Jim Klopman is a lifelong innovator who has always been one of those people who thinks differently. He believes balance training has sharpened his ability to make new neural connections and see the possibilities and pathways that others miss.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Jim Klopman about your real sixth sense, balance.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How engaging the big toe while walking or running is important for balance and preventing falls.
– How balance training enhances athletic performance and coordination in athletes.
– Why instability training methods may be more effective for balance improvement than traditional weightlifting.
– How balance work must be distinct from weightlifting to fully reap it’s benefits.
– How balance is crucial for your overall performance and coordination.
Connect with Jim:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@SlackBow
Instagram
@slackbow_balance
Facebook
facebook.com/SlackBow
Links Mentioned:
slackbow.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
You think you have five senses. I’m not even going to list them because I can’t remember what the hell they are. But maybe you have a sixth sense, and I don’t mean ESP, that if you don’t master and develop and practice could really impact your life in a very, very negative way. And we’re going to find out more about that on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting from the feet first, because those are your foundation. We’re going to break through the mythology, the propaganda, and often the outright lies that people have told you about what it takes to run, walk, hike, dance, play, workout, do yoga, whatever it is you like to do more enjoyably and more effortlessly.
I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host for The MOVEMENT Movement Podcast, where, look, our goal you may know is to make natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice the way natural food currently is. And we need your help for that, which is why we like to say we are creating a movement movement, and we would like you to be part of that. In fact, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. You know how to do that. Go to jointhemovementmovement.com, you’ll find all the places you can interact with us on YouTube, on iTunes, on the Google Play, wherever it is, and make sure you share and review and like. And if you’re on YouTube, hit the bell, et cetera.
If you’re watching on YouTube, by the way, my apologies for not having shaved today, deal with it, and you know how it goes. So anyway, why don’t we jump in. I’m trying to think if there’s anything. Oh, if you have any questions, feel free to drop them to me via email. Send an email to move@jointhemovementmovement.com. And let’s do this, shall we? So first of all, I want to say hello and welcome my dear friend, Jim Klopman. Jim, hello, dude.
Jim Klopman:
Hey, man. Where did you go to radio school?
Steven Sashen:
I never went to radio school, but I did when I was living in Manhattan, which was from ’83 to ’93, I did make a good amount of money doing voiceover stuff.
Jim Klopman:
There you go.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll show you the entire recording session that I did that made me $15,000 one year. You ready? Here we go. Ready? I’ll do the entire session right now. Fire. Okay, that was it. So it was a commercial, radio commercial for the army. And what they used to do is they would get actors to do the radio commercials, and if the radio ones went well, then they would bring in actual people from the military to do the TV commercials. So there was times where I was doing standup comedy for a living. There’s times where I’d be at some gig and I’d hear the setup for the commercial. I was like, “Oh, just wait for it, wait for it. Fire. That’s me.” And everyone would go, “Yeah, right.” I was like, “Yeah, that’s me.”
Jim Klopman:
Nice. Better be lucky than good.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a really good gig. The voiceover world, you can make a lot of money doing a very small amount of work.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, apparently.
Steven Sashen:
Five guys who do most of it, and they have a pretty cushy gig, but enough about that. So Jim, why don’t you tell human beings where you’re from and what you do, and then we’re going to give people a movement to do based on that conversation.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah. I’m based in Park City, Utah, now, and what I do is I’ve developed methods and systems and patents and equipment to improve athletic balance. And athletic balance is something far beyond what you get at physical therapy. Most balance training stops at physical therapy a little bit beyond, but we take you all the way up to the Cirque du Soleil level, and we find that there’s a direct correlation to balance, athletic performance, coordination, agility. And we’re pretty convinced now that as you improve your balance, you’ll also improve your vision as well.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so let me back up and just say for people who are listening or watching that while you use the word athletic repeatedly, that doesn’t mean this is for athletes, far from it. Would you like to address that point?
Jim Klopman:
Yeah. So another way of saying it it’s dynamic balance. So it’s movement. The world is built for people who have not so good balance because the American Disabilities Act, everything’s flat, everything’s perfectly staged. So the world is set up for people who need canes and walkers, and we end up being stuck in that place as humans. And so the fact is you do go outside, you challenge yourself, whether on the slope, the tennis court, sprinting, running, going up and down trails, all those areas have higher needs of balance that we don’t recognize that we don’t have.
Steven Sashen:
So let me start with, since I like to give people a movement to do, you and I talked about this right before we got started. Do you want to walk people through it, or do you want me to do it?
Jim Klopman:
Well, one of our core balance challenges is a balance challenge in an athletic position. So if you go to your physical therapist or the doctor they have you stand and kick one leg in front, and you have a straight leg that’s into the ground and one leg pointed out in front. And basically that’s teaching you how to balance on your heel with a straight knee, a position you’re never in real life. Actually, it’s a position you’re in just before you fall on your ass. So we like to change that up and say that first of all, and this dovetails into, the big toe is sort of the core of all balance on the foot. So you have to engage the big toe. So we have you stand on one foot.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so let’s just actually walk people through it. So keep in mind some people are not in a place where they can actually do this. So be it, you’ll get the hint. So walk them through and give them an actual-
Jim Klopman:
So you can do it next to your desk. You just stand on, let’s say your left foot.
Steven Sashen:
Some people are in a car.
Jim Klopman:
Well, don’t do it in your car.
Steven Sashen:
Look, if you do it, open the sunroof first.
Jim Klopman:
Exactly. Stand on your left foot, and then you bend your knee so your weight is over your big toe.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to do it. Hold on.
Jim Klopman:
You stick your ass out a little bit.
Steven Sashen:
All right. I got to bend down. Wait, here, I’ll change this. Okay. All right. I’m doing it.
