Chong Xie is the author of “Secret of Athleticism”, inventor of the Hyperarch Fascia Training System and founder of the page “secret-of-athleticism.com” a website and discussion group founded to understand more about the foot, and its relationship to athleticism, as well as best training practices. Chong has a computer science degree and has been working as a technical analyst in the software industry for the last 10 years. His interest in the foot was piqued by seeing the large discrepancy in athletic performance, and Chong has spent many years on a quest to unlock the “secret” of athletic performance that is hiding beneath our shoes.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Chong Xie about the Tai Chi secret to stronger glutes.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How fascia training focuses on creating a more responsive facia for improved overall body function.
– Why foot health and movement behaviors can be influenced by being barefoot.
– How training your glutes and feet together is important for optimal movement and performance.
– Why foot mechanics are affected by the type of shoes you wear.
– How fascia plays a crucial role in movement and strength, emphasizing the need for intentional stimulation and training.
Connect with Chong:
Guest Contact Info
YouTube
youtube.com/channel/UCvadUJcVjdSKA0cUJpStQKA
Links Mentioned:
secret-of-athleticism.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Jointhemovementmovement.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
I often talk about how feet are the most important thing, but I also talk about how glutes are the most important thing. And maybe to train your glutes, you need to train your feet, and to train your feet, you need to train your glutes. What’s the connection? We’re going to find out more about that on today’s 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 and where we break down the propaganda, the mythology. Let’s see if I can say that. Sometimes the outright lies that people have told you, about what it takes to run or walk or work out, or do yoga or CrossFit or ride bikes or anything you can think of. And to do it enjoyably, efficiently, effectively. And did I mention enjoyably? I know I did, because that’s the most important part.
If you’re not having fun, do something different till you are. I’m Steven Sashen, co-host, not co-host, host of the MOVEMENT Movement podcast, co-founder of Xeroshoes.com. I got those things conflated. And we call this the MOVEMENT Movement because creating a movement that involves you, and I’ll say more about that in a second, about natural movement. We’re trying to make natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice the way people currently think of natural food. And that’s the movement. And the movement about you is spreading the word. This only happens because people discover the fun and benefits of natural movement and tell their two friends and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends and so on.
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So let’s jump in with my guest for today. Now I’m going to start, before you say anything, by seeing how much I can butcher your name in Chinese. Ready?
Chong Xie:
Go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. All right. Let me see if I got it. Xie Chong. How did I do?
Chong Xie:
Very close.
Steven Sashen:
So close. All right. How would someone who can actually speak Chinese say it?
Chong Xie:
Xie Chong.
Steven Sashen:
Xie Chong. Ah, interesting. Okay, thank you. I love the correction. My Mandarin is limited to five words, which gets me in trouble when I’m in China because if I say anything, then people assume that I speak Chinese and it’s bad news after that.
Chong Xie:
Yeah, gotcha.
Steven Sashen:
So Xie Chong, I don’t remember how I found you, but I was so, so intrigued because for all the people who talk about foot strengthening, and we talk about it quite a bit, you have a very different approach. There’s a nice Venn diagram and there’s an overlap, but there’s definitely things where your approach has a whole different foundation and some of the things that you’re actually doing are a whole different game. Do you want to give people just the Reader’s Digest version, the shorter version of what you are doing?
Chong Xie:
Yeah, sure. So I want to mention something most people are probably aware of first. So for example, when people have cellulite, that’s because the fascia tissue underneath is not in the right organization. This has a direct influence to how the skin, how the body functions. People have tried the acupuncture or any type of massage before, they will tell you, “Oh, it feels good afterwards.” So these type of techniques that people have tried and experienced before has certain type of influence on the fascia system.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to back up a little bit and paint an umbrella over this. The fundamental thing that’s interesting to me about what you’re doing is you’re focusing on the fascia rather than musculature per se. Fascia is obviously related to muscle and musculature, but your focus is on fascia. Can you tell people, what is fascia and the difference between attending to fascia versus just attending to muscles?
Chong Xie:
Sure. So I guess, when we have all these scientific studies on the human body, what the scientists used to do is when they dissect the body to study the organ, study the muscle, they remove the fascia, which is the yellowish whitish content that surrounds and permeates throughout all the organs, all the tissues itself. And they thought this is something not important. But recent research just revealed the exact opposite because they have done studies through ultrasound studies on how fascia influences muscle contraction, force generation, and now we have more understanding of how acupuncture controls the superficial fascia and in return it has a benefit to the holistic fascia chain.
And now we have people, for example, Mike Myers, we have people in Germany, Dr. Schniepp talking more about fascia health. So fascia is really this connected tissue that permeates within your body. It’s everywhere in your body. There is no place that does not have fascia. So to understand it another way, it’s like that dark matter or dark energy permeates in the universe, but we don’t know what it does, but it’s just there. So fascia, it’s sort of like that.
Steven Sashen:
And so talk about what the difference is between doing fascial training and just doing, say, muscular strength training.
