Mark Sisson argues for a lower-friction longevity practice built around metabolic flexibility, walking, strength, and foot health. The useful question is not how much intensity a person can tolerate once. It is which signal, repeated with care, helps the body become more resilient over time.
foot health. It's the lowest hanging fruit in the world of longevity right now. Starting with 20 and 30 year olds, but certainly anybody over 50 or 60, the greatest risk of your mortality is falling and breaking something. And that is almost directly a function of your foot strength and particularly the strength in your big toe. The strength of the big toe is part of what determines whether or not when you trip, whether you fall or not or catch yourself. All right, Mark Sison, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thank you. [laughter] You know, listen, you I have known you a very very long time. We used to work out in the gym together. Um we we shared a mutual friend who since his past who we love deeply, Don Wildman. I think you knew Don. I thought about him on the drive over here. He's with me all the time still. And you're a person that I I admire, not only because I I have to tell you as a friend, what's been interesting is once you feel like someone's okay, you're warmer, and it's been interesting to get to know you closer, closer over these years. But also, you're a person who's lived it for 60 years. You know, you're 73 and sometimes certain things are just intuitive. I can look at you and think this guy's been doing something to take care of himself and you've been dedicated to this space whether it was you know Primal Blueprint well it started with Mark's Daily Apple then you know as an entrepreneur you've got Primal Kitchen you have all these other
Primal Kitchen you have all these other things um and because I think you care so much about how really can we truly in a well-rounded way be healthy and you do that you a lot of people don't have the balance you you had a family, you were in pursuit, you have grandchildren, and you still managed to take care of yourself. And so that's a hard thing to do, I guess. Although it's not that hard if you have uh good intuition, if you have good instincts, if you have some discipline, um I don't think it's that hard to do. And that's sort of the message I've been giving for the last 25 years at least. Um you have to do the work. And you know, this sort of gets us into a a conversation perhaps further on into this podcast about all of the shortcuts that people are looking for these days. But at the end of the day, I want to enjoy my life. I'm not even pursuing health as much as I'm using health as one of the pillars to be able to enjoy my life downstream. So, I want to enjoy my work. I want to enjoy my family. I want to enjoy my friends. I want to enjoy every bite of food I eat. I want to enjoy my workouts. I want to orchestrate a lifestyle where so little of it is considered work or difficult that it just comes naturally and intuitively. And I think that's kind of been my life's mission is to explain to people that it's not that
explain to people that it's not that hard to be really healthy and vibrant and enjoy every moment possible if you're aware of the moment. If you're living life now instead of doing stuff now, contemplating that the hard stuff and and the sacrifice and the suffering and all the the that we go through now so that one day I can experience my life. Well, Lar talks about that. He goes, "Yeah, great. You retire, but you don't feel well and you don't get to actually enjoy it." Yeah. So, you say, "Oh, it's it's not that hard." But it does take a work and consistency. discipline, resilience, but everybody has that built in. You know, we just we're so freaking tempted by the world around us with whether it's uh an abundance of, you know, fatty, salty, sweet foods, sugary stuff, whether it's the availability of phones to just check out and scroll and and get down rabbit holes of Instagram or whatever, whether it's, you know, uh unlimited amounts of of television that keeps us on the sofa. Uh all of these things are temptations that uh look the human body is designed to save energy. You know, we're we're a m we're we're evolved over millions of years to conserve energy because energy was such a precious commodity through our history. So we had to figure out what's the least amount of energy I can expend to go find food to live till
expend to go find food to live till tomorrow or the next day. [gasps] So we have this tendency to not want to do stuff, want to be lazy and sit around and have stuff done for us. And the challenge is only to get the brain to say, "Yeah, I think I'll go to the gym. Yeah, I think I'll go walk a little bit. I'll go out take a hike in nature. Yeah, I think I won't eat this cookie or this candy bar, but I'll opt for a steak. I think I'm hungry, but I'm not really hungry cuz just because it's noon doesn't mean I have to have lunch." So all of these things exist, this this power exists within us to make good choices and and to sort of bypass all of the tendencies that we have to be lazy, slovenly, um, uh, gluttonous, you know, all those things. I think that's also why it's so important to understand your biology, which is all those impulses are actually quite natural. Yeah. And so you come from the sharp end of the stick. You were an endurance athlete. Yeah. The sharpest end of the stick. Correct. So people can go, well, it's easy for him. So let's say, and you do, you work with people all the time and visit with people and talk to people that they go, I don't have that momentum yet. I don't have um the ability where it's like, well, am I really hungry? Right. People are busy. They're stressed out. Uh and and they're not there. So from your point of view, uh just to remind people, even though it's not sexy, what are the what are your buckets of like these are my pillars and of what
of like these are my pillars and of what what I'm trying to do so that I have this practice in place that that I look like this at 73? I would say the pillars are first and foremost get the diet right. Um 80% of your body composition, 80% of your uh energy production comes from choices you make in terms of food. not just what you eat, but how much you eat and when you eat. And those choices are I I've written largely about those choices in the past 20 years. And it kind of uh defined uh my role as an educator. It also gave me a base for creating the company Primal Kitchen because I realized that when you get these food choices, when you eliminate all of the stuff, the pies, the cakes, the candies, the sugars, the sweetened beverages, the processed foods, you come down to a a list of great foods, meat, fish, fowl, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables, a little bit of fruit. Um, some people would say that's a short list, but you can make it an infinitely uh sustainable list with the methods of preparation, the herbs, the spices, the sauces, the dressings, the toppings. And that's what prompted Primal Kitchen. I said, "Okay, I'm going to make healthy eating easier. I'm going to create a line of sauces and things that you put on these healthy foods that would make it easy to to eat a diet that's sustainable that way." So the diet once you eliminate the bad stuff and you focus on uh quality
bad stuff and you focus on uh quality proteins, some vegetables, a couple of starchy tubers or something like that, you start to develop what we call metabolic flexibility. And you and I have talked about this for a long time. The real holy grail of of all of this is to be able to burn off your own stored body fat all day long whenever you run out of calories. Instead of going to the refrigerator because you're low on energy and restocking on fuel, your body contains all this fuel. And so that's the cornerstone of everything we talk about is achieving metabolic flexibility and it's either through restricting carbs or um timerestricted eating, eating cutting meals back. Um it could be um part of that is is through the choices of exercise that you do low-level zone one zone two stuff that only burns fat. So you develop metabolic flexibility. Then number two is movement patterns. And people I think get way out of control with their workout strategies. They're either not working out at all and then they say, "Well, I couldn't go run 20 miles or 30 miles or 40 miles a week. I can't go to the gym every day. I don't have the strength or I don't um or they get into this pattern and now they're doing too much of what more than they should be doing now. And I just wrote a book called Born to Walk which is really funny. I'm looking across your bookshelf at Born to Run. Yeah. Sitting on the top there. But the idea that maybe maybe we don't have to train as hard as we assume or we think we do to get to 80
we assume or we think we do to get to 80 or 85% of our genetic potential. So the the first pillar being establishing metabolic flexibility through appropriate diet choices um discipline and the second one being appropriate movement which involves a lot of low-level activity. So humans are meant to be moving all the time through different ranges and planes of motion. It doesn't matter about burning calories. Forget the calorie burning thing. You cannot exercise away any kind of a diet, especially a bad diet. [snorts] But think about movement as movement. Think about it the body wanting to move. We're designed, we're built, we're genetically engineered to have to move all the time. Uh which largely involves walking for most people. And it's it's cheap, it's easy, it's free. Um almost everybody can do it. Almost everybody's set up from life from birth to be able to walk well. So, lots of low-level activity. And then twice a week, lift heavy things. Go to the gym and lift weights, you know, and and spread it around the body and put your muscles under some tension. Not to failure and no pain, no gain, and all that Just get to the gym twice a week. And you go, "Well, wait a minute. If twice is good, why not five times a week?" Well, if you're doing it right twice a week, you can't do it the next, you know, like if you're doing it right on Monday the proper way, you can't do it again on Tuesday because you need the recovery. And and that's that's not a bad thing. That's a good
that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. That's how the body responds. So now we have the diet. Now we have low-level activity and we have twice a week lifting weights. And then once a week we say sprint. And by that, it's a generic term for push yourself through some highlevel output, high intensity, short bursts, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. So, you do a little warm-up and then whether it's on the track running if that's your thing. But it could be on an assault bike, it could be on elliptical trainer, it could be on a concept urg, it could be on any device that you can really go all out for 20 or 30 seconds, which is a long time by the way if you do it right. It's a long time. It is a long time. No, it's it's amazing. And then rest 2 minutes and then do it again and rest two minutes and do it again. And at the end of 20 minutes, you've done probably the most profound workout you could do of the week. And yet, you haven't beat yourself up the way you would if you gone out for a seven mile jog in crappy shoes with bad form, you know? So even I'm trying to give you what I would call the minimum effective dose of all these things. So, establish metabolic flexibility with the diet, lots of low-level activity, walking, not running, a little bit of sprinting, and then lifting weights twice a week, sleep, of course. Are you a good sleeper? Um, I'm a good sleeper. Yeah. And and having said that, I wake up three or four times a night, but you know, we