Jim Klopman:
And then you just balance and have that other leg behind it, so it’s not in front or to the side, it’s actually behind it. So you’re in a deep, nice athletic position.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Jim Klopman:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So I just bent my knee, so my heel is behind me. All right, mostly on my toe.
Jim Klopman:
And your knee is actually behind you too, so off the ground foot, the knee is behind you as well. And you just do that actually… I mean, if you do it 30 seconds to a minute on each side, it has a massive ability to clear your brain and kind of reset your brain and get out of that chatty conscious brain. It takes you in your subconscious more.
Steven Sashen:
Can we do the advanced one right now?
Jim Klopman:
Sure.
Steven Sashen:
Close your eyes.
Jim Klopman:
No, we never close our eyes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really? I love doing this one. How come-
Jim Klopman:
When you close your eyes, what you’re doing is you’ve just play into my hands beautifully.
Steven Sashen:
So how come?
Jim Klopman:
Well, first of all, you train yourself to be a well-balanced blind person.
Steven Sashen:
Hey, there are some blind people listening.
Jim Klopman:
Not, But blind people actually take their visual cortex-
Steven Sashen:
… with cars, you have an issue with…
Jim Klopman:
They’ll take their visual cortex and they’ll change the application visual, so other senses.
Steven Sashen:
True.
Jim Klopman:
So what happens when you close your eyes is we see there’s probably five different systems that are involved in your balance system, ones that aren’t even talked about in science yet. Eyes, vestibular, tongue, which is pretty well researched, palm of the hands, your mapping system. You have a position in your brain… you have in your brain, a map of every position your body can be in, your vestibular system, the 100,000 to 200,000 sensors on the bottom of your feet, the muscles on the bottom of your feet. All these are separate systems that are all engaged in the balance system. Why on God’s earth would you take one system and shut it off?
So you can think you’re isolating the other system, when in fact, when we teach people to balance, we improve their eyesight dramatically. They see better, they have better field awareness, they can shoot the basketball better, they can hit the golf ball better, they can put better all because the balance system is engaged along with the eyes. What’s missing is that when you look at the eyes and you see my hand, that’s only 5% of the data that’s going into your eyes. 95% of the data is going to your subconscious mind.
Now there’s a large chunk of it that goes to faces. So if I destroyed your visual cortex and all you saw was black, you don’t see my hand at all, you go, “Oh, that’s a happy face. That’s a sad face.” By the same token, if you had a destroyed visual cortex, you could walk down a hallway with obstacles even though all you saw was black because your visual cortex is destroyed. And there’s research that proves this. So our point is huge amount of data comes in through the eyes, and we think shutting off the eyes is something that helps the balance and it doesn’t.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not suggesting that it helps it at all. In fact, let me back up a little bit.
Jim Klopman:
It actually hurts it to close your eyes.
Steven Sashen:
Well, hold that thought.
Jim Klopman:
It will hurt your balance to close your eyes.
Steven Sashen:
No, of course. But two things. First things first, let me back up to the intro that I gave for this, which was the idea that we could arguably say that balance is a sixth sense that people do not pay attention to, they don’t develop, they often lose it for reasons that we’ll no doubt get into, so that sort of thing.
And let me back up also about what you said during the intro. So I would normally, at this point, well, not normally, I would hold up a copy of your book if I had it with me, but it’s at home and not the office. So I just want to say right now a lot of what we’re going to talk about is in your book. I don’t know why you’re laughing. Come on.
Jim Klopman:
Well, I don’t have a copy of the book myself.
Steven Sashen:
Perfect. So tell people what the name is.
Jim Klopman:
The name of the book is Balance is Power.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So I’m holding it up, it says balance.
Jim Klopman:
And that’s one of our core products called the SlackBlock…
Steven Sashen:
Yes, I’m holding…
Jim Klopman:
… which is sold through Xero Shoes.
Steven Sashen:
… balance training device. We’ll talk about this, but I hold that up mostly because it says balance equals power similar to the title of your book. So yeah, no, I’m not suggesting that closing your eyes is good for your balance. Clearly as soon as you close them, it’s like for most people, all hell breaks loose.
Jim Klopman:
No, it’s not good for training your balance, it inhibits your training.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. I have to tell you a funny story about that. There was a situation recently, I won’t mention why because I don’t want to… Well, because, and anyway, they had me stand on one leg and then close my eyes, and then two minutes later said, “All right, I guess you can stop now.” So I was totally fine. And then they put you through a workout, and then have you come back and do the balance drill again where the idea is after you’ve done this workout, your balance has improved. And it’s similar to when you’ve seen people with the hologram watches or any other something else where once you do it once, the next time, you’re usually going to be better regardless of what happens in between, because it is amazing to me how quickly people do respond to balance training.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, so we see that too, which is not always a great business model because we can’t hook them in for a year’s worth of training like they do…
Steven Sashen:
Good. Well, I say that for a couple of reasons.
Jim Klopman:
No, I know.
Steven Sashen:
Look, I’m not a big… It’s kind of like chiropractic treatment. I have a good friend who’s a chiropractor who hates chiropractors, consult chiropractors when I say that. But unless you can demonstrate that you can make people graduate from what you’re doing then I’m iffy about what you’re doing.
Jim Klopman:
Right, right. So it comes down to… First of all, anybody says they know everything about the balance system doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It’s one of the most highly researched parts of the nervous system. It’s 40,000 neuroscientists in the world, and they still haven’t figured this shit out. I mean, they just recently found out that information you get from the bottom of your feet doesn’t even go to your brain. It goes to brain tissue in your lower spine.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting.
Jim Klopman:
If you look at the whole balance system and you look at the data flows, it’s like a computer network. The data flows are generally closer to the processing center, so the vestibular systems where right next to a huge processing center. So you get a lot of data from the bottom of your feet. So rather than spending all the time going up to your brain with the data and then back down again, they have a special mini computer that’s in between your brain and your feet to do the work for you.