Chong Xie:
When you do muscular strength training, you’re working on the muscle fiber in the eccentric way much more. So you are inducing muscle for hypertrophy and increasing blood flow. You want to create this micro tear to the muscle and get it bigger so it can generate more force, more contractile force. Fascia training, on the other hand, we’re working on creating a more holistic body. We’re working on to create more responsive fascia web strength. This is what we’re working on. And because fascia integrates muscle, so there’s three layers of fascia that permeate and intertwines your muscle tissue. When your superficial layer of muscle moves and contracts, in order for it to interface with your interior muscle, it has to go through fascia. So by understanding this, if you are training your fascia and making it really compliant and making it really responsive, you can actually generate a lot of force over time and this can be measured.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. All right, so I want to jump into that some more and of course talk about where this came from, how you found this or developed this. But first because it is the MOVEMENT movement podcast, let’s do something movement-y. What can you share with people who are listening or watching to either diagnose something about the condition of their fascia or feel something that’s actually something exercising where they can experience what we’re starting to talk about?
Chong Xie:
Sure. Because our fascia starts from our feet. We all know about the plantar fascia, and I’m guessing a lot of people have suffered some type of pain in their plantar fascia in their life once or twice. So this plantar fascia, it needs to be stimulated just like anything else. If you don’t stimulate a healthy organ, it becomes dysfunctional and atrophies. The simple exercise or a simple assessment people can do is just by standing straight and in the heel-off position, meaning that they try to get on their ball of the foot and toes. If they feel their body start to crumble and wobbly and they have absolutely no control, and then the ankles start to shake, that tells me their fascial connection is weak.
And in this position, a lot of people who are quad dominant, meaning their quad muscle is neurologically dominant. Whatever they’re doing, they’re just using their quad, they don’t feel any glutes. Their glutes is also soft, but in a personal with good factual connection, their glutes is hard and activated in the heel-off position and they’re extremely stable. And this is what we see in Division I athletes, Division I athlete and professional athlete. All these guys functionally very sound. They don’t have to necessarily have big muscle, but their connective tibial strength is extremely high.
Steven Sashen:
So if someone’s going to stand on both feet and just elevate their heels a little bit, first of all, how high on their toes do you want them for this test and how long do they need to be able to stand stably before they get any shaking to determine that they’ve got some fascial strength, some fascial integrity?
Chong Xie:
Sure. They can stand about more than 45 degrees, more than 45 degrees, so around 45 to 55 degrees heel off the ground. And if they are only feeling their calves being taxed the most and they feel quad being taxed the most and they feel unnatural and wobbly, basically, that tells me that they need this type of training. They need training in their fascia because what that tells me is that their glutes is not working. And we know now that the muscle in the glutes, more than 75% inserts into fascia. So there is a lot of fascial content in the glutes that needs to be working in order for the person to actually use it in movement.
Steven Sashen:
I’m always amazed the number of runners that I’ve met, mostly more distance runners than sprinters. The number of runners that I’ve met who have no butts, they don’t engage their glutes at all. And I’ve been on the track, this is going to sound like I’m some sort of perv. But when we’ve done exercise, glute exercises and they can’t seem to do that, I’ll stick my finger in their glute and go, “Just try to contract that, make that harder.” And they often can’t do it. And then I do the opposite. I go, “All right, put your hand on my ass.”
Chong Xie:
I always do that too, so we’re the same. I say, “Look, feel it. This is what happens. This is what’s supposed to happen in your body.” And people feel it. They were like, “Okay, this is very different, different from mine.”
Steven Sashen:
Right. Well, it’s an interesting thing when I talk about walking properly. One of the first ways that I describe this, I said, “Just keep one foot on the ground, lift the other foot a little bit, and then contract the glute of the foot that’s on the ground, which because your glutes are hip extensors, that should make your foot go back, that’ll make you move forward and then just use your other foot to not fall on your face.” A lot of people could not figure that out because they couldn’t contract the glute first, which is what I was thinking when I was doing it.
So then I tried another cue, which was, “Okay, think about being a figure skater or being an ice skater, like a speed skater and drive your heel back.” And that one they could often do, and it started to give them the hint about using their glutes. But I think that a lot of what’s gotten people’s glutes turned off is just the style of walking, especially with big, thick padded elevated heel shoes where you just kick your foot out in front of you, land, and then try to essentially pogo stick off of it or hop over it rather than using your glutes and hamstrings as hip extensions, as prime movers. And it’s fascinating to see how people, they’ve just lost the ability to do that at all to walk like normal humans.
Chong Xie:
Absolutely. Having a very thick bottom of the shoe will change your mechanics forever. And this is on a subconscious level, you don’t realize. What it does is, first of all, you plantar fascia and shield that stimulation from the bare ground. That’s number one. That’s just coming from a neurological proprioceptive point of view. Secondly, what it does is even if you just add one inch, your body have to adapt to that one inch. So to adapt that, your foot actually have to relax even more to dorsiflex higher than necessary. You watch people who walk around, for example, in slippers or with very zero bottom shoes. They do not dorsiflex, they walk naturally. But with people who are wearing those high heels or very thick soles, they will have to dorsiflex to accommodate that type of mechanical interference. So over time, they lost the fascia tensioning in their foot, and also they have this wrong neurological pattern in their ankle. So now you have a double whammy there. And then because of lack of fascia tensioning, their glutes start to degenerate because everything’s connected.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s interesting you say that. I was on the track last weekend and there was someone I was… I watch people run all the time, and most of the time I just shake my head a lot. But this person in particular, I’m looking to see what his shin angle was when he was landing, where his foot was landing in relation to his body, everything fundamentally looked okay. But to your point, just as his foot was about to land, he dorsiflex, which for people who don’t know, it’s raising your toes towards your knee, just pulled his toes way up in a way that was completely unnecessary. Had he not done that, he would’ve been landing in a great stance, nice and strong, using his body correctly.
