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FC2O Episode 23 - Helen Hall (Part 1)
80 Plays4 years ago
Helen is one of those rare treasures who truly walks her talk... well, in fact, she often runs her talk. As a barefoot ultra runner, run coach, rehab & performance specialist, author and early adopter, Helen is someone who inspires on many levels.
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Transcript
Barefoot vs Cushioned Shoes: Force Measurements
00:00:00
Speaker
And with my amazing new tech, I have the data for myself. So I'll measure somebody running barefoot if their feet are used to running in a minimal shoe. So for instance, a footballer will be used to running around the pitch in a completely flat shoe, no support, just skugs underneath.
00:00:27
Speaker
So it's very interesting to then measure that same footballer with a pair of trainers on and see the force change. So we know the studies have gone back decades now where it was established that when there is a cushion underneath your foot, you will land firmer, you will land harder. It was the same body weight. So on my force plate treadmill, people will run and they will have
00:00:53
Speaker
a force going into the force plate that I can measure with 8,000 sensors and they will run at the same speed with their shoes on and there will be more force. And I find that so interesting. It's been revealed in front of me. I am reading
00:01:14
Speaker
and seeing for myself the research that goes back actually a really long way. Well, Nike found out about that in the 80s, didn't they? So that's one of the famous quotes from the Born to Run book.
Helen Hall: Barefoot Ironman and Coach
00:01:56
Speaker
Helen has been a colleague and friend of mine since 2007 when we first met due to our shared interest in human movement and function. As you'll hear, aside from Helen's explorations into human biomechanics and gait, she is someone who practices what she preaches and holds the accolade of being the world's first barefoot female Iron Man, even if that seems something of a misnomer.
00:02:16
Speaker
Helen has run marathons, ironmen, ultras and all in barefoot or minimalist footwear, as well as coaching thousands of people both directly and through her fantastic barefoot running albums, Barefoot Goddess and Barefoot Apollo, in association with pop star and fellow barefoot runner Kirsty Hawkshaw.
00:02:34
Speaker
Helen and I have presented at various conferences and events together, and on one long train journey back from Edinburgh, I talked Helen into digging deeper into the Paleo approach, something she and her husband embraced and still very much followed to this day, combining it with her penchant for endurance events. So sit back and enjoy this chat with Helen Hall, one of life's true enthusiasts and someone who walks the talk to the nth degree. Enjoy the show. Here we go.
00:03:01
Speaker
Welcome to another edition of FC2O with me, Matt Wolden, and my guest, Helen Hall. Thank you, Matt. I'm very pleased to be here. Excellent. Fantastic. Now, obviously we met, I'm trying to remember when we met. Was it around 2007, 2008, something like that? It was at Olympia back show, 2007. Yes. Where I was in my film, Max Tossocks.
00:03:28
Speaker
And I came across shoes where I could put my toes.
00:03:34
Speaker
without taking my socks off straight into them. And I just thought this was the best thing ever. I remember, I do remember that. And the fact that was the very first show I think we went to as distributors of the Vibram Five Fingers. And so they were, I remember the reactions at the show, obviously, where people were quite bemused by them and shocked by them. But I think you were one of the few people that saw the light straight away. You were like, this is something that is gonna work.
00:04:01
Speaker
That's with my socks. I even already had my feet prepared because I think it was a Olympic collection. I'm pretty sure that was in the wintery time. So having having the toe socks already on before my feet went in, before I even knew such a thing existed. Yes. That's very cool. Yeah, yeah.
00:04:22
Speaker
I was ready for you. Excellent, excellent.
From Air Traffic to Therapy: Helen's Journey
00:04:25
Speaker
So if we take a little step back before that, because obviously at the time you're running Tenpoint, which was essentially a specialist running store and triathlon store already, wasn't it?
00:04:39
Speaker
Yes, back then it was triathlon. We did everything in swim, bike, run. Of course, it started run and then we added bike and then because triathlon has that wet thing, we had to do the wet thing, although I still don't do well with the wet thing. But yeah, back in the day when it was a shop and people came shopping,
00:05:00
Speaker
into shops no longer the way now. Yes, yes exactly. Now what it led you into that in the first instance, because I know a little bit about your background, I know that you started in the military and became, when you left the military, I understand that you went into manual infected drainage as a part of what you did, but can you just walk us through that sort of phase of your career?
00:05:24
Speaker
So when I was, yeah, I was an air traffic control supervisor when I was in the Air Force and felt obliged to look after the squadron football team because ever since I can remember, I looked after people with rose petal poultices, whatever bandaging might be available. And then when I left the Air Force, I wanted to be a physiotherapist.
00:05:51
Speaker
But I couldn't afford to go back to university or to university for three years. So I did a year at college, remedial massage. And when I came back from Africa, so then there was a little hiatus when I lived in Africa for nearly five years and my youngest son was born there. When I came back, having worked in a physiotherapist clinic, doing all sorts of things that I really had no qualifications to do, but I did it
00:06:21
Speaker
with the physiotherapist looking over my shoulder and I had a good pair of hands. So she allowed me to help her. I came back and of course I was not qualified to do what I had been doing in Africa. And there was such a thing when I came back called a sports therapist, which I'd never even heard of.
Manual Lymph Drainage and Trigger Points
00:06:40
Speaker
And it seemed to me that sports therapists were doing what I was doing before I left Africa as a remedial master. We're going back
00:06:50
Speaker
This is late 80s. I don't know how many years that is. That's like 30 years, isn't it? And then my best friend from Africa got breast cancer. And it was the first time that I could recall not having any skills to help her. And then back in those days before Google,
00:07:15
Speaker
I looked at Yellow Pages because she'd heard of something called manual lymph drainage and I found somewhere on the South Coast through Yellow Pages which said that they did a form of manual lymph drainage so I called them and had a natter as you did in those days.
00:07:33
Speaker
And she said, oh, we don't do that tricky one. We don't do that difficult, that difficult one. And I said, what do you mean the difficult one? And she said, well, there's, you know, the VODA one is a bit tricky, so we don't do that one. So of course, I closed the conversation and then went off in search of VODA. Yes. And you're lived drainage, but you know, I think I want that one. Yeah. And then set off to get qualified in VODA manual of drainage.
00:08:02
Speaker
I had to go to Austria to get fully qualified. And I still felt it wasn't quite fulsome enough. It didn't, I didn't feel confident that anybody who walked in through the clinic door could, I could help. So then I managed to get on the Laduk medical lymph drainage course and I added that to my arsenal and then I felt confident. And then,
00:08:30
Speaker
MBTs came into my life.
