I got mine around 2012 (but not the toe version) and quickly found out that running in them for more than 15 minutes makes my feet hurt, with no sign of a training effect.
But they still serve me well as gym shoes with a very low packing volume (great for business trips).
I've been running barefoot (real, but sometimes also in 'barefoot' shoes) on and off for years, and my feet quickly got used to it.
But then, I've always had a forefoot strike.
I also do a lot of barefoot walking.
However, the first few times I definitely ran for less than 15 minutes. That seems like overkill when getting used to barefoot running. I was sore enough in my calves for days from five minutes of running the first few times.
In that era I saw two major misconceptions around minimalism in running footwear. The first is the idea that heel-to-toe "drop" is the the main important metric -- of course, a shoe company thing. Actually what matters a lot more is proprioception -- the feeling of knowing where your foot is in space relative to the ground, and also the feedback your foot is getting from the ground.
The second misconception is that it's important to switch over 100%. Related to this is a misconception that somewhat more minimalist is better. As a competitive runner, I saw benefits from mixing in barefoot strides and a couple miles per week barefoot on soccer fields while keeping my training shoes the same. I'd recommend others do the same, and very gradually increase mileage.
The challenge for research in my understanding is that it's very hard to track long-term injury prevention and performance improvement in a statistically significant way. You can measure what happens when habitually shod people do a barefoot run, and you can go to Kenya and study how habitually barefoot people land when they put on shoes, but that's different from the long term impact on your gait of changing your footwear for a long period of time. (I'm not a researcher myself but I've talked to them.)
I think your proprioception point is huge. I sometimes randomly get a floppy foot. In anything but structurally sound shoes, I'm wrecked. Would barefoot running have avoided the problem or exacerbated the problem?
Same experience here (though I probably skewed more to barefoot than you did). There's a certain amount of immediate painful feedback for a heel striker once you start running barefoot. There's a certain amount of reconditioning and retraining of under utilised muscles that needs to happen so I think your advice to gradually introduce is make a lot of sense. What I've always found interesting is that even for runners like me that had poor form, as soon as the shoes come off we naturally shift towards a more efficient and lower impact technique.
After a few years of regular barefoot running my running gait had changed enough that I didn't feel the need to keep doing it and have been doing runs in race shoes almost exclusively for the past decade.
I think anything whose soles are really thin and not too hard. I'm partial to Xero, but there's a lot of possibilities.
I do think all shoes, except those original Vibram Five Fingers, are not a great substitute for barefoot running itself. Running barefoot on a nice grass field feels so much nicer and more fun, too! But the minimal shoes do help force you to feel the ground and not just slam into it, so I think they can help.
Whatever you do, I'd only make changes slowly: try 10 minutes of barefoot running or with different shoes, a couple times a week at the end of a normal run, and go from there.
The article is not telling what happened after the hysteria.
This movement settled and manifested to a "natural running" idea.
We now have Altra, Topo Athletic, Hoka, Invo8 and others, offering shoes with more or less flat soles. Encouraging you to run with a natural running pose.
This does not mean cushioning wouldn't be allowed.
"The data showed significant differences in the oxygen uptake (a way to measure the energy cost of running) in the Vaporfly shoe resulting in a 2.8 percent improved running economy, or the amount of energy it takes a runner to go a certain distance, over the Adidas shoe on average"
Also the significant benefits that comes from improved post-run recovery with modern super shoes, allowing athletes to run significantly more weekly mileage.
But not every runner sees improvement in time. so-called non-responders exist at the elite level but I don't recall seeing any analysis as to why some runners run faster and others don't with these carbon-plate shoes.
Not vibrams, but please have a closeer look at those olypians shoes. These are very lightweight and most important _flat_ shoes, encouraging a natural running pose.
a really high percentage of the runners i see out i the street are forefoot striking in zero drops - clearly that's not barefoot but i'd also question whether you can call it 'short lived'
I ran a lot in two pairs of Altra Instinct 1.0s. Altra shoes used to be very minimalist that also happened to be zero drop with big toe boxes. The most notable thing was how little cushion it had, it was like running on a piece of leather, close to barefoot running. You wouldn't even think the Altra shoes made today are from the same company, they have so much cushion. I don't think its a bad thing, what I eventually took away from my Altras was that I need a huge toebox for my feet to be happy and if my shoes have too much drop I tend to heel strike. I'm glad my shoes have more cushion today, I just wish the cushion didn't break down so fast.
i started and ran a barefoot running club back then. it doesn't make your foot stronger. but you do learn to put up with pain.
i did real no shoe barefoot running and pushed most people to try that. it did have an effect; no more twisted ankles. i got them quite often and never after 3 months of no shoes. there was a kid who eventually played d1 ball who joined because he had 'bad ankles' and still credits me for solving that.
you can get all the benefits of barefoot running by running or jogging once a week on a beach or soft grass soccer field. i think it's building up muscles in the leg to better balance you. no changes occur in the actual foot.
I argue that doing any sport would help with the bad ankles. For me it worked, for kid it worked, so I have two data points to offer. Of course if you have them and want to get into real performance sports you'll still need ankle support, but for the daily life this got us fixed.
I was in a trail running club in that era and the organizer and a few others ran in flat Luna sandals. I will say that their form was beautiful - there’s no question in my mind that barefoot-inspired running produces a more natural locomotion.
But I tried it and it was a bust. A one mile run would lock my calf up, and that would set me back for weeks. I still have the Lunas and wear them on the boat.
I trail run and hike in my Chaco sandals. I need the arch support. I also wear socks when I do it because then small stones and rocks don't cause any issues.
Yeah if you’re already a competent runner using traditional shoes then switching to Lunas or similar will absolutely blast your calves if you try to maintain even a remotely similar pace or volume at the start.
During hiking, I realized that I’m more likely to tip over in my hiking boots compared to my sneakers. The center of pressure is much higher in hiking shoes than in sneakers. And the shape of my sneakers is roughly like a triangle, with the larger side on the bottom. It's a different stroy when its muddy though...
Agreed - I've always naturally landed flat when running even in very padded shoes. I run in concrete with very cushioned runners and still do this. Also run on the soft beach sand a few times a week which builds stabilizer muscles and when hiking or on softer ground I use shoes with almost no cushion but thicker rubber outsoles.
For casual shoes I mostly wear leather boots which also have no cushion and stiff thick rubber soles. I kinda like the variety for different surfaces
I know a guy who has been no shoes for almost 20 years now. I think he does use the shoes with the toes when running, but in everyday life, he's just no shoes, no socks. The exception is situations where he's in a formal wear, in those cases he does put on shoes.
Most others who didn't the barefoot running have all quit.
