Blister Prevention for Ruckers: Socks, Shoes, and Foot Care with Alex Thrasher from Mudgear (Part 1 of 2)

0:00 Have you ever had a great ruck completely ruined by a blister? Maybe everything felt fine for the first few miles, then a hotspot showed up, and a mile later it became painful. By the end of the ruck, every step felt miserable. The frustrating part is that most blisters are preventable. In today's episode, we're talking about blister prevention, footwear, sock systems, moisture management, and the small mistakes that can create big problems over long distances. My guest today is Alex Thrasher, founder of Mud Gear and the creator of one of the first merino wool socks built specifically for rucking. If you're new here, you're listening to the Rucker's Edge podcast, a show all about rucking that is designed to help you improve your rucking routine, lose weight, and ultimately gain your strength and energy back. Each episode dives into the science, stories, and strategies of rucking. You'll learn from top ruckers, coaches, health experts, and performance specialists who break down what it takes to train smarter, recover faster, and stay ready for the next challenge. So whether you're new to rucking or an experienced rucker that's already logged hundreds of miles, this is the show for you.

1:01 I'm your host, Spencer. Thanks for listening in. As I said before, today's guest is Alex Thrasher, the founder of Mud Gear, which is a performance sock and outdoor gear company based in North Carolina. Alex grew up in the army town of Fayetteville, North Carolina, spent more than a decade supporting the F3 fitness community with gear and apparel, and during the COVID era set out to solve a problem many ruckers know all too well. blisters. Beyond designing gear, Alex is an experienced rucker and long distance hiker who's logged miles on the Appalachian Trail and the Camino de Santiago in Spain. One quick note before we get started, my conversation with Alex ended up being so packed with useful information that I split it into two different episodes. This is part one, where we focus on what causes blisters, footwear, sock systems, and building a foot care strategy that works before problems start. All right. Please enjoy my conversation with Alex Thrasher. Alex, thanks so much for joining me here today on the Rutgers Edge podcast. I'm excited to talk about foot care. It's a really significant issue for new Rutgers that go out on long rucks and they get three, four or five miles in, they start feeling hot spots. And then at the end of the ruck, they're like, oh yeah, that was a blister.

2:09 So appreciate you coming on and talking about foot care this morning, Alex. doctor of physical therapy, talked about feet, foot problems. And I think this is a good compliment to talk about socks and foot care, the things you can do, especially preventative things you can do. Very important for new and old ruckers alike. Agreed. Yeah. And for any listeners out there. Like Alex mentioned, I highly recommend going back and listening to that episode. John Ritter shared a lot of great information about biomechanics and avoiding injury. This will definitely complement it. You're right, Alex. We're specifically talking about avoiding blisters, which is probably a number one way to kill any progress with rucking. And I'll reference that down in the show notes if the listener wants to go check that out. But before we get into, I guess. you know, blister prevention systems.

3:08 I want to give people a context about your background. You built the SOC specifically for rucking during COVID. And I just was curious, can you walk me through the problem that you identified and what you wanted to solve? Yeah, of course. I guess, and even to back up a bit before that, I've sort of been rucking adjacent for a lot of my life, having grown up in Fayetteville, North Carolina as an Army town, Army Air Force base there. And I think, you know, for me, rucking was something that I always got to see the GIs doing on the side of the road with those huge packs that are much bigger and different than what you're going to see with your buddies or out in the neighborhood.

