Golden Harper’s expertise lies in handling running injuries, complicated shoe situations and trail running. He attended Orem High School. He has two amazing runner parents and 3 fast little sisters and couldn’t ask for better. They’re all wonderful. His interests include playing the guitar and writing songs, photography, fastpacking/backpacking, showshoeing, trail running, surfing, going to concerts and recording them, cooking, camping, and going to as many mountain tops and beautiful, breathtaking places as possible. His favorite book is The Other Side of Heaven. His favorite magazine is Trail Runner. Post-college did trail/mountain/ultra racing after finishing up running cross country for BYU-Hawaii.
Golden amassed over a decade of experience managing Runner’s Corner in the Wasatch Mountains before creating and founding Altra in 2009.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Golden Harper about the history of Altra Shoes.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How minimalist shoe stores prioritize teaching customers efficient running techniques.
– Why footwear design significantly influences your running mechanics and long-term joint health.
– How zero drop shoes led to improved running form and fewer injuries.
– How many in the footwear industry prioritize financial gain over consumer health.
– Why starting a footwear brand involves resisting already establishing brands and marketing constraints.
Connect with Golden:
Guest Contact Info
Facebook
facebook.com/PRGearSports
Links Mentioned:
prgear.co
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
You want to a behind-the-scenes look about what it takes to run a natural movement footwear brand? Well, you have come to the right place. We’ll be doing that today on this episode of the Movement Movement podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first. You know, those things at the end of your legs?
And as you may know, we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or CrossFit, whatever you like to do, and do those things enjoyably and efficiently and effectively. Did I say enjoyably? Don’t answer. It’s a trick question. I know I did. So I always say that because look, if you’re not having a good time, do something different until you are. You’re not going to keep it up if you’re not.
I am Steven Sashen, your host of the Movement Movement podcast. We call it the Movement Movement because we, including you and everybody here, are creating a movement about natural movement. More about that in a second. Basically, we want to make sure that you can do what you enjoy by getting out of the way, letting your body do what it’s made to do, not interfering with that and the part where you’re involved, the first part of the Movement Movement is just spread the word. Give us a great review, a thumbs up, like in the appropriate place. Hit the bell icon on YouTube, go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You’ll find all the previous episodes, all the places you can find us on social media and of course other places to find the podcast if you don’t like the one that you found it on now, which seems odd, but I said it anyway. In short, look, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. So let us jump in. Golden Harper, welcome. Tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Golden Harper:
I’m Golden Harper.
Steven Sashen:
We already established that.
Golden Harper:
We established that. I am a runner, coach, exercise science guy, founder of Altra, creator of Altra originally, and PR Gear and running technique guru of sorts.
Steven Sashen:
Sorts. Oh, you can keep going. We got plenty of time.
Golden Harper:
We can go on and on, but that’s good for now.
Steven Sashen:
Let’s start with the Altra part. For people who don’t know, you and I have a similar thing in that I am the “face of this brand.” You were really the face of Altra. And so why don’t we start with the part that most people probably don’t know, which is what led to doing that and what made you take that leap from the beginnings that I’m hinting about because I know about them to actually saying, “Hey, let’s start a footwear company, the dumbest thing in the world”?
Golden Harper:
Yeah. What I always say as “the quickest way to go homeless.”
Steven Sashen:
Didn’t I tell you what the guys that I met seven months in said to us?
Golden Harper:
No.
Steven Sashen:
So these are guys who’ve been in footwear for 35 years, and they sat down at our kitchen table with me and Lena and said, “We believe in you guys. We believe in what you’re doing and we would start this with you but we’ve been in footwear so long that we’re not stupid enough to try and start a shoe company.”
Golden Harper:
So our guys basically told us the same thing.
Steven Sashen:
And neither of us listened.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, exactly.
Steven Sashen:
All right, so then back up. Prior to actually starting, what led to that happening?
Golden Harper:
Geez, so much. I was born in shoes, born in footwear.
Steven Sashen:
The baby picture show that?
Golden Harper:
Not born with shoes on, but from a career standpoint, my dad was working for Nike when I was born, left there because they were unethical, immoral, basically terrible people and went to Saucony until I was about nine. Then-
Steven Sashen:
What was he doing?
Golden Harper:
For Saucony?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, for either.
Golden Harper:
He was a paid product tester for Nike, so he had to run 100 miles a week. And this was when they put the air in the shoes for the first time and they all got injured, all the testers, and they all felt like they were running 150 miles a week, which is not sustainable. And so they all wrote in and said, “Whatever you do, don’t put this in running shoes.” They came back and said, “Yeah, we got your feedback, but we’re going to make billions off this. The marketing is just too strong. Sorry.” And my dad said every tester he knew, essentially they all quit at the time because they just couldn’t do it. And also they had an acknowledgement from the company that, “Hey, we understood your concern. We know you’re all getting injured and we just frankly don’t care because we’re going to make lots of money off of it.” And so his thought was they’re knowingly injuring people.
Steven Sashen:
Well, his thought was prescient because have you looked on the Run Fearless page in the last couple months?
Golden Harper:
I don’t think I have.
Steven Sashen:
It actually shows a portion of the abstract of a study that never actually got peer-reviewed published. But basically in the zoom structure 22, in a twelve-week half-marathon training program they developed, 30.3% of the people got injured in that shoe. And of course, as you know, injury rates go up over time. And in the React Infinity run, “Only 14.5%.” So they demonstrated that shoes can cause injuries and different shoes cause injuries at different levels. But no one has picked up on that in a way that would complain about that. And someone asked me a couple weeks ago, they said, “Why do you think they even published it?” And it suddenly hit me. My suspicion is it’s for the same reason there’s a warning label on cigarette boxes. They’re concerned at some point someone’s going to go after them and then they go, “But we published it.”