The only way we'll be seeing that trend go away is if they're banned. Those shoes improve race times so much they stretch the definition of what should be legal in racing. Nobody's going to revert to barefoot running for racing unless they don't care about their times.
Yeah, they may look goofy but they work, similar to how lycra makes one look like a power ranger but you won't see anyone in the TDF wearing a hoodie and jeans.
I bought a pair of the original Vibram Five Fingers while living in London, 2007/2008. It was more out of curiosity than anything. They were displayed in a shop window in Spitalfields and looked bizarre in an appealing way.
I was never a runner/jogger. But I do walk a lot. Especially in summer. For example, if something is 20 walking minutes away and public transport takes 15, I walk.
I wore the Five Fingers all summer, every summer, ever after.
I never had any sore feet when wearing these. And what's more, I have exceptionally strong feet and I attribute it to these shoes. I only found this out when I started tango dancing and several of my teachers told me.
My first pair from London disintegrated, a decade later, in 2017.
Every pair of five fingers I bought after that lasted a maximum of two years.
As such they're both an example of a great product as well as great example of enshittification.
Exact same experience—first pair from 2008 lasted over three years of heavy use (running on mostly pavement) and each replacement has barely survived one or two years.
If you were a red-blooded progressive maker-type of person in 2010, and you read Born to Run and didn't immediately go out and buy a pair of Vibram 5 Fingers, I really have to wonder if we're going to get along.
Never use the shoes anymore but that book has made me a healthier human for sure.
Same here. Back in 2009-ish or so when I was on a three week vacation to took my shoes off and re-learned how to walk. From then on, I haven't had any cortisone shots in my knees nor the somewhat annual reoccurring throwing my back out. From then on I have been exclusively barefooted, wearing Bedrock sandals or some other minimal shoe.
I get all kinds of comments and snide remarks, but to walk and stand pain free I really don't care.
Seriously. Hasn't the main thesis of that book (a distinct advantage of human upright evolution is our ability to run long distances) and several key supporting points been mostly disproven scientifically (early humans often hunted by running to exhaustion, for example)?
Seems to me another enticing narrative with little to no sound evidence a la Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens, and the like. The stuff this site loves to gobble up with comment after comment of supporting anecdata.
The insistence HNers have for utterly re-inventing their lives off of a single completely unsubstantiated book astounds me.
You know literally anyone can write literally anything in a book right? There's no vetting, no magical reality check. You can write a book that's nothing but good sounding falsehoods and nobody can stop you. You can even fill it with 10 pages of garbage, low quality citations!
The modern equivalent of a book is a 3 hour Youtube video essay, and most of them have more research behind them!
But nobody would obsess over them like people here obsess over lifestyle books.
I wear nothing but minimal shoes day to day. I find them so much better. I used to have precision manufactured orthotics etc, then went to another podiatrist one day who had moved to specialise in barefoot. She basically said "your feet are fine, try these shoes out and see how it goes". It went great.
TBC on running, I have tight achilles and need to put in a lot of prep work to be able to run without pain so cbf. Day to day though, give vivobarefoot or something a shot - I have 7 pairs. They're great.
I have almost the exact same story. I'm not a runner (I was a jogger when I was younger), but my unusually flat feet had me wearing orthotics most of my life, and the podiatrists kept prescribing thicker and more extreme orthotics. Finally, a physical therapist I was seeing (not for foot problems) suggested I try "barefoot" (zero rise, minimal support) shoes, and go barefoot as much as possible, also try to be conscious of using my arch muscles to avoid pronating as I walked.
tl;dr: Haven't worn orthotics since, no more foot problems. My favorite brand is Merrell.
My girlfriend at the time got into this. I didn't run but expressed interest in giving it a go, so I got a pair of lightweight running shoes and she instructed me how to run "properly" like dogs and other animals, that is on the balls of my feet and not on my heels.
I injured myself on my first run and couldn't walk for two weeks. I still don't really know what happened. Nothing obvious happened on the run; I didn't fall or twist anything and wasn't in pain during or after the run. But when I awoke the next day I couldn't stand. I was very fit at the time due to daily cycling both as transport and as a sport/hobby. So my theory is my "cycling muscles" were way stronger than my "running muscles" and something in the latter just gave.
This theory was corroborated by the fact that I could not walk at all during my two week recovery period, but I could still cycle. I was in pain most of the time. It's the only time in my life I've taken painkillers regularly. It actually seemed to be getting worse, then one day I woke up, the pain was gone, and I could walk again.
Suffice to say I've never tried running in this completely unnatural way again. I've run since and never injured myself again. I run the way my body tells me I should run.
Forefoot running helped me tremendously, but the people in the shoe store advised me to use proper shoes for that (I guess I took the Nike Fly thing, which was good for that) and to start slowly with it. I used months to slowly adapt myself to it, starting with no more than 50 meters on these things per day, and I was already an experienced runner at that time.
I had a similar experience, except at the time I was an avid distance runner. I had run a number of ultras and was training for a marathon. After a single 15 minute run in a pair of Nike Free shoes, I was unable to run for two weeks. It felt like a combination of shin splints, knee problems, and calf cramps. It was horrible.
The strange thing was that I never really favored the big, bulky shoes anyway. I always sought out the lowest cushion, lowest drop shoes I could find. And in 2010 I was already 20 years into running regularly.
The fad did have a lasting effect on me though. I can now buy nice, low cushion zero drop shoes, and I love them. But no-cushion is definitely out for me, and I can’t imagine running shoeless at all.
I read Born to Run and loved it. I never did the barefoot running thing. I just started running. That was four years ago. Weight is down. BP is down. A1C in the middle of normal. It’s done wonders.
There’s a passage in there about how humans have evolved to run that’s fascinating. Made me realize maybe we are naturals at running.
Was is David Attenborough's "Planet Earth"? There was a bit about a tribe that hunt antelope or some other kind of herd animal. After separating one from the herd, the human eventually "outruns" it. Not in speed but just tenacity, endurance — the animal eventually collapses.
It's possible it's in both places. In the book there is a passage, "if you can run six miles on a summer day then you, my friend, are a lethal weapon in the animal kingdom. We can dump heat on the run, but animals can’t pant while they gallop."
I always felt that running with slim sneakers (very thin sole) was best for me. Of course I never run on asphalt (somehow it always seemed to me crazy). So, running barefoot is not that crazy if you run on grass or sand. Running on asphalt with or without shoes doesn’t sound right to me.
The whole mythos of running barefoot got me and my wife into running! We did actual barefoot just a little bit before switching to toe shoes. We ran in those until 2021. We only switched to Xeros because of the "grass stuck between the toes" effect when hiking and the ability to get slightly thicker soles with lugs.
From when we started in 2009 to today, we both had to increase two shoe sizes.
