he had taken people who, tenured runners, who have always ran barefoot, and he went ahead and measured the angles of their knee and their hips and their ankles, and then went ahead and put a shoe on their feet and measured the same things.

And it’s fascination! You can see, just like what Danny was saying, when you go ahead and you run in your bare feet, they’re going to be a midfoot striker. And their impact forces are relatively low. When you go ahead and you put any… and this is the form; their form was the same, everything else was the same. When you put a shoe on their foot and have them run, they can’t help but strike through that heel. You’ll start to do that automatically.

And I don’t know if Jamie can sort of speak to the fact that the form is really going to be important here too. If you go take a minimal shoe and you have really horrible form, and you’re going to go and heel strike any way type of thing, I think you’re just asking for trouble there. You’re going to add injury to the whole thing.

And there was one quote that I liked from before too, I’d just pulled out. “There has been no studies or peer review, scientific journals, anything”, that when you look at it, and it sort of speaks to where the industry had gone, there’s nothing that says that really supportive shoes have in any way cut down injury rates. I mean there’s nothing out there at all.

So it’s fascinating that we’ve been completely putting these shoes together, everything from the DMX; and I don’t even know all the other shoes, to these really supportive things to date, and then there’s
nothing that says that it’s actually helped us in any way. If anything, maybe it’s hurt us in some ways.

John: Jamie?

Jamie: I think it’s important to understand that it’s not so much about the shoe, it’s about your body. And when I started running barefoot in particular I realized I don’t need a shoe to support my arch. I don’t need cushioning as long as I’m on a relatively soft surface. Your body evolved to run long distance, and that’s what Doctor Liebberman’s research has shown.

So I think the thing about barefoot is it helps you find that natural form. I think one of the first shoes I got was Newtons. And the first 2 minutes of running in those I was like, “Wow! These are great! these are fast!” And then after about 5 minutes I said, “Wow! My calves really hurt.”

Danny: I can tell you why in a minute.

Jamie: Well it’s just an adaptation.

Danny: One of the first thing you did was fast, right? You were running faster than normal, and didn’t have a stretch on your calves and achilles, right?

Jamie: I got to the point, I did like a 10 mile race without my heels touching the ground, and that’s not a desirable form necessarily, and with the Five Fingers I got a stretch fracture running on the road in those, and I attribute it to the fact that they take away some of the skin sensitivity factors, so when you land in bare feet; especially if you’re not used to it, it hurts a little bit. So you’ll lighten up. And the Vibram has just enough cushioning to take away that factor, but not enough to really provide any support. So you’re going to land, open up your stride a little more, and land a little heavier than you would if you were just barefoot.

But I guess to get back to what I said originally, Our bodies are made to run. And if you have some faith in your body, and your feet, in your legs, in your hips…

Kirsten: And you go slow. You don’t go really quick.

Jamie: And you start just very small distances. For me, that’s how I really felt like I finally got it. Like “Okay, this is it.” And then it’s just a matter of I tell people I try to capture that feeling and take it out on the road, or take it out on the trail. And find the shoes that allows you to mimic your same natural form that you have barefoot and apply it to your given surface, if you’re a road runner or trail runner.

So I guess to some extent it’s semantics. Like Kirsten said, if you decide you want to try minimalist running and you’re a heel striker and you slap on a real minimalist shoe, you’re probably going to get injured.

I don’t think you can go wrong. In my 2 or 3 years of trying to find my form, if I sound in trouble, I always went back to barefoot in the grass because I figured I can only do so much wrong if I’m here. After enough of doing that I finally found it. I have like 10 different pairs of shoes.

It depends on the circumstance, or road, or long distance, or short distance, or trail. Or is it muddy or is it soft or roots, or just finding the shoe that works.

John: Okay! Well my point of view on this is I’m not a big believer on absolutisms. When we select product that goes on our wall, we look at it that there’s a reason for that shoe being here. Shoes like that where we call shod runners or whatever, they work for some people.