Steven Sashen:
I have so many punchlines in my head right now about the computer between my brain and my feet. I’m not going to get into that.
Jim Klopman:
To us it’s a software system. So you’re not using it, and we’ll have people come in, let’s say they train at a level, they leave our session at a level two. Well, they’ll come back the next session and be at a level four. And so the system’s like firing back up, and it’s like we’ve unplugged it and plugged it back in the wall again and it starts coming back. And of course, different age groups, different athletes have different levels of progression, but it’s truly, it’s mind-blowing how quick it regenerates and comes back.
Steven Sashen:
Well, let me back up again because I think you know this story, but I’m not sure that you do. I have a personal interest in this, and it’s one of the reasons that I’ve been very excited about what we’re doing at Xero Shoes and the response and reports we get from people who wear these shoes and what they say, because it was a little over four years ago, my dad, who was little 80 and a half at the time, and he had always just been in big thick shoes and he kind of shuffled where he walked and he didn’t have very good balance obviously. And he tripped on a ledge in a hallway at a business that was maybe half an inch, three-quarters of an inch and fell down and broke his hip and was dead two weeks later. And so-
Jim Klopman:
Really? Wow.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it was… I mean, I’ll tell you, it was crazy. I got a call that he had done this. He was in the hospital, had a hip replacement. I talked to him two days after that. He was totally fine, ready to sue the people who had the thing in the hallway. And then three days later, I got a call from the hospital, it’s like, “Your dad just coded, you better get out here. We just paddled him back,” and maybe four or five days later, that was the end.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah. Well, it’s oftentimes a broken hip is a death knell, but usually it takes longer. But the numbers are staggering. So if you’re over the age of 45 and you go to the emergency room, there’s over 50% chance you’re there for a fall.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really?
Jim Klopman:
Overall, half of all emergency room visits over the age of 45 are for falls. And those are just the ones that are bad enough that need an ER…
Steven Sashen:
They are going to go to the emergency room.
Jim Klopman:
… so imagine how many more there are. Over the age of 65, it’s the number one cause of accidental death. Over age 65, it’s the number one cause of accidental injury. And the interesting thing is where deaths from all these other diseases are going down as medicine and drugs get better, the deaths from these falls are going up. So you’d think with the ADA rules and the fitness programs and all the healthy things we’re doing that these number of falls is per 100,000, and this is not a gross number, continues to go up. So it’s not a huge number. So the deaths are about the number of those, let’s say, of strokes. But it’s still…
Steven Sashen:
Preventable.
Jim Klopman:
Oh, my God, hugely preventable, and it’s the number one cause of industrial death. So it’s just massive. And what people also don’t realize, this is mind-blowing fact too, is it’s a number one cause of concussions. So it’s not Johnny on the soccer field or the baseball field or the football field, it’s people falling. So let’s say falls are a $30 billion a year problem, and concussions are a 60 to $90 billion a year problem. So you’re talking over $100 billion a year that’s costing us because of falls that are totally and easily preventable.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so before we talk about the prevention, I mean, obviously I have theories about some of the causes in general and the increase, but I don’t want to say it. Let me hear what you think.
Jim Klopman:
Well, I think there’s several. We have four listed in the book, and here they are. One, I’ll start with, you, shoes.
Steven Sashen:
But enough about me, talk about my shoes.
Jim Klopman:
So first of all, the shoes today, you have an elevated heel. We could rename our company big toe balance because we just think the big toe is a huge component to any balance challenge. So when you look at the running shoes nowadays, which most people don’t run in, you have your toes virtually off the ground and your heels up. They say a four millimeter lift is a flat shoe, but it’s from four to 12 millimeters up tilted.
The second part of it is the foam in the shoe sort of inoculates your foot from all sensation. When we balance train somebody, they will come in and oftentimes with elastic shoes on for the first visit, and they’ll say, “Can I keep my shoes on?” And we say, “Yeah, sure, keep them on.” And because taking them to the maximum balance limit, about a minute or two minutes in, they go, “My feet are really hurting. Why are my feet hurting?”
And what’s happening is because we’ve taken them to the balance limit, that foot is going, “I got to get involved in this shit, and I can’t, what’s going on?” And it’s trying to push through that foam to get involved. And we say, “Okay, take off your shoes.” And then we put them on their flat board with no shoes on, no socks too, because that’s another level of friction we don’t want in there. And they’re like, “That’s amazing.” Within five seconds, foot pain goes away.
So number one cause, you say shoes. Number two is… I’ll go through the four. Number two is what we’re doing now. So I just gave you a discussion on the peripheral vision. As I’m engaging you here, I’m doing what’s called peripheral denial. I’m shutting off this system around me. And the more I do that, the more I damage my balance system. Third thing is bifocals or these lenses that are multi vision. So if I have lenses that are readers on the bottom or bifocals on the bottom, I’m cutting off the data that’s coming in from the bottom. And there’s a huge amount of data that comes in from the bottom of the eyes. And these come in through your rods, not the cones in your eyes, and they don’t need vision correction. And then-
Steven Sashen:
Well, I want to pause on that one. As a guy who typically wears progressives, I’m not wearing them right now, which I mean, if I don’t wear them, I can’t function, because I got progressives because basically computer screen distance, I’m totally fine. Anything closer or anything further, I’m screwed. So talk to me about that.
Jim Klopman:
Well, if you’re doing your sport and you don’t have to have any closeup vision…
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah, no, I take them off for that.
Jim Klopman:
… you do single vision. If you go into the Walmart-
Steven Sashen:
Actually I just take them off. I mean, I’m on a track, I can see the lines.