Embracing Barefoot: The Vibram Five Fingers
00:08:32
Speaker
Yes. This is the long winded version of how we get to the shop. So MBTs were, there was an article in the Sunday Times and it talked about all the things that I worked with and with lymphedema and that I had, which was sciatica. And I thought, goodness me. So I spoke to the CEO of Massey Barefoot Technology in Liverpool street at the time.
00:09:00
Speaker
and went to see him and then started selling MBTs from my clinic.
00:09:06
Speaker
and out of the boot of my car with, I would go and visit people and fit them and show them how to move in a better way using these crazy shoes. And then it was, it sort of had a life of its own. And then before I knew it, I needed to have a shop. And I first NBT shop in the UK and the CEO from Liverpool street came and cut the ribbon.
00:09:32
Speaker
Oh, wow. So my barefoot journey started with the most ridiculous, a lot of in great shoes that you could imagine. Yeah. Thick, thick, thick soles that and you were, you know, two inches off the floor, but it had barefoot in the name. So when was that? What sort of year would that have been? That was 2000 and
00:10:01
Speaker
I opened the shop 2004. And then, so three years later, when I was no longer the only person in the whole wide world, at least in the UK, selling MBTs, we then had Newton's in the shop, which were magical to run in after the weight of the MBTs. And then, of course, I met you.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, right. So you're a real, what's the word? An early adopter. I think I can safely say of the many things I am, one of them is definitely an early adopter. Yes, excellent, excellent. Okay, fantastic. So now when did you, because you obviously were running prior to me to me, what sort of, I know you were the first person to run an iron, or first woman to run an iron man in
00:10:54
Speaker
barefoot shoes or minimalist shoes. That's one claim to fame. But what have you done prior to that? Have you run several marathons or other Ironmans in normal running shoes, so to speak? No, no, that was my first Ironman and they were my only trainers, so it was a complete accident. And Robin, who worked with me in the shop, he beat me across the line by several hours, and he was running in.
00:11:23
Speaker
Five Fingers, Robin Davies. And so he was the first in the whole world. I was the second and the first girl. It was in that same event. So Iron Man Austria 2009 was the first time anybody apparently
00:11:41
Speaker
across the line. And then Stephen Lord was just, I thought Stephen Lord was the first, but it turns out his event was after mine. He took me. Yes. Oh, that, yeah, that's my, um, icebreaker conversation stopper sometimes got into fame. Uh, no prior to that, um, I've run as long as I can
Marathon Beginnings and Military Influence
00:12:02
Speaker
remember.
00:12:03
Speaker
It was my freedom down the back lane and literally it was called the back lane. It's still called the back lane in the village of Lower Quinton, which is where I went to secondary school, where I grew, where I was living when I went to secondary school. And, and I was allowed to run the three miles there and back down the back lane. Right. Right. And I, I was, I was the,
00:12:30
Speaker
the solo running around the muddy school playing fields on my own every lunchtime. That's what I love doing. And I wasn't very good at ball sports, even though I tried really hard, I was always reserved. I was enthusiastic, but not very good hand-eye coordination. But I ran a lot. I could run up and down the wing very willingly.
00:12:52
Speaker
And then I trained for my first marathon, which was the inaugural Stratford-Ponavon marathon. That would have been in 82, just before my 18th birthday. So you can do the maths. And I arrived and they said, oh no, I'm riding my gymnacus. Because that's all I had, my school gymnacus and a t-shirt.
00:13:18
Speaker
and some trainers that I bought off the market and they said, oh, you're too young to run the marathon. What? You had to be 18 and I was going to be 18 in two weeks. Right. And they wouldn't let me. So, um, so I ran a half. Okay.
00:13:38
Speaker
Okay, okay. And then after that it was straight into the Air Force where it was just great big DMS boots and pine poles on your shoulder and kit bags and
00:13:51
Speaker
A lot of trudging and so running then became something else. So distance running stopped then. You ran the five miles that you had to run with the pine pole on your shoulder as you do and on camps and things, but it was sort of within the officer training that you had to do.
00:14:17
Speaker
So then running for pleasure took a little bit of a backseat until, well, probably until I was out of the Air Force, more or less. Sure. Okay. Okay. So when did the interest in triathlon come along? Was that, was that as a result of setting up the shop or was it prior to setting up the shop? No, after setting up the shop. So I was running and everything was geared around running, gate,
00:14:42
Speaker
movement on two feet. And then my now husband, Brian, he just, a couple of triathletes came in and they got chatting with Brian. And then before I knew it, we were selling bikes and building bikes. And then in time we became bike fitting instructors.
00:15:11
Speaker
bike fitting. So it just rolled. There was this wonderful meandering path that just rolled out in front of me and I just went with the flow. I took a place that was for somebody else to go to America to the bike fitting institute run by Dan Enfield, the godfather of triathlon bicycles, and became the first
00:15:35
Speaker
female road and tri bike fitter. And then the first female road and tri bike fitting instructor in Europe. There were a lot of firsts, but they were all accidents. Right. Excellent. Excellent. Now you mentioned both, I think you said Voda and Maduk. Is that right? Yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah and you and I have had the discussion at some point about about trigger points and how to treat them and I remember your technique was that from one of those instructors or was that a different person you learned from about trigger points? Yeah no that was we learned about trigger points back in college when I did the remedial massage and then
00:16:23
Speaker
with CPD courses since I came across trigger points and then there was a whole it became quite um a I wouldn't say fad um but trigger points suddenly became a bit of a thing with there was a workbook manual that everybody
00:16:45
Speaker
knew about. I've still got it on my bookshelf there. And I still... So it was Trevelyn Simons, is that right? Yeah. Well, no. So that hit... those were the two great big texts. Yes. But then there was another, like a pracy version, a blue workbook that was based on Trevelyn Simons work that just made... it was an easy, quick reference. And when that was published, then
00:17:14
Speaker
everybody was doing uh trigger it also it seemed at the time though it seemed so that was just something that was that i knew of and picked up and
00:17:25
Speaker
used more and honed and still use it even now, although not so much. Yes, yes. So I remember the discussion we had was that it actually came off the back of I was training for the London Marathon. So this was 2012, probably 2013.
00:17:46
Speaker
It must've been 2013 actually, because I remember I was a few weeks out from the marathon, and my Achilles was starting to give me some trouble. And you said to me, oh Matt, you just need to screen your calf at the trigger points. And I was thinking about it, I don't have any pain or discomfort in my calf. And so I started doing what I thought I would do normally clinically, which is to essentially find the tender point, and then to do an ischemic compression or an inhibition, which from reading Leon Chato's book,
00:18:15
Speaker
which he did i'm just trying to think which one it was i think it was his neuromuscular techniques but he had a little section in there where he talked about the different approaches to treating trigger points from you know strain counter strain to iskimic compression to electro acupuncture you know dry needling ice and stretch all of those different modalities and
00:18:36
Speaker
From what he could make out, he concluded that the ischemic compression was possibly the simplest approach and from the research had been done into it seemed equally as effective as the other techniques. So he kind of recommended, so just use ischemic compression. But you had a different technique and this was just milking the trigger points and going, was it, it was cross fiber, isn't it? It was cross fiber as opposed to, but very, very gently,
00:19:07
Speaker
Yeah. And sure enough, my Achilles pain disappeared within about two weeks of starting this little regimen.