She just finished her first 50 mile ultramarathon using Xero thin soled shoes. It was half on the AT, and she had no issues with that.
I'm a less serious runner, just enough to be able to knock out a few miles on demand and the annual Broad Street 10 mile run.
We both hiked 1000 miles of the AT on a thru in 2022. We've also clocked around 3O00 miles of other small day hikes and overnight trips. All with Zeros or Altras, and with a 30lb pack.
Over the years, she's had some minor issues with plantar fascitis that went away when she added in regular stretching. She's had a few bouts of hip bursitis when ramping up mileage for the ultra.
I've had some issues with knee pain that started on the thru hike related to scoliosis. My one hip drops lower than the other, twisting the knee and causing issues on both. Regular single leg exercises and heavy lifting keeps that in check (hard to do on the trail unfortunately).
Neither of us have had any issues with ankles, calves, or typical runner knee issues. I'm not sure I can credit the shoes for all of it, but I'm very glad we started with them and neither of us have any reason to change. Regular thick foam trainers now feel very uncomfortable, it's hard to describe. They squish my toes (which are very wide). They change my gait which feels awkward.
It's funny, now I feel like I see lots of runners in my area using these thin soled shoes, like the Merrel Vaporglove, Xeros, or alternative. Maybe it's cohort bias? Either way I am glad I found them when I did!
Exactly what I figured, wider, not longer. Some shoes (usually higher-end ones) have a width measurement (in letters) as well as a length (the usual number measurement) for this reason—you shouldn't need a longer shoe (larger number size) unless buying shoes that don't offer a variety of widths. In fact, getting a longer shoe for the extra width will result in a poor overall fit.
It's kinda like how some nicer brands offer a variety of size modifiers in addition to "small, medium, large" on their ready-to-wear shirts, like "slim", or Brooks Brothers' named fit-variants ("Regent", "Madison", et c)
Is having a wider foot a good thing for certain sports? It seems like it might be more natural and advantageous but I don’t know if I like the idea of having to buy wider shoes for regular purposes.
I have naturally wide feet, and it's no advantage for any sport requiring footwear. Soccer shoes, climbing shoes, ice skates, snowboard boots, the list goes on, mostly manufactured for average to skinny sized feet.
Who makes wide skates? I have a wide foot and have yet to find a hard body skate that is wide enough. I always end up having to sit laps out at the track every 15-20 minutes at the track because my feet get so squeezed into my skates and after a while the pain is no good. And skates that are wide enough are sized up and just feel like boats on my feet or they don’t have low ankles so you don’t really get to lean forward as much as you like to overstep. Anyways I love skating so much I just wish i could find a skate that fits before next season as I want to skate the Elfstedentocht. Well at least the alternative.
I see. The main reason I was wondering about this is that occasionally there’s people online who recommend going barefoot or using a special shoe for doing weightlifting. Maybe strengthening the foot arch is the point behind this trend rather than width.
I resolved my plantar fasciitis by switching from hiking boots to thin soled trail runners. My theory is that it makes me take more care in putting my feet down, and makes me stretch them considerably more as they conform to rocks and holes. I was just stomping over everything in the boots.
I read someone who said that walking barefoot was a religious experience for them, in which every step was a prayer. Someone responded that they weren't as religious, and for them every step was fondling the earth. Both work for me, and both work better with thinner soles.
I've spent quite a bit of time in outdoor sports and don't think I've met a single person who did a lot of rough hiking and preferred heavy duty hiking boots over lighter trail running or approach shoes. I see quite a few of the old school heavy boots for sale in some stores so there must be a market but I have no idea what it is.
Barefoot hiking is also very niche from what I've seen, but I do think there is something undeniably nice about walking around camp or a yard in bare feet.
I don't think it's fallacious to appeal to nature. Sure, not all things natural are good for you (deadly viruses etc.). But when you have something that works for millennia, and has been optimized (by evolution) for that specific purpose, making changes to that specific thing is likely to ignore the context in which that specific thing was created. It's like trying to change a legacy software system with no documentation. You have to be very careful not to introduce bugs, and in most practical cases, "how the legacy system does it" is GOOD, and you should hold the burden of proving that the new system is actually better.
Definitely true. Most people walk/run on flattish, hard surfaces (roads and paths) most of the time, though, which is a change significant enough from what we evolved with that I'm not entirely sure the null hypothesis holds.
I'd alway been prone to avoiding shoes. I started running when I was 16 (1986). During high school I'd run 10-14 miles a night about five days a week, mostly barefoot.
I didn't start regularly wearing shoes until after college. Since I started wearing shoes there has been a significant change in my foot structure. My big toes have moved outward by at least 10 degrees. Before then they were directly in-line with the bones and ligaments running down the foot.
When you walk and run barefoot your foot soles get much thicker. You learn how to respond to your feet. I tend to not get splinters or glass slivers because I can feel them before I put my full weight down. Even when something does pierce the skin, it doesn't penetrate the sole, and I can just pick up my foot and grab it out with my fingers.
One of the most interesting benefits seems to be resistance to fungal infections. If I ever start to feel itching in my feet, then I go for a long walk barefoot on concrete. It just ends.
For a couple of years, there was this barefoot guy who commuted on the same train as me to work. No matter the season, always barefoot. I must say, purely from a hygiene perspective, it felt uncomfortable looking at his feet. They were dirty and dusty in the same way shoes would pick up dirt.
What do your feet look like today ? Honest question.
I lived in Java, Indonesia for a year and ran barefoot, and only wore sandals to the mosque. You wash your feet 5x per day for the 5 daily obligatory prayers, so it works out well. An earlier post here about a person barefoot in all seasons and on the subway train, well, that's another story. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 60s through the 80s, and I can't see that at all. But then again, NYC is a lot cleaner now than it was then. My foot spread out and feels so much more usable to grab at the trail and less stiff without pain. I started running barefoot in 2007, but not as frequent or as long as a competitive runner would; it was more of a 30-minute run 3 to 4x per week at a mild pace . I'm 60 now and have no back, knee, foot or other joint pain or soft tissue issues. I did run on the front of my feet, and with a bicycle pedalling type of motion of my feet. Now, I wear Xeros and a cheap rip-off of the Vibram minimal sole shoes for my daily town/city walking and running.
Yuck. We used to put the sprinkler cap on the johnny pump (Brooklyn for fire hydrant back then) and run on the curb and into the street with bare feet. In the early 70s there was a lot of dog crap and broken glass, since beverages were in glass or heavy cans vs. plastic. I sliced my feet on glass a half dozen times over the years. Lucky I didn't get hepatitis or other nasty stuff. I do have a very robust immunity system though ;)
In the summer in the inner city of Brooklyn, you would be sweeping all day, everyday. NYC was a cesspool in the 70s. Newpapers blowing around, overfilled trash receptacles, insufficient street cleaning, and the public's general lack of respect for their fellow denizens. Homicides were at 1890 in 1989 in NYC compared to <400 nowadays and the population was a lot smaller then.