four times a night, but you know, we Brad and I did a whole study on this years ago, and a lot of the ancestral sleep patterns are you go to bed at sundown. This is in the days before, you know, electric lights and whatever. Um, you might wake up at at uh 1: 00 in the morning and get up and have something to eat or walk around for 15 or 20 minutes, go back to sleep. And it's this this assumption that you need eight hours of uninterrupted sleep is kind of a misnomer. It's just not it's not accurate. So the fact that I might get up and I'm now that I'm 73 and I got prostate, you know, concerns, yeah, I have to get up and pee in the middle of the night. Okay. You know, uh so sue me. But I come back to sleep. I I fall right back to sleep again. Um it's uh so yeah, I'm a good sleeper and I don't apologize for the amount of sleep I get. Probably eight hours, maybe eight and a half some some nights, seven and a half some nights. But I think with sleep, the most important element is like consistency on the on when you do it, you know, and even if you stay up late, I think getting up at the same time may be more important than shifting it all across because you went to bed late and then you woke up late just to make get your eight hours in. So that's diet and movement patterns and sleep. And then I think controlling stress is is huge. How do you control your stress? Uh when I figure it out, I'll let you know. Really? I'm kidding slightly. I think because I think that comes with age. Like I'm I'm
think that comes with age. Like I'm I'm getting uh more less frenetic, less type A than I was when I was building companies and and training at the same time and raising a family at the same time and coaching little league and refing soccer and doing and teaching boogie boarding and all that stuff. Um that's part of it. just it comes with the refinement of of getting older um and not caring as much because I've been talking a lot about walking over the past um 5 years. Um every night at 6: 30 I go for a 50minute walk. Why 50 minutes? Well, it's just it's what it takes to get to the end of my route and turn around and come home, you know, before it could be longer. And if I'm out if I see somebody I'm talking to, I'm out there. I live in Miami, so it's flat. Um, but it's it's at the end of a day and I've I've changed my my I've reframed this to not think in terms of like I have to oh 6: 30 I have to go to for a walk. It's oh my god 6: 30 I get to go for a walk. And that is my meditation. That's my de-stressing for the day. That's my most productive thought time. And you know, we'll talk about the shoes that I wear when I do this, but it's also the time that I really sense my environment underneath me. And there's a gratitude that comes with that that I never got there. It was sort of a disconnect before this because even though I was putting the steps in and I was doing the work and I was walking, I couldn't feel the ground underneath me,
couldn't feel the ground underneath me, the earth underneath me, and that connection that I have. Yeah, I can't help but think too the down reggulation to your nervous system which you know the deeper I go into all these conversations I you start going oo that might be the hierarchy right there is keeping is staying regulated um I actually think it probably starts there. I've been thinking a lot about that recently and the fact that um when uh when people work out a lot too much more than they're trained to do, it's it's really not the muscles that give out and it's not it it's it's the central nervous system that has taken a an onslaught. Um leg days is a great example. When you do a leg day and you're tired at the end of the day and you need a nap, that's not your legs telling you, "Oh my god, we did, you know, 30 METs or 50 METS, that's your brain, that's your nervous system saying this was a lifethreatening on, you know, an assault on the nervous system." And now you you compound that sometimes with a heavy leg day and then you go, well, I and I still have to do my cold plunge, you know, and that's a horatic stress on top of that. And then you go home and you have an argument with your spouse and at the end of the day you go like, "Why do I feel this way? I did all these good things. I I worked out. I took a cold plunge. Those that's all supposed to be good for me. Why do I feel like crap? Why do I feel like I've been beat up?" Well, it's it's a central nervous system assault.
it's a central nervous system assault. And I can't help but go back to what you said at the top of this, which was our instincts. I'm finally, you know, I wanted to ask you about uh when self-discipline also becomes self-destructive because I can discipline to like, you know, all day long. And it's just now in the last 5 years. And weirdly, I I look better. Um, okay, my kids are a little older, too. That makes it easier. I'm not going to lie. But just knowing like, oh no, today I'm going to do 100 jumps in the pool and I'm going to do lightweight because yesterday I crushed myself. And it's making peace with understanding the value. And so the thing I think a lot of people get into is the self-discipline becomes self-destructive. And um it's that weird dial. No. And the irony is now the discipline becomes to back off. It becomes knowing when to back off, paying more attention to every rep and being willing to stop at seven when you thought you were going to do 10 or 12, you know. And I learned that so many times as an athlete. And I never groed it. I learned it. I sort of got the experience of it, but I never grocked it until a few years ago. Yeah. you know, when it when all of a sudden the cost of getting injured because you went you had the discipline to do one more rep or one more set or put on 20 more pounds or whatever the challenge was that you were disciplined enough to override the
disciplined enough to override the survival part of your brain and say, "Nope, this is what my schedule says. I'm going to do this workout today." It takes discipline to then back down and go, "You know what? I want to live to do this another day." And at my age at 73, an injury is like it's catastrophic. It's just like not because it's, you know, it's going to kill me, but because it shuts me down from doing the things I want to do. Yeah. I I got my blood work done recently. So, I took my blood work and I had it read through an AI model of a doctor that I really like who's very aggressive. Um, and it was like, "Oh, you're overtraining and you're exposed to too much blue light. like you better it's like your bucket has water in it and there's a hole in it and I remember thinking oh you can see from my blood work I'm overtraining so I think that's an important part of this conversation which is is working from a place where you give your nervous system a break um in some parts of the day. So where we see this in large numbers is in the running community. So this book born to walk came about as sort of a response to the running boom of the last 50 years that has engaged tens of millions of people if not hundreds of millions of people over that period of time who engaged in running thinking it was going to be the best thing they could do for themselves. It was going to be a way to lose weight. It was going to be a way to improve their cardiovascular fitness. It was going to be a way to improve their health and
be a way to improve their health and perhaps extend their lives. And it's turned out to not be true. And it turns out that most people who run should not be running. They're not runners. They're not genetically gifted. We were not born to run as the book title says over there. We were born to be able to run once in a while. If we're fit, if we've got the right diet, sure, we can run once in a while. But this idea that we should run metronomically at 8 minute miles or 9 or 10 minute miles five or 6 days a week is an accumulation of those stresses. And that's an assault on the central nervous system. And yet the brain gets so habituated, I don't like to use the term addicted, but habituated to thinking that I'm a better person if I don't skip my workout today, even though I feel like crap. That we tend to override that part of us that knows better because there's no benefit to be gained from overtraining. It's the It's one of the worst things you can do. It's an accumulation of stresses again. So, everyone would be better off slightly undertraining than slightly overtraining. Yeah. Back to the minimum effective dose. What's the minimum effective dose of of exercise that I can do to achieve 80 to 85% of my true genetic potential based on my family? [snorts] If you want to exceed 85% of your genetic potential, now you're going to
genetic potential, now you're going to start, there's going to be a cost attached to that. And if you want to do that, it's a challenge and you want to go do a high rocks or or run a 5K or a 10K or or a marathon, go for it. But understand that it's not advancing your longevity strategy, your health strategy of any of this. Sure, it's a bucket list item. It's a great thing to to fall back on to have your finishers metal or whatever it is, but it is not part of a system approved longevity protocol because of this central nervous system assault, this accumulation of cortisol. And when we talk about running and and much of the book looks into what's wrong with running for most people is that they're running at they're running too hard. They're running too high. Even at 9minute miles or 10-minute miles, if their heart rate is too high and they're not burning fat and they're largely deriving most of their energy from their glucose and their glycogen in their muscles, that's the that's and the brain recognizes that as an assault, secretes cortisol, adrenaline, all the stress hormones. Now, you get back from that run and you go, you slump on the couch and you're like, "Oh my god, I'm sweating. This is so valuable. I did such great work this today and oh, I'm hungry. I should probably eat something to replenish the glycogen I I just lost. Which makes it a a bad strategy for losing weight because when you train at that level, that zone 3, zone 4 level, and you're only burning glycogen, very little fat, um all you're
