Valerie Hunt has been a strength and conditioning coach for 30+ years. She spent the first part of her career in a traditional gym as a personal trainer and aerobics director/teacher. In 2001 she left to open her own gym, XpressFItness, a group workout studio combining strength and endurance for runners.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Valerie Hunt about teaching yourself to run better.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
Connect with Valerie:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@runrx
Facebook
facebook.com/runrxfit
Links Mentioned:
runrx.fit
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
What if you know how to run better, but you don’t really know how to run better? In other words, how do you learn to become a better runner? Or how do you teach other people to become better runners? Both of these they’re intertwined and very interesting. We’re going to talk about that today on this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to well, have a happy, healthy, strong body, starting feet first, because those things are your foundation. We break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play, or do yoga or CrossFit, whatever it is you’d like to do. To do that enjoyably efficiently. Did I mention enjoyably? It’s a trick question. I know I did, because look, if you’re not having fun, do something different till you are, because you’re not going to keep doing it anyway, if you’re not having a good time.
I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com the host of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast. We call it that because we’re creating a movement that involves you in a really simple way. I’ll mention it, no obligation, no money required. But it’s about natural movement. Helping people rediscover that using your body naturally is the obvious, better, healthy choice, the way we currently think about natural food. Now, the part of that involves you is really simple, just spread the word. If you find this interesting, just share it with other people, you can go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com, you’ll find all the previous episodes, all the places you can get the podcast, every place that podcasts can be gotten. As well as all our social media channels and of course what to do, like and share and leave a review and give us a thumbs up wherever that’s appropriate, or hit the bell icon on YouTube to be alerted to upcoming episodes, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
Okay, let’s get in. Valerie, first of all, hello and tell human beings who you are and what you do.
Valerie Hunt:
Oh, hi, happy to be here. I am Valerie Hunt and I’m that person. I teach the running, I teach people the how to part of running. I’ve been doing that now for… Well, I’ve been a trainer for about 31 years and I got involved with teaching running about 20 years ago. I’ve been kind of specializing in the running from that point forward to do today.
Steven Sashen:
I mentioned to you in the email where I introduced ourselves. Myself to you? Yeah, that’s the way of putting it. That I had a conversation with Dr. Nicholas Romanov the other day, he was sitting right over there. We had way too much fun together. And I know one of the things that you’ve been doing is teaching Pose Method running.
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
No, I was going to say, I’m just curious if you can talk about sort of in your teaching, how that’s evolved. What you’ve been doing, when you got involved with pose, how that influenced what you’re doing? What’s happened since? Because I have a fondness for asking people like doctors, I’ll ask them questions like, “How much of what you learned in medical school is what you actually do on a daily basis?
Valerie Hunt:
Sure, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
And they go 100%. So as people learn to teach things, I know it evolves and changes and you learn new things. Nick has one perspective that you being in the field has gives you a whole perspective. That’s why I was so dying to talk to you.
Valerie Hunt:
Well, and this is really fun. I started my life at Gold’s Gym, teaching aerobics and doing personal training in 1990. Knew nothing about running. I went to UT Austin, I’m a kinesiology major, nutrition minor. I was studying the body and movement. And we were the first graduating class to be a bachelor of science instead of graduating to be like, it used to be under, you were going to be a PE teacher and had no other choice. It was when they started making the change into movement, not just teaching non-movement, if you will. That was kind of an exciting time.
Anyway, when I graduated, I got my job and I was doing a lot of aerobics instructing. Back then you taught like, you name it, I taught it all. High impact, low impact, kickbox, boot camp, all the fitness classes. Well, I lived in Austin, and everybody was getting into triathlons and I’d never done a triathlon. This group of women said, “I would love to hire you to teach us to do a triathlon.” I said, “Sure, sounds so fun.”
Steven Sashen:
You just need to be one chapter… Yeah, there you go. You just need to be one chapter ahead of them.
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah. I did, I went and bought a book. Back then it was all about getting certifications. This is now late ’90s. I graduated, I had a job. I found this book on how to train for triathlon. And for the first time ever, I saw how to learn how to run, not really teach. I was like, I’m blown away because I thought you just ran. Right?
Steven Sashen:
You were not the only one.
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah. I was very fascinated with it. But the book just had a little bitty blurb with like one sentence about pose. It just said, “Try to use your hamstring when you run and pull your foot.” Basically the book had like talked to Dr. Romanov. Anyway, I took that book and I took that thought I really liked it. I continued and I went and I found the Pose book. Then I just felt like it wasn’t enough to learn from the book. I wanted to get the certification. This is so funny, because it’s so long ago. I called the number back then in the back of the book and his wife answered. She was like, “Yeah, sure. We’d love for you to learn to teach.” I was one of the first students to just work with him, to learn to teach running. I’m not an athlete. I wasn’t learning for me to become some kind of athlete. I’m like, “No, I teach group fitness and these people want to run and I don’t want to just take them running. I want to know how to run.”
So, he was so impressed that I had that desire because when he first met me, and now you’ve met him, he is brilliant. His mind is just amazing. But the words he was using and not even just his accent, but just… I’d never heard the words he was using. This is before the internet. He’s saying things like gravity and falling and unweighting and all these words. I was like, “Right, but what muscles do we use?” I was so stuck in that same frame of reference, like every other trainer, when we were teaching people body parts. Not that the body itself is the part. Like your whole body works together.
