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Dr Peter Gorman | Stuart Gordon
55 Plays3 years ago
Dr. Peter Gorman is the president of Microgate USA who works with everyday runners and athletes as well as the world’s top athletes, team owners and doctors. He has multiple patents for heart rate monitors.
Stuart is the owner of all about balance and sports therapist of 30+ years as well as the UK distributor of barefoot science insoles.
We discuss:
Your gait / the runners gait cycle
Importance of proprioceptive stimulation
Better balance and why you should strive for it
Injury risk
Midfoot / forefoot running
How runners attempt to fly….and more!
For those of you attending run fest run or the national running show south you will be able to meet Stuart and watch his talks so go say hi!
If you haven’t already heard our previous podcast with Stuart and Dr Susie Cooper which has lots of plantar fasciitis tips in then do have a listen, that was episode #38.
Connect with Stuart and All About Balance on the links below.
Dr Peter Gorman on CEO Talks watch here
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode 45 of the UK Sports Chat podcast. I'm your host Joe Williams and in this episode I speak with Dr Peter Gorman of Microgate USA and Stuart Gordon from All About Balance in the UK.
00:00:14
Speaker
Dr. Peter Gorman, as I said, is the president of Migrate USA. They work with everyday people, as well as the world's top athletes, team owners and doctors. Dr. Gorman has multiple patents for heart rate monitors, including with Polar.
Topics Preview: Gait, Balance, and Innovations
00:00:30
Speaker
Stuart is the owner of All About Balance and sports therapist of 30 plus years as well as the UK distributor of Barefoot Science Insoles. We discuss your gait and the runners gait cycle, the importance of proprioceptive stimulation, better balance and why you should strive for it, injury risk, midfoot and forefoot running and how runners attempt to fly.
00:00:54
Speaker
and more. There's more in there as well. So for those of you attending Runfest Run or the National Running Show South, you'll be able to meet Stuart at those events and watch his talk. So do go and say hello. If you haven't already heard our previous podcast with Stuart and Dr. Susie Cooper, which has a lot of plantar fasciitis tips in, then do please have a listen. That was episode 38.
00:01:18
Speaker
As usual, please do comment on the podcast via our social channels or get in touch on info at UKrunchat.co.uk. In the meantime, have a great week, enjoy your weekend and we'll see you on the next episode. Welcome Peter and welcome Stuart. Thanks for coming on to the UK Run Chat podcast. Happy to be here, Joe. That's an absolute pleasure, Joe.
00:01:41
Speaker
Thank you both. Thank you. Peter, I was looking back through our archive of podcasts and I believe you're our first international guest. So thank you very much for coming on.
Dr. Gorman's Innovations in Heart Rate Monitors
00:01:55
Speaker
Come on, I'm shaking in my boots. Don't put the pressure on me. Brilliant. Well, Stuart, we've been on a couple of months ago, haven't we? So you're a veteran now. I'll just try to imagine Peter shaking in his boots. It's not a notion I can imagine very easily, I've got to say. A lot of inertia in this body.
00:02:23
Speaker
Does it shake that easy? Well, for the benefit of our listeners, Peter, would you mind giving us a background in what your background is, sorry, in helping runners and athletes generally and how your interest in running started? Okay. Well, I went into general practice as a chiropractor, April of 1980.
00:02:47
Speaker
So I guess that makes me about 29 years old. April of 1980 I started a general practice as a chiropractor. Basically taking care of runners. Got involved with the Westchester Road Running Club and the New York Road Running Club. And just starting out and I had this
00:03:08
Speaker
source of people coming to the office with little strains and back aches and stuff. And then we started using a thing called the heart rate monitor. And as it became more popular, we saw the drawbacks of the heart rate monitor.
Development of OptoGate for Running Efficiency
00:03:25
Speaker
So became part of my life's work as a physics major.
00:03:28
Speaker
to see about improving that heart rate monitor. And that led to seven patents on heart rate monitor technology, you know, strap around the chest, heart rate to the watch, but done in a fashion that if me, you and Stuart were together, I could receive mine. You could receive your heart rate. Stuart could receive it. It was called coded transmission. Before that, it was analog transmission.
00:03:54
Speaker
So that led from the heart rate to the watch, the heart rate to the exercise equipment, to the heart rate now being accurate, controlling the exercise equipment, and blah, blah, blah, over time, seven patents on it. And a lot of people using heart rate, we had a saying back then, let your heart be your coach.
00:04:18
Speaker
And a lot of people using heart rate to control their training until finally we decided that, yeah, you know how fast to go, but you don't know if you're going smooth or if you're shaking. And that led to the development of Optogate into the Microgate system. So that's been the last 40 years. Controlling the intensity and then making sure once you're moving that you're moving correctly. That's been the background.
