Strength Training Number Five, Keep Your Feet Strong with Tim Branston. Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast, the podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger, and smarter runner. My name is Brodie Sharp. I am the guy to reach out to when you finally decided enough is enough with your persistent running injuries. I'm a physiotherapist. the owner of the Breakthrough Running Clinic and your podcast host. I'm excited to bring you today's lesson and to add to your ever-growing running knowledge. Let's work together to overcome your running injuries, getting you to that starting line and finishing strong. So let's take it away. Those who were paying attention to the episode numbers might have seen that I skipped episode 15 just to try and work in the fifth strength training episode. So I originally had a plan to schedule this episode with Tim a couple of weeks ago, but had to get rescheduled and with me planning season three and it was already recorded and ready to go, I decided to keep publishing episodes while waiting to schedule this appointment with Tim. So I decided to go from episode one to 14, skip episode 15, and then publish 16, 17, 18, so on. So that hopefully when I start publishing this episode on say iTunes and Spotify, if I put it as episode 15, it slots straight into the episode list. And so we have strength training one to five, and then we move on to season three with explained pain. That's the theory anyway. doesn't turn out that way. I'm not going to be too devastated, but at least I gave it a try. Tim is a ripper bloke. He is a podiatrist from Wollongong. He operates out of Wollongong podiatry and also has these, uh, strong feet programs teaching other practitioners about the importance of strengthening for the feet, not necessarily for runners, but we try and tailor that episode today. We're going to talk about the importance of strengthening for a runner. who it's important for, what tests you can do at home, what a strengthening program would look like for feet, what some progressions are, and just a lot of real practical takeaways for you to weigh up the importance and for you just to go away and start implementing some of these tips and exercises yourself. You'll see straight away that he's really passionate about this and he really wants people to have the most effective functional rehab possible. So I hope you enjoy. All right, Tim, so thanks for taking the time in your busy schedule to come on and have a chat about. foot strengthening. Can we just start with what your background's like in podiatry and what your day-to-day kind of profession looks like? Yeah, great question. My background is in podiatry and I was taught just the same as all other podiatrists. And I guess what I look at it now is that we're taught to support weakness. We're taught to label problems. We're taught to label shapes, poor alignment. And I've got some students with me now in the clinic. I take a few, lots of fourth year students for four weeks. And I ask them regularly, I say, hey, what are you taught to analyze with gait analysis or posture that's actually good? Like, what are you taught to tell a patient that's actually good? Because everything's very negative. They pull everything apart, you know, from asymmetrical freckles on the body to anything. And so my career changed when I started the question why I couldn't fix my own feet. why the supportive orthotics and shoes that kept my pain away were different to the rest of the body, because I didn't wear a knee brace or a sling or a plaster cast of all the other injuries or surgeries that I've had. That support and immobilization was always temporary. So effectively now what I do is strength and conditioning for feet and what I just consider rehab that we would expect for the rest of the body, whether we're seeing a physio for a knee or an osteopath or a chiro or any body. like rehab to actually address the cause and fix the problem. Yeah. That's the short story. Empower the person on the way rather than like catastrophizing things and saying, um, you know, there's a problem with your structure that you can't do anything about, but it's going to be a problem with you moving forward. Spot on. So whether we just go simple with a flat feet, uh, pronation, you know, such a bastardized word, but it's really just a description of movement, just like flexion or extension. is that again, there's a lot of negatives. So one of my favorite things to say to every patient is that there's 33 joints in each foot, which just on its own is incredible. There's 33 joints in each foot. And I say, that's 33 joints of potential. And just that alone just gives them, just a little bit of a thought sitting there saying, actually we can train these just like we can the rest of the body. That's not even talking about the muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia in there. It's just 33 joints of potential. And generally I say to him like, when's the last time you walked into a gym and the goal of the session was to get jacked feet. Very true. Never hear it. Right. There's no answer. That's right. And so the clients that you see in your clinic, are they mainly runners or do you specialize in any other demographic? Every demographic. It's something I'm very careful in terms of labeling myself. I'd never call myself a sports podiatrist. it just eliminates 95% of my clientele who, even if they're very, very active, they're not sports people, they're not sportsmen or women. So they consider it too elite to come and see me. So I'm a podiatrist that looks at movement, assesses movement, and teaches people how to stand, walk, run better. So whilst I do deal with