Jim Klopman:
Right. If you go to the Walmart, you need both, because you’re in Walmart, I got to see where I’m going and I got to read the labels. I understand that. But if you’re doing anything athletically, and we’ll take people that’ll come in, they’ll go… they’ll have their dual vision glasses on and we take them off and suddenly they’re balancing better. And they say, “I can’t see.”
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting.
Jim Klopman:
And I go, “You can’t see because that’s not the data we’re looking for. I don’t give a shit about that data that you say I can see.” Listen, if you take somebody who has macular degeneration, and this is particularly the young person who has some sort of… I forget the name of disease, macular degeneration, which is the central part of the vision gets clouded or disappears, and you put in front of them a cup, a glass, and a plate, and you say, “What position is the cup in?” They go, “I don’t know.” “What position is the plate in?” “I don’t know.” They can’t tell you. And they go, “Grab the cup. Grab the plate. Grab the glass.” See the two different systems in play there?
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Jim Klopman:
That’s the system we want. That’s the system we work with. So when we work with that system and we have tons of different methods of training that system, and it’s different than what anybody else is doing. I don’t even want to talk about it here because it’s just what we consider to be a trade secret. But learning how to use that system improves the athletic ability of the individual, improves their balance.
So back to this periphery thing. So you have peripheral denial because of this, you have the glasses that take it away, you have the shoes. And finally the fourth thing is that we talked about here is you’re moving about in modern spaces, in a constantly degrading situation. So we say that you need a walker. We have 0 to 100 scales. You need a walker, let’s say, or cane at level 20. The world is built for level 20. So you’ve degraded your system to level 20. So it’s just like you’re never going to learn how to lift a hundred pounds if you lift five pounds every day.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Jim Klopman:
So you’re lifting five pounds every day with your balance system. Then one day you come along and you stumble, you’re dead, and we don’t stop… This is interesting. We don’t stop people from falling, we cause you to catch your balance, lose your balance, catch your balance, lose your balance, so when you hit the ground, there’s no velocity. It’s people that have bad balance.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, they topple like a two by four.
Jim Klopman:
Very high velocity. So this system, this world we live in with flat floors, perfectly perpendicular walls. I mean, we have this level system built in, so we are totally detuned, so then one day we come along and we get a level 30 or 40 balance challenge, and we’re shit out of luck. And you can be totally healthy. I’ve had really healthy people come in and say, “Yeah, I’ve had that fall.” And they look healthy, they’re fit, but they don’t have good balance. So the fourth problem is the world we live in. And going back to the crazy numbers I was telling you about before, and it might relate to your dad, amongst those falls for people over the age of 65, you know what the number one cause is for those falls?
Steven Sashen:
I’m trying to guess. I’m guessing it has nothing to do with whether you’re tall enough to get on that ride. No, I don’t know.
Jim Klopman:
Can I get on that pony? No, it’s a curb.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, oh, interesting.
Jim Klopman:
So here’s the deal. When you see a step, every step by every building code, and every city in this…
Steven Sashen:
Same height.
Jim Klopman:
… country has to be… it can’t be an 8th or a 16th of an inch off, has to be exactly the same. But we see curbs all the time, but they’re always different heights.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Jim Klopman:
And there are different heights within the same street. So it’s something that will cause you, if you don’t have this vision working and you don’t have good balance, you’ll catch your toe on it and go down.
Steven Sashen:
That’s interesting. I’m just having flashbacks to when I was in Nepal, this was 30 years ago, and have you ever been there?
Jim Klopman:
Mm-mm.
Steven Sashen:
So the way a lot of Nepali houses are built, they’ll start with a room, then they need to add on another room and they just put it wherever the hell they can. And then they build whatever they need to build to get from one room to the other. They’re rarely at the same level, you have to build a third and a fourth. It’s like a weird three-dimensional maze where none of the stairs match, none of the heights are the same to get from one room to the other. It’s totally crazy, and it really is, it’s like a very cool entertaining game that you’re playing 24/7 just to get around.
Jim Klopman:
Well, so if you go… I used to live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there’s a little town right next to it. I’m trying to remember the name of it, but the houses are 1670s. And you go in there, every doorframe is like this, every wall is like this, every floor. So here’s the thing I don’t understand is that you look at Google, they spend so much money trying to make their offices interesting, and they got rounds spheres here and triangles there and cushy things here, walls that go like this and floors that are dead straight. Now to me, I understand you got to have, again, for ADA, you got to have flat floors for those who are in wheelchairs, walkers, and canes. Why the fuck not have like this, cobblestones, things that go like this, things that go like this, none of that?
And so I just don’t understand. I don’t know. I just don’t get why we get so stuck into this world. Now here’s the other thing that happens is when you’re in this area and you’re in these perfectly… and we talk about this a lot in the book, you’re in these perfectly perpendicular places in your office, nobody ever has ever, ever said, we need to spend more time in the office.
Steven Sashen:
True.
Jim Klopman:
What do you do on weekends? You leave the office, you ski, hike, run, trail run, sprint, play hockey, play tennis, play golf. Everything you’re doing is what, challenging your balance, riding a motorcycle. You can go to an art museum and challenge your balance because nowhere in art museum other than the frames, there’s a straight line.
So you come out, and on Monday you feel great, Sunday night you go to work and you get debilitated for a whole week, dunka-dunka-dunka-dunka-dunka-dunk. You feel like crap on Friday, got to go back out and recover again by balance challenges. So it’s a horribly debilitating environment. Apple knows it. So Apple knows that I got this box in front of me and it’s totally rectangular, but look at Apple’s screensavers, what are they all of? Totally fractal nature, mountains, trees, all sorts of nature type things. And even their little pink light that goes around drawing lines, nothing is square, nothing is straight.