glycogen, very little fat, um all you're doing is replenishing the glycogen you lost, but you haven't trained your body on how to burn fat. And any excess glycogen that you take in um as because you're hungry as a result of the brain going, whoa, what's going on here? we're in a survival mode tends over time to increase the fat deposition in your body. And so we see people who've been running for years and years. We know a lot of these people that we've seen on PCH and and over the years, you know, their their weight stays the same, but their muscle mass decreases because running is catabolic. It breaks things down and their fat increases. So, there's been a a change in body composition, even though the weight stays the same, but they don't look as good. So, we tell people, forget forget the running part of this. Do your long slow stuff longer and slower and do your short hard stuff shorter and harder, faster. So, run, walk a lot, and then sprint once a week. And if you want to put it together in a 5k run or put on your shoes and go out and do a you do a five mile or six mile once a week to test yourself, go ahead, do it. But understand that that is a catabolic event. You're going to have to recover, not have to, but you'll want to recover from that. The other thing that we see with a lot of people who are um runners who shouldn't be running is then they don't have the energy to go to the gym and lift weights. No, and build muscle. So, it's a sort of a a this cascade of
So, it's a sort of a a this cascade of bad events that arise from from well-meaning u uh goals, but just sort of not understanding, as we talked about earlier, how the body works, what happens. And that's been my my life's work has been to take sort of these complex biological concepts and studies and translate them into language that the average person can go, "Oh, Jesus, I like I I don't want to struggle that much." You tell me I can achieve ideal body composition easier than what I'm doing right now. So that's it. Did you have to have a conversation with yourself at some point? Cuz I know I I have had to when it's like, okay, fitness, working out, and then on this side over here, yes, you and I were interested in performance at one point in our life. Now we're interested in in that forever long-term performing idea. [snorts] And if like we were in an emergency, we could activate um where it's it isn't, you know, fear or insecurity or ego even. Did you have like a come to Jesus where let's take performance out, okay? If you're a professional athlete or something, that's just what it is. We all pay a price for that. Um you've paid your own prices. We talk about hard health for endurance athletes. Do you see the guy who was just in shaman? I'll show you that. this incredible long-distance runner who had a 50 years old had a heart attack in in Shaman just the other day like in the last five days and
like in the last five days and and Jenny Simpson I don't know if you saw the Jenny Simpson Yeah. So, did did you have a moment where you're like you wrestled with that side of yourself? Because I have Oh my god. After I retired from competition, I trained like an athlete for five more years. I would not let it go. After I recired from competing as a marathon runner. I had a career as a marathoner. I did 50 marathons. I did some some decent times. I got injured and I couldn't race at that level anymore. I had hip tenonitis [snorts] from the shoes I was wearing. Um, and my I went crazy and I had to find a replacement for I I was jonesing for discomfort. Literally jonesing for that kind of discomfort. So I turned to triathlon. Iron Man Hawaii was the first triathlon I ever did. And so you went small. Yes. So you just go big or go home. So, I I switched from being a a career runner to being a triathlete for a bunch of years just so I could train hard and beat myself up. That's that's an unwell person, Gabby. That's I know, but what is Yeah, what is that? So, it's a mindset and by the way, I'm glad I lost it because but it took me five years after I stopped competing in triathlon. I still coached world-class triathletes and I I could keep up with them in in half their workouts. I'm now I'm 37 years old and I'm able to climb
I'm 37 years old and I'm able to climb Lato all the way to the top with the best triathletes in the world one or two days a week. Then I'd have to rest a long time. I couldn't come back and do it the next day, but I was fit enough and I was able to do that. I got into the the Desert Princess World Championship. I finished 11th among the pros as a 38-year - old or a 39year-old as just a citizen racing out there cuz I was still fit. So, I always had this something. I don't know, it might be an ego kind of thing to prove that I still got it. But it took me years to I where I could uh drop my training back to a sane level and then realize Jesus, you know, it's better to look fit than to be fit. Now, I joke about that, but the if you do what it takes to look fit, you're fit. You know, you're healthy. You're healthier. I was uh I I'm 73 now. I'm I weigh 170 lbs. Man, you're ripped, too. I have the same body fat I had when I weighed 140 lbs and I was a marathoner. So, I weigh 30 pounds more now than when I was a marathoner and the same body fat. But because running is so catabolic, it tears muscle tissue up. You can't keep it on. That's why every marathoner is, you know, 58 and 105 pounds and legs, lungs, and the head. Speaking of your sprinting notion, um I have a friend Abby, Dr. Abby Smith Ryan. She's a researcher in North Carolina and they study all kinds of movement and impacts and everything and she said across the board the most impactful thing for every person based on their genetics, age, gender takes 10 minutes
genetics, age, gender takes 10 minutes and it's it is a one minute la. Let's say on the assault bike like a good clip and then 1 minute as hard as you can go which you know how hard that is. And then you do that for 10 minutes. And she goes, "It drives everybody's metabolic function in the right direction." And that's 10 minutes. And that's really only five minutes of these sprints. Yeah. No, it's it's incredible how impactful I mean, I've said for 20 years, nothing cuts you up like sprinting. Nothing drops body fat, improves muscle mass, uh creates uh uh pulses of growth hormone and testosterone like sprinting. And that's a great example. There's also Tobatas, which is another example of that. And now they have Norwegian 4x4s, which 50 years ago we called mile repeats at the track. So that's that's not a new thing. That's been around for a long time. But the point was it's once a week. It's not, oh, if this is if this if I'm doing so great doing this, let me do this every day. It doesn't work that way. You have to recover from that. But back to minimum effective dose. When I talk about lots of low-level activity, zone one, walking, zone two, walking for most people, forget running. I guess you [gasps] if you I don't get me started, but we you know we um I grew up you're not passionate about our [clears throat] I grew up in the era of running uh in the 70s when it really started when Frank Sharter won the gold medal in 72 in in Munich and uh and then
medal in 72 in in Munich and uh and then Bill Rogers won the Boston Marathon and running became a thing and Jim Fix wrote about it and um in those days runners were runners and if you couldn't break three hours for a marathon You were a jogger, which was fine, but you weren't a runner. In order to call yourself a runner, you had to break three hours for a marathon. Right now, we look at the stats for the last 10 years. What percentage of runners of the millions, tens of millions of runners in the world, but let's focus on the US. What percentage of runners break three hours for a marathon? 2%. Good. 1%. Okay. 1% of runners, people who call themselves marathoners, can break three hours for a marathon. And that's what we used to define as a runner. So when I say most people should not be running or when I conversely say the only people who should be running are runners, ectomorphs with long legs, large lung capacity, and a high pain tolerance. Nobody else should be running that sort of stuff. Yes, once in a while go run a trail. I love it. Look, I haven't run a mile in 35 years. I just I got over it. Like when I got over it, by the way, that's where we talk about the mindset that makes you get up every day and bust your ass and hurt and manage pain every day as an endurance athlete. It took 5 years, but when it went away, it freaking went away. And now I can't get it back. And I'm so thankful for that because that's all of that endurance stuff is catabolic. It tears muscle tissue down. Now, if you're going to compete and you have to do that because it's theater and people are watching you
it's theater and people are watching you and you're getting prize money, go for it if that's your choice. But if you're thinking about living longer and looking better naked and all of, you know, losing weight and all that stuff, that's not a good choice. [clears throat] How's your heart like? Do you get it checked because of all I have? No, I have I've had heart issues for um 10 years now. I have PVCs, premature ventricular contractions from taking my heart to max four times a week for 25 years. The heart is a interesting uh organ. It's a demand organ. So the heart doesn't have really any innovation. Um the heart is along for the ride. The heart is like what do you guys need me to do? You know you decide to go lift weights and you decide to use your muscles and you pump some weights or you get on the whatever the machine is and the heart goes oh that's cool. I got to supply more energy, more more oxygen to those legs. No, I think I'm going to go run 10k now. So now the brain says let's go run 10k. The heart goes let's go run 10k whatever. And as you get as the muscles get stronger and more adapt adapted and as the diet and the availability of energy substrates increased um because our ancestors would never have gone for a 10k run. It was such a waste of energy, right? Because energy was like like expensive and and scarce. Now it's everywhere. It's abundant. So when people started running in the 60s and 70s and 80s, they'd carbo load after every race. They'd take in calories and then they'd go run again. Well, the brain is saying, you know, this sounds
brain is saying, you know, this sounds like a good idea. Let's go run every day. And the heart's going, okay, let's go run. But the heart has no say in it. The heart is just a long, it's like it's responding to the thought of doing the action and then doing the action. And over time, if you raise your heart rate too high, too long, you sustain damage. And and now there's I two million, three million people of my generation who ran who have AIB. We kept the registry. You just talked about the guy at UTMB and Jenny Simpson. And there's I stopped counting at 75 of my friends who either died of heart attacks at 28, 30, 32, 40, or who had heart attacks and lived. Salazar was a great example, one of the greatest runners the country ever produced. Dave McGelry, who was a great friend of mine. I mean, I could go on and on about all these triathletes that have had heart issues. Um, Dave Scott had massive open heart surgery a couple years ago. probably the greatest one of the greatest triathletes ever. In the same year, Scott Tinley had heart surgery. Tell me this is good for you. You know, tell me that this is an appropriate end point to um a willingness to push yourself so hard that your heart goes it either it it and there's a thing called the athletes heart and I know you've experienced that. I mean, every athlete pretty much has it. The heart does get stronger over time with judicious application of stresses. But if your brain is such that you are overwhelmingly