That's one of the reasons why you generally don't go to bed with shoes on (and why most people take off their shoes when coming home). If you don't use shoes however, I guess you probably have to wash your feet when you come home?
That's exactly why folks remove shoes at the door when going in. I find it strange when people do not do this because they are tracking in whatever they may have stepped in throughout the day. Just pop your shoes off at the entrance and throw on some house slippers or shoes.
I try to go barefoot as often as I can, and my bigger concern in crowds is getting my feet stepped on.
Paradoxically, I am very paranoid about injuring my toes - so walking around doesn't concern me (at worst, I'll step on something pointy and will need a bandaid), but losing another toenail because someone kicks me with a hard shoe is something I dread.
Also: I would absolutely never, ever go barefoot in a big city, which is defined by being big enough to have a train. Stepping on a sharp rock or thorn is one thing; stepping on someone's broken beer bottle and then hiking through all the wonderful fluids that cities accumulate sounds like a nightmare and a free trip to the hospital to get pumped full of every antibiotic known to humanity.
There was a dude in my old Queens NYC neighborhood who was a local fixture. His job was distributing flyers, you'd see him walking along the business districts in and out of stores placing his flyers. Didn't matter what time of year it was, he wore the same outfit almost every day: wind breaker, tee shirt or tank top, short shorts, and bare foot. Dude even took the A train bare foot - something I would never do.
As you’re running, your foot lands, you put your weight down on it, then you push off. If you step on something sharp when running barefoot, you can’t avoid the first part, but you can avoid putting all your weight on it or pushing off hard. Basically just a little skip. You’re not going to be able to do much at a full sprint, but it’s fine for anything less.
The nice thing about living on the beach is that it's socially acceptable to be barefoot at all times since you're walking on dirt roads or sand.
The only time I put them on is when I go into the supermart or airport.
Your soles thicken up so much that you forget how puny they are normally. So I'll accidentally lead friends through some stretch of area and they can't follow because of the hot sand or sharp sea shells, and the discomfort is very mild for me.
It's kinda sad going from that back to the city where your feet never touch the ground.
I bought some unstructured shoes last fall, which I ordered online because none of the shops I went into sold them, because "too many people were getting injured". When I forst got my shoes the forst thing I did was go for a 2 mile walk, and sure enough I hurt something under my left arch, which gave me minor grief for a couple weeks.
When winter arrived I started using them for the real reason I bught them: winter trail running, and for that they're great. Like mocassins, your foot conforms to the ground and they provide provide pretty excellent grip on snowpack. I consider it an improvement over lugged trail runners for winter.
I previously owned some Converse high-tops and found their lightly structured soles worked well in winter, which is what first got me curious about unstructured shoes. That and the 6 months I spent surfing in Mexico, in which I was barefoot 90% of the time. To note, I am not a serious runner. I hike and cycle, but for running the trend over the last 5 years has been to go for trail runs in winter 1-2 dozen times a season.
I am thankful for this movement because I now mostly wear xero shoes (or DIY sandals) and now I never get shooting pains up my leg (caused by arch support) nor squished pinkie toes.
I also have no need for high heels in my daily life so "zero drop" is great. I don't think heels are good for your back.
It's also nice to not that the shoes are extremely light weight/flexible (no breaking-in) and breathable (no stink).
I don't plan to ever wear a high-heel pointed shoe again.
> “… was dominated by an aggressive mob mentality around barefoot running”
Really? Most of the barefoot running enthusiasts I encountered were super friendly and open-minded.
> “… the appeal to nature fallacy: a logical fallacy in which a subject is claimed to be good simply because it is natural”
I’m not sure it is a fallacy to revert to tradition (proven heuristics) in a complex realm of limited first-principles understanding. Much of the barefoot running enthusiasm (and general naturalist or anthropologically-oriented problem-solving) is less oriented to proving various theories and more so trying to find gains with a clear awareness of uncertainty.
Personally: I suspect simple shoes best honor the immense structural complexity of the feet and legs (and the integration with the rest of the body). I wear thin-soled shoes in order to maintain healthy lower limbs. As a lover of walks for a clear mind I advocate for simple, thin-soled shoes (but I don’t believe we need an inquisition and I haven’t yet started collecting funds for a mission).
The few times I attempted to wear shoes with significant support I noticed dangerous knee strain that went away upon returning to simple shoes. While there’s no overwhelming body of evidence there and I probably can’t write a paper about it, that’s sufficient signal for me to stick with simple shoes.
Yeah, labelling this as a hysterical mob going after people is weird. Runners are pretty chill as a group. There was certainly a fad, but this article exaggerates it to the point of dishonesty.
So called barefoot shoes, which are notable for their thin, flat soles and wide foot boxes, are not based on an appeal to nature at all. Constricting the foot and movement of the toes results in visible changes to feet and complications like ingrown toenails which are otherwise rare. Thick soles cause a transition to a hard heel strike pattern which ultimately increases stress on the heels and knees. The amount of hard data which is currently available is limited, but also rather dramatic.
My work involves walking all around urban environments. I had long had problems with overly narrow shoes, and when I transitioned to barefoot style shoes my gait completely changed. The result has been a massive improvement in quality of life with foot and joint pain that used to be constant now completely gone. One interesting part of this is that it took a full two years to completely make the transition, and now when I want to buy shoes I almost always find a range available in my size because so many attempt to transition to wearing barefoot shoes turn back because it is genuinely painful, difficult, and dangerous, especially at first in the initial two weeks or so.
This article is interesting, but to me seems a bit off. More interesting than the brief spike of strong interest is the fact that interest in barefoot running and barefoot shoes remained elevated afterwards relative to before.
I really liked the idea of "barefoot running" at the time, but it was always pretty clearly an extreme take. I do still think (with 0 evidence) that a lot of supported shoes are overly padded - that said, people run on a pretty wide variety of surfaces, it seems hard to argue that people evolved to run on concrete.
There are so many things put together here almost randomly, because of that its easy to criticise the whole thing, but there are some reasonable things in it.
Having barefoot connection with soil is definitely good for you, so is any reasonable exposure to nature. The key here is exposure to nature, walking on asphalt or concrete is not nature. This is about walking barefoot so that your soles connect to the soil, earth, dirt, grass or sand. In the modern world of course you have to be careful and watch out for sharp objects, all kinds of garbage etc.
People who have a piece of land, garden or park access can definitely use it for barewalking, running or just standing - it doesn't matter as long as feet touch the soil, without any fancy, minimal, shoes or anything like that.