Steven Sashen:
That’s so cute that you think that’s an Apple thing. Those were screensavers from DOS computers, and then Windows computers. There’s a whole lot of those wacky little things. But the thing about screens for me, and maybe it goes back to your peripheral… Was it peripheral blindness? What was the phrase?
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, it’s peripheral denial.
Steven Sashen:
Peripheral denial.
Jim Klopman:
So have you ever heard of amblyopia?
Steven Sashen:
No.
Jim Klopman:
Little kids that have wandering eye?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jim Klopman:
So what happens is that it’s not that the eye is getting plenty of data, it’s a weak muscle thing, but you have to put a patch over the strong eye to make the weak eye start to work.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Jim Klopman:
If you don’t do it before age eight, it’s incorrectable, not because the eye can’t see, it’s because the brain has said, I’ve had enough of this and shut it off. So when you have now… And I’ve spoken to optometrists now who say they see it, kids coming in like this all day long and they test the kid, and their peripheral vision test is nothing like ours. It’s only right here, they go, “This kid’s got peripheral vision denial.”
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting.
Jim Klopman:
Because he’s starting to shut off that part of his brain.
Steven Sashen:
Well, my thing to peripheral vision denial is… And I’ve said this since, when did I get my first computer, 1983 is it’s difficult for me to deal with computers because I just don’t think in a 14 inch or 16, 17, or 23 inch thing. I don’t even think in one thing. I mean, when you come into my office, there’s piles of stuff in various places. The only way I know where anything is, is through that three-dimensional model. It is so difficult for me.
It’s funny, there’s certain kinds of activities that I can’t even do in my regular office. So I’m in our conference room right now. If I’m doing video editing, it’s easier for me to do it here than it is in my office. And I had an office at one point where it wasn’t working for me because the ceiling was too low. I’m hypersensitive to where space is around me.
Jim Klopman:
So if you look at it this way, and we have a presentation we did on this for management consultant years ago, is that go to some corporate office set up and who has the big window view? So it’s always the top people, the CEOs, the tops, and what do they do when they have some deep thought to do? When you see photos of any CEO in deep thought…
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I don’t really know.
Jim Klopman:
… is he sitting on his desk like this? No, he’s looking out at his big view, because what that does too, and as we’ve talked about this in terms of athletic being in the zone, when you have that big view and I’m pulling in as much data as I can, your conscious brain shuts off. Everybody that’s in the audience right now, if you just turn to wherever you are and don’t look at one spot, but try to see everything you possibly can, you won’t have any conscious thought at all.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny, I just had a flashback. I was with some people, a bunch of marketing things that we were doing, we are in a restaurant and we are sitting in a corner booth and I’m working on a problem and I said, “Wait, wait, I can’t do this. I have to get out of the booth to do it,” because the booth, the ceiling was like…
Jim Klopman:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
And the restaurant was like 15-foot ceilings. I had to get more space around my head.
Jim Klopman:
Exactly. And so you’re sensitive to it. But now imagine every person in every job in this country that’s in those spaces, it’s a total shutdown mode.
Steven Sashen:
God, that’s really fascinating. I’m also thinking it’s like the amount of work that I’ve done sitting in a hot tub late at night. I mean, the first few years of this company, we lived in a house, we were renting a house that had a hot tub, and I would just spend hours every night just sitting out there because that’s how I could get my best thinking done. So I want to back up. This is a thing I say often in these podcasts. Why you? How the hell did this happen? How did you get into this? Who are you? What are you doing here?
Jim Klopman:
Well, it’s been really a myth, what is it, myth of Sisyphus, whatever type of project. So when I was 50, I spent a day skiing with Stein Eriksen, just he and I, and he was 74. And I asked him, “How do you ski so well?” I could ski better than he could at that age, but still I didn’t that day because I didn’t want to embarrass him. But it was amazing. And we just had the most fun. I had more fun talking with him than skiing with him. But he said… Well, first of all he called me Jimmy, which was interesting because my only people who call me Jimmy are the people that knew me when I was like eight years old.
But he said, “Jimmy,” he said, “I ski every day.” Okay, I can’t do that. So I asked him about some of his gymnastic work, and he said, “Yeah, I used to do gymnastics when I raced.” And he said, “I still do some of it.” I think it’s interesting that we see a lot of athletes age out who have great physiques and great muscles because fitness has gotten so great. And of course you can buy really good vision, so they’re not aging out.
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, I thought you were going to say you could buy really good muscles, you could buy…
Jim Klopman:
Well, you can that too, but so why was an athlete aging out? And I thought maybe it’s a balance system. So I messed around. I looked for all sorts of balanced challenges in the industry, and there was nothing in the fitness industry that was a challenge. I discovered slacklining, but when I got on the slackline, walking didn’t make sense to me because putting one foot in front of the other is nothing that you do athletically. So you just never in that position.
Steven Sashen:
True.
Jim Klopman:
So I started doing some one foot work, and I was ridiculously fast as a skier at 50. Well, age 51, I was faster. So I’m like, “Wow, something’s happened here.” So long story short, I engaged a local university, their engineering department, they designed a frame for me. We built the frame, we patented the frame, I built a protocol that we patented, and we tested it on different athletes.
Steven Sashen:
So wait, wait, so was this for the SlackBow?
Jim Klopman:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So basically just to describe it here, I’ll let you describe it for… I’ve been on one, so I know, but I will let you describe that for people.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, it’s basically a two-inch line adjustable frame that’s like a slackline. But what makes it different for us is it’s infinitely controllable, and we have on what’s called a slack plate.
Steven Sashen:
So wait, I’m going to pause and do Jim to English translation. So what’s SlackBow? A SlackBow is, it’s a suspension system for a slackline. So basically it’s portable. Just imagine… Actually if you imagine a bow and arrow and you take the wooden part, the bow and put that on the ground so the string is parallel to the ground, that’s the gist of it. The string is the slackline, the bow is the thing that holds it and gives it whatever tension you need. And the plate you’re talking about is just a piece of wood essentially that’s about, what, a foot by three inches roughly?