3:52 And, you know, I think from there I got reintroduced to rucking around 2012, 2013 with a group of guys that I work out with here in Charlotte. And it's a nationwide group called F3. And those guys are deep into the rucking scene. And we started to do a lot of events together, starting with like Spartan races and Tough Mudders. Eventually, a subset of those guys got into rucking and I've been working with them for over a decade now on gear. So I wasn't new to socks and apparel just because I've been working in that space for quite a long time. But in the COVID days, as you mentioned, that's when I feel like rucking had a turning point because Events were canceled all over the country. You couldn't sign up for a Spartan race. You couldn't sign up for a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon. So, you know, trail running became very popular back then, just a way to get outside. And rucking, you know, right there with it was a way that you could get your exercise, be outdoors. If you were social distancing and needed space between people, that wasn't hard to do. That's where I feel like a lot of folks in our community became ruckers during that period if they weren't already exposed to it. And, you know, I realized that there was just as strong a community around rucking as there was in the

5:24 other sports and events in which we've done a lot of participation. So I took some of my, you know, gear expertise and my sock expertise and... decided to solve the problem well if we wanted to create the world's best sock for rucking what is that technically how is it different from just hiking or how is it uh how is it different from the compression sock world where uh we we made our name uh with the mud gear brand and um that was a challenge i was you know i needed a project i like everybody i needed a project during covid and set out to solve that and make for myself, you know, scratch your own itch, what I thought was the best rucking sock possible.

6:07 And, you know, fast forward to today, it's become our number two selling sock style right behind our tall compression socks. Come on, cool. I didn't realize that. Yeah, you have several products from, I didn't realize that, yeah, that was that popular. I mean, I haven't tried them out, full disclosure, but it sounds like they're very well received. That's one of my follow -up items here is make sure we get a pair on your feet. Oh, I appreciate that, Alex. Yeah. You know, going back to COVID, yeah, you're right. A lot of people were doing new things to kind of fill that void of, yeah, in -person activities. It was either that or a pickleball in the driveway, whatever your choice was. That's right. That's right. I certainly, that's when I started rucking. Yeah, a friend of mine, Mark, kind of, I think he sent me a podcast and sent me some workouts he was doing. I was like, yeah, you know what, let's do this. Because I had been biking for a while and, you know. I just started to find biking a little boring. Well, yeah, let's go out for some of these rucks. Let's talk about why blisters happen and what's actually going on inside your boot. So I want to draw from your experience after all these years of you rucking and hiking, which I definitely want to touch on your experience on the Appalachian Trail and the Camino in Spain, I think it is, right? That's right. Yeah. Later in this episode. Yeah. And so we'll touch on that later in the episode, but let's talk about blisters. Start with the basics, because I think most Rutgers have never had anyone actually explain this to them, or at least, you know, like I haven't.

7:35 I was a runner and I never really understood, you know, exactly the cause. They just kind of appeared and I'm like, oh, OK. But like very basically, it might be a stupid question, but what is a blister? Yeah, and I'm going to give you the layman's explanation here because that's what I am. I don't have the doctorate or the medical training as John does in the foot care space. But what I do have is a lot of experience and a lot of mistakes that I've made personally where, you know, I think between you and me, we can together share some lessons learned that maybe. will help listeners prevent those things or keep them from making those mistakes or having to learn those lessons themselves the hard way. So three things to remember when it comes to blisters. It is friction, heat, and moisture.

8:22 Those are your three ingredients that come together to make the bad recipe for a blister. And I think it's... it's probably best to talk about each of those separately because there are prevention strategies to help abate your moisture or reduce your friction, keep the heat down. And, you know, working together, you've got to kind of fight all three legs of that stool to prevent blisters. And we'll talk about taking care of blisters as well. But the whole point is to keep you in the game, right? Especially if you're going to do... multi -day events or go on, you know, long hikes that have, you know, many miles per day, the blister is the number one thing to take you out of the game. You know, there are plenty of other things, you know, foot and hip and knee problems that can slow you down. But blisters are probably the most common that will take somebody out of a long hike or You know, for me, first of all, why we built our rucksack with merino wool, it's a very low friction yarn and also has some heat abatement properties. But I think the friction side is originally, you know, why we chose that and why so many ruckers and long distance hikers choose a wool, a merino wool especially, as the yarn of choice. Friction is