Golden Harper:
“But we published it.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Golden Harper:
“We showed that this shoe reliably injures one in three of you. This one only in a short period of time. And this one, only one in six or seven.”
Steven Sashen:
Piece of cake. No big deal. So he left Nike, moved to Saucony and doing a similar thing there.
Golden Harper:
Western sales manager. Covered Colorado, California, Canada, Mexico. Basically, I didn’t see him much. I was really young though.
Steven Sashen:
So you didn’t know what it looked like anyway. Yeah. It’s like “Here’s a picture.” It’s like, “Okay, good enough.”
Golden Harper:
Yeah. And he stopped doing that because he felt like he needed to be around us more.
Steven Sashen:
I appreciate that.
Golden Harper:
And then we opened the shoe store when I was nine.
Steven Sashen:
So he learned nothing from being a salesperson?
Golden Harper:
Correct. He learned that he… This man loves running more than anybody I’ve ever met, and I’ve met all kinds of runners at least on par with everybody I’ve ever met, just loves running, loves everything about it. And so I started working there at age nine. I started being left there alone at age 10.
Steven Sashen:
So 10, you’re manning the cash register and…?
Golden Harper:
Yeah, because really five dudes with 500 bucks started the store and work their day off of their real job. And when somebody couldn’t make it, I would get left there for odd hours. And when you’re left in a running store as a ten-year-old, you better have chops for one, and you better know your stuff. And luckily, I had had some running success and I was a shoe nerd to the nth degree.
Steven Sashen:
You made me think of something happened to me when I was 10. I got really into hypnosis when I was like eight. And I remember having a conversation with a friend of the family who was the head of anesthesiology at a big New York hospital. We’re all having dinner and he and I are talking about the clinical applications of hypnosis for anesthesia. And in the middle of the conversation, he stops dead in his tracks and goes-
Golden Harper:
You’re eight.
Steven Sashen:
… “You’re 10.” I was 10 at the time. And I remember thinking, “Yeah?” So I imagine you had some of those too.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. In fact, that definitely happened. A lot of times what would happen too is people would come in and they’d be like, “Is there somebody here who can help me?” And I’m like, well, yeah, I can. And they’re like, “Is there anybody else?” “Yeah, it’s just me right now,” except, “Yeah, it’s just me right now,” voice a couple octaves higher. And they’d turn around and leave and I’d be like, “I can see you have some version on your Saucony shoes with a ground reaction intertia device.”
Steven Sashen:
Sometimes-
Golden Harper:
“By the way, I run a 308 marathon, I might be able to help you.”
Steven Sashen:
And sometimes I imagine that would stop them in their tracks and work and other times it’s like, “Great. Is there somebody older?”
Golden Harper:
Yeah, pretty much.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so you and he are running a running shoe store. We’re getting closer to the next thing that would lead to what eventually became Altra.
Golden Harper:
So I managed the shop, started managing near the end of high school and after high school. And then as I went off to college… We get all this training at run specialty, but it’s not training, it’s propaganda. So the only training anybody at runs specialty gets is from shoe companies. And so again, it’s not training, it’s propaganda. And I realized that-
Steven Sashen:
Well, give me an example. They come in with a new shoe and what do they tell you? How does that all go down?
Golden Harper:
Think the most classic one is, “These shoes are going to save your knees. This cushioning system is going to help your knees out or it’s going to help your joints or whatever.” And we can get into this later, it’s literally exactly the opposite of what the science would say about that technology. If you had an actual scientist doing a study or you had studies on hand that analyze… That had to do with this technology, you’d see it was the exact opposite of what we were being trained. And that’s a problem.
Or another one be like at the time, the whole pronation paradigm was really big. It was like, “Oh, your feet roll in, you over pronate, you’re going to get hurt. That’s bad and we need to fix you, and so we’re going to give you this anti pronation device in your shoe.” And it was all this kind of stuff. And the problem for me is that after working there almost 10 years before I’m heading off to college, I’m realizing, “It’s not working.” People are coming back with the same problems and the solutions that we’ve been trained on, I’ve now been doing them for 10 years and they’re not working.
People are coming back with the same issues over and over and over. And so I’m not stupid. I’m like, “Well, stupid is doing the same thing over and over and over. In fact, it’s insanity to keep doing it over and over and expect different results.” And we weren’t getting great results. And that was really frustrating. So my whole thing was like, “I’m going to go to college and I’m going to study the science behind how to be a better shoe seller, essentially, how to help people.” Because half the people that come into a run specialty store to buy shoes don’t even run. They’re just there because their feet are jacked up or something hurts.
And the other half they might run, but they’re usually there because something’s wrong as well. And I’m a passionate person. I love helping people, and I just really wanted to be good at helping my customers out. So in my book, I was going to come back, I was going to manage the shop the rest of my life, and this was my life’s work was to figure out how to best help people that came in the door.
Steven Sashen:
And then onto the next chapter.
Golden Harper:
So I’m one of those people that took nine years through college. We usually call those doctors.
Steven Sashen:
Or slackers.
Golden Harper:
Anyway, mine was a four year degree that just happened to get stretched out over nine years because I studied whatever I wanted and as much of it as I wanted. I had enough credits for multiple degrees.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, what a hoot.
Golden Harper:
And I ended up going to Hawaii along the way, and I spent two years out there, and that was the switch flipper, you could say.
Steven Sashen:
Because?
Golden Harper:
I had looked at everything through a running lens previous, and for a couple years I had been toying around with Vibram FiveFingers. My shop was the first store in America to carry them, first running store.
Steven Sashen:
I say there’s a store on Pearl Street that they’re known for being the first one to grab things. So they got the first pair of trucks, they had the first pair of FiveFingers as far as I can tell. But yeah, I get it.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. We were the first running store. In fact, when we came back to the OR show, their very first OR show we came back-
Steven Sashen:
Outdoor retailer.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, outdoor retailer.