This is great with by the way. Anyway, I’ve been with him ever since. We’re going on about 18 years together. He’s my teacher and I see him at least once a year, because you never stop learning from him. Our main difference, I’ll say this, one is, yes, he’s worked so much with elite athletes. He’s the creator of the content. He sees the science and the research. It’s just phenomenal what he does. Then I take it to like the average runner. It’s very challenging in this way, because it’s a theory and it’s so simple, but you can make it really complicated. Or if you listen to him, sometimes people get lost in the beginning, because he’s quoting all these authors and this old research and, “Don’t you get it?” You’re looking at him like, “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
The first time I met him, I was like, “I don’t know. I just want to run.” I feel like what I do is I kind of bring it to the regular runner, the person that just wants to enjoy, like you’re saying, “Enjoy my run. I want to be able to walk out the door and go running and maybe train for an event. Maybe really train, like go race. But most of all, how can I finish my run, and I feel good about running?” And obviously where you come in with the minimalist shoes, is that we’ve been talking about taking the cushions off for years.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, so for people who didn’t necessarily listen to the episode I do with Nick, where they’ll hear more about what Pose is, but I want to hear it coming out of your mouth as well. Because I’ve done a number of things where I learned something from someone that I go out in the field and teach it. And even if you try to keep it pure, you’re going to find your own little thing, not necessarily because you’re trying to add your spin, but because you’re having a different experience with a different type of human being that you’re dealing with.
Valerie Hunt:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
Adjust accordingly-
Valerie Hunt:
Oh my gosh.
Steven Sashen:
… what pose is in a sec, but I’d love to hear you talk about just what evolved for you or what you’ve noticed as you’ve done, especially that makes what you’re doing a little different than the way it started or different than the way Dr. Romanov might do it.
Valerie Hunt:
Okay, well, I’ll say this, and this is a big thing. And the web has been huge. Most people unfortunately, will take like a one day clinic or something like that. So in that one day clinic or a few hours, you can get across an idea. You can help someone maybe feel. The challenge though, is just exactly what you said, we all have a different experience. How can we all share the same experience of running, even though we’re going to run at a different pace, you and I may not ever run the same speed or distance or even terrain, but we all want to feel what running itself feels like. That is the fall. It’s the gravity aspect. This is really interesting because I tell people this with full honesty, but it took me probably a full year and even longer to actually fall.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Valerie Hunt:
Because of my own one, my misunderstanding of what falling is and being so stuck in action. For example, I always say to people, “Kids are much easier to teach because if you tell a kid to fall, they’ll literally throw their body down.” Right?
If you’ve never road cycled, like the first time I started teaching triathletes to road cycle, and I always have moms and women, and that’s who I am, we’d never clipped in on a bike before. We’re all scared of riding a bicycle and we’d all ridden bicycles. But all of a sudden you’re having a new experience. But then once you figure out how to clip in and how to shift your gears, then all of a sudden you’re excited for the experience. But it took a bit to get there. The same with the falling, like we’ll take people and we’ll put them like on a rubber band, for example. We’re like, “Let go and free fall.” And for just a second, you feel it. Then you want to replicate the feeling.
Well, 99% of the people that I would work with, they would feel it in that second, but then when they went to go do their own run, they would lose the feeling. How do you keep the feeling going? I feel like that’s where… By the way, Dr. Romanov does have a series of drills that you practice. By the way, if he was here with me, he would be like doing this. Because I loved the drills because they helped me to feel the feeling of running. When I take somebody, he’s working a lot of times with people that have been running their whole life. They’re like professional runners.
I’m working with someone that’s like, “I’ve never been a runner. I’ve never been what I consider an athlete and I just want to run.” So you’re taking that person and then you’re helping them, not just experience running, but maybe they have no communication or awareness with their body itself. I feel like I take them on the full journey. This is funny when I first started running Pose, I struggled by the way. With not the action of running, but the free fall. Just didn’t sound right. I didn’t understand it. But now I can say like, it’s like when you’re peddling downhill and you finally let go of the brakes and you actually let yourself go down the hill. Most people are hitting the brakes constantly. They have no idea.
So, the when they run, it’s hard. It’s like the effort in running for them unfortunately becomes like, how much can they tolerate? Then the answer of course has been the shoes. And we’re over here like, “No, it’s not the shoe. The shoe is in fact becoming your inhibitor. The more you disconnect from what you feel when you run, then you’re not running anymore.” So we used to literally, we had a guy when I first started, by the way with Pose, there wasn’t minimalist shoes. So we would buy like racing flats or we would buy walking shoes, even that were just made for funsies. Then all of a sudden, as the shoes came out, we’ve seen, I know you have, we went from like the Born to Run, everybody put on their Vibrams, then all of a sudden they freaked out and went Hoka. Because they never went through that transition of the learning.
One thing a lot of physical therapists will say, and my physical therapist, when I first started doing Pose told me, “Everyone’s feet out there are made of pudding.” They have no strength in their foot. Then they’d been disconnecting in their run, like putting on the headphones, “I’m only looking at my heart rate or my mileage. I don’t really know about feeling.” I feel like I’ve been very fortunate because people that come to me are like, “I’m not attaching myself to… I am a runner, so I’m willing to open myself up to learning.” Like a fitness class.
Steven Sashen:
It’s really interesting because, how do I want to put this? First of all, one of the points you made, everybody thinks, “Well, you just run.” They don’t get that there’s a technique for doing it. No one would ever think, “Well, you just do gymnastics. You just do a flip.” No one would even think you just play tennis. All you’re doing is swinging your arm and hitting a ball. But for reasons that are in many ways… Actually, there’s a weird version of this. Everyone thinks they can write.
