Simon Bartold jumps on the podcast today to help clear the air on carbon fibre shoes. Simon is a Podiatrist and has spent several years working with the worlds best shoe brands on shoe manufacturing. He is world-class with the latest research on shoe science and performance & is THE expert to ask, 'Is a carbon fibre shoe right for you?' We discuss how these are different to traditional running shoes, how the mechanics benefit a runner & how to best use this type of shoe. To find out more on Simon please visit his website Bartold Clinical If you would like to support the podcast and participate in future Q&As sign up for $5US per month at https://www.patreon.com/therunsmarterpodcast To learn more about the Run Smarter Online Course, including FREE preview head to https://courses.runsmarter.online/collections To follow the podcast join the facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/833137020455347/?ref=group_header To find Brodie on instagram head to: https://www.instagram.com/brodie.sharpe/ To work with Brodie Sharpe at The Running Breakthrough Clinic visit: https://breakthroughrunning.physio/
Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and let’s begin your run smarter journey.
:
On today's episode is a carbon fiber shoe right for me with Simon Barthold. 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. the big gun on the episode as a guest today. Simon Barthold is the master of running and shoes and just knowing the science. He's worked with a lot of big brands in the past and definitely knows his stuff on the make of a shoe, how a shoe performs, what are the different characteristics of a shoe and- watching his content for the last couple of years a lot of his talks have been on the carbon fiber plate shoes and I'd love I it was an honor to have him on and although I didn't want to do a topic that he's probably done over and over and over again he was more than happy to come on discuss and talk with such passion and really admire that. I did ask some questions or I posted some questions if anyone wanted to. ask Simon something. So thanks to Matt for asking a couple of questions, Dave and Tony. The question sort of revolved around what type of shoes, or are the carbon fiber shoes good for long runs or potentially trail runs or track, are they a replacement for track shoes, those kind of things. How to best utilize them, should we be swapping them out with other shoes, should we be... using them just all the time or only for our long runs, only for short time trial stuff. What's the best value for a carbon plate shoe because they do get very expensive and what would be around so some like injury specific stuff such as like big toe arthritis or any other sort of running injury conditions that the carbon fiber shoe might help with. So we discuss all that today, we discuss obviously Simon's background a little bit, his career, and then we dive into like what are the mechanics, what's actually working when it comes to the carbon fibre shoe. practically what it's doing, what are the sort of tangible benefits someone might have, who could best benefit from it? Is it the recreational runner or is it more of the top end athlete? How to best transition from these type of shoes and then yeah just those questions asked by the public by Matt, Dave and Tony. So you guys are really going to love this one. I actually learnt a lot when it comes to who is. who this shoe is best for and yeah it's going to help me moving forward with my knowledge and giving out advice so hopefully you learn a lot as well. Yeah I think that's all we need to discuss. Simon is for those who don't know he is a podiatrist and he is from Adelaide in Australia but he has worked in France and worked all around the world with these big shoe companies so It's always good having a guest who is on another health professional discipline. So I'm always love having podiatrists on. Yeah, let's get started. I think I've said enough, let's enjoy and let's listen to the legend that is Simon Barthold. It is an absolute honor to have you on. I've been following your stuff for a very long time. And a lot of the recent presentations that I've listened to have been around these carbon fiber shoes and it is something that a lot of my listeners like ask questions about and want to know about and I'm pretty, I'd say my level of expertise isn't quite there with this topic so there wouldn't be a better person in the world to talk about this. So thanks for coming on to the Run Smarter podcast. Thanks very much Brody. I'm not sure that anybody really knows a lot about these shoes, they're a brand new category but. We're trying our hardest to understand what they're all about, but it's a pleasure to be here with you today. And yeah, we should have a bit of fun. Brilliant. Can we start with just an introduction into your expertise and a little bit about your background and how you've got to the space that you're in right now? Yeah, sure. Well, I'm actually by trade, I'm a podiatrist and I worked in clinical sports medicine for many years. So I've always had an athlete only care practice. But a long time ago, I got approached by a bloke who was repping for ASICS at the time in Adelaide. And he I've been shooting my mouth off actually about football boots and saying how crap I thought they were. And he basically said, well, put your money where your mouth is and come and help me design one. And I did that with ASICS. And that was the start of a 25 year relationship with them, really. And ultimately I ended up being, I had the grandiose title of