But what I like about the minimalist movement that’s occurring, and the barefoot running, and the natural running, is it’s making everybody rethink how shoes are built. And it’s making us really take a look at our running forms.

We take Newtons and we take Vibrams and we really try to educate about the adaptation process, and how to utilize it to really maximize it as a tool for better running form. If you’ve been running in a Kayano for 20 years and it’s working for you, you’re not just going to switch from something, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get another pair of shoes as a tool to help you with your running form.

Twice a week, 20 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever. So we’ve seen a number of injuries, and it’s all because, no offense but that type “A” guy gets out there and all a sudden he’s Bam! Running 30-40 miles a week and then they get injured. Well, if his body is used to a certain style of running shoes whether it’s stability or neutral or whatever, he’s going to get hurt. It’s just natural.

So our job as a retailer is to really be involved in the education process; how these shoes work. And Tom and his group… I’m sorry, Tom Curran from Newton came in, and we hold a number of educational seminars to try and educate on our different products.

So my point of view is, there’s no absolutism, but what’s happening is a good thing.

Jamie: Yeah I just want to say one thing. When I run on the road, I do run with Newtons. The whole calf thing was just acclimating.

John: Oh sure, absolutely.

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John: Leading in to that, could you just talk a little bit about the Newton technology and how it works?

Danny: Well first of all, it starts off by next to your foot there’s actually a firm plate, right next to the foot itself inside the shoe. There’s a firm plate for 2 reasons. In all foam shoes you have the biomechanics of your forefoot, as well as your rear foot. So if you land under your body, you don’t have to worry so much about your rear foot’s biomechanical movement.

But if you have a forefoot misalignment, called vares, or valgis, or short first metatarsal, or Morton’s foot tight, there’s only a few things that could happen, dropped third metatarsal or dropped metatarsal.

When you’re in foam, foam creates more of a rotational force as you break it down with your forefoot rotation. Because I’ve seen that for so many years, I’ve put a firm plate right next to your forefoot. Everybody goes, “Wow! It’s firm! That’s going to hurt!” No it’s not. Because your foot can deal with a firm surface. And it activates the technology underneath.

So they way our lugs protrude from the surface, as soon as those start to touch the ground, they move into an elastic membrane, which is just like your muscle and tendon. We’ve worked with Dupont, and the membrane that we’ve used is Dupont High Trail and it can store and retrieve 80 to 90 percent of the energy that goes in, just like your muscles and tendons. So all of our research tried to build…what is the
best things about your feet and your body, and how can we match those up with a shoe?

So as soon as we have a ground engaging technology. So as soon as the lugs start to microtouch the ground, movement starts. So a greater movement on impact is the greater cushion in physics. The more something moves on impact, the greater the cushion is. So our lugs can move into this hollow chamber on the stretch membrane up to about 8 and a half millimeters, that’s insane! Other company’s foams like 5, no matter how thick you make foam, it’s only going to be about 5 to 6 millimeters of compression, and that’s unstable as well.

So we have plate for communication, afferent feedback, and activated technology, very safe and biomechanical so you don’t rotate all around the top of it and compress down on the foam. Then from the ground up, as soon as you touch the ground, concrete or asphalt, moves up to absorb.

The beauty then is we allow you to lever your entire body mass right over the forefoot. So leverage again, it’s all Newton’s laws, all gravity and all science. We lever your whole body mass, then you lift off the ground as opposed to push. You don’t push off. That would strain your calf, achilles and fascia.

Once you lift, boom! There’s a little burst of energy that comes out of the shoes that’s stored from the vertical movement.

And so our shoes scientifically move with less energy.

So I know that more than you’ve probably wanted to know.

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John: I’ve been to a number of companies this year, believe me, if I see another minimalist shoe, I might shoot myself.

But we’re going to go with the authentic brands that are relevant and that have started out with it, like Newton and Vibram. New Balance has a collection called the Minimus coming out that’s really exciting.

Danny: That’s funny! They have a Latin termed shoe now.