Valerie Hunt:
That’s it, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
There are some people who write better than others. You may be able to compose an email, maybe you get some typos in there. But by and large, these things that people can… Because you can do them, you think you just keep doing more of what you’re doing. And very rarely do people try to get better at it. Even more rare, do people want to get better from day one, when they haven’t had any experience. The fact that you’re bringing that in is super interesting.
The topic you mentioned repeatedly is falling. And for many people, I imagine that would be kind of confusing out of context. Let’s back our way into what Pose Method is, really since you brought up falling off and really talk about that. But I’ve got to tell you before we even do that, I said to Nick, “I think the biggest problem that you’ve had in propagating this information, is the word method.” Because then it seems like it conflicts with that thing where everyone thinks they can run. It’s like, “Well, I know how to run. I don’t need some method for running.”
If instead he had identified it as, “Oh, we found the common factors that all successful, happy runners have,” and I don’t know what the other term would be, but it’s like, “Here’s the thing that makes running fun,” then people have been all over it. But it’s just like, “Oh, I got to learn some new thing. Are you kidding me?” I think that’s part of the obstacle that people have run into.
Valerie Hunt:
Well, I also think, well, one, he is kind of a professor. So he also delivers the message-
Steven Sashen:
Not kind of, he is.
Valerie Hunt:
So that is one. But you’re right, and the bummer is this, when people hear that word, I think you’re completely right. They think, “Right, I have to learn something.” Then it’s taking the fun out a little bit, just like you’re saying.
Steven Sashen:
Yes.
Valerie Hunt:
And our whole life we’ve been told, “Just go running.” Anyway, having to kind of say, “I’m learning to run,” you’re right. If there was a way to say… And by the way, I took it out of what I say. My thing is, “RunRX, run pain-free.” Because that’s my goal for people. If I said, “Fall when you run,” they’ll be like, “That doesn’t make any sense.” I will say this, and I’m very honest about it, I do an online course and it’s 12 weeks. The reason I do that is, and people say to me, “Oh my gosh, that’s such a long time.” Well, it takes almost that long to just talk to you. For you to get okay with, “I’m going to go out and experience gravity.” But you’re right. I feel like the more we can make that the aspects of running we’re talking about…
And it’s free for everyone. See, that’s the other thing that’s so funny. When you actually talk to Dr. Romanov, you can feel the fun. When he’s out there doing the drills and talking about the falling and all of that, it changes so much. He wants you so badly not to believe, but to understand what he’s saying. Sometimes we get too caught up in the… If you read like any running article and it sounds so official. They talk about ground contact force and all these words. I’m like, “Ugh.” And you say to someone, “You know what? If you can go out there and just look around and be like, ‘I am literally going to let go and free fall,’ that’s truly running.”
But to get someone there, you have to be like, “You’ve got to open your mind a little bit and go back to being a kid.” It is fun. I just did a clinic for 120 kids on Zoom. I got 30 at a time, they were from eighth to 12th grade. It was so fun to watch, because when they first come in, I seem a little bit goofy myself. The drills feel like dancing a little bit, because you’re in place doing it. So there’s giggling and whatnot. Then you see them shift to like, “Oh.” And then the woman, the coach has told me when they actually went outside and felt it, they all were like, “This makes more sense.” Again, because they’re students, so then they took me as a teacher, not to sound crazy.
But you realize when you get people in a room and I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, because I don’t know how you do stuff with your shoes, but if you get people probably even just doing hops, they’re so self-conscious. When I show people just the balancing in Pose, or immediately they’ll say, “I have no balance.” They start telling you, “I have tight hips,” or, “I have weak knees,” or, “I have this.” You’re like, “No, you don’t.”
Steven Sashen:
You know what it is? I have a thought about this. Especially because I had this experience where Nick and his son Severn were here. They said, “Well, look, let’s just show you. Let’s go out and videotape you running.” So I had two thoughts that went through my head simultaneously and I don’t know which order they came. It doesn’t really matter because they bounced around and cycled. One of them is, “I want to impress you.” The other is, “I don’t want to look like a moron.” The excuses is it’s sort of like, at the end of a…
I was in a track meet on Sunday and of course what happens at the end of the race? People say, “How’d you do?” My line is, “Do you just want the number or can I give you the excuses first?” We want to look good in front of other people. We don’t want to look like idiots. Even if we’re learning something brand new, where there’s no way you could be good at it, you still don’t want to look like an idiot. You want to impress the other person.
And you will simultaneously want to learn, and you know you’re going to be a moron at first. Those conflicting thoughts, I think, lead to things like, “Ah, I’ve got this problem. I can’t do this.” Doesn’t make a difference. You’ll get a kick out of this. I told this to Nick, “When I teach people how to run either in bare feet or in Xero shoes, usually in bare feet, we’ll go out into a field and I’ll say, “Remember like,” if we can find a two year old, it’s really easy. It’s like, “Take a look at their giant heads. If you look at the way they move, their giant head kind of falls in one direction and they try to catch up to their head. But they’re not very good at it. I want you to do that same thing. Let your head lead in some direction and try, but don’t successfully catch up to it. And don’t do anything with your arms. Let your arms just flail.” Until they stop caring what other people think.
Valerie Hunt:
Right. You’re right.
