Natural Running Symposium – Part 2

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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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