Episode 92 | Aug 9, 2024

Why Walking Beats Running for Your Health, With Mark Sisson

What if walking—not running—was the most effective exercise all along? In this episode of Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi and holistic health entrepreneur Mark Sisson challenge the conventional wisdom of the “running boom” by taking a closer look at the benefits of walking. They explore how prioritizing foot health, especially as we age, can lead to greater overall well-being and longevity.

“Walking is a quintessential human movement. I think walking defines humans.”

Mark Sisson

Himself a former competitive endurance athlete, Mark now advocates for a shift from running to walking as a cornerstone of a sustainable fitness routine. He argues that walking, paired with minimalist footwear, not only enhances foot health but also provides significant cardiovascular benefits. In his new book, Born to Walk, he questions the running boom’s impact on our bodies and emphasizes how proper walking techniques can prevent injuries and support overall wellness. His insights highlight walking’s role in a balanced fitness strategy, supported by strength training and occasional sprinting.

A lifelong innovator in the holistic and natural health space, Mark’s journey began with a passion for running but evolved into a broader understanding of holistic movement. His experiences led him to champion walking and minimalist footwear, aiming to help others build a stronger, more resilient connection with their bodies. Through his work with Primal Kitchen and his new company, Peluva, Mark focuses on changing the way we approach both nutrition and movement.

Understanding these insights is crucial for health coaches. Many clients come to their coaches seeking weight loss solutions, often through running or other high-impact exercises that are hard on the body. Mark offers an alternative approach, encouraging coaches to integrate walking into their clients’ routines and highlight its benefits.

This episode provides practical guidance on fostering a more balanced and sustainable approach to fitness, enhancing both physical health and overall well-being. Check it out below.

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Episode Transcript

Dr. Sandi: How many people really pay attention to their feet? And I’m not talking about getting a pedicure or if your feet are hurting. I’m talking about day in, day out foot health, and paying attention to the importance of feet as part of your overall fitness routine. This is the subject of our conversation today because my guest is none other than Mark Sisson, and many of you know him. I’ve known him for many, many years. I had the opportunity to meet in person a few years ago, and I just think he is inspirational, and he has always been on the cutting edge of what is very important in terms of preventive healthcare.

So, let me tell you about Mark. He has been shaking up the world of health and fitness for over 20 years. He ignited the Ancestral Health Movement in 2006 with his wildly successful blog, Mark’s Daily Apple, and his best-selling book, “The Primal Blueprint.” He helped popularize the ketogenic diet and the concept of intermittent fasting with his New York Times best-selling books, “The Keto Reset Diet” and “Two Meals a Day.” He gave millions of health-minded grocery shoppers access to healthier sauces and dressings with his Primal Kitchen food company. And now he wants to change the way the world walks with his latest venture. It’s a shoe company called Peluva. So, without further ado, let me share my conversation with Mark. I know you are going to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording it, and it just might change what you wear on your feet. Mark, welcome.

Mark: Thanks for having me, Sandi. Great to be here.

Dr. Sandi: It’s just a delight. Let’s talk about your new company. What drove you to create this? And you are in my age bracket. I believe you turned 70. I’m ahead of you. I’m 74. But I just got it. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see these shoes, and you can notice that they have toe spacers. So, Mark, why did you start this company? You started it with your son. And why is this critical to pay attention to our feet, especially for over 50?

Mark: Yeah, I’ve been in this health space for a long time, for 40 years. I started out as an athlete. I was a runner. In those days of running, I put in a lot of miles and I got injured, partly from the diet, which informed much of the rest of my life in terms of “The Primal Blueprint” and all of my advocating for certain ways of eating and getting rid of inflammation that way. So, certainly some of my training was compromised by the food but also the shoes that I was wearing. So, I was an early user of the Nike thick shoes that enabled runners of my ilk to put in 80, 90, 100 miles a week of training, as opposed to the thin shoes that preceded the Nike, sort of, revolution. And those thin shoes, they were thin and they forced your feet to say, “Okay, Mark, that’s enough running for the week. 40 miles is plenty. Stop running.”