Trigger Points and Running Techniques
00:19:15
Speaker
So, um, and it's something that I know you've used on yourself and obviously with clients across not just marathons, but ultra marathons as well. So do, can you, can you elaborate on that at all? Have I kind of covered everything that you would explain?
00:19:29
Speaker
Well, you have, but it's really interesting because as you were chatting, I realized that every single hands-on modality I use is all about bringing blood through the area, every single one. And I've got quite a few now. So whether you're draining lymph, whether you're treating it, milking a trigger point, whether you're
00:19:55
Speaker
creating a flow through a scar, whether it be a tissue scar on the surface, a tissue scar underneath, or a bone scar from a fracture, the common denominator is always flow.
00:20:11
Speaker
it's always irrigation. Yes. And that's a very osteopathic concept. The, you know, one of the sort of premises of osteopathy is about, it's called the rule of the artery and the idea that you keep flow of fluids, fluid dynamics optimized. Yeah. And it, and it's the, it's the, also the, the, the, the rule from, uh, going back to the very beginnings of, um, working with MLD with,
00:20:39
Speaker
with posture, with the MBTs being so useful in the treatment of the lymphedema patients because of the irrigation. You unkink a body, so you stand it upright without forward leans, without kinks, massive kinks in the inguinal canal, in the groin, behind the knees.
00:21:04
Speaker
So you unflex a body and then all of the tubes, if you think about the whole of the main artery vein, air pipes, digestive pipes, the initial ones, they're all, you can picture a schematic as like a plumbing system and if you can just stack everything on top of each other, everything seems to work better.
00:21:33
Speaker
So with the trigger points, the milking, the cross fiber, just taking, imagining that you're taking inflammatory soup, which is creating pressure that the body is then giving you as feedback, as pain. You're just milking that away and allowing fresh nourishment to arrive.
00:21:58
Speaker
It doesn't seem to matter whether you use that milking technique, whether you pulse, whether you stack somebody vertically, whether you stroke the lymph up, all of them work. Because it seems to me that bodies that are uncomfortable are asking to be made more comfortable, not by
00:22:26
Speaker
pummeling, but by enabling fluids to arrive to all areas and depart all areas. It's not good enough. The artery is king, absolutely. It's not good enough just to get the fluids there. We have to enable the fluids to depart the use blood and of course the metabolic waste fluid taken away by the lymph system.
00:22:49
Speaker
So it's really, I've never actually thought of it. All of this is all boiled down to exactly the same thing. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? And one of the things also I remember you talking about is, and I think you're the first person I heard say this, is that the soleus muscle is often termed the second heart. Is that right?
00:23:09
Speaker
Yes, but I did. That wasn't me who said it originally. I might've been the first person who said it to you, but I read that in a coloring book. And when I was learning muscle origins, insertions, coloring, and it was a book for dancers. And it was the dancers who considered the soleus. Well, in that book, it was saying the dancers consider the soleus to be the second heart.
00:23:40
Speaker
I just thought, wow, that's really very cool because it's so big and it's attached to the great big Achilles tendon without which we can't run. We can walk without one if your feet are strong enough, but we can't run.
00:23:55
Speaker
of the Achilles tendon because without it I can't run, so I'm stroking my Achilles tendon now. Excellent, and of course this leads into the whole discussion around barefoot running because
Forefoot Striking Benefits
00:24:10
Speaker
One of the key differences between barefoot running and running shod is that people will tend to favor more of a forefoot strike when they are barefoot or in a very minimalist shoe. And of course, there are some people that will do that in a fully cushioned standard running shoe as well, but they tend to be the minority. The figures I've seen suggest that there's certainly less than 20%, perhaps even less than 10% of people will forefoot strike in a standard running shoe.
00:24:39
Speaker
But those figures pretty much invert when you put them into either a minimalist shoe or into fully barefoot. And so that obviously links back into this idea that your forefoot striking, the gastric enselleus in particular, are now having to work that a little bit harder and both concentrically and eccentrically. And therefore, you're getting that return of fluids optimized, it would seem. Is that part of the kind of conclusion that you arrived at?
00:25:13
Speaker
ancient and ongoing discussion about midfoot and rear foot first contact. I mean there's ancient to you and me because we've been in it but I think you know there's still when you look at most biomechanics books they still just talk about the gate cycle as being a heel strike midfoot, toe off, swing phase and there's not so much yet in the textbooks. I mean certainly there are in papers but there's not so much in the textbooks about even the idea you can forefoot or midfoot strike.
00:25:36
Speaker
Well, yes. Oh, that, that, that.
00:25:42
Speaker
So all of the textbooks I've seen, they discuss the walking gait cycle, which of course, apart from the toe walkers, does seem to, it seems to make a lot of sense that we start at the back of this enormous great big bone that is, it seems to be superbly shaped for the job of then rolling through to reach the toes.
00:26:08
Speaker
But landing on that enormous great big bone with both feet up in the sky. And you're referring to the calcaneus here, right? Yeah, the calcaneus. I can't make myself do it. I try to make myself do it. I just, I can't.
00:26:28
Speaker
And every time I'm with somebody, we investigate. So I want their bodies to decide where do you want to land? Jump up and down. Jump up and down the spot with shoes on. Jump up and down on the spot with shoes on. Where are you wanting to land? And if they're jumping up and down the spot, I don't know how many. It's obviously hundreds. It could be thousands. It probably is thousands.
00:26:55
Speaker
of people that I have ended up talking to about this over the years, not a single one yet. I've seen with my own eyes, minimalist runners who land on their rear foot, their heels, their cocaine, but not many. And when I'm with somebody, we just jump up and down the spot. Nobody, so far, nobody has ever, they all,
00:27:23
Speaker
land somewhere in front of the heel. And it seems to me an instinctive reaction to wanting to spread the load through the the rays of the feet leading to the toes, which have these amazingly strong introsious muscles that enable that spread and control that spread. So we have a lovely base of support that
00:27:49
Speaker
rose as our body weight lands through them and because of um now I got picked up for this a couple of weeks ago so um shout out to James Wilkinson uh I'm going to say the right the right thing according to Google and YouTube eccentric loading of uh the the plant of fascia
00:28:13
Speaker
Is that instead of eccentric, eccentric? Yeah, it's eccentric apparently. It's eccentric. It's the eccentric people and eccentric loading. It's the same pronunciation. So that's my new learning. I'm going to share that with you there. So the eccentric loading of the plantar fascia and of course with the calcaneus descending, you get the eccentric loading of the lower leg tissue into the Achilles tendon, the biggest tendon in the body.