International Research Coordinator. So my job was to act as a consultant to ASICS and to coordinate all the research program, medical research programs for the universities we dealt with around the world. So the idea basically was to try to come up with a research question that related to specifically injury in runners, and then to take it to a university. and kick that into gear as a proper research project. And the reason I wanted to do that Brody was basically, I wanted to get it external from ASICS. You know, ASICS is no different to any other company. They want to try to get the right answers for the questions. And I basically wanted to look at it from the correct way, which is to ask a research question and get an answer, which may not necessarily suit the marketing protocol of the company. So that was that. And Yeah, I did that for a long time. And then I went back into clinical sports medicine for a while, for about 18 months, actually, and fielded a very bizarre telephone call from a man with an outrageous French accent who was asking me to come to a place called ANSI in France, which I'd never heard of, to give a lecture to a company called Salamon, who I was aware of because I'm a snow skier, but unbeknownst to me, I was actually having a job interview with them. And when I arrived there, They essentially offered me a job on the spot to hit up the development of their road running program. So they're very, very good at building trail running shoes, but they didn't know how to build road running shoes. And just for you listeners out there who might think they're the same, they're not. It's a little bit like, I don't know, it's a little bit like the difference between Nordic skiing or cross-country skiing and Alpine skiing or downhill skiing, totally different athletes, different equipment, different biomechanics, different dynamics. So there is that much difference between road running and trail running and the footway has to reflect that. So that's a sort of potted snapshot of where I've been. I would, I guess consider myself more a biomechanist than a podiatrist these days because I've been involved in the real world of hardcore biomechanics for many years now at a research and innovation level. So that's pretty much my little journey. Yeah. And I love to hear that it comes from like you want to take that scientific research background approach and have a, an unbiased result and not just like a marketing driven sort of, um, answer that you're looking for. So I really, really liked that answer. It's really great. Uh, we want to talk about carbon fiber, carbon fiber plates. And I thought we might start with just generically, um, what is it and how is it implemented in the shoe and how has it kind of been developed over recent years? It's a good question. I mean I think most people think this is something that's terribly new but it's really not and it might surprise people to know that the reasonably obscure companies were actually involved in this long before any of the big players got involved. So the first really serious player in this arena was actually Fila. who are more famous for tennis shoes than running shoes, but they actually built a really good running shoe back in the very late 90s. So a long time ago, we're talking over 20 years ago, that had quite an effective carbon fiber plate. And the thing about the footwear industry is it's quite a disaster, so everybody knows each other and there's sort of these lines of succession, if you like. And one of the very interesting things is that Professor Ben-O-Nig, who's a very, very well-known figure in probably the most revered biomechanist in footwear biomechanics. He was the guy who I guess was most involved early on and he was developing a shoe for the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000. Actually it was a spring spike. I had a discussion with him in 1999 and he said, yeah, our athlete who was Addo Bolton is going to win the 100m gold medal for sure because we've done all this research and we know he's going to run faster because he's running in a carbon fiber. Fiber plated shape in fact he won the silver medal because he happened to be competing against Michael Johnson who was you know Michael Johnson so but the interesting thing is that his understudy was a guy called Darren's definition who continued the journey with carbon fiber plated shoes and he He is understudy was a guy called Gal and Gal was one of the authors of the So we've had the succession of scientists who are all interconnected over about 20 years, who've all inputted into eventually what we're seeing now as the sort of race for the super shoe and what's not a race for a super shoe, we've now got a whole new category of super shoes with many players in that. But it's been a journey over many, many years. And I guess in terms of the construction of how they're all put together, well, it changes from shoe to shoe and company to company because... Some are not full length plates, some have different geometry, some are angled differently, some are split. So there's quite a lot of variation in terms of how the shoes are actually put together. And if we're looking at, generically speaking, the fiber itself, is it just more of a denser foam that's placed in the last of the shoe? No, it's an actual carbon fiber plate. Right. It's a separate carbon fiber plate. So, you know, you imagine a Formula 1 car, you know, you see the carbon and carbon fiber. So this is an actual plate that is shaped depending on what the manufacturer wants, and that it's inserted between