This new concept of thick, cushioned shoes enabled runners to put in more miles, train harder, work their hearts harder, theoretically to become better performers. But what they did over the years was they encouraged a generation of runners to exhibit bad form in running and to forgive bad form by cushioning the heel strike. Now we’ll get into that a little bit later. So, what got me started here? Cut to 30 years later, I’ve got this food company that you’ve noted. I sell it to Kraft. I make a lot of money. I decide I want to really rededicate myself to this problem that had plagued me my whole life, which was I just didn’t like footwear in general. I didn’t like athletic shoes. I certainly didn’t like thin, narrow Italian loafers and fashion footwear. I always tried to find ways to go barefoot. I was an early adopter of the Vibram FiveFingers back in 2007. I was a huge proponent of the minimalist revolution in running when “Born to Run” came out. And that book presented a case for we should be barefoot all the time, but because we can’t, we have these hard surfaces that we walk on all day, concrete, pavement, hardwood floors, tile, and then obviously uneven surfaces and then rocks and sticks and stones and things like that.

So, I’d always been fascinated by the idea that the foot is our primary connection with our environment. It is our feet that connect us to Earth and through which we should be receiving all sorts of tactical input. We should be feeling every undulation of the ground we walk on. We should be feeling changes in terrain, and temperature, and texture. Our toes should be articulating and adapting the way fingers adapt to a piano or a violin or cooking utensils or whatever. Our toes should be responding to changes in surface. But the fact of society having created these hard surfaces and creating this boot that encases our feet for decades at a time and scrunches our toes together and restricts our foot movement and certainly restricts our big toe from doing what it’s supposed to do and certainly cuts off all of the sensory input that the foot needs to inform the brain of exactly how to orchestrate a forward gait. So, if you’re barefoot and you step on anything, rocks or any kind of surface, by the time you weight that front foot, the brain has all the information it needs on exactly how to scrunch the arch, how to bend the toes, how to roll the ankle outward maybe, how to flex the knee, how to tilt the hip forward in a perfect kinetic chain.

One of the things we talk about here is that everybody is born with a perfect kinetic chain. Whether you’re knock-kneed or bow-legged or duck-footed or pigeon-toed or whatever the cliche is, you have a perfect kinetic chain provided that your brain gets enough information on exactly how to orchestrate it and bend all of these joints in a way that decreases strain and stress and accommodates gravity. So, the challenge for me was how do we create a shoe that will enable feet to be feet, enable feet to do what feet are supposed to do, which is react with the surface you’re walking on and create a perfect gait so that we don’t get injured, we don’t get tired, so that we want to walk, we want to move. So, many people just complain about foot pain, like something like 70% of people complain about foot pain in their lifetime, and cutting to runners and specifically marathoners, 50% of them are injured every year and 25% are injured at any one time. It’s like the NFL doesn’t even have that many injuries.

So, my son and I started this company with the idea that we were going to redesign the perfect shoe from the ground up. It had to have that tactile sensation. It had to have what we call ground feel, the ability to feel everything that you walk on. It had to have individual toes to articulate so that they could respond to changes in texture and terrain so that you step on a stone and, if it’s in the middle of your foot, only two of the toes respond or you don’t step on anything that’s uneven and all of them, you push off the big toe. But the foot needs to respond in a way that it was designed, that it was evolved to respond to. We wanted a shoe that, in addition to realigning the feet, that strengthened the feet, that relaxed the feet in a way that regular shoes just can’t do, and in relaxing and realigning and strengthening, that also looked good. And I think they look pretty cute. I think those blue ones that you have are great trainers. They’re pretty cute.

That’s why we decided to do this. I’m so passionate about foot health. The fact that, and you mentioned this, people over the age of 50, shall we say, balance, it becomes a huge issue, and falling can be life-threatening when you’re an older person. And why do people fall? Well, they fall because they haven’t done the strength work in the gym, which I know you talk about and we all talk about, but they also haven’t done the proprioceptive work with their feet. Their feet have not been conditioned to respond to changes in texture and terrain such that, if you do trip, you easily catch yourself or that the balance… I work on balance as part of my workout program. I do a couple of balance exercises in between sets when I’m lifting weights because I know that balance is so critical. I just spent an hour and 15 minutes on a paddleboard today, which is all about balance in the waves and things like that. And these are life skills that everybody should have, but certainly people over 50 should have these sorts of life skills.