00:28:42
Speaker
which instead of returning 50% of the potential energy with a stretch recoil, the research tells us that it can return up to 90. So it's such a significant tendon that if we are not stretching it under load, why is it so big? When we're walking, we've established your feet are strong enough because maybe they're being
00:29:10
Speaker
used without shoes for enough years. If your feet are strong enough, you don't need that Achilles tendon to walk and you're not stretching it under load. You're not eccentrically loading the Achilles into the lower leg musculature. You're just, you're just, it's, it's being pulled as the toes lift in ankle door selection, but, but you're, it's not being eccentrically loaded. But when you land with both feet up in the air,
00:29:39
Speaker
on somewhere in front of the heel, then yes, it is. So we get this amazing stretch recoil. And so some people suggest that the heel bone, the calcaneus is so big because we need to land on it. And I say, well, I understand this discussion, but we're not hammering it.
00:30:05
Speaker
where when we're walking, we always have one foot on the ground. So we're not landing on it with the forces that we would have when we're running. And when we're running, in my experience, nobody really wants to land on it with any force because that would hurt and instinctively they shy away from it. And maybe the size of it is because the Achilles tendon is so big
00:30:34
Speaker
It needs a great big chunk of bone to attach onto for the massive eccentric loading of the lower leg musculature into the foot. Yes, yes, absolutely. This win-win, no matter what gear you're in, you have a lovely great big bone to roll through and land with
00:30:53
Speaker
with less effort because you're in the gear of less effort. It's more efficient to, it uses less energy to walk. But then at some point when you want to go, it's not as efficient as running. So then we go into the next gear, but then we have this same useful calcaneus, which yes, we're not rolling through it quite the same.
00:31:17
Speaker
but it's significant enough and big enough for enormous structures to attach to it without it getting distressed.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah yeah it makes perfect sense and I know that I think Professor Lieberman talks about how the the plantar fascia and the Achilles tendon between them account for 17% and 35% respectively of the energy we can recoup during the gait cycle. So in other words if we are running with that kind of forefoot strike which and of course Lieberman is a
00:31:51
Speaker
What is he, evolutionary anthropologist? No, evolutionary biologist is the right term, from Harvard University. His whole field is looking at the evolution of running. He's looking at essentially the body's ability to be efficient within its environment. That's what evolution is all about, is for finding these energetic niches.
00:32:14
Speaker
And so the point really that that's alluding to is that if you heel strike, then you're not really utilizing those two structures, the Achilles tendon and the plantar fascia, nearly as well as you could do if you were to forefoot strike. And therefore you're canceling out a lot of that energetic benefit you could get if you were to forefoot strike.
00:32:39
Speaker
Again, from an evolutionary perspective, we know there were no Nike air trainers back in
Natural Running and Evolutionary Insights
00:32:44
Speaker
the day. So it does seem that the barefoot condition quite obviously was the natural condition and that we tend to go towards that forefoot, midfoot strike if we're not wearing something cushioned. But there's another element to this, isn't there? And that's the actual substrate that you're running over. Is that something that you've thought about much in terms of running on softer ground versus harder ground or that kind of thing?
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah, I come across that discussion a lot too and am I allowed to drop my book into this now? Of course, you could, yeah, of course. But having written the book even with your shoes on so that it is all inclusive and having read so much about this versus that and a lot of this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong,
00:33:39
Speaker
approached it from the point of, well, maybe we can look at this in terms of efficiency rather than right or wrong. Is it more efficient or less efficient? And so it seems to me that everything that you've just said, and I fell in love with the Achilles tendon when from Daniel Lieberman's work, which was quoted in Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, which is of course where
00:34:06
Speaker
We meet the amazing and wonderful Becca Ted, with whom we have run and enjoyed his company. So there we learn. We learn just how amazing this Achilles tendon is in that amazing book and Daniel Lieberman's amazing work. And the substrate that we run on, so I coach on road because it enables people to feel stuff and focus on stuff rather than focusing on keeping upright.
00:34:36
Speaker
I run, my running for pleasure is always off-road, the muddier the better. And my sense is this, the discussion about hard ground and soft ground, it doesn't really make much sense to me because most of the earth's surface isn't lovely soft manicured lawns and fields. It's, you run off-road and apart from the mud, it's hard. It's rocky, it's stony, it's hard.
00:35:06
Speaker
this soft, soft sand. Well, I mean, okay, you've got to be by the coast to have this soft sand. And the vast majority of the world doesn't live by the coast. And I get this feeling that the people think that, well, they need protection when they're on hard ground and they can only run with less protection on soft ground.
00:35:34
Speaker
And I just think, I don't think we evolved on soft ground. I don't know. But I just get the feeling that we didn't. And a lot of the ground that we traversed was actually hard. I lived in Africa. It's hard. I was going to say, in Africa, it's, I mean, so we know that our ancestors evolved from Africa. And of course, Africa is a lot hotter and harder than it is in sort of mid northern Europe. But also,
00:36:02
Speaker
one of the things i dug out is that africa's actually got wetter over the last two million years so when our ancestors did first start running which again from liebman's and others work suggests it suggests that that started around 2.2 million years ago that's where the adaptations came in but the ground was much harder back then and so it's you know we know that africa today is hard but but back then it would have been even harder so um so certainly uh it seems like
00:36:29
Speaker
our adaptations are for running on very hard ground. Yeah, for me the spread of these amazing five rays, these metatarsals with these staggeringly strong muscles in between each one, so they don't ping off in all sorts of different directions, the structure of the foot, it is just endlessly, fascinating is the wrong word,
00:36:59
Speaker
I am inspired by feats every time I come across another parent. And I just think that's incredible. Those 33 joints just doing their best, not necessarily in harmony because of the conditions of the body above, but they're still trying to do their best. Diving deep into the work of what the foot does,
00:37:24
Speaker
from what I learned through you into what I learned with Gary Ward and Chris Sridharan with emotion. And I'm just forever grateful to my feats that continue, even with all of their difficulties because of various surgeries and injuries over the years and generally falling off my bike, which has an impact on your feet.
00:37:53
Speaker
I think we just need to give them more credit and more freedom and bunching them up into restrictive shoes and not thinking twice about them. I think that's the issue. You stick them in a pair of shoes, is that comfortable? Okay, great, that's a comfortable shoe. But is the foot, the 33-jointed foot, able to function within that comfort? Or if he just locked it down?
00:38:22
Speaker
followed it in cotton wool and locked its function down. Or is it a shoe where, yes, okay, you've got some nice comfort because that's what you want, but the foot can still function.