John: But beyond that, how many shoes can we really sell in those categories?

Vibram, I applaud them because they’re actually making the outsole for New Balance and they’re making the outsole for Merrell.

Why are they doing that?

Because they want to grow the category. They want to expand it. And that’s fine.

But utilizing it and learning how to adapt as a retailer, and I know I’m talking on, as a retailer, it’s our job to educate. New Balance for example is actually putting a, almost like a caution tag, because our job is to educate people on the adaptation process. How to use the shoes, so that people don’t get injured. And that’s really my perspective.

So one of the things that I don’t struggle with but I do on occasion is the whole difference between barefoot, minimalism, and natural running. Those are the 3 prominent terms that we hear out there.

And Danny I’d like to hear your perspective. Are they all the same? Is there a difference? How is that?

Danny: Usually they’re equating to the same. I mean, barefoot is barefoot, right? Go step on a piece of glass totally unprotected, but you are in the best position to self-regulate your impact and your body position to be in the ideal position to run.

We could all do it right now. We could all take our shoes off and go out in the parking lot. And we’ll run very gingerly, very lightly on the concrete or asphalt. We’ll lighten our upper body, we’ll touch very carefully sensing the ground, and we’ll just have a short stride, and we’ll lean flatly forward. And we regulate that when we’re barefoot.

Minimalist is what I call anything that’s from a very thin racing flat to a Vibram Five Finger. A minimal amount of protection underneath the foot. In that case it’s getting closer to barefoot so the communication is a little better. But even the rubber or the material in between, foam especially is not a good medium.

It’s a good medium for cushioning but it’s not a good medium for communication, or rotational forces.

John: Could you just expand on the whole sensory integration with the foot to the brain, and cadence, and all that.

Danny: Well typically the idea is if you’re going to run more naturally, you’re going to be on your forefoot. And you have a condition called afferent feedback. That’s your input from the ground to your central nervous system. So as you touch the ground, if you feel a pebble, boom! You get off of it. Because you feel that pain just instantaneously. If you have a… I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

John: About sensory input, and the integration of that to cadence and everything else.

Danny: So idea is that the lighter you touch the ground the quicker you have to move.

I’m ADD so I get off on tangents.

So as we have a longer stride and heel strike, which is basically caused by the ability to do so by having a higher heel, we’re really urged to do that, then of course the cadence will slow down, the impact forces are greater, then you spend more time on the ground getting your upper body mass centered, then guess what…you break. You’ve got to push off. So it halves the muscle power as you break. So when you’re running underneath your center of mass, or barefoot style you just kind of roll like a wheel, because you’re picking your feet up. You don’t really have to push off.

So all the other stuff that we’ve researched for years and years and years, rear foot pronation, over pronation, over supination of rear foot, that was only caused because we put our foot out in front of our body. If we put it underneath our body, we do not have to worry about rear foot pronation or supination.

So the very fact that as they built the heel up, our ankle became a loose adapter when we’re walking, we try to run with the walking gait, our ankle, knee, and hip, and back are all over the place, plus the impact force. The sensory input that you get is like… you guys all notice this when you go home. When you’re walking up and down steps, do you ever put your heel down? No, you put your forefoot down so
you can sense your balance and not fall down the bloody steps.

Sorry.

John: It’s all right.

Danny: But yeah! It’s really about the ability to regulate and balance. And that does not come from your heel. Your heel is an adapter. Yeah! It’s a loose adapter. So by having your forefoot communicating, then you’re centered over your mass you’re very protected.

Pretty easy I think, but we made it very complex. All your cronies from the past… I’m just kidding. All your work associates from the past have made it complex, so now most people actually think it’s
natural to run, it’s natural to heel strike.

We’re having great success in Asia. Japan loves Newton! There may be a couple of things in our blog site where you can see Japanese like jumping up and down on trampolines in like Newtons and probably crazy.

Because what do they do? They come in their house, they take off their shoes and put on slippers. They’re grounded. They don’t sell.. I can tell you, okay John, they don’t sell the Kayano in Japan.