And Peluvas, the shoes that we make, reinforce this commitment to understanding what balance is about and regaining balance. I have many women over 60, 65 who train in Peluvas in the gym, and their trainers will tell me they’re so much more balanced and so much more confident when they’re doing lunges or when they’re doing single-leg squats because their feet are now grounded. They’re able to feel the ground underneath and literally contact the ground and use the toes as a tripod. If you think of the heel and the little toe and the big toe, it’s a tripod. A regular shoe doesn’t do that. A regular shoe, in many cases, these HOKAs and these Sektechers, it’s like standing on a BOSU ball and then trying to develop balance that way. It’s been an exciting journey thus far. We’re getting a tremendous amount of acclaim from not just influencers in the movement space but runners, weightlifters, and a lot of great reviews from some of the gear companies that are looking at what we’re doing and saying this could be the new big thing.

Dr. Sandi: Well, it’s well deserved. I started out by walking just around the neighborhood and then about a week ago, I went on a trail to walk and it was a gravelly surface and it was great because I had some concerns. Am I going to really feel all these stones? And I didn’t. But the other way I’ve been using it, so before we are recording, I had taken my ballet class. I take ballet three days a week. I do tap classes as well. And the major emphasis there is on balance, jumping, foot strengthening. And at home, I was just practicing and I was going up on releve, and it is really great. I haven’t tried it when I’m doing a strength training, but that’s a great suggestion. I’m going to do that because it is so important, and I find so many people have poor balance. They’re doing cardio. They’re out there thinking that they’re really doing everything in terms of being as fit as can be and aging well, but they’re not paying attention to their feet to balance. Pilates is also something that I do that has great foot exercises but it’s…

Mark: It’s interesting. So, we have a lot of Pilates instructors who are wearing the Peluvas as they’re moving just throughout the day. It’s a great shoe to wear doing your errands and picking up the kids and going shopping and whatever you’re doing all day long. It’s a great shoe for walking. You talked about walking on pebbles and things like that. We call it foot candy. We search cobblestones here in… I’m in France now for two months. My wife and I walk between 6 and 12 miles a day, and we’re always looking for cobblestones to walk on because it just feels so good. It’s a unique experience. It’s almost like when you go barefoot in the grass, you can’t not smile. Going barefoot in the grass puts a smile on your face, and that’s a testament to how important it is for the feet to get this sensory input.

So, the next best thing is, if you have to wear shoes, then wear minimalist shoes. And so the specifications on the Peluvas are we have 9 millimeters. That’s less than one centimeter of total stack height between the heel and the surface of the ground. But within that 9 millimeters, we have just enough cushioning. We like to say it feels like when you’re walking on a sidewalk, it feels like you’re walking barefoot on a [inaudible 00:12:55.828]. So, just enough cushion, just enough protection to not get bone bruises or get any sorts of issues that the other older five-toed shoes might’ve caused. So, enough to give you that feeling of comfort but also to still be able to feel everything you step on. Like, you can step on a manhole cover and read who manufactured it. I’m kidding. You can’t do that, but, you know, the dimples on some of those metal plates. I’m always looking for things to walk on to feel the ground underneath my feet, even while I’m wearing these shoes, which you cannot do with most traditional running shoes.

Dr. Sandi: That is so true. It is such a good point. And especially, I think for women, so I came of age in an era where you had to wear high heels, stilettos with pointy toes and ruin my feet. And so I welcome wearing these and wear toe separators when I’m going barefoot around the house throughout the day, just so I can continually be exercising my feet and preventing any more damage from taking place.