runners, they're absolutely not the majority of my clientele. And when I talk runners though, it's an interesting one, because we think runners, we're thinking marathons, we're thinking, you know, obsession getting up every morning and running. But anyone who plays a field sport, anyone who goes to a gym, anyone who does a bootcamp, they're all runners. And that's what I like is that I'm not targeting a very niche demographic. It's anybody who does anything more than walking in terms of running. Well, they're all runners. They just don't consider themselves a runner because they hate it and they only do it because the personal trainer says to. Or they don't enjoy long distance running, but they love playing soccer. It's like, well, hang on, if we can actually get you to run better. And better for me doesn't mean faster or longer. Better for me means more efficient, better techniques. So there's the option to run faster or longer if that's their choice. Yeah, so definitely not a runners only clinic. It's a cater basically to everybody. Well, I'm gonna change that. I don't cater to everybody. I cater to motivated individuals. And when I teach my workshops to other practitioners, they often say, oh, my patients are lazy and they won't do the exercises teaching the practitioners and say, well, either you're not educating them on how important the exercises are and where they sit in, you know, where they're gonna get to in respect to their goal. So you're laying out the stones like, if you can't do this, we can't move to here. If you can't do this, we can't move to the next step. Or you got the wrong patients. And then they'll often say, well, you can't help who comes through your door. And I say, well, you can. Absolutely you can. Oh yeah, so my clientele, like anyone who's been in practice for a while, you mold your clientele and you can mold them by offering the cheapest rates and free this and free that. And you get a clientele that doesn't really invest in themselves, and I'm not talking monetary, I'm talking in actually putting the work in to get better. Or you can sit there and slowly mold the clientele that you want, and I get awesome people coming in and they're ready to work. They're either sick of what they've tried, sick of their fate, they've heard there's another way from friends or a podcast or whatever else, and they come in from all over the place, but it's fun because they're ready to go. Yeah, they're ready to take control of their own management as well as just you telling what to do and you fixing the problem there. They're looking to take control. Keyword you said there is fix. I start nearly all my appointments with telling patients I can't fix them. Ah, and I'll say, Oh, what can I do for you? And I say, Oh, fix my feet. So that's about the only thing I can't do. But I say, if we worked together, we worked together, we can do anything. And that's all hindsight, but it's just reframing it, you know, from the get go that we're in this together. You know, I'm going to direct the show. I'm going to put in, put in, but what, what you do and what you tell me is going to guide me effectively from the patient. Yeah. Let me give you a bit of a recap. Cause this is a part of like a season that I want to do with the podcast, all around strength training. So, um, this is like the last episode of the season where we've gone through, um, the importance of general strengthening and strength and conditioning for runners to improve performance. And I had Rich Blaygrove on and interviewed him and we just talked about some practical uses to implement strength training into like a running program. But, uh, got you on to talk about strengthening for the foot. And I know there's a lot of tangents we can take with, um, like orthotics and type of shoes and all that sort of stuff. But I wanted the main, uh, bulk of the content today to be about strengthening. I've got the starting off question, which It's quite vague. I promise all the other questions won't be as vague, but why is the foot strengthening so important for running? Like, why are we dedicating time to put aside to do some foot strength training? If, uh, if our runners are doing a gym session to help build up their performance. First thing I'd say, why are the feet the last thing we strengthen for running the last thing we talk about with running? And that's just my bias switching around saying, why don't you start with feet? So my big thing is if you want to be a weightlifter, you're probably going to have some strong legs, need some strong legs. If you want to be a swimmer, you're going to need some strong shoulders, but runners, like, hang on, runners don't do anything for their feet. And it's because we've got these magic things on called shoes. And with all the marketing in the world these days, you barely have to run. You just let the shoe go out for the run for you. So my big take on it is that I want runners to put a Formula One machine, i.e. their foot, a Formula One machine into a shoe. to go for a run. And the problem with gym training is that we lock up the feet. So every gym exercise that we do can be a foot exercise. We don't need to have like extra foot exercises for strength. But if they're locked up, like if you put your arm in a sling, you can't get a strong shoulder on that side. Just not gonna happen. So one of the big problems is that most gyms of course say you've gotta wear shoes to protect your feet. Problem is, every time we put a shoe on, we're not exposing the feet to any sort of, well, strength and conditioning principles of gradual overload or any of the very simple things we can talk about with feet. Now, I've been lucky that I've trained