John: Yeah!

Danny: They don’t buy that shoe. That was an American shoe. They don’t sell that shoe in Japan. They sell racing flats. The thinner the better. Less weight, 155 grams, more expensive than a 195 grams. It’s all about lighter is better, and less is better in Japan. But the reason they like Newton is, their Asics sits only about 10 millimeters thick, and they’re running on concrete everyday, they put a Newton on and they’re like, “Whoa!”. They can run with that same form, but they feel so protected on the concrete, you
recover so much quicker.

So there is a big difference between an unnatural surface and going barefoot or minimalist, and then going into a man-made surface. It’s just natural.

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John: So, Kirsten, why don’t you…

Kirsten: Give a little bit about my perspective?

So it’s obviously a great testament to this whole natural running piece that you’re all here. And I think that it’s a great testament to John to bring this on and have you all here listening to the natural running piece of things.

My background in this started…I did my PHD at the University of Virginia, and I worked under somebody by the name of Irene Davis. And she was a big proponent of orthotics and supportive shoes, and pronation and stopping pronation, and slowing it down and things like that. And that’s how I
started all my research. And really how I learned about biomechanics and things like that.

And then ultimately, when we moved here, I still keep in touch with her all the time. And she had called a couple of years ago and said, “Hey! Have you read this book, I know that there’s this new sort of movement out with natural running and have you read this book called Born to Run?”

And I thought, “You know, I’m going to get to it. I’ll get to it,” kind of thing, and I hadn’t gotten to it yet. And then she stopped and she goes, “You know, it’s kind of changed the way I think about things.”

And that made me stop because I thought, “Oh god! The way you think about things is the way you taught me to think about things.” So now we’re really having some problems here about what natural running is, and what this all means (audience laughs).

And so I said, “Fine fine fine. I’ll read the book.” And once I read the book, it really did start me thinking about it a little bit more and started opening me up to a company like Newton and some of these other minimalist shoes and what that means, and what that means for the patients that I see and the consulting that I do. And it serves again as a testament to John, because I think that the shoe companies and stores like this has been all about pronation and supporting that. And it’s kind of what I base my whole entire PHD on, supporting the foot. And now all of a sudden, there’s this paradigm shift and we’re not talking about that anymore, we’re talking about getting back to basics.

How many of you all are either barefoot or running minimalist shoes today?

About half or so.

But I think it is a really important thing. And I know that Doctor Raymond has worked with a lot of people as well. And I think it’s a good place to be. It’s a wonderful paradigm shift to be able to add a natural running piece to your training, and we’ll talk a little bit more of how to do that.

So that’s my backgrounds and how I came into the whole thing.

John: Jamie?

Jamie: So, I guess my background comes from more of what I do for work which is to help people who have injuries and I’ve always been more of a “big picture” kind-of-guy and I struggled with my own running over the past 4 or 5 years. I kind of went into progressively heavier shoes and seem to
have a lot of minor injuries and it just wasn’t fun anymore.

So I spent a couple of years thrashing around with different, at the time they weren’t called minimal shoes but just less of a shoe, racing flats, etcetera. I remember reading an excerpt from Born to Run that was about to come out and I knew at that moment I’d pre-order it.

I was like: “This is it, I have been waiting for this book”. That was actually a year before looking for this book. I knew it had to be a book that kind of summarize a lot of this concepts and it made me realize that there were a lot of people out there who are smarter than I am and have more experience that this is legitimate.

The section on evolution really spoke to me. I think you can’t go wrong in any health topic to go back to what our ancestors did. So, to use an analogy for nutrition, I know I would feel a lot better if I eat vegetables and meat versus Wonder Bread. So, it just seem to fit my way of thinking. And so I started
experimenting and kind of just went barefoot, not on the road so much but on grass. I feel that’s really when it clicked, when I found my best running form and I guess that’s my definition for natural running is go back to where we all started and build from there.