But to your point, I hadn’t really thought of it. It’s just like a habit that he’s developed of lifting his toes and again, completely unconscious. It’s a really interesting thing. So again, backing up, we’re going around a little bit. Talk to me about how you came to this. Where did you start to find this out, figure this out, put it together?
Chong Xie:
Well, I wasn’t born in the US. I was born in Beijing, China, and when I was young, I studied martial arts, and one of the things that we did was the training for martial arts, it’s horse stance or called ma bu. Basically you’ll get into a sumo squat fence and hold it there for a long period of time. And this is also known as the asymmetric fascia tensioning supposedly. And I did a lot of this. And when I came to the states, I started to play basketball and I started to play basketball with a-
Steven Sashen:
It’s required by law. You had to.
Chong Xie:
Yeah. So I am a very active person and I’m very competitive also, and I noticed that I was losing more than I’m winning, so I know that something is missing. Also, at that time, I was also brainwashed into all these shoe hypes, like, “Oh, this is a Jordans,” whatever Nike came up with. So I wear those because I saw all the stars, basketball stars wear them. Somehow it has some connection, so I wear them.
Steven Sashen:
Well, yeah, you want to be like those guys. Come on, you’re not a tall black guy, but what the hell?
Chong Xie:
Yeah, exactly. But what happened afterwards was I developed knee pain.
And of course like anyone else, at that time, I went to the doctor, I went to see what’s going on and he said, “Oh, your quad is weak. Your surrounding muscle around the knee is weak. You do this and that.” They gave some exercises. And also at that time I was young, I was around twenties and there’s a lot of fitness program out there on strength training, on vertical jump, on running, there’s lots. So I followed their programs. I was lifting weights. I was a gym rat. I was in the gym 24/7. Whenever I have free time, I was in the gym lifting. Because I’m not lazy person, I like to work to just better than myself. But then I realized over time I was relying on the muscles for all my movement and it became very different because I actually take myself and I see myself move and land. It’s very muscle-bound. It doesn’t look correct.
Then that same time, I met a very good friend, well, my best friend to this day, and his name is Peter, and I mention this a lot because he really made me see what is going on in the feet because he grew up in the mountains when he was young, and he always run barefoot. He always run barefoot, and he clearly remembers that in his memory. And this guy, I would say he was on the light build side. He’s not muscular or anything, and we used to work out and he definitely lifted much less than I did.
So I’m like, “So he doesn’t have the muscle strength, yet he’s extremely athletic and he doesn’t have any knee pain. What is going on here?” Then one day we were just watching a basketball game. I still remember, that was the game, I think it was one of the championship games, and we were at his house, and you know how in the Chinese culture, we don’t wear the shoe inside the house?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Chong Xie:
So both of us were barefoot. So we were just having good time, and I realized that his foot has blisters on top of toes and his toes are curled and has a lot of these black tendons visible. It’s very different from mine, very different. So I asked him, “How did you get this? What’s happening?” He’s like, “I don’t know, it’s just natural.” So then I asked him to just do some movement for me and jump and land and move around, and I see it’s completely different than how I use my foot. So from there-
Steven Sashen:
Well, so wait. So what were you noticing?
Chong Xie:
Well, first of all, ankle stiffness, it’s tremendous. And also, when he was off his heels, he was extremely stable, extremely, and his glutes were hard.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting.
Chong Xie:
At that time, my glutes was soft.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Chong Xie:
So I wanted to find out more about this. And actually at that time, I asked a lot of these gurus, fitness gurus, and I asked them, so I go, “The basic problem is that why is it when I lift weights, I cannot use glutes? If I lift weights, I cannot use glutes. That means when I run or move, I’m not going to be using glutes.” At that time, they don’t really have a good answer for this. And they told me, “Yeah, you got to do more isolation, glutes isolation exercises and stuff like that,” which I did, but I found it to be not helpful because once I get out of that isolation stance, the effect were off, you can’t use your glutes again because I’m actually standing to execute these movements versus lying down, doing the hip thrust. So then I did more research, much more research. I also studied Tai Chi. And while the Tai Chi principle is called silk reeling strength, and this strength, after I understand what it is, it’s really what described the fascia strength is.
Steven Sashen:
Silk reeling strength.
Chong Xie:
Silk reeling strength.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. It’s an interesting metaphor.
Chong Xie:
And physically, if you look at the silk web, you look at the fascia, wow, everything just matches. So that way, I understand, “Oh, this is what they’re describing.” Also, one thing that I mentioned before is that the principle of Tai Chi is one part moves, all part move.
Meaning, anything that you do in your body, any movement you execute in your body, it should not be a segmented movement. It should be using your entire tensegrity model in your body, which is your fascia. So with this knowledge, I look into their foundational training of Tai Chi. A foundational training of Tai Chi is really the Zhan Zhuang, which means that you stand in isometric, but what, I think 90% of the masters, they don’t talk about this, or maybe even more, maybe 98% don’t talk about this, is that they require the person to grip their foot. It’s a very generic term, often missed in translation and often don’t get talked about enough. So I did the exercise, I didn’t get the benefit I was looking for, but then I did not miss about that part. So I spent a long time over 10 years trying to figure out, and I found out what exactly.
