Golden Harper

Rick Rubin

Tetragrammaton.

Golden Harper

I always like to tell people, you are not running or walking around in walking or running shoes. You're actually running or walking around in horse riding boots. And so this goes back to the middle ages, but it syncs with pop culture today. You'll think about it instantly as soon as I say it. So the middle ages, we had royalty and military that rode horses, right?

So they're like the heroes, right? They are the pop culture icons of the time. And these guys are riding horses, and they came up with shoes specifically for stirrups. So stirrups had been invented, and you want to stay in the stirrups. So you.

You have these shoes that hold you in the stirrups. And so what they did is they made shoes pointy, because human feet, human. Feet are not pointy. Human feet are not pointy. They're widest at the end of the toes, not widest at the ball.

And then they have that heel. You know, you think of a typical to reshoe, and that is there to hold you in that stirrup. So almost all shoes have some version of a heel. 99%. And the whole reason for the heel originally was to keep your foot in the stirrup.

Precisely. That's amazing. I never knew that. So, yeah, I love showing, you know, a picture of a horse riding boot in a stirrup and. And just explaining to people, like, what you're wearing came from this, and it's.

It's all about pop culture. People on the streets at the time, in the middle ages, saw their heroes in these boots, and then they started making boots for themselves or shoes for themselves that mimicked what they saw their heroes wearing, just like we do today. You know, we see people on the big screen or, you know, on the music stage wearing whatever, and people want to wear what their pop culture icons wear, basically, or they're sports stars or sports. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Any aspect of pop culture, basically.

And so then that proliferated, and, you know, the next thing you know, it's a couple centuries later, and people are walking around in horse riding shoes almost en masse, you know? And what are the negative effects on foot health? It hasn't been until fairly recently that people wore shoes all the time, you know, because this was so uncomfortable previously, and frankly, it still is. People just don't know it. It's not as bad as it was, but the negative effects are unbelievable.

And I actually go and speak to podiatrists and other, you know, sports doctors, and we get into this, and if you look at the research, we go to, the billion people on the planet that don't wear modern shoes. They're in primitive sandals or barefoot most of the time. Basically zero chronic foot conditions. And it's a really stark contrast to America. According to APMA data, the American Podiatric Medical Association, 73% of american adults report foot pain on a regular basis, on a yearly basis.

So almost three out of four of us are reporting our feet hurting. So that is probably the most base answer to your question. But, you know, essentially one thing we see that is ever present is plantar fasciosis, what we used to call plantar fasciitis, bunions, neuromas, metatarsal. You know, any of those chronic foot conditions that are so common in the world today are essentially nonexistent in these populations of people that don't wear modern footwear. And we're presented as the footwear is there to protect our feet, when in reality, it's doing the exact opposite.

Yeah, I think you hit on something key. There is a great piece of footwear should protect our feet and nothing more. And the problem that most people don't realize is that 99% of all footwear out there deforms your feet. You get out of bed every morning barefoot. Your toes spread your heel on the ground.

You were born this way, you come this way. This is OEM, human, right? And then you put a shoe on, and 99% of all shoes deform your foot out of its natural position. They've raised the heel, they crowd the toes together, they push up in the arch, because when the big toe gets bent in just a quarter inch and the heel gets raised even just a half inch, that essentially renders your arch much weaker and less stable. And so then your foot starts to collapse, and you need this thing called arch support, which is new to humanity.

You know, we go back a couple hundred years ago, and arch support didn't exist, and we were fine without it. Now, you know, you would ask almost anybody, and they'd be like, oh, I need arch support. You know, and it's like, well, can you go walk on the beach barefoot without arch support? Oh, yeah, I do that. Okay.

Can you go garden in your backyard barefoot? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can do that. How about walk, you know, walk in the grass? Oh, yeah, that's fine.

So when do you need arch support? Oh, well, when I have my shoes on, I have to have arch support. And frankly, they're absolutely right, because they put their foot in a shoe that then takes their foot out of its ability to stabilize itself and you have to have an arch when you have a raised heel in a tapered toe box, you don't have to if your feet are super strong, but it's definitely helpful. So modern shoes weaken and deform the foot? Deform, destabilize and weaken.

Absolutely. And then from the foot having those issues, what are the upstream issues in the rest of the body if that happens to your feet? Yeah, massive. As a running coach and biomechanics guy, this is where it gets really interesting. Statistically speaking, the number one way to prevent running injuries is not what anybody would think.

It's actually to go through a foot strengthening protocol and people might think to themselves, well, how is that going to prevent running injuries? And the reality is your feet are your landing gear. And when your feet land right and can stabilize and control at the ground level, that then takes pressure off of everything else. If that's not happening right when your foot hits the ground and it's not able to have the right amount of strength, it's not able to control, it's not able to stabilize, then all that, those forces, and we're talking, you know, joint impacts, shear forces, joint torques, all this stuff is then translated further up the kinetic chain until it hits a weak link, basically. And that for everyone is different.

But for most people, that's going to be shins, it's going to be knees, it's going to be hips, or it's going to be lower back. And so what the foot can't control at ground level then gets passed on up the chain. And it's interesting as we, again, look at these billion people on the planet that don't wear shoes, they have a far lower incidence of joint issues as well. And, you know, people say, oh, yeah, but these people aren't overweight. And it's like, well, there's a lot of them who are.

You know, we look at people in polynesian islands who are, I don't know what to call them, overweight, but they're giant humans. This is actually how I got on this, by the way. Tell me, tell me about it. Part of it. So how did you get on it?

So my journey, we opened a shoe store when I was nine. And by the time I'm 18, heading off to college, you know, I realized that most everybody comes in to buy shoes because something hurts. Were your parents runners as well? Yeah. So my mom's a five time Olympic trials qualifier and one time world record holder in the eight k.

And my dad is also an elite marathon runner and held state records for ultra marathon distances as well. Wow. And both of them came from sedentary, non active families. In fact, we go to a family reunion, and people are always like, who are the skinny people? That's us.

We just stick out like a sore thumb. Right. You know, I have a lot of people say, like, oh, you're just genetically, like, you know, bred to do this, basically. And my dad was actually a collegiate football player and baseball player drafted to play pro baseball with the Angels. So I don't know that there was a lot of distance running prowess in our background.

Right. So, anyway, I get to heading off to college, and I'm like, I want to study this stuff because most everybody comes in because something hurts. I want to fix that. I want to be better at making that better for them. I want to be able to help them.

And, frankly, half of them are coming in. They've already been to the doctor or several doctors, and they're like, my doctor hasn't been able to help me. They throw their custom orthotics in the garbage can, and they're just kind of like, what do you got? You know? And so I wanted to be really good at helping these people.

And part of my collegiate journey took me to the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii, and I spent two years there studying with this finnish biomechanics exercise scientist named Yoke Kokonen, and he had actually developed this toe strengthening machine that I had been using at my house since I was a kid because my dad had read studies that one of the biggest difference between the african runners and the american runners was that the african runners had much greater foot and toe strength. And so I had this weightlifting machine for my toes, and I find out this guy, you know, out in Hawaii, you know, was one of the creators of it, and so I ended up going out to study with him. But while I was there, I, you know, I had grown up my whole life being conditioned by the shoe industry. Running shoe employees don't get any training, really, except from shoe companies. So if you're with me, it's not running.

It's propaganda. I would say there's, like. It's like 3% science, 97% b's, you know? And I was already questioning it, don't get me wrong. And I had started wearing the Vivram five fingers, which you may be aware of, the barefoot style shoes.

They had just hit the market, and we were the first running shoe store in the country to carry them and start selling them. So this is the place I'm at, I head out to Hawaii, and I'm surrounded by, you know, giant humans who have flat feet, which I've been told by every shoe company since I was knee high to a grasshopper, is horrible. They pronate like crazy, meaning their feet roll in, which, again, I've been told by every shoe company in the world that this is terrible, and they have a solution for it. And then, you know, most of them weigh quite a bit. And as I'm kind of observing this, when I first get there, I'm like, wow, I've been sent to help these people, you know?

But as I get to know them closer, I come, and I'm like, hey, yeah, so tell me about your feet. And they're just like, bro, about my feet. And I'm like, well, tell me. They hurt, right? I mean, you're a huge guy.

Your feet roll in like crazy. They're flat. You got no arches. You got flat feet. Your feet probably hurt.

This is what I do. I've been doing this since I was a little kid. I'd love to help you. And they would all just look at me like, bro, my feet don't hurt, you know? And I'm like, oh, come on.