Steven Sashen:
Big show for everything related to outdoor, et cetera.
Golden Harper:
We brought an order to them and they were like, “Okay, what’s your shop name?” We’re like, “Runners Corner.” And they were like, “What are you going to do with these? What are you going to sell these for?” And we were like, “For running.” And they were literally like, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.” This is at the time, they just had the one slip on classic model. That was it. And our thought was, “We’re going to sell these as a training tool to help people work on their running technique and strengthen their feet.” Because in our book, those were the two most important things that happened to any runner out there, technique and strong feet. And so that had been going on, and I go out to Hawaii and my entire life, all the propaganda training I’ve been given by the shoe companies is flat feet or bad, over pronation is terrible. If you’re overweight, it’s going to make it 100 times worse. And it’s basically that triple combination is the end of the world for people.
Steven Sashen:
So for people listening, see if you can predict what’s next. If you think about Hawaii and think about native Hawaiians or Samoans… There’s nowhere to actually enter your guesses, but keep it in your brain and now back to you, Golden.
Golden Harper:
Well, and I think the part I missed on the end of there is, and that good shoes are really important in all of this.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. They’ll fix all this.
Golden Harper:
And I’ve had this beaten into my head my entire life. It’s hard to pull that out. Even though I was doubting it. I still get over there. You got tons of 300 pound giant humans walking around, just giant Polynesian people. They got flat feet, they roll in like crazy so they’re pronating and they’re wearing no shoes. Or they’re in slippers, flip-flops.
Steven Sashen:
Did they have any problems like the people that came into your running shoe store?
Golden Harper:
So this is the thing I felt for a minute there when I first got there. “Okay, I doubt this stuff, but it’s hard to root it out.” So as I get to know these people, I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to wait. I’ll get to know them well, then I’ll ask, then I’ll help him.” My first one is my boss and I get to know him really well. We work together daily. And I was like, “Hey, tell me about your feet. I can see you’re a big guy. They roll in. You wear crap shoes. This is what I do. I can help you and tell me about your feet. And they hurt, right?” And he’s like, “No, bro.” And I’m like, “No, it’s okay. It’s fine.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. “If not your feet, maybe your knees.”
Golden Harper:
Yeah, this is what I do. And he’s just like, “No, bro. My feet don’t hurt. My knees don’t hurt either. Sorry, bro.” It’s just nothing. I
Steven Sashen:
Ignoring for the sake of argument that there’s nothing that Hawaiians like better than white guys just showing up and telling them what to do.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, which is why I waited months to get to know people before even starting the whole thing. But across the board, almost nobody’s feet hurt, knees hurt, et cetera. It was the exact opposite of everything I’d been trained my entire life. And again, I was already questioning it before I got out there, but this was seeing it in person. And then I’m running the best I have in my whole life. I’m running barefoot on the beach up to 90 minutes at a time, and I’m dominating collegiate cross country races, setting records, et cetera. And at the same time, I’m wearing slippers and walking around barefoot a ton and living this lifestyle out there. And so that thrust me into this whole study the foot part of things. And it added on to all the exercise science and running technique and running injury stuff that I’d been doing. And it tied in really well, because it turns out that feet are a huge part of all of that. And they go hand in hand.
Steven Sashen:
Pun intended.
Golden Harper:
Exactly. And so as I came back from Hawaii, I came back to the running store and my first thought was like, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t really believe in anything we’re selling anymore.” And that was a really tough place to be because this is where you’re making your living. And my dad, he blew his knee out playing college football and has no cartilage in his knee. And the only way he was able to run, he actually got dared into becoming a distance runner. He got a postcard in the mail from his roommate’s dad that was like, “If you guys are really tough, if you guys are real men, you’ll do this.”
Steven Sashen:
That’s all it took is was postcard?
Golden Harper:
Pretty much. Well, you got to understand the psyche though.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no, I get it.
Golden Harper:
This is the guy that jumps off 90-foot cliffs for fun just to prove how macho he is. And so when somebody sends a postcard that says, “If you guys are really tough, if you’re real men, you’ll do this.”
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to send him a postcard, “If you were a real man, you would give us a whole bunch of money right now. We’re trying to grow the company. If you are a real man.” But I want to highlight something you said, because people ask often why we, and I’m going to include both Altra and Zero in this equation, why we’re not in more stores. And I said, because fundamentally, people realize in the stores that they have to learn something new. And that if they learn what we’re saying is true, they won’t be able to sell anything that they have on the shelf. And so it’s a tough road to hoe when you’re threatening someone’s livelihood.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, it’s very difficult. And I think Altra is in 1200 plus stores nationwide. There are almost all running stores though.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And I mean the number of stores for which you or I would be appropriate is somewhere in the order of like 50,000.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, there could be a lot. But yeah, no, your point is true. It’s very difficult at the least to manage this idea of looking through things through a-
Steven Sashen:
Different lens.
Golden Harper:
… a different lens, a natural lens, and still be able to make a living or still be able to sell that other stuff.
Steven Sashen:
It’s the selling of the other stuff that’s the challenge. T there are a couple of stores that focus on minimalist natural movement, and they have cracked code. They figured out how to do it. It is totally doable. But the idea that you’re going to take a store and have them switch over to that is… The odds are pretty much close to zero.
Golden Harper:
Well, it takes years and it’s harder. That’s the thing because doing things the right way is harder, and it’s harder to make money. It’s harder to learn it. Once you’ve figured it out, it’s more fun. It’s easier in a lot of ways. It’s certainly better. It’s more rewarding. But the training is more difficult. Again, you’re taking people that have been programmed a certain way their entire life and having to flip them.
Steven Sashen:
Correct.