In many spiritual places they require you to remove your shoes and even your socks, there are certain benefits of doing that, but even the holiest of people would wear shoes when going on rough terrain, thats just a question of sanity.
Not always, yes. But in this case I can test it by general wellbeing and shape of feet.
The more I walk barefeet on grass and rock, the stronger my feet are. And more sensitiv. With shoes, I don't really feel my feet, with barefeet I can now feel the grass on different parts on my skin. Feels good. Improves my mood -> is good for me.
While that feels good for you, this does not constitute the evidence that "going barefoot is good for you." A sibling posted some studies that would be more interesting (I'll admit I've not read them).
What "good for you" would look like to me would be longer life expectancy, better health outcomes at different stages of life, etc. "Strong feet," for example, doesn't meet that standard for me. I'd want to see a link that work to actively strengthen one's feet creates those better life outcomes.
You body does provide you with a quite elaborate feedback system. And you can also objectivly meassure. (E.g. how long you walk without pain)
And studies can be very misleading. For example it matters a lot, if and how often you walked barefeet as a child. If you didn't, your bones will be not so strong developed and then barefeet walking/running can be even dangerous. Trusting a general study that maybe did not take this into account (or did not mentioned it prominently) here vs trusting the feedback from your nerves in your feet would be not wise.
> What "good for you" would look like to me would be longer life expectancy, better health outcomes at different stages of life, etc. "Strong feet," for example, doesn't meet that standard for me. I'd want to see a link that work to actively strengthen one's feet creates those better life outcomes.
"It feels good" isn't an objective outcome that necessarily means something is "good for you."
> And you can also objectivly meassure. (E.g. how long you walk without pain)
This is a better outcome but I'd say it's not objective because I walk without pain while wearing shoes.
Do you need an explanation of why the touch of another human would be obviously beneficial? I find walking on bare dirt or earth to be similar. I think experiencing is believing.
I think the need for an explanation/citation scales relative to how common a given anecdotal experience is.
I’ve spent plenty of time walking barefoot outside but apparently have not experienced what people here are claiming. Not saying no one can/does, but at the very least the experience doesn’t seem to be universal.
>but apparently have not experienced what people here are claiming
Or you did have experience it just did not notice. The problem with experiential comparisons is that different people have different levels of sensitivity and attention. So just because you didn't feel it consciously doesn't mean you did not benefit from it.
> Or you did have experience it just did not notice.
Exactly my point, and this is why personal anecdotes are just not sufficient for something like this.
Life is full of people telling us to do <thing>, because they’re convinced that their personal experience with that thing indicates some universal truth.
In the circles I grew up in, that meant growing up unvaccinated among many other highly questionable things.
The point is that the burden of proof must be higher than “it feels good to me” or what amounts to the naturalistic fallacy.
I have no actual opinion about the efficacy of walking barefoot other than to note that I didn’t knowingly experience what other people passionately describe. I also know there are many things that make me feel good that have no effect on many people.
Cite me then as far you trust I'm representing my own truth. I don't even know what you are demanding exactly. There's not going to be any universal human truth so its going to be made up of opinionated reporting with arbitrary scientific assignments. You don't believe that the average person has positive feelings about walking on meadow or mud or whatever scientific endpoint? Or you don't think human touch is on average perceived positively? Or you want to see some +X years survival for those in arbitrary group compared to this other arbitrary group. Like I said, I believe what I experience, so very sorry to extrapolate a simple life experience almost universal to all humans since the dawn of time onto my suburban vice lord.
>You don't believe that the average person has positive feelings about walking on meadow or mud or whatever scientific endpoint? Or you don't think human touch is on average perceived positively
As noted elsewhere, something being "perceived positively" is different than "good for you". I perceive drinking beer positively, after all. But I think we can agree that it's not good for me.
Your whole comment is basically "science doesn't matter because I feel good when I do X".
>Like I said, I believe what I experience, so very sorry to extrapolate a simple life experience almost universal to all humans since the dawn of time onto my suburban vice lord.
This is unnecessary snark.
By all means, go barefoot or whatever makes you feel good. I even think that there's probably some sort of merit to it. But you don't need to get so defensive over someone asking if there's something more substantial than "well I said so" when it's being recommended to them. Especially if there are counter-examples also in the thread.
Do you need a citation or can I safely assert: "Things are good for me that make me feel good absent it being a poison." I just don't think walking on grass or whatever is that far away from ground truth. Coming by in a thread discussing fairly universal experiences and asking for a citation isn't productive at all. "Ya well my great uncle didn't have feet so it would be excruciating for him to try to walk on grass." is just as productive.
>Do you need a citation or can I safely assert: "Things are good for me that make me feel good absent it being a poison."
I don't need a citation, no, this is pretty obviously false.
Once again, go ahead do do what you want, but asking for a citation when people are recommending a change in lifestyle because it is "good for you" is a completely reasonable thing to do.
Especially when their first ask was "Just a simple explanation why it is so obvious and so beneficial." (i.e., not a scientific study or anything), to which you responded with some hand-waving and a question instead of a simple explanation.
In my opinion, I would rather walk through mud with some kind of footwear on than barefoot, and I think the beauty of a meadow can be appreciated with or without footwear
The simple way to understand it is exposure to nature activates some internal mechanisms that evolved with us through millions of years of species living in nature. In a similar manner it feels so good to go to a beach on a sunny day - you have exposure to earth, water, sun and wind.
nod I grew up with access to a big back garden, so barefoot walked on it a lot, unfortunately it involved crossing a little bit of asphalt pathway to get to, and I still have nightmares of the feeling of small sharp stones digging in my feet.
A similar late-teens habit I developed was going out and laying on the grass pretty much naked, when I couldn't sleep late at night, and just staring at the milky way. It was a peace I have no idea how I'd get back.
To add to the anecdotal support for barefoot running: I ran in traditional running shoes for years ... and my knees were eventually not happy. I gave up running, assuming I just had bad knees.
When I heard about barefoot running a year or so later, I tried it. Running on the balls of my feet took some re-learning but the knee pain never came back. I continued to run for 4 or 5 years. (I'm not sure why I started walking instead of running — getting older? Or to share the time with my non-running wife?)
(On a tangent: I dislike any kind of shoe-clip when biking. I feel that pulling up on your leg/knee to power a bicycle goes against the design of our knee.)
Same for a friend of mine, years of heel strikes and doctors appointment to cure his bad knees. Cured after 5 mins of barefoot running and finding his natural stance
I'm still running in my vibrams mostly because I've not had a reason to change and researching alternative shoes is annoying and expensive, limiting my experimentation with different brands and models. I also put in a good amount of mileage and worry how long the shoe will last. I'm mostly considering changing because vibrams aren't on sale as often, carried by fewer retailers, and sizing online is a pain (especially when they don't list the european size).