Steven Sashen:
“Other people will think you’re goofy, they don’t know who you are. They’ve never met you before. They don’t know your home address. They’ve never gotten your email address. They don’t follow you on Twitter. And if they film you, none of your friends will see this. Close your eyes, they’ll all go away.” That was sort of like the first exercise just to have fun and get used to this whole idea of not trying to be in control all the time.
Valerie Hunt:
Right. It’s funny, when I first started videotaping people, before the iPhone was invented. So I would literally have to bring my video camera and then put it on a VHS tape. I had one of those TVs where you shoved the tape in and then you pause it fast forward. Back in those days, we’d never seen each other on video. And certainly not moving. So when people first saw that, now you see yourself as so normal. But I’m telling you, you’re right, all of that is still there. Especially because I had women, they were like, “Oh my gosh. That’s what I look like?”
So, I had to really get into like, “You look very cute. Your outfit’s amazing. We’re just looking at your movement.” It was really hard in the beginning for them to think about that. Especially people that are trying to use running to lose weight, or they’re already like you’re saying, like I’m a back of the packer. I get a lot of people that say to me, “I’m not a good runner, I’m a back of the packer. I’ve got bad knees.” Then I’m like, “Well, let’s do video.” You’re right. Their first response is like, “Oh really?” I’m like, “Yes.”
Steven Sashen:
This is another interesting point, which is that no one has ever watched themselves on video and liked what they’ve seen.
Valerie Hunt:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
Ever.
Valerie Hunt:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
I was looking at video from this race I did on Sunday. I have this thing, it’s really funny. I was thinking about it this morning. Back in my 30s, which is now way too long ago, holy crap, I’m turning 59 this week. I did a whole lot of breathing exercises and I realized that for most of my life, I had been holding my abdomen in, in some way. Just everything was tense. I was a gymnast, that’s what you do. All this time doing breathing exercises.
When I run, even if I just relax entirely, even though I’m at like 12% body fat, my abdomen sticks out and it looks like I’ve got this big belly. I don’t, but it looks that way. I’m watching that going, “Oh, yeah, I hate that.” But my next thought is, “Yeah, so what? I hate it. I don’t give a shit.”
Valerie Hunt:
I’m totally looking at it like, how many frames was I falling before I pulled my foot?
Steven Sashen:
Well, I look at that too. But I can’t not see what it looks like I’m practically pregnant.
Valerie Hunt:
But I’m guilty also, because I post daily videos. And I put myself out there every day. And I’m really more checking than anything else my form.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Valerie Hunt:
Because people are going to mimic me. And knowing that I really am cautious. But I’m telling you, people will… I get comments all the time, they’re like, “You have really stiff shoulders. Your hips are a little bit…” And I’m like-
Steven Sashen:
Don’t even get me started.
Valerie Hunt:
I just turned 50, and I’m like, “The fact that I still move as well as I move, I think it’s great.”
Steven Sashen:
I’ll warn you about something though. So I’m turning 59 in a couple of days. I was at this track meet on Sunday and the number of people who told me that I was an inspiration-
Valerie Hunt:
I know.
Steven Sashen:
… I wanted to punch them all. When did I’m old enough that I’m an inspiration. That is okay to me.
Valerie Hunt:
But it does though, for me anyway, lend some credibility, to be able to say, “I’ve been doing this now for over 20 years,” is a good thing to be able to say. But then sometimes I’m like, “Wow, that is a long time.” But I’m like, I wouldn’t still be doing it if I didn’t see the value in it.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Valerie Hunt:
I certainly am not… I also used to tease Dr. Romanov like, “Why did you have to call it Pose? No one wants to be a poser.” “Right. Right. Right.” For him, he was directly translating from Russian. It’s the same thing with the Pose fall pose. I think you’re right. There when a little stigma with these methods and doing things right. But one of the things that I’m sure you must get this all the time, is because we talk about pulling up from the ground and everyone’s stuck on landing.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Let’s use this moment to dive into what Pose Method is. And I might interrupt you to break down certain bits really, really specifically. I’ll let you begin, then I will no doubt rudely interrupt.
Valerie Hunt:
Okay. Pose itself is every movement has an optimal pose. Meaning like if you’re going to throw a ball, you’ll see someone reel back. Then there’s a right way to do that pose, in relation to movement. With Pose, the pose itself is also called the figure four. Dr. Romanov, when he was researching running… By the way, the reason it all started with him, is because he was a high jumper, he was not a runner, a distance runner. So when he basically was doing his PhD, but they asked him to teach the track and field guys, and he said, “Well, where’s the manual?” They said, “There’s no manual.” He said, “Well, what’s the standard? How do you measure these athletes?” They said, “Well, with a clock. Whoever runs the fastest is the winner.”
He said, “Well, what if they want to run faster?” They said, “Yo, run faster. Blow a whistle. Shoot a gun. By the way, I still use today, same method. Anyway, he didn’t like that. He started filming people, elite runners, regular runners, animals, old people, young people. Long story short. What he realized is, every runner runs through the running pose. There’s a moment where your body’s in balance. That moment, your ears, shoulders, hips, lifted ankle, all line up over the ball of the foot. All of us. This is why we love using video.
But in that moment, your body is actually free falling. Your body is falling down. For a moment there, if you do nothing and you just balance on your foot, you’ll start to free fall forward. That’s acceleration. There’s a point, all of us, we free fall past a point we’re going to face plant. So what’s fun is those, you have 22.5 degrees, which I use by the way, a pie chart, like a little pie, to teach my runners, you don’t want to put your face in the pie. You just get a sliver of pie when you feel it. Because we don’t feel falling in the beginning, until it’s like we think we’re supposed to be bending in our ways.