two sandwiches of foam. And that is what actually provides the stiffening of the shoe and changes the lever behavior of the shoe. But it should be pointed out that right now, knowledge is saying that the carbon fiber plate is possibly not the most important thing in these shoes, that the foams are also super important. So it's not just one component. I mean, in athletic football, you don't just normally do one thing to a shoe that makes the difference. And when you talk about the first of these shoes, the first famous one, the Nike VaporFly 4%. The 4% relates to the 4% improvement in efficiency or economy if you like for the runner. So they're saying if you wear the shoe and you can exploit it properly, you will be 4% more efficient. When that came in, we thought, well, that's a load of bollocks, that can't possibly be, but now there's ample evidence to say that is in fact the case. But when you talk to the people who are involved in the project, they say, yeah, well, the carbon fibre plate's probably worth 1% and the foam's probably worth 3% of that total of 4%. So it's about the construction and the way the shoe is put together as a whole rather than just one particular feature of the shoe. Okay, that explains it really well. And you mentioned the stiffness and you mentioned efficiency. So mechanically, how is it actually helping the runner? Is it helping them spring forward or is it helping them like absorb load? What are we talking about mechanically? Well again, it's really important to understand that it's a combination of features and we should even perhaps mention the geometry of the shoes so you'll notice that some of these shoes look like a They look like a racing cyclist helmet with the pointy bit at the back So the geometry is also really important because it affects the biomechanics of the runner but to try to explain how this is split up so If we if we look at the vapor for the first iteration the vapor flight 4% and we could talk about any of the any of the current shoes new balance have just released what looks like it's going to Be fantastic sure it's called the fuel cell RC elite and all these shoes are using very Technical foams that are quite different to the foams of the past So traditionally an athletic footwear we've used EVA, Ethyl Vinyl, Acetate Every shoe pretty much use those somewhat inject a bit of silicon in them make them either a bit springy or But what happened with the Vaporfly 4% and a lot of these other shoes, is Nike used a material called PBax. Now PBax is actually a thermoplastic or a TPU, a thermoplastic polyurethane. So the TPUs, they developed a technique where they could actually pelletize it and turn it into a foam. Because PBax is normally the stuff that you make the stud plate of a football boot out of. So it's a rigid plastic, right? But they developed this technique so that they could actually make it into a foam which they used in the midsole of the shoe. And the advantage of that is it's about 20% lighter than the next best material and it has about 30% more rebound than the next best foam. So the Nike React foam, which is what they got, sorry, Zoom X foam, which is what is used in that shoe, it returns about 87% of all input energy. 87%. The next best is at about 61%. So you can see that the foam is super important because if you have better rebound, then it probably affects things like how fatigued you get during a run. And those guys who saw Elliot Kipchogy break the two hour barrier in Vienna, you know, you'd see him running across the line and he's jumping and he's going across to his wife and he's beating his chest. He looks like he could run another 42 Ks, no problems at all. He didn't look fatigued. So these foams are probably helping with that. What the carbon fiber plate does is it probably changes the lever action of the shoe a bit. So people are saying it acts like a spring. It doesn't act like a spring at all. It acts more like a lever. So if you can change the lever action of the shoe, then you will get a mechanical advantage of the shoe over the foot. So that's probably where the carbon fiber plate fits in. Okay. And you're looking at... returning more energy than say a traditional shoe, which would then lead to a more efficient run. And if, where, if I am imagining like putting a plate in a shoe, my thought would be to it might act like a spring. And if someone was running, say on their, like a four foot strike, it would kind of act like a trampling kind of like rebound and recoil and spring you forward. That was my first impression of this type of shoe. But, uh, when looking into or listening to people like yourself, it seems like the heel runners are the, the heel strikers, I should say, are the ones that kind of getting most of the advantage because that's when it acts more as a lever. Is that right? Yeah, that's, that's right. So categorically doesn't act as a spring. So we should, we should put that to bed. Anybody who's, who's believing it acts like a spring. That's, that's, that's not the case at all. And it's a real conundrum because most people would consider that elites and super elites are mostly mid-foot or four-foot strikers, although that is not the case. But the truth of the matter is that with most of these shoes with the full length carbon fiber plates, you will get a better advantage and you can exploit the carbon fiber plate better if you strike at the heel and obviously propel off the end of your big toe. So you will get a better action of it. But just to sort of try to explain how to do that, the energy return point