Like, it's okay. I'm here to help you. My feet don't hurt, bra. Just over and over, and I find this across the board, you know, it's like. It's just the complete opposite of everything I'd ever been told by every shoe company and every training meeting I'd ever been to.

And I had read some of this stuff, I was already kind of into it, and that was just kind of like jump off point where it was like, okay, I got to get serious about this, because if I really want to help people, I can't do it through this lens of just complete garbage that I have been taught, you know, for my entire life up to this point. And so I eventually, after a couple years in Hawaii, and I, you know, I ended up running collegiately out there for a couple of years. I would run hour and a half on the beach barefoot. I'd never been healthier in my life. I'd go hammer a mountain, come down, run hard, run on the beach, and then go soak in the ocean and go surf, you know, and just let that saltwater do its healing thing.

And I come back to the. To the shoe store, and all of a sudden, it's like, wow, I don't believe in anything we sell. That's a rough place to be. That's kind of how I got into all this. And then what was the first?

Rick Rubin

Did you start making samples of foot healthy shoes? Yeah. So shortly after I got back, I never found that barefoot style shoes, like the five fingers, were a solution for the average person. For long distance running on hard, flat, man made surfaces. The argument is like, hey, humans, throughout the eons have run around barefoot, but throughout the eons, we didn't have concrete and asphalt.

Golden Harper

And so my thought was like, well, we want to simulate running barefoot on a natural surface. So most natural surfaces are softer than concrete. Yes, they are. And it's not even as much the softness, it's the variability too. And I think this is, as we get into help further up the kinetic chain.

Variability is such a massive thing that I like to hit on with people. People think soft is going to solve their issues, but the reality is tracks and treadmills cause more injuries than any other running surface out there. So you want something that has natural shape? Yeah, natural shape, unevenness. And in my opinion, that is one of the biggest keys to, you know, remaining injury free, whether that's as a runner or just as a human.

As part of an exercise science degree, we do a bunch of anatomy stuff. And when you really look at the muscle structure of the human body, it is built to ambulate over uneven ground. That's how our whole muscle structure is set up. And what happens when we walk on a perfectly consistent, even surface, even if it's soft, is every step is the same. Certain muscles get used and then other muscles don't.

And we develop these imbalances that then are cause our hips, our low back, our knees, etcetera, to hurt. This is something to really think about in your daily life is spend as much time as possible on uneven ground or just go out of your way to do it. You know, if I'm, even if I'm running down the sidewalk, I make a point to step off on the curb so my hips tilt. Anything that makes your hips tilt is doing what your body has been designed to do for eons. And I'll make a point, you know, if I see a tree coming, I don't run around the tree, I duck under it.

You know, I lean one way or the other to go around the tree. Anything like that can make your hips tilt. Anything I see to step up on or step off of, I'm going to make a point to do that. Walking, running, it doesn't matter. And plus, it just makes life more playful.

And when life is more playful, life is better. So you found out that the five fingers were not the solution for everybody. So what did you do next? Yeah, we found those to be, like, a great solution for foot strengthening and to use in smaller amounts. They're fine for general lifestyle, but, you know, let's say you're doing a high impact activity, or in my case, I was training for a 50 miles race in the Rocky mountains over technical terrain with sharp rocks.

It's just not going to fly. It's, in fact, it's dangerous and you'll probably break something. And so what really happened is that at the shop, we started filming people and we do this thing. My dad. My dad's story is incredible.

He blew his knee out playing football right at the end of his career, and this is why he didn't end up playing pro baseball. And he then got dared by his roommate's dad, dared them both to go do this thing. And, you know, he's like, huge weightlifter, always been great at anything he had done. And this roommate's dad says to him, like, hey, I'm gonna send you a postcard. And this postcard comes in the mail and it says, if you're a real man, you'll do this, you know?

And they kind of looked at each other like, all right, they flipped the postcard over. Las Vegas marathon. And it's like, in two months, my dad's like five 9240 pounds. Just totally jacked, you know? And because he blew his knee up playing football, we're talking unhappy triad.

So no meniscus, bone on bone, just grinding. Doctors told him he'd never run again, he'd never walk normal. That's been true to this day. My dad walks with a limp and he's almost an inch shorter on that side as well, and goes out and tries to do this marathon, finishes, you know, he's like the last at the very, very, very back. And it really pissed him off.

For the first time in his life, he really sucked at something that he actually put a lot of effort into. And on top of that, just excruciating knee pain. And just over and over does this. If you know the type of personality, just back at it. A few weeks later, massive failure again, over and over.

And he eventually sees a group of african, you know, kenyan runners running. And these guys dominate distance running, if you know anything about distance running. And he's like, oh, my gosh, I crashed down the road. We all crashed down the road. Those guys float, you know, I now do something called float running.

And I make this float run harness for this purpose. But he's like, those guys float. I'll bet if I taught myself to run like them, my knee wouldn't hurt so bad. And sure enough, that's what he does. And you fast forward seven years later, 110 pounds lighter, and he wins the St.

George marathon in 2 hours and 22 minutes. Unbelievable. And gets ranked as high as 17th in the country. I'm two at the time, so pretty cool. So tell me about the float running.

Rick Rubin

What is float running? So, float running is my method for making running techniques simple. And the reality is, most everybody in any other sport gets all sorts of training, and they spend most of their time on technique. So you just think shooting a shot, you know, passing the ball, there's a certain way you do this. Throwing a football, you know, kicking a soccer ball, there's just technique everywhere.

Golden Harper

Swimming running is the only sport where we just tell people, like, hey, good luck out there. And I just like. I like to frame it for people. Imagine if your first day of swim practice was like your first day of cross country or track practice. And I'll tell you how my first day of cross country practice went, and I had a great coach, don't get me wrong, but it was.

Hey, guys, welcome to class. Let's take roll. Okay, great. You know, housekeeping items. Okay, let's go for a run.

I'll see you in 30 minutes. Okay. Now let's do this at the swimming pool. Okay. Just jump in.

Good luck. See you in 30 minutes. Like dead people, you know? Literally dead people. Yeah.

This is the only sport where we do this, and it's absurd. And the problem is, there's so much conflicting information out there on running technique, and there's not as much science as we'd like there to be. And what is there is pretty solid, but it's shouted down by the money of the shoe companies, and overwhelmingly, most shoe companies just tell you, oh, just go run however you want. You know, just do your thing. It's as long as you're wearing the.

Rick Rubin

Shoes, you're protected, and you're fine. If you wear our shoes, you're fine. Like, you know, everybody has their own way of running. And don't get me wrong, there's some truth to that to a degree. But float running is my way of taking it and making it simple.

Golden Harper

So, for basic running technique, we're not talking, like, super in depth, you know, stuff, but for most people, they need the basics, and it's every method out there that I know of has been too complicated. And so float running is a way of helping people master the basics of running technique very, very quickly. And the reason I do this harness here is it just hooks in underneath the armpits, and it keeps your arms and your posture in position. And what people don't, you know, here's another thing that people don't realize about running is that it's largely driven by your posture and your arms. So.

And the thing I discovered over and over teaching running technique, you know, night in, night out, from one on one to massive groups of people, you know, hundreds of people, is that if we can get people to focus on keeping their elbow back and not letting their elbow come forward of their hips, everything just works. And we're talking their cadence improves, their foot lands underneath the bent knee, underneath the backward traveling leg, the way we want it to. Their posture will be great, their airway will open. I mean, we can almost distill down, you know, 2 hours of running technique class into, hey, get your elbows back, get those chicken wings, as I like to say it. And if you get your elbow back, your posture is going to be good.

Your foot's going to land where it's supposed to, your cadence is going to be higher like it needs to be. And everything just is so smooth and nice. And what the float run harness does is it provides tactile feedback. So you're not just thinking you're doing it right, it's letting you know you know you're doing it right. Or hey, you're not doing it right, I'm giving you a tug.

That's saying you're coming too far across your midline, or your left side is going one way and your right side isn't, or you're pumping too far forward with your arms or whatever. And I would say 90 plus percent of people need that tactile feedback. And even me, as somebody who's had running technique lessons and breakdowns since I was age eight and been using devices along these lines since I was eight, still really helpful. I'll get out on a run or a race and use it. And I'm still picking up things like, oh, yep, I'm slipping there a little bit.

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Rick Rubin

When did you realize that the arms were such a key part? I would say probably twelve years ago, which is almost at the exact same time I started ultra. When we got into alter, there was a lot of focus on barefoot and there was a lot of focus on foot strike. And I would say, now the biggest thing that I tell people is don't focus on foot strike. And back then, everything from the media was like, hey, just stop heel striking and everything will get better.