When you practice the running pose, you stand in that moment, you stand in that free fall moment and in that balance. And you literally let yourself fall from your mid-section, from your center, and you pull your foot up from the ground. And it’s a repeated cycle pose, fall, pose.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to do that rude interruption thing. And I’m going to paraphrase as well. For any type of effective movement, efficient movement or optimal movement, let’s use that one, whether it’s throwing a ball or something, there’s going to be certain positions that a body will take. Now, one way of showing this, that Nick and I did, is if you, someone does a search, maybe I’ll put this in the show notes for Usain Bolt slow motion. It’s one of his races. It wasn’t Berlin, which I happened to be at by the way and saw him run that world record, which was super fun. But anyway, you can watch his running and you watch his form, but what’s really interesting, you look at the other seven guys in the race and they have the exact same form. They’re doing the exact same thing.
So, the better you get, the more optimal your body positions are as you’re doing this activity. Now there are some little idiosyncratic things, whether your foot turns out a little bit or blah, blah, blah. But basically, 99% the same. There are these positions that you will take as you’re going through. Or if you’re freeze framing, you’ll find these positions. Some of them inevitably lead to the next. It’s typically, especially for something like running, it’s a cycle. One leads to the next, leads to the next, in a circle. The first one, the pose, the one that sort of typifies running. And I’m just going to kind of repeat what you said.
Valerie Hunt:
Sure.
Steven Sashen:
You’re on one foot, you’re in mid stance, you have one foot on the ground, one foot is not on the ground. It’s like you said, it’s a figure 4, there’s sort of an S-shape going on as well. If you got to that position through running, not just by standing, the next thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to start falling over. Now, here’s where things get interesting. That’s the fall part. That isn’t something you can consciously do, it’s just what happens. And he and I talked about this, like as a sprinter, that phase of falling takes 1/400th of a second. There’s nothing you can do to make that happen. It’s just going to happen.
Valerie Hunt:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
That next part is the interesting one. Because most people think that what you’re supposed to do is push off the ground. Most people think that you’re supposed to do a thing called toe off. You’re supposed to flex your, point your toes. That’s what gets you off the ground. In part, because of the design of the modern athletic shoe, I’m going to hold one up, that has this thing called toe spring, where because you’re not using your foot naturally, it sort of forces the issue and makes you do this weird, unnatural thing with your foot.
This thing of pulling your foot off the ground, which sounds so counterintuitive. Like, “What do you mean? I can’t pull my foot off the ground.” It’s like, “Yeah, yeah. You can.” “Well, I’m going to fall then.” “No, you’re not. Because you’re going to do this crazy thing with your other leg called stopping yourself from falling on your face.”
Valerie Hunt:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
And if you do it right, when you’ve pulled that foot off the ground, you now end up in that pose again with your other foot on the ground. Did I get it?
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah. It’s exactly it.
Steven Sashen:
Now, here’s the really fun part that I really want to dive into. Let’s assume that we’ve now gotten the gist of it. Let’s dive in a little more specifically then about how you teach people to do this thing that feels so weird to them.
Valerie Hunt:
That’s when you use the drills. Honestly, it’s interesting. I’m going to say this again, because I do work with recreational runners. For example, by the way, and you had mentioned CrossFit. One of those things that’s kind of fun, I coach CrossFit classes. I used to teach… Well, pose is still the running for CrossFit, which is how I got connected. CrossFitters hate running. They just hate it. That’s a running joke in there. But anyway, so I introduced my runners to CrossFit. When we first introduced it to them, they couldn’t jump on the RX for women’s are supposed to jump on a 20 inch box. Most of the women that I introduced, this was 11 years ago, could not jump on a 20 inch box. I bought a 12 inch box and I bought an eight inch box for my runners. And because why? Because they don’t train muscle elasticity
This is the big challenge in running, because pushing is thought of, because people push because they want to go up. Like in jumping, you would push to go up. Then I was told the same thing, by the way. The very first time I went running, training for a race, was in the early 1991, maybe. I went to the shoe store and the guy said to me, “You need to push off your back leg and reach with your front.” I’m a kinetics major. It’s interesting now, when you… It’s called perception. I wasn’t aware of anything else. So here, this guy is a very talented runner telling me this, who’s not any talent in running, so I’m like, “Absolutely, I’ll go try that. I will get all the shin splints.” And things like that.
But my point is that, like you said, most of us aren’t taught anything, so we mimic. But the people that are taught, are taught to push. And it feels powerful. We talk about that control, it feels like I’m in control when I’m pushing. It’s kind of like you said that, that little extra kick and these little movements. Then when you teach someone to pull, that’s why I use the drill so we can play with it in place. If I can talk to you and help you feel something, while we’re in place, much easier to take it out and feel. But I’m telling you, most people have never done things like hops.
We teach things like hops, because really, that’s what’s happening in a sense when you’re running. If you would learn to use muscle elasticity, your foot really does feel like it’s popping up off the ground. But if you’ve never experienced hopping or even rebounding or ever done a jump, how do you even feel that? If someone’s been running say like, wearing very thick shoes and just think about it every time they take a step, their foot sinks, think of how much more effort that is on them to try to get their foot up.
Steven Sashen:
Well even more, back up to the shoe, which is a generic running shoe, with the elevated heel, even if you’re hopping well, you’re not letting your Achilles work for you.
Valerie Hunt:
Correct. Yes.