of view, if people are wondering. So people think, yeah, okay, so you strike the ground and the foams absorb that energy and return it. So again, this is not a spring like action, but what happens here is that when you strike the ground, you get an impact, right? And the impact generates a shockwave through your system. So I think everybody can understand that pretty easily. And the shockwave, if you did not somehow reduce that shockwave, it would propagate all the way through your body, up through your ankles, through your knees, through your hips, all the way up to your head. And if it was not somehow reduced, then you would fall over because it would severely interrupt your eyesight and it would shake your brain and it would affect your hearing as well. So the body has natural mechanisms to what we call attenuate this input shockwave. And the way you do it is through muscle contraction. and through the vibration of your organs. And what that does is it absorbs the shockwave, just like a sound wave is absorbed in a soundproof booth, okay, with panels and what have you. But the problem here is that if you are reducing the impact by muscle contraction, of course, over a period of time, you're gonna get fatigued. So if you can build a shoot, that reduces somehow that input shockwave. then you have less requirement for the muscles to contract so you don't get as fatigued. So that's the real ace in the hole here, Brady, that's somewhere along the line here. Something quite extraordinary is going on where these shoes are somehow dramatically affecting this input shockwave in a way that's never been done before in running footwear. Yeah, wow, that's a fantastic way of explaining it. I think anyone can kind of get that analogy. So that's fantastic. Is there... If we're talking about like tangible results and looking at a runner who is wearing the shoe compared to a traditional shoe, are we seeing faster times? Are we seeing like the athlete themselves feeling better, feeling faster, feeling more efficient? Um, and is it really, uh, like getting tangible results? I want to give you an idea, you know, and I don't want to continue to talk about Nike because there's other great product out there, but the last five world records have all been broken in one of the Nike Vaporfly 4% families. So either in the 4%, the Next% or the AlphaFly, the last five world records. Now, the thing here is that these records are not just being broken, they are being smashed. in a level that we've never seen in the history of distance running. So the women's world marathon record was broken by several minutes and it was a record, Paul Radcliffe's record, it's a record that stood for many, many years. Normally when you break a world record, you expect to see broken by a few seconds. We're seeing these records broken by a minute or two minutes or three minutes, in some instances, four minutes. I was talking to Alex Hutchinson recently who's a really well-renowned sports scientist and he was telling me about a guy who's on the cusp of being super elite and he reduced his marathon time wearing one of these shoes by eight minutes. I mean that is absolutely unprecedented and it's really interesting because it feeds in a number of other issues that we have to ask. Quite unpalatable questions, I guess, but you have to wonder whether the shoe, for some athletes, is acting as a bit of a smokescreen. In other words, we know the shoes are fast. We know they're improving times. But when you see these really big differences in time, we may be seeing that these athletes are getting a little bit of help from something else as well. Yeah. You know, there is this possibility that the shoe, because it's obviously making such a change, Are some of the people also, are they using other methods to improve their times and the answer that may well be yes, that could be happening? Yeah, I think that's another debate. Along with the shoe actually, is it having an unfair advantage for a lot of people is I think another can of worms that we might open another day. But are we seeing similar world records being broken in shorter distances? No, at the moment the records are pretty much limited to the marathon distance. And this is what makes me think that fatigue is probably the real issue here, that I think the shoe is able to really allow the athlete to remain fresher for a much longer time. I mean, usually when you see guys breaking world record in the marathon, they look like they're about to die as they cross the finish line. You know, they look absolutely spent. We're consistently not seeing that with these shoes. So we're seeing guys who are really bouncing over the I think we may well see some changes in, actually I shouldn't say we're not seeing those changes, we've seen changes in Ironman and Triathlon. We have seen some changes in some of the shorter distances, but by far the major effect we're seeing is over the marathon distance. Okay, yeah. And it could be a nice segue to talk about the elites and if there's any... additional benefit for recreational runners because what when I'm thinking about elite I'm thinking they're trying to look for the one percenters that are going to get them like the best return and you know that additional one percenters can be the difference between gold medal or world record or finishing fifth, so is there the similar effects if a recreational runner wanted to try and improve their marathon time Probably not is the answer You do have to have adequate technique to be able to exploit these shoes properly. And you probably