Golden Harper

The reality is a lot of people stopped heel striking and they started forefoot striking or doing something different and everything else was still wrong. And so they just got different injuries. You just took the force off of maybe the knees and you placed it on the feet. And so what we saw were a ton of foot injuries. Tell me, the beginning of ultra.

Rick Rubin

When did you realize you were going to start a shoe company as opposed to solving the problem of shoes for you to wear or your friends to wear? It was about a year and a half process of coming to just that realization that, that you pointed out there. Because originally ultra was a way to help our customers at our shop. And so we were taking traditional shoes and we were cutting the heavy, elevated heel out of the back of the shoe and we were leveling the shoe out front to back and we were weight balancing it front to back. And we were doing this because of my dad's experience.

Golden Harper

He attributed all his success as a runner to learning to run like a kenyan. This better running technique, right? And Kenyans learn to run barefoot, correct? Yeah. So they develop great technique from a young age.

And once you've really developed that technique and foot strength, then you can kind of put on whatever you want and it doesn't matter, you can overcome it. Right. And this was kind of the place we were coming from, except we were dealing with the opposite problem. Everybody in America grows up wearing shoes and they have weak feet and we have to reverse engineer it. Right.

We have to go back and reteach them how to run well. And so when people would come into our shop, we would then teach them a lesson on how to run better. And, you know, I had this realization watching on a treadmill. We watched people run barefoot or in five fingers, and they look great. And then that same person 30 seconds later, in the very shoes we were selling them looked like crap.

And we just had this thought of like, oh, man. And I remember, you know, my dad looks at me, he's like, I don't know if we're really helping people here. And again, that's a really bad place to be. And again, this pretty soon after coming back from Hawaii, and I was just like, yeah, it's pretty rough. So you started by shaving the shoes and just modifying them so that they would perform better?

Yeah, because I saw on video and by looking at the specs of the shoes and weighing them, that every shoe in our store was heel heavy and heel high. None of these specs were published back then. Now we have a term for it, drop. That was a term I invented the term zero drop again, you know, one of my. My terms that everyone uses now.

But at the time, it was like, wow, shoes are all heavy in the heel and they're all thick in the heel. And we come to find out basically every shoe is twice as thick in the heel as it is in the forefoot. That's just how they were built. If it's a twelve millimeter forefoot, it's a 24 millimeter heel. If it's a ten millimeter forefoot, it's a 20 millimeter heel.

That's just how the cushioning, you know, was built in the shoe. And what we saw is as people's foot swings out in front of their body, that causes the heel to drop. And in biomechanics, what we call dorsiflexing, so their. Their toes pop up, their heel drops down, and then because the heel's thicker, the foot catches the ground earlier. So people are literally landing inches more out in front of their body than they were without a shoe on.

So we're talking, you know, a fundamental movement that humans have done throughout all eons has now been disrupted, not by millimeters, not by centimeters, but by inches. And we wonder why. Running, which is a non contact sport, has a 73% injury rate, you know, plus, you know, depending on the study, 60% to 90% yearly. It's terrible for a sport with no contact. And so did just what you, you said is, I got looking at shoes, and I was like, well, what if, you know, what if we took a traditional amount of cushioning that still had enough protection to simulate running barefoot on a natural surface while you're on concrete or grass or, in my case, trail running on rocky ground.

We have a moderate amount of protection there. And what if we get to shoot a weight balance front to back? What will happen? And so that's when I took the first pair of shoes into my toaster oven, you know, little mini oven. And I talked to my dad and told him what I was doing.

He's like, yeah, that makes sense. Just do it downstairs where mom can't smell it, you know? And I put this pair of shoes in the mini oven, and, you know, my dad was like, he's doing this stuff all the time, always modifying shoes. Growing up, he was working for Nike when I was born. Socking most of my childhood.

Modifying shoes was just something that happened at our house. He's like, yeah, 275. Wait till the glue bubbles. And I'm like, okay, cool. So, 275.

I wait a little bit long. Melt the laces. Melt all the TPU on the upper. I mean, it's. It's as Frankenstein as they come, right?

You know, it just looks terrible. But I take this shoe out, and I rip the outsole off the rubber. You know, just pull the rubber off the shoe, pull the foam out. I put some slabs of weight balanced, flat foam in spenco foam, and then glue the rubber back on. And I go for a run.

And for the first time in my life, I'm running down the road, but I feel like I'm running barefoot on the grass. Wow. Or barefoot on the beach, you know, just that. That freedom. If you've ever run barefoot on the beach or barefoot on the grass, you know, this, like, freedom that comes with it, it's just.

It's kind of a glorious, fun thing. And I remember just thinking, like, oh, this is amazing, you know? And let's get back and test it. So let's go video it in slow motion. Slow motion video had just become available to, like, not rich people.

And sure enough, the video was pretty, pretty clear that it was doing its job. We get that elevated, heavy heel out of the equation, and good things start to happen. How many of those modified pair of shoes did you make? So just a couple that way. And then I took a fleet to a guy that ran rivers on the Grand Canyon with my dad that owned a shoe cobbler shop nearby, Robert Glazier at village Shoemaker.

And I explained to him what I wanted to do, and he's looking at me, and he's like, look, you know, he's like a third generation shoemaker, certified pdorfist, and he's like, I usually add things to shoes, not take things away. And he said, why would you want to do this? And I explained the biomechanics of it and how it's going to straight fix your posture and everything else and changes the way you walk, changes the way you run back to a more natural way. And he starts shaking his head and giving me this look. And I was like, oh, man.

And he's like, well, that sure makes a lot of sense. And so he ends up modding the shoes for me. And I had brought him these original, like, 1984 saucony jazz originals that have two layers of midsole. You know, they have one slab along the bottom, and there's a second slab that runs from the heel to the arch and then drops down to the forefoot. And I just simply said, hey, can you take the second slab out here?

So they're just level front to back, and then we'll see if we can get them to weight balance front to back. And he was like, yeah, I think we can pull that off. And so we did about two dozen pair then, and we test them on our staff at the store. And, you know, 19 out of 20 loved it. So I was like, well, 95%, that's pretty good rate.

Like, we don't see that very often. And then somehow a customer ended up in a pair. It might have been me, but, you know, this guy comes in, knee problems for ever, just had been through the wringer, tried everything, and he's like, what are you wearing? Because I'm wearing Frankenstein shoes, you know? And I was like, well, we try to get the toes to spread out.

You know, we skip the laces in the front half of the shoe. You know, I'm wearing something that helps me simulate being barefoot on natural surfaces. And, you know, it seems to improve my running technique as well. And he's like, well, I've tried everything else. Let me try it.

And I was like, okay, fine. So he puts them on, goes for a run. He's gone a while, and I have this, like, dude, jacked my shoes kind of moment because this occasionally happens at a shoe store, like, you know, and it's a bad idea when you're dealing with, like, us. We were all pretty fast people that worked at this shop, you know, but I was like, he's been gone a long time. Like, dude, jack my shoes.

And he eventually comes back in and he's like, I'll take them. And I'm just like, man, they're not for sale. Like, these are Frankenstein shoes. And at the time, we. We hadn't even called them zero drop shoes.

We were calling them, like, modified, you know, whatevers and jazzy zeros. Modified jazzy zeros. And he's like, well, I need a pair. Can you make me one? So I make this guy a pair and then swear him to secrecy because we don't want to get sued by the shoe companies.

You know, it's like we're taking their shoe and modifying it, and now we're past the statute of limitations, so we can talk about it, but it's just like, don't tell anybody. Do you know what happens when you tell people not to tell people things? Word spreads. Yeah, exactly. So we didn't think about this at the time, but next thing I know, it's like, a few weeks later, and this guy comes in, and he's like, who sold Joe the hacked up shoes?

And I'm like, over here on the fit stool, like, yeah, that was me. Sorry. He just looks at me, and he's like, sell me a paramount, too. I've known that guy forever, and his knees have always hurt. Now they're feeling good, so I want some.

And next thing you know, it's like taking off like wildfire. We saw a thousand pair. Wow. Just about a thousand pair in a year of these modified shoes, where people are literally taking a brand new pair of shoes. They're paying us full price.