I didn't start out of any book hype but bought a pair out of curiosity and then lost my regular running shoes before a race. It was a monthly 5k and my time dramatically improved that month (I had also switched to a standing desk, making root cause fuzzier, which I also still use). Most of my running is on rough, rocky trails except when they are wet or for the 5k.
> strongly worded claims: barefoot running prevented injuries; barefoot running was more efficient; heel striking was evil; barefoot running was the natural and therefore "correct" way to run.
Anecdata: a friend of mine has been running for years, and for years he complained about knee pain. As it turns out he was heel striking the whole time, it completely disappeared since I told him to run 50 meters barefoot to find his "natural" point of contact
FWIW I had knee pain whenever I ran and my natural point of contact has always been the heel. I forced a change to mid-foot and it went away. Felt pretty unnatural for a bit and I was slower, but was able to build up to my heel-strike pace eventually. (all this done with regular running shoes)
The human body is an amazing construction; it knows exactly how to run, it's more a question of letting it run its way as opposed to making it run the way you think it should.
The main issue with running for me is emotional. Like many others, I tend to overdo it; and then its not fun, which means I stop doing it.
210 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 360 ms ] threadBut they still serve me well as gym shoes with a very low packing volume (great for business trips).
But then, I've always had a forefoot strike.
I also do a lot of barefoot walking.
However, the first few times I definitely ran for less than 15 minutes. That seems like overkill when getting used to barefoot running. I was sore enough in my calves for days from five minutes of running the first few times.
In that era I saw two major misconceptions around minimalism in running footwear. The first is the idea that heel-to-toe "drop" is the the main important metric -- of course, a shoe company thing. Actually what matters a lot more is proprioception -- the feeling of knowing where your foot is in space relative to the ground, and also the feedback your foot is getting from the ground.
The second misconception is that it's important to switch over 100%. Related to this is a misconception that somewhat more minimalist is better. As a competitive runner, I saw benefits from mixing in barefoot strides and a couple miles per week barefoot on soccer fields while keeping my training shoes the same. I'd recommend others do the same, and very gradually increase mileage.
The challenge for research in my understanding is that it's very hard to track long-term injury prevention and performance improvement in a statistically significant way. You can measure what happens when habitually shod people do a barefoot run, and you can go to Kenya and study how habitually barefoot people land when they put on shoes, but that's different from the long term impact on your gait of changing your footwear for a long period of time. (I'm not a researcher myself but I've talked to them.)
After a few years of regular barefoot running my running gait had changed enough that I didn't feel the need to keep doing it and have been doing runs in race shoes almost exclusively for the past decade.
I do think all shoes, except those original Vibram Five Fingers, are not a great substitute for barefoot running itself. Running barefoot on a nice grass field feels so much nicer and more fun, too! But the minimal shoes do help force you to feel the ground and not just slam into it, so I think they can help.
Whatever you do, I'd only make changes slowly: try 10 minutes of barefoot running or with different shoes, a couple times a week at the end of a normal run, and go from there.
"The data showed significant differences in the oxygen uptake (a way to measure the energy cost of running) in the Vaporfly shoe resulting in a 2.8 percent improved running economy, or the amount of energy it takes a runner to go a certain distance, over the Adidas shoe on average"
https://lifesciences.byu.edu/can-your-shoes-really-make-you-...
[edit] a quick search found this article about supershoes and the range of response - see https://run.outsideonline.com/gear/super-shoe-hyper-responde...
https://www.runningshoesguru.com/2023/09/the-shoes-of-the-wi...
i did real no shoe barefoot running and pushed most people to try that. it did have an effect; no more twisted ankles. i got them quite often and never after 3 months of no shoes. there was a kid who eventually played d1 ball who joined because he had 'bad ankles' and still credits me for solving that.
you can get all the benefits of barefoot running by running or jogging once a week on a beach or soft grass soccer field. i think it's building up muscles in the leg to better balance you. no changes occur in the actual foot.
Futsal will destroy them.
But I tried it and it was a bust. A one mile run would lock my calf up, and that would set me back for weeks. I still have the Lunas and wear them on the boat.
For casual shoes I mostly wear leather boots which also have no cushion and stiff thick rubber soles. I kinda like the variety for different surfaces
Interestingly I seem to be able to run for longer barefoot (on socks) than with shoes. There’s something about shoes that makes my legs tire faster.
Less weight on the parts of the body that move most during a run is an obvious benefit of not wearing shoes.
Most others who didn't the barefoot running have all quit.
https://assets.adidas.com/images/w_600,f_auto,q_auto/2d9fa49...
In 10 years we'll be writing about how dumb this trend is while we revert to barefoot running
I was never a runner/jogger. But I do walk a lot. Especially in summer. For example, if something is 20 walking minutes away and public transport takes 15, I walk.
I wore the Five Fingers all summer, every summer, ever after.
I never had any sore feet when wearing these. And what's more, I have exceptionally strong feet and I attribute it to these shoes. I only found this out when I started tango dancing and several of my teachers told me.
My first pair from London disintegrated, a decade later, in 2017.
Every pair of five fingers I bought after that lasted a maximum of two years.
As such they're both an example of a great product as well as great example of enshittification.
It’s probably more because of this:
> But I do walk a lot. […] For example, if something is 20 walking minutes away and public transport takes 15, I walk.
The shoes I wear most other times are oxfords, monks or brogues however.
These kinda lock your foot in place, metatarsal and arch of the foot are not 'exercised' as much because of the rigidity of these shoes.
I do use more feet muscles in my Five Fingers for the simple fact that these shoes allow me to do that.
You can kinda flex your feet and e.g. choose to land only on the metatarsal and feel safe.
Never use the shoes anymore but that book has made me a healthier human for sure.
I get all kinds of comments and snide remarks, but to walk and stand pain free I really don't care.
Seems to me another enticing narrative with little to no sound evidence a la Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens, and the like. The stuff this site loves to gobble up with comment after comment of supporting anecdata.
You know literally anyone can write literally anything in a book right? There's no vetting, no magical reality check. You can write a book that's nothing but good sounding falsehoods and nobody can stop you. You can even fill it with 10 pages of garbage, low quality citations!
The modern equivalent of a book is a 3 hour Youtube video essay, and most of them have more research behind them!
But nobody would obsess over them like people here obsess over lifestyle books.
This article from 2024 [1] that discusses newly published research seems to refute your claim.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-distance-runn...
TBC on running, I have tight achilles and need to put in a lot of prep work to be able to run without pain so cbf. Day to day though, give vivobarefoot or something a shot - I have 7 pairs. They're great.