you are overwhelmingly able to bypass every instinct to pull over and take a nap. Guys like Tinley and Mark Allen will say, "Dude, I went to the well too many times and I'm paying the price now."central nervous system, but I over I overrode all of that instinct, that survival instinct to pull to stop doing what I'm doing. Again, the heart has no say in it, and it just Okay. So, then it expands. The the left ventricle gets thicker. Um, but it's a smooth muscle, so it doesn't when it expands, it doesn't get that much stronger. It just gets thinner and and weaker. It might get thicker scar tissue. And then that scar tissue is where the electrical impulses emanate from. And so you get skipped the beats, you get AIB, you get ventricular, you get VTAC, you get all these things that happen because you did something you thought was good for you. It's interesting to try to get people to switch their thinking. And a lot of times you hear people go, well, let's say for the recreational, well, I get a I get high. And that's cuz I think you're breathing. I think you could lay your butt on the ground and do 20 minutes of rigorous breathing. Oh, you know that for sure if I breathe. just get that release and you don't need to pound your body to do it. So, I think that's kind of a misnomer because first of all, those those endorphins, by the way, I've never experienced it one time. No, I know. Never. No. And and it's it's a weird thing because my theory is that that is that endorphins are released when a lion
endorphins are released when a lion chases uh a gazelle or a zebra down and starts eating the zebra. The zebra is secretreting endorphins so that it has a peaceful death. And it's like because you can watch go on safari and watch a lion eat a zebra alive for 20 minutes. It's horrible, but it's nature. So we evolved these survival um canabonoids, these opiates to get us through periods of stress and bad times. And so that's almost an this runner's high is almost an example of people proving that they went out and stressed themselves too much and that's the and then they crave it the next day. And that's why it's it's why uh distance running became such an appropriate uh transition for drug addicts. Yeah. You know, now they're just they're doing the same they're addicted. They're still seeking the same high, but now they're trying to generate it themselves through putting their bodies through um discomfort. I mean, people say pain. It's it's not pain, it's discomfort. Well, it depends on who you talk to. If you ask me, my my big body, when I think about you, I there's something very similar to me about you and Lar, which is um you make things you want. And I really appreciate this because as an entrepreneur, um you've done that. And so you're obviously so passionate. You've written the book Born to Walk, but you've also as somebody who you
but you've also as somebody who you don't need to work. Um but yet you go and decide to create a footwear brand around your passion for encouraging people not only to walk, but to do it in a way where they're also uh setting themselves up from the ground up in a good position. And so, uh, you sent us our first pair of Puvas, I don't know what, four years ago. And, um, the joke in our house is, you know, Lar never wears shoes, and then if he's going dressing up, he's going to wear slippers, flip-flops. But he does wear the PUVA to play pickle ball because your your toes are spled. I mean, I think that's one of the things he and I have had the advantage of is being in a sport where you're not wearing shoes. beach volleyball, you're not in shoes. So, your toes are working, your ankles are articulating. Um, you know, for him in surfing, same thing. But most people wear shoes. Why would you as somebody who doesn't have to work? Because it's not easy what you're doing. And you're not going to do it as um well, we'll just see what happens. You you I get the feeling you do everything to see to make things successful. Why did it feel so important to say, "All right, I'm going to get back to work now. Why?" Well, I'm I'm all in on this. Um I feel like in a different way, you're
I feel like in a different way, you're more passionate about this, but that was about food. Yes. And it cuz food felt like, "Oh, you know what? People seem to struggle here and here. I'll make this and let's see what happens." But this feels like a very specific uh intention. Yes. No. Well, first of all, why work? I mean, I tried to be retired for about a day and a half or two days. It's it's horrible. And and I suck at golf. So there there went that. Uh and and I know I'm not going to get any better. Um but I also wanted to do something with my son and uh so he joined me in this endeavor. But more importantly, my entire life, I've I've hated shoes. I I was barefoot as a kid. I grew up in Maine. I was barefoot as often as I could be. I didn't like the shoes that I was wearing as a runner. Um, which started with when I was a runner as uh wearing uh Chuck Taylor's Converse. That's what you ran in cuz that there was nothing available. And then eventually Phil Knight brought over on its Suka Tiger, which was a minimalist shoe, a very thin shoe, which didn't allow you to to run that much. Um, it was the thinness of the shoe that sort of dictated uh it was your feet that told you it's that's enough miles for this week. And so when the thick cushion shoes came along, it enabled all the good runners, the ones who were actually runners of those days, to be able to put in 80, 90, 100 miles a week instead of being limited by the bottoms of their shoes. So, the intention of Phil Knight and the
intention of Phil Knight and the development of this new high-tech running shoe, which would enable you to strike with with less ground impact, it was all good, but then it got blown out of proportion by every person who thought they might be benefiting from running to go buy these running shoes and start running with bad form, putting in lots of miles. And what we learned over the years was that nobody there were no decrease in injuries from running. In fact, if anything, running injuries have increased. 50% of all runners get injured every year. At any point in time, 25% of all runners are injured right now. It's like that's a worse rate than the NFL. So, we have this this idea that footwear somehow has has improved in its technology over the years, and it hasn't. And I've never liked uh fashionable footwear. I've never been one to wear uh, you know, narrow Italian loafers, Todds, you know, all of this stuff. They've always I've always felt bound up and restricted by that. You know, ski boots when I was a skier, hated them. Like, what's going on here? As a cyclist, you know, you've got the the hard clipins that are again, they're scrunching that big toe against the rest of the metatarsal, destroying foot function. So I recognize that uh you know I think foot health is the new sleep. Foot health is the most it's the lowest hanging fruit in the world of longevity right now. Um starting with 20 and 30 year olds but certainly anybody over 50 or 60 the greatest risk of your mortality is is
greatest risk of your mortality is is falling and breaking something. And that is almost directly a function of your your foot strength and particularly the strength in your big toe. You know Courtney Connley and she she will you know she she's been studying this for decades now and she'll say the the big toe most important joint in the foot needs to be the last point of contact needs to be activated to get the glutes working. The strength of the big toe is what part of what determines whether or not when you trip, whether you fall or not or catch yourself because everybody trips. You know, you're a kid, you trip. Oh, goofy me. And then you're 20 or 30 and you trip and so you catch yourself because your reactive time is there. Your balance is good. Your feet are strong enough to uh react and put one out in front of the other and catch yourself. So, you don't really suffer the ill effects of of tripping. As you get older and as your feet atrophy, as your balance declines, partly as a result of this atrophy in your feet, as your bone density decreases, partly as a result of your unwillingness to get to the gym and lift heavy weights. Now you get up and you're 60 or 65 or 70 or whatever and you trip over the cat in the middle of the night and you fall and you can't catch yourself because you don't have the reactive time. You don't have the balance. You don't have the strength. Now you fall and you break a hip and and then as the story goes 30% of all people who who fall and break a hip die within a year. Another 30% are
a hip die within a year. Another 30% are sort of incapacitated for the rest of their lives in some way. They're debilitated and then um it's a steady decline from there. So, you know, it's it's a little bit glib to say foot health is the new is the lowest hanging fruit in longevity, but if you want to talk about uh decrease risk for mortality, that's right up there with everything else you can do. Now beyond that, as an athlete, every [snorts] step you take in terms of performance and as a citizen athlete and as a citizen who likes to dance and play games with the kids, every step you take, every every time you run, you jump, you change direction, every time you dance, every time you set up to hit a basketball shot or or a baseball or or swing a golf club, it starts with the feet. It's your connection with the ground that that begins this powerful force that you're generating using your entire body. But it depends on the strength and the mobility and the integrity and the resilience of your feet. What do we have? Well, we have a generations of people have worn restrictive cushion shoes. Their feet have atrophied. The muscles, the intrinsic muscles of their feet have gone soft. They haven't been used. Even if you're a runner, your feet, the muscles in your feet have atrophied. It's bizarre. It's like with again I keep looking at Born to Run. It's like right there in my eyline and and when Chris McDougall writes this book and he says, you know, everybody be better off running barefoot or with minimalist footwear