9:53 also related to fit. So when you think about your shoes and points of contact and where you need to have some room to breathe in your shoes and where you need to have things fitting nice and snug, I would focus on your heel area and the forefoot. Think about the ball of your foot area as being the most important for low friction. You don't want your heel sliding around in your shoe or boot, and you don't want your forefoot and the ball of your foot sliding around in your shoe. So I do like to have some extra space in the toe box. There's plenty of shoes out there that have a wide toe box. And, you know, know that your foot does swell and grow during, you know, a long time underweight. So you do need to have some space, especially in that front of foot area. But it can't be so much that you're sliding inside your boot. And I also want at some point I want to talk about lacing and I'm a big fan of heel lock. We'll talk about that, I'm sure. But yeah, let me stop there and see if you have other tips related to fit related to the friction element. Yeah, for me, I remember the first time I got a blister, it was straight up wearing ankle socks and the boot rubbing right onto the skin. That's like route one. how to get a blister, right? Create, create no barrier that you have your friction there. You have your heat and you're sweating so you can have a moisture.

11:14 So yeah, that, that was a killer. Um, now can we talk about like the, uh, the boot sock interface as its own system? Like, um, how does, how does Merino wool differ, uh, between like cotton and maybe some like plastic type socks with its interaction with, with the boot itself? Sure. Well, I guess there's the interface between the boot and the sock and then the sock and the foot. And it's kind of hard to talk about one without the other. But cotton. To me, where it falls down is in how it absorbs and retains moisture in the water. And I feel that more in the connection between the sock and the foot. If you think about, you know, when you get pruney from being in water too long, it's the same situation. If you have water that's soaked up and absorbed in that cotton and that's against your skin for a long period of time, it really softens up that part of your skin and creates an area that too much moisture and the... The friction is working against you there. In the outer layer, so you mentioned the sock and the boot, I guess the thing that's most important to realize is underneath your foot is the most weight that will be anywhere in the whole rucking system. Your hips carry a lot of weight. Your shoulders carry a lot of weight.

12:40 You keep working your way down the chain, you know, your hips are going to carry the weight that's on your shoulders, plus your whole upper body. Down to your knees, you add in your upper thighs. You go all the way down to your ankles and your feet. But when you get under your foot and you get to that layer of sock and shoe, that is carrying not only the pack weight, but all of your weight from top of your head all the way to the bottom of your feet. So the single, you know, point of contact that has the most weight on it is right there so as as there's friction in that area it's just magnified by the amount of total weight that you're carrying in in that spot which is above and beyond anywhere else along the chain uh important to think about that that point oh yeah no absolutely and you know going back to to merino wool it took me a while to realize that difference between um moisture wicking versus moisture retaining because i i historically have only worn cotton socks.

13:39 And I see some people wearing like dress socks that are like kind of a plastic -y material. And I guess that might work a little bit better than cotton because it may not retain it. But yeah, like ultimately something wicking is what you need. So thanks for hitting on that. Let's talk about lacing strategy and heel lock. So what is heel lock? I know what those two words mean individually, but put together, what does that mean? So it's a form of, it's a method for lacing. And there's no better way to explain it than to tell you to just look it up on YouTube. There's a lot of great videos that will show you the method, which is a lot easier than explaining it. But what it's going to do is going to take some of the top part of your laces and create a looping pattern that basically keeps the laces from... From loosening up at the top of the boot, it really locks that heel and that Achilles into place, but it allows the rest of the foot to have a little bit more movement. It's different from a traditional way you might tie your shoes in that a traditional shoe tie will create a certain level of tightness throughout on the top of your foot if you think about it. You know, running down from the top of the foot towards the toe, whereas the heel lock really concentrates that around the ankle, locks that in solidly, but it allows the rest of the foot to have a bit more freedom of movement that you're going to need. Not too much to where you're going to be slipping around, but a little bit more freedom

