In this episode, you will learn about the critical role the big toe plays in human movement and athletic performance.

I reveal the truth about how shoes can weaken and restrict your big toe, leading to imbalances and a higher risk of injury, especially as we age. You’ll hear how the big toe impacts everything from balance to the activation of your glutes, which are essential for powerful movement.

I’ll also guide you through a simple Toe Test to assess your big toe’s functionality and share a fix to strengthen it—just a few minutes a day can drastically improve your athleticism and help prevent pain.

Tune in to discover how taking care of your big toe can change the way you move and live!

TIMESTAMPS:

The big toe is one of the most critical functionalities of the homo sapiens species. [00:59]

In order to function properly, the big toe must be able to move dynamically through multiple planes of motion independently from other toes. [01:46]

With poor balance, people fall, and that is a leading cause of death of the elderly [05:03]

The big toe is the initiator of the activation of the glutes. [09:47]

Can you move your big toe separately from your other toes? [12:53]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• BradNutrition.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel – The Best Protein on The Planet!
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• B.rad Podcast – All Episodes
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• Outlive

LISTEN:
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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.

Brad (00:51):
If you have that toe that’s weak, dysfunctional, yet it’s gonna be helping you get knee problems because you,

Brad (00:59):
What’s the big deal about the big toe? Well, I will have, you know that the big toe is one of the most critical functionalities of the homo sapiens species. It plays an incredibly important role in human locomotion, all manner of athletic performance and everyday movement. In comparison to our great ape cousins, we have a shortish big toe that is in alignment with the other toes, which is a huge distinction. Our primate cousins have longer opposable big toes to distinctly separated and pointing in the other direction from the other toes, kind of like the opposable thumbs on our hands. Opposable thumbs are great for our hands. They allowed humans to use tools and rise to the top of the food chain, but <laugh> and climb well in trees and all that.

Brad (01:46):
But when we have this shorter aligned big toe, we are hosted when it comes to trying to climb in trees. Our ar boreal abilities, as the scientists would say. What this means was that the big toe was one of the last parts of the human body to evolve, and it helped us come down out of the trees and become walkers, runners, sprinters, the greatest endurance athlete on the planet, all thanks to the big toe. In order to function properly, the big toe must be able to move dynamically through multiple planes of motion independently from other toes. This means that any shoe that encases all the toes into a single box, even a wide toe box, is inhibiting the functionality of the big toe. It’s as simple as this shoes cause our big toes to become weak, rigid, and atrophied. This causes undesirable alterations in our gait pattern.

Brad (02:50):
We move not in the way nature and evolution intended, but we move more stiffly and in a constricted manner because we’re wearing shoes. And then even when we take our shoes off, because we’ve worn shoes for decades, we don’t have that functionality and dexterity in the big toe. What happens then? It causes a chain reaction of excess load and dysfunction applied to other joints and connective tissue. That’s why we have statistics like 83% of Americans complain of chronic foot pain, which is so ridiculous. The other stat that I learned from Medicare, did you know that Medicare, that’s the, uh, governmental healthcare system in the United States that covers people over age 65 for our international listeners. The Medicare program covers like two pairs of orthopedic shoes and one pair of custom orthotics per year. As part of your insurance, they will go and buy you these crazy orthopedic shoes because your feet are so weak, atrophied, and in chronic pain that you’d need them to walk around as a senior citizen, huh?

Brad (03:57):
Anyway, if you don’t have this current chronic pain yet <laugh>, or you don’t have acute discomfort in your big toe, you might be unaware of the severity of what shoes are doing to your big toe functionality. So I want you to learn more about it, acknowledge this, and I’m gonna have you assign you a little big toe test, which you will probably be surprised how poorly you perform at. I was very surprised to discover the lack of dexterity in my big toe. That’s right. I can’t sign any checks or write any notes with my foot, which some people can. I think there was a bestselling academy award winning movie, something to that effect, right? My left foot. Anyway, our foot functionality can improve really quickly when we start to transition to a more barefoot dominant lifestyle. So, uh, when your big toe becomes weak and unstable and dysfunctional after a lifetime in shoes, what happens is your balance is compromised.

Brad (05:03):
And that is a big deal, especially as we age. I’ve, you’ve probably heard me recite the shocking statistic that the number one cause of demise among Americans over age 65 is falling and related consequences. According to the website Health in Aging.org, 18 to 33% of elderly people who fall and break a hip are dead within any year. Dr. Peter Attia and his bestselling book Outlive talks about a higher statistic. I think he said 38% of people who are over 65 and fall and break a hip are dead within one year. And that’s because they become immobilized. They’re bedridden, they get weak, they get atrophied, and it’s not the direct, the fall was not the direct cause of their death, but perhaps they catch pneumonia and they can’t cough up out of their lungs because they’re too weak and immobile and they die from whatever related cause.