footwear footwear in 2010 or 11 or 12, you know, tens of thousands of runners went out and said, "That's a great idea. I'm going to run barefoot." They bought the shoes of the day which were a five-toed shoe and they got injured like horribly injured because even though they ran every day they ran seven miles the first day in this new footwear and they realized my feet have atrophied. None of the muscles in my feet work the way they should. [snorts] So recognizing that we need to rebuild the strength and resilience of our feet, recognizing that ground field, the our the bottoms of our feet have tens of thousands of sensory receptors that that the brain requires in order for us to orchestrate a perfect move every time we walk. So everybody's born with perfect feet. I don't care if you say I have flat feet or fallen arches or whatever. You were born with perfect feet. You were born with a perfect kinetic chain, but it's perfect for you. Provided you give the bottoms of your feet the sensory input that the brain requires that by the time you weight that front foot on a step or a jump, the brain has all the information it needs on how much to scrunch the arch, how much to articulate the toes, how much to bend around that rock that you just stepped on, how much to roll the ankle out a little bit to the outside so the knee doesn't tweak because the ankle is supposed to roll in all directions. The knee is really only supposed to work in one direction. So the foot is there to protect the knee provided you have the ground field, provided you have the
the ground field, provided you have the sensory input so the brain can orchestrate this kinetic chain and it goes all the way up through the the glutes and through the lower back and all the way up through the neck, but it needs the sensory information. So that's kind of one of the things that was missing from most footwear. And minimalist shoes have been around for a long time. Um, most of them are wide, thin, flat, flexible, but with a single toe box. But if your feet are misformed, misshapen from a lifetime of wearing high heels and pumps and restrictive footwear, um, no amount of putting them into a a wide toe box, they're not going to find some beautiful, wonderful, relaxed splhshapen, deformed position. So the only really way around that is to guide them into individual toe slots in a neutral spllay so that they can begin to articulate up and down accommodate the texture and the tilt and the temperature of the ground you're work you're walking on and over time strengthen and so we say relax realign and strengthen the feet and I wanted to create a shoe that was optimal for all of this concept of re regaining foot health and foot strength. So, it had to be wide, which it is. Had to have individual toe boxes. It had to be gloves for feet. There's just no way around that. I mean, so many women recognize that their their toes are messed up. Not you, cuz you got But but I mean, most women are like, "I don't get offended." Yeah. No. But um you know,
Yeah. No. But um you know, there's 10 or 20 million pairs of toe spacers sold because women recognize yoga toes. Yeah. But then they take them off and shove it in for eight hours. Yeah. So, what we do is we say, "You don't have to do that. put them into a an operative system that allows you to um to find each individual toe slot to relax it and realign it in a neutral pattern and then now walk on uneven surfaces. Walk up and down stairs. Go to the gym and do leg day. Whatever it is you're going to do, do it in a way that uses the toes and I and isolates almost the big toe. The big toe wants to play outwardly. If you've ever, and I know you have, sprinted down Zuma Beach at low tide very slowly. I have. Yes. Whatever. But you go back and look at your footprint. Yeah. It's wide. You're If you're barefoot on the sand on on hard pack wet sand, you go back and look at that's the widest your foot is ever going to be. That's the foot wanting to be spled outward to generate maximum explosive power from that. And now you put it in a narrow restricted shoe where you've scrunched the big toe against all the other toes. You cut off the circulation to the planter fascia. You've done a lot of bad things and you've built an artificial arch in there which unbburdens the arch muscles around that of having to do any work. You've shortened the calf muscle because you put a you've raised the heel up even as little as a / an inch or an inch [snorts] which most of the running shoes do these days. So you've shortened the calf which puts more pressure on the Achilles.
Achilles. All of these things this is what drove me crazy when I set about to start this company. I'm like, I want to de develop a shoe that's optimal for human performance. Whether you're a top athlete like our friend Christian or whether or le uh or whether you're a citizen or of I like I have so many 65year-old women wearing my shoes walking fixing their bunions. Well, this is what I find so interesting about this. So, you're you you're giving supportive information about why walking is so important and you're saying and you can do it in these shoes. And it's so interesting where you could take somebody who is 60, 65 or younger or older and say through time because the body is so smart, you can improve that situation no matter how old you are, how athletic you are, even if you just decide to walk in these. And so what I appreciate about it is you're you're sort of saying this is why walking's good and and the only thing I'm and I'm always fascinated is it's not a c cultural norm. I don't know how we got attached to this is what shoes look like because the the toes are, you know, and by the way, my big toe, I'll show you my big toe in a minute. I it's it's actually one of the only highly functioning things on my body that I do correctly. I hinge and my feet are in good shape. Everything else I'm always working on like I'm still working on a squat. Believe me, my form my my femur is so long. To squat
my my femur is so long. To squat correctly is constant effort. Yeah. But it's your unique kinetic chain. It is that we're dealing with and it works. But I'm just saying like even when I put a palua on cuz what I like is when I actually play pickle ball, I also step. You don't go clunk because you are feeling. It's like when you're more barefoot where you're you're landing and leaving accordingly, not just, oh well, a shoe's going to take care of it. Um, so you so people have this opportunity to improve no matter where they are by doing that. And you have to have little patience. Like I have to have patience to get my little toe in there. It does not want to get in there. Every time I'm like, come on, you can get in there. So, what are you hearing from people as far as, "Oh, my back feels better." So, we just put up a new website um a couple of weeks ago. It's just pulverare reviewviews. com because we have so many like tearjerking testimonials. People who thought they'd never walk without pain again within a few days um are experiencing this. One of my best friends in my building, he's a former D1 tennis player, early adopter, bought seven, eight pair. It's all he wears. Um he's he's all in on Paluva. Gave his baby mama uh who was a former model and she's 50 now. Uh and she had bad back problems, almost scoliosis. Couldn't couldn't walk without pain. Certainly couldn't lift. Um uh and he gave her a
couldn't lift. Um uh and he gave her a pair and she said, "I'm not wearing those. Those things are ugly." Whatever, you know. Um two years later, I see her four months ago on the path. She comes over. She runs over and hugs me. She says, "Oh my god, you've changed my life. Thank you." I finally put these shoes on. I'm walking five and six miles a day. I'm enjoying every step I take. My back pain is gone. I'm like, it's changed my life. That's the kind of stuff that we're getting. I have like 15 women over 60 in the building I live in in Miami who I sort of made get the shoes. I I forced them to you got to try these shoes. Some of whom have had bunions that kept them from walking outside. and now are doing six and seven miles a day walking on the flats of Miami, on the sand of Miami, on the concrete of Miami. It's incredible the response that we're getting to these. I have UTMB, speaking of that, guys, some of the best in the world who ruck in the ATRs in the Puva ATRs. Rucking is basically fast hiking with a backpack on and that's their training. And then when they race, they put on Alt or some other wide toebox specific racing shoe. But all over the place, we've got um you know MMA fighters wearing them. We've got I mean a lot of athletes, but even more importantly, younger people who are now recognizing that they need to start doing something about this cuz young people are having foot problems. They're there people complain. Women in their late 20s, early 30s are starting to complain about foot problems. My my son's wife, my daughter-in - law, who's runs marketing,
daughter-in - law, who's runs marketing, Leia, had bunion surgery at 19. She had bad bunions at 19. And she had one on one foot done. She was going to wait to do the other one. It was horrible experience for her. She hated it. It was painful. It lasted a long time. Then she met my son and then she started working with us and she's worn nothing but paluva for the last since they've been available for the last four years. Never got the bunion surgery on the other foot and her other foot is great. and and the original uh surgery surgical foot feels better now, but all she wears is Paluma because she she sort of understands the concept that you know foot health is so critical to again when we talk about like what is a what does a well-lived life look like? Cognition, I want to be able to have a conversation with people when I'm 110. We talked about like what's the end point? It's not 180, Dave. No, I I 180 is No, it's it's I've been around the block. It's like I I think I heard that story already. Like I'm good. No, 100%. I'm good. And I'm And also like I'm in a long marriage and I think Yeah. Okay. 40 more years of this would be is quite lovely. Yeah. There was a great Jerry uh no it was a curb your enthusiasm bit that sent me was sent to me this morning about uh when when Larry and his wife are getting their vows ready and and she's starting about until eternity and Larry started eternity. What do you mean [laughter] like after we're dead we're still going to have to be together? I thought I was going to be single during eternity [laughter] anyway just flying around up there. Yeah. Anyway,
Yeah. Anyway, would it be safe to say like somebody's listening to this and they go listen I work in an office. I have a real job and I I'm going to wear my grown-up shoes. That at least this is a tool when you are walking or going to the gym or doing other activities to at least counterbalance great point some of the smashing that we're doing. Great point. If you walk the dog, if you go for your walks, if you go to the gym in Palubas, if you do uh trail hikes in Palubas, go ahead and wear your regular shoes. I guarantee they're not going to be as comfortable because that's going to be an issue. We have surgeons like we have four surgeons right now who do 5hour surgeries standing in one place but shifting their weight wearing paluvas because their knees don't hurt and even though they're closer to the ground because they've got the toes play and because they've got the ground feel their knees aren't guessing about or or they're they're not sitting on clouds which are basically Bosu balls that tweak your knees in the wrong direction or or cause problems further up the genetic chain in the lower back for standing in one place for 5 hours doing intense you know micro surgeries. We have uh a lot of um you know Brad's aunt uh wears the shoes on her nurse shift and thinks it's changed her life. See I think that that's the important part is to get to let other people understand that this could just be a tool. Yeah. In your toolkit that when you are moving here's an And by the way who cares like you know I always look at it and that's another fun thing about Lar. Lar doesn't care if it works. That's what he cares
