Minds in Motion - Sports Gene Experiments (Special Guest: Jake Byrn)

The podcast hosts conducted an experiment to test if different types of shoes affect running speed. They compared running barefoot with running in socks and two different types of basketball shoes. They found that shoes did make a difference in speed, with the LeBron shoes being faster than the Game 8 shoes. However, there were limitations in the experiment, such as participants being in different physical shapes and having different foot arches. Overall, the experiment concluded that shoes can impact running speed, but there may be other factors at play as well. Hello everyone, welcome back to Minds in Motion. I'm here today with Jake Byrne and Liam West and I'm Taven Hoffman and this is our podcast. Okay, so we've had to run some tests recently. Yes, we did. And what would those tests be Jake? We did running with three types of, like three types of ways of running. We did with socks on, down and back on the court, and we did with a different type of basketball shoe. They delivered eight and LeBron witnessed sixes I believe. Yes, we did and we ran back and forth and we timed every single time. We did that to see if there was any difference. And how did that relate to the book? It relates to the book by, it relates to the book in the beginning of the book when he was talking about his friend who said was faster and he was thinking it was because of genetics, but it could possibly be because of equipment because he was saying his shoes were better, but you never know. So we're testing the theory of shoes help you run faster. And what size were the, what size were the shoes Liam? The shoes all were about a size 12, you know, with a different thing in brands, the differentiation of brands. Adidas tends to run true to size and Nike is a little bit bigger, especially in their LeBron models, but they were size 12. All the participants' feet were about size 12, maybe 11. I know we had one size 13. Thanks a lot, Jake. But other than that, everybody stayed around the same. Yeah, and the product. That's where I come in with limitations as in like the difference in people that we tested as we had, I'm almost, I'm pretty sure we had one tester that was a size 10. And then we had, yeah, Jake, who was a size 13. And then most of us were all size 12 or like 12 and a half or 11 and a half. So a lot of us were there. But also it comes into like people being in shape and out of shape. Like I was one that was out of shape and my times were pretty slow compared to the others that were in shape. And I think that's a big limitation there. Yeah. I also think a limitation is how wide your feet could be or not how wide actually your arch of your foot, because your foot, some feet have arches or you could be flat footed in the tent. People with arches tend to run faster. So I was just testing that theory kind of a bit and what the running, because I was asking people if they were arched or flat footed and most of them were arched. So their times were pretty much, they're pretty good because they were arched. Yeah. We had a lot of people who did really well and as the data did show, socks were obviously not the way to go as that was very hard to run in. I flipped it. Yeah. I think I almost hit it a couple of times. Yeah. And everybody was sliding to the finish line. Also another limitation that I also saw was like people would slow down at the end, like before they cross the line. So once they slow down, I mean that also- Not running all the way through, but looking, comparing the times, our lowest barefoot time was 10.12, which is pretty quick, but most of them were in the range of 12 to 13. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought times are pretty surprising actually, because some basketball shoes tend to be a bit heavy, but for the people that were out of shape, I thought their times were pretty good for just the way they're running in their socks and their shoes. Yeah. And those game eights, they were pretty heavy and a lot of people, I'm pretty sure those were the times that everybody put their slowest times in, the game eight. Yeah. They were really heavy for basketball shoes and so I feel like that really limited people to their true speed. I mean, while that is true, going back through some of the data, there are certain cases where people were faster in the game eight, because LeBrons also tend to be pretty heavy because LeBron's a big bulky guy. Yeah. I thought the LeBrons were a bit heavier. Oh, in my opinion, they were the lighter ones. They're just harder on your feet than like the soles are just much more harder on your feet. Continue what you were saying earlier. I mean, it seemed like the bigger, more heavier people were faster in the game eights in comparison than the LeBrons. I mean, no, they were faster in the LeBrons than the game eights. Uh, I mean, most of the people were out of shape. We have a list, I think, about five, four or five out of the people, four or