I have a confession. I find the barefoot running craze, inspired by the book, Born to Run, tantalizing. It makes sense, right? Humans evolved for hundreds of thousands of years running barefoot. And we were good at it, running gazelles down over time till we could catch them. And thus a modern invention, shoes, might be the source of many of our foot issues. I even tried the five fingered shoes out. Only problem? I got really bad blood blisters that wouldn’t go away. No amount of ‘breaking in’ my foot would get rid of them. So maybe I’m just soft? Either way, I find the movement fascinating. And so this article makes a lot of sense to me – basically, we may be born to run barefoot, but because we’ve been wearing shoes all our lives, the shoes themselves have changed how we walk and run. Therefore, our feet and bodies are accustomed to running with shoes. It follows then, that just removing the shoes right away and going barefoot will likely not work out perfectly. We need to break ourselves in to it. While the perspective is complacent – it doesn’t pick strong sides – it makes a lot of logical sense. What do you think? Are we born to run barefoot? Or is this an unreasonable craze and in theory the geniuses at Nike have designed shoes that will optimize our running style to have the least impact on our bodies?
John Galt
L.B. Jeffries
First Time Blogger, Long Time Reader
atyp1cal
maceaver
Elspeth Reoch
Vade Mecum
The Lamplighter
Kate Chopin
Thanks for the article! It is an interesting debate, but we obviously were built to run barefoot. The only thing we must think about is the terrain on which we are running. Obviously, concrete, asphalt, and other urban construction materials that are man made might do more damage to our feet and bones than grass, sand, or earth. I enjoy running barefoot, but I would not do it on the cement. My dog who never wore shoes once, ran too much on cement and had issues with his paws and bones. Running on these not so natural surfaces can do a lot of damage and could possibly be attributed to knee issues sometimes.
I also have a friend who studies kiniesology and works with different pro athletes and said that today’s shoes are sometimes more damaging because they mess up the posture of people and these shoe companies should be more focused on creating a shoe that promotes good posture. Basically, it is a bottom up problem many times and he says the best shoe you can wear are is the indoor soccer shoe because it protects the feet but still acts as if you are running without shoes.
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