care if it works. That's what he cares about. It's like our stand up our ellipticos that we use up the hill because you get full extension out of the back and fire your glute. You look ridiculous. Who cares? You feel good. And it's the same where it's like we have this idea about, well, this is what shoes are. It's like, well, no, this is a tool that when you're going to go walking or doing your thing that you have an opportunity to kind of offset and give it give your foot this opportunity to work in its full capacity. And so that's part of the the message where it's like, hey, start slow, but to your point, once you start feeling good and then you wear your other shoes, I'm fortunate. I actually work with a shoe company, Vionic, and their sort of regular shoes have a lot of technology in them that my feet don't hurt. Um cuz there's a lot of that technology as much as you can get in there wider in the front and things like that. But I think um people can understand that this could just be they can just be like, "Oh, you don't know yet. You're behind." I mean, I had two two 30some guys the other day say, "Those are cool." Like, I would wear those. Those look good. I'm like, "Okay, I think we're getting there." Do you walk backwards at all? I do uh I do treadmill uh you know 15 degrees on the treadmill 1. 7 miles an hour, put on, you know, some kind of music and go for 10 or 15 minutes doing that. Yeah. Now, a lot of people but good point because you you push through the toes. Push through and you push through the toes going on. Yeah. And that also has made my knees over time. I love Ben Patrick, the knees over toes guy. And and then it's so
over toes guy. And and then it's so talking about early adoption like I go I walk my dog because of you. I am reminded first of all like I can't just crush it in my workout and then sit at my desk all day and so on my every other day I'll take the dog for 2 and 1 / 2 mile walk he's happy I get to use my body and walk but I'll see people now all the time walking backwards and because it's like oh yeah this makes me feel good and and I think it's the same same idea where when you just try something and see how you feel that going back to your instinct. I don't need the world telling me how I feel. I need to understand, you know, is this working or not. So people come to your sphere for like health and wellness because you you are the embodiment of it. You you still have fun. You still enjoy a glass of wine, you know, on your every trips and, you know, things like that. Are there things that you know because we were talking about kind of this hacking selling um and and this is part of the business right I'm in a part of the business you're in a part of the business at what point is it hey these are the things you really you have to do and it's like you know we're in such a place now where it's like now there's a million things we're supposed to do this hacking idea we've complicated it you know we we've uh obsessed over health we we're measuring ing it. We're doing all these things and you're also a little anti
things and you're also a little anti like meaning, hey, you don't need to buy everything. How are you kind of ebbing and flowing with the notion of being in the space but then being really true to what you know is works and um has shown up over and over for you over literally 60 years. I feel like my mission is to teach people about the human body and how it works and then to be intuitive about every decision they make. So to not have to rely on a device or or data. I mean I say bad data is worse than no data. Um I don't need a a ring to tell me how I slept last night. And the worst thing that can happen to me, not worse, but I mean one of the things that can happen is you wake up, oh Jesus, I slept great last night. And then the ring says, "No, you got 62 or whatever it was." I'm like, "Whoa, what do you mean? You know, I didn't have any deep sleep. What my RAM was this?" To what end are we taking this information and then incorporating it into our lives? Um, I have PVCs, so my HRV always looks good because I got big gaps between heartbeats. Not exactly exactly accurate. I don't need to wear a CGM to tell me that uh an extra bowl of rice is going to raise my blood glucose to 180 for or 160 or whatever it is for an hour or two, but then it's going to come back down and and what information am I going to get? I already know it's going to do that. How am I going to change my life? So my uh like with with the protein
So my uh like with with the protein metrics that are being bandied about now, you know, a pound, a gram per pound of lean body mass, what? Please, that's a lot of protein. That's way too much protein for almost everybody. So, uh, what, you know, why would I pay attention to that? I'm intuitive about how much I'm eating if I'm no longer hungry for the next bite and I've orchestrated a decent meal with some protein, some some vegetables, and something else or not. I just know when to stop. So, I'm the unquantified self. I just don't like any of the devices and I don't think they serve any purpose. Now, a CGM for somebody who's pre-diabetic and wants to really understand the effects of the real-time effects of of a meal. Great. But within a a week, you know, you have all the information you need. Now, you're just, you know, like when Peter says he wore one for two months or whatever, like, dude, what are you doing? Or he measured his ketones every day for a year. again to what end? Like like what are you going to do with that information? How are you going to change your life? What what new protocols are you going to adapt? Right? So, I'm really about everybody not agonizing, not being orthorexic, not being, you know, uh so precise about following their workout routine that if they didn't do the workout that was prescribed for them that day, they were a bad person. you know, just be intuitive to again to to know that seven reps today is probably where I should stop, not 10. That's that's what I want to ingrain in people more than extracting the last 1% of
more than extracting the last 1% of performance because you have the devices that are able to measure that that you know um granularly. [gasps] All I want to do is I want to extract the greatest amount of contentment, fulfillment, pleasure out of every moment. That's the only reason I do any of this. I don't do it to be um able to brag about my blood work or my body fat or my you know I yeah I want to look good. I'm you know we a lot of the stuff we do like I the whole thing about GLP1s cracks me up like some people need them right some people listen if you're be really deeply behind the eightball it could be the jump start as long as you're having best you know but if you're in Hollywood and you're already looking pretty good and you're doing this stuff I'm only micro doing and then you find out that because the way it works it's basically an anhidonic it takes away hedenism it takes away your appetite so you're not hungry okay great fair enough you're not going to eat as much as you as your gluttonous ass was going to eat before, but it takes your appetite away for sex. So now your libido shifts and now you're not interested in sex or maybe your interest in building a business decreases because you're not you don't have the drive to do that anymore. Look, part of the reason we do all this stuff is to get laid. So if if you're going to take a GOP one to look better and then not feel like having sex, okay, that's like digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows. It's it's bizarre to me. So a lot of them, you know, and I I tell people I go to these anti-aging conferences, these biohacking conferences,
biohacking conferences, and I think I told you off offline that I think biohacking is the day trading of health. Like people are looking for a quick hit like like how can I get some some quick hits here without investing long-term? You know, if you want to build wealth, you invest long term. You learn the market. You understand all this stuff. You you're patient. Day traders are just they're trading dollars with other day traders. So 90% of day traders lose money because there's no investment here. They're just gambling against each other. And that's what I think biohacking is. If you haven't done the basics, if you haven't done the four pillars we started with, if you haven't gotten [clears throat] your diet dialed in, develop metabolic flexibility, if you don't have your movement patterns right, if you don't have your sleep or your stress under control, no amount of methylene blue is going to change your life. No amount of blue light blockers or you know chambers or headbands or infusions or transfusions or whatever is going to make a difference. So having said all that and I I would share mine but are there things that you do because you do have a a very solid uh system in place. Are there any sort of what would be perceived as hacks that you go I really like we have a hyperbaric here and actually it was inspired when Lar was getting another surgery and he's like I can heal quicker but then it was also an opportunity we've had friends who had concussions or surgeries they can just come over and go in the hyperbaric and it's a real hyperbaric. Um so I I do
it's a real hyperbaric. Um so I I do like that. I do like a sauna. Are there things that you have in your practice that would be considered extra that you go, "These make me feel good." My only hack is I've been doing TRT for about 10 years. Okay. So, I do testosterone replacement therapy. Um, it's a regular dose for men. It's not a, you know, not a bodybuilder dose. Um, but beyond that, I don't even do vitamin supplementation anymore. I mean, I do some vitamin D once in a while if I'm feeling deficient, uh, because I don't convert sunlight that well. Um, I do take collagen supplements once in a while because I'm always kind of pushing the envelope in my hard days on my hard days and I'm trying to maintain muscle mass. My [snorts] muscles get strong, but then as you get older, the weak link becomes the collagen. It becomes the connective tissue. So, I take a collagen supplement. That's about it. Um, I don't really have any of the again the chambers or the protocols or the stuff that I do that that's being uh touted or bandied about in all of the conferences that I speak at. And I speak about what I just talked about like what are you guys doing? Like if you haven't covered the basics and I I tell them that I think foot health is the lowest hanging fruit in this entire world of longevity. If you want to move around for the rest of your life, if you want to be able to move through this world, if you want to be 80 or 90 years old and be able to walk down the street and visit a neighbor or board a plane and go to Italy on a walking tour, or if you want to walk your ass to the gym to lift weights and do a leg day, you need good, strong, resilient,