Then they're paying another $20 to $50 to have the cobbler take them apart, them up, take them apart, level them out, weight balance them, and at the same time, we're selling them to people another size bigger. And we're skipping the laces in the front half to attempt somehow to get their toes to get in the game a little bit more. So this is the journey. And back to your question. When did you know that you had to start a shoe company?

So, at this point, initially, there was no start a shoe company. And we had great contacts with shoe companies, and we had all this research. Now we had all this data because we were actually paying people $10 to bring back a survey after six weeks and tell us what happened. Did it get better? Did it get worse?

What hurts more? What hurts less? You know, what are you using more? What are you using less? Muscular?

Where are you getting more sore? Etcetera? I mean, you name it, 25 questions. And you were doing this not for commercial reasons, but because you wanted to know what worked. Yeah.

Yeah. No, just care. Like, sick of selling crap. Yeah, I totally cared. That was it.

Rick Rubin

You weren't doing market research for the market. You were doing market research to understand what actually works. Yeah. Well, and keep in mind, this is a more time consuming process. So we're actually, you know, net, we're probably losing money on the whole thing because we're spending more time trying to fit people.

Golden Harper

It's complicating everything. But we're all super stoked about it because we can tell it's making a difference. And we're fixing people. And the results we're getting are off the charts compared to anything we've ever seen. And we're seeing like 90 plus percent success rates with your typical running injuries.

So. And these surveys came back really five areas that were just, you know, incredibly successful. Plantar fasciosis, what we used to call plantar fasciitis, typical heel pain that people get, shin splints, runner's knee it band and lower back issues. And two of those issues are not running things. You know, plantar fasciosis and lower back issues are not, you know, those are, everybody deals with that kind of stuff.

And we've got people going in and modifying every pair of shoes they own. After a little bit, wow, they're taking their whole closet in and saying, expand my toe box. You know, get rid of the heel elevation, weight balance the shoe. And so we've got the data now. And so we start pitching it to our contacts in the shoe industry and basically getting laughed off the street, you know, and ridiculed and, you know, just lots of no's across the board.

And I was like, okay, so let me get this straight. We know people are getting, they're feeling better and they're less injured, you know, and you don't care? You know, I think now I look at it a little bit more compassionately because I understand, like, stocks and, like shareholders and stuff. But the answer I got across the board is like, yeah, we just can't go there, you know? And a lot of it, honestly, was we have our dedicated fan base who likes the shoes we make now?

And we don't care that you're making something better. We got our people. And if you understand innovation theory, you know, this how is how it works with every innovation in every class out there, basically something new and better comes along and it eventually wipes what was the top dog off the face of the planet because they won't change for that. But at the time, like, I remember just being so distraught and so frustrated that we were doing something that was really helping people. It was incredibly effective.

And all these shoe companies that I grew up darn near worshipping didn't give a crap. And that was really hard for me at the time. And so it was during this time, this kind of year long acceptance, very slow acceptance, that we might have to do this. But the problem with doing it is, up to that point, we'd have the same seven running shoe companies. Since the beginning of running shoot time, basically, the quickest way to go homeless was start a shoe company.

You know, start a running shoe company. You don't make it. You spend millions, you go homeless like that. That was the pattern, right? And what happened is, it was on my birthday, my cousin Jeremy comes over to my house, and.

And I say to him, like, you know, kind of tell him what I'm doing. And he's like, well, I haven't run in, like, five years because my knees hurt. Like, prove it. I'm like, okay. So we go for a run, and I give him the hacked up, modified zero drop shoes, and he's blown away.

And we get to a turnaround point. I'm like, okay, put regular shoes back on. And we run back, and now his knees killing him. And he's like, we have to do this. We got to make these things.

And I'm like, yeah, quickest way to go homeless, you know? He's like, I'll do everything. You know, you just design cool shoes and do the biomechanics and product, and I'll do everything. You know, I'll find the people, I'll find the contacts, manufacturing, all that. And I'm like, okay, whatever, bro.

You know? Is that what happened? I don't even know how you start something like this. Neither did I. Yeah, so, I mean, so basically what happened is, initially, he has me make him a pair, but he comes back and he's like, can you get me a real pair?

And I'm like, what do you mean, a real pair? He's like, well, you know, not made by you. I'm like, well, they don't exist. And he's like, you mean to tell me there's no running shoes on the market that are shaped like feet and keep your foot in barefoot position, don't have this elevated heel in them? And I was like, no.

And he's like, that's preposterous. Like, that's absolutely absurd. I don't believe you. And I was like, what would I know? I just managed a shoe store, and I'm like, go do the research, man.

And so my cousin Jeremy Hallett, he does the research. He comes back and he's like, you're right. They don't exist. It's crazy. And I was like, yeah, it is crazy.

And so, long story short, he finds these guys that find these guys that then find us. And we're talking ex. Nike and Adidas develop executives and the head of the kitchen at the Nike. At Nike, their advanced concepts team, head of development at DS, the first guy to ever do CAD, computer animated design for shoes. These guys had this rapid prototyping group, and they were like, hey, we thought about doing what you're doing, but we don't really have a marketing story.

And you do, you know, with your running background and all this stuff. So let's get together. So we meet with these guys, you know, next thing we know, we're a million dollars in debt. And, you know, here I am today. And it is what it is.

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Rick Rubin

Tell me about the story of the growth of the company. Yeah, so altra, you know, is probably worth, I don't know, between 500 million and a billion dollars today. You know, started with nothing, essentially. How many years old is it now? When did you start?

Golden Harper

I started hacking shoes in 2008. We got the first shoes on the market in 2011. So we're looking at almost 13 years now. And we did like 1.3 million year one. When you started, did you just have one model?

Yes, we started with this model called the instinct. It was just a road running, you know, shoe, kind of crossover shoe, moderate cushion. Again, just simulate running barefoot on natural terrain. I think you have a pair of escalantes now and the escalante in the line now is probably the closest thing to what the instinct was back then. The instinct was probably a little more shoe, I would say just a little bit, but very, very similar.

And then we built the lone peak, which has been the number one trail shoe in America, repeatedly and is a household name kind of shoe that still exists today. That came out in November, so about six, seven, eight months after the instinct. And we also built a shoe called the Adam and the Eve, men's and woman's version. These were barefoot style shoes, similar to five fingers, just without the toe pockets. And that was kind of the initial lineup.

Rick Rubin

That first year when you guys started, no one was doing either zero drop or natural wide toe box running shoes. Not with any cushion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And really, it was just five fingers. So you had the five toe shoes.

Golden Harper

About the same time we launched, some of the minimalist shoes came on. Those were non cushioned, barefoot style shoes. Most did not have an appropriate toe box, what I'd call foot shaped toe box, but some kind of did after that. You know, originally, that first year, we're out there pitching at the running shoe stores, and everybody's like, well, what's with the barefoot style shoes with cushioning, or what's with the running shoes without the heel and with the big clown shaped toe box? You know, we just.

We were creating a category because it simply didn't exist at all. And I'm a big believer in doing this is like, you want to create something that people don't even know they need. Yeah. You want to create a solution that is so good that people are like, wow, I never thought about that before. So we've always been very anti trend.

I always had this philosophy of, let's create the trend, basically, and now I'm not at altar anymore. It's a publicly traded company, and that philosophy may or may not exist into the future. Being a publicly traded company, probably not, but that was always kind of the mindset from the get go. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you because when I got the shoes, I never felt comfortable shoes before in my life.

Rick Rubin

And it's just a radical experience to feel something that feels like it belongs on your foot as opposed to all the shoes that don't. Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that. My goal was always like, they should disappear. Yeah.

When did the book born to run come out? During your story. So born to run came out just as I was like, I think I was in Hawaii when born to run hit. So born to run had been a thing for a couple years before I started hacking up shoes, and we had been selling the five fingers at our store for a couple of years, and we knew they were a great tool. We also just knew the average person couldn't handle them.

Golden Harper

And they weren't practical for hard, flat, man made surfaces, and they weren't practical for technical trail. And so that was kind of the frame. But born to run definitely built a foundation and helped bring an awareness there. And, you know, I still, you know, talk to Chris McDougall to this day. We get along.

Rick Rubin

So I love Boyntoran. It's interesting. I never. I don't think I ever read a book. I certainly never read a book about running before, but I don't think I read any book about any sport before just because I'm not interested.

And a friend of mine said, you got to read this book. I read the book. It made me cry. It was beautiful. Yep.

Amazing book. Amazing book. Yeah. And I think. I think I wanted to create that experience that people had reading born to run in shoe form, you know, and for me, altar was like, so much more than shoes.