Mark: It’s funny. We’re both friends of JJ Virgin, and she got her first pair. She’s like, “I’m not wearing those, Mark.” And I’m like, “Try them on, JJ. Try them on.” And then Tim, her husband wore them and he loved them. And so she was in town a couple of months ago and we went for a walk in the blue. She’s like, “Oh, my God, this is a whole new life-changing experience.” So, it takes a little getting used to, but once you put them on and once you wear them a couple of times, the danger is you don’t want to wear other shoes. So, this was my problem. I created this company and now I don’t wear any other shoes. So, I brought 15 pair with me to Europe for the summer. I’m going out to a fancy restaurant tonight. I’ve got leather ones that I’m wearing tonight. I’ve got all different styles and colors that go with different outfits, because for me, it’s become a real lifestyle. I want my feet to be strong, and resilient, and pliable, and mobile. And I want to have that confidence that I’m not going to be someone who falls and that’s not how I’m going to go. I’m not going to go by falling. And I turn 71 in three days. So, that’s the metric I’m using.

Anyway, I’m a huge proponent of people reclaiming their foot health. And you mentioned the heels. I mean, God bless you, Sandi. They look great. Wear them on occasion, but take care of your feet. And one of the things that people have noticed in the last five years, there’s like 20 million pairs of toe spacers have been sold in the last decade. And that’s because people recognize, when you take your shoes off, your feet don’t automatically find this wonderful natural outward splay. You have to force them. You have to put things in between your toes to spread them apart, to reclaim what you were born with, that natural splay. So, what we do with Peluva is we just say, “This is like wearing toe spacers all day, except now you’re not just wearing toe spacers, but you’re putting your toes through the motion, through the movement. You’re pushing off the big toe.” When we’re in the gym, the big toe is directly connected to the glute. People in the gym will say that, if you can’t activate the glute, unless you are fully articulating the big toe, which is why many bodybuilders and weightlifters take their shoes off to do leg training. That’s not because they want to be more comfortable. That’s because they literally want to activate the glute with that big toe. And you can’t do it with socks. For instance, even wearing socks, the socks, irregular socks still scrunch that big toe in. So, a lot of people get injured. They don’t even know it. But because if you can’t activate the glute by letting that big toe splay outwardly and push off the way it’s supposed to, then what happens is the stabilizer muscles around the glute say, “Well, I guess if the glute can’t function fully to do this exercise, we stabilize and your muscles are going to have to come in and take on some of the load.” And then you get this muscular imbalance. You can maybe get low back pain. Maybe you get an IT band issue or whatever it is. And I’m not saying you’re not going to get injured wearing Peluvas and working out, but it’s this idea that if you want to fully activate the glute while you’re doing deep squats or while you’re doing lunges, while you’re doing hip raises, that big toe is critical and it needs to be separated away from the other toes on your foot to fully engage.

Dr. Sandi: That is such an important point. And I actually have noticed that. So, if I’m doing a lunge or a single leg RDL and feeling wobbly, and then I put my attention on my big toe and squeeze my glute, then the two are working in sync. And the same thing in yoga. If you’re doing a pose like Warrior 3 where you’re balancing that way or King Dancer and you pay attention to your foot, you spread your toes and also you dig deeper into the earth and pull up more, so it’s always awareness, but it starts with the feet. And so I think it is so important to have this conversation. And we train health coaches and we have a lot of health coaches listening. And this is an area where they can really ask people about their foot health and what shoes they’re wearing and help them to feel empowered, to make choices. Like, they don’t have to wear the latest fashion shoe if that is going to be causing negative consequences in terms of their foot strength, and balance, and mobility and end up with more problems down the road.