day, you need good, strong, resilient, mobile feet. And if you overlook that because you think, "Ah, shoes. I got shoes that'll handle that. They're high-tech shoes." It's not how it works. I have to ask you as an entrepreneur [clears throat] um what how were you able because that those that's a hard path even when you're successful by the way it's harder it's I've been successful a couple of times the last one Primal Kitchen was was a home run it gets harder it does get easier is there you know it's like you see an Olympian they win the gold and then they have the next day yes it's a comedown huge so for you you've had a in I understand what's great about it. Yeah. But was there anything that you had to wrestle with? Oh my god. Yeah. And you as an athlete I and I used to tell people, you know, you train train and then you race and you win and the next day you wake up and then that afternoon and that evening, oh my god, champagne, you know, the next morning you go, the do I do now? Like what's next? Like I got to go do this again or I have to exceed it. And um you know when I sold Primal Kitchen, that day was one of the greatest days of my life, you know, the money just hit your bank account. I look at my bank, oh Jesus Christ. 2 days later, you're like, "Okay, um I'm going to am I going to retire? No, I'm not going to retire." Like, "What am I going to do?" Like Like I have to have a reason to get out of bed. And that again on the drive over here we came up Pauma
on the drive over here we came up Pauma and across and and we're revisiting the old cycling days and talking about AI and and how all this stuff is going to be done for us in the next few years and let alone five or 10 years from now. [gasps] Um you won't have to work, you won't have to there'll be universal basic income maybe and and everybody will be sort of abundant and uh why are you going to get out of bed in the morning? like what is it that's going to motivate you to go to work or not to go to work to do something productive with your life to make a contribution what is that going to be and and that drives me as much as anything is this wanting to make a contribution to humanity and I think with Primal Kitchen it was I want to change the way the world eats and with Primal Footprint is the name of the company but with PUVA uh it's I want to change the way the world looks at movement. It is funny to see you at this next stage because you're as equally as fired up. You might even seem more fired up than you did 20 years ago when it is really hard and then in the back of your mind you're like, I don't need this. What is it that you tell yourself uh to just continue on? So my son is the CEO of the company and he does the heavy lifting. I'm the thought leader. I'm the idea man. I write all the checks. Um, but you know, it's sort of a daily practice. Every day I kind of get up and I go, you know, I've had an amazing life. I've had two other
life. I've had two other careers that nobody knows about that would have been enough to write a book about. If today was the last day of my life, it's it's good. I'm good. But nah, I got more to do. You know, I have stuff to do. And so that's kind of how I approach it. I'm like one one day at a time. I'm um people are like, "What about you know when you're 80 or 90?" Nope. I got tomorrow and that's what I'm living for and that's what I want to work for tomorrow. Yeah, I got a you know general plan about what's in the future. But but really all we have is today and then waking up tomorrow and and figuring out why you get out of bed. I mean, it's a real thing. I'm so glad you said that because I also think part of your vitality cuz let's just call it that. It's not health, right? It's your life force, your chi, your vitality. It actually is. Yes. Okay, you do all these things well and right and consistently, but that it's the the purpose. I think that that is a very overlooked important thing. And as we get older, we're told, well, no, you're supposed to wind it down. And I don't think that's true. I think we have more to offer in different ways as we get older. And I think for me when I see you, I'm like, "Oh, this guy's on a mission." And that also is part of why you look the way you look and you're excited about life and you have the energy that you have. And I think
energy that you have. And I think that that's a a hard thing for people to find. They're scared to fail. They're they don't know um well, what what could I do? And I think that that's another part of this message that feels really important um beyond walking and other things is we all have something really to contribute and that gives us a lot of energy. Yeah. You brought up an interesting point that I hadn't thought much about but as we get older there's a burden of purpose because we're wise enough to know that there should be a purpose. When you're younger you know you're like I don't want to get out of bed. I got nothing to do. I got no, you know, no job prospects or whatever. I would not want to be it'd be tough to be younger. It with what I know these days, but as you get older, that concept of purpose becomes more ingrained. And then it then then you wrestle with it. And that's the what I wrestle with when I was retired for a day and a half, which which was I'm going to like wake up every day and have nothing to do except train, which I love to train, but you know, that's not who I am anymore. I think risk and being a little uncomfortable in even in that way I think is really good for us. Uh look, we're we're um as I say, do something hard every day. I mean, I want to I we've talked about this in the past and I know Larry feels the same way. I feel like I need to earn the day, you know, and I want to do something hard every day because life is too freaking soft as it is right now. So whether it's a hard workout, and I not all my workouts are hard, but or whether it's just dedicating an hour and a half to
just dedicating an hour and a half to just writing and being creative, which you know, I've written 12 books with with Brad here and 4, 000 podcasts, blog posts. I hate writing. Sorry. I hate it. It's I I don't like to write, but I force myself to do it because I'm pretty good at it. Do you play music or do anything to get yourself into No, I just gota I just got to grind it out. And it's a hard thing for me to do. My point is, you know, do something hard every do something you don't want to do every day. People used to talk to me about discipline. And you know, when I was a triathlete, um, they would say, "Oh my god, you're so disciplined. Like you're out there riding, you know, 50 miles and then running 10 and like you do this every day. You have to be so disciplined." I'm like, "The joke is on you, pal. Like I sleep in, I get to ride and I get to work out. I have no discipline." I didn't I it's not that bad. But but you're the one who has discipline because you go to work every day and you grind it out and you're you know working for the man. God bless you. I couldn't do that. But this idea of discipline is basically it's about doing the things you don't want to do, not doing the things that you want to do. Look at my feet. I want to show you how big my big toe is from beach volleyball. Love it. Look how thick that thing is. Powerful big toe. Look at that's amazing. Isn't it crazy? It's crazy good. I have to put nail polish on just to make it look feminine. It's pretty big foot, too. When you send me shoes, it's like in a box like this big. Um, what's the what? But wait, Just But but you feel powerful with those feet, right? Yes. And no, there's chains parts of my body that I feel vulnerable and I'm
body that I feel vulnerable and I'm always just being kind to them like my knees and trying to work on it and also not u identify with it only like, oh, I have bad knees. It's like, "Oh, well, I have things I'm doing my homework on." And uh and just keep going. And that's the other thing I think it's important for people to remember. Nobody feels perfect. Nobody feels great every day. Everybody doesn't feel perfect. Yes. And you and and I still think movement is the medicine. And and even if it's like, "Hey, today I'm going to modify." Yeah. So I I think that that's a people go, I don't feel good. It's like, hey, most of us don't feel good and and we're going to just do our best and keep rolling. Do you ever walk barefoot on the beach? Yeah. Okay. All the time. Great. Yeah. No, I'm a big fan of that. But, you know, that's sort of a specific like I like the soft sand sometimes. I like the hard packed. I still do sprints when the tide is right. You know, again, we got Zuma down here, which is the greatest place to sprint. Garbage can to garbage can, I call it. I used to walk gar from one garbage can to the next and then sprint in the deep because I was playing ball. And also nothing more humiliating than you're like I'm sprinting, but if you saw me from the outside, you'd be like, she's attempting to run right now. Yeah. It's It's not even pretty. No. I try to I'm again I do my sprints on the grass uh in Miami every once in a while and I video myself and I'm like it looks like I'm running in slow motion and [laughter] I was running so fast and I was so on point for that. But there was there's nothing like Zuma Beach at low tide for running
like Zuma Beach at low tide for running sprints. It was great. I used to take these guys on uh every once in a while we do a 100 mile ride. We go down San Viceni up PCH up Los Posas to the doughut shop, turn around, come back and then stop at the dunes and run the dunes once just for shits and giggles and then get back on the bike ride back to Brentwood, take three minutes to change into our shoes and run 10 miles. That was the original brick that if you've ever heard the term the brick in used I I coined that phrase. It's Yeah. Scott Scott Zangarino and I coined that term. It was a 100 mile ride followed by a 10-mi run. Anyway, dunes, sand, heavy sand. Yeah, it was again man managing discomfort like how can you dig a hole so deep and pull everybody else into it with you and then spit them out the back so you finish first. Oh yeah. You said that definitely sounds like Lar strategy. So my last question for you only because I I think you have a lot of wisdom lived lived wisdom. uh you have good good relationships with your children. We all have thoughts going into parenthood and then reality comes and you have a son and a daughter who are adults. What were valuable things that you learned as a parent that not only helped you be um you know a good parent but that all supported your children and led to the relationship being uh close and connected? What what have you learned?