00:38:34
Speaker
That's, yeah, that's where I am with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, fantastic. That's really good. So, I mean, there's so many ways we could go talking about the biomechanics of the foot, but I'd also like to talk a bit about your athletic endeavors. And, you know, because you've done ultras and all sorts. So talk us through some of the things that you've done. Basically, in most instances, I believe, in Vibram Five Fingers or other minimalist style footwear.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yes, so the most recent journey has been a bit of a nightmare because I've had to find shoes. So I've been so long in as little as possible and still all the way through the summer, I'm either in my five fingers or in some other very minimal broad shoe slipper, something that I just don't want to feel the shoe on my foot. The task of Cape Wrath
00:39:32
Speaker
And that's a real place. I am challenging myself to run Cape Wrath in May next year, which is 400 kilometers from Fort William. So I'm putting it out there. That's very going back. Fort William to Cape Wrath. I thought it was a joke name.
00:39:55
Speaker
But it's a real place, the most northern point of the UK, which is the northwestern peninsula of the Scottish Highlands. And the thing about minimalist is the lack of grip. So there can be grip, and grip on some degree of light mud, some degree of little bit of stony stuff,
00:40:23
Speaker
there can be enough. And so for years I would run off road in the vibrant five-finger spiritans. I'm not even, they're not called those anymore, they're the betrayal. And, but I knew that Kate Rath, I was not setting myself up for success, running feet bulks, if, and really very challenging terrain, if I didn't have some really kind of serious grip
00:40:51
Speaker
and I wasn't spending, uh, energy, expending energy going sideways in my feet and, and, and sort of just forward. So, uh, but my feet don't like shoes to the extent that my going out, my shoes were going out, uh, leather, leather, little leather slippers, like little leather gloves. And those are my post shoes.
00:41:16
Speaker
So if it's wet, I go barefoot across the wet ground to the venue and then I wipe my bare feet on the mat and then I put my posh leather slippers on. And that's as far as I'll go with posh shoes. So anyway, I'm running this amazing 400 kilometer thing. I don't know if I can do it and I'm trying to find shoes and I think I found the right pair. But it's hard because my feet
00:41:46
Speaker
my feet are not enjoying. I'm finding my way. It's interesting. I went for a run last week in a pair of minimalist shoes that were sent to me by a company outside of Vibram and they have a lovely ground feel to them. They obviously zero drop. They're fairly minimalist. They've got grips on the soles.
00:42:11
Speaker
But I think having run in Vibram Five Fingers for so many years, I was just on the local trails and I could feel every time my foot was on a kind of camber or an incline or it hit a stone or a root, the amount of force that puts through the ankle compared to when you're in a
00:42:31
Speaker
pair of even five fingers. And I think it's to do with what we were alluding to earlier about these rays, you know, in the way that the rays of the foot are designed to accommodate the different contours of the ground. That's really, you know, it's such a kind of clever design feature that if your big toe hits a stone or a root, then it extends and the rest of the other four toes plant naturally and maintain ankle stability or it could be the other way around or it could be in the middle.
00:42:54
Speaker
but your foot wraps around the challenges on the ground, right? But in a shoe that's flat, even if it's minimalist, it tends to create quite a lot of torque through that ankle joint. And it's with my amazing new tech, just on that subject, I am measuring, I have the data for myself, so I'll measure somebody running barefoot.
00:43:21
Speaker
their feet are used to running in a minimal shoe. So for instance, a footballer will be used to running around the pitch in a completely flat shoe, no support, just skuds underneath. And so it's very interesting to then measure that same footballer with a pair of trainers on and see the force
00:43:45
Speaker
change. So we know the studies have gone back decades now where it was established that when there is a cushion underneath your foot, you will land firmer, you will land harder. It was the same body weight. So on my force plate treadmill, people will run and they will have a force going into the force plate that I can measure with 8,000 sensors. And they will run at the same speed.
00:44:13
Speaker
with their shoes on and they will be more false. And I find that so interesting. It's, it's been revealed in front of me. I am reading and seeing for myself the research that goes back actually a really long way. Well, Nike found out about that in the eighties, didn't they? So, so that's one of the famous quotes from the Born to Run book. Yeah.
00:44:37
Speaker
So it's really interesting. So I am having to find a way to, I can feel through these shoes, I can feel the stones
Minimalist Footwear Challenges on Rough Terrain
00:44:47
Speaker
that I'm on. So I'm not so separated that I can't feel the ground, but I am aware that my foot doesn't feel even remotely like it normally does when I'm running in my nothing and my feet, as you say, are wrapping around.
00:45:03
Speaker
But needs must, so I set myself the challenge. I wrote the book called Even With Your Shoes On, so hey, you know, I'm gonna have to practice what I preach and say, yeah, you can do it with, you know, whatever is comfortable on your feet. But the story, which in my head I'd started, I was gonna finish now, my right foot has been my nemesis for so long, and it's never felt the same as mine left, and we've only just discovered why.
00:45:32
Speaker
So a thorn, an African thorn, went into my right heel before my youngest son was born, and he's just coming up 27. Wow. And we couldn't get it out. We couldn't get the thorn out. And you don't go to any in Africa, not one that you certainly didn't then. So we tried and tried, and then eventually, somehow, I forgot all about it.
00:46:03
Speaker
And two years ago, it came out. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. There was, I'd come back from a run and I was in the garden and I was just admiring my battered feet and saying thank you to them. And there was a peculiar, small disc-shaped piece of thin skin at the back of my heel with a black thing seem to be floating around in it.
00:46:30
Speaker
And the skin was very thin. I just grabbed a pair of tweezers and pierced it. Didn't hurt at all. And then this centimeter and a half African thorn. Wow. Out. That's amazing. And with a puddle of milky fluid. Yes, yes. It had worked its way out. And I didn't know that the tissue until last Saturday when Chris Sridran helped me with my foot and that the tissue had wrapped itself
00:47:00
Speaker
around this thorn and embedded it somewhere around my heel and I never went there. So this is a fascinating conversation that I have with people's feet who come to see me when they have a veruca. And this is apropos nothing, but it's so relevant when you talk about feet and the way that people are moving through their feet. If you have got something in or on your foot,
00:47:26
Speaker
which is creating the need for your central nervous system to avoid it. You will. You won't even know that you're avoiding it. Your central nervous system has got your back, it's organized it for you. So for 27 years, I have been, over 27 years, it was before he was born, so maybe 28 years, I've been moving in a way around my right foot. No matter what I did to my right foot, it never felt like the left. And now we are rewinding the tissue
00:47:56
Speaker
because my heel looked like, and I can't even, I can't see my heel, my heel looked like a worn down shoe where somebody has worn down the outside of their heel. You know, the typical leather-soled shoes would give you a really good idea. That's what my heel looked like, and the tissue was forward and medial instead of lateral and posterior. And we're just tugging it back, and my foot is feeling like my leg.