Golden Harper

You know, our first investor and my mentor, Joe Morton, he always said to me, like, you know, the shoes are great, but the education is like, is like another component of this that's so big. You know, actually teaching people how to move properly and teaching people to strengthen their feet. Like, you know, you're providing more than a shoe to people. You're providing people an experience. And that was really, for me, the goal of doing it, and that's really what I'm doing with PR gear now is I'm doing this other stuff that really allows me to focus on that other stuff, because there are the teaching part, yeah, there are shoes out there, but there's some accessories and things people need and education that people need to make this easier.

You know, people's feet are deformed. I'm a huge proponent of correct toes that we sell, and correct toes are a way for people to get their deformed feet back to looking like natural, happy, healthy human feet. Are those like yoga toes? Kind of, except you wear them inside foot shaped shoes so you can actually wear them while you're active. And, you know, I tell people they're an arch support, they're an ankle brace, and they are a pronation optimizer.

And until you've put them on, you just don't understand it. But at my family shoe store, we have people do a balance test without them on. And most people's feet, again, their. Their big toe is bent in their toes touch which natural human feet, your toes really shouldn't be touching. And then we put them in a pair of correct toes and have them do a balance test.

Rick Rubin

So the toes want to look almost like fingers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that. Your toes should be spaced. You know, they, they should be spread apart, and certainly, if they're not, they should be able to do so.

Golden Harper

You know, the biggest thing we see with people as they age is their feet are not stable and they fall and falls kill lots of elderly people. And there's actually tons of studies supporting this. We get people out of big, fat, cushy shoes that are stabilizing and deforming their feet, and we get them into barefoot style, you know, footwear, and we get their toes to spread out and they stop falling over. And, and I was referencing the balance test we do at the shop because, you know, we'll have people, and it can be somebody who's 70 years old that can't balance on 1ft. We put a pair of correct on them, and instantly their balance improves dramatically.

And, and people literally look at me and they're like, okay, what voodoo magic did you just do on me? Yeah, you know, that's, that's just one example. The other thing we do, we do these bridge soles, and they have a met pad in them. And a lot of people don't even know what a met pad is, but a met pad sits as a cushion back behind your metatarsal heads or your forefoot. And most shoes are concave left to right.

So your shoe is higher on the right side and the left side than it is in the middle. And as your shoe wears out, it gets even more so. And so what happens is your foot ends up in this position where your middle met heads or the middle part of your forefoot is down. Like sway back. Yep, exactly.

And so what happens with a met pad is you put a Met pad in a shoe and it actually fills that gap, and it puts your forefoot back into natural position. And bridge soles are named this way because they're a bridge from traditional footwear to more natural footwear. So a lot of people will kind of have a tough time with that transition. You know, some people, it's really easy for other people, just like they don't have the foot strength and, and if they reduce their cushion too much, which most people do, they have issue. And so these bridge holes are a bridge from traditional footwear to natural footwear, and they just make that transition nice and seamless for people.

And then we give them the education. What are the best foot exercises? So the biggest, if you have to really distill it down, I would say the single best thing people could and should be doing, the easiest one is just go jog barefoot on the grass or sand. Single best foot exercise you can do. If you can't do that, and that's not easy, you probably should do this anyway, is what's called a single leg heel float, and it's simply balancing on 1ft.

And if you can comfortably balance on 1ft, then you pull your heels slightly off the ground. We're talking quarter to a half inch max, and you sit there and balance. And the nice thing with this exercise, you may or may not have picked this up. For me, I'm a very moderate, you know, kind of approach guy. I hate kind of the extremes because I just, people get excited about that stuff, but it's not practical.

I'm super practical. And the nice thing with single leg heel floats, you can do it anywhere. You can do a single leg heel float waiting in line to pay for your groceries. You know, just balance on 1ft, pull that heel slightly off, up off the ground. Once you get decently good at it, no one has to know what's happening.

And so that that single leg balancing is a huge foot strengthening exercise, obviously going to be more effective down barefoot, and even more effective done barefoot with correct toes in. That's the key one. And then I just like to use a little like an elastic, you know, band of some sort, and walk with an elastic band around the big toes. So it's pulling the big toes away from your feet and towards each other. Anything to help those feet, you know, re approximate, basically, because for decades, most of us have been in shoes that bend the big toes away from each other.

And the more your big toe is bent away from the other big toe, the more problems you tend to have, the less your Arch Works, etcetera. So zero drop means the heel is level with the front of the foot, correct? Yeah. So the whole idea was like a typical shoe would drop from the heel down to the forefoot. Understood.

And so the, I should tell you the story of how this came out. So I meant the shoemaker, when I was first doing this, and we would actually measure the thickness of the midsole that was left, and I would talk about how it, you know, was dropping from the heel to the forefoot. And Robert Glazier, the shoemaker, he'd have these millimeter rulers, and he'd sit here and he'd measure you know how thick it was here and how thick it was here. He'd be like, okay, it's still dropping 2 mm from the heels of the forefoot. I'm like, okay, good.

Sand two more millimeters out, we'd send two more millimeters out. And we're calling them hacked up modified shoes. Right? And then he sands two out, and we remeasured, and he's like, okay, it's dropping 0 mm. I'm like, robert, you're a genius.

We don't have to call them hacked up modified shoes anymore. We'll call them zero drop shoes. It sounds cool, you know, and it's what they are. It's great. Yeah.

And the. I think the great irony of it is the term, like, caught on long before ultra did. Like I said, we sold $1.3 million worth of ultras the first year. Well, that's nothing compared to the term. Zero drop went into usage among the born to run community.

Like, instantly. Like, it was just like everybody was using it. And it was really a term to describe the cushioning of the shoe. The cushioning was no longer dropping from the heel of the forefoot. Right.

Then all these, like, minimalist, barefoot style shoes came out with no cushioning, and they started calling themselves zero drop shoes. And I just had to get a chuckle because it actually kind of created an uphill battle for ultra at run specialty, because people started associating zero drop with no cushion. And it was really a term to actually describe the cushioning of the shoe originally. Is there a benefit in being as close to the ground as possible in your flat position? It's very situational, and I would say it relates to impact and it relates to activity.

So, for example, I am sitting here talking to you barefoot right now. There's no reason for me to have a shoe on. There's no benefit from having a shoe on, so I want to remove anything possible. Also, you know, if you're familiar with grounding, there's. There's incredible benefits with just letting your body ground with the earth.

And a lot of people think that's hooky stuff, but just letting your foot connect with the earth. There are studies that show there's a much bigger electron transfer happening there. So you get these. These ions that are transferring. It's much better.

And so a lot of health benefits with grounding. And, you know, I would say for casual usage, yeah, you want to have as little to no cushion as possible. You know, if you're not challenging your feet, if you're not doing something that's difficult for your feet. I don't see any reason. And you're going to be.

The closer you are to the ground, the more stable you're going to be, period. Sports cars are low and wide for a reason. You know, I always tell people you want to use the least amount of cushioning that's necessary for what you're doing and trying to accomplish. So, you know, for me, I go for a 1 mile run around my neighborhood. I don't really need a shoe on for that.

Okay. I go for a five mile trail run across rocky terrain with mud. I probably want lugs for grip, and I probably want some rock protection in the form of cushioning or rock plate to blunt the rocks and make it easier for me to do that safely and quickly. Now I go run a hundred mile race. It's really hard to prepare your feet to go 100 miles, at least in the modern world.

And so having a big, fat, thick, cushy shoe can actually be helpful at the hundred mile distance for a lot of people. There are people that take years and train their feet and get their really, their feet really strong and can do a hundred mile race in no cushioning, but they're one in a billion, you. Know, how often have you done a hundred mile race over the course of your life? I stop at 50. 50 is your number.

Once I get a little bit older and I lose my fast twitch, I'll probably move up and do hundreds. But I like to run still. And the reality is, even the elites are not really running at the 100 miles distance. They're running the downhills, they're running some of the flats. Almost everybody's power, hiking the uphills and speed is not as much as.

It's all relative, I guess. But for me, I can run quickly. At the end of a 50 miles race, I've run a 545 miles. At the end of a 50 miles race. Wow.

I've run, you know, a 36 minutes, ten k at the end of a 50 miles race. Wow. Nobody's doing that in a hundred mile.

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Rick Rubin

Tell me what it's like to do a 50 miles race. What's the mindset? I always tell people, like, if you're on a trail run, you should approach it like hiking. The mindset is hiking. I'm going hiking.