Steven Sashen:
You’re not getting all that spring that’s built in. Because the elevated heel is getting in the way. That’s another thing that people don’t… It’s so funny you mentioned this. My neighbor, and if she sees this podcast, I’ll have to explain it. I saw her running yesterday and she’s in a pair of Hokas. She’s a forefoot runner. Now let’s back up to something you said about shoes, I like to say, “It’s not about the footwear, it’s about the form. It’s just certain footwear gets in the way of certain form.” She’s in a pair Hokas, she’s forefoot landing. But in that shoe, the foam was so squishy that she’s unstable with every step. Things are happening with her ankle and her knee, with every step because of all that foam. And she had no has no idea. We’re having dinner on Saturday, and I’m trying to decide if I’m going to bring this up or not. Because I don’t want to be that obnoxious.
Valerie Hunt:
Oh, you will.
Steven Sashen:
You’re probably right.
Valerie Hunt:
Well, here’s an interesting thing. Sprinters, they have the most minimalist shoe or a spike. It’s a hard bottom. Look at that woman, did you say she ran that, she broke that the 10 meter 10K the other night?
29 minutes, right? I want to say to the distance runners, guys, we have to take… Look at the reality of the people that are running the fastest that are putting, if you want to talk about ground contact and force, it’s the sprinters. They’re not putting foam in their shoes. They’re going the totally other way. We’ve got to stop separating running itself. That’s the challenge. A lot of sprinters feel like jogging, jogging, or marathoning is such a different… They think it’s a completely different event.
Steven Sashen:
Well, speaking as a sprinter, it is a completely different event. Not because of the form, but just because of energy usage, just the way you process energy. My joke is I hear there’s, what are they called at the end of the track? Turns, curves, something like that. Don’t know how they work, never used them. Someone told me that I’m afraid of the other side of the track because I don’t use it. I said, “How can you be afraid of something that doesn’t exist? I have no experience of this other side of the track you’re talking about.” But it’s just some people are wired for aerobic things and some people are wired for power things.
Valerie Hunt:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
So that’s the difference.
Valerie Hunt:
My thought is more that, people that run distance, don’t feel that they need to do as much training as part of their running. They believe that they just train the mileage, their feet will adapt, their body will adapt. What we’ve seen for 40 years of research, I know you already know this data, 85% to 90% are injured. And that’s, by the way, it’s the same thing. I’m sure you’ve talked to many people with running form. I know over the last gosh, like I said, I’ve been with Dr. Romanov now for almost 20 years. The challenge we have of course…
And you’re right. People will say, “Well, you didn’t invent running.” Well, of course I didn’t invent running. Just like spinning teachers didn’t invent cycling. But it’s like, you want to make sure that if you are running, people are now way more open, I’ll say this, to at least if you talk about like holding the line. Like your ears, shoulders, hips in line. I think we can all agree that that’s important. Whether you’re sitting, standing, running. At least we can talk about….
That’s what I always say to Dr. Romanov, I talk… Because he gets, not upset, but he hates like I say, running tips. I do too many drills. But I’m getting people that don’t have, like I said, if you don’t have the ability to just simply use your own body weight, whether it’s just a little bit of jumping even. Because even though we are teaching you how to reduce impact in your run, running is still a very high impact sport. You’re running. So that’s why, don’t be scared of running-
Steven Sashen:
Let’s clarify. It is a high impact event because your average runner is putting two to three times their body weight on the ground every time, they do it. But the point is, that we’re wired to handle that impact. We’re built to handle that, if you use your body correctly. It’s not a big deal. If you can, just literally just jump from one foot to the other, that’s about the same amount of impact. Nobody would think, “Well, I can’t just hop from one foot to the other.” It’s like, “Well, then you can run.” But there’s this thing in people’s head where they go, my favorite thing is, “Well, I can’t run because running hurts my knees.” Like, “Well, you’re not running correctly. If you run correctly, it doesn’t hurt your knees.” “Well, it’s like…” No, no.
I had one guy, I was in a panel discussion, and he said, “All you barefoot runners think that if anyone gets injured, it’s just because they had bad form.” I’m like, “Yeah.” End of story. But look, sometimes things happen, muscles don’t fire at the right rate. There’s things that can happen. But fundamentally, if you’re getting hurt, you’re doing something wrong that isn’t required. It’s not part of the equation. Running does not equal pain. Running does not require Achilles tendonitis or plantar fasciitis or knee pain or hip pain. People have gotten so used to that though, with again, 50% of runners, 80% of marathoners getting injured every year, that they think that it is. Because there aren’t enough examples of people that we encounter on a daily basis, who like me, are an inspiration to people.
Valerie Hunt:
Right. You say that, but well, a couple of things. One is we’ve made another shift is in running, especially in the recreational age group categories. Everyone’s about just finishing. You’re competitive. So then there’s more… So when you talk to people that are like trying to be in the front, they’re usually more willing to try something.
Steven Sashen:
They’re willing to try anything. They’re willing to do all manner of things that make no difference whatsoever. They’re willing to do things that make no difference because the guy next to them is doing it, and they’re afraid that maybe it does make a difference and they’re just too stupid to realize it. I’m not mentioning new super maximalist shoes from any particular company that rhymes with blikey. I’m just saying, it’s like when someone says, “Well, people are sending records in their shoes.” Well it’s because everyone’s wearing the damn shoes. It’s not because of the shoes, it’s because everyone’s wearing them, because they’re all afraid that someone’s going to get an edge.