00:48:24
Speaker
for the first time in living memory. So folk, check your feet. If there's a bruca, you can't leave it there. You've got to get rid of it because you will be walking around it. And the point being, that's what happens with shoes. If a shoe doesn't let you use the whole foot, you can't use your whole foot. You can only use your whole foot if you can. I know that sounds a bit bad to say, but that's literally what it falls down to.
00:48:50
Speaker
yeah amazing fascinating really fascinating yeah fantastic so but but in spite of that thorn you have covered a few miles since since 27 years ago so um well you see maybe that's why i run i love running because i'm not landing on my heel right
00:49:12
Speaker
I'm landing somewhere in front and my heel comes down to kiss the ground briefly, but not for very long. And it hasn't held me back at all. It's just feeling a lot better now that it's out. Me and my applicant born. So I've just done my eighth Ironman. I thought it was going to be my last Ironman. I intended for it to be my last, but I got lost in the dark as I do. And I got DQ'd.
00:49:41
Speaker
And so now I face plant and think, oh, no, I can't finish on a DQ. I can't. So now I've got to do another one. And I just love going out for the day. So I run old and I'm not fast. I'm always, I start at the back because I walk to warm up and the challenge is always, well,
00:50:08
Speaker
how far can, how far can I run? So the question with my, when I, I started running in minimal, it was, well, how far can you run? Because you can't run, you can't run very far in them thinking, really? Well, I don't know. I have to try. So the, the experiment has been to answer questions. Yeah. So if the question is how far can you run? Well, I can't answer the question until I try. Yeah. So, uh, initially it was, um, uh,
00:50:37
Speaker
a marathon in Ironman. And I'd never run a marathon all by itself. I was thwarted age 17 and 50 weeks and never went back to the said marathon. So the Ironman marathon after a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike ride, then you just knock out a marathon. That was my first marathon.
00:51:05
Speaker
Then it was, okay, I can do a marathon, so then we do an ultra. And I remember a conversation with you way, way back with the flow work, with it keep my feet warm. And it did. It's like a neoprene. It worked. Yeah, it did work. So then the furthest I'd run over three days was 83 miles, Druids Challenge, that was a
00:51:35
Speaker
2012, no, 2011, I did that. And then it was, somebody said, well, can you do 100 kilometers in one go? I go, I don't know, give it a go. So, give it a go and it turns out, turns out you can. No blisters, no nothing, nothing. I got bored in the dark. I couldn't see anything. I got 85K, but everybody was fine.
00:52:05
Speaker
And then I was expecting somebody to say 100 miles in one go, and I just thought, oh, this is just numbers. This is, I don't, this doesn't, it doesn't interest me really. And then the Cape Raph came up and it was, okay, so 400 kilometers in eight days. So if that was 50 kilometers a day, that wouldn't be a challenge because 50 kilometers a day, it would be hard, but it would be why you could probably do it though.
00:52:35
Speaker
But it's not because it's the wilderness and some days are longer than others. It's a real mixed bag. So then it becomes a real challenge, can I? I have no idea. So that's the next challenge. Yeah, amazing. Seeing if I can with
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah, lots of very long days, we'll see. Now, I remember for one of those, you told me a story about you fueling up on walnuts, was it? Was it walnuts that got you through one of those ultras? I seem to remember you saying that you got there with something like a handful of walnuts. I was thinking that's not your conventional slag. I had a walnut for Brazil nuts. Brazil nuts, okay, yeah. Yes, it could have been either. It might have been my country even, but yes, one of those three,
00:53:30
Speaker
Yeah, I was just thinking, the other marathon I did do, just while I think of the events I did do, the other marathon I did do, because it was, you can't run, the other question was, you really can't run it fast. You're so slow, Helen. It's all very well, but when you run fast, run faster than if not sustainable.
00:53:53
Speaker
So then I did the Amsterdam marathon, which coupled two things. It was sustaining nose breathing for the entire marathon. There were two questions. Number one, you can't run fast nose breathing. And number two, Helen, you can't run fast. It was okay. Well, I'm not interested in sprinting because I'm interested in endurance. So if I wanted to maintain a pace, could I? So the question was,
00:54:20
Speaker
can you nose breathe a marathon and can it be a halfway decent time? And it would have been, I failed to achieve, because I got bored, I got so bored. At 35 kilometers, I was on for a 343 marathon, with nose breathing and for me, I was respectable.
00:54:50
Speaker
And in vibrant five fingers, no issue with it being minimal. You don't have to be a slow marathon runner to run, a slow timer to run in minimal shoes. But I got bored on the industrial flyovers outside of Amsterdam. And I'm thinking, where's all the pretty stuff? And where's the canal? And I will to bother. And I came in at 4.11.
00:55:15
Speaker
But you know, hey ho. But to go back to the question of what was the question, Matt? I was asking about the nuts, the walnuts or whatever it was. Yes. So yes, nutrition. I fuel on fat, not sugar.
00:55:37
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Very good. No sugar at all. Yeah. Right. Right. And I know, I know that, um, probably I imagine it must've been 2012 or 2013 we were having a discussion and we started talking paleo.
Dietary Shifts: Paleo, Keto, and Energy Levels
00:55:52
Speaker
And in fact, even perhaps even before that we were talking metabolic typing. And I remember one of the things that you were having challenges with was that you were feeling very nauseous during your training or after your training. Can't remember which it was. Um,
00:56:06
Speaker
And I said, well, that's a strong parasympathetic response. And perhaps if you assess yourself on the metabolic typing approach, you might find something out about how your physiology is responding to the stresses you're putting it under. And sure enough, you tested as a parasympathetic type.
00:56:24
Speaker
Which push, you know, in the recommendation for someone who's more parasympathetic is to eat, you know, more towards that paleo style of higher protein, higher fat. So you did that, didn't you? I did. On the 16th of September, do you remember that train journey?
00:56:45
Speaker
16 I think it was. Was it three years ago? It might have been a bit longer. It's longer than that for sure. Yeah it's been 2013 or 14 I think. Yeah so it was definitely the 16th of September because we were on our back from Edinburgh and you had a chat with me because I potted around with Superfood because I was
00:57:07
Speaker
The problem was twofold. I was endlessly nauseous on endurance events and, you know, just puked my way around all the Ironmans. And I was also, I would have a, I was hyperglycemic, so I would have a hypo pretty much every day. And I would be in a complete state if I left the house without any sugar.