Now I break it down to six steps to show people how exactly you can activate your foot the correct way. And guess what this happens? When you actually activate your feet the right way, your foot start to generate a neurological effect and your foot starts to move physiologically, you can see your foot. For example, you measure it three weeks, take a picture in 12 weeks, take a picture again in some other timeline. You can see your foot gradually change its look. Then I went to a neurologist to measure my glutes, EMG reading, and the neurologist said that he never seen something like this before. It was off the charts just standing there. I’m not doing anything, I’m just simply putting my mind to my feet.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Wait, so you’re putting your mind to your feet and not trying to flex, if you will, your glutes?
Chong Xie:
I’m not trying to squeeze my glutes as well. I’m only squeezing my foot. I’m only controlling the plantar fascia, and it has a direct influence to my glutes. And it was off the charts because we also compare the EMG of me doing the hip thrust. The signaling is very different and it lasted much longer.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here. So this whole concept of gripping the foot. Now FYI, so I did Tai Chi for a number of years and one of the things that was unusual about the group that I was practicing with, the teacher was a guy who started… well, when I met him, he’d been doing Tai Chi for 22 years. He was 27. His dad was a world champion judo player, and somehow got Eric into Tai Chi. And Eric, like you, he wanted to find the… and me as well, find the truth underneath some of these things. So if Tai Chi was the fundamental fighting art, which is the way it was, he wanted to see what Tai Chi was like as a fighting art, as a real martial art, not as something that old people do to relax.
And so that was the way we treated it, is that this was a real fighting art. And so we spent a lot of time doing isometric standing, a lot of standing on one leg, and I don’t know that we were doing what we would call gripping the foot, but we were certainly paying a lot of attention to the foot and where you were feeling the contact with the foot and what you were doing with your foot. We did a lot of crazy things in that class. Actually, you’ll get a kick out of this. The way I started doing Tai Chi with Eric was we actually met doing Aikido and then someone made a comment that Eric did Tai Chi, and I went over to his house. There was like five guys living in this house in Brooklyn, and someone said, “So have you ever had Eric push you?”
I said, “No, don’t know what you’re talking about.” So Eric says, “All right, well, I want you to stand.” I’ll describe this for people. “Just stand one foot in front of the other, bend your knees, put one of your arms in front of your body parallel to the ground, bend your arm so there’s a 90 degree angle between your upper arm and your forearm just in front of your body and just relax.” And he gently puts his hands on my forearm and he’s moving it around gently. And it was really quiet in the room. Their living room had no furniture. And I look over my shoulder wondering where everyone was, and they were all standing about 10 feet behind me holding a mattress vertically. I turned back to Eric and I’m about to say, “What’s with the mattress?” And he just looks at me. He goes, “Bye-bye.”
And what it felt like was that he just tapped my forearm and then I flew and hit the mattress 10 feet behind me, and once I got off the ground, I went, “Okay, I got to learn how to do this.” So it was a very different approach to Tai Chi, but again, I don’t think we paid as much attention. We certainly didn’t pay as much attention to the foot the way you did. And I’m curious if you could say more about this whole idea of gripping the foot because obviously that’s a piece of what we’re talking about.
Chong Xie:
Yeah. So on the bottom of the foot, that’s the plantar fascia. So a lot of people who grew up barefoot who are actually today’s elite athletes, for example, Ronaldinho from Brazil, who retired as perhaps one of the best soccer players in the world today. When they were young and then they had no money, they played barefoot. And when your body learns how to play barefoot, you’re not going to have movement behaviors that will hurt your foot or heel strike.
You are going to spend majority of the time on your ball of foot, and the stimulation from the harsh environment creates neurological stimulation. When the foot tried to adapt to that, it has to adapt it in a fascia tensioning way. That means providing more tension in your tissue, more tension in your foot. And if you are raised up in this type of neurologically stimulating environment with movement integrated, you are a very good mover. Now majority of the people today, we live in the urban society, we grew up with the shoe. So how do we actually create this type of phenomena? So there is the barefoot group that choose to adapt to the harsh environment and try to create some type of neurological stimulation by going barefoot. But if they are already grown, meaning, if neurologically they’re grown, if they want to tap into more of this connection, they actually have to put a lot of intentional effort into tensing their feet, into tensing their fascial connection to make it happen.
And before, I thought, “Let me just do my barefoot exercises and try to create some of the stimulation.” Yes, it does help a lot. But after I studied the work of Hubel and Wiesel, their neurological experiment on the cat, the visual cortex, I understand that there is a developmental progression of the neurological connection. So at certain time, if you don’t have enough neurological stimulation during the developmental stages, this means when we were younger, that part of the neurologic connection is forever weakened and it will take a much bigger effort to reverse that. And this is why I think in another way answers the question why some barefoot runners, they still get injured.
Steven Sashen:
That may be hard. I’ve also seen a bunch of barefoot runners who have… How do I want to put this? They figured out a way to run… Let me try that differently. They figured out a way to be barefoot and accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish, say, run a half-marathon or run a marathon. But when you look at them from the outside, they aren’t necessarily running. So for example, and here’s a weird version of this, Dr. Irene Davis at Harvard has a force plate treadmill, and she didn’t experiment giving people some biofeedback where there’s a screen in front of the treadmill with a line on it showing some amount of force. And she said, “I want you to run and just keep the amount of force that you generate below that line.” And I said, “I can predict what happened for a lot of people.” She goes, “What’s that?” I said, “They ran or they were able to keep the force below that line by doing something that looked like a really fast kind of weird walking like Groucho Marx walking fast.”