Golden Harper:
I’m doing this with my staff right now.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s an easy story to say of some version of cushioning, arch support, motion control. You just need to say those three words. People are like, “I’m in.” Because that’s what they’ve been taught. So yeah, it is a different game. So anyway, you came back, you’re looking at the wall going, “How am I going to do this?” And then?
Golden Harper:
Yeah. So back to my dad. He’s got no cartilage in the knee, gets dared into running Las Vegas marathon. Horrible. Just crawls across the finish line. One of the last finishers of the race. And this is guy who was drafted to play pro baseball, who’s never really been bad at much of anything, but no endurance genes, no athletic genes in his family. And it’s actually the same on my mom’s side.
Steven Sashen:
Except she didn’t get drafted to play pro baseball.
Golden Harper:
True. So he eventually, after failing at the marathon six times, laying in gutters, begging for coke and food, just disastrous results, cracks the code because he figures out, “If I run those guys, the Kenyans, they float.” Now this is a guy that’s 5’9″, 240 pounds of solid muscle pound. And so it’s a little bit funny to think about, but he thinks to himself, “If I ran like that… I crashed down the road. Everybody around me, most everybody, we crashed down the road. Those guys, it looks like they barely touched the ground. They just float.” And this is the inspiration for what I call “float running” now. And he basically teaches himself to run a Kenyan. And for purpose of the story, we’ll shorten it. We’ll skip ahead seven years. So seven years later-
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, wait. Du-du-du, du-du-du.
Golden Harper:
He runs 222, wins, the St. George Marathon in 1984.
Steven Sashen:
Holy moly.
Golden Harper:
I would be two years old at the time. And he becomes ranked in the top 15 in the country as a runner and becomes an elite runner sponsored athlete, and getting paid to run, essentially. That is his thing, is he attributes almost all of his success outside of just hard work and stuff to great running technique, low impact, efficient running technique. And so this brings us back to where you were.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Du-du-du, du-du-du.
Golden Harper:
It’s back to the store. And so everybody that comes in the door, our store is unique in that we didn’t really do this. We did the whole pronation thing for about a year, and we kept stats on it. And we knew that when we did pronation testing on the treadmill and assigned shoes that we saw twice as many injuries. Our return rate was twice as high. And in general the customer experience was not as good. So it was after that, my dad was like, “Get rid of the treadmill. We’re not going to do the pronation analysis thing like that. We’re going to go back to focusing on people’s running form.”
And boom, injury rates went back down, return rates on shoes went back down. Customer experience was better across the board. And so we had been there, done that. And so focusing on teaching people how to move in efficient, low impact ways as part of the shoe selling process, which as far as I know, there’s almost no running stores across the country that do this. And when you think about it, it’s straight up crazy. Because in any other sport, the first thing we do in every other sport is teach people how to do it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Golden Harper:
We teach them how to do it. We teach them how to do it safely, efficiently, better, more effectively, et cetera.
Steven Sashen:
Well, because this is like writing. You go through school and you’re writing papers, so everyone thinks they’re a writer. Same thing. We grew up, we walk, we run. “Oh, I know how to walk and run.” It’s like, “No.” Even if you did, and of course we all know that you watch little kids before they get in shoes and they know how to do both of those things, beautifully. But we don’t think about how the footwear then impacts that and changes your gait, and you become habituated to that. But everyone still thinks, “Oh, I know how to run because I’ve been running. I run to the mailbox, I run to the car, I run to whatever.”
Golden Harper:
But the thing that people don’t think about is that running is also the only sport where we put the mandatory, mandatory piece of equipment on your foot that actually teaches you to do it wrong.
Steven Sashen:
Correct.
Golden Harper:
And this is what I was about to discover, is that the shoes that I’ve been selling and wearing my whole life had actually been making it difficult for me to do just this.
Steven Sashen:
Dude, you’re doing this in chapters. This is like crazy. It’s like, “Okay, we’re onto chapter three, Golden’s Discovery.”
Golden Harper:
And go back to ’84 and my dad winning St. George, he found that for his knee, again, cartilage, none, bone on bone, no meniscus, and 222 marathon, no meniscus, visibly limping. But he found he could run with better, efficient, low impact technique when he drilled holes in the back half of the shoe. So he was essentially lowering the heel height and getting the shoe more weight balanced.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, so he’s drilling the holes, like going-
Golden Harper:
Through the midsoles.
Steven Sashen:
… through the midsoles?
Golden Harper:
Yep. Sideways.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it.
Golden Harper:
So he’s drilling all the weight and height out of the midsoles, essentially.
Steven Sashen:
I hate to say it this way, but I will. So he-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:24:04]
Golden Harper:
… weight and height out of the…
Steven Sashen:
I hate to say it this way, but I will. So he was doing the early version of What On is doing except the Way On is doing it is not real.
Golden Harper:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. Except he would just do the back half of the shoe. Because back then there was basically no cushioning in the front half of shoes. It was thin and it was firm. So in a way, he was leveling the shoe out and weight balancing it, which is really what I ended up doing. So, really interesting. And so he was really passionate when people came in. Let’s teach them technique.
Steven Sashen:
I was going to say, “Give me your shoes. I’m going to put balls in them.”
Golden Harper:
That came later.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I was going to go over really well at first.
Golden Harper:
But yeah, we did do that, in a way. But either way, you come in the store and my dad wanted to share like, “Hey, this is what helped me. I think it can help you.” And it was part of our store ethos, if you will, to teach people how to run, actually. How to run with low impact efficient technique. And so we’re doing this, and at the same time, just back from Hawaii, high speed video, lets you see things in slow motion clearly. Becomes available to, not rich people. And so we get this handheld slow motion video camera, and we start filming our customers.
And of course we’re filming them with the shoes on that we’re selling them, we’re filming them in racing flats, we’re filming them in Five Fingers and we’re filming them barefoot. Some combination. And it becomes really obvious really quick to the point where, look, people run pretty great without shoes on. They run pretty decent in Five Fingers.