in a gym where I can be barefoot for, well, probably about five or six years now. There are certain activities I still need to put a shoe on just to protect my feet from pain. Road climbs, the rower, the stirrup just hurts. Running outside on the road in the dark, that's definitely not smart to do barefoot. But. Every squat, every deadlift, every press, every burpee, every box jump that I do barefoot is training my feet. But if I've got a shoe on, almost of any sort, obviously there's variations of course, if I've got a shoe on then I'm limiting what my feet are doing, which is silly because for the exact same amount of time it takes to train what you want to for your run in, you're cutting off your feet. And then if you wanna do a foot strength and conditioning program, well that's gonna take more time, which as everyone knows, Uh, with any endurance sport, time is of the essence. You know, we need, you know, we've got it with making time for strength and conditioning, or sorry, strength with running it's often eliminated because we're literally just time poor. Cause the amount of running that people want to, or think they need to do. So essentially what we're doing is when we put our shoes on, we're in casing or just like just creating some support that isn't really necessary if you want to get the full benefits of strengthening. Spot on, so I'll go back another little step is that let's just say we've got toddlers, their feet are strong, their feet are healthy, there'd be no breaking in period, if they were to do a gym program, we'd sit there and say go for it. Now, for a toddler, thankfully, their entire life is a gym program. Just climbing, running, everything. Now, because we've worn shoes for so long, good or bad, because we've worn shoes for so long, just taking them off doesn't mean that we'll actually get quality strength in the feet. Is that... And that's, we can go down the barefoot running thing another time, but just taking your shoes off doesn't mean your feet will get strong. That's like saying, hey, just go in and squat. Don't care how you squat, just squat, and every week put a bit more weight on the bar. Now you probably will get stronger as in the weight will go up, but in terms of actually training the right muscle, in terms of actually not breaking something, you know, you're gonna be pushing the limits of injury for sure. So the thing with feet, if we've worn shoes for a long time, which all of us have, and probably everyone listening to this podcast have, We've just got to train the feet to work again from a motor control point of view. So balance and coordination. Then everything we do in the gym is the workout for feet. And I'll go another little step. Every step you take at work has the potential to actually help your feet get stronger. Or again, if they're just encased in these shoes, you're missing out of thousands of opportunities for your feet to get stronger. So that one of the most important things with strengthening feet for running is that it doesn't have to be done while you run. That's for sure. It doesn't have to be done in the gym, although that's a prime opportunity to do it, but there's another prime opportunity, is work. Now, not every workplace is flexible in terms of what shoes you can wear, but if you can wear an absolute minimal shoe or no shoe at all and walk around in your socks, is that every step is a workout. And times that by thousands, that is more repetitions than you will ever do in a gym of any exercise. So, walking with minimalist shoes, Is a great opportunity for your feet to actually slowly, but surely get stronger. It's good. I open up a lot of people. Is there a type of runner who might need foot strengthening more than others? If they're basing it on like what shoes they wear or what, um, foot arch height they have, um, is there any, uh, preference or is there any, do we need to prioritize foot strengthening over one than the other? No, I'm just simply going to say a hundred percent of humans who. want to be active in respect to running, need to have strong, healthy feet to run with. You know, if we really think about that, that just makes sense. You wanna have strong, healthy feet to run on top of, rather than weak, dependent feet that, you know, are always chasing the right orthotic or the right shoe. And again, shoes and orthotics, they have their part to play, not a problem with that. But hey, let's put an awesome, strong, healthy foot into a shoe or orthotic to get the most out of your own body, your own organic body. I don't prioritize arch heights or anything like that. I know that there's billions of dollars made on what your arch height is and how much you pronate, how much you don't, but really that doesn't tell me how strong and coordinated your feet are because I can have a high arch or a dead flat foot that is either strong and coordinated or weak and uncoordinated. Now if it's weak and uncoordinated, well great, we've got parameters to work with there. We can sit there and train that. Whereas if I say your foot's wrong because the arch is too high, without a sledgehammer we're not fixing that. If I say your foot's wrong, your arch is too low, well, what are we gonna do with that? So the big thing for me is more about describing feet from a function point of view, rather than just a shape. Now I see shape because I'm gonna see people barefoot. That's great, I observe shape. We can argue all day about different angles, affect feet, of course they do, but those angles aren't gonna change. So for me, it's about strong and coordinated versus weak and uncoordinated. Now I do have another category which just seeing feet all the time is deformed. There are