Golden Harper

I'm just doing it faster. And for most people, it means you are going to, you're going to hike the uphill, you're going to jog the flat, and you're going to run the down. And also, it's an eating contest. And if you've read born to run, you hear him talk about this. But it's almost as much more about who has the awesome stomach as it is about who has the awesome legs, because you have to fuel.

You can get through a marathon without fueling extensively, but you go much beyond that, and you're dead person, you know, walking if you can't fuel properly. And so for me, the mindset is like, I'm going to go do this somewhere incredibly beautiful because I want to experience this beauty. I'd love to do it fast. I'm going to eat stuff that I like, and I'm going to have a great time with it. And the mindset is like, for me, survive for 37 miles, and then let's get down to business.

For the last half marathon, for me, that's an hour and a half, and it's like, it's go time now. What do you do for food? So I actually trained my stomach when I first started doing this. I would drink orange juice right before going really acidic, and then I'd stop at 711 along the way and get mini tacos and pizza and burgers and anything else. Just horrible food, you know, that I wouldn't normally eat in normal life, really.

But I did it to train my stomach, because I know, like, the stomach is the probably the single greatest issue for most people running alter distances, you. Get nauseous, or what is it? You get nauseous, you have a hard time holding food down, you have a hard time getting enough in. And so, you know, I've always been of the mindset. Like, for example, my first marathon, the mindset was like, well, when I went to run my first marathon, I had already done things harder than the actual marathon, so the race didn't actually seem that hard, and that was the mindset.

I really took into to ultras as well. It was like, okay, let's. You know, this eating situation, let's make it harder than it's going to be on race day, so the race day isn't so tough, basically. And training your stomach is a real thing, you know, it's a huge thing. I never heard of that before.

Rick Rubin

I never heard of training your stomach in that way. It's. Yeah, and it's such a big one, and people don't talk about it enough. But, you know, the reality is you're burning two to 400 calories an hour or more, and you've got to replace at least a couple hundred of that to have any chance of performing, you know, optimally. So learn to eat whatever, you know.

Golden Harper

And. And ultra aid stations are beautiful things. You know, you just go in and it's like, there's something for everybody. For me, I'm usually grabbing, you know, some soda, a handful of peanut m and m's, beef jerky, bacon, you know, pancakes, grilled cheese sandwich, quesadillas, you name it, just grab it, put it in your pockets, roll, and then just eat while you're going, kind of thing. So it's just a mobile food party, you know, at the end of the.

Rick Rubin

Day, what's the first pushback you get from your body? It's like something in me doesn't like doing this. Sometimes it's your stomach, you know, sometimes it's like, I don't want to eat that. I don't feel like drinking more. And, you know, I have to do this.

Golden Harper

Like, if I do not get in this amount of calories, I will not keep going at the same rate. Or if I do not drink, I will dehydrate and cause a problem. That's really only an issue. Dehydration is massively overrated, in my opinion, especially shorter races. It's really difficult to dehydrate in under 3 hours, for example, which is, you know, I run marathons in about two and a half hours.

So dehydration is not something I face at that level, but it's longer levels, you know, that that can be a thing. But I would say, you know, in ultra distances, there's these ebbs and flows of just fatigue. And at first it's probably physical fatigue where you just can't hold the pace you want to hold, and your legs are just like, sorry, bro, like, it's not happening today. But then you come out of it, it's like you just like, suck it up for an hour, you know, and the next thing you know, it's like we're flying again, you know, and you've been fueling. So it happens towards the end of the race.

It's actually more like your brain is like, what is happening? Like, we're fatigued out here. We're done, we're fried. It doesn't want to believe anymore, you know? And so it's really this roller coaster of, of.

I would say both physical roller coaster, but an emotional roller coaster. And I think that's why people get addicted to it. I don't really promote it. You know, if we're running for health, we should be running five ks, running somewhere between a mile fast and 3 miles fast. And training for that is the optimal thing to be doing for your health.

But there is something about the challenge of running 50 miles in the mountains or, you know, 50k or 100 miles or whatever that people love. And part of it is just this emotional roller coaster and this physical roller coaster that happens where you literally think, I'm dead, I'm done, I'm quitting, it's over. And an hour later, you're back on top of the world. Amazing. And then an hour later, you might be dead, done, and quitting for real.

But, you know, who knows? That's a fun piece of things for sure. That, I think leads to the addiction of ultra running, because it's really not that healthy of an activity, in my opinion. But so many of these races are just in jaw droppingly beautiful places, and this combination of beautiful place with incredible life experience of these roller coasters is powerful. Is there anything about body type for running?

Rick Rubin

Like some people say, if you're over a certain amount of weight, running is not for you. Better to walk. Is any of that true? I mean, maybe at a certain size when. When you get really, really big point.

Golden Harper

But for the most part, no. It's interesting, you know, I think people have this misunderstanding that, you know, if you're tall, you're gonna be a better runner. Well, the average marathon champion is male, is five six and 112 pounds. You know, so tall is. Is actually not an advantage.

Typically, your marathon and under runners tend to be smaller at the elite levels, but you're. A lot of your elite ultra runners are pretty big, you know, and it's actually helpful to have more muscle mass and fat storage to go off of for these longer distances. And you may not see that as much in the elite of the elite, but everything from good to elite. I would say, on average, the athletes who are a little bit bigger tend to do a little bit better in these longer distances, which is kind of an interesting thing. But, yeah, for general people running, you know, if we give people the right techniques, they tend to be fine.

And I find that people that are heavier tend to adopt better technique, easier. They haven't learned as bad of habits, and their body naturally is like, we got a lot of weight hitting the ground here. We need to spend more mind power and emphasis on protecting ourselves. And they can kind of overcome their bad shoes more than the average person might be able to, which is an interesting thing for sure. You mentioned grounding earlier.

Rick Rubin

Did you ever consider making the ultras groundable? Yeah. My sister very early on was like, you should put grounding plugs in ultras, you know, and it was like, ah. At the time, we were mostly only making running shoes. And it's like, that's like half an hour out of the day for most people.

Golden Harper

And people can ground any other time of the day, you know, they can take their shoes off before or after their run and get the benefits that way. And from an engineering standpoint, it was difficult, and a marketing standpoint, very challenging to kind of tell that story. So it didn't get off the ground, but it was definitely considered and didn't quite make it to prototype stage, but it was in development stage for sure. If you were to do it, how would you do it? So, there are shoes today that have grounding plugs in them, and they run a copper interface from the middle of the shoe.

So the copper touches the ground and it runs to something that then connects with the foot. So the foot is some on something that's touching the copper interface, which is then running a line down to the ground. So we're getting pretty extreme on the fringes here, but that's what people do, and I think it's really interesting. So it's not something I've played a whole lot with, but fun to think about, at least. So when you started your shoe company, what was the first competition you had in foot shaped shoes?

You know, even today, there's really only one other brand making cushion foot shape running shoes, which is fascinating and saddening at the same time to me. You know, I would say these days, and even all along, I have not always just been a pure ultra advocate, but I've been an advocate for healthy footwear. Yeah. This is why I sit on the executive board of the healthy feet alliance and I promote shoes. Besides ultra love ultra, don't get me wrong, but I want people in whatever foot shape, natural, zero drop shoe is going to be best for them.

Yeah. There's just one other brand out there right now, at least with any cushioning, and I wish there were more, frankly. I still remember when this other brand came out and my buddy that helped me start the company as well, Brian Becks did. I remember him just being pissed. He was just like, can't believe those guys just ripped off our instinct shoe and made their own and slapped their brand on it.

And it's actually the guy that started five fingers in the US doing this. And him and I are, you know, we're good friends and we get along and I remember thinking like, awesome. They just totally legitimized us. Like, they just made us look legit, you know? Yeah.

Rick Rubin

Now it's like a real format. Yeah. And I think part of it, though is it's really hard to engineer this because shoe lasts at the factories, these foot forms that the shoe are built around, they all come with heel elevation. I see they all start tapered. Like when we did this, I had to engineer these lasts from the ground up.

Golden Harper

We had to literally build an entirely new shape that had never existed before. A last is a plastic foot. Plastic or metal foot form. Yeah. It's like a mannequin foot, essentially.

Yeah. Except like all other shoes, it's super pointy. Yeah. And so we had to go in and make an actual one that looked like a foot in a sock, basically. And that's actually how we got the shapes for the first ultras, is I literally took a bunch of healthy feet and, you know, my mindset was like, okay, people that get injured, I'm not going to use them.