Chong Xie:
Yes, exactly.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. I said, “So they figured out how to move across the ground barefoot, but they’re certainly not doing something called running.” And similarly, when people talk to me about what exercises do I do before I run barefoot, I go, “There’s nothing you can do.” There’s things that you can do that you’re going to talk about, I’m sure, actually. “But the difference between any exercise you’re going to do and running barefoot, it’s night and day because you’re just way more forced, way more often. It’s not the same.” There’s certainly things that you want to do to get stronger, that’s helpful, but the thing that’s going to really make a difference is running barefoot. And it never occurred to me until just now that, I don’t know, certainly I may have missed that developmental cycle for using my feet properly, but I spent a lot of time running around as a kid, a lot of time barefoot. I was an All-American gymnast and doing floor and vaulting, so I spent a lot of time doing-
Chong Xie:
On your barefoot.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. And before gymnastics I was a diver, which is also barefoot training in many ways.
Chong Xie:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So a good history of that in advance, which is interesting. Anyway, that was a tangent from something. I don’t remember where we were going on that. Oh, the neurological thing of just whether you got it and what it takes to then train afterwards. Now to your point though, it’s funny, when we started Xero Shoes, I got introduced to some people who make sandals that are super thick with really big arches, and I couldn’t figure out why. And they said, “Well, it’s because once you’re over the age of 40, you can’t develop arch strength.” And I remember thinking, “That’s an interesting position to take.” I started running barefoot when I was 45, and from doing that, I developed arches in my feet. So clearly I had developed arch strength, so that was clearly nonsense what they were saying. And we know that 90 year olds when they do a weightlifting program can get stronger.
Chong Xie:
Yes, because the body adapts. Mm-hmm.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, exactly. Bodies can adapt. And it’s different for different people because there’s just idiosyncratic differences about how well you adapt to activity. But I love doing the combination of attending to the movement or the activity you want to do, say, running as an example, but then doing the supplemental work that it takes to really make that better. And knowing this is a long process. I don’t want to make it sound onerous or annoying, but just it’s a lifelong process of improvement. You can always be doing more to get a little better. I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, I’ve only lived here. But it’s amazing how people just want a quick instant and when shoe companies say, “Hey, here’s our magic shoe that’s going to do that,” and it’s a big thick padded shoe with motion control and our support, which does the opposite.
Chong Xie:
Yeah, high-tag shoe, low tag foot. That’s how it is.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good line. But we’ve been so conditioned to look for an external instant answer that many people aren’t comfortable just doing the ongoing, I don’t want to use the word work because that just makes it sound like it’s a pain in the butt, but just the ongoing process of helping your body work. It’s fascinating.
Chong Xie:
Changing a habit.
Steven Sashen:
I think the habit is a really interesting part, and there’s two aspects of that that occur to me. One is during COVID, I’ve been doing more exercise than I have outside of COVID, not because I had more time or whatever, but because I was just getting bored I think. And I found that running Xero Shoes has been very tiring, and so I can’t do big workouts, so I had to find things that I could do in 15 to 20 minutes because that’s all the time I’ve got at the end of the day or the beginning of the day. And so that’s been really, really helpful. And what’s been fascinating is watching something that I knew from when I was a kid is that the benefits really kick in a little bit after you feel like you need to quit because you’re not seeing the benefits. It’s like you have to get over that hump and then you start to see it.
When I was a gymnast, my best friend and I, we were lifting weights one summer, the first month felt like we were just getting used to how to lift the weights. The second month we are seeing improvement. But it was the third month where we got much bigger and much stronger. Now, here I am 40 years later, I don’t know how quickly my body’s going to change and adapt, but some of the stuff that I’ve been doing, my wife said this morning, she says, “What have you been up to? Is it just because you’ve been playing with these kettle bells?” Which is something I’ve been doing lately. I said, “No, I think it’s just the consistency of just doing things that I’ve been doing in the last eight months that’s been making a difference.” And part of it was just getting over that urge that kicks in usually around the three or four week mark of going, “Got to try something different now, getting kind of bored.” Getting past that. Then it becomes a habit and that consistency is the most important part or one of the most important parts.
You talked about the six exercises or six stages. Do you want to chat about that?
Chong Xie:
So the foot, the first part is your toes. So remember the assessment you’ve done, right? I’ve taken a look at your feet as well, and your feet does show a lot of fascia tensioning signs, where if I look at someone else or pull someone else on the street and say, “Let me look at your feet.” They probably don’t have that.
Steven Sashen:
Do you want to describe what some of those are for humans who have seen my feet?
Chong Xie:
So the first thing is that you look at how the flexor tendons on top of your toes, how they are pronounced if they do show at all. Some people, they just don’t have any. They don’t show. And this has to do with the superficial fascia. If your superficial fascia has enough fascia web strength, these tendons are more likely to show than not. And also another very important clue is your anterior tibial tendon, which is the very thick tendon in the front, and this tendon is extremely important but many people don’t know. And I also see many trainers talk about this tendon in the exact opposite way. They tell people, “Do not fire this tendon when you exercise because it’s going to make you more tired,” and stuff like that. Yeah. There are people-
Steven Sashen:
So for people, if they want to try and see what their anterior tibial tendon is, this is the thing. Well, I can think of a bunch of ways of doing it. If you want to have someone do a little self diagnostic to find where that is and see how pronounced it may be, how would you do that for them?
