Tony Riddle - An amazing FEET of strength

This weeks episode is with our good friend Tony Riddle.

Tony is a natural lifestyle coach, author and record-breaking barefoot endurance athlete.

Regarded as a trailblazer within the field of natural movement and lifestyle, Riddle is the creator of the Natural Lifestyle Philosophy, that encourages modern urbanites to reconnect with certain innate, ‘wild’ behaviours in order to increase physical, emotional, social and spiritual wellness.

Having overcome clubfoot as a child, which involved years of traumatic treatment, Riddle has devoted his life to physical training in various forms – whether it was serving in the army and later establishing himself as a respected personal trainer, pilates teacher and rewilding movement coach, or becoming an endurance athlete in his mid-40s, breaking records for running the length of the UK and completing the Three Peaks Challenge barefoot. 

While running his own successful pilates studio in West London, Riddle began to study the principles of natural human movement and wellness, including the works of Joseph Pilates, Erwan Le Corre, Lee Saxby and Dr Nicholas Romanov, as well as research into indigenous tribes. 

The resulting journey of discovery, which included extensive self-experimentation over 18 years, led to the development of Riddle’s Natural Lifestyle Philosophy, which combines his physical training expertise with learnings across science, social anthropology and eastern spirituality.

A gifted coach and communicator, Riddle has taught the Philosophy to thousands of people worldwide, through talks, workshops, retreats, social media and the NatLife Tribe, an international subscriber-based community launched in 2020 as a result of the COVID pandemic. 

Riddle has been featured extensively in the press from The Times, Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Telegraph Magazine, New York Times, Men’s Health, Evening Standard, and on BBC Breakfast, Sky News, The Rich Roll Podcast and many others. His debut book How To Be More Human will be released in 2022. 

A proud husband to Katarina and a father of four, Riddle considers his family to be his greatest teachers.

We had an amazing conversation with Tony, dare we say it may be our favourite yet! We talk about his past, from his childhood with club feet to his alcohol addiction, time in the army to eventually running the length of the UK barefoot.

He speaks with such knowledge and wisdom that half way through, when Tony speaks of the benefits of deep squatting, we jump off our seats and squat for the rest of the conversation.

"You have just as many senses in your feet as you do in your hands. Up to 200,000 extra receptors reside in your feet. The more information you put between you and your foot, as in the more rubber, the more desensitised that information becomes."

We should all take advice from Tony and remember to use our bodies, we are made to move. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did, there is a lot to be learnt here.

Find out more on Tony Riddle and what he is currently working on:

https://tonyriddle.com/nat-life-tribe/

https://vimeo.com/thenaturallifestylist

References:

Book: Breath by Matthew Walker

Book: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Photo credit Christopher Bake @_christopherbaker

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