00:04:48
Speaker
So how did you get involved in developing OptiGate? And what is it, I suppose, for our listeners as well, just to give them an overview? So OptiGate, I met a genius by the name of Federico Gori, who's my brother slash partner. And he had a system where he was measuring jumps, and they very accurately could tell how well you would jump, contact time, flight time, power.
00:05:17
Speaker
They could mark it out so that you knew the position of each jump, dynamic control, something that you couldn't do on a stress pad. So I said to Federico, why don't we not just jump? Why don't we move? Why don't we run? Why don't we walk? And between the two of us, OptoGate came about, about the year 2010.
00:05:44
Speaker
And we got it validated very quickly from another fine researcher, Nikolai Mafoletti, Schultes Clinic in Zurich. And he did the validation work of Optogate.
00:05:59
Speaker
And once we were validated, it was off to the races that now we could give a validated gate report in less than a minute, something that was taking hours before then, you know, setting up your high speed cameras, calibrating the cameras, getting the calibrations right. By the time you did all that, it became crazy. And so all of a sudden we had an optical system that was portable.
00:06:27
Speaker
that could give us a validated gate report in less than a minute, and then we added biofeedback to it.
Stuart's Experience with OptoGate
00:06:34
Speaker
Once we added biofeedback, we added an analysis system and a fixed system all in one simple package, and the rest is history. Stuart, I know that you're using the OptiGate system, aren't you?
00:06:49
Speaker
Yes, I am. I had the pleasure of going out to see Peter in his New York center and watched how he uses it there. I'd heard a lot about it from the manufacturer of barefoot science because
00:07:04
Speaker
He and Peter have a joint venture called For Your Gate, which is the use of OptiGate and the incorporation of barefoot science into that, into those protocols, I think, that Peter created. And so I saw those and thought, yeah, this is a great way to go forward. Unfortunately, two days after I got back from New York, we went straight into lockdown. So things got somewhat delayed, but I'm up and running with it now and having a lot of fun.
00:07:33
Speaker
I'm going to call on Peter's expertise at some point in the near future, I'm sure. But I'm kind of learning as I go along and getting people coming in. I had a really interesting one the other day as a guy training for the marathon who's tried, I think, three times to train for the marathon and in every single time has got injured.
00:07:51
Speaker
And so finally, and I've been treating him on and off for nearly 30 years. Finally, we were able to nail down exactly what was going on and what was going wrong and start correcting it using this biofeedback system that Peter was mentioning.
Importance of Balance and Proprioception
00:08:06
Speaker
But basically we can then correct him in real time, just with some subtle cues and prompts and changes to his running style. And it was a bit of a eureka moment for him because he suddenly felt himself running
00:08:20
Speaker
better instead of crucifying his calf muscles all the time. So yeah, I mean that's just one example and I've got a young lady coming in tomorrow who's a pro footballer who's doing some of that stuff with as well. So yeah, it's really exciting.
00:08:38
Speaker
the work with Optigate, and we spoke about barefoot science in our last podcast, didn't we, Stuart? So Peter, looking at your work with Optigate and the inclusion of barefoot science as a corrective intervention, why does balance form such an important part of your mantra along with time and coordination?
00:09:02
Speaker
Well, think about it. If say your car was out of balance, one tire was flat and one tire was good and you wanted to go on a little road trip, you'd have a pretty rough ride and that rough ride would make it very distressing. And God knows what else would fall apart from being out of balance. So when you're standing still,
00:09:26
Speaker
And unfortunately, that's how a lot of people get checked, standing still, how well do they stand, show light and all that. When you're standing still could totally change to when you put movement. And when you put movement, you'll find that the people that have more balance, more proprioceptive ability, but basically balance at the heart of movement,
00:09:49
Speaker
They can move more symmetrically. And that's the idea. The idea is not how do you compare to the people of that study over there. The idea is how does your left side compare to your right side? And what do I need to do to bring symmetry?
00:10:08
Speaker
to that so that I can move more efficiently, whether it's walking, jogging, or running. So the correction of movement in real time usually falls back to how balanced they are. And then once you become more specific, how balanced are they in each position of the foot strike cycle? As you move, your heel hits the ground.
00:10:38
Speaker
your toes are up, you heel hits the ground. That's dorsiflexion. You come down to a moment known as pronation. You come down to a moment known as supination. You come down to a moment known as plantar flexion, and then you push off with your toe. During those four phases, how well balanced are you? And what we want to do is be able to detect it
00:11:08
Speaker
and fix it before it manifests itself as some kind of inability or he's limping or the idea is to try to fix things before they're seen.