Chong Xie:
So it’s between their shin and their foot, and it’s right in front of their ankle. There is a very big thick tendon. You cannot miss it. Yes, exactly. That’s the one. When people have problem activating their glutes and their glutes are soft, then they can’t really engage in any way whatsoever, this tendon usually is non-existent. So when they stand there, this tendon does not get activated at all. To activate this tendon, you need to actually use what I call the hyper arc because you have to engage your feet, you have to be activating your toes, you have to be activating all these intrinsic muscles in your feet down below. So this creates tension through your tendon. It’s like you can be a master violinist, you can have all the skill in the world, but you get this violin that the string has no tension. Whenever you’re playing, the tune is out of tune. You cannot work in such environment. So the body is the same. You can have the best mind in athletics, you can be a best mover, but if your body physiologically does not give you that tool, you cannot perform.
So the foot and the barefoot shoe together will make you that master violinist that you want to become. Because a lot of times we don’t pay attention to our feet.
Steven Sashen:
So toes, anterior tendon, what else?
Chong Xie:
And your arc.
So they all have to be activated synchronously in order for your anterior tibial tendon to be pronounced and activated. At this time, then you can do your movement. Your ankle should be actually locked in this form, in this position, which is pretty much a 90 degree angle. This is why people look at the athlete and they say, “Wow, this wonderful running form is so beautiful.” They just raise their knees and then they propelled themselves. It’s so elegant and effortless. Now, if you look at the heel striker, it’s really sore in the eye. You look at them, they’re struggling, either heel striking, and then they’re like, “Oh, my knee is hurting.” And also the people who are first transitioning from those horrendous shoes that they had and then to barefoot running or minimum shoes, because there’s so many years of neurological habit built into them, like what you said, they’re not running, they’re fast working, they’re running in dorsiflexion. So that’s what’s happening because they don’t know how to run because they never had that correct neurological teaching. Their foot was never taught properly.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll tell you, the thing about seeing people run beautifully. For anyone who hasn’t had the chance to watch live an Olympic level sprinter, it’s almost indescribable. I’m a really good sprinter. I’m a master’s All-American. I’m one of the fastest guys in my age group.
Chong Xie:
I believe you. You are very high level.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’m not saying that. I’m saying, but watching me is so different than watching someone who’s a 25-year-old guy or woman who is top of their game. There’s a guy… oh gosh, I just blanked on his name and I always do, it’ll pop into my head, that I got to train with a couple of years ago. He and his wife, his wife is Mandy White, and his name is… he’s a 200 meter and 400 meter runner, and oh, it’s killing me. Anyway, watching him when he was training, his ground contact time was so short, it looked like he almost didn’t hit the ground. It looked like maybe his foot was approaching the ground and then he stepped on an IED, and then he was getting so much movement out of that, so much propulsion out of that. Again, it looked like he stepped on a bomb and it blew him forward.
It was amazing. And similarly, I happened to be in Berlin when Usain Bolt set the world record, it was him and Tyson Gay, and Asafa Powell. Watching them run, it just doesn’t look human. These are the best in the world-
Chong Xie:
Of course.
Steven Sashen:
And it looks like whole… There’s a weird combination of effortless and effortful, but it’s just inconceivable. Usain Bolt, I was at the 70-meter mark about five rows off the track, and that’s about when he hits his full speed. So this guy’s running by me at about 29 miles an hour, and when you see somebody running of their own volition fast enough to get a speeding ticket in my neighborhood, here’s what your brain does. Your brain goes, “What?” Because it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It’s amazing.
Chong Xie:
Exactly. So a lot of athlete that I work with who are trying out for professional teams, we have to get their four-yard dash time from, for example, 4.7 down to 4.3 and 4.4. When we do this type of training to the foot, what we’re trying to do is create fascia tensioning in the ankle. So imagine if you have any type of slack in your joints when your foot, just like what you said, when your foot impacts the ground, if there’s any in any other joints, that force is going to leak out. That energy is going to leak out right away. But your joint is not meant to handle force, but fascia is what’s supposed to be keeping them together and acting in unison. So by doing fascia tensioning training, you can make this holistic change stronger. This is how we can get athlete from running 4.7 to 4.4.
Steven Sashen:
Love it. That’s a good transition point. Can you talk more about what the fascial training looks like? And by the way, for people who are listening, you’ve got a whole program about this. It’s not going to be a surprise. We’ll tell you about that towards the end. But can you give people just a taste of what that looks like so they get a sense of it?
Chong Xie:
Sure. So first we have to understand what fascia is response to. We know fascia is important, but how do we actually make it respond to what we want? So first I look at the acupuncture. Acupuncture, the reason why people poke a needle in you, they’re not hurting you. Or you have some type of magical spot in your body. They’re poking you to activate that magical spot. It’s not that.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, I’ve got to stop right there. I so love that you just said that because it’s one of my favorite things when people talk about acupuncture, and it’s like you go to five different acupuncturists for the same thing and they’ll poke needles in five different spots. And so to hear someone say, “Yeah, no, there’s a there there, but not for the reason that you’ve been told,” that’s my favorite thing for someone to hear. So what it doing, please continue.