Steven Sashen:
Some change.
Golden Harper:
Some change, but not tons. And then we’re filming them with the shoes on and we’re kind of starting to do this thing where we’re like…
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no.
Golden Harper:
And the comment was, “I don’t know if we’re really helping people here.” That was this moment of like, “Oh, no.” And it was this idea that the shoes we’re selling people are physically changing the way they move. And now the way I actually talk about this with people is, modern shoes have fundamentally changed how we move as a species.
Steven Sashen:
At least in the West. Anyone wearing them.
Golden Harper:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Golden Harper:
Anyone wearing modern shoes, it’s changed the way we as a species move. So, for example, you can go watch any movie pre 1960. People walk a certain way that they don’t anymore. People run a certain way that they don’t anymore in general. The only people that walk and move like the people pre 1960s are the people that don’t wear shoes or don’t wear elevated heels. And if you’re listening, you may not understand this. Most people I talk to think their shoes are flat, and they think their shoes have a wide toe box. And the reality is 99% of all shoes on the market have an elevated heel, and the mid-sole is almost always twice as thick in the heel as it is in the forefoot. And the toe box is tapered, meaning that the big toe gets bent in and the pinky toe gets bent in. You’re fundamentally dislocating your first metatarsal, anytime you put a shoe on. 99% of all shoes, and so people are literally moving differently as a result. And we’re just going back-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we’re going back-
Golden Harper:
65 years right now is all-
Steven Sashen:
That’s it.
Golden Harper:
That’s it.
Steven Sashen:
Do you know the writer David Sedaris?
Golden Harper:
I don’t know if I do.
Steven Sashen:
It’s okay. He spent a lot of time living in France, and he said, my French friends tease me that I walk like an American. And finally I said, “What does that mean?” They said, “You throw your legs in front of you.” And if you’ve got a higher heel and you basically have to lean back to accommodate, the only thing you can do is throw your legs in front of you. And there they wear a lot of flatter shoes. My line is, if you want to see people who have really good walking form in particular, go to anywhere where they also don’t have indoor plumbing.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. Yeah, that’ll do it.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So, you had the holy crap moment of, we’re not necessarily helping people, we’re seeing that shoes are making this difference. And then are we still in chapter three or are we onto chapter four?
Golden Harper:
I think we’re moving there.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Golden Harper:
So it was at this point I was like, “Why?”
Steven Sashen:
Okay, now we’re there. That was the cliffhanger for chapter four.
Golden Harper:
Right. So, what about these shoes that we’re selling is causing people to move differently and run poorly. What is causing them to basically land out in front of their body on a forward traveling lake instead of landing underneath a bent knee on a backward traveling lake? And it’s the difference between jamming all that impact up into your joints, or if you’re doing it right, you’re landing underneath this bent knee and you’re using this big three foot spring to absorb impact.
And, again, why? And so, I started just filming, and we started looking at how shoes were built. Drop was not a term back then. I invented it. And I got looking at the shoes, and none of this was published at the time.
Steven Sashen:
This is what year?
Golden Harper:
This is 2008. Early 2008.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wow. Interesting timing is we’re going to find out.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, exactly. And so I start looking at the shoes and I start weighing them and I find out the shoes are all heel heavy. If you balance a shoe in half, the back half of the shoe just always cranks off the back. It’s much heavier in the back half of the shoe, and all the cool stuff’s in the heel of the shoe. We had grid, we had gel, we had air, we had-
Steven Sashen:
Springs.
Golden Harper:
Springs, all the stuff. It’s all in the heel of the shoe basically. And then also shoes have these plastic heavy heel counters in the back. There’s structure to keep your foot from moving and doing things that it’s “not supposed to do.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, structured… No, designed to do that. That doesn’t mean they do that.
Golden Harper:
No, they don’t do that. It just looks like they do that. And that’s a great important distinction that we know and didn’t know at the time. So, my first thought is, we watched the foot come out in front of the body, and let’s see if I can demonstrate this on the camera here. But as the foot comes out in front of the body-
Steven Sashen:
And you have to describe it for people.
Golden Harper:
Generally speaking, when you say barefoot, the foot kind of moves like this, right? And the foot lands relatively parallel with the ground, but when I was filling people in the shoes I was selling them, what we’d see is that the foot comes out in front of the knee, the heel drops and the toes pop up more in the air. And then as the foot comes down, because it’s thicker in the back half of the shoe, it would catch the ground two to three inches further out in front of the body before the foot could get underneath the knee. And so that was the distinction I was seeing is like, “Okay, so the weight of the shoe being heavier in the back half is actually causing a little bit more dorsiflexion perhaps.”
Steven Sashen:
I mean, I wonder if it’s the weight or just simply… This is going to be a weird story. So, we’re moving forward in time, a couple years, not that many. And I give Dan Lieberman from Harvard who we will mention in a few months, I’m sure. I give him a pair of our sandals, and a little while later I asked him what he thought. He said, “I’m getting proprioceptive information that these things are dangerous.” And I said, without missing a beat, “No, you’re not.” And the people around him were sort of aghast that I had just criticized the preeminent researcher and whatever.
And by the way, Dan and I are dear friends, but that moment was a little tense. And I said, “Well, what do you mean?” He said, “Well, I’m getting the information that I’m going to catch the front edge of the sandal and then I’m going to fall.”