Valerie Hunt:
Yes. And then we’re going to see those times are going to level off. Because we know it. But my thing is though that… And then of course the average runner will buy those shoes because of the magic. But I think that also, there has to be a way… I say this to my two people when they come into my membership, because I usually get… I’m the last hope when they come to me. And then they’re like-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. That’s partly your responsibility. If you’re going to brand your company as RunRX. People don’t go to the doctor for the fun of it. They go to the doctor, it’s the last option.
Valerie Hunt:
I’m very honest though, because I’m like, “Give me at least 12 weeks, to at least change your mind set on running. Then we work on changing the movement.” But here’s the fun thing, if anyone’s listening, people are like-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. Thanks so much, “If anyone’s listening.”
Valerie Hunt:
No, I didn’t mean it like that, by this point. I’m sorry.
Steven Sashen:
For those of you who are listening.
Valerie Hunt:
You know how excited people are that I’m talking to you? I’ve already put it out there. I had a pair of Xeros and I did a bunch of videos in them. Then I had them for like a year and they’re a lot of fun. I really enjoyed them. But I did mud them up and they’re gone now. But I need to have a rotation in my shoes. Because I don’t do a lot of racing anymore. I do just mainly recreational running, a lot of coaching. I’m barefoot a lot, because I’m home. Just so you know, I’ve already talked to people because that’s my number one question. What shoes should I wear? No matter what I say about running.
I will say, I’m always advocating minimalist footwear. Always. But I say to them, “But you’ve got to take the responsibility of wearing them correctly.” This was really kind of what I was getting at. I have so many people when they come to me with their injuries are, “I just want to get better.” Then I always want to say to them, “If you’re willing to work from the bottom up, if you’re willing to start with the feet…” And I’m telling you, the conversation will shift. If people that are like in a running group, for example, I’m like, “You have to leave them until you commit. But go meet them for coffee after.”
I love running groups. I love running with other people, all of that. But there has to be a point where you have to say to yourself, “I have to focus on me and my connection with running.” And to really, truly, free fall and feel what’s going on, you have to like take the watch off sometimes and take off the headphones and say to your friends, “I need to run by myself for a minute.” Because what I see a lot of times, is people are so, like I said, they go out and their mindset is just on the completion. “I’m going to get through it. I’m just going to get through it.”
I’m like, “You’re actually missing the whole fun of the run.” Because once you love running, you’ll be that annoying person. Honestly, the more reason that you’re inspiring, it’s not just your age, it’s that you truly come across like, “I love what I’m doing.”
I say that to people like, “I love running, just the act of running.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Valerie Hunt:
Some people would find that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, the framing of all of this is so interesting to me because, if someone was in a car accident and they broke a limb and they were in a cast for eight weeks and then they get out of the cast and they’ve got another two, three months’ worth of rehab, they would never think anything of it. It’s like, that’s what you do. If you say to them, “We want to take that same amount of time, maybe even less and teach you to not get broken in a car accident to begin with,” they go, “Wait, what?” It’s like, “Here’s the deal. If you get injured, you’re going to spend time fixing yourself. We’re going to make it so you don’t get injured. Are you willing to spend the same time, so you don’t get injured that one time or any of the times thereafter?”
It’s a mental accounting thing. It’s kind of like if you win money and then you go spend the money, even though you have bills that you needed to pay. It’s like, “But it was free money.” It’s like, “You still have the bills that you need to pay.” So that weird mental accounting thing that we do is part of it. The other part to your point is like you said, that 12 weeks is just to get you familiar with it. But then it’s a lifetime of continuing to find these refinements and learning to listen, I don’t like that phrase, learning to develop the ability to attend to the information you’re getting from your body, so that you don’t need a coach. You become a coach. Not even, you become a coach, it’s everything around you and in you, the information is so screamingly obvious that you can’t avoid it.
Now, that said, I’m going to concede this point. If anybody finds a video of me online, preferably one running, not naked and doing something crazy that I don’t know about, you’ll see that, since I met with Nick and this was only a couple of weeks ago. Same thing you do, I watched that video, I was like, “How fast am I getting my foot off the ground?” It’s like, “Son of a bitch.” My undergraduate research was Cognitive Aspects of Motor Skill Acquisition. I know what it takes to lay down new neural pathways, especially at the inspirational age of 59.
So, I’m giving myself a bit of slack, at the same time, a lot of pressure because I want to get this right. I just want to build that into the equation for people that this is not a one and done, like you said, a one day workshop kind of thing. But if you decide to give it that little bit of attention, to go through that bit of what we call frustration, which is just the experience of laying down new neural pathways, the payoffs are huge. And they let you do something entertaining and enjoyable and obnoxious to all your friends for the rest of your life.
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah. Why not? I will say, one of the funnest things I have in doing this is when people, like you’re saying with the… There are so many people out there that are suffering unnecessarily and they will say to me, “I have tried it all.” You name it, I’ve heard it. Compartment syndrome, people that have had surgery. When they find that, like I say, “It’s never too late, because gravity is always with you.” I agree with you, by the way. As a running coach, I agree with what you said. The best part about learning correct movement, is that when your knee hurts, you know why, and you have a way to self-correct, even inside of the run. I’m like, imagine if you knew, “Well, I can sense I’m doing it incorrectly, or I have a way to correct, it makes it a lot more fun.
Steven Sashen:
What’s also interesting in what you just said is, when people say, “I’ve tried everything,” what they typically mean is I bought every product that someone suggested I buy.