15:10 of movement that allows your foot to expand and swell over long distance while preventing that heel from slipping up and down, which is the most important thing for preventing heel blisters. Sure. Now, is that specific for boots or can you also lace up your shoes? Like if you yeah, if you have like a hundred percent. Yeah, it is. It's something I use on my boots, but it's something I wear on my tennis shoes, my running shoes, pretty much every pair that I wear for any reason. I use that method now, now that I've, you know, I swear by it. But I think there's an important point in here that I want to make, which is. You don't have to have boots. And there are many times that I go out without boots. And it's not just a cost thing. Sure, there's a lot of expensive boots and I even make a boot. So, you know, maybe it's counterintuitive. But I think trail running shoes are an excellent choice for a lot of rucking and hiking activities. And I would say when I've been on the Appalachian Trail, you know, amongst very, very serious hikers, through hikers. Trail running shoes, a really good pair of trail running shoes is more common these days than a boot. It used to be 20 years ago maybe that people were lacing up those heavier hiking boots. But trail running shoes have definitely taken the lead due to the lightweight nature of them and the grip that they usually provide.

16:41 But I would say number one for me is how... How how ventilated they are. In other words, most trail running shoes are going to not hold water. They're going to dry out very quickly. They're lightweight and they just breathe in a way that a large hiking boot with a lot of padding around it will not. And of course, that'll lead us into the discussion around heat. One of the the the two of the the second of the three horsemen that lead to blisters. For me, the trail running shoe being lightweight and ventilated is something that helps keep that heat down. So, yeah, you don't have to have a boot, especially you don't have to have a high price boot. Trail running shoes are just fine and, in fact, even recommended in a lot of environments. Yeah. So when I started getting serious about rucking, I had that dilemma.

17:33 I have historical ankle issues. I was like, I probably should wear a boot. But I'm also in Louisiana where the average temperature is like 90 throughout the year. So I'm like, oh, it's really hot. So I tried a boot. It was too hot. It wasn't really well ventilated. Maybe it was just the boot that I was using. So, yeah, I've been rucking in these McCall's that I have. They're pretty well ventilated. They're kind of lightweight, but they have a good sole. But, you know, maybe I just need to explore different types of boots. So you mentioned that Mug Gear has one. I think you mentioned that Mark Jones helped you develop that. So you and Mark kind of worked pretty closely, got to know each other, and he gave you a lot of insight designing that one, right? He did. Yeah, he's a great guy and just a phenomenal rucker. I mean, to watch this guy train is very next level. So, yeah, I guess I've been very fortunate to have been around what I would consider.

18:28 elite ruckers and mark obviously is one at the top of that list having a world record that he holds in in rucking um and guys guys like that um we wanted to tap into their knowledge when we built not only our sock but our first uh rucking shoe uh i call it a shoe sometimes i call it a boot sometimes because it's sort of a hybrid between the two yeah we we basically um Took a running shoe and we took a boot, like a hiking boot, and we made him have a baby and create something that's a very lightweight hybrid in between the two, very kind of tactical, lightweight, three -quarter rucking boot. So Mark was directly involved in a lot of the early development and design and then definitely a lot of the testing.

19:17 He put a lot of miles in what we created to make sure it was going to. um you know be sufficient for not only elite rucking but all the way down the chain that if it's going to work for mark it's going to work for for me yeah yeah right yeah and mark came on a week or two before he accomplished his his world record and was really happy to to learn from his experience and you're right like the training that that dude does is unreal like all day every day outside doing something uh again i'll link that episode down in the in the show notes More with Alex in just a moment, including why he never uses waterproof boots. But I want to take a quick break to say thanks for listening to the podcast. If you know a rucker that's been battling blisters or someone just getting into rucking and will inevitably run into blisters, please text this episode to them.

20:01 It can help them figure out a blister prevention system that works for them and keep them on the trail longer. Thanks. Going back to... What causes blisters? So we talked about moisture wicking. We talked about friction. Do you have anything else to add about what heat is doing to cause the blister before we go into like an implementation on how to prevent it? I do have a couple notes on heat. I want to talk about waterproof shoes a little bit. I have pretty much banned them from my rucking activity in that I run hot. And so I think it's important to. sort of know yourself, know your body. And over time, you'll understand, do your feet run hot? Do your feet run cold?