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, a foot by three and a half. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Ah, that’s pretty good. I was guessing. That fits on top of the slack line. So rather than just having the webbing that you’re standing on, you have this block that you can stand on as well. Did I get that right?
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, you did a great job. And we do everything one foot because we determined that all athletic balance is on one foot or the other. You’re either transitioning to one foot or the other or you’re on one foot or the other. So this whole thing of balancing with both feet, and we do some two foot balance, but on a specific type of equipment, but a lot of times, not a lot of times, but all balance and athletic movements are on one foot or the other.
So anyways, back to my story. So then I try… There’s no real test of coordination. There’s the, what is it, 5-10-5 in the NFL and this vertical leap, which they say is a fairly good measure of coordination. So we did a vertical leap test on… it was only like 10, 12 athletes, and we had them do 10 sessions of the patented 12-minute routine. And every athlete except for one increased the vertical leap by over 10%. No changes in anything else.
And also what I found fascinating is when you watch some pre-intervention, they jumped and did their test. And then when you watch them after they did the 10 sessions, their kinetic chain and fluidity was just totally different. They were just graceful. They were ballet-like when they went up and touched. The one guy that didn’t do it, he was 5’11”, I think he had a 37-inch vertical to begin with, and he went to 41. So he increased by 8%. But he was insanely good to begin with, which was also a valuable test because here was somebody who had insanely good balance and vertical leap and we improved it.
So what we find too is that when your balance improves, your whole kinetic chain improves. And it took me years to figure this out, but what I determined was it’s a very simple premise is if you define the balance system as an autonomic system, which is not clearly defined as such. An autonomic system is supposed to be a system that the human body or human has that’s automatic and protective.
So first of all, falling hurts. So I’m pretty sure that stopping falling, we don’t think about it, is protective. So when you take something like hitting a golf ball, you can’t swing any harder than what your balance system allows because you’ll fall over. Now if you’re under the age of 12, you can do it, because kids under the age of 12 fall all the time because they’re still engaging in defining their balance system. If you’re drunk, you can do it, because you’ve shut the balance system off, you’ve detuned it, but you cannot swing so hard that you’ll fall.
Steven Sashen:
As an adult. Yeah.
Jim Klopman:
So this is true with baseball. It’s true if you were running and cutting. It’s true with long distance runners. It’s true with any of the…
Steven Sashen:
Hold on, you’re going to love this.
Jim Klopman:
… you cannot run any faster than your balance system allows.
Steven Sashen:
You’re going to love this. I think you will. So when I teach people… We’ll find out. Maybe you won’t. I don’t give a shit. So it’s one of the reasons that we get along. One of the things that I do when I’m teaching people how to run naturally, doesn’t have to be barefoot, but I’ll usually do it barefoot, we’ll be out in a park somewhere. And this is not about running per se because I’m not a fan of teaching someone to run on grass, because that’s like taking the padding from your shoe and just taking it to the ground, and you don’t don’t know what the hell’s under there anyway.
But what I have them do, I go, “Pretend you’re a kid. Watch what kids do when they’re goofing around and playing. So keep your arms by your sides. Don’t try to use your arms, and basically just lean your head until you’re about to fall over. And then just do the barest thing that you can to keep yourself from falling on your face, and just keep moving your head in these wacky different directions to let your head guide you.” And it takes people a while, so you can see that they’re constantly just on the edge of falling, but not letting themself. And then they start having so much fun. It’s such a great goofy thing to do. You’re just letting yourself fall and catching and fall and catching. It’s a blast.
Jim Klopman:
Well, and all balance challenges are fun. I recently stopped training anybody under the age of 15 years old.
Steven Sashen:
Because?
Jim Klopman:
Because they come and they have too damn much fun, nobody’s listening to me. I got specific protocols they’re supposed to be doing, the kids are screwing around. I was like, “Stop.” And they won’t listen to me because they’re having too much fun. So I need somebody who’s just a little more serious. My wife Janet’s much better at handling that kind of stuff. I can’t do it.
But anyways, yeah, that’s a good thing to do. And that leaning to the side, there’s a famous basketball player. Kyrie Irving had a video, someone did a video of him warming up, and he did that leaning to the side, and he’s truly one of the most athletic people in the NBA. That leaning to the side looked like he was doing it with CGI. It was incredible…
Steven Sashen:
Wow, cool.
Jim Klopman:
… how far over he was. So yeah, that kind of stuff is good. All that’s good to challenge your balance. Now the only problem we have with that is when you lean to the left, you end up putting the weight on the outside of your foot and there’s nothing functionally balance-wise on the outside of your foot.
Steven Sashen:
That is true. Here’s a question-
Jim Klopman:
But keep doing it, Steve because I know it makes you feel good.
Steven Sashen:
Well, yeah. I just do it for the fun of it. That’s all I care about. Let me ask you this while I scratch my eye. So what’s your take…? And I not surprisingly have an opinion about this, but I’m going to ask you as if I don’t, what’s your take on the whole trend in the fitness world about instability training, doing things while you’re on a Bosu ball or on a stability ball?
Jim Klopman:
Well, some of the things you’re seeing now, they’re using my methods that I’ve developed years ago, but we-
Steven Sashen:
Bastards.
Jim Klopman:
I had a website recently asked me to write an article because someone had just written an article reviewing all the unstable surface training research that was out there, which proves unequivocally that unstable surface training doesn’t work. And I’ve looked at all this research, and the protocols suck on every one of them. There’s one bit of research that was just done in Spain a year ago that used my methods that proves it does work.
Steven Sashen:
So to the extent that you’re able slash willing slash whatever, define somehow a difference between what they’re doing and what one of your methods might be.