00:11:26
Speaker
The idea of being a health care provider and trainer is to see when others are blind. By the time you can see the imbalance in the runner, the runner has that imbalance. Well, if the imbalance started months ago,
00:11:42
Speaker
as a little discrepancy between contact and flight time or whatever it might be, let's fix it before it manifests itself into injury or inability.
Role of Barefoot Science Insoles
00:11:53
Speaker
So the idea of optogate is to identify movement with efficiency to the millisecond so that little imbalances can be understood and corrected as needed.
00:12:11
Speaker
and how, and Stuart, how the inclusion of barefoot science is within that. Why is that important? So the nerve system that
00:12:24
Speaker
significantly controls all of those reactions, those reflex responses within the foot is called proprioception. And we need to have that proprioceptive nerve system switched on, woken up, stimulated through the foot-gate cycle that Peter's just mentioned. And that's what barefoot science does. So almost regardless of the shoes you're wearing, there's obviously huge debates about different types of shoes, whether people heel strike or forefoot strike or midfoot strike, whether they
00:12:54
Speaker
have zero drop shoes or cushion shoes. There's a huge debate about that. But whichever shoes you wear, you need that proprioceptive stimulus happening from within them. So ground contact through the sole of the shoe into the foot. And that's what Barefoot Science does. It's
00:13:10
Speaker
Specifically designed to create the same stimulus that one would get walking or running on sand for instance where your foot Carves into the ground and you get that contact up in an area of the foot called the mid arch. So it's right between
00:13:26
Speaker
the medial longitudinal arch, which we're all familiar with. We also have a lateral longitudinal arch and a transverse arch. And this proprioceptive dome stimulator, complicated and wordy, but this bump on the top of the insole fits into that point of the foot and wakes up those nerves every single stride or every single step. And the body can then respond to that. It's a reflex response that happens from there on.
00:13:53
Speaker
And that we know through the work that Peter has done and through using other types of technology called surface electromyography where you measure the activation of the muscles, we know that
00:14:07
Speaker
once people start wearing barefoot science, they start to regain or gain symmetry left side, right side, which is Peter's explain is the key to well balanced movement. Yeah. So that's, you know, there's, there's the connection. And I think that's what drew Peter to, to the use of barefoot science in, in your clinic, Peter, am I right in saying, Oh, well, we have to realize,
00:14:31
Speaker
is that when you're running, your eyes are looking ahead. What's reading the ground is your feet. So your feet read the ground.
00:14:43
Speaker
And then you take the next step and your foot reads the ground and you take the next step. So you want high efficiency in reading the ground. So there's a very simple test. Stand in a one-legged balance position with your eyes open. So you're standing on one leg. Your opposite leg is brought, your knee is brought up to 90 degrees in front of you. Your hands are held up to the side of your shoulders.
00:15:11
Speaker
You're looking straight ahead. Your eyes are open and you balance on one leg. And most people could do that for one minute, two minute. They could do that. Yeah. Okay. Now let's do the same test.
00:15:26
Speaker
When you're ready, close your eyes. You should be the same person. All you did was drop an eyelid down. You didn't change anything else. And what you'll see for most people is they start shaking. Some people actually fall over in two, three, four seconds.
00:15:47
Speaker
They're not transmitting properly. They don't have good proprioceptive ability and that becomes detrimental to the runner because now as your proprioceptive ability is not as effective as it should,
00:16:04
Speaker
then it's taking you longer to read and understand the ground with each foot strike. If it takes you longer to read and understand the ground, you're going to increase your ground contact time. And all of running is just contact and flight, contact and flight.
00:16:22
Speaker
If I increase my ground contact time, it slows me down. So we've learned over the last 30, 40 years that a very good proprioceptive ability is to be able to stand on one leg with your eyes closed, stiff as an arrow for 30 seconds. If you shake or move before the 30 seconds, that's a little bit of inefficiency that should be corrected.
00:16:51
Speaker
I came across a device known as barefoot science. I knew the whole idea. Take the runner, put him barefoot in sand, let him walk around for a year barefoot in sand, and the sand will stimulate the mid arch and help their proprioceptive ability. I knew all that. Well, how do you get that done? Most people, unless you have Stewart's kind of money, most people can't take a year off.
00:17:18
Speaker
to walk barefoot in sand and say goodbye to everything else.
00:17:23
Speaker
So a guy by the name of Lance Todd who developed Barefoot Science, he says, here's my mid-auge proprioceptive stimulator. I said, you gotta be kidding me. It can't be that simple.