I injured myself on my first run and couldn't walk for two weeks. I still don't really know what happened. Nothing obvious happened on the run; I didn't fall or twist anything and wasn't in pain during or after the run. But when I awoke the next day I couldn't stand. I was very fit at the time due to daily cycling both as transport and as a sport/hobby. So my theory is my "cycling muscles" were way stronger than my "running muscles" and something in the latter just gave.
This theory was corroborated by the fact that I could not walk at all during my two week recovery period, but I could still cycle. I was in pain most of the time. It's the only time in my life I've taken painkillers regularly. It actually seemed to be getting worse, then one day I woke up, the pain was gone, and I could walk again.
Suffice to say I've never tried running in this completely unnatural way again. I've run since and never injured myself again. I run the way my body tells me I should run.
The strange thing was that I never really favored the big, bulky shoes anyway. I always sought out the lowest cushion, lowest drop shoes I could find. And in 2010 I was already 20 years into running regularly.
The fad did have a lasting effect on me though. I can now buy nice, low cushion zero drop shoes, and I love them. But no-cushion is definitely out for me, and I can’t imagine running shoeless at all.
There’s a passage in there about how humans have evolved to run that’s fascinating. Made me realize maybe we are naturals at running.
Blew my mind that we could do that.
From when we started in 2009 to today, we both had to increase two shoe sizes.
She just finished her first 50 mile ultramarathon using Xero thin soled shoes. It was half on the AT, and she had no issues with that.
I'm a less serious runner, just enough to be able to knock out a few miles on demand and the annual Broad Street 10 mile run.
We both hiked 1000 miles of the AT on a thru in 2022. We've also clocked around 3O00 miles of other small day hikes and overnight trips. All with Zeros or Altras, and with a 30lb pack.
Over the years, she's had some minor issues with plantar fascitis that went away when she added in regular stretching. She's had a few bouts of hip bursitis when ramping up mileage for the ultra.
I've had some issues with knee pain that started on the thru hike related to scoliosis. My one hip drops lower than the other, twisting the knee and causing issues on both. Regular single leg exercises and heavy lifting keeps that in check (hard to do on the trail unfortunately).
Neither of us have had any issues with ankles, calves, or typical runner knee issues. I'm not sure I can credit the shoes for all of it, but I'm very glad we started with them and neither of us have any reason to change. Regular thick foam trainers now feel very uncomfortable, it's hard to describe. They squish my toes (which are very wide). They change my gait which feels awkward.
It's funny, now I feel like I see lots of runners in my area using these thin soled shoes, like the Merrel Vaporglove, Xeros, or alternative. Maybe it's cohort bias? Either way I am glad I found them when I did!
https://www.reddit.com/r/BarefootRunning/comments/1ec5i5n/di...
It's kinda like how some nicer brands offer a variety of size modifiers in addition to "small, medium, large" on their ready-to-wear shirts, like "slim", or Brooks Brothers' named fit-variants ("Regent", "Madison", et c)
I read someone who said that walking barefoot was a religious experience for them, in which every step was a prayer. Someone responded that they weren't as religious, and for them every step was fondling the earth. Both work for me, and both work better with thinner soles.
Barefoot hiking is also very niche from what I've seen, but I do think there is something undeniably nice about walking around camp or a yard in bare feet.
I didn't start regularly wearing shoes until after college. Since I started wearing shoes there has been a significant change in my foot structure. My big toes have moved outward by at least 10 degrees. Before then they were directly in-line with the bones and ligaments running down the foot.
When you walk and run barefoot your foot soles get much thicker. You learn how to respond to your feet. I tend to not get splinters or glass slivers because I can feel them before I put my full weight down. Even when something does pierce the skin, it doesn't penetrate the sole, and I can just pick up my foot and grab it out with my fingers.
One of the most interesting benefits seems to be resistance to fungal infections. If I ever start to feel itching in my feet, then I go for a long walk barefoot on concrete. It just ends.
What do your feet look like today ? Honest question.
Maybe also invent a sort of layer of soft cloth they can put between the hard outer layer and their skin.
"That's a dumb idea," I said to myself.
Minutes later, I saw them walking out of a bodega, using a handful of napkins to staunch the blood coming out of their foot.
Paradoxically, I am very paranoid about injuring my toes - so walking around doesn't concern me (at worst, I'll step on something pointy and will need a bandaid), but losing another toenail because someone kicks me with a hard shoe is something I dread.
Also: I would absolutely never, ever go barefoot in a big city, which is defined by being big enough to have a train. Stepping on a sharp rock or thorn is one thing; stepping on someone's broken beer bottle and then hiking through all the wonderful fluids that cities accumulate sounds like a nightmare and a free trip to the hospital to get pumped full of every antibiotic known to humanity.
This makes sense at a slow gait, but how do you manage this when running?
The only time I put them on is when I go into the supermart or airport.
Your soles thicken up so much that you forget how puny they are normally. So I'll accidentally lead friends through some stretch of area and they can't follow because of the hot sand or sharp sea shells, and the discomfort is very mild for me.
It's kinda sad going from that back to the city where your feet never touch the ground.
When winter arrived I started using them for the real reason I bught them: winter trail running, and for that they're great. Like mocassins, your foot conforms to the ground and they provide provide pretty excellent grip on snowpack. I consider it an improvement over lugged trail runners for winter.
I previously owned some Converse high-tops and found their lightly structured soles worked well in winter, which is what first got me curious about unstructured shoes. That and the 6 months I spent surfing in Mexico, in which I was barefoot 90% of the time. To note, I am not a serious runner. I hike and cycle, but for running the trend over the last 5 years has been to go for trail runs in winter 1-2 dozen times a season.
I also have no need for high heels in my daily life so "zero drop" is great. I don't think heels are good for your back.
It's also nice to not that the shoes are extremely light weight/flexible (no breaking-in) and breathable (no stink).
I don't plan to ever wear a high-heel pointed shoe again.
> “… was dominated by an aggressive mob mentality around barefoot running”
Really? Most of the barefoot running enthusiasts I encountered were super friendly and open-minded.
> “… the appeal to nature fallacy: a logical fallacy in which a subject is claimed to be good simply because it is natural”
I’m not sure it is a fallacy to revert to tradition (proven heuristics) in a complex realm of limited first-principles understanding. Much of the barefoot running enthusiasm (and general naturalist or anthropologically-oriented problem-solving) is less oriented to proving various theories and more so trying to find gains with a clear awareness of uncertainty.
Personally: I suspect simple shoes best honor the immense structural complexity of the feet and legs (and the integration with the rest of the body). I wear thin-soled shoes in order to maintain healthy lower limbs. As a lover of walks for a clear mind I advocate for simple, thin-soled shoes (but I don’t believe we need an inquisition and I haven’t yet started collecting funds for a mission).