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
This is something that really is amazing, is that we have just as a culture, this is not just about runners or running, as a culture, thanks to the magic of really, really, I’ll use this phrase appropriately, really smart marketers. I mean that with both complimentary and pejorative terms, connotations attached to it. We’ve come to the conclusion that the product is always the solution. That there’s always something out there that all you need to do is buy it and it’s instantly done.
This is the problem that Vibram had. I had Tony Post on the podcast. Tony was the CEO of Vibram when Five Fingers came out. And we had that same conversation, is the problem is everyone came to the conclusion, despite the fact that nobody was saying it from his side, that all you need to do is put on these goofy ass shoes that make you look like a gorilla and smell like one too, and everything’s going to be instantly better. That clearly is not the case.
So, we know we have this idea and the running shoe companies, the big companies, big shoe, AKA BS, they have capitalized on this like there’s no tomorrow. It’s like the boy who cried wolf, except they’re crying, “Cushioning and our arch support emotional.” The difference is in the boy who cried wolf, the villagers eventually gets smart. In the running shoe world, the villagers keep buying the same non solution, year after year, after year after year. And the shoe companies have never said, “Here’s our new, incredible cushioning. Sorry about that crap we’ve been selling up until now.” They never say that.
Valerie Hunt:
Right. I will say that I keep… It’s funny because we used to be like the kind of the weirdos, the French people.
Steven Sashen:
What do you mean?
Valerie Hunt:
When Vibram first came out, I lived in Austin and I did two talks at REI through them, about their running barefoot whatever. It was so funny, people showed up barefoot to the event. I kept saying to them, again, I of course talked about Pose and the falling, and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. When do we get the shoes?” They sold out. Vibram was there selling, it was the whole thing. I was really impressed that they actually had wanted to have a message with it. You can’t make people listen.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll tell you, being on the other side of that now, they got really burned by that. Because fitting that product was very time consuming and challenging. Ironically, had they fit my feet, I would have never started Xero Shoes. But I kept trying them on every six months for a couple of years. It’s like when you go to the fridge late at night and you don’t find what you want and you come back five minutes later, like it’s a psychic replicator. So I kept trying them and they never fit my feet, so I said, “Ah, screw it.” But the interesting thing is, because they had a bad experience selling a lot of those products, taking a lot of time and getting a lot of returns, now they’re saying, “Well, I don’t know. I’m not so sure.”
Ironically, what’s happening, REI has picked us up starting in 2019 and has expanded their commitment to us every season, because we sell better than almost anything they have. So they’re telling the story that people don’t want these products, then they put the products in just to test it and what the people say is, “Oh my God, we need more of those.” So I’m hoping that the tides will turn within the next year or two, and people will start to… There’ll be a meeting of the minds again. Because what we’re doing, this is the point that I always love to make, sorry about talking about me-
Valerie Hunt:
No, that’s okay.
Steven Sashen:
All we’re doing is getting out of the way. We’re not doing anything special. When someone says, “People don’t want low, flat shoes.” And we’re, “Do you sell flip-flops?” They go, “Yeah.” “Same thing, but better for you.” It’s like, ‘Oh, okay.” We have a couple of sandals for women. We went to this one store and they said, ‘Well, women don’t want something like that.” At which point we watched like five women come in in flats that were way worse than ours. It’s like, “There they are. Put these on them.” This is just my rant about what happened in that, oh those Halcyon days, when shoe companies were terrified that no one was ever going to buy another pair of shoes again. That’s ultimately what made everything that happened since, happen since. And everything that happened then…
I’m going to keep ranting for a second. I had the VP of marketing of a major footwear brand who was selling a lot of “barefoot shoes.” They’re horrible. They never fit my feet either. Telling me that they were going to stop promoting that product, even though the sales were doubling year after year.
Valerie Hunt:
Why?
Steven Sashen:
Because they couldn’t sell that story along with the story of all their big cushion shoes at the same time.
Valerie Hunt:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
It’s like-
Valerie Hunt:
Yeah. It’s kind of like just for fun, I was at Dick’s Sporting Goods and they had free gait analysis. I told the kid, “All right, watch me run.” He sold me and I should buy these, I don’t know, I can’t remember the shoe. I said, “Why should I buy that shoe?” He goes, “Because my manager said we had a whole bunch of them. We need to get rid of them.”
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God!
Valerie Hunt:
But he was totally honest. 17 year old kid, giving you a free gait analysis.
Steven Sashen:
I’m a big fan of rewarding honesty. When I lived in New York City, there was some guys who were beggars on my corner and they’d ask me for money all the time. First of all, I said to them, “I’m not going to give you money. If you have a good joke that I’ve never heard, I’ll give you a dollar. But keep in mind, I’m a professional comedian, so the bar is pretty high. If you give me one that I’ve never heard, and I give you back one that you haven’t heard, you have to give me the dollar back.” That was deal number one. But after the guy realized that was never going to make money, I said, “I’ll give you money if you’re honest with me.” He says, “Okay, can you give me some money?” I said, “Why?” “Because I want to go buy some booze.” I said, “Yep. Here’s five bucks.” I also gave money to people who gave me good stories. “I need some money.” “How come?” “My wife jumped off the Brooklyn bridge, and I got to buy scuba gear to find her.” Here’s five bucks.
Valerie Hunt:
That’s a good one.
Steven Sashen:
One day, it was literally, “Can I get some money?” “How come?” “Because you know that other lady beggar who’s on the other corner?” I
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free