Best of The Body Pod - Why Foot Strength Is Key to Balance, Power & Aging Well for Women with Dr. Courtney Conley

**Hailey** (0:00)
Hey, Body Pod family, we are bringing back another absolute fan favorite for our Best of the Body Pod series. And this one, I think about it constantly. We sit down with Dr. Courtney Conley, and we have to be honest, before this conversation, we knew feet mattered, but we had no idea just how much they were quietly running the show for everything else in our bodies, especially for us in midlife.
Here's why we needed you to hear this again, or for the first time. If you strength train, this episode is a non-negotiable. Dr. Conley breaks down why your foot is the foundation of every single lift, and why training in heavily cushioned shoes is essentially squatting on a pillow. The loads you can move, the stability you can create, it all starts from the ground. She shares her own personal story of bunions, pain, and refusing surgery in favor of building strength and resilience from the ground up. We also dive into the importance of balance and longevity. As we age, our relationship with our feet becomes one of the most important factors in how long we stay strong, mobile, and independent. This is not a foot episode. This is a longevity episode. Dr. Conley is brilliant. She is passionate, and she will make you want to kick off your shoes immediately, possibly forever. So let's get into it. This is the Best of the Body Pod.
Dr. Courtney Conley, we're so excited to have you here. This has been, we've been counting down for this. So we've had these questions for a long time, and we're just stoked that it's finally time to hear from you. So welcome.

**Courtney Conley** (1:57)
Thank you so much.

**Hailey** (1:59)
So Courtney, as we were just saying offline, we're both in Colorado, which I feel like is the greatest state in the United States.
We'll see. We'll see if everyone else says that, but I love it.
I was just mentioning, I wish I could come into your clinic because this is fascinating. And as I've been, I was actually introduced to you a couple of years from a mentor of mine who actually lives in Sydney. And he was like, Hailey, why haven't you? Well, first of all, her company is Gate Happens, and your Hailey Happens. What's going on here? It's like, I got to meet this lady. I got to meet this lady. So how did you, what sparked your passion? I'm always curious about people that work with the feet or that are just interested in the feet. How did you come to that?

**Courtney Conley** (2:51)
Yeah, it's really, I think it's really interesting because, you know, people think, oh, she's into feet. It's kind of weird. I mean, I have, I like to say I have a healthy obsession with the foot, healthy.
I have always been fascinated by human movements, and it's been kind of a passion of mine since I've been a, since I was very young. I was a ballet dancer and then I was a triathlete, and my biggest Achilles heel, if you will, had always been foot pain. I had bunions and neuromas and everything kind of under the sun. And so I think with anything that you become passionate about, it becomes this personal quest of how can I help myself? Because I had to stay moving.
I knew that surgeries and that going down that route was not going to be the way. So that's kind of what got me interested in all of this. I went to school and we really didn't get what I was looking for. It was more of treating the foot very differently than we treat the rest of the human body. So for example, it was if someone's foot hurts, here's a foot orthosis. And if it hurts worse, here's surgery. But we don't have those conversations with other parts of the body, say your low back. The first go to isn't, well, wear this brace and then if it doesn't work worse, go get surgery. It's how can we make you stronger? How can we make you more resilient as a human being? And that's what I really wanted to do from a foot perspective.

**Hailey** (4:20)
Okay, I love that because the only people I've ever had to block on Instagram are people that are obsessed with the feet.

**Courtney Conley** (4:30)
Well, if you saw the messages that we get, you might, that number, that count might be higher.

**Hailey** (4:38)
I don't understand. I don't understand it. I understand what you just said about the foot and being interested in it, but that's a whole other topic. I just think it's funny because I'm like, where do these people come, where do they come from? Where do they come from? But anyhow.