Mark: No, 100%. And if you as a coach can convince your client, your patient, that one of the easiest ways to live longer, and as Bryan Johnson would say, it’s by not dying, to live longer is to not fall and to live well by not falling. I mean, I see it all the time. I see it now. Peter Attia talks about it. Gabrielle Lyon talks about it. Perlmutter. All the doctors that we know online talk about you have one fall after the age of 65, and your risk of dying increases 30%. It’s a huge number. And it’s one of the easiest things I think to address in the gym and to get real benefits immediately. If you can have your 50 and 55 and 60 and 70-year-old clients doing a little bit of balance work and strengthening their feet and feeling confident that they’re not going to roll an ankle if they step wrong off the last step on a stair landing, or if they’re afraid to go outside and walk because of the undulating terrain, it’s not just physically debilitating. It’s mentally debilitating to think that I have to restrict my access to the world because I’m afraid of my feet. I’m afraid of turning an ankle or I’m afraid I might fall because my balance is good. Imagine as a coach, if you can fix that with your clients and give them that confidence, that’s worth more than big biceps or huge delts or a Brazilian butt.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely. In fact, right now, as we speak, I’ve been balancing on one foot. I do that frequently when I’m on Zoom meetings. Sometimes I will go up and down, strengthen my calf muscles, or typically at least once a day, I’ll do some exercises where I close my eyes and you can put one foot in front of the other, you can raise one foot, and you can work on balance and see with your eyes closed, which is more challenging. But when you get it, it’s really empowering and it’s so critical to prevent falls.

Mark: Here’s my favorite exercise for balance. It’s a tough one, but you center yourself. You get on one foot, eyes open, one foot, lift with one foot off the ground, cross your arms, close your eyes, and see how long you can stand because now it’s real proprioception. Right now you’re using every part of your foot to do these minor corrections, and it strengthens the foot and it improves balance. I’ve read these sheets, like if you’re 30 years old, if you can do it for 15 seconds, that’s probably the standard. And if you’re 70 years old, like I am, 5 seconds is…

Dr. Sandi: Five seconds, exactly.

Mark: And I can do it for a minute. So, I’m like, “I got this,” but it’s not a magic trick. You have to work on it, but it’s so easy to do in between sets. If you just think about, okay, I just did bench press, I’m going to rest two minutes in between sets. Okay, I’ll just do it with my eyes closed, arms crossed, one legged, one each side. That’s the sort of stuff. And then I do it with Peluvas on, because if you do it with regular shoes, when you press down with your toes, they press into rubber and then you’re bouncing around like on a BOSU ball. So, not that a BOSU ball is bad, but anyway, I think that again, this connection that we have with earth, this feeling, that’s how we navigate the world is through our feet. And my goal now is to reclaim foot health and to teach people how to move again with confidence.

Dr. Sandi: Well, I fully support your mission. I think it is critical, especially as we’re aging. And I see women who are like… I’m 74 and my contemporary, they’re still out there wearing high heels and you need to design one that has sparkles so I could wear it to a gala.

Mark: I know. I know, I know.

Dr. Sandi: That’s one of the things, as we get older, I have found that I have given up the sense of embarrassment or shame. What are people going to think about how…? You forget all that and you’re focusing on feeling empowered to take charge of your health. Speaking of that, you have a new book, I believe, to come out. Can you talk about that and how you have made that transition from running to the power of walking?

Mark: Yeah. As we open this conversation, our feet are a connection with the ground. I think walking is a quintessential human movement. I think walking defines humans. It defines who we are. It’s how we populated the face of the earth by walking, not by running. So, my new book is called “Born to Walk.” And if nothing else, it’s an indictment of the running boom of the last 50 years as having been largely inappropriate for most of the population. Most people who are running should not be running. They should be walking and they should be walking well and walking fast and walking with minimalist footwear, which would strengthen their feet, which would give them the same cardio or better cardio benefits than the poor running form that is encouraged by the thick shoes that they’re wearing.

So, the book is really…first of all, it looks at the inanity, if you will, of people running four and a half hour marathons when they could be walking almost as fast and not getting injured. How the running boom has caused a lot of injuries, how it’s caused a lot of people to become depressed because many people engage in a running program because they think it’s a weight loss strategy. It’s not. It never has been an effective way to lose weight. Walking is, again, much more effective. So, within the book, we lay out all of the reasons why running was inappropriate. And we talk about ways in which walking appropriately, walking with a good gait and good form, which we talk about, can reinforce this kinetic chain that we all have, this proper gait so that it’s about avoiding injury, not getting injured. I mean, when you’re injured running and you want to come back and recover, what do you do? You walk, right?