Chong Xie:
Sure. So what recently people found out this is the work of Dr. Helene Langevin from Harvard Medical School. So she had a curiosity on acupuncture as well. So using the ultrasound study, what she saw was that when the needle penetrates your skin, actually what happens, your fascia try to feed it as there is a wound. So your fascia react to it by grabbing the little tiny little. So it intertwines and circles around the needle so when the practitioner actually use that little needle and twist, what it does, it creates a spiral, and that spiral pulls your entire fascia with it. And by studying on the mice, it’s not just on that point; it’s the entire body.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Chong Xie:
So what that creates is a holistic effect to your fascia sliding, because also what we learned today through ultrasound study in vivo is that people who have chronic lower back pain, their fascia and muscle sliding is much less than the healthy people who have no chronic back pain. So by doing acupuncture, by putting that needle there and manipulate it, by moving the fascia physically, it creates healing. And here’s another thing, lymphatic system follows the fascia system. For those people who don’t know about lymphatic system, lymphatic system is really like a sewer system in the body. Anytime you have an injury, lymphatic system has takes care of getting rid of all the dead tissues, the dead proteins, or accumulation of proteins in any type of injury site. By having your fascia system moving, you encourage the lymphatic system to help you get rid of this waste.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Okay, so-
Chong Xie:
So my training, so here’s the type of my training-
Steven Sashen:
We’re not suggesting that acupuncture is part of the training, but that was a good lead in.
Chong Xie:
So my training does the exact same thing, but it does it from inside.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Chong Xie:
So without somebody poking you with a needle and manipulating your super layer fascia, when you introduce fascia tension into your feet, for example, you are creating a anchor for your fascia. Because what happens is that when the fascia responds to isometric tension, that’s when the fascia gets used. If you are moving away, it’s your concentric eccentric, that actually utilize much less fascia.
But the isometric state utilize your fascia the most. So this is why we developed the method of training the foot so that you are creating an anchor for your fascia. Now you have a anchor in your fascia. Basically let’s say you have a rubber band, now you hold onto to the one side of the rubber band, then the other side, whatever you’re doing, it has to go from the anchor to that point. Now you’re stretching all your fascia or your movement. As of before, if this part has no anchor is loose, whatever you’re doing, you’re using in the muscle, it’s segmented. So the fascia will be used much less and it doesn’t create that type of movement effect.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. So can you give people an example of, I want to go for one of the more unusual fascial training exercises that you would teach. I know what my favorite is, but I want see which one you would pick that might be surprising for people to discover is useful.
Chong Xie:
To be surprising? I would probably say, well, the simplest is probably people don’t get is the Hyperarch Hop. And I see a lot of trainers on social media try to copy my work. So they say, “Look, if you do this way, it creates a fascia tension.” But they’re doing it wrong. People think, “Okay, is this just a regular jump? You’re just hopping, you’re just doing rhythmic jumps. What’s different?” There is tons of difference in the Hyperarch Hop and the regular hop.
In the regular hop, what I said before, anterior tibial tendon is not activated. So the person who has no expression of the anterior tibial tendon when they hop, every hop they do is muscle-driven, meaning their fascia is actually not doing the work and their heel will drop, and the ankle will give. So every step they’re hopping, they’re giving. This is how regular people hop. Now you go to the Hyperarch Hop, now you have to use fascia tensioning. Now you have to put a lot of tension in your fascia. You secure your ankle, your ankle is not moving. Now when you hop this way, it creates a holistic fascia chain and this whole chain is moving. And what it’s also doing is if you have anterior knee pain, that’s because there’s entangled fascia tissue there. What it will do is actually pulls, it pulls the fascia because we’re doing this exercise, it pulls the fascia and stretch it, and this stretch, it raise healing.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. I’ll tell you, my favorite was actually your version of the depth jump, which for people who don’t know depth jump, you’re going to stand on a box of some height and just step off of it and then catch yourself, just land basically. And the way that this was typically taught by the people who brought a lot of plyometric training to America from Russia is that they want land flat-footed and sometimes land even on your heel. And the idea is just catch yourself. It’s the eccentric part of any squat motion. So you’re just slowing yourself down when you land. But your version of landing on the toes, basically, on the ball of the foot, and engaging the arch and keeping that ankle stable, a whole different game.
Chong Xie:
Yeah. Different.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And I love that one. I can imagine that for many people, if they’re new to this, they can try that and they won’t be able to keep their heel off the ground, their heel.
Chong Xie:
They cannot.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that’s one of the reasons that I really love that exercise is that it’s an almost instant barometer for how well you’re doing just because you can feel instantly how stable your ankle joint is when you land.
Chong Xie:
But let me tell you a very fascinating aspect of that exercise. If you ask someone who is, I’ll say before seven years old, who never had too long of this bad neurological programming from the big shoe companies, you ask a little kid to jump on land, they can do it naturally. They can do it. So what does that mean? We are basically damaging ourselves over time. You are supposed to be adult and you cannot do something that you did when you were a child. And all kids are faster movers. They don’t have muscle.
Steven Sashen:
Oh. At the beginning of COVID, they closed all the public schools around here. And so none of the tracks were open, so we couldn’t find anywhere to train. But there was this one, it’s called a charter school, semi-private school that was way east of town and where the majority of the population in that neighborhood was Hispanic. That’s relevant because when we went to that track, there was a whole bunch of people there and they were all playing soccer, many of them barefoot. And then the kids, especially the little kids were running around the track and they did two things. One thing they did was they ran with perfect form. Just impeccable form. They were mid-foot, full-foot landers. Their feet were right underneath their body. They had just the right amount of body lean.
But the other thing they did was my favorite, was they were laughing when they ran, they were smiling when they ran, they were doing it because it was what they did to play. And when they were tired, they would stop not for very long and then start again. So it was just enough to reset and away they went. And it was just so much fun to watch. And usually it was like a pack of four or five of them holding hands doing this and just running around the track for fun with, again, perfect form. It looked like they were expending no energy to do it.