a lot of feet that will come and see me that have formed in from minor to major ways. And I've got to work around that to form me the best I possibly can. Yeah. If there's, while we're talking about the weight coordinated, uh, you mentioned balance as well. Is there any practical tests the listener can try out if they want to see what, how coordinated or strong they are. Any tests that can do at home without any equipment or with a physio with them? You bet. Uh, simple tests. Stand on one leg. Feet close together, strong and tall, stand on one leg. It is unbelievable how many runners who are fit will run faster than I ever will over a long distance. You know, 40 plus Ks a week and cannot stand on one leg. Now I just look at them and say, hey, this is not about your shoes and orthotics. Look at this thing, like you are, let's say you go for a 5K run, you're gonna land on that foot 2,500 times, but it can't hold you up when you're standing still. And I basically say, what do you think's happening underneath you while you're actually running? So for me, standing on one leg, single leg stance, just a very, very simple test, feet close together, strong and tall, and for just any human who doesn't wanna have a walking stick or a walking frame, is that for me, you need to be able to stand on each of your feet, one at a time, for 10 seconds, comfortably, easily, just, it just shouldn't be an issue at all. But for me, if you wanna run, and you wanna be active, you don't wanna be average, you don't wanna be a pass mark. is that 10 seconds eyes closed. Now I don't tell people that eyes closed should be comfortable and easy. I say it should be achievable 99 times out of 100. Now if we've got the wires between the feet, the brain and the muscles working that fast that 10 seconds with eyes closed, that's a first pass mark, happy days. The second test is whether your big toe and the big knuckle joint behind it. So the big toe, the reason it's so thick and chunky is it needs to be chief and boss of the foot. The other toes, the little ones, they're twigs for a reason. They're the support act. So we need to have that big toe for balance, stability, and propulsion. Now to test whether you're big toe, I've got fancy force platforms at work, which is fantastic. But a great test is come up on the balls of your feet and stand and just hold for about five, six seconds. And if you wobble like you're drunk, your big toe is not stabilizing, not anchoring you to the ground. Now the second part of that test is just slowly lowering the heels back to the ground. And again, if your big toe can anchor you to the ground, big toe and big knuckle joint behind it, can anchor you to the ground comfortably, easily, then from just a balance and coordination point of view, without going into greater detail, we'll kind of tick that box. So there are my two tests, standing on one leg, and then balancing on both feet, not single leg, balance on both feet on the balls of the feet, how well can the big toe anchor you to the ground, comfortably and easily, and then slowly down. Now, to get better at standing on one leg, you've kind of got to stand on one leg. And my rule for that, great saying I stole off a great physio I used to work with a little and often. To stand on one leg a little and often. But then the other one, the exercise is called five. So I get people to stand and spend five seconds slowly coming up on the balls of the feet. Hold for five seconds. Five seconds slowly back down to the ground. And I just ask them to do five good reps once a day until it's easy to do. So we've got those tests and when you're balancing on one foot, do it doesn't matter what you do with your arms. Are they by your side or spread out? I tend to have them just in front of me on the chest. That tends to be my sort of postural position. And so I don't, I don't be too pedantic to start with. Now, if people have got the, uh, the window wipers going, trying to balance or the hips going, that doesn't, that doesn't count. So it's feet together, strong and tall wherever the arms feel comfortable is fine by me and just keeping it really, really simple. Um, can you, yes, no. And then just everything nicer controlled. And you said little and often for those exercises. Um, how often are you proposing? So for the standing on one leg, I want people to do it as many times as the day they can until it's just easy until it's comfortable. Then bringing in some eyes closed. Now there are a lot of people, I won't tell them that we're doing eyes closed next because I need them just to focus on eyes open. If you give people what's next often, you know, they want to jump to that too quick. without laying a solid base. So eyes closed, so I don't tell people it should be easy, but it should be achievable. And if that's achievable, great, we've ticked the box of balance and coordination. The fives exercise, I get people to do it once a day. So again, five seconds up, five hold, five down, big toe anchors you the whole way. And I ask for five good reps. I don't ask for five perfect reps because we're building towards better. And I say whatever your pass mark is today, that's great. And in a week or so your pass marks going to be higher, but don't accept anything that's rubbish, just five good reps. And if they do that once a day, if they do this standing on one leg and that gets better by the time I see him next. Awesome. We're progressing. We're pushing on. Cool. I wanted to throw some comments at you. Like I hear a few, um, repeated comments in my clinic when I see clients and I thought I might just get what your response is. And so the first one I've come up with is, um, I've had foot pain in the