I could barely fall asleep last night (no...this morning) for the excitement of writing this post and taking a morning walk...barefoot.
My interest in barefoot running all started ~1 year ago when a friend shared a video about minimalist shoes. The videographer's shoes were made out of a leather slab and rope. I didn't understand how that could be good for his feet because physical therapists had put me in new sneakers and arch supports when I had posterior tibialis tendonitis caused by flat feet (which also caused other hip and leg pain). Later, podiatrists put me in custom orthotics. I contacted the man who made the video & he told me that orthotics weaken the feet and suggested that I read
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Barefoot Running to learn how to strengthen my feet.
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| There's a great article with this picture! Via |
I did just that. Many summer mornings I was out in my back yard jumping rope; doing jumping jacks; rolling my feet on softballs, tennis balls, racquet-balls; picking racquet-balls up with my feet; drawing the whole alphabet with my pointed toe and extended leg; balancing, stretching, and more. A couple months later (during my first semester in college) may have been the first time that I comfortably walked indoors without wearing sneakers and orthotics after I had been wearing those for ~2 years. The balancing and letter drawing continued throughout my freshman year.
Now, I'm reading
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Minus some evolutionary comments and the swearing, the 54 pages I've read are great. It's mostly written like a story instead of like a scientific/informational book so I skipped ahead to chapter 25 where he talks more about the science and history of barefoot running rather than Mexican drug cartels.
(Maybe you've never had pain from running and thus don't care try it
barefoot? Keep reading to learn about a study done by Jeff Pisciotta! Maybe it will convince you of how differently our feet function outside of a shoe.)
It's just common sense that our feet would function more naturally without shoes. Even though I had never thought of it until learning about barefoot running, my natural streak helped me easily accept this crazy sounding exercise. For ~16 years, I didn't even know walking put stress on the body! I thought it was the most gentle exercise one could do. Add comfortable sneakers to that stress and one will pound harder because there's no pain associated with that pressure.
"At McGill University in Montreal, Steven Robbins, M.D., and Edward Waked, Ph.D., performed a series of tests on gymnasts. The found that the thicken the landing mat, the harder the gymnasts stuck their landings. Instinctively, the gymnasts were searching for stability. When they sensed a soft surface underfoot, they slapped down hard to ensure balance.
Runners do the same thing, Robbins and Waked found: just the way your arms automatically fly up when you slip on ice, your legs and feet instinctively come down hard when they sense something squishy underfoot. When you run in cushioned shoes, your feet are pushing through the soles in search of a hard, stable platform" (McDougall, pg 173).
Chapter 25 details the creation of Nike sneakers when they were unneeded and wouldn't help runners. "Before these two men [Phil Knight & Bill Bowerman] got together, the modern running shoe didn't exist. Neither did most modern running injuries" (McDougall, ph 179).
I wish my doctors, physical therapists, podiatrists, and orthopedics knew this information. Or maybe they do, yet don't share it? "As far back as 1976, Dr. Brand was pointing out that nearly every case in his waiting room - corns, bunions, hammertoes, flat feet, fallen arches - was nearly non-existent in countries where most people go barefoot" (McDougall, pg 177).
That is incredible! The specialists that I saw told me that I over pronated my feet.
"'Pronation has become this very bad word, but it's just the natural movement of the foot. The foot is supposed to pronate.'
To see pronation in action, kick off your shoes and run down the driveway. On a hard surface, your feet will briefly unlearn the habits they picked up in shoes and automatically shift to self-defense mode: you'll find yourself landing on the outside edge of your foot, then gently rolling from little toe over to big toe until your foot is flat. That's pronation - just a mild, shock-absorbing twist that allows your arch to compress" (McDougall, pg 176).
Why do arch supports weaken the feet? "You support an area, it gets weaker. Use it extensively, it gets stronger....Run barefoot and you don't have all those troubles" (McDougall, pg 182).
Might I add "properly" to that extensive use? One can't just extensively use his feet and hope for the best if he's walking improperly and has unbalanced muscles or weak feet. I needed arch supports to tide me over until I was rehabilitated, strong, and pain free. After that, the arch supports should have gone while the strengthening continued. That didn't happen.
Another interesting angle to walking barefoot is this picture, it's about acupressure. (If for some reason you think this picture is phony, know that my cousin - a foot reflexologist - asked me if I had knee problems because of something she felt while working on my foot.) Someone included in a caption: "Every time you walk BAREFOOT you are pressing these pressure points and thus keeping these organs activated at all times."
That makes a lot of sense, though I suspect walking in shoes also keeps those organs active. This explains why bed rest is so bad for the body!
The study by Jeff Pisciotta that I promised:
"Jeff Pisciotta, the senior researcher at Nike Sports Research Lab, assembled twenty runners on a grassy field and filmed them running barefoot. When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found: instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own - stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan." Jeff said, "We found pockets of people all over the globe who are still running barefoot, and what you find is that during propulsion and landing, they have far more range of motion in the foot and engage more of the toe. Their feet flex, spread, splay, and grip the surface, meaning you have less pronation and more distribution of pressure" (McDougall, pg 183).
Sneakers are just another example of people thinking that they can do something better than God. I'm so thankful for all the information I have at my disposal (Internet and library), and I'm excited to learn more! I'm thrilled that this information relates to my major.
I don't think I'll be running barefoot any time soon, or at least not on pavement. I
definitely want to toughen my feet up and see how my feet handle
walking before I add more pounding. This morning's walk went well.
Comfort definitely depends on the condition of the road. The white lines
are pretty comfortable, and people's front yards feel like velvet.
I'd like to take the advice of Dr. Hartmann who "believes that the best injury-prevention advice he's ever heard came from a coach who advocated 'running barefoot on dewy grass three times a week'" (McDougall, pg 177).
Source
- McDougall, Christopher. Born to Run. A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never seen. New York: Random House, Inc, 2009. Book.