I said, “Well, there’s nowhere in the running gate where it would be even remotely possible for you to catch the front edge of the sandal. And even if you did, it would just flip over and flip back.” So you have a picture in your mind of something that is telling you, basically giving you an idea that’s patently false. But the reason that I bring that up with regard to shoes is, there’s things that we do in our brain because of what…
I said, “What’s actually happening is you’re getting no proprioceptive information and you’re turning that into this story that you haven’t really proven true or not true.” So I would contend that even if the shoe was lightweight, if you made the heel super lightweight, but still that high, there’d still be something… I mean, at the very least, if you’re running with that barefoot form, you would just catch the back edge, regardless of… Even if you’re trying to land with your foot flat, you’d still catch the back edge. But I also imagine that… You saw the same thing, different shoes on different people, different gait. I saw that in the lab with Dr. Bill Sands, different shoes, different people, different gait, and they don’t know they’re doing it differently. So I would-
Golden Harper:
And studies have repeatedly shown that people don’t land the way they think they land.
Steven Sashen:
Correct. So, I don’t know if this is true or not, this is just kind of academic, but I would imagine that just having the shoes on people’s feet tells their brain something that’s making them accommodate in some way, just in case, for whatever other reason. But anyway, it could be the way, it could be this other thing. Regardless, same end result.
Golden Harper:
So, both the shoe being heavier in the back and thicker in the back.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Golden Harper:
So regardless, they are hitting two to three inches more out in front of their body.
Steven Sashen:
At least.
Golden Harper:
On a forward traveling leg. Instead of hitting underneath the knee, under a backward traveling leg. And this is critical stuff for anybody who studies running technique.
Steven Sashen:
Or physics.
Golden Harper:
Or physics. Yeah, exactly. And so for me, it was like, okay, so this is what’s going on. This shoe’s heavier in the back half, thicker in the back half. And we saw it… We tried to kind of control out soft even, we would put steel insoles in. So the shoe is just rock hard basically. And even with a rock hard shoe, we would see the same thing. And so I personally don’t believe it’s because it was softer or it felt like it was going to be nicer to land on. I hear a lot of that in the barefoot crowd is like, “Oh, it’s an accommodating landing.”
I do think that is part of the equation. But when the shoe is thicker in the back half and heavier in the back half, it doesn’t seem to matter whether it is-
Steven Sashen:
Soft or hard.
Golden Harper:
Soft or hard. People still end up catching early because it’s just physics, it’s heavier so that’s going to change the amount of your dorsiflex midair. And it’s thicker so that’s going to change the actual contact point with the ground. And so, obviously you make it softer and more accommodating. Then there’s the mental of, “I can do it even more.”
Steven Sashen:
To that point, the confusion there I would contend is that if you do make something softer and you’re not feeling it as much in the foot or more accurately, the foam is basically dissipating the pressure, but the force still has to go somewhere. And if you’re not feeling it in the foot, which has just more sensory receptors than anywhere else, then it’s just traveling up into places, into upstream joints, in particular, the knee and the hip, that don’t have that sensory information available to them.
Golden Harper:
So, it takes longer before you-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. By the time you realize it, it’s too late.
Golden Harper:
It’s too late. And as I would say, force doesn’t magically disappear. It has to go somewhere.
Steven Sashen:
Yes.
Golden Harper:
So, if it’s not getting absorbed down low and controlled down low, and again, this is why foot strength is so important. If your foot can’t dissipate impact at the point of impact, then the force doesn’t magically disappear. It translates up the kinetic chain, it hits your weak link. And this, we’ll come back to this because this is a whole cushioning discussion that we need to have.
Steven Sashen:
We’ll get there. So, just an FYI, we are getting so close to starting a shoe company. We are one chapter away.
Golden Harper:
We are. So, at this point, my brain says, “I’m training for a rocky 50-mile race in the mountains. And I’m an elite athlete, there’s a good chance I’m going to win this race against paid professionals. So I need a shoe that I can run as fast as possible, and I need something that simulates me, essentially being barefoot on natural ground.” And I’m looking at my customers who, for the most part, run on concrete and sidewalk. And we’ve been selling Five Fingers for a couple of years at our shop at this point in time. And we’re having great success with anybody who uses them as a training tool, a couple times a week, strengthen your feet, run short to moderate distances in them, work on your running technique, et cetera. But no matter how hard we try, very few of these people are able to keep running 30, 40, 50 miles a week while in the Five Fingers.
Steven Sashen:
Well, if for no other reason than all the mocking.
Golden Harper:
Sure. Because they just look stupid. So, social pressure aside. But yeah, it’s difficult. And so my thought was like, “Hey, I want to make something that simulates running barefoot on grass or running barefoot on dirt, a natural surface.” And also I’m running this rocky 50-mile race. I want something that is going to be more protective. And in my mind, there was already kind of a solution for when you wanted to mimic barefoot, purely, is you could just go barefoot or put the Five Fingers on or something along those lines. And so I find… We get looking at the Tarahumara sandals and they’re an inch thick. And so I think like, “Okay, I’m going to take these shoes that have got our bestselling shoes at the store, and I’m going to get the elevated heel and the weight out of the back half of the shoe.”
We’re going to expand the front half of the shoe as much as possible. So, we’re already… Most customers we’re selling them their shoes, a size, size and a half, even two, two and a half sizes just-
Steven Sashen:
To get the right width.
Golden Harper:
And even that doesn’t even really work. So we ended up skipping the laces in the front half of the shoe so they can’t physically tie the shoe in the front half, so the toes could spread out as much as possible. And back to our previous discussion about what was happening with the foot. So, I tell my dad, I’m like, “As we look on the film, shoes are heavier in the back half, they’re thicker in the back half. What if we leveled it out? And we kept the cushion consistent front to back.” And he’s like, “That might do it. My old shoes that I used to race in, I would always drill the holes out of the back half to make the back half of the shoe lighter and make it lower in essence.” And so I was like, “Well, I think what I can do is put a pair of shoes and heat them up, take out the mid-sole, glue in a level flat piece of foam and glue the rubber back on.”