So, walking is anabolic. Running is catabolic. Running tears people down, tears muscle tissue down. Over time, people get stressed out because of running. And so we lay out a walking program. By the way, I’m not against sprinting. I think sprinting is one of the best things you could do. So, as human animals, it evolved over the millennia. We walked a lot, and we sprinted once in a while. Now, the fact that we can run doesn’t mean we should run every day. So, I’m not telling people don’t ever run. I’m just saying don’t run six times a week. Walk a lot. Run once in a while. That’s fine. Only with good form, because if you don’t have good form, I’m not going to let you run. And then sprint once in a while and lift weights. So, it’s a new longevity strategy that’s a kinder, gentler way of building VO2 max, building muscle mass and not getting beat up in the process.

Dr. Sandi: It is so critical. And there was a study that was released. They had health coaches help people who were very sedentary. They didn’t move at all. And they got that… They had hypertension and they got them up for just 30 minutes. And it could be broken up several times a day, and a dramatic decrease in blood pressure. So, it’s so valuable. And I think for your mental well-being as well, there’s been many studies showing that walking is better than an antidepressant medication. People are rating how they feel, what their mood’s like before going out and taking a walk and afterwards, particularly if it’s outside, “Oh, I felt much better.” So, it is really critical.

You have described my exercise routine because I do. I remember those days when I was younger and I had to go on the treadmill every day. And to make matters worse, I was a raw vegan at the time. So, totally not having any awareness.

Mark: So, Sandi, did you love running?

Dr. Sandi: No, I hated it.

Mark: Did you love running? Yes.

Dr. Sandi: I hated it.

Mark: But you told people you liked it. And this is what… Not many people except those who… And, look, I was a 100 mile a week runner. I was a career runner. I was one of the few people who probably should have run. But I think people who say I love running, I said, “I don’t think you love running. I think you love having run. You like telling people that you run and that you ran and having finished running, but you don’t love running.”

Dr. Sandi: I thought afterwards, “Oh, I’m sweating…”

Mark: I mean, it’s like, do you love the cold plunge, right? You love the cold plunge? No, you hate the cold plunge. But when you get out, you feel good.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah.

Mark: All right, there’s something wrong with that.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, walking is so much better. And I blended with the mandatory resistance training, which is so, so important. Well, you have always been on the forefront on the cutting edge of a healthy way to be. So, as you look ahead, what are some things you would most like to accomplish in terms of Peluva or anything else?

Mark: With Primal Kitchen, I really set about the change the way the world eats. And I wanted to show the manufacturers of food how it could be done. There was a way in which you could make mass produced food that was better for you, that was healthier, and that did not cause the health problems. This is what I’m trying to do with Peluva. My mission with Peluva is to change the way the world moves by showing people that the proper footwear can strengthen, realign, do all the things that we want to have happen to build more robust individual people, starting with the feet. And as part of a longevity strategy, again, if your feet are hurting, you can’t walk. If you can’t walk, the day you stop moving is the day you start dying. So, walking is life. That’s really the message here is like, how can I create a product that encourages people to want to walk? And that’s one of the things about Peluva. I bet you felt that. Like, you put the Peluvas on to go out for a walk, and you literally want to walk. You feel like walking, right?

Dr. Sandi: Yes, I wanted to keep going.

Mark: Yeah. So, that’s the mission.

Dr. Sandi: I love the mission, and you are really an inspiration to people in our age range, that it is possible to actually age in reverse, which I think you and I are doing.

Mark: You’re doing a great job, Sandi. I applaud you as well.

Dr. Sandi: So. this has been an absolute pleasure and I hope we can continue the conversation sometime.

Mark: Sounds great. So, have people go to peluva.com. Check out the shoes, and soon we’ll be pre-ordering the book, “Born to Walk.”

Dr. Sandi: We will have that in the show notes to go to peluva.com and to wait for the book to be released. And we should have that episode out by the time the book is released. So, congratulations and best of luck with that as well.

Mark: Thanks, Sandi.