past, but then I was just given orthotics and while I wear the orthotics, I don't have pain. So everything should be fine. Um, and I don't need to do anything else is, um, what's your response to that? If I'm not dealing with the person personally, and that's, they're happy, they're running, they're enjoying life, not a problem. That's, that's each to their own. My personal preference and what got me out of orthotics was asking why I couldn't actually fix my feet to the point where they didn't need artificial support. That's what drove me, is that I don't want to have to rely on a knee brace or a sling or anything, but I will use any of those things that I need to help me heal, help me do what I've gotta do. So let's say a runner, let's say a runner uses orthotics for running, do they actually need them for work? Do they need them to get out of bed in the morning? to go to the beach. So my big thing is that there's a lot more freedom, there's a lot more freedom in not needing artificial support to get through life. But running's different. Now running is high repetition, high force through the body and usually on hard concrete. And so if somebody needs something specific from a shoe or an orthotic, you know, I'm not against that. But I just sit there and say, what are we doing to actually correct the problem? And that doesn't mean that orthotics are bad. It's like, hang on, let's just see what's wrong with the organic you. And again, now especially, people coming into my clinic, they're looking for a little bit more. They're looking for a solution that's not just orthotics. So in short, each to their own, but if they're in my particular room, I'm gonna educate them on everything that's possible. And if they want to, and if they choose to pursue having strong, healthy feet, then I will support them the whole way and guide them the whole way. Very good answer. The second comment I have, there's only two. Um, I've had like several knee issues, but when it comes to any foot issue, I haven't had any, my whole running career. So should I worry about foot strengthening? Again, I'm gonna say they're the things that technically are connecting you to the ground, except for that piece of rubber between your foot and the ground. And so no, they don't have to. But for me, again, I want a Formula One machine that I'm gonna run on top of, regardless of how much rubber's between my foot and the ground. I want those 33 joints, let's just go 66, combine them together, 66 joints that are my feet. I want them to work the best they possibly can. That's like, I call it performance enhancing feet. And it's not illegal, it's actually free, because you own the feet, so the better they work for you, happy days. And even though all shoes, all orthotics, will take away some function of feet, some function of their potential, is it feet fatigue? That's the bottom line. Like we haven't been running around barefoot to school several miles a day each way for our whole life, so our feet aren't what they could be. Aren't what they are if we were living somewhere, such as Kenya, where we just ran barefoot for... 18 years and that was just part of our life. We can't buy that strength. We can't buy that ingrained connective tissue strength. It's just not going to happen. So the point is that feet will fatigue. So having again, whatever your shoe, whatever your orthotic is, it's not the end of the world. But yeah, my personal preference, I don't want the best fit I can possibly have because they're an asset. And if they're not an asset, then they're a liability. And just the act of running. generally like when it comes to the literature and looking at the forces and the requirements of all the muscles and tendons, the further down the limb you get, the more and more like times of the mass of your body weight, like you have the foot as soon as it hits the ground, it can be up to 10 times your body weight, but the hip and the muscles around there is around like the two to three. And, um, even just saying like your soleus muscles, like eight times your body weight when you're impacting the ground and, um, just having just that one foot, like you say, the 33 joints and that amount of body mass times, um, when you're impacting the ground, they need to be strong and like you said, foot fatigue, as soon as people, uh, finish winter and they're spending all this time in their shoes. And then as soon as it comes to summer, they're getting all these foot cramps and they're walking at the beach or at the, like around the pool and they're noticing all these foot cramps. The foot does fatigue. quite quickly, do you see a similar presentation with some of the clients that you see? 100%, 100%. It doesn't take long for muscles to atrophy in respect to mobilization. And so think of, yeah, the more winter a shoe is, generally the more enclosed, the stiffer it is. And then walking on the beach causes pain, they might get Achilles pain, plantar fascia pain, and so then they associate being barefoot as bad. Or if people have got foot pain, walking around the house barefoot hurts. so then barefoot is bad. It's like, well, actually not really, but when you've got an injury, like if you had an injured shoulder, doing cartwheels is kinda bad. But that doesn't make a cartwheel bad. It means that if you've got an injured shoulder or one that's not capable of supporting you through a cartwheel, then a cartwheel's not necessarily good. So I like to educate people and say that even though orthotics have solved your pain for now, is that walking barefoot's not wrong. Walking without your orthotics is not naughty. Is that... I want people to use their orthotics as much as they need to, or shoes, as