Jim Klopman:
Well, one of the things they’re doing is, A, they don’t allow progressions.
Steven Sashen:
What do you mean?
Jim Klopman:
Well, it’s like, “Hey, Steve, we’re going to prove that lifting weights is going to make you stronger,” so I’m going to give you the protocol. “Here’s five pounds, lift it three times a day for the next six weeks and we’ll come back and test you.”
Steven Sashen:
Got it. Versus increasing the weight over time.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah. Secondly, what happens is what are you testing at the end? So there’s a real tendency in the… Look, it’s called strength and conditioning. And I’ll tell you a story about why it should be renamed strength conditioning and control. So everything with balance, and you see all these people doing is balance work and lifting weights at the same time. It’s like, why not brush your teeth and comb your hair at the same time? It just doesn’t make sense to do them both at the same time. Either build strength or improve your balance system.
And it is the core of all athletic movement, but it gets just a modicum of attention. It only gets like three minutes a day. Weightlifting, movement patterns, skill building patterns, those are all more important than building up the balance system. And what we say, and we’re working on a device now to measure athletic balances, do you know how good your balance is? You don’t. You know how good your heart rate is? All these other things.
So I come back to that’s one reason why. And then what you’re seeing too is the video of Alvin Kamara. They buy our equipment down there, and he’s standing on a medicine ball, and he’s catching sticks, the HECOstix, which are good things to do. We do it differently. We don’t put people on medicine balls, even though Alvin Kamara is doing it right, he’s engaging the front part of his feet. Most people are like this on a medicine ball, like that, the legs are bowed. Again, outside of the foot, nothing happens there. Secondly, when you look at-
Steven Sashen:
Most people when they try and balance, they basically try to put their feet on the outside and squeeze in rather standing on top and using their feet.
Jim Klopman:
Exactly. And the great thing… And I complimented the guy, he and I emailed back and forth, and I just can’t remember his name now. Sharif was his last name. If you look at that video that went viral of Alvin Kamara, he’s got the area cleared. There’s nothing for him to fall and break his neck on. Secondly, I mean, there was strength and conditioning coach, one after the other just peed all over this guy for doing it. And ,”Oh, it’s dangerous. Oh, how does it affect you on the football field?” All these criticisms.
A, I think the most important thing we know in our science is our progression. We’ll put something… I have a golfer on a medicine ball on our social media stuff we did a few weeks ago, but this kid’s been training with me for six years. He’s progressed to that. If you put somebody on a medicine ball that hasn’t been progressed to it, they’re going to fall and break… they’re going to fall and break their neck. So there is that kind of unstable service train.
Now there’s other unstable service train that we call earthquake equipment. And I’ve gone to the biggest, fanciest medical balance training centers in the world… in the country, excuse me. And they have these plates that are moved by servos underneath you. They’re going like this. It’s an earthquake.
Steven Sashen:
Miniature version of a mechanical bull.
Jim Klopman:
Right. Well, but my balance challenge is, A, I’m standing on a piece of something flat right now and it’s solid, but I’m still moving the challenge. So if I get on an unstable surface that’s generated by me, it’s that same thing and it’s exacerbated 100%. We take golfers through their movement patterns on solid ground, and then we put them on our own designed unstable surface and they find all the flaws in the golf swing right off the bat. And I say to them, “It’s minuscule when you’re on solid ground, it’s magnified when you’re on the unstable surface.”
But when you get back to the earthquake machines, I don’t know where that stuff’s coming from. I suck at it. Going back to your vision thing, it’s in the book. I have pictures of… I have a lot of brain damage in the back of my head, so my cerebellum has a lot of brain damage, and I probably… There’s nobody in my age in this country has balance as good as I do. But if I close my eyes and I stand on one foot…
Steven Sashen:
Gone.
Jim Klopman:
… it’s scary. How bad.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah. It’s funny, I’ve never looked for videos about professional bull riders on mechanical bulls, but I would be willing to bet that they’re not a whole lot better than people who just hang out on mechanical bulls, because there’s no doubt that they’re getting a whole lot of information about just some natural thing that you start to figure out from being an actual bull.
Jim Klopman:
I mean, we see two different types of balance. There’s foot base balance that comes from the ground, and then there’s balance. So if you’re a mountain biker, horseback rider, we’ve trained horseback riders, and their balance improves dramatically. And then the horse says, oh, I’m feeling more comfortable, because they don’t want to hurt the person on their back because they get in trouble. So they’ll move quicker and gracefully and better because the person on the back has better mounts. But that’s ass balance.
So this took me a while to figure out too, I bought a couple of unicycles. I was going to learn how to ride a unicycle. I get on the unicycle and it took me nearly two years to figure out the unicycle is ass balance. So how well can I sit on my ass and not have much pressure on my feet? Now when I ride my mountain bike, it’s pedal balance.
Steven Sashen:
Totally different.
Jim Klopman:
I’m going around turns, I’m on my pedal. But a bull rider’s got ass balance. A horseback rider’s got ass balance. A mountain biker… I mean, a cyclist has ass balance. So those are different balances than balancing through your feet.
Steven Sashen:
How old were you when you wanted to learn to ride the unicycle?
Jim Klopman:
64.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Our realtor, actually, our commercial realtor, he rides a unicycle all over the place, and he’s been doing it since he was in… I don’t know how long he’s been doing it, but let’s just say his children have a very hard time with the fact that that’s what he does.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah, well, it’s good for you. And once you get it, it’s good. I just haven’t put the time in.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s so funny because actually, boy, one of my first… I don’t know how to describe this. I learned a moonwalk from a guy who’s a very famous bass player, and we were at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, together. He and his brothers were in a band. I was doing magic comedy things. Anyway, he taught me to moonwalk. I taught him to do a standing back flip. Then a whole bunch of us all bought unicycles. And the thing that’s so funny about ass balance, it’s 90% relaxation, it’s 90% just sinking.