Chong Xie:
It should not be. Mm-hmm.
Steven Sashen:
Ah, man. It was delightful. And then there was the older kids who did not look like that.
Chong Xie:
Yeah. I think this is why your work is very important to the next generation because if we keep letting all these shoe companies, the big shoe companies have our kids wear these big thick soles and just wire them neurologically incorrectly, we are basically destroying ourselves. And then we are spending more money on Medicare for chronic pain than anything else. We need more minimum shoes for kids really, because before, we just don’t have those.
Steven Sashen:
No, and to be candid, it’s a little tricky because manufacturing shoes for kids, the manufacturing costs about the same amount as manufacturing for adults because it’s in the labor, not the materials. And so most companies who sell shoes for kids don’t make money doing it or make very little money, or they’re selling super expensive shoes for kids. Making good shoes for kids is challenging from a business perspective. It’s something we’re looking to be doing more of.
Chong Xie:
Can I give you a suggestion?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, please.
Chong Xie:
I think for example, the first thing is people’s awareness of how important the foot is to their neurological health and also their fascia health. But I think if you can create a subscription model, so you’re not just selling one pair of shoes, you’re selling an entire generation, a kid’s entire generation from age six to age 18, you subscribe to this model of development, then you can make money.
Steven Sashen:
Possibly. Suffice it to say, it’s a bit challenging from the business perspective and something that we’re looking to be doing more of and expand. Because obviously I agree with you and in fact, Irene Davis at Harvard has a great line. She goes, “If we just get kids wearing shoes like yours, in 20 years, we won’t be treating adults for the billions of dollars of problems that they currently present with.”
Chong Xie:
I agree.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And that would be a very different world. I want to wrap it up in a bit, but I want to bring one thing up that just popped in my head for the 10th time. Can you say something about flat feet and high arches? And I’ll preface this by saying that people, especially in America, have a lot of opinions about those two things that are not based on reality. So can you chat about that?
Chong Xie:
Right. Yeah. I know a lot about this and I think maybe some of the people that had different opinions about if the high arcs are better or lower arcs is better or flat arcs if it’s a defective or not really. A lot of these arc height has to do with genetics. You can have high arc functional, you can have low arc functional, you can have almost no arc functional. The key here is how much fascial connection you have to your glutes and upstream.
A lot of the NBA athletes today, they are African descendant, and they have almost no arc, and yet they’re performing the highest at the highest level. So chasing just the arc high physically from the outside, again, it’s superficial type of desire. It is not going to get you anywhere. So having, let’s say, an insole, creating some type of arc, that only helps temporarily. It also creates a bad neurological habit, and that does not create fascial connection from the feet to the glutes. So really the key here is to develop that healthy fascial connection from the feet to the glutes. Then you’ll love your body much more. You don’t blame your parents, “Why have this foot?”
So I see a lot of people that do that. They hate their body because they blame their parents. “Oh, your foot is flat. Now I’m flat, now I have pain.” But that’s no true because your parents never wear those type of bad shoes that you had when you were a child.
Steven Sashen:
Yep. Well, I’m not surprised to hear that the way you’ve presented that is almost exactly the way that I say it. I say it’s 90% genetic and arch height is not the issue. Strength and flexibility are the important things. Some people who have very high arches, they just need to get a little mobilization going because they’ve gotten just into this pattern where things are hypertonic but not being functional. And so yeah, you went exactly where I imagined you were. Although we did not prepare this in advance, and I didn’t expect that.
So if people want to discover more about what you’re doing, and I highly recommend that they do. I was putting together a list of people who are developing programs that are really valuable for foot and ankle strength and training. And there’s only about a half a dozen that I’ve seen that are in any way worth paying attention to. Yours, of course is one of them, which is why we’re having this conversation.
Chong Xie:
Thank you.
Steven Sashen:
So how can people find you and what you’re doing and get involved and discover more for themselves?
Chong Xie:
My website?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Chong Xie:
Secret of Athleticism. Or you can Google my name, Chong Xie, Hyperarch. Hyperarch Fascia Training.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so wait, let’s back up. So Secrets of Athleticism, did I get it right?
Chong Xie:
Yes, that’s the website.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so that’s one. And then Chong Xie, so it’s C-H-O-N-G X-I-E. That they can look you up that way. You’ve got a lot of stuff on YouTube.
Chong Xie:
A lot.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, so there’s a lot to play with there. And anything else that you want people to know in terms of just finding out more?
Chong Xie:
Just keep on looking for our work in the UFC, because right now we’re two-time world champion, and we’re going to continue doing so.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s a good one. I like it. Well, thank you so, so much. Again, I wish I had any idea how I first bumped into you, and I feel horrible that as long as I’ve been doing this, that it taken until now, but so be it. Here we are. And I can’t encourage people enough to just go check out your work.
So thank you, thank you, thank you. And for everybody else, thank you as well. As a reminder, just go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. If you can’t remember the links for this, we’ll put them in the show notes so you’ll be able to find them there. And as always, if you want to find out previous episodes, et cetera, et cetera, and how to find all of our content in different places, that’s at www.jointhemovementmovement.com. If you have a request or a question or suggestion, drop me an e-mail, move@jointhemovementmovement.com.
And as always, like I say, if you want to be part of the tribe, please do subscribe and most importantly, go out, have fun and live life feet first.
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