I was talking to people that never got injured. I was like, okay, you've never had any foot problems, you never get injured. Let me trace your feet. Wear your socks, because you wear socks when you wear shoes. And we're going to trace your feet and see what those shapes look like.

Rick Rubin

Based on the length of a foot. How much difference is there in the width of the front of the. The foot from person to person? A lot. Really?

Golden Harper

Yeah. People have massive variability. It's very, very difficult to fit everybody. You kind of do the best, the best you can, try and get in the middle of that bell curve as much as possible. But that said, it's better for the foot box to be too big than too small.

Yeah. And that's actually a big point as a shoe. You know, when I'm actually selling a shoe or fitting somebody for a shoe, the first thing I'm going to tell them is you know, you want your shoe to disappear. The shoe that's best for you is the shoe that feels the least there, and it should feel too big in the toes. And if it doesn't feel too big in the toes, it's too small.

Rick Rubin

Yeah. And I will just emphasize that over and over. And I like to kind of push it a little bit far with people because most people can't grasp this. Since we have been little kids, our parents have told us to put our shoes on and tie them up tight and make sure they're secure. And that's so bad for blood flow.

Golden Harper

It's bad for foot health, like, you know, and the reality is, when your toes learn to spread out and do their thing, they stabilize in the shoe. You know, I don't even lace my shoes anymore. You know, the only time I'll lace them is when I'm running, like, super technical trail or I'm doing, like, really fast speed work. And even then, you know, if I don't lace my shoes, my foot can go to roll or my shoe can, and my foot will be like, nope, I'm good. You know, the toes will spread out and do their thing where the, you know, the shoe does something you may not want it to do, for example.

And that's just, like, a cool thing that the human body does once you get it back, being a human body, you know. So when you say you don't lace them, do you mean you don't have laces in them at all or you don't tie them? I'll put my foot in the shoe. Right. And then I'll pull my foot most of the way out of the shoe.

So I'll take it, and before my heel comes all the way out of the shoe, then I'll tie the shoe nice and tight, and then I'll put my foot back in the shoe at that point in time, and from then on, that shoe is a slip on. I see. I slide it on. I slide it off. I never tie it.

I never untie it until it, you know, just randomly comes untied at some point in time. So it comes on and off. Like a boot. Yeah, boot or a slipper, you know? And I think people like this idea of not having to tie their shoes, for sure.

For a lot of people, they have to rewire their brain again because they've just been taught my shoes should be tight, and it's uncomfortable to them for their heel to slip up and down a little bit at first. But again, the reality is once you get used to this, it's far more comfortable. You get better blood flow. It helps everything heal, your foot stabilizes better. It's just a better way to be doing things.

Rick Rubin

So what's your feeling about socks or no socks? Personal? I'll say my feet stink. So if I don't wear merino wool socks, it's, it's bad for people around me. But the biggest problem with socks is socks deform your feet, too.

Golden Harper

You know, if you've ever put a nice pair of socks up next to your foot, it's like half the size of your foot. Well, that's going to pull your toes together. And in my opinion, you know, socks are almost as responsible for foot deformation as shoes are. And so the, the biggest thing, you know, if you're going to wear socks, and that's your preference, buy them a size bigger than the package says. So, for example, I'm a size nine foot.

I wear a size ten shoe. I wear socks for a size 13 to 15. Wow. And they fit great, you know, and the thing I always have people do is just like, take your sock and hold it up next to your foot, you know, and my foot, even with the size 13 to 15 sock, my foot is still longer than my sock is. And it's a ridiculous thing when you really think about it.

So if you don't want to deform your feet and you want your feet to be healthier, use a sock that's bigger. Tell me more about the first year of ultra. How did you distribute them? So Brian, Jeremy and I went and knocked on the door of running stores everywhere. We went to trade shows, we cold called.

There's about 1000 running stores in America. I've been in close to 700 of them personally. And the approach was basically, we manage shoe stores. Here's what other shoes do. This is why we think we make something that could be an advantage to you and you should carry it.

Rick Rubin

And what percentage of people were interested? I'd say maybe one in three, one in four would pick it up in the first year or so after we met with them, probably only one in 20. That was like on the spot. Yes, let's go. So it was a lot of, a lot of rejection.

Golden Harper

But as the years go on and the science is what it is, and, you know, people see it more and get more familiar with it, then it becomes easier. And, you know, I still remember some of these guys calling back that may have been really, really harsh to us early on and just totally dismissive and calling back to get an account and sometimes I'd be like, make them sweat a little bit. Don't approve that. Account for a few weeks. You know, I'm not vindictive by any means, but I do like to have fun with people.

And, you know, if you made me sweat for a few years, I might make you sweat for a couple weeks.

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Rick Rubin

Was there a moment in time where it felt like it really shifted to being beyond your dream? Successful? No, still not there, to be honest. I remember, like, I remember being at SGB 40 under 40. We were nominated and were inducted into the 40 under 40.

Golden Harper

And that's like these 40 business leaders under 40 years old. And it's this big, big deal in the business world. Whatever. I don't really care about this stuff, but I remember being asked this question and they're like, so when did AlTR become bigger than you thought it would be? And I still remember Brian and Jeremy looking at each other and we're like, it's not like we thought it'd be bigger, and it wasn't the product.

It was the whole back end side of the business. The accounting, the shipping, the delivery, the customs, the just the nuts and bolts, the organization of the business. That really held us back from being bigger, in my opinion, at least, you know, that first five, six, seven years, I thought we'd be bigger after four or five years than Altra is now, frankly. Wow. I probably didn't see us being as big as we became in the thru hiking community.

That one took off really quick, and it was in that first, probably four years, we became the number one shoe on all the long trails. So people hiking, Canada, Mexico, hands down, ultras are the highest shoe there. And the ultra marathoning world, that. That came really fast, too. There's not a lot of those people, I mean, in, in the grand scheme of things.

But we did dominate that market pretty quick, and the trail market was about where we had kind of, I think the original vision was like, we ended up being in trail running where we kind of thought we'd be overall. And that's still catching up today. Yeah, I imagine it catching up because the, again, once you wear the shoes, it'd be hard to put on any other shoes. You know, I think people, where people miss the boat and where that ends up not being true is runners are very beholden to marketing and technology, and they're all about fast, you know, and the irony is we've got all these super shoes now. And Ultra makes a super shoe called the Vanished carbonal.

That's fantastic. But these super shoes, for the most part, are, they're engineered to make you run faster, but they're also engineered to injure you. And we're seeing an epidemic of runners that are running a lot of miles in these super shoes. And they have these really explosive foams. They're super bouncy, bouncy.

But the problem is they tend to amplify anything you do wrong as well. So what goes down has to come back up. Right. And with these explosive foams, it gets amplified that much more. And so we're seeing this epidemic of injuries.

You know, this is where road runners are just so beholden to this. And the, the best super shoes are, on average, making people one to 2 seconds faster a mile. And, you know, for reference, like our float run harnesses that we make, our average reviewer is saying they get 30 seconds faster a mile. You know, you pay $12 for a float run harness or spend three to $500 on a pair of super shoes, your choice one will get you more injured and the one will get you less injured, and it's the cheaper one that gets you less injured. But the thing there is, runners are so beholden to that, you know, and all the marketing is there, all the dollars are spent there.

And so where we get into a problem is, you know, people go after that stuff. And also doing this stuff that we're talking about, getting your foot back into its natural position is far more important for all day, every day than it is for the 30 minutes a day you run average. You know, you have some ultra marathoners that run for an hour plus a day. You know, some elite roadrunners or higher level roadrunners that run more than an hour a day. But for, for the average person out there, they're running ten to 30 minutes a day, and you're going to get a lot more benefit having your foot in natural position for all day, every day than you are just for running.

And so I always tell people, like, at the end of the day, running what you want, you're biomechanically going to be better. You're going to be less injured in a pair of foot shape, zero drop cushion shoes. But what you wear all day, every day, getting your foot back into its natural position, is going to be a lot more important. So it'd be better to wear ultras or be barefoot during the day than the little bit of time that you're exercising? Absolutely.

Yeah, 100%. And that's where I think people kind of missed the boat, in my opinion. And at altar, we used to do something where we, we called it the month long foot shape challenge, and we challenged people to wear nothing but foot shaped shoes for a month. And that included your casual wear as much as your running wear. And when those people did that, it was exactly what you said.