And my dad is always modifying shoes. I remember him doing this glow in the dark paint, and he’d put it on shoes, and if you run under… He’d go run under streetlights to charge it. And then you keep going, and you get the idea. So modifying shoes was totally normal at my house. And-
Steven Sashen:
This explains something about your dad’s craziness. Was the house ventilated properly?
Golden Harper:
No. No, probably not. But in this instance, my dad’s eyes light up and he’s like “275. Wait till the glue bubbles.” But downstairs in the mini oven, the toaster oven downstairs.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God.
Golden Harper:
Where mom won’t see, because she gets mad when it smells bad. And you’re using a kitchen appliance to bake shoes. And so-
Steven Sashen:
You’re practically Walter White from Breaking Bad when it comes to footwear. This is the footwear version of a meth lab.
Golden Harper:
Pretty much. Yeah, exactly. And it smells. I don’t know what a meth lab smells like, but it definitely smells like burning rubber.
Steven Sashen:
It smells like this is not good for you.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. So, I took, at the time the shoe with the least structure in the heel I could find. That was the most weight balance that didn’t have all the heavy heel counters and stuff, simple mid-sole. And I took it down 275 degrees, stuck it in there and waited for the glue to bubble. And frankly, waited too long, melted the laces, melted the TPU on the upper. I mean it was ugly. Pull this shoe out of there and it smells horrible. Grab a pair of pliers, rip the rubber outsole off, rip the mid-sole out. And I cut out some Spenco foam. And Spenco has this original, they call it their comfort foam. It’s pretty firm, really bouncy. And it comes in these sheets and it’s level, it’s flat. And so he glued in a couple layers of this Spenco foam. And then I glued the rubber back on and I instantly went for a run.
And for the first time in my life, I’m running down the sidewalk or the road. And I feel like, more or less, and again, these shoes are two sizes too big with no laces in the front half. I mean, they’re Frankenstein. But I feel like, I have this sensation of I’m running barefoot on grass. And I just have this moment of, “Thank you.” All the running technique stuff I’ve been taught since I was eight years old. I had sessions with Dr. Tom Miller, author of program to run, at age eight. I’ve been taught great running technique my whole life, and I’ve always felt like my shoes or my feet fought my running technique.
And for the first time, I’m like, “It’s just happening.” And I feel like I’m running, that freedom. And if you’ve ever run barefoot on the grass, you understand this freedom I’m talking about. And I just had this feeling and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is great.” And so for me, it worked. And then it was like, “Okay, I got to prove it now.”
Steven Sashen:
Well go ahead to proving. Actually, I’ll do this. The irony here in a way, or I don’t know if this is an irony. But the thing that’s kind of entertaining me now that I think of it is, if you were older, you might’ve had a different solution to try because if you were my age, I’m what? 500 years older than you? Something like that. You might’ve remembered the original Waffle trainer, which was basically flat with about 10 milli foam. That’s it. And you would’ve hunted… Kind of like, “Hey, wait a minute. I remember using those. And then you would’ve hunted those down.”
Golden Harper:
Well, it’s interesting you say that because how I ended up proving it is along these lines.
Steven Sashen:
All right, then hit me.
Golden Harper:
So, I thought, “Okay, I’m one guy. Let’s test it on our staff at the shop.” And we’ve got about two dozen employees at the time. We had just tons of-
Steven Sashen:
So, I was wrong. So this is another chapter before we get to the starting the shoe company.
Golden Harper:
Yeah, maybe.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Golden Harper:
And so I’m like, “I can’t make two dozen pairs of shoes in the toaster oven.” I’ve done a couple. It’s not efficient. And so I see these 1984 Saucony Jazz Originals that they’ve re-released.
Steven Sashen:
What a riot.
Golden Harper:
And they’re actually similar to the waffles we’re talking about, but all the shoes back then had these two layer mid-soles. And I wish I had one here. I probably have a picture somewhere here.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s okay.
Golden Harper:
But essentially, there’s one layer of mid-sole that’s flat, that runs the length of the shoe. And then there’s a second layer of mid-sole that’s the exact same thickness that starts in the heel and then dives down through the arch and disappears by the time it gets under the forefoot. And so you can visually see the shoe is exactly twice as thick in the heel as it is in the forefoot, which is essentially how all running shoes have been built ever since.
Steven Sashen:
Or worse.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. Or worse. And so I went to the shoemaker, the cobbler shop that was just a mile down the street from our running store. And the guy that ran the cobbler shop actually ran rivers with my dad in the Grand Canyon. And so I went to this is Robert Glazer, he’s a certified pedorthist, second generation, maybe third generation shoe maker. And I go to him and I’m like, “Hey, Robert, you see the way this shoe is built?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “See that top layer of foam there? Can we take that out?” And he looks at me and he’s like, “Well, first off, I usually add things to shoes, not take things out. Why would you want to do that?”
And I explained to him, “Well, with that second layer of foam there, it actually changes your ankle position, your knee position, your hip position, your back position. It actually physically changes your posture. So for standing, it has all these negative effects that your body has to make up for. And then it changes the way you walk. It makes you land out in front of your body, on more of a straight leg. It causes more impact. It’s harder on your shins, your knees, hips back, and it changes the way people run. And I’m trying to make running shoes that don’t jack with people. I want to make something that is as natural as it can be and still be a running shoe with some cushioning.”
And he looks at me and he looks at these shoes and he just starts shaking his head. And he’s like, “Well, sure makes a lot of sense.”
Steven Sashen:
That’s brilliant.
Golden Harper:
And it’s the exact opposite of everything. He’s always adding things to shoes, but-
Steven Sashen:
Well, you know what? I’ll tell you what’s funny. You just did with him, and he was amenable to it, the thing that-
Golden Harper:
And props to him for that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, yeah. Well, yeah, because most people, when they hear something that contradicts what they believe, they latch onto what they believe even more firmly. But you’re doing the thing that we’ve had to figure out to do in advertising, what we’re doing, which is get people to think about something unrelated to footwear to a certain extent, that just makes sense. Is weaker better than stronger? No. When you put your arm in a cast, does it come out stronger? No. When you put your foot in something that similarly restricts its movement, what happens?