Find a shoe that doesn’t interefere with your natural mechanics, if you’re so inclined. It’s not for everybody, I think it depends on how long you’ve been running and how much injuries or deficiencies you’ve been accumulating over the years. I see a range from people who are doing just fine with their
current shoes and look they’re not going to change anything to people who are totally shut down and can’t run anymore and everything in between. So, it’s a viable option, it makes sense to me, and it’s just about integrating it into what you do.

Kirsten: For me, it’s about the research also behind it and so I have some papers for you, John, for anybody who’s interested about it. I just pulled some articles, but to me it’s like “Okay, so it’s all nice and good and we can all tell our stories”, but what does the research show?

And so, I think there’s more research that is doing and talking about this. Danny has talked about Doctor Liebberman at Harvard, and he’s got a great website. If you guys have ever taken a look at it and some of the papers are here but it really shows about heel strike and forefoot striking and midfoot striking and how the impact forces are just so much higher when you’re striking through your heel, and how a cushioned heel is going to do that for you, versus a shoe that is more of a minimalist shoe.

Perhaps if you can change your mechanics to bring your center of gravity over your base of support, you’re going to start to really decrease here; for impact forces so much.

John: Well from a retail perspective and my own background, if you look at some of the shoes that we started out with in the 70′s, Tiger Fabre, Tiger Jay Hawks, so it’s really minimalistic shoes that we were using. That’s really where we started.

And then my own background in the shoe companies and working in them, we just got crazy with technology. We had DMX, we had gel, we had air. Take a big air bag and put it into the heel, and it’s going to later your foot strike, it just is.

If you look at what Nike is doing today, you look at the Lunar series, you look at their running line, it’s all foam based and it’s all based on the footstrike pattern. And they came out with the Free, I’m using that as an example. Asics the same thing. Reebok, oh my god! I can’t even begin to tell you stories there.

I remember we were launching DMX and I was heading up running, and the advanced technologies group wouldn’t tell us that the DMX pad was underneath, they had a stim pack underneath the soft liner that was made out of ambient air, and they wouldn’t tell us so we’d cut the shoe open. What were we not going to cut the shoe open?

And it was called a stim pack. And when people ran in it, ambient air basically expands. And so runner’s feet, when they were doing the wear testing; and I’m telling a story now, I’m getting a little bit off-tangent, but I think I’m making a point in terms of people fell on technology for the sake of technology.

Runner’s feet were burning up, and they were hurting. So we cut it open, so what is this? And I remember the president of Reebok, Bob Meyers, ahead of me he goes,”Yo! We didn’t want to tell you because it’s going to be just like coke. It’s going to be our secret formula.”

I said, “Are you out of your mind?”

But anyway, we got into this whole technology phase, and the LD1000 from years ago had a heel on it.

Am I right about that?

Danny: I remember that.

John: And it basically created a lever and it existed for about maybe 6 months before people started having knee injuries.

And I think the refreshing aspect of this, and I welcome the whole natural running movement and minimalist movement because I think it makes the companies think, and it makes them evolve their product into a more realistic, natural state, which is what you’re seeing.

Are all running shoes bad? No!

We sell a lot of Kayanos, we sell a lot of Adrenalines, and they work for a lot of people because of the environment we’re in. And people have adapted to that.

This is about good running form, and Newton is at the forefront of that, as a tool to help with that. One of the things that I’ve been to a number of companies this year, believe me, if I see another minimalist shoe, I might shoot myself.

But we’re going to go with the authentic brands that are relevant and that have started out with it, like Newton and Vibram. New Balance has a collection called the Minimus coming out that’s really exciting.

Danny: That’s funny! They have a Latin termed shoe now.

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John: For those of you who don’t know me, I’m John Rogers. I’m the owner of the Maine Running Company. Welcome to the Natural Running Symposium!

There’s a lot of chatter in the marketplace about this trend. I’m going to ask each of the panel members to introduce themselves and get a little background on their work and previous engagement in this activity.