Balance, Efficiency, and Performance Insights
00:17:33
Speaker
So he gives me the thing and I start putting it on runners. And I never in my life saw the ability to stand on one leg with your eyes closed improve so quickly that I challenge anybody out there. You think you're a good runner? Okay, fine.
00:17:52
Speaker
You're comparing to others just because you're better than others. That doesn't make you good compared to yourself. If you want to know if you're good to yourself, first check your balance. Second, check your proprioceptive ability.
00:18:07
Speaker
If you start shaking in your proprioceptive ability compared to your eyes open, your eyes closed says that you're not as efficient, try the barefoot science. And I have never seen where it doesn't help. I'm totally amazed by it. There's barefoot science.
00:18:27
Speaker
There's only one other, I carried Barefoot Science at a tiger tail rolling muscle massager. It's the only two products we use for all the people we see. And we consult with, I think they told me 30 countries around the world on four different continents. So there's a lot of following to this approach, but everybody should test themselves. And if they see the weakness, go ahead, try the Barefoot Science initiative.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting, Joe. I'm going to be speaking about this at the National Running Show South in the middle of September, 12th of September. And I'm on the running skills stage talking both mornings. And this is exactly the basis of my talk is about the importance of balancing contact time and running efficiency.
00:19:17
Speaker
And the aim is I'm going to try and get people up on the stage, three or four people, and test their balance. Let's show people how important it is, how difficult it is. And I mentioned earlier that young professional footballer, young woman who came to see me. Before putting her on the OptiGate system, I tested her balance. And she was phenomenal. She was a minute with eyes closed in all positions until we put her on the slant board.
00:19:46
Speaker
in what would be a loaded pronated position, or it's called an inverted position at the ankle, so the foot's tilted inwards. And having been able to stand comfortably for a minute in all other positions, she started to wobble very, very quickly and came off the slant board at 16 seconds.
00:20:06
Speaker
Then we put her in her trainers and did the same test and she lasted 11 seconds in that position. So we very quickly saw where her problem is and it was creating for her, it was creating this instability in movement.
00:20:19
Speaker
which was resulting in Achilles tendon problems. Put her into the insoles, got her walking on the treadmill, went outside for a little walk around, retested her, literally, I would say, 500 steps later. And she held that position. And 45 seconds in, she opened her eyes and looked at me and said, this is unbelievable. And I said, yeah. And like Peter, I've been doing what I do for 30 years. So if Peter's 29, that makes me about 21.
00:20:50
Speaker
It just blows my mind every time I see it, because it's just such a clear example of a before and after case of how proprioceptive stimulation changes things immediately. And this is what Barefoot Science and Solves do. And that's why I got involved with them. I've been doing this for years, looked at lots of different products, and just thought, yeah, this is one that I'm prepared to put my name and my money to after doing this for such a long time, because I can see it working.
00:21:19
Speaker
I mean, we played with this with you, Joe, didn't we? Yeah, mine was poor. I'm up to level four on the insoles. I've had six operations on my right knee, Peter.
00:21:37
Speaker
The most recent one was a high tibial osteotomy, and I've struggled. I've definitely struggled, and I'm back to a comfortable 15 miles a week, and I'm on level four, so I'm an advocate. I'm definitely an advocate. Well, you have to remember the ankle, the knee, the hip. They're called hinge joints. They flex, they extend. They flex, they extend.
00:22:03
Speaker
When you have a pronation weakness, like Stuart was just talking about, and you have a collapse of the mid arch, you're adding rotation to that knee joint. And that usually manifests itself early on as lateral knee pain. And then the next thing you know, you go from lateral knee pain to hips that can externally rotate properly. The point that I'm making is why allow people
00:22:31
Speaker
to go through the movement cycle, not knowing they're weak in one of the phases. In the case that Stewart just gave, it was pronation. Well, we know from tracking over the last five years that 83% of the athletes, if they have a weakness, they have a weakness in pronation. So wouldn't it be such a nice, simple test?
00:22:57
Speaker
A, to see if you have balance, and why do we balance? Well, look how you run. You run one leg, and you jump to the next leg. So you're balancing on one leg in motion, and then you're balancing on the next leg, and then you're balancing on the next. We're walking, you're on one leg, but then you're on two legs, then you're on one leg, then you're on two legs.
00:23:25
Speaker
So a runner needs more balance than a walker because you don't have double support. You go from single support to single support to single support. So first check to see if you have balance. Next.
00:23:40
Speaker
Now that you're moving, are you reading the ground properly? Well, do the next check. Check to see that your balance can hold up under appropriate receptive demand by closing your eyes. If you cannot hold up under appropriate receptive demand, then you need mid-art stimulation.