00:57:33
Speaker
in my bag or pockets because I would feel vulnerable that I would have a hypo and I wouldn't have the first aid to get me out of my hypo. And on that day, having been pre-diabetic, as long as I can remember, I've had hypos every day since I was 11. I'm being tested every year. Are you diabetic yet? Am I diabetic yet? No, you're not diabetic yet. Okay, great. Carry on with the
00:58:02
Speaker
slow release, complex carbs, little and often, superb foods, I mean, you name it, I tried it. And then when I just stopped sugar, just stopped. Then I, the hypo stopped, the nausea stopped, it all stopped, just like that. And when I went back to the doctor the next year for my next, are you diabetic yet test? I said, oh, and I haven't had a hypo for however long it was and problem solved.
00:58:32
Speaker
And bless him, he didn't even ask me how. Right. Wow. He didn't want to lay. Yeah. So I, so it started with a paleo, which was, it was, it, that cut out all the grains, of course. And then we, we were creeping, um,
00:58:59
Speaker
we were making nut crumbles one Christmas as a treat and then the nut crumbles increase in frequency and we found ourselves gaining weight and my hypos were coming back. So then that moved from paleo to keto doing the whole shebang with using the pistics and the breathalyzers and the whole thing.
00:59:26
Speaker
to discover that I needed to be around 15 grams of carbs to stay in ketosis and to stay under the radar of having hypos. And then since then, and then thrived, just thrived, you know, just went about my life minding my own business, just not eating, not eating
00:59:49
Speaker
carbs of any form. No, no fruit people would be horrified. Yeah, no, no, no fruit, maybe occasional handful of blueberries. And when we say handful with I can't them maybe five or six. Right. And so no fruit, plenty of green veg, and just no starches. And I thrive.
01:00:14
Speaker
I really thrived, solved all of the nausea problems and the hypo problems and nice steady energy. And it's accidentally become more, some would say extreme, but I'm thriving more. I accidentally, I now discovered the formula for even more thrive, more energy and even less
01:00:45
Speaker
my digestive system is even better.
01:00:52
Speaker
So being a Czech practitioner, with poor Czech being the poopy policeman, we talk poop all the time. Yes. And all of my clients, if they let me, if they're willing, we will talk poop. Yeah. And the need for toilet paper. And this needs to be discussed. Is this the platform? We can discuss it here. That's fine. Because I can put the image up on the show notes so people can see exactly what we're talking about.
01:01:22
Speaker
Fantastic. So for me, the definition of a wonderful digestive system which is strong and healthy and you're eating the foods that enable you to thrive isn't just what ends up in a toilet bowl, but what ends up on the toilet paper. Some people call it ghost wipes. Right, yes.
01:01:41
Speaker
I just say, do you need toilet paper? And people look at me like I'm mad. And if I need toilet paper, I was like, Oh no, what's gone wrong? Oh my goodness. I was a bit naughty. Oops. And I, and it makes me feel, um, I feel, I know in myself when I've eaten something that I'm not thriving with, uh, I know
01:02:01
Speaker
that when i get the loo it's just interesting interesting point because it's one of those things that uh if you if you think about oh we've got pet cats we've got a dog but rabbits yeah none of them wipe their bums no and i've always thought this is an interesting thing why do humans wipe their bums you know what's that about um so but i i didn't know we were going to be having this conversation but but
01:02:25
Speaker
But it is an interesting thing, isn't it? It doesn't make any sense if you put a human in their natural context. Then, of course, you go back to Dan Lieberman, I don't suppose he's found any Kleenex or Andrex or anything in his archaeological digs when he's been looking for human remains and all the rest of it. So it just doesn't make sense that we would need that, yet it's so commonplace, universal, ubiquitous, that we all use it.
01:02:54
Speaker
And that we should need it. That's right, yeah, yeah. And that we, not only toilet paper, but you could spend a small fortune on special little moist tissues to clean up said area once you have used the toilet paper. And of course, bidets. Yes, yes. And all of this cleanliness that's required where, yes, although we haven't got a double sphincter like many other mammals, why is it so messy?
01:03:24
Speaker
when when it doesn't have to be messy and I I am Most days it's it's just a joy And it's just so clean no work required
01:03:41
Speaker
No white required, exactly, because if the police and I get gold stars and it feels so good, you feel like the food has gone in, you have absorbed the nourishment and you get rid of cleanly what your body can't use. Yes, yes. And it's not a horrible mess.
01:03:58
Speaker
And the accident came about, I was so busy, I didn't have time to cook so my husband Brian had to do some cooking for a while and so we just had some meat. Man with barbecue. I had barbecue, slammed some meat on the barbecue and that's what we had for dinner. We just had the meat.
01:04:24
Speaker
After a week of that, because I was so busy, we both almost simultaneously commented, are you feeling really quite good at the moment? Yeah, we were both feeling really quite good. Go figure, no veg.
01:04:44
Speaker
No fibre irritating bowel. Yes, yeah. Have you listened to much of the discussion on the carnivore diet? I mean I know this is what you're alluding to a bit but for me obviously I heard about it. I've been following Jordan Peterson a little bit and he's perhaps one of the
01:05:03
Speaker
the more famous people that is using the carnivore diet which is daughter and they have found that it's reversed their autoimmune issues, their mental health issues,
01:05:16
Speaker
I think largely reversed is probably a fairer way to describe it. But then, of course, there are many people out there that have specialised in this. There's even a guy called Paul Saladino. And the funny thing is that his surname's got salad in it. But yeah, he is one of the leading carnivore diet specialists. And when you listen to his
01:05:41
Speaker
description of it. It's a very compelling argument. He's very technical, lots of polysyllabic medical words. He is a doctor. But he talks about all of the rationale for why we don't, you know, a lot of the things that we think we need, such as vitamin C. He says, you don't need that if you're eating meat, because I'm trying to remember the rationale. I probably shouldn't have dived down this rabbit hole without doing some preparation.
01:06:06
Speaker
Well I can add a little bit there. Vitamin C is in the meat and because of another compound that goes alongside it in meat, is it thiocin? I'm pretty sure it begins with T. Because of that element, the body to thrive needs less vitamin C. It needs more vitamin C without that compound that is in meat and with
01:06:34
Speaker
the, that compound in meat, you need less vitamin C and there's enough vitamin C in the meat. Right. Yeah. Yeah. One of the points they make though, and I don't know if you followed this is, is the, the idea that, um, a carnivore diet shouldn't be a flesh foods diet alone. It should also include organ meats and skin and, you know, so like crackling or collagen or whatever. So they're saying, you know, essentially if you're eating the kind of the idea of the nose to tail, um, uh,
01:07:03
Speaker
consumption of the animal then that's a very healthy diet but if it's just flesh foods alone then that could be problematic. What's your experience been there? Well you know N equals 2 and we've only accidentally came across this since June and it's for me it's all about every each person
01:07:29
Speaker
It's so difficult to have this conversation without the discussion about sustainability and feeding the planet. But just from an experiential point of view, where I have been slowly pulling myself away from any kind of carbohydrates since that day on the train, and now increasingly even away from
01:07:58
Speaker
more and more away from plant food stuffs in general. I'm not very good with organ meats, but we'll have pork with crackling. We'll have chicken with, of course, the skin. We'll favor the fatty steaks with the lamb, all of the fat. I mean, the fat is the amazing part of it.