Those people that actually took the foot shape challenge, very few of them went back to regular shoes at that point in time. But the people that still wore what I would call modern, traditional shoes all day and occasionally ran in ultras, it wasn't as hard for them to go back. Do the great runners tend to be great runners naturally, or is it more based on stuff that they've learned? Sprinters are almost completely genetic. You could have the greatest coach in the world, the greatest nutrition, the greatest training, and you're either born a great sprinter or you're not.

I think the most beautiful thing about distance running is that anybody can be really good. Now, can anybody make it to the Olympics? Probably not. You're kind of born an olympian or not to a degree. But for the most part, with distance running, you get in what you put out.

And this is something my dad has always loved because he came from this non running background. He came from being a weightlifter, essentially, and a really big guy. And you put the work in, you get it out, and it doesn't really matter who you are. It doesn't matter what your genetics are like. Anybody can be respectable, and I love that, too.

Personally, there's not a lot of sports like that. Frankly, it's probably the least genetic based sport I can think of. What's your feeling on heart rate training? I'm a math disciple. Math is Phil Maffetone's method to a degree.

So I'm basically a believer in training at a really low heart rate for the bulk of my mileage. The number one cause of running injuries is supposedly overtraining. It's training with the wrong technique. It's straining your body too much. So I guess in that sense, it's over training.

And the best way to combat overtraining and therefore running injuries is just to freaking slow down. It should be enjoyable. And I don't know really always how to explain it to people, but I know that when I tell them to do it, almost everybody comes back to me and is like, well, I have to walk at that heart rate, or, like, that's too slow. Like, I don't feel like I'm running. It's like, yeah, well, that's kind of how it is at first.

Then your body adapts. Next thing you know, you're running at that same heart rate a few months later, and you're going a lot faster. And, you know, for me, I kind of describe it like this. Sometimes my wife will call me on while I'm out on a run, and a few minutes into my run, she'll be like, are you running right now? And that's a good way to describe if you're running at the right heart rate most of the time is somebody could give you a call on the phone, and they might not know you're running, you know, for a while.

It might take a while before they're like, oh, you're out running, aren't you? And what people don't understand with this is the way the aerobic engine is built. It doesn't matter whether you're running at the top end of your aerobic zone or the bottom end of your aerobic zone. You get the same benefit either way. So you might as well run slower and put more volume in, which also does less muscle damage, which means you're more recovered.

So that when you do want to go fast or hard, you're more fresh and able to do that. So essentially, you get the same benefit. You can put in more volume, and you're fresher to hit it harder when you want to hit it harder. And that's why it works. And I don't hear a lot of people talk about that why of the component.

And I'm a big why guy. When did you first hear about Philmaffetone? My mom went to a maffetone coaching thing when I believe Saucony, who was her sponsor at the time, probably early nineties sometimes. Probably, you know, somewhere around the time around my first marathon, and it took a while, and I probably didn't like, fully embrace it all the way until about the time I started ultra again. And I haven't had a major running injury since that time.

So it's been 13 years now, and I've. I've never had an it band injury or knee injury or shin splints or, you know, runner's knee or any of this stuff. Tell me about your first marathon. So when I think about it, I feel like I'm talking about somebody else's life. And maybe it's because when you run long distance, you burn brain cells, and I just burned too many brain cells running as a young kid.

You know, my parents, they had read that the longer kids crawl, the more intelligent they'd be. There were some studies on this, and so they always push me down whenever I stand up to walk. And I just got pushed down all the time as a toddler. And one day they set me outside the car and didn't realize there was a playground there. And I had never walked before.

But supposedly I took off running and ran to the playground before I had ever done any extensive walking. You know, I maybe got a step two, three steps in before I got knocked over. That was me running before I walked, supposedly. Again, like, I don't remember this. And I ran at a young age.

My parents were race directors, so, you know, put races on, so I ended up running races. I just liked it. And when I was eight, I won the world youth championships. And it was kind of like, this was a shorter race, like three k, I think I was kind of like, what's next? And my next door neighbor was an Olympic trials qualifier as well, in the marathon.

My mom was a multi time Olympic trials qualifier. My mom was the state record holder in the marathon. My dad, you know, was elite as well. And I remember just thinking, well, the St. George Marathon is like the thing.

Like, you know, I mean, they do Boston and stuff, too, but really, like, at least in my circle, like, St. George Marathon was the thing everybody keyed in on. And if you're not, you know, familiar with this, St. George is down by Las Vegas, Nevada. Beautiful red rock scenery.

You know, it's. It's basically a road marathon that looks like it should be a trail race. It's just gorgeous start to finish. And I was like, well, everybody else does that. I want to do that.

You know, I was like, hey, dad, I want to run St. George. He's like, you're eight. No, you know, and so that year I turned nine. And that year at St.

George, the youngest runner wins the performance of the day trophy. Wow. Which is the six foot tall trophy. And I'm telling you, to a little sawed off, four foot tall nine year old runner, there is nothing more cool than a six foot tall trophy that is the pinnacle of life at that point in time. And I just remember turning to my dad, I'm watching the awards, and he ran, this kid was twelve, ran four and a half hour marathon, which is super impressive.

And I just remember turning to my dad and just be like, if you would have let me run, I would have got that cool trophy, you know? And I never let it go. Like, I just kept pestering him and pestering him. And the next spring, at one point, he was just like, fine, fine. Just leave me alone.

If you run rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, harder than a marathon, and you run up Mount Timpanogos and back, you know, also harder than a marathon, and do these other couple things that are marathon equivalents, basically, I'll let you run the marathon. And I really think the thinking at the time was like, he'll realize that this is a horrible idea, that this is super painful and it takes a ton of commitment, and, you know, he'll try to do one of these things and just like, pull the plug and go back to running short stuff or, you know, playing basketball. And I played a ton of basketball and football as a kid, so. And I'm kind of messed up because I liked it, you know. In fact, we went and ran rim to rim, and this is kind of where it started and ended.

And I got done the first day and I suffered. But, like, they were doing Havasupai the next day. And if you know about Havasupai, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Kind of same thing. It's at least a marathon level effort to run down into Havasupai and back out.

And they were gonna do that the next day, my dad and his friends that I was with. And, you know, they were like, okay, you've had enough, right? And I was like, no, I'm going to have a supai. So I end up running 50 miles in two days, basically back to back marathons as a nine year old. Unbelievable.

And that was it. You know, at that point, the writing was on the wall, right? I was going to do Mount Tipponogos and I was going to do these other things, and it wasn't going to be a problem. And so he was, he essentially lost a bet with me, was forced to let me run, and, you know, it's not like I was doing all this specific training or anything, but I had done things that were harder than the race, had no expectations. It was just like, I go out and have fun.

3 hours, eight minutes, 5 seconds. Wow. And this is seven minutes a mile. For a marathon. Yeah, for a marathon.

State record nine year old. I turned ten right before the race, so I was ten on race day. And, of course, the next couple years, I ran faster. And I'm about the same speed as the elite Olympic trials qualifying woman. And they don't like that.

You know, that's an ego blow when a four foot tall, sawed off run with red hair goes by lots of swear words. I learned a lot of new vocabulary at that point in time. It sounds super fun. It really was, and it still is for me. And I think that's, like, one of the biggest pieces of advice I give to people is, like, make it fun.

Rick Rubin

Yeah. I live in a place now in Golden, Colorado. I've got about 20 trailheads within a 15 minutes drive. And for me, any day I want to go, it's just like, what sounds fun today? What do I want to do?

Golden Harper

I want to go get my hands dirty and scramble up a cliffside? Or do I want to climb up a mountain and bomb down this trail? Or do I want to go through the deep, dark, enchanted forests in the snow? Who knows? I think that's a big piece of things.

You hit it on the head, it should be fun. Is it as much fun for you as it's always been? I think it might even be more fun. Great. No.

I'll tell you this. I'm on break right now. There's this book, train hard, win easy, by Toby Tanzer. He went and lived with the Kenyans, right? And he writes in the book that a lot of these world champions don't run three months of the year.

They just totally take it off. No workouts at all. And when I read that, I was like, well, I should do that. If the best in the world are doing that, I should try that. And I think that has been one thing that has always kept it fun for me, is I've always taken two, three months off.

I don't run. I do other stuff. You know, it's winter right now. I snowboard, I snowshoe, I play basketball. I do pickleball.

You name it. It shouldn't be rote and routine and boring if that's the way it's happening, like, find something else to do.

Golden Harper

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Episode Summary

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Episode Chapters

1: The History of Footwear

2: Impact of Modern Footwear on Health

3: The Science of Footwear Biomechanics

4: Solutions for Foot Health

Actionable Advice

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