The few times I attempted to wear shoes with significant support I noticed dangerous knee strain that went away upon returning to simple shoes. While there’s no overwhelming body of evidence there and I probably can’t write a paper about it, that’s sufficient signal for me to stick with simple shoes.
My work involves walking all around urban environments. I had long had problems with overly narrow shoes, and when I transitioned to barefoot style shoes my gait completely changed. The result has been a massive improvement in quality of life with foot and joint pain that used to be constant now completely gone. One interesting part of this is that it took a full two years to completely make the transition, and now when I want to buy shoes I almost always find a range available in my size because so many attempt to transition to wearing barefoot shoes turn back because it is genuinely painful, difficult, and dangerous, especially at first in the initial two weeks or so.
This article is interesting, but to me seems a bit off. More interesting than the brief spike of strong interest is the fact that interest in barefoot running and barefoot shoes remained elevated afterwards relative to before.
Nice bit of context for anyone interested but not wanting to read the whole book is Christopher McDougal's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iGZPtWXzE
Having barefoot connection with soil is definitely good for you, so is any reasonable exposure to nature. The key here is exposure to nature, walking on asphalt or concrete is not nature. This is about walking barefoot so that your soles connect to the soil, earth, dirt, grass or sand. In the modern world of course you have to be careful and watch out for sharp objects, all kinds of garbage etc.
People who have a piece of land, garden or park access can definitely use it for barewalking, running or just standing - it doesn't matter as long as feet touch the soil, without any fancy, minimal, shoes or anything like that.
In many spiritual places they require you to remove your shoes and even your socks, there are certain benefits of doing that, but even the holiest of people would wear shoes when going on rough terrain, thats just a question of sanity.
Also in the pre modern world. Spikey plants are in many places and my feet regular hurt in summer.
"but even the holiest of people would wear shoes when going on rough terrain"
Unless when done with purpose. It is a good awareness training, walking through the bushes barefeet. One moment of distraction .. ouch.
Citation needed
But make sense to being able to move our feets freely without any hard sole that limits the development of the foot musculature and joints.
What "good for you" would look like to me would be longer life expectancy, better health outcomes at different stages of life, etc. "Strong feet," for example, doesn't meet that standard for me. I'd want to see a link that work to actively strengthen one's feet creates those better life outcomes.
You body does provide you with a quite elaborate feedback system. And you can also objectivly meassure. (E.g. how long you walk without pain)
And studies can be very misleading. For example it matters a lot, if and how often you walked barefeet as a child. If you didn't, your bones will be not so strong developed and then barefeet walking/running can be even dangerous. Trusting a general study that maybe did not take this into account (or did not mentioned it prominently) here vs trusting the feedback from your nerves in your feet would be not wise.
I didn't say that. What I said:
> What "good for you" would look like to me would be longer life expectancy, better health outcomes at different stages of life, etc. "Strong feet," for example, doesn't meet that standard for me. I'd want to see a link that work to actively strengthen one's feet creates those better life outcomes.
"It feels good" isn't an objective outcome that necessarily means something is "good for you."
> And you can also objectivly meassure. (E.g. how long you walk without pain)
This is a better outcome but I'd say it's not objective because I walk without pain while wearing shoes.
I’ve spent plenty of time walking barefoot outside but apparently have not experienced what people here are claiming. Not saying no one can/does, but at the very least the experience doesn’t seem to be universal.
>but apparently have not experienced what people here are claiming
Or you did have experience it just did not notice. The problem with experiential comparisons is that different people have different levels of sensitivity and attention. So just because you didn't feel it consciously doesn't mean you did not benefit from it.
Exactly my point, and this is why personal anecdotes are just not sufficient for something like this.
Life is full of people telling us to do <thing>, because they’re convinced that their personal experience with that thing indicates some universal truth.
In the circles I grew up in, that meant growing up unvaccinated among many other highly questionable things.
The point is that the burden of proof must be higher than “it feels good to me” or what amounts to the naturalistic fallacy.
I have no actual opinion about the efficacy of walking barefoot other than to note that I didn’t knowingly experience what other people passionately describe. I also know there are many things that make me feel good that have no effect on many people.
As noted elsewhere, something being "perceived positively" is different than "good for you". I perceive drinking beer positively, after all. But I think we can agree that it's not good for me.
Your whole comment is basically "science doesn't matter because I feel good when I do X".
>Like I said, I believe what I experience, so very sorry to extrapolate a simple life experience almost universal to all humans since the dawn of time onto my suburban vice lord.
This is unnecessary snark.
By all means, go barefoot or whatever makes you feel good. I even think that there's probably some sort of merit to it. But you don't need to get so defensive over someone asking if there's something more substantial than "well I said so" when it's being recommended to them. Especially if there are counter-examples also in the thread.
I don't need a citation, no, this is pretty obviously false.
Once again, go ahead do do what you want, but asking for a citation when people are recommending a change in lifestyle because it is "good for you" is a completely reasonable thing to do.
Especially when their first ask was "Just a simple explanation why it is so obvious and so beneficial." (i.e., not a scientific study or anything), to which you responded with some hand-waving and a question instead of a simple explanation.
The simple way to understand it is exposure to nature activates some internal mechanisms that evolved with us through millions of years of species living in nature. In a similar manner it feels so good to go to a beach on a sunny day - you have exposure to earth, water, sun and wind.
https://medium.com/mr-plan-publication/natures-footprints-ex...
A similar late-teens habit I developed was going out and laying on the grass pretty much naked, when I couldn't sleep late at night, and just staring at the milky way. It was a peace I have no idea how I'd get back.
When I heard about barefoot running a year or so later, I tried it. Running on the balls of my feet took some re-learning but the knee pain never came back. I continued to run for 4 or 5 years. (I'm not sure why I started walking instead of running — getting older? Or to share the time with my non-running wife?)
(On a tangent: I dislike any kind of shoe-clip when biking. I feel that pulling up on your leg/knee to power a bicycle goes against the design of our knee.)
I didn't start out of any book hype but bought a pair out of curiosity and then lost my regular running shoes before a race. It was a monthly 5k and my time dramatically improved that month (I had also switched to a standing desk, making root cause fuzzier, which I also still use). Most of my running is on rough, rocky trails except when they are wet or for the 5k.
Anecdata: a friend of mine has been running for years, and for years he complained about knee pain. As it turns out he was heel striking the whole time, it completely disappeared since I told him to run 50 meters barefoot to find his "natural" point of contact
The main issue with running for me is emotional. Like many others, I tend to overdo it; and then its not fun, which means I stop doing it.