much as they need to, but no more than they need to, if that makes sense. And even though it helps solve a problem at one point, just like slings and plaster casts and knee braces for me solved a problem at one point, it doesn't mean it has to forever. And that's probably my negative on anything overly supportive is that there's generally not a plan to come out the other side. And that's where foot strength and conditioning comes in is just offering people a plan, runners and other, to sit there and say, hey. Let's invest a little bit in these feet. Let's put a little bit into them because we can get a hell of a lot out of them. And for me, you know, runners being able to walk on the beach barefoot, it's a great recovery tool. Runners being able to, you know, go for a swim or any work in the pool, but if they're cramping up doing that, or getting aches and pains, it's a sign of dysfunction for me, as opposed to, um, you know, saying it's wrong. Yeah. I think that's a nice segue into a bit of a scenario that I've got planned out to finish off the episode. I always talk about this pain, rest, weakness, downward spiral. And you see someone, a runner who does get foot pain and then rest for a couple of weeks and tries to get back into what they used to do that flares them up. Rest again. Now walking is a little bit of a bother. Then they, all of a sudden after, you know, a couple of weeks or a month, now they can't walk without pain. And so they get the orthotics or they get the support and that feels better, but it's just further and further weakening them. So I call this the pain rest weakness downward spiral because like they get to that bottom and their function and their capacity is just so, so low. If you have, uh, if we were to like play around with a scenario here where someone is at that rock bottom and let's just say they're getting, um, as soon as they're walking for half hour in bare feet, they're starting to get symptoms. And so they're in these supportive shoes all day. What's a good starting point for them? Like if we were to build up their capacity and build up their function, start some strengthening. Where can we start with them? In the head. Okay, how do we do that? So, just think about their mindset when they come in at that point. They wanna run, they love running, and now walking they can't do. So, it's just been a negative spiral. I love the way you termed it as well, but it's just been a negative spiral on a headset or mindset point of view. So, I guess the first thing, when they're in the clinic with me, I've got hour long initials and a lot of it's education, a lot of it's reframing, a lot of it's getting people to understand that there is a way out of this. And if they understand how they've got to where they are and how we can piece by piece get them back to running, is that all of a sudden you can see it in their eyes, it's like there's hope. Now it's not gonna be a smooth ride in a straight line in terms of every day is 5% better than the last and I explained that to them from the start. is that it will be a little bit up and down, but it's gotta be progressively getting better as we go through. Now, I talk about my climbing back up the spiral. I've got a pyramid. So to get to the top of the pyramid is that the bottom of the pyramid is balanced in coordination. That holds everything above it on the pyramid. That holds it up. That's the foundation. The next part is strength, then spring. Now on the top half of the pyramid, I know you can't see me with my fingers here, but on top half of the pyramid is running live, doing all the fun things, travel that you want to do. But all of that stuff, if there's not a solid foundation of those levels below it, we keep running into problems. So once I step them through the fact that, and we've done the test, so they're absolutely appalled and amazed that they can't stand on one leg or can't balance on the balls of the feet. That happens a lot. Oh my gosh, I can't believe that's that bad. And I say that happens with pain and injury. but we can rebuild that and it won't take long. So I step them through, we're gonna work on your balance and coordination and you're gonna get that back pretty quick because all the wires are there, we just gotta reconnect them. Then we're gonna work on strength. Now most of the time with strength, I'm talking about a lot of muscles that are so tight and gritty, I call them beef jerky, they're so tight and gritty that the strength is there. And I'm talking about the soleus, I'm talking about the gastro, I'm talking about the lower leg muscles, the strength is there, but it's just locked in a cage. And so then I'll talk about Gradually slowly releasing that as opposed to pummeling him to death and thinking the muscles will love that and be loosen Fill at stake as is what I'm after so basically on a scale of muscles beef jerky to fill at stake So we've got balance and coordination We've got strength which is largely unlocking muscles and a little bit of footwork and then spring now spring is literally having a spring in your step for life, but also obviously spring is for Jumping for burpees and for running and so there's drills just progressing through each of those stages But as you know with anything, there's lots of drills and scenarios and release techniques that you can use to help that individual get through. But yeah, it's basically balance and coordination, strength, spring. Now most of my spring exercises look like skipping without a rope, I call them bunny hops. And I'll get people back to bunny hops, and my prescription is three lots of 10 seconds in a minute. So they're doing bunny hops, and as I teach it, it's the most