Golden Harper:
Atrophy.
Steven Sashen:
And so you got to get people to that point of having that Aha moment unrelated in a way, and then translate it. So, you did that with him and he was, again, smart enough to respond appropriately. Because when I do this with people, most people respond appropriately. The other half just respond with, “Hey, moron.” It’s like, “Which part of, Weaker better than Stronger was confusing to you? Or Weaker not being better than stronger was confusing?”
Golden Harper:
Yeah. So, long story short, he made this first two dozen pairs of shoes for me. We tested out on our staff, and 19 out of 20 loved it.
Steven Sashen:
And the 20th was the one who also did not prefer Trident gum.
Golden Harper:
Maybe.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Golden Harper:
And the irony is he ended up being an ultra wearer like 10 years later. And so, anyway. So 19 out of 20. I was like, “Well, that’s pretty good. That’s like 95%.” And we’re talking about hacked up 1984 rerun shoes that we’re getting this kind of success with. And again, to kind of fast-forward a little bit, it just got to the point where we’re wearing them, testing them in the store, and I’m wearing my pair. I just like the way they feel.
No other reason, not a ton of science at this point in time. I just feel better standing in them, walking around the store. I like running in them. And I’ve got this… I have this guy that comes in and he’s had knee pain for 10 years plus. We’ve tried everything. We’re trying everything. And he’s like, “Well, what are you wearing?” And I was like, “Frankenstein shoes.”
Steven Sashen:
Basically.
Golden Harper:
And he’s like, “Well, why?” I’m like, “Well, on video it looks like they help you run more naturally, land underneath a bent knee.” And he’s like, “Well, my knees are the problem. Don’t you think that might help me?” And I was like, “Yeah, but they’re Frankenstein shoes. I would get sued if I sold you these.”
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:48:04]
Golden Harper:
Yeah, but they’re Frankenstein shoes. I would get sued if I sold you these. He’s like, “Well, at least let me try them.” He happened to be my same size, so he puts them on, goes for a run, and he’s gone a long time. If you’ve ever worked at a running store, and somebody’s gone a long time-
Steven Sashen:
It’s not good.
Golden Harper:
… You have the thought of, “Dude jacked my shoes,” which happens very rarely, and it’s not smart, because usually, the people working there are pretty fast and can run you down.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on, wait, I got to do this. This had nothing to do with being in a running shoe store and having that happen, but when I had a software company on the second floor of this building, we saw some guys through the window rip off some lady and take off. Well, it just so happened that one of our employees is a nationally ranked marathoner.
He goes, “Be right back.” He caught up to him, and he’s like, loping, it’s as slow as he can go. He goes, “I can do this for another two and a half hours without blinking,” and they just stop and hand him the woman’s purse.
Golden Harper:
I love it. Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Yeah, yeah. Here’s the shoes back. Yeah. Anyway, he eventually does come back, and he comes up to me and he’s like, “I’ll take them.” I was like, “You will certainly not take them. They are mine.” He’s like, “Well, can you make me a pair like this?” I’m like, “Well, just please don’t tell anybody.” It’s like, “We don’t want to get sued. I promise the shoe company that made the shoe is not happy about us cutting the back half of the shoe out, and leveling it out, and literally Frankensteining the shoe, so just don’t tell anybody.”
He’s like, “Well, that’s fine. If it makes my knee better, I’m good with anything.” It’s not a month later, some guy comes in and is like, “Hey, who sold Joe the hacked up shoes?” I’m sitting there on the fit bench, like, “Come on, man.”
Steven Sashen:
I told you.
Golden Harper:
“I told you not to tell anybody.” Do you know what happens when you tell people not to tell people things?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Golden Harper:
They freaking tell everybody.
Steven Sashen:
Yep. Give people a mandate, they’ll do the opposite.
Golden Harper:
Yeah. Again, let’s fast-forward. We’re a little over a year later. We’ve now sold a thousand pair ish, about a thousand pair of modified ZeroDrop, expanded toe box, too big shoes, because it went like wildfire. Real quick, we’re like, “Okay, the only way around this, the only way to save ourselves is we make a research study out of it.” Everybody who gets a hacked up modified pair of shoes, we send them home with this survey, we pay them 10 bucks to bring it back in six weeks of store credit, or gift card, or whatever.
We get all this data. Then we track it and we tell them, “By buying these shoes, you are opting into this study, essentially, and we need this data back. You are willingly buying a shoe that has been changed.” That was kind of our way around getting sued. It probably still wouldn’t have worked. Luckily we’re past the statute of limitations.
Steven Sashen:
Well, yes. In a different era, AKA now, that would’ve not flown, but those were more pleasant times, more pastoral. People left pies on the windowsill and they stayed there. It was dreamy.
Golden Harper:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wait, I’m thinking of the Andy Griffith Show. That’s different.
Golden Harper:
Anyway, we basically had this data, though, that was great, and I was able to take it. We had great contacts within the shoe industry. Obviously, my dad was well-connected. We were the biggest running store in Utah. It was easy for us to go to our friends and be like, “Hey, we’ve been getting people’s big toe to straighten out and their toes to be able to spread out. We get the forefoot in the heel level with the ground, and all these good things happen,” specifically like five areas that were really strong with the data: plantar fascia issues, shin splints, runner’s knee, IT band, and low back, some of which made sense to us.
The shin splints, the runner’s knee, the IT band, no-brainer. We’re like, “Yeah, you land underneath a bent knee. Of course, three foot spring absorbs impact, those areas are goin
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