Welcome to another show about the big toe (hopefully you heard the first presentation, What’s the Big Deal About the Big Toe?) because in this episode, we’re taking it further.

You will learn why your big toe is crucial for efficient movement, and how its functionality influences everything from your running stride to balance. I reveal how wearing tight, restrictive shoes can hinder your big toe’s ability to function properly, leading to muscle imbalances, poor glute activation, and even overuse injuries.

You will hear about the myths surrounding “over-pronation” and why it’s not the enemy—and why poor big toe function is. I also dive into the science behind conditions like “runner’s hallux” and the role of the big toe in controlling pronation, explain why two-thirds of endurance runners have a dysfunctional big toe, and why barefoot-inspired footwear like Peluvas may be the best path to restoring foot health and strength.

This is a great episode to listen to if you want to learn how to improve your big toe health and take your movement and fitness to the next level!

TIMESTAMPS:

Big toe functionality helps influence and optimize pronation. [00:58]

Pronation is the natural inward and downward rotation of the foot and the flattening of the arch during the walking or running stride. [02:02]

There has never been any research to reveal that the most high-tech modern running shoes or any running shoe ever invented can actually control pronation. [05:38]

How can we get better at pronation? [08:03]

Walk around barefoot as much as you can. [12:27]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel – The Best Protein on The Planet!
• Brad Nutrition.com
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• B.rad Podcast – All Episodes
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• Eluid Kipchoge
• Joshua Cheptegei
• 4 effective exercises to avoid ‘runner’s hallux’
• The importance of the big toe
• Runners hallux
• Why we shouldn’t worry about Cheptegei’s pronation
• Researchers Suggest Big Toe Was Last Part of Foot to Evolve
• The Big Toe: Key to Proper Movement & Athleticism

LISTEN:
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• Peluva: Comfortable, functional, stylish five-toe minimalist shoe to reawaken optimal foot function. Use code BRADPODCAST for 15% off!
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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.89

Brad (00:51):
The single best way to strengthen your feet is to gracefully and carefully transition over to,

Brad (00:58):
Hey, welcome to another show about the big toe. Hopefully you heard my first presentation. What’s the big deal about the big toe? And now I want to get into a little more detail about how big toe functionality helps influence and optimize pronation. As you learned in the first show, the big toe is perhaps the single most important body part for efficient human locomotion, and it must have that freedom to operate independently from the other toes moving dynamically through multiple planes of motion. This is in order to efficiently remember those big three I talked about, absorb impact, balance moving body weight, and generate forward propulsion. If you wedge the big toes against the others, it nullifies its important role. The big toe is super important as the trigger, the primary trigger for a glute activation during the running stride, to a lesser extent, the walking stride, as I talked about in more detail last time.

Brad (02:02):
So even when you’re standing still the big toe and it’s finely tuned, receptors have a strong influence on static balance. Stand barefoot with your feet pointing forward and close your eyes and see what I mean. Pay attention to the incredible sensitivity and nuance movements of the big toe, as well as the other toes and the arch that will help keep you balanced. When you close your eyes, that’s when you really need to work at it and get more sensitive and have a better impact on a better impression of how important the foot is, even for just standing posture, let alone complex kinetic chain activity. Now, here’s a little known issue about how big toe functionality, influences pronation. In particular. Pronation is the natural inward and downward rotation of the foot and the flattening of the arch during the walking or running stride. You may have heard that term because it’s often referred to in a negative context.

Brad (03:04):
Pronation is often blamed as the leading cause of overuse injury, like it’s something you don’t wanna do. And we have pronation control shoes and we have perhaps articles and people talking about, oh, you’re a pronator <laugh>. It’s like, guess what? Every human is a pronator. Every homo sapiens ever lived on planet earth. And it’s an actually, the act of pronation is an extremely necessary important and efficient way to absorb, impact and generate energy. Now, the reason that pronation is often referred to as in a negative context is when you have weak poorly adapted feet. Raise your hand because almost every modern citizen falls into that category. Uh, the pro nation, the act of pronation will irritate and overstress your very fragile and vulnerable arch and or your fragile, shortened stiff achilles tendon just in the course of normal pronation. That’s why as a novice runner, for example, and you’re trying to up your mileage from 10 miles a week to 20 miles or 20 to 40, you’re going to get injured almost certainly so because your starting point is weak, fragile, vulnerable, and atrophied caused by a lifetime of wearing shoes, for example, with arch supports or with an and or with an elevated heel.