So I ride a recumbent bike, because I’m a dork, and I’ve been doing that for, Jesus, 30 years. And when I put people on a recumbent, they’re all freaking out. I go, “Look, I’m just going to push you. You don’t do anything. You just hang out and just learn to sit and do nothing. Don’t pedal. Just learn to… We’ll get you down this little hill. Just relax.” And eventually you figure that out, but it’s obviously it’s a very different thing on your feet.
Jim Klopman:
Yep, absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
So, so, so, so, what you’re pointing to, which I think is really interesting, is two pieces of the puzzle. One is that there isn’t an awareness of… Let’s call balance our sixth sense. There isn’t this awareness that this is an actual thing that is important independent of this instability training stuff, which I agree is just kind of silly. And then there isn’t yet… And I know that where I’m going with this is something that you’re trying to do. There isn’t yet a program that has been, not developed obviously, but caught on to give people something that they can do where it is a progressive program where they experience the combination of satisfaction of progressing and demonstrable benefits thereof.
And I find this kind of amazing because I’m remembering in the last couple of years, I’ve been in various hospitals for surgery or whatever, and almost every one of them, actually, not even hospitals, doctor’s offices as well, where almost every one of them has a flyer from the hospital about some balance thing for the elderly. And when I look into the program, there’s no there there to it.
Jim Klopman:
Well, there’s two things that go on there. Again, I mean, I like to focus on the athletic balance. So we have our equipment’s being used at the University of Michigan, and I met with them last week, and they said, “Well, okay, but can you give us a set of gradations? And so you’re level one through nine.” And we gave them that. And so that’s part of what’s missing. But what’s also missing is we don’t realize our balance is bad till it’s acute, till we’ve fallen. So we have a golfer, let’s say, who comes in and he’s an eight handicap. I look at his balance, I go, “Do you know your balance could be improved?” “Yes.” And I said, “Well, if I improve your balance, will you believe that I’ll lower your handicap by 40%?” He go, “No.” We improve his balance-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Let me highlight that. So for whatever reason, people by and large, and perhaps probably people who are listening or watching this, by and large, don’t have the frame of reference to conclude or believe that balance may be the fundamental or a fundamental problem underlying many of the other issues they’re dealing with.
Jim Klopman:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
I should have opened with that.
Jim Klopman:
So there’s dissonance and disconnect. So we’ve had golfers that come in, we improve their handicap by 40% within 8 to 10 hours, and then come back, and you go, “How’s it going?” “Oh, I was a six, now I’m a three.” “Oh, great, cool, the balance training worked.” “Well, no, I bought a new driver, I got a new coach, blah, blah, blah.” And I go, “Baloney, that’s just not true. You’ve been on a plateau for five years. You come and spend time with us, now it changes.” And so there’s this incredible dissonance.
And secondly, there’s a huge dissonance because nobody wants to admit, “I have been busting my ass for seven years to lower my handicap, and you’re telling me I just did this for eight hours and I’ve lowered my handicap? No, I’m an American. Nothing comes easy to me. I work hard. I buy a better game. I hire the best coach. That’s how it works. Don’t tell me it’s that easy.” And so I have this problem all the time.
So again, we come back to here’s the thing, there are balanced measurement devices, there are static measurement devices, nobody understands the balance system we do in the movement patterns that we know. So we’re working on developing a system where you can say, “Oh, I’m a 45. I’m going to balance train,” four weeks later, “I’m a 75, and look at this, I’m faster on my mile, I’m faster on my 100 meters. Things are going better.” Or, “My injury’s gotten better.”
So you can start correlating your balance system to other parts of your life. “Oh, I feel like crap. I’m going to go going to balance train for 20 minutes and come back. Oh look, it’s gone up. I feel great. I’m thinking better.” I mean, there’s all sorts of things you can correlate it to.
Steven Sashen:
It’s really interesting. One of the things that I’m amazed people don’t… Well, let me say it differently. People especially in the West, I think, I don’t know why I said it that way, we think of things as being very disparate and we don’t realize the interplay of certain features, certain functions. So for example, the point that you made early on, we have all these nerve endings in the soles of our feet. And people, for amazing reasons, don’t correlate or connect that to the vestibular system.
It’s like, “Oh, my feet hurt,” or, “My feet are doing whatever.” But it doesn’t occur to them that all that information is part of what contributes to your balance. And more, if people do think about how you need to have your feet aware of what’s going on underneath you, it doesn’t occur to them that if your brain is doing its job correctly just in the vestibular system, that that is not just a single isolated thing, that that has more global impact on your neurology. Not across the board.
Jim Klopman:
Well, you had Emily… I can’t pronounce her last name.
Steven Sashen:
Spiegle.
Jim Klopman:
Yeah. So she has that mat with the little knobbies in it. For years, we’ve had people who have neuropathy, and they say, “What do I do?” And I said, “By a doormat that’s made out of AstroTurf, and take off your shoes and just stand, activate the bottom of your feet.” Well, it turns out Harvard’s got a thing that somebody developed at Harvard that you stick inside the foot. I mean, like Emily’s footpad.
Steven Sashen:
Vibrating thing.
Jim Klopman:
And it has little tiny electrical currency go into it, and immediately your balanced.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I know. Well, look, it happens every about once a year where someone has developed some kind of magic vibrating whatever for your feet or your ankles. The most recent one was the University of Delaware got $440,000 from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for a vibrating thing. I don’t remember what it’s called. You put it on your ankle and it vibrates your ankle.
Jim Klopman:
Oh, sure, sure, sure. It tells you when you’re off balance. I’ve seen it.
Steven Sashen:
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