My background… Maine Running Company has been open for 6 years. We were the first company in Maine to add Newton footwear. We’ve had Vibram Five Fingers for 5 years.

So we’ve always been a proponent of the Natural Running Movement as a tool to help with better form. My background is also, I’ve worked at Reebok for 12 years, I’ve worked at Mizuno for 2 years, had a second stint at Reebok and had a bunch of other jobs which I don’t care to mention.

But the panel that you have have up here is pretty extensive. To my right is Danny Abshire who is a co-founder of Newton Footwear, and their Chief Technology Officer. He has a book coming out that’s called, Natural Running?

Danny: Yeah!

John: I wish we had it here so you could autograph it.

Danny: It’s still subtitled, but we’re not sure what that is yet. Natural world?

John: Anyway, I had the opportunity to go to the Newton Summit in Boulder, Colorado this summer and we participate in a number of vendor summits, and we get educated in their products, where they’re going with it. The Newton Summit was a wonderful opportunity to get more engaged to the natural running movement and what it represents.

There was good dialogue between retailers and their staff, in terms of where they’re taking this thing. They were the original. They were the “founding fathers” of this movement. So it’s a priviledge to have Danny here, because he is the “father of natural running.”

Let me introduce Kirsten Buchanan, owns Impact Sports. Is the prominent gate analysis. She has her PHD from the University of Virginia. Many people have worked with her throughout the marketplace. She is a disciple of Irene Davis, who was part of her symposium in July. Very proponent of natural running, but also has a vast background on the subject.

And I asked Jamie Raymond, who has been preaching good form running and chi running, god since I’ve know him. And he was at the forefront in this marketplace of wearing Newton Shoes. He’s also worn Vibrams, he’s gone through some injuries, he’s gone through the adaptation process, and he is a huge, huge part of the running community in terms of advanced release technique and helping many runners adjust their form to help them get healthier.

So that’s the panel. I think it’s a lot of expertise here. I’ll ask Danny to comment a little bit more on his
background, and then… well why don’t we just start. Let’s just get going.

Danny: Yeah, yeah!

John: I think that’s enough on the background.

Danny: Oh, yeah.

John: So, what I’ve asked everyone to do, and we’re going to start with Danny is for each panel member, you get their perspective, history, research and insight into this trend towards Natural Running. And I’m going to start with Danny, then go to Kirsten, and then Jamie, and then I’ll give my limited 2 cents. ‘Cause I think these guys are really experts in this field, and we should hear from them versus me who you guys hear from all the time.

So go ahead Danny!

Danny: Please forgive me if I pass out. I flew from China just a couple of days ago and then flew across the country today and got here at 4:30. So, bear with me if I act really strange.

(Audience laughing)

I had the privilege to live in Boulder, Colorado almost all my life. I worked at a business called Active Imprints. We made custom orthotics for many elite athletes for speed skating, to mountain climbing, to marathon. So I got to work with feet in general and see how we balance people’s feet.

So long story short, by understanding how we ski, you have to be centered with gravity, otherwise you’re out of control. You have to make a right and left turn. You have to be in an athletic position, or if you’re playing basketball, or football, or any sport, you name it, you’ve got to be in an athletic position.

So that’s kind of a basis of my work years and years ago. We started Active Imprints in 1988, and then by working with so many athletes and seeing so many common injuries, plantar fascitis, chronic hamstring, achilles, we just started taking notes of all these injuries and how shoe technology was changing, let’s say from the 60′s until now.

And humans do the best without footwear, that’s how we evolved, and we’re centered, and we’re grounded, and we’re balanced. But if we put a small amount of material, it could be under our toes, it’ll alter the way we stand with gravity. If we put it underneath our heel, it’ll alter. If we put it on the outside, it’ll alter, and through the inside edge. So we’re like this great little gyroscope, but if you mess with the gyroscope it’s going to be out of wack.