Brad (04:29):
Because when you walk around for years and decades in an elevated heel, you cause a shortening and weakening of the Achilles tendon. The Achilles is designed to hit bottom, to hit the ground on every stride and fully lengthen and then coil to supply that, to supply that rotational kinetic energy. And the arch, of course, is designed to flatten and tighten and what did I call it? Flatten, tighten and point downward, downward rotation on every stride, walking or running. But if your arch is weak or you’ve been forcing it to disengage because you’re wearing a giant arch support in your shoe, oh boy, that’s when the simple act of walking and running can result in overuse injury. And the more we go down that line of foot care and protection, for example, getting an expensive custom made orthotic and sticking that orthotic into our shoe the more chance we have for further weakening atrophy and reliance on gadgets, which actually don’t work.

Brad (05:38):
That is the big shocker. So there has never been any research to reveal that the most high tech modern running shoes or any running shoe ever invented can actually quote unquote control pronation. Even the most rigid and supportive shoes don’t really control pronation. The foot finds a way to pronate inside those fancy shoes. Furthermore, pronation often blamed as the driving cause of injury, and as I described it there, you’re irritating the weak arch and achilles tendon. But I wanna be clear that there has never been any research showing that pronation itself is a driving cause of injury. There is a bit of research suggesting or proposing that those who pronate in an exaggerated manner are actually less likely to get injured. Even what is widely considered as over pronation or extreme over pronation is natural and functional. And I want you to pause the recording right now and go and Google images of two of the greatest runners of all time Eluid Kipchoge, the great marathon runner from Kenya and Joshua Cheptegei, imiddle distance runner, middle to long distance runner from Uganda, who has the world records, who shattered the world records at 5,000 and 10,000 meters.

Brad (07:04):
The two most hotly contested long distance running events on the track. You can Google their names and then after that put extreme pronation. You might come right up to some of these pictures that they have of these guys running where their foot is bending so far in toward the ground that the shoe sole appears to be sideways at impact and the foot certainly is. So they’re pronating beyond the surface of their shoe. If I can describe that, you can go look at it and see what I mean. So this term, this widely bantered about term in the running community of over-pronation is essentially a made up word that makes no sense, is a complete farse and is just gofer for the marketing machine to try to sell you more shoe inserts, custom orthotics or more shoes, more rigidly built shoes, to desperate runners who have been brainwashed to believe that over-pronation is causing injuries.

Brad (08:03):
What’s causing injury is a weak, atrophied and dysfunctional foot that can’t perform the simple and necessary act of pronation efficiently. Do you get the distinction now? I hope so. So the real question to explore is instead of how can we get out of this horrible over pronation, how can we get better at pronation? This is literally the question that we must ask.The recalibration here. How do I get better at pronation? It starts with improving big toe functionality because the big toe plays an incredibly important role in controlling and optimizing pronation. As I said to start the show, Lee Saxby, a leading biomechanist, says the big toe quote provides 85% of the stability in your foot. They conducted an international study of 500,000 endurance runners, and it was revealed that nearly two thirds of them had a dysfunctional big toe. This is known as runner’s hallux.