00:24:00
Speaker
borrow money from Stuart and go walk on an island somewhere barefoot for a year, or buy a simple pair of barefoot signs and put it in your shoe and go through the program of mid-art stimulation. Now that we have the mid-art stimulation working, look at the different phases that your foot's going to go through.
00:24:22
Speaker
dorsiflexion, pronation, supination, plantar flexion. Are you balanced and strong in each phase? Or is there a moment of weakness that you don't know because you don't stay there long enough to realize it?
00:24:37
Speaker
But when we freeze frame you, either measuring you with the optogate or a simple slant board and putting you in different positions, you can't hold position. If you can't hold position at zero miles an hour, what makes you think you can hold position at five miles an hour? Fix the weakness. But to fix the weakness, you have to know that a weakness exists.
00:25:01
Speaker
And what Stuart just told us is through a very simple examination and study of balanced proprioception and foot strike position, even before we got into technology, just that simple understanding can save many by knowing here's the weakness. Here's how you fix the weakness. Let's all hope everybody be more efficient runners.
00:25:26
Speaker
It's so simple. I don't know why everybody doesn't do it. It's just a nice approach. It's a nice approach. Yeah, we'll have to put it out there as a challenge and we'll do it to get actually doing it. I mean, one of the interesting things there, Peter talked about the action of what's called supination, the foot rolling out now.
00:25:49
Speaker
I've been seeing runners for a long, long time and lots of runners go to a running shop and they get analyzed and they're told that they're over pronating so they get sold a particular pair of trainers to correct over pronation.
00:26:01
Speaker
Or if it's even worse, they might go and get a pair of orthotics or whatever it is. Now, I started to look differently at this. Having sold orthotics previously, I kind of fell out of love with them because for me, they weren't doing what I wanted them to do, which was to actually encourage the foot to re-supernate. So I was seeing a lot of people pronating, but we need pronation. But we need it to be controlled pronation, not a complete collapse.
00:26:25
Speaker
And what I realized then was mostly these people were collapsing into pronation and staying there. They weren't coming back out of it into re-supernation for the push off. So they weren't then using their foot correctly through that. So I started to look at that differently. And that's where I do a really simple test with people before I got the Octogate, where I would test them just stepping through and see whether the foot re-supernated.
00:26:49
Speaker
And it often doesn't. Then we put the barefoot science insole underneath that foot. And again, it was almost like magic. It didn't matter what was going on. If the foot was collapsing in and staying there and the shin was rotating the wrong way and the thigh was rotating the opposite way.
00:27:05
Speaker
Barefoot science somehow corrects it and you get the right sequence of movement through the foot, the shin, the thigh up into the hip and it controls all those rotations that Peter was talking about. So we get hinging on the hinging joints and rotating on the rotating joints.
00:27:21
Speaker
Right the way up the body, it carries on up because if your hips not rotating, then the rotation often gets thrown into the lumbar spine. And the lumbar spine, the low back's not designed for rotation. So a lot of runners get low back pain, but they get low back pain because they're rotating through their lumbar spine. And so again, it can track on up right the way up through the system. So getting that foot function right, getting that stimulus right.
00:27:45
Speaker
It's just like magic when you see that change. And I don't know if that's something you've played with, Peter, where you've actually seen that difference between the fact that people do pronate. Obviously, we want them to pronate, but they don't come back out of pronation. Is that something that you've seen? Look, pronation is a normal movement of the foot that's necessary in the shock absorption phase. We understand that.
00:28:13
Speaker
What Stewart said, and it's 100% correct, it's not the pronation, it's the excess of pronation that causes the problem. And sometimes that's okay for certain defined events, such as the 100 meter dash, and I don't want to get into it because I got the data on certain people that are pretty good runners at it.
00:28:38
Speaker
um where you want to for that particular thing keep them a little bit over pronated but for the normal person you pronate and then you roll to supinate and what happens is they don't come out of pronation they
The Art of Running: Balance and Proprioception
00:28:55
Speaker
stay down it causes an excessive torsional change in the tibial shaft the shin bone coming up your leg it causes an inward rotation of the knee
00:29:07
Speaker
and it causes lateral knee pain in the earliest stages. So how do they fix it? They go out, they buy an orthotic, and I don't want to be totally down an orthotic because sometimes you have a person who has a serious muscle weakness that has to be dealt with and you need that orthotic to push that foot into place. But for most healthy people,
00:29:34
Speaker
Once we push the foot into place, the orthotic is doing the work. Now, what's the chance that the muscle that's weak, tibialis anterior, whatever it might be, is going to reactivate itself? Well, it's going to go to sleep further.