light. effortless little springs, not jumps, little springs on floorboards is great because they can hear their feet. And we're just training that reflex spring and tapping into that Achilles and plantar fascia that can give you so much free energy return when running. Then pushing ahead again, giving the listeners, you know, the next stage, but then I'll get into single leg bunny hops. And I'll say, well, hang on, if we can't do single leg bunny hops, what business do we have taking thousands of single leg hops, which is running? And once they can do that, often in the clinic, I'll then go and do a running mechanic session, and we just work through technique. Now that's one of my passions as well, is one of my big things working through running technique is not to reinvent the wheel, is not to try and make everybody run the same, is not to sit there and tell everybody to go four foot or a mid foot or an any foot striker, is to sit there and look at how they move already, and then make subtle changes. Okay, sometimes there's big changes, but make subtle changes that somebody think can then repeat millions of times over the next couple of months of running. So, ending this, I know I've gone off on a little bit from where to start from, but where to finish. For me, running is repetitions. And when we think of each step of running as a repetition, as opposed to 5Ks, it's now 5,000 repetitions, I approach it like I would anything in the gym or anything that I do in terms of a rehab exercise with a client. is that I want every repetition to be as close to perfect as possible, whatever that is. And so with running, I'll ask runners like, how many repetitions can you do with good technique and efficiency where you feel light, you feel strong, you feel tall, you feel elastic? And then when that breaks down, how many more repetitions do you do? Now to say a 5k run, often that might be 500 good repetitions, so 500 meters. And then four and a half thousand repetitions where they're just trudging along. And often when I see people training for the marathon on the start of their long runs, they look miserable. And because it's just, they're painful, painstaking repetitions. So I more try and reframe it to the fact that if you're in a gym dead lifting or squatting, hopefully you care about your technique and form, and you want each repetition to be solid, sound, as good as it possibly can, even as you get to fatigue. Now with running, that's my aim. It's not perfection, but what does a perfect repetition look like for that individual? How many of them can they do? And then if we gradually build up the good repetitions, well, there's less chance of injury and performance will come off the back of that. For sure. Performance is a big one. And if it's any, um, for people who haven't had any foot issues in the, in the past and think they need to do, wondering if they do need to do foot strengthening performance is a big one to get them on board. I'm glad that you mentioned the mindset and just the positivity. in the initial stages, because we just got off doing a season around explained pain and knowing the benefits of having a positive outlook and how that can impact recovery. So I'm really happy that you mentioned that you mentioned balanced coordination as the foundation to start with and then building onto strength and then into spring before we go, is there just one strengthening exercise that, uh, you have as maybe a favorite that you like to give to your clients? If you have good balance and coordination, my favorite strength in exercise is use your feet. Just walk barefoot. If you've got the balance and coordination, walking barefoot is thousands of repetitions that will build strength. If you don't reprogram your feet from a balance and coordination point of view, then walking barefoot can be problematic, can cause pain. So yeah, literally strength is actually not that hard. It's quite ironic with feet. There's a lot that goes into it. There's 33 joints in each, but if you get them working well as a team, those joints, which is balance and coordination is that walking barefoot, walking in minimalist shoes, working in minimalist shoes, there's your strength and you don't have to earn it because you're already doing those exercises. You just need to sit there and either take your shoes off, which is cheap, or invest in a shoe that's got not much to it. Doesn't squish your toes up. It's one of my pet hates. We need our toes for balance and stability and propulsion. And a lot of our shoes taper in. So you need to free your feet and just use them. Now also then go back to the gym. What are you doing in the gym? You're doing some plyometric work. Well why you got shoes on? Okay, take your shoes off. Now it's a foot exercise as well. It's a dynamic strength and exercise for feet. You're squatting, why you got shoes on? You're dead lifting, why you got shoes on? Now I know I can't change all the rules in gyms in terms of what you're allowed to wear, but the argument of if you drop something on your foot, the shoe's gonna save you. Like probably not. You've got 20 kilos on your shoe. I will tell you from experience, the more you barefoot, the more aware you are of your feet. Without jinxing myself, I'm yet to drop anything on my feet in years and years and years of throwing all sorts of weights around and different objects in the gym. I've tried on a couple of things. They get over it. They're fine. At the time, it hurts. Sometimes, it's, ha-ha, you should put shoes on. The benefits far outweigh those odd times when I bump or kick something that... I wasn't looking at. Well said. If anything, I hope the listeners come away with a bit of relief