01:08:28
Speaker
and of course eggs with all of the nutrients within that.
01:08:37
Speaker
So for us, there's been only feeling better so far. And do you do any slow cooking or any kind of stews or anything like that to get the more fibrous components of meat broken down, or is that not really something you do, bone broths, anything like that? No, because I haven't got time and I don't know if he would,
01:09:03
Speaker
but we chew the grisly bits. Right, right, okay, wow, yeah, very good. So sometimes, sometimes I think, ah, do you know what, I actually, I don't want to eat that, but we will eat pretty much all of the stuff rather than leave it.
01:09:26
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Well, I just did my most recent podcast I did with Leah Keith, who's the author of The Vegetarian Myth. And she was talking about, you know, one of the key parts of her book is talking about sustainability and the ecological impacts of both vegetarianism and meat eating.
01:09:44
Speaker
And the challenge for meat eating is if you're eating factory farmed, standard agriculture type cuts of meat. Whereas if you're eating organic and especially grass-fed organic, then actually what she has uncovered and I have as well in my own research around it is that it's actually a net carbon sink. So you're not contributing to global warming at all because it's when
01:10:09
Speaker
Cows, for example, are fed on grains that they start burping up methane. When they eat grass, that doesn't happen because they're eating their natural diet. Ah, well, that makes sense because I can fart with impunity and there'll be no smell. Yeah. And I, and frankly, it doesn't often happen anyway. Right. Right. With the judge, when your digestive system, it seems to be running really smoothly. Yeah.
01:10:38
Speaker
that building that the buildup of air doesn't seem to happen and if there is any that needs to pop out there's no it's there is no horrible yeah yeah yeah yeah interesting stuff the the cow is eating well and then and and that is happening i hadn't heard that that's wonderful news then that makes me feel better and it
01:11:06
Speaker
It completely makes sense to me. Yeah, well, it's all cycles, isn't it? If everything's doing what it's supposed to do in its natural cycle, then the whole system functions pretty well. But we're running a little short on time, and I know there's a couple of things that we wanted to get into. One thing that I'd like to mention, just because it's been such a fantastic help to me and clients of mine and various people I've spoken to, is your barefoot,
01:11:33
Speaker
series. So do you want to just briefly explain about that? So me and Kirsty Hawkshaw, the wonderful Kirsty Hawkshaw, she popped into the shop one day, I had no idea who she was and she wanted some help with running and I was telling her my struggles with finding music to help
01:11:59
Speaker
the people I was working with run to. They wanted to run the music, but they were running to really ploddy, slow cadence stuff that I can dance to, but I can't run to. I can't even walk to it, never mind, but I can dance to it. And she mulled over this and came back with a certain beat and I said, yes, that's perfect. And then I discovered that she was a pop star.
01:12:29
Speaker
so then we just started naturally working together and we still are because she's helping me create the Audible for the book and so that'll be out hopefully we've just got one more chapter to do and then the editing so it's the audible of even with your shoes on it's nearly there so together
01:12:49
Speaker
She created this amazing music with the cadence that would keep feet from becoming slow and inefficient. So the foot needs to be on the ground as long as it needs to for the stretch recoil to be loaded for it to recoil. So we need, if it's too fast,
01:13:11
Speaker
Sometimes on technical trails the feet need to be so fast it's like lightning fast and you are not. This is survival to say upright you've got to have fast feet but you're not getting efficiency. But that's fair enough because the totem pole priority there is to not face plans.
01:13:30
Speaker
then when you're looking for as much efficiency as you can, you need the foot to be on the ground long enough to load the plantar fascia, the lower leg calf musculature, the achilles, everything, but not so long that you lose the momentum
01:13:48
Speaker
into the ground and stretch the reef cord into the ground so that then you actually have to work harder to keep the same speed going forward. So it was finding a range of cadences so all of the barefoot goddesses
01:14:01
Speaker
We wore our heart on our sleeves, didn't we? The Barefoot Project. Although we made an album for the blokes called Apollo to make Eeyore. And actually, I really enjoyed the music of Apollo. Yeah. They're both great. They're both great. Yeah. The same coaching words, just different music. And we made it to help people think about and notice what they were doing.
01:14:26
Speaker
And there are words now that are in the audios that I wouldn't necessarily use now. But I still feel that compared to what else is out there, it's still wonderful stuff. And the music, the instrumentals, because this work is just out of this world. Fantastic. We want to do some more. We want to put a few of the chapters
01:14:47
Speaker
of the book onto an audio to help people play and notice things as they run. Just invite them to notice things and explore and change the cadence up with her music so that they can explore. So that's also the projects in the
01:15:09
Speaker
in the pending train and her amazing music. Yes. Excellent. Good. Well, I've just been thinking about, we've got, we actually got quite a few things that we could dig into further and things that we haven't even covered yet. And so I'm just thinking maybe we should wrap it up there for today and do a, do a second one to dive in a bit deeper. What do you think?
01:15:31
Speaker
Amazing. I love it. I love yeah. Yeah. No, it's been great and there's been so many areas where I thought oh I'd like to talk about this but I've had to sort of rein it in because I knew that we were on a Fairly tight time budget. So if we if we Wrap it up there for today, but but do another one, you know soon as we can just so we keep the momentum with it That'll be that'll be great. So Love that man. Is that the app that works for you? Brilliant. Okay. Well, um
01:15:57
Speaker
Let me thank you very much for today and for all of your insights over the years and the things we've shared has been fantastic and lots more to talk about, so I'll look forward to that. But I'll let you go because I know you've got a client. Yeah. We'll continue in a couple of weeks' time. All right. Nice nattering. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
01:16:21
Speaker
So that was part one with Helen, and part two will be following next week. If you want to learn more about Helen, about her highly skilled, experienced and technological assessments of your biomechanical function and walking or running technique, you can do that at Helen-hall.co.uk. That's Helen, h-e-l-e-n, dash, hall, h-a-l-l, dot co, dot u-k.
01:16:44
Speaker
and you can also get a copy of her book called Even With Your Shoes On on her website too. Or you can access the amazing Run and Walk coaching albums on Bandcamp at barefootaudio.bandcamp.com and I found those fantastic for my own running so I can recommend those through personal experience. So thanks once again for listening. I look forward to seeing you on the next show.