00:29:50
Speaker
because the orthotic is pushing the foot into place. There's no chance of fixing the reason for the weakness in the first place. So what the barefoot science does, it helps to correct the problem, not by pushing it into place, but by stimulating
00:30:07
Speaker
the mid arch to lift the foot and over time, re-strengthen the foot so that the normal mechanical movements of the foot and how they affect the rest of the leg and then the lower extremity can all be more effective and more efficient.
00:30:24
Speaker
So what we need to understand is it's not just the movement, but sometimes it's the excessive movement in a given phase of running. That's the problem. And all of that is very, like Stuart said, you go to Stuart's office and very simply he can say, strong, weak, need this, need it. But those little changes are profound, life-changing changes, especially for the runner.
00:30:54
Speaker
who has decided, think about it, you're a runner.
00:30:58
Speaker
you are no longer complacent to walking around on the planet Earth, where you lift your leg and say, oh, I lifted my leg. I'm going to put my foot back down and stand on both legs. And then I'm going to lift my leg again. That's not what the runner says. The runner says, I'm going to be on one leg. I'm not going to be mediocre and go back to two legs. I'm going to attempt to fly. So I'm going to lift my leg, stand on one.
00:31:26
Speaker
And I'm going to bound from one into the next one. And I'm going to give up double support. And by giving up double support, I'm going to make sure for that runner, now that they took that chance to go run.
00:31:42
Speaker
that they have good balance to do it, and they have good proprioceptive to support it. A good proprioceptive ability to support it. And the next step from running would obviously be flying, but we haven't figured that's barefoot science too. Where you put it in your foot, you know. I didn't listen to them. They're going to love that. They're going out on their next runs and they're saying to themselves. That's barefoot science too. And we'll get those guys at Virgin Galactic to do something about that.
00:32:17
Speaker
I'm going to attempt to fly they're gonna love that well that's what running is running is man's attempt to fly it's as close as you come
00:32:27
Speaker
to flying consistently. Step by step, here I bound. Well, you'll need special support compared to the average person because now you're attempting to fly by calling yourself a runner. It's our job to make sure that now that they're taking the attempt to fly,
00:32:49
Speaker
We give them all the proper support needed to be effective and efficient at it. Otherwise, all they're going to do for all their great efforts is to break down, end up with pain, and 30 years from now, have a hip or a knee that says, I wish I never ran.
Debating Running Techniques and Footwear
00:33:09
Speaker
I wish I was on a bicycle, or I wish I did that. No, they need to run. They need to attempt to fly.
00:33:15
Speaker
but we need to support them and balance and proprioception are the key ingredients for them. I'm interested in both your thoughts on this. There's been a massive publicity about forefoot and midfoot running and minimal shoes. What are your views on this?
00:33:35
Speaker
Do you want to go? Everyone. Go ahead Stuart and I'll make the corrections after you. Thank you. Go ahead. In my view, the simple answer is I've treated lots of runners who heel strike run and they wear cushioned shoes and they come in with an injury. I've also treated lots of runners who have gone over to minimal shoes and tried to run and tried to change their running style and have ended up with other injuries. But the bottom line is that for some people,
00:34:04
Speaker
minimal shoes will work. If they've got a nice running style, their muscular chore is ready and it's fit and strong enough to cope with it. If they've got the proprioceptive stimulation, they'll cope with it. But for a lot of people, they won't. And I've seen more and more people who have gone over to minimal shoes get injured. I think even the manufacturers
00:34:21
Speaker
admit now that there's a minimum six-month transition period to get used to it. But some people are just not going to be suited to that. So if they're better and less likely to get injured and can perform well with a thicker, sold shoe running with a heel strike, then crack on. Why not? Peter? What do you think, Peter?
00:34:48
Speaker
All right, now listen to everything I say before you draw conclusions. Everybody, everybody should be a four foot runner in a minimalist shoe if they can. Everybody, if they can, should be a four foot runner in a minimalist shoe.
00:35:13
Speaker
but show me where it's smart to have a person land on their forefoot. And instead of loading on forefoot,
00:35:25
Speaker
They now fall back to their heel because they can't stabilize on their forefoot. They're not able, they're not at that level yet. So they land on their forefoot, they fall back to their heel, they rock back to their forefoot, and then they go into toe-off and push-off. If you're going to go backwards,
00:35:49
Speaker
I don't understand where going backwards for a runner is ever good. Hold on one second. The idea is to land, load and go forward. Spend less time in contact, a little bit more time in foot flat and then most of your time in the propulsive phase.