five out of the 10 were out of shape. And then some of us were in shape. Who were the, uh, could you get, or actually let's not give names for that. No, that's pretty well. One person that was out of shape is, uh, Jake, Jake Byrne. Jake Byrne. Yes. Um, I know I was one of the ones that were out of shape. I, I believe I was in shape. I hope I was in shape, but I don't know. Jake, you cannot argue that one. Yeah. Jake, you can't say anything. Okay. Um, yeah. Sit around and eat. I just thought the, uh, experiment was very good because in other ways it could have been harder to test because we could have like ran a mile, but I don't think people would, would like to run a mile. No, we would not get participants in wanting to be a part of that if we decided to do that. I also don't think a mile would be very, I mean, we'll tying it to the book, it would be more effective, but for what we were doing, it would be counterintuitive. At the time that we had, I would not say. Yeah, exactly. And the time that it, like the time that we had to not only recreate our, um, our experiment, because the first experiment we did not have the time to do, um, you know, but. Yeah. Yeah. What's the, what's the next part that we have to discuss? Did we do procedure? The procedure we have not talked about yet. Okay. So for the procedure of this experiment, the procedure was quite simple. First, participants would run, would sprint up and down the court would sprint up and down the court one time, uh, barefoot with socks on. And then after that, they'd wear two different pairs of shoes. I think the rest time was about, it was probably about a minute for 30 seconds to a minute for everybody, depending on how fast you could tie your shoes and how fast they got their shoes off. Yes. Um, that was a, uh, very big, uh, uh, factor behind that. So, and, uh, well, one, yeah. Yeah. Um, a lot, a lot of it, a lot of it. Um, I felt like in the end, shoes were going to be faster than socks because obviously socks, you don't have much traction on those, uh, point where like, I thought of which was going to be, um, faster. I always thought that the lighter shoes can be faster, but, uh, as, as in the data analysis, uh, a bunch of, it was a bunch of mixed numbers of between shoes. Yeah. Originally I thought the lighter shoes were going to be faster for me when I ran it, but the heavier shoes were faster for me. I, I think it was just because the weight carrying, but I do feel like you have more control in the lighter shoes, but in the heavier shoes, it's more of like the weights going with it. So you're kind of going faster. Yeah, I can see that. Um, I mean, looking at the average time, I don't know the exact weight of the LeBron's or the day mates, but, uh, the average time for the day mate was 10.525 seconds. And the average time for the LeBron's were 10.24 seconds. And the average barefoot time was about 12.39 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think one limitation that we have not brought up yet was, uh, timers and just how they kind of, uh, how our timers kind of suck sometimes cause they do the time wrong. Yeah. Uh, I, I liked personally how one timer was going in the, in the thing of, um, how they were waiting. Like they would go, like they'd start the time on the person's time on the person running when they started at the time because how another time I was doing it was when they said go, which you're not always going to go right as they say it. Yeah. I mean, obviously some people are going to be quite slow in their reactions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what other, what other points do we have to bring up? We did the procedure, we did the results, we did limitations. We, we talked about the, we talked about the hypothesis. All we need is really just the conclusion of this work. Yeah. Um, so, you know, this concludes our podcast pretty much. Um, in conclusion, shoes, shoes didn't make you faster in the short. In, in conclusion, really, um, better outside. There'd be a little bit of, of a difference. Yes. Yeah. I do believe there'd be a difference if we were outside, but yeah, I thought it was a very good experiment. I didn't learn a lot from this. I thought the lighter shoes were going to be faster for me, but I guess it was the heavier ones. Yeah. I mean, that's typically how it is lighter. You're faster on your feet, but also less containment. Yeah, that's true. They're more out of control. And also because the difference in technique and how like much of a break that you needed, because if you needed more of a break on the next shoe, then you could just be more tired and that could have affected your, your thinking. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know I needed a break. That was tiring. Yeah. I was, I was out of breath. Yeah. Oh, I could not. Well, that concludes our podcast guys. Uh, the minds in motion podcasts. Um, join us next time when we will be doing the next episode. Yep. See you guys later. Adios Amigos. Bye.