also have to have adequate strength to exploit them properly. I think a lot of recreational runners are experiencing some improvement in their times with these shoes. But I'm a little bit suspicious that there may well be a little bit of a placebo effect here as well. So... I'm sure we're not seeing that with the super elites. You know, they are running faster because they should do it. I think there's just no doubt that is the case. But I think with the recreational runners, you know, if you're told that you're gonna run 4% more economically by wearing the shoe, you go and buy a shoe, the likelihood is that you may well run a bit quicker, and that is the placebo effect. But the general money is that these shoes are aimed very squarely at people who are very good runners. I actually just wrote an article this morning on my website on the new fuel cell RC Elite, the new as yet to be released new balance shoe. And you can look at that shoe and see how it's put together. And you know that it's very squarely aimed at the pointy end of the running community. And I think the average runner will find it quite difficult to run in actually. Okay. If we're continuing on with this recreational population. You did mention also that there are a ton of different plates and different type of shoe geometry and that kind of stuff that's already out there on the market. But like generally speaking, if you, how would you practically use this shoe? Would it be flat roads? Would it be greater distances? Would it be to use all the time or just to swap out with other shoes? Is there a certain way that we can best utilize this shoe? Well, I'd answer that initially by saying I don't think this is a shoe that I personally would be recommending to a novice runner or to just your weekend warrior. I think they've got better options. I mean, we've got to balance out the question between what's the most important feature? Is it protection or is it performance? For the elites, it's all performance. For a novice runner, we've got a pretty fair inkling that protection is more important to them because they don't have the technique or the style. they're often struggling with, you know, they're quite deconditioned. So they're often people like me who've sat in front of a computer for days on end and you know, they're just not conditioned for running. So the key issue for those people is to protect them and there are very good shoes on the market that will help with that. The key issue for an elite performer is they wanna go faster. So that's where a carbon fiber shoe will help them. For those athletes who are wearing the carbon fiber shoes, should they be wearing them all the time? I think the answer's probably not. I mean, one important thing here, Brody, is that we're not quite sure whether there might be, there's a bit of a suspicion that there might be downside to some of these shoes as well, because what they do is they change the mechanics of some of the major joints in the foot, so they definitely change the power output at your big toe joint. And we're just not quite sure. If you're changing, basically if you're changing mechanics in one joint, it has to go somewhere else. It doesn't just go away. So it gets shifted to another joint. And one of the things that we're not sure about here is what is gonna be the long-term consequence of this? And the answer is no one's got a clue. We just don't know. But we do know these changes are being made. So I think to use the shoe all the time would probably be counterproductive and I would probably be looking at doing the longer training. workload in a different type of shoe and saving these shoes for race day. And if we're, if someone, I think a lot of the, the listeners who have listened to past episodes that know that if you're doing anything, that's an acute change, it does increase your risk of injury because it does shift certain loads. And if it's definitely a different style of shoe, different type of shoe and the loads are shifting, if the body isn't accustomed to that, or if you're exceeding, your capacity to adapt, then it increases the risk of injury. If someone is a recreational runner and they've got these new shoes and they wanna try them out, is there a possible increase in risk of injury if they're not transitioning the shoe appropriately? Yeah, I think the answer across the board for any shoe is yes, there is that absolute risk. So, you need to view change as a runner with great suspicion. So if you're uninjured and you decide you want to change the way you run, I would suggest that that's something you need to think carefully about because changing your, your gait pattern or, you know, what we call gait retraining in an uninjured runner is fraught with danger. When you adapt to a particular pattern of running, which you learn when you're very young, probably when you're about 18 months old and it's pretty hardwired in your brain and it's quite hard to change. If you're injured, it changes the rules. Of course you need to look at whatever you can do, but if you're not injured, then basically I would recommend against changing that. Same thing with footwear. If you wanna make a particularly gross change or wholesale change, and the great example here is people who decided to experiment with barefoot running or minimalism, there's absolutely nothing wrong with running barefoot or running a minimized shoe, but there's plenty wrong with making a sudden change to that because you just can't adapt. So it's what I've just said, you change the way you run. you change the load through