00:36:16
Speaker
If you're gonna land on your forefoot, fall back to your rear foot, land to your heel, and then go back to your, you spend so much time, you added so much time to your contact, that you might as well start at your heel. So the idea is, and you can measure this precisely in an Opti-Gate system, just go to Stewart's today and you'll know this answer immediately.
00:36:46
Speaker
When I land, how do I land and what do I do after I land? You should never land more forward than you could go forward from. If you have to go in and go backwards from where you landed, then you might as well back off and start more back on the foot until you gain the ability, the balance,
00:37:13
Speaker
the proprioceptive ability, the tendon work, the muscle work, to be more fore. But don't just call yourself a forefoot runner because it's the new thing, or a minimalist shoot thing because it's the new thing. Correct your imbalances. Be what you need to be. There was a man that all of you are very familiar with the name, so that's why I can't say it. He probably at the time was the greatest runner in the world.
00:37:43
Speaker
And he was shifted to be more of a rear foot striker because he was landing a little bit forefoot, then wasting time coming back and then going forward. Well, just make him start from back. And the next thing you know, he was getting gold medals and being declared the best runner in the world. So the point that I'm making is at every level, every level,
00:38:08
Speaker
You land where you can go forward from. You don't land where you go backwards from. And that's the problem. People think, oh, that's a good thing. Yeah, it's a good thing. We all should strive for it. But that doesn't mean that's who we are today. Let's go to the moon.
00:38:27
Speaker
Well, that's a nice idea, Orville and Wilbur. But before we go to the moon, let's just get off the ground a little bit. And then let's go to the moon. And then let's build houses on the moon. It's impossible today, but that doesn't mean it's impossible tomorrow. Find out who you are today. Add the excellence of training and conditioning to it.
00:38:52
Speaker
And what was impossible today will become reality tomorrow through your enhanced training and your efficiency. So yes, we all should be forefoot runners when we're ready and able to be a forefoot runner. So we use the OptoGate to measure where you land.
00:39:10
Speaker
What you do after you land and we change your foot strike so that you land load and go forward, not land load and go backwards. That to me, nobody could argue that point. You have to land load. The problem is most places can't measure it.
00:39:28
Speaker
And that's why we built 1,000 Hertz ability into the out the gate system. So to a millisecond of accuracy, you can understand the foot strike and say, I've had people come to the office with their foot, forefoot striking on the left foot, rear foot striking on the right foot, and wondering why their knees and low back hurt. Are you kidding me?
00:39:53
Speaker
So get analyzed, get understood, and let's try to be efficient at the level we are. And once we're efficient at that level, then go to the next level and the next level. But don't try to go to the moon first. Let's learn to fly first.
Conclusion and Resources
00:40:09
Speaker
A question to follow that then. How much improvement can realistically be made using just the barefoot science insoles then on their own as it in compared to in conjunction with the with the system with the OptiGate? How much improvement can a person have? Yeah, how much improvement? Okay, you're not going to take me.
00:40:40
Speaker
and turn me into the world's greatest runner, no matter what you do and no matter how much weight I lose. I'm beyond my time for that. But you are gonna teach me to learn to grow younger with every step I take under Stewart's program of training effectively and training efficiency, learn to grow younger. So you can improve everyone. The body is plastic, meaning the body gets hurt
00:41:07
Speaker
You cut it, it heals, and like magic, next week you don't even know that you cut the body. The body is plastic and it heals. The brain is neuroplastic. The brain gets hurt. The brain gets hurt.
00:41:22
Speaker
It gets healed and you can train it and it's better than it ever was. That's why there's another company, brainhq.com. It's the only company that's allowed to save. We reduced the onset of dementia by 53% by using our platform. It's that powerful of a brain train. So you have a body that's plastic, you have a brain that's neuroplastic and all it needs is proper conditioning.
00:41:51
Speaker
The younger the person, the more conditioning they can get, the more advancement they can have. As you go through this game known as life, where do you start? I started in my 10s, in my 20s, in my 30s, in my 60s. It's never too late to start.
00:42:14
Speaker
Now, will you heal and become a marathon runner? I don't think so. But depending on where you start putting proper stimulation, proper understanding, effective trainings into the human body, and it's never too early to start and it's never too late to start.