Brad (09:07):
That’s a misshapen of the toe where the bone protrudes out of the side of the foot instead of pointing forward. Look down. Let me know if you’re one of those two thirds of the people. Hold on, I’m gonna do it again right now and confirm. Yes, I have a pretty minor case, but I definitely have a bone protruding out of the sideline. The nice, graceful, beautiful straight sideline of my foot. How about you? Most people I look at definitely have the bone sticking out sideways known as Runner’s Hallux researchers asserted that when the big toe is unstable during the propulsive phase of the runnng stride runners exhibit quote, alternative movement patterns such as over pronation or supination. 60% of runners are considered either over pronators or supinators. Uh, supinators would be the opposite of pronation. Supination is where, um, you’re, you’re kind of, uh, folding the shoe in an extreme manner, in the opposite to the outside rather than to the inside and downward like pronation.

Brad (10:14):
Uh, so when these runners are tagged with this label, it means they’re either collapsing through the big toe because the big toe is weak and unstable, or they’re avoiding, this is in the case of supination. They’re avoiding loading the big toe because the big toe is weak and unstable. Okay, it makes sense. You’re either avoiding the correct process of pronation as a quote supinator, or you’re an over pronator <laugh>. Those are both a bummer ’cause we want to meet in the middle literally where we have correct and perhaps more aggressive pronation than you think is appropriate after looking at Kipchoge and Cheptegei. Let me know what you think there, but, uh, we wanna be a nice aggressive pronator. I also enjoy looking at video or still photography, uh, the great Olympic sprinters because a lot of times they engage in extreme pronation as a manner of forced production, especially as they’re coming outta the blocks, taking those first few strides.

Brad (11:20):
So their feet are pointed outward, like at a duck footed angle to allow for even more, uh, they call it internal rotation of the various body parts, muscle groups. And that allows them to generate power. If you’re losing what I’m talking about here, imagine a sprinter coming outta the box and being ramrod straight with their pelvis, their knees, their hips, their feet, uh, their arms, their shoulders, and like kind of marching down the track. That person is gonna be a lot slower then go ahead, pause the recording again, and type in something to YouTube like Usain Bolt slow motion running, and you’ll see all that rotation that he engages in the whip like rotation, uh, coming and emanating from the thoracic spine. Whereas upper body is just cranking as a way to counterbalance the rotation that’s incurring in his legs and really literally starting, uh, from the ground up at the bottom with a extreme act of pronation maybe labeled over=pronation by some.

Brad (12:27):
Okay? I found this information from a British footwear company that had some great info on their website, and they claim that they’re dedicated to optimizing big toe function by equipping running shoes with a slightly wider toe box and a high tech carbon fiber reinforcement strip that is purportedly allowing the big toe to generate more power during the running stride. So I give them some credit for making a decent effort to put some technological innovation into a footwear and, uh, have that esteem goal of them making big, making the big toe stronger and more functional. But I’m gonna argue for another way, perhaps a better way to help our big toe get strong and functional, and that is a barefoot inspired footwear and overall lifestyle. Okay? So as much as you can walk around barefoot, indoors and other safe areas, and as much as you can use your Peluvas, with that critical five toe individual, five toe functionality to walk your way and exercise and move your way through daily life with a barefoot inspired footwear experience that is going to generate a strengthening effect and a toe spacing effect at all times.

Brad (13:44):
Oh, it’s fantastic to look on Instagram and look at the great experts and get their foot exercises and their contraptions, you know, the wobbling board and the balance board. And I do have some of that stuff right here in my office and I like to have fun working on my foot functionality with those devices. But the single best way to strengthen your feet is to gracefully and carefully transition over to a more barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle. We have a free ebook that you can download at peluva.com. It’s 88 pages packed with information about how to make this transition safely, learning more about how shoes are so damaging and dysfunctional. So just go to peluva.com. You should see the popup menu, and you can download the free ebook. Oh boy. You’ll get a free print book when you order your first pair of shoes, a nice little booklet to learn from. So I appreciate that and using my 15% discount peluva.com. BRADPODCAST, you’re on your way. Take baby steps every single day. Get more barefoot functional, get that big toe working and getting stronger, and realizing how important it is. Thank you so much for listening. Watching Love to know your feedback or comments, questions, you know, the drill podcast@bradventures.com. Da da da.

Brad (15:02):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.