So as we saw more and more athletes and notice the differentials, we were pretty wacky, we started cutting shoes open. Noticing all these technologies, but also how the heel height evolved. And so with that, we said, “You know, there’s really got to be a better way.” We started working on the Newton in 1996, believe it or not. It’s been a long time.

We struggled for 15 years, taking it to other brands saying, “You should really look at this ’cause
people do run on their forefoot when they’re barefoot. They don’t land on their heel. They’ll crack their heel bone.” It’s sort of a placebo that you get from having a padded shoe with a big heel.

So long story short, the biggest thing I see is that we’ve evolved over thousands of years, and now past 40 years, we’ve evolved to run the way we do. But is that natural? And we’re trying to now get people to realize when people come up to me and say, “I’m a natural heel striker.” Then I go, “Yeah! When you walk.” ‘Cause that’s the walking gait. Heel strike, mid-stance and toe off.

When you analyze then parts of that; what is toe off, that’s more like sprinting, you’re way up on your toes, that’s very propulsive. And then if that’s sprinting and that’s walking, then what is running?

Doctor Lieberman, under center of mass. That’s where we land on our barefoot, we don’t break, we adapt.

Did I even answer the question?

(Audience lauging)

John: Okay! Given your point of view on natural running and where it has come from, and Newton’s perspective and research on it, when did you…?

Danny: Yeah, 2007.

John: 2007? Eleven years.

Danny: Well the cool thing is with that, during the meantime, we were protecting our intellectual property. We had 9 patents; 13 worldwide. So we’ve spent a ton of money at a privately held company just to protect our ideas.

Because we knew if we try and sell it to them, at least 5 major brands, and they say “Guess what… nobody runs on their forefoot, they run on their heel.” So of course, how can we sell a technology based around protecting your entire foot, but focus in sensory feedback of your forefoot, and protection of your forefoot.

So, consequently they all said no. A cool thing was, we focused on a tiny little market which people thought we were crazy. But I’ve made orthotics for 13 Iron Man World Champions so they trusted me
and we got a couple of triathletes that helped us out in 2007. And Natasha Badman was forty years old and set a half-iron man world record at 40 years old wearing our shoes. So we were fine and that almost everybody was running faster in the shoes.

We’re doing a study at MIT towards the year, and all the students do run faster on our shoes than they do on their most favorite shoe. And it’s a combination of two things. Our shoes lose less energy on impact, and they run with a more natural form, less breaking.

All in all, we launched in 2007. We were only an internet company the first year. 2 years into that, we’re in 25 countries around the world and over 250 stores.

That’s pretty quick.

John: There is actually a store in West Virginia?

Danny:Yeah! Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

John: All they do is sell Newtons?

Danny: Yeah!

John: That’s kind of interesting!

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Blaine: Hi! I’m here with Alex Feldman, from the Brooks Traveling Circus Bus. So we just did a gait analysis, and he’s going to explain how they do the gait analysis, what they’re looking for, and we’ll see what my feet look like.

Alex: All right! So what we’re watching here is what’s called the gait cycle, and we’re going to watch the 3 basic phases.

There’s contact, mid-stance, and then toe-off.

So we’re going to play it back here.

And what I’m going to do is I’m going to slow it down and pause it right at mid-stance when his foot is flat on the ground, and measure from his achilles down to the base of his heel, and then up through his mid-calf, and then we can better recommend a shoe for him.

All right… so about 177 there. Then we’ll take a look here.

176 there.

So what these numbers mean is anywhere between about 175 and 180 is where we’re typically going to recommend what’s considered a neutral shoe, and then anything below that we’d start getting into support and stability shoes.

So right about 175-176 definitely falls into that neutral category; so like that minimalism kind of stuff: The Green Silence or the T6 Racing Flats I think would be the best bet in the Brooks line.

But the difference between neutral and stability shoes, as you can see, neutral shoes are going to be all white through that mid-sole area, where a stability is going to have that extra great support piece. It’s just the difference in the densities in the foam, and what that’s designed to do is trigger the propriocepters in the feet and prevent the foot from rolling inwards so you have the ability to toe-off straight and evenly.