00:42:34
Speaker
both mind and body are plastic and they can be changed. And if we all listen to Joe's podcast and we adapt certain trainings and certain understandings, we could look at the game of life and we can march through it. And with every step that we take, we can learn to grow younger by helping each other improve our balance
00:43:01
Speaker
and improve our brain speed. There's a big study out there that says at the age of 53, if a lady can balance better than another lady, she has a lower chance of dying. She's going to live longer. That's a major, major study. There's another study out there that says if you balance very well,
00:43:24
Speaker
I think they were talking about a minute on one leg with eyes open. You could have a perfect MRI of your brain. And the guy did this big study out at the Kyoto University in Japan, where they had you balance and then they took an MRI of your brain. And the better the balance, the better the MRI. So why don't we nourish the brain by balancing better? The fundamental component of all movement is balance and balance with proprioception.
00:43:53
Speaker
Enhance it at every level. How do you die? You die by laying down. You don't die standing up. Death is the ultimate loss of balance. And I want to get into all this philosophy right now, but death is the ultimate loss of value. You lose your balance, you lose your balance, you lay down and you die. Well, why don't we make a point in life where we say, I'm tired of losing my balance. From this day on, I'm going to try to gain balance.
00:44:22
Speaker
And now as I gain balance, I actually taught a step towards you instead of a step in the other direction. Same thing with brain speed. Go to Stewart's office, find out what your brain speed is. Your brain eventually slows and slows and gets demented and it dies. Well, instead of letting it slow down, why don't we enhance the brain speed and speed it up so that by the time I'm 60,
00:44:51
Speaker
I have a better brain speed at 70. I actually made my brain get better nourished. I took a decade to nourish it and let it learn to grow younger. So there is no limitation on the human body.
00:45:08
Speaker
What there's limitation on is reality that we have to compare and compete against others. So what we should do is compete against ourselves and every day learn how to grow younger by applying certain fundamentals that are easy to do and have profound effective changes on the human body. Let's all learn to grow younger together and become better able and agile while we're doing it.
00:45:37
Speaker
What a wonderful way for us to wrap up, I think, Peter. Thank you. Thank you both ever so much for joining us. Where can people learn more? If you want to point our audience to websites and social media and that good stuff, please.
00:45:52
Speaker
Well, in terms of the UK market, my website is all about balance.co.uk. The clue is in the title. We've got lots of videos on there showing how to do these balance tests, showing some examples of the use of Optigate and so on, and the inclusion of the insoles, the perfect science insoles. So, www.allaboutbalance.co.uk.
00:46:19
Speaker
We've got links from there onto our Instagram and our Twitter accounts and our Facebook and all the other social stuff and the YouTube channel. So absolutely have a look on there for runners. I'm going to shoot myself here, but for runners, we're running a we've got the Runfest event coming up in a couple of weekends time.
00:46:41
Speaker
a huge big running festival, Peter, in the countryside. And that's on the 27th, 28th, 29th of August down in Lavastoke Park. And then we've got the national running shows south in Farnborough and Hampshire on the
00:47:01
Speaker
11th and 12th of September where both occasions I'm exhibiting, got the insoles there, going to be doing some talking at the running show South. Come along and see, come along and have a go at the balance tests. I'll have a slant board there. I hopefully have the Optigate there at the running show and we can put people through their paces and show them how it works.
00:47:21
Speaker
Stuart, when all this COVID stuff passes, and I feel sorry for everyone that's been affected by it, but I kind of put myself in locked. I used to do about 300,000 miles a year in the air. And last year I didn't do any, and I haven't done any this year. But when this COVID stuff passes, Stuart, I'm going to look forward one day to being in London and being at a running event with you and going through some stuff.
00:47:49
Speaker
Joe organizes these events, Peter. He's a race organizer. Well, then Joe can buy the fish and chips, but I was staying in London. I went to a place, I don't even know where I was, but I'm sure you guys will help me if I was like a market. And in that market was a guy who won the fish and chip award. And I said, how the hell can it be different? And I went in there and by the time I finished my second order,
00:48:16
Speaker
It ruined me because now every other fish and chip is right. So if I'm coming over, then Joe's buying at that game. We'll make sure that we find it.
00:48:30
Speaker
Well, I look forward to welcoming you, Peter. I mean, it'd be great to see you here. We could have some fun at an event. So I look forward to it. If anybody has any questions, I mean, come on, you got Stuart right there. Ask Stuart all the questions that you want. Stuart can always, if he needs any help and he doesn't, he's a genius with it. But if he needs any help, he could contact us. And we're happy to help anybody at any time.
00:48:59
Speaker
Brilliant. So you just let us know. Brilliant. Thanks, Peter. And I'll make sure we include all links to Stuart on all the show notes. So Peter, Stuart, thanks ever so much for joining us. It's been great. Thank you, Peter. Really good to talk. All right. It was a great time, guys. Have a great day. Stay safe. Stay safe. And you. Bye bye. Bye bye.