the joints and those loads don't go away, they go somewhere else. So for example, we know for a fact that if you wear a traditional shoe, so let's say a 10 millimeter stacker, a 10 millimeter drop, we know that increases the load on your knee, but it decreases the load on your Achilles tendon. If you reverse that and you go into a minimalist shoe, we know that it decreases the load on your knee and it increases the load on your Achilles tendon. Now you can exploit this if you're smart. You know, you can actually say, right, well if I've got a persistent knee injury, especially around the kneecap, then I can go into a shoe with much less drop and that will reduce the load on my knee. And that's established by science. We know that's what happens. But you have to factor in that it also will increase the load on your Achilles tendon, so you need to be careful. And you probably need somebody like you, a physio, to monitor this and make sure that this is all being done in the correct manner. and it can work very, very well. But the bottom line is you do need to treat change with great caution as a runner. Yeah, and I think it ties in really well. I had an episode last week with a guy named Matt and the discussion was using shoes as a tool. And if you have to shift load somewhere or if you have to manipulate the muscle mechanics and those sort of things that shoes can actually do that. And we talked about certain conditions where it might be advantageous for, um, certain shoe characteristics, which, um, ties in really well with this. I did have a listener who actually has like big toe arthritis and was wondering if they sort of carbon fiber plate shoes might be of benefit. But, um, I think you briefly mentioned before that it actually increases the requirements at the big toe joint. Was that right? Yeah, I would be cautious about wearing this sort of shoe if you've got arthritis in your big toe joint. A far more sensible option would probably be to look at something like a shoe with a very substantial non-plated rocker, so something like a hooker. Those shoes, there's no scientific evidence for it, but anecdotally, there's tons of information saying that these shoes work really well for people who have first MPJ or big toe joint pain. And... you know, the logics behind that are pretty robust. So obviously, if you've got a rocker shoe, then you're going to take the load away from the big toe joint and that can help a lot in people who've got pain in the big toe joint. Right. And if we're looking at shifting load with the carbon fiber plates. Can you see any conditions where there might be like an advantage to wearing this type of shoe. Personally, I don't. I think that I think this is a performance product. So this is the Formula One car in the paddock, mate. We could all drive around in a Hyundai i30 or we could all drive around in a Formula One car. Not everybody can drive a Formula One car. Not everybody should drive a Formula One car. And they're a very specific piece of equipment. I see this being the case with these shoes that they really are designed. with a particular athlete in mind, with a particular purpose in mind, and they're definitely not for everybody. I can't personally conceive of a circumstance where I would use this shoe to treat an injury. Yeah, that's a very well put. I don't think I'll be wanting to drive an F1 car either. The performance side of things, and it seems like the very elite top end for performance is the takeaway message here. And you did mention there are different types of carbon fiber shoes Is there any one like when it comes to the different? products that are out there Is there one that might best suit a different type of runner or a different type of situation? Look the simple answer is we don't know one of the problems we've got at the moment is there's only really one family of shoes that have had any sort of scientific scrutiny and that is the, that's the Nike family that started with the Vaporfly 4% and are currently at the Alpha Fly. So all of those shoes have had pretty extensive published research on them basically. None of the other shoes in this category have had any published research on them yet. So they're all quite different and at times they have a different application. Some of them have carbon fibre plates that are not flat. They have a slight twist to them. Some of them have carbon fibre plates that are split. Some of them have plates that don't go full length. But the problem is we don't have any hard data on, or comparative data on how these shoes differ in their effect on the athlete. So at the moment, until those studies start trickling through, and I'm sure they will, Um, we don't really even answer that question, unfortunately, which we did because I'm personally quite interested in that. Yeah. And if I do have a lot of questions coming in about the price of the shoe and if there's any like best value type of shoes, uh, mainly for recreational runners. But I guess the overarching message I can say is probably for the elite top end type of performance, but, um, from what you know about the products and the different types of shoes that are out there. Would you suggest any particular type of carbon plate shoe based on like the value and based on price? No, look, that's a really interesting question because it sort of points to a much bigger issue and that is the assumption that you might be able to make a recommendation fairly generally, which I'm quite opposed to that concept. So it's like when anybody asks me what's the best shoe, the answer is