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My buddy Mike at Fit36.com was recently writing about how he is redefining what his normal is.

By that he means, when he started running 2 miles was pretty much what the normal was when he would go out for a run. 2.5 or 3 miles would be a stretch for what he was capable of at the time.

But then after that it didn’t take long before he was running 5K as his norm, and then he got up to about 4 miles as what his normal run is.

Now he goes out and he can run 5 to 5.75 without too much trouble, but he doesn’t really feel that 5 miles is quite what he would define as his normal, “This is what I’m going to go out and run everyday” kind of distances.

His plan is to try and get up to that 5 miles feeling like, “This is what I’m going to do just as my default, what I’m going out for a run” to do. And then he wants to try and speed up and pick up his pace a little bit so that he can do that 5 miles in a shorter period of time.

Now he has a lot of time constraints given work and family, so he doesn’t really have time at the current pace he is running to actually get in much more than that 5 miles whenever he goes out to run.

Now given that Mike is a pretty new runner, he just started really this past Spring and his first race was Memorial Day Weekend. He is going to see a lot of improvement by following that kind of strategy where he is just going out and running every day, and just building that level of fitness and cutting down on the weight a little bit, and all around just learning to enjoy the process of running which is something that he’s tried in the past but never really been able to accomplish before. You can follow his whole journey about that over at his site on Fit36.com.

But once he’s actually in a little bit better shape, or if you’re in a similar boat where you’re trying to build up your mileage or pick up the pace a little bit, you might find that going out and running the same distance every single day, if you are a little bit more fit or if you do have a more extensive running background, isn’t actually going to see the same kind of results. And you’re going to find you’ll have plateaus a lot quicker. One way to get around that is to actually vary how much you are running everyday.

So if you do 2 miles one day and then 5 the next, and 3 the day after that, and 5 after that, this gives your body something a little bit different to work towards. You’re going to stress your muscles a little bit different each time.

You can also try varying your pace a little bit with each of those. You might find that you make some faster gains that way than you would if you were just going out and doing 5 miles at the same pace every single day.

As I’ve said, in Mike’s case he is going to see some huge gains no matter what he does just because he is such a new runner. For the next year or two he can just go out and do the same thing, and if he does stick to just doing the 5 miles he’ll eventually find that that pace is going to slowly get a little quicker over time, and the plateuas aren’t going to be that huge.

But in a couple of years he’s definitely going to want to start mixing it up a little. So I just wanted to give him this little response, some advice on what he is doing, and wish him good luck on getting down to the 5 miles as his normal run.

And if you have any experience with this, or if you’re in the same kind of boat, let me know what has worked for you and what you’re doing with your exercise program right now.

Just leave a comment below or I’ll leave a link below this video where you can go over and you can comment directly on Mike’s post and let him know what you’re doing and I’m sure that he would love to hear from you and to have a new reader.

Transcript

Do you run the day before your marathon, or do you take a rest day?

For me personally, that’s a pretty straightforward question. If at all possible, I try to get in just a short easy run of maybe 20-25 minutes or so at a very slow pace, just to stretch the legs out a little bit and to keep me from getting too stiff on race morning.

Now once I do my warm up on race morning I’d probably be okay anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal.

But my general theory is that before a football game or basketball game, those players are practicing. So before a marathon, why wouldn’t I be? I tend to be a little bit stiffer and it takes me a little bit longer to warm up in the morning if I haven’t run the day before.

If I’m able to manage it that way, then what I will do is take a rest day where I don’t run two days before and use that for my travel days if at all possible. Now if I’m flying in the day before a marathon, then obviously I’m not going to have much of an opportunity to get in a good run beforehand, depending on what time my flight gets in and other details, so I am pretty flexible.

My recommendation in general is if you can get out for a couple of easy miles just remember, keep it slow, just stretch out your legs, and don’t do anything dumb the day before your big race.

I hope you’ve found this tip useful, and I will see you in the next video.