The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Foot Health Expert Reveals the Best Shoes for Strength and Mobility!
19 Dec 2025
Courtney Conley is a renowned foot health expert who combines science with practical advice to help people lead pain-free, active lives. In this Moment, Courtney dives into the surprising impact of our everyday footwear on both our physical and mental health. Discover the best kind of shoes to wear, and how crucial footwear is in enhancing movement, preventing pain, and supporting long-term strength. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/WeoZX42ycZb Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/tXqCmi6ycZb Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Courtney’s clinic: https://gaithappens.com/
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We don't do much of that these days. It seems to have gone out of fashion with all the Ubers and the other ways to get around and all the sedentary behavior that we do living and working in offices. What should we know about walking and how important it is? Because I'll be honest, I don't walk that much.
Yes. I always say it's the most underrated, underutilized, easily accessible activity that most of us are not doing. If you think about – if you look at the research on average step count that most people globally are taking, it's about 45 to 4,900. Okay? Which means that there's a lot of us that are taking less than that.
So when I'm working with my patients, we always look at baseline numbers. What's your baseline? So, for example, if you had a person who was walking 2,500 steps a day, I mean, some of us would be like, wow, that's not a lot. But for a lot of us, it is. If you were to walk an additional 500 steps in a day, your baseline is 2,500, you can reduce your risk of cardiovascular mortality by 7%.
Wow.
Here's a bigger wow. If you have a 1,000-step increase, you can reduce your risk of all-cause mortality by 15%.
Dying of anything?
All-cause mortality. 15%. That's a big number for 1,000 steps.
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Chapter 2: What is the importance of walking for our health?
Hmm.
So I have a story for you. This is a patient of mine, and it just, you know, warms my heart to talk about him because when I saw him, he was two years into a diagnosis of heel pain, 27 years old. So he had gone to see a bunch of people, and the last doctor that he had seen told him to limit his step count to 2,500 steps a day.
Why?
to rest, to rest the foot. Now this is chronic pain. Now we're not talking acute heel pain. We are two years into this song and dance and he's being told at 27 years old to take 2,500 steps a day. So he comes into my office. We're talking about all of this and he's also a quadruplet. So it was one of the first quadruplets I think I've ever treated. So he has, um,
You know, which why I think pain is so difficult. It's so complicated because now you have this 27-year-old who's seeing his siblings who are at 27, like, enjoy their life and doing all these things. And he's being told he can take 2,500 steps a day. So he's now living in his father's basement. And he's afraid to go above 2,500 steps. And he used to tell me, he's like, I cry a lot.
I'm depressed. And wouldn't you be if... So there wasn't any magic exercise that I was going to give him two years into this. There wasn't any magic orthotic or magic shoe. He had done all of that. Shame on me if I would have done the same thing. So we had a conversation. And... I knew I needed to get him outside and I needed to get him walking. That was my goal. Forget about the heel pain.
We didn't even focus. We didn't even talk about the heel pain. I knew I needed to get him outside and start loading his foot. Two years, this foot, by the way, when you're walking, four to six times your body weight. It can handle four to six times your body weight when you're walking. But you don't load it appropriately and muscles atrophy. So I told him. We had a long, long conversation.
And I said, we're going to slowly start to introduce steps. And if you think about this, if we were to say add 1,000 steps a day, to some people that might not sound like a lot. But to someone who's taking 2,500 steps, that's almost 50% of what they're doing. So we introduced the concept of a micro walk. which is a five minute walk. So a five minute walk is about 500 steps.
Okay.
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Chapter 3: How can increasing step count reduce health risks?
You're like, listen, all I need is five minutes. And so we started five minute walks. And for the first couple weeks, it was, you know, there were good days, there were bad days, and there still are. But we were starting to build his confidence and movement. We were starting to get him comfortable on his foot again.
And it was, you know, it was one of those cases where I just, like, I really enjoyed working with him and watching what had happened because... If you look at step counts, I knew what number I was trying to get to. Because if you look at depression, for example, 5,000 steps a day can reduce the risk of having symptoms of depression.
If you get to 7,500 steps per day, it can reduce the prevalence of the diagnosis of depression. So that was in the back of my head. I'm like, we just got to keep working towards these numbers. So while we were doing that, we were strengthening his foot. I had him in different footwear. And at the end of each week, we were also talking about three good things.
Tell me three good things that happened to you this week. And in the beginning of treatment, it was a struggle, Stephen. It was a struggle for him to think about good things happening in his life. And I spoke with him probably about a month ago. And his email is like my why. He was like, um, on average, he's walking between five and 6,000 steps a day.
He still has good days or still has bad days, more good days than bad days. But he said to me, he's like, I haven't, I can't tell you the last time I cried. He's going to church. He's spending time with his dad, you know, and It's not the step count. It's the person behind the step count. And that's why I think this stuff is so powerful. I saw it change my life. I saw what it does to my patients.
I mean, it has the capacity to improve not just your physical health, but how you interact with the world.
It has a completely different meaning when you understand the real sort of human consequences it can have on someone's life, for better or for worse. And it's not often until we have some kind of injury or issue that we realize that our feet and ankles were there.
Yes.
And that's certainly been the case in my life. It wasn't until I got plantar fasciitis that I was like, oh my God, I should have been doing something about this sooner. And then as I told you before we started recording, I've currently got a high ankle sprain. So I've pulled some ligaments in the top of my ankle training for this game called Soccer Aid.
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Chapter 4: What is a micro walk and how can it help?
Are you seeing more and more people come to you as a result of that?
Yes. I think also, you know, it was interesting. I was working at the running event in Austin, Texas, and I was teaching there. And so a lot of the shoe stores were there. And one of the bigger shoe stores had said that the majority of their clients now are actually walkers and not runners. And I thought that was pretty interesting. And I'm thinking to myself, I wonder why that is.
Like, are more people reverting to walking because they're getting injured when they're running? Are they, you know, I'm making all these conclusions in my head. I'm like, well, is it because we're going in the wrong direction with footwear? Because we're creating the shoe that is basically doing the work for us and it feels so good and, you know, people aren't putting the work in anymore?
I don't know, but I'm certainly going to do my best to change that.
What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.
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