connected? What what have you learned? Time just spending time with the kids. That's every uh Father's Day, every birthday, I get a card just reminding me how much time I spent with him and how uh that meant more than anything. And um but at the end end of the day, it's this life and feeling good is it's not about so many things. Yeah, that was the other part of these um sentiments over the years is it wasn't the you know the presence or the it was the time spent. So, and it was boogie boarding at Zuma. It was teaching them how to uh snowboard. It was uh reffing soccer and coaching little league and um teaching them how to play ultimate frisbee to the point that my son became one of the best ultimate players in the in in the state. All these things revolved around willingness to spend time. And when I as an entrepreneur, I tell other entrepreneurs, don't think that 80 hours a week is going to buy you anything on the back end that you especially if you're taking it away from family time. So, you know, spend time with the family. Don't disappear on weekends to the office. That's you're again if your goal is to make a big pile of change so you can take care of your family when you're old and they're they're grown up, you're going to miss everything along the way. So that was I think the big thing. There's every once in a while I get a feeling of like, oh, I feel comfortable.
feeling of like, oh, I feel comfortable. I did one little thing right sometimes cuz as a parent we're always questioning and doubting ourselves and I always think no I was there and uh at least I feel relieved cuz they're older now um that I had that opportunity. So remind people uh your book is born to walk but also where they can find if they want to learn more about the shoes and why did we name it PUVA? Ah, so I I have like 20 trademarks that use the word primal. Primal kitchen, primal nutrition, primal blueprint, primal health coach, all over the place. Primal fuel. And when I went to get Primal Footprint for footwear, somebody else owns the word Primal for all apparel, shirts, shoes, everything. One word. It's like incredible. So, and I'd bump I'd bumped up against this guy 15 years earlier when I did a t-shirt that said the primal blueprint. So, I said, "I'm not going to go down that road again." So, anyway, we we made up a we had to make a word up that sounded good. So, my son and I went through a bunch of different iterations of different languages and and it turns out that in Portuguese, PE P is foot and louva is glove. So Peluva sort of is a madeup word that uses the roots of foot and glove in in Portuguese. Yeah. And it sounds but it's got a nice Luca Tagliotti [clears throat] is here helping. Luca is my technical producer. Yeah. But it sounds very Italian. Yeah. Well, it's so tell people where they can find
so tell people where they can find Palas. So it's paluva. com and it's only available online right now. Great. Um we have lots of styles, lots of colors, lots of sizes. We have uh socks to go along with it if you're a sock fivetoed socks because you have to get the five toad socks. Um so paluva. com we also have um on Instagram we are wear paluva w e a r palovva lots of information there. You can see a lot of people who are wearing our our shoes and talking about them. And then I'm Mark Sisen Primal on Instagram. Yeah, I know you're trying to phase out of that. Trying to phase out. Yes. I don't think you're phasing out of that. No, but I can't because I because because I gota I need people to know about the shoes. I got to promote the shoes. So, as we're leaving, I I just want to drop off one last question or last invitation, which is, you know, you've lived this story and a lot of people, I think, are trying to end up where you are. Um, what reminder or uh idea do you want to leave people with based on, you know, you've seen a lot of stories and a lot of scenarios about what's keeping people from their best wellness or feeling good? What last kind of idea do you want to leave with people or reminder about what you've seen um in order that people could be in pursuit like you have been? Yeah, I think people give up too soon on a goal and um you know I think so persistence,
know I think so persistence, consistency. We talked early on about discipline and I said how easy it is and then I laid out a couple of ideas about how easy it could be like the minimum effective dose of exercise, the minimum effective dose of food. And if you can gro those those concepts, then it's just about consistency and patience. Yeah. And and one thing I learned from you that I think is also important to remind people is that you said this probably six or seven years ago. I remember you saying this that really the whole goal is to be adaptable and to have flexibility. So it's like if you eat a c a carbohydrate or a protein, you're going to do good. That you're adaptable to your environments. And I just want to remind people that uh it isn't always about lifting more. There's days I go in the gym. Today I was very strong and I felt good. Let me tell you, a couple days ago I was like, "Oh, it's one of those days." And I didn't feel as good and I wasn't as strong. But adaptability. But you were willing to shut it down. Well, I dropped the less weight. Yeah. I didn't shut it down. I just was like, I don't have that juice today. I'm gonna go a little lower. But just to remind people that we're we're going to it's that's what's going to happen through the whole story. So Marxist, I I appreciate you. Congratulations. Do you think you have another invention in you? No, this is it. Are you sure? [laughter] I'm not sure, but I'm feeling like like I have a life's work in front of me with this. Okay. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you. Thanks, Mark.
Well, I appreciate you. Thanks, Mark. Likewise. Thank you.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
Mark Sisson speaks from the perspective of someone who spent years at the edge of endurance. His argument is restrained: train enough to adapt, not so much that the protocol becomes the stressor.
The minimum effective dose is not laziness. It is precision. It asks what gives the body the signal it needs with the least unnecessary cost.
Metabolic flexibility is the ability to move between fuel sources without drama. Food choices, muscle mass, walking, sleep, and training all influence that capacity.
When flexibility improves, energy feels less fragile. Meals, movement, and recovery for health begin to work with the body rather than against it.
Use the minimum effective dose: enough stimulus to adapt, enough recovery to improve. — Contrast Collective
Walking is low cost, repeatable, and deeply human. It supports blood sugar control, circulation, mood, and joint rhythm while leaving recovery intact.
That makes it a longevity anchor. The best protocol is often the one the body can repeat for decades.
Foot strength, sensory feedback, and ground contact influence balance, gait, posture, and fall risk. Modern footwear can make those signals quieter.
Training the feet is not a niche concern. It is part of keeping the whole body organized, responsive, and confident in movement.
The conversation pushes against biohacking for its own sake. Tools can help, but the fundamentals still carry most of the return.
Eat in a way that supports body composition. Walk. Lift. Sprint occasionally if appropriate. Sleep. Recover. Repeat with enough patience to let the work compound.
Build metabolic flexibility through food quality, muscle, walking, and sleep.
Use the minimum effective dose: enough stimulus to adapt, enough recovery to improve.
Build metabolic flexibility through food quality, muscle, walking, and sleep.
Treat walking as a daily longevity practice, not a consolation prize.