Brad (06:01):
But the demise started with a simple fall because their balance was poor. And on this note, as an aside, it’s also important to maintain explosive power. The anaerobic muscle fibers are the things that are going to protect you from falling, because falling requires you to miss on that first step. When you’re trying to catch your balance, you’re gonna take missteps in life. They’re gonna happen here, there everywhere. They might be on stairs, they might be on a rock, they might be off a curb. And that first chance to catch your balance is a fast twitch, anaerobic, explosive, single event activity. So that’s great if you’re walking and walking and as a senior, uh, you start to become more aware of this and realize that you gotta get your steps in every day. But it’s that power and that ability to support your entire off balance body weight to catch yourself and prevent a fall.

Brad (07:00):
That is the huge deal. And how do you get that type of capacity or that competency that comes from strength training, put your muscles under heavy resistance load and doing brief, explosive all out sprints. That’s why sprints are so important for anti-aging. I’m gonna give a shout out to my brother Wally, who’s a very young 73 and a golf champion recently shooting his age for the second or third time. For you non-golfers. That means he turned in his score lower than his chronological age. I think he shot 71 when he was 73. He first did it shooting 68 at age 69. It’s a phenomenal achievement because you’re shooting around par. Par is usually 70, 71 or 72, and he’s in his seventies. But we were helping move my mother to her new residence and he was carrying some heavy furniture down our driveway and loading it up in the truck.

Brad (07:53):
So he was backing up with a heavy load toward the truck and stepped on a pile of blankets. You know how you put the blankets on the furniture to protect them? He stepped on a pile of blankets and lost his balance, and he did a pirouette spin on the driveway and a couple of crazy sidesteps and caught his balance without falling. And remember the statistic Americans over age 65, he’s definitely over 65. That could have been a huge turning point in life and the start of his demise, but he was able to catch himself. So I gave him major props. I said, you’re still in top shape if you can do that one single event of catching yourself of on what should have been a gnarly, nasty, fall broken ankle, even worse, broken hip, that kind of thing. Okay, back to the story about the big toe.

Brad (08:44):
As I said, the big toe plays a preeminent role in impact absorption, balancing moving body weight and providing takeoff propulsion. These are the three things that the entire foot, especially the big toe, but the entire foot does during the human gait pattern, whether it’s walking and especially running. So I want you to remember those. The foot is designed to absorb impact, balance moving body weight, and provide takeoff propulsion. These are the things that shoes ruin as soon as you put them on even the most elite running or high performance sports shoe. So what happens at Impact, the big toe absorbs an amazing 40 to 60% of your body weight, just the big toe, and incurs a three to five times body weight impact load while running. The extension of the big toe at impact activates the flattening of the arch and the pronation of the foot during the walking and running stride.

Brad (09:47):
This is how the body absorbs impact gracefully and harnesses rotational kinetic energy for a powerful takeoff. The big toe is the king, the initiator. It is also the primary trigger for the activation of the gluteal muscles in the body, which happened to be the largest. The booty is the largest that right, the largest and strongest, most powerful muscle in the body, extremely important for the human gait pattern, especially running less so than walking. But when you have a dysfunctional toe or a toe pinched in with the other toes, you are not going to fire your glutes optimally. The extension of the big toe at impact activates the flattening of the arch and the pronation of the foot. So I’m saying that the big toe does this takeoff propulsion balancing body weight, but of course, the arch, the Achilles tendon, the ankle and the other joints throughout the lower body also participate and contribute.

Brad (10:44):
When the big toe dorsa flexes to initiate the takeoff phase of the stride, it creates tension that travels up the leg and into the glutes, allowing the glutes to engage and provide that power. This engagement is vitally important, and it’s actually another distinguishing feature between us and our very slow moving, cumbersome running ape cousins because they typically don’t have any gluteal muscles to speak of. So we have that forward facing shortish big toe to help us push off, launch off, and then we fire those glutes. We also have a prominent Achilles tendon, which is super powerful and provides a lot of elastic spring-like energy, which the apes don’t. Go to the zoo and watch the gorillas or the chimps waddling around, uh, their, their, uh, encampment. And you’ll see the ridiculous difference,. If the glutes do not activate when running or during other complex athletic activity, you have much less force production and stability, and you will certainly perform worse and increase your injury risk.