20:42 Do your feet sweat? Do you naturally have calluses and that sort of thing? For me, my feet tend to run hot. And I have noticed over time that a waterproof shoe, because of that inner liner that keeps out the water, it also keeps in heat. And for me, I can't go very far with a waterproof shoe without my feet starting to sweat. And it creates the same problem I was trying to prevent, the waterproof trying to keep water out. But instead of that, I'm generating my own moisture inside the shoe or the boot because of that waterproofing. So in fact, the only time that I wear waterproof shoes now is if I'm going to be standing in the cold somewhere. I used to go stand and watch our son play soccer in a cold field. That might keep my feet warm because of that liner inside, but I just can't do it for activity. So even on a cold day, if I'm going to be moving, I'd rather have a shoe that breathes. I would rather, at the end of a long day on the Appalachian Trail, I would rather take off my lightweight, breathable shoes and let them air out overnight versus have a waterproof boot that is much more difficult to dry out once it does get wet. And if you're ever in a situation where your foot gets submerged, either intentionally or by accident, you know, on a creek crossing or in a downpour, once a waterproof shoe gets wet, it's incredibly hard to get dry. If you're putting them on your hiking

22:13 poles overnight or just trying to take out the insoles and the liner and just... dry things out. It's much easier to dry a ventilated lightweight shoe than it is a shoe with that type of waterproofing. So they're basically out of my pack, out of my packing list for any type of ruck or hike activity for me. That's my experience. I don't know. Have you experimented with waterproof shoes? You know, so what I'm currently using is waterproof to an extent, but just at the bottom. So there's certainly, there's some ventilation. But, yeah, you're right. Even with shoes that are ventilated, if they're not dry, it's a bad situation. I remember in my running days, you know, running through the rain, had I get up in the next morning, the feet or the shoes were still soaked. And, yeah, created hot spots, created blisters. So it's funny hearing how you dried your shoes on the trail by hanging them on your poles. versus like sticking newspaper in them and sticking them by the refrigerator for them to dry quickly overnight.

23:17 It's certainly two different situations. You have to improvise, you know, you get them up close to the fire or something like that. But that's part of the trail community out there when you're on the longer and overnight trips. And we did some tent camping. We did some of the camping in the lot. I'll call it a lodge, but the open air. covered areas. Yeah. That's a lot of, a lot of smells in those, in those camps. I could imagine. Yeah. You get to know your neighbor very well. I bet. And sometimes they can get packed too, right? Sometimes they'll show up, there'll be nobody there. Other times they'll be packed. Yeah. I've only spent maybe one day on the Appalachian Trail near, I think it was Chattanooga, but certainly I would like to do. I think, is it Bill Bryson wrote the book?

24:08 Into the Woods. Yeah, A Walk in the Woods. Great book. They did a movie too. Yeah, they did. Was it Robert Redford in that? It was. I haven't seen that movie, but the book was certainly good. He's a funny author. It keeps you entertained. And yeah, I learned a lot about that. Did anybody give you a trail name? Yeah. So my trail name is The Ghoul. The Ghoul. Yeah. The reason for it is about two miles into a hike, it doesn't matter what the temperature is. I mentioned my feet run hot. The rest of me runs hot too. And I tend to form a sweat pattern on my chest. It looks like two eyes and a big open mouth. And that's The Ghoul comes out about two miles into any longer distance. Gotcha. Sort of like a Warshack test on your chest. I can get that. That's it.

24:53 All right. That wraps up part one of my conversation with Alex. If you're curious about the products that Mudgear has to offer, head on over to mudgear .com slash T -R -E and check out some of the rucking related gear that they have to offer. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to follow or subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app so you're notified of new episodes, including next week's part two of my conversation with Alex. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks again for listening to this episode of The Rucker's Edge.