as well, because a lot of this is, it makes a lot of sense. It's simplistic in some ways, but relief and kind of like hope that there's hope for people who do have a low arch or a collapsing pronated foot or those who do have reoccurring plantar fasciitis or some sort of foot issues. And like you're just systematically and like clearly planning out these management plans and giving us these tips, hopefully they're coming away is that it doesn't have to be as complicated as it seems. It doesn't have to be so disempowering like a lot of people or a lot of health professionals are communicating to them and trying to create some fear just so they get a bit of buy and a bit of reliance and have them coming back to session after session to try and get them better. Definitely. I like to say I'm quite lucky working with feet because they've been such a neglected part of the body forever in terms of strength and conditioning is that I haven't had to reinvent the wheel on anything. Yet what we know about basic principles of strength and conditioning. I've, I've simply taken that and applied that to fate and then mixed molded added subtracted And just worked out what works better for the most part in terms of general guidelines. And then obviously when we work with individuals, it's just working with that human But yeah, I've really just taken basic principles of use it or lose it. And unfortunately we've all lost degrees of what our feet were just because of shoes, that's life, it's a Western world. Because we need shoes to protect us from hot, cold, sharp, hygiene, and then we need them for work. But anyway, is that use it or lose it, and then progressive overload. Like those principles there, they're pretty sound. Like no one would really argue that use it or lose it exists and that progressive overload is gray. And so applying those to feet is really all I've done. Um, and obviously over the years, just trying to, trying to cut the fat, trying to get to the way we need to go, not by taking shortcuts by the most direct route we can, it's probably the, probably the answer to that. Cool. We're going to finish up there, Tim. Is there any social media links or, um, any details about your programs that you want to listen to go to if they're interested? Uh, Willingham Podiatry is my second home. That's my clinic. Uh, the running lab is part of that. And the running lab. I only came as a separate thing as I started to teach workshops through gyms and around the country in New Zealand. I've got a Strongfeet certification slash workshop, a two-day one for practitioners and coaches and I haven't announced any dates for that this year. But yeah, if you jump on and look for the Running Lab on Instagram, Facebook, Woollongong Podiatry either or myself, I'm not too hard to find. Awesome. I know you're a busy man. twin daughters, so it's, um, it'd be a bit of a handful and a bit tough to schedule in these times. Pardon? I've got to throw the older one in there as well. I can't just say. Okay. Yep. Just to pile on the complexity. So, um, I want to thank you for taking the time sharing the wisdom. That's a lot of wisdom and it should be a really good eye opener for a lot of runners and this is why I wanted to dedicate a whole entire episode just to the benefits of strengthening the feed. It is super, super important. Hopefully. Oh, you've done a great job of communicating that and giving us some nice practical examples. So we're going to finish up there and thanks for taking the time to come on. Really appreciate you asking Brody. And, um, yeah, hopefully listeners, if you take anything away, keep it simple. There's a lot of potential on your feet. And even if they've been liabilities in the past, uh, just need to work out just slowly and gradually how to build them up to be assets. Brilliant, mate. All the best. Thanks Brody. There you have it. I hope you enjoyed Tim. As you can see, he's extremely passionate. Even after I got off the call with him, we had a bit more of a chat and we might get him on to future episodes. We just delved into things like running shoes and cadence and he just went off on his passionate little tangent. And I could have even just pressed record again straight after this episode because he's just delivering a lot of nuggets and just a wealth of information. And it does seem like we can. jump back on and do another episode on another topic because I understand when it comes to the feet there's several topics we can take around shoes, around biomechanics of running, running technique, cadence, all that sort of thing and Tim would be great to jump back on to explain all that. He does a really professional way of breaking down concepts into everyday terms and avoiding the jargon and the real technical definitions of things and so... I think it's great for you even if you don't have a physio background or if you're not high on the biomechanics and the anatomy and all that sort of thing. It's a real good way for you to digest and learn. So yeah, it'd be great to have Tim back on. Hopefully it happens in the future. Follow Tim on social media if you want to continue following his content. And we'll finish up there. Enjoy your run today. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Running Smarter Podcast. I hope you can see the impact this content will have on your future running. If you want to continue expanding your knowledge, please subscribe to the podcast and keep listening. If you want to learn quicker, jump into the Facebook group titled Become a Smarter Runner. If you want tailored education and physio rehab, you can personally work with me at brea Thank you so much once again, and remember, knowledge is power.