Brad (11:54):
At takeoff, the big toe is the last part of the foot to leave the ground, and it dorsa flexes under tremendous load, as I described, three to five times body weight when you’re running. 1.75 or up to two times body weight even when you’re walking. So when it dorsa flexes under this tremendous load, it will unleash along with the arch, along with the achilles tendon, along with the ankle, all that kinetic energy for a powerful takeoff, a strong and functional big toe helps prevent strain or inappropriate sheer forces to other parts of the foot in the lower extremities. While a weak or constricted big toe inappropriately, or helps to inappropriately disperse impact load to other areas such as the perhaps vulnerable arch or achilles tendon or even the knee joint. So if you have that toe that’s weak, dysfunctional, yeah, it’s gonna be helping you get knee problems because you did not absorb impact gracefully.

Brad (12:53):
We also talk about this a lot in the book, Born to Walk, where you’re wearing the elevated cushion shoe, which is enabling poor form and a poor use of all these spring-like and excellent joints, connective tissue and muscles in the foot to help you generate that power and not succumb to. Do you know what sheer forces means? I learned that from architecture <laugh> with our remodel project where it’s in, in a inappropriate load or it’s force that should not be accepted by the foot, and that’s when you get microtrauma that leads to injury. Okay, it’s time for the toe test. Here we go. Can you move your big toe independently from the other toes? It’s very important to be able to move the big toe up and down separately. You should also be able to move it away from the other toes laterally.

Brad (13:47):
Yeah, that’s a tough one. You know, like the Star Trek greeting. If you’re watching the video, I’m holding my hands and I’m splitting the two fingers apart in the middle. I’m not very good at it, actually <laugh>, but I’m trying to show that ability to kind of, um, separate laterally from the other toes. So if you want to try this test, you take off your shoes, sit on the floor, have your knees bent and your feet placed flat on the floor, if necessary, squeeze. Use your arms to squeeze your legs in so that your shins are vertical to the ground. Then make sure you have pressure through the three points in your feet, which would be the ball, the base and the heel. So the ball, the, the base of the big toe, the base of the pinky toe in the heel.

Brad (14:34):
So without pronating or everting, that is keeping the pressure on those three points. Press your small toes into the floor and try to lift your big toe. Then do the opposite. Press your big toe into the floor and try to lift your small toes. You can even try to do a wave if you’re advanced and go for the little toe, then the big toe and back and forth. See how well you do. Maybe take a video and then come back and try it over time as you improve the functionality of your big toe by walking around barefoot and wearing your Peluva shoes. With the distinctive feature of the individual slots for each toe. The individual articulation of the toes is critical for a truly authentic, barefoot inspired shoe. Also you can have fun doing things like trying to pick up a pencil <laugh>, write something on a notepad.

Brad (15:34):
And what’s gonna happen, perhaps in the beginning I noticed with myself is you might feel like your brain is sending a signal to move. Come on big toe or rise up, but it’s not quite happening. So in a way to improve this is then you can go and use your hands to move that big toe while you are thinking and concentrating and trying to move the big toe. And that will kind of help you progress. Keep working at it, keep practicing, but especially, try to get as much time as possible in a barefoot style, uh, locomotion. Uh, so it’s great you can get the Peluvas and start walking around. You don’t have to use them for specialized high impact sporting activities and invite injury risks because you’re not used to them, but you can certainly get them and start walking around and putting as many steps as you can in and then progressing gradually and gently to do more complex fitness activities in a barefoot inspired manner.

Brad (16:34):
Some stuff you probably will never wanna do or need to do in a Peluva or another minimalist type shoe. If you’re interested in long distance running, which we’re gonna have a have to second guess that and you can listen to those shows, uh, wondering if you really should be doing that for fitness, health, and longevity. But if you insist on doing sports like endurance running or if you’re playing basketball or doing crazy things like high jumping, you’re gonna want the specialized shoes for that for sure. And then the rest of the time you use your Peluvas for what we call prec and recovery, getting your feet stronger and more adapted to go and put on a crazy shoe that’s gonna allow you to do specialized athletic activity that might not be so easy on the foot. And then you get back to a more stronger and resilient foot overall.

Brad (17:24):
So that is the big deal about the big toe, and we’re gonna do a whole nother show about the influence of the big toe on the all important human dynamic movement pattern called pronation.

Brad (17:35):
Thanks for listening. Watching, of course, would love to have your questions and comments about that. And also have you go and try out some Palous shoes. So please use my wonderful 15% off code, which is Bradpodcast at pva, P-E-L-U-V A.com. I strongly recommend the Strand lightweight trainer for all manner of everyday movement and activity. You can wear ’em around to weddings and funerals as Mark Sisson says, as well as shopping or, uh, general gym activity. And then we have the, uh, recent development of the strand, a TR that stands for All-Terrain, which is a more rugged, buffed up version of the Strand for things like hiking, even on the most rugged trails or doing high impact gym activity. It’s got a stronger, last material and then a much more buffed up tread. So go and pick the shoes that you want. I hope you’ll enjoy ’em. Let me know how you like it. Thanks for listening, watching.

Brad (18:36):
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.