there isn't one. The best shoe is the shoe that's going to work best for that individual athlete. So it's the odd story that, you know, different runners react differently to different shoes on different terrain and different circumstances. There's a lot of difference in there. So you cannot make one global or homogeneous recommendation about footwear across the board, whether it's got a carbon fiber plated or not. There is no answer to that question. it's completely athlete specific. And that's where it gets difficult because the athlete is starting to travel in a very murky territory where things are starting to get very complicated, very technical, very sophisticated. And it's sometimes quite hard to make the right choice. So do you just automatically go to the Nike product because they're first across the line and they've got the research data there, or do you go something to something like the sketches product, which is by far the lightest shot of this category. It's only 190 grams for a sample size. So the answer to the question is, well, if I was trying to answer this question, Brady, I'd say, I don't know until I've had a look at you. I need to have a look at you. I need to find out what your goals are. I need to figure out what your running mechanics are. I need to look at your injury history. I need to try to understand how engaged you are in the sport. there's a lot of things that factor into the shoe selection process. And it's one of the really complicated things about running shoes. Yeah. And I think that's a great response. Sometimes saying there's no answer is an answer in itself. And yeah, I think that helps summarize a lot of what we've talked about today. As we wrap up, Simon, thanks again for coming on. It does seem like you are still bringing out content on a regular basis. Is there any? platforms or if there's any websites people can be drawn to you if they want to learn more information and read a lot of your content Yeah, sure. I mean our website is just called Bartoldclinical.com So B A R T O L D clinicaloneword.com It's a members. It's a members Registration website know that you have to pay for all the content, but there's a lot of free stuff on there so there's an open access area that that you guys can go to and there's always tons of stuff in there. There's videos and lots of stuff. Or you can just get on any of our social media accounts, either on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. And of course that's all free content. And we talk about stuff and post stuff on a daily basis. So you can, you can get stuck into a lot of different stuff there if you're interested. Yeah. So that's, they're the main platforms and there's always stuff of interest. We're very running, we're very running focused. So whilst we do talk about other sports as well, we have a strong focus on writing. Great, and before we started recording, you said you've settled back down in Adelaide, and is there anything exciting career-wise on the horizon? Oh, it's always exciting, mate. I'm in the process of writing. We have a platform that's called Bartogold, and it's like a university course. So the first one we did was on musculoskeletal injuries, so shin pain, knee pain, achilles pain and heel pain. I'm in the process of writing a brand new course which, you know, it'll probably take me until the end of September working 40-hour weeks to finish off their big jobs, but I really like that stuff because, you know, I have to research all the current information, so I like discovering new things about the way particular injuries are treated. So that's good fun, but yeah, there's always stuff going on, you know. I'm really enjoying the consultancy to the industry. So I'm working currently on some netball, very exciting netball shoes and we're just about to launch a field hockey specialist field hockey shoe. So my, my dance card's pretty full. You might say there's lots going on. Yeah. As a past member of your online course, I highly recommend it. And your, um, the certificate, the completion certificate is, um, on my wall in my office as we speak. And I'm very proud of, um, Uh, the, all the content that you do deliver. And so we're going to watch up there. Simon, I might just interrupt there and say that you want to have any four people who have that certificate by the way, everybody else has found the cause. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, it's, um, the, the exam itself is, um, yeah, pretty content heavy. And, uh, and I was very happy to, to complete it and yeah, it's a, it's a real honor. It's, uh, I just tried my best to delve into like all different. disciplines as much as I can and doesn't just necessarily have to be targeted towards all physio stuff So as soon as I saw a podiatry online course that's suited for runners, I'm like this is right up my alley I need to learn more about this. So Yeah, if anyone else wants to check that out, I highly recommend it Simon thanks for coming on sharing this Really interesting topic. I think with the recreational runners that mainly listen to this podcast. It's a it's really nice to get someone like you to come on, share your expertise and everyone wants to perform better. Everyone wants to get a better marathon time. And I think we've helped shed some light on this topic. So yeah, once again, thanks for coming on. My absolute pleasure. I hope people have enjoyed it. And yeah, by all means, if anybody has any questions, you can forward them to me, Brody. I'll do my best to help. 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.