Warning: this article is about feet but if you’re weirded out by that then you’re the weird one. Weirdo.
WHO LET THE DOGS OUT!? As I trot along the sidewalk in the wee hours of the morning, bare soles slapping the cool concrete beneath me, onlooking witnesses might assume I’ve just escaped the cellar of a mental institution. Everyone wears shoes. What on earth am I doing?
If I had seen myself doing this a year ago, I too would have been perplexed and maybe even frightened. When I first heard of it, I thought barefoot running was just for tree-hugging nutjobs. But oh boy is it so much more. And you don’t even have to go totally barefoot, minimalist shoes do the trick and I end up using them a lot. Definitely try barefoot running at some point though, it’s pretty neat. The first time I went on an actual barefoot run I just started giggling like a dumbass. Anyways, I promise I’m sane now hear me out.
Leonardo DaVinci liked feet. Wait, that didn’t sound right let me rephrase. Leonardo Davinci, artistic and scientific mastermind, was fascinated with the anatomy of the foot. Of course he was–DaVinci had an eye for epic machines. With over one hundred moving parts, the foot is nothing short of epic. It’s useful too–feet, among other unique running adaptations, have enabled the frail human to hunt, survive, and thrive in various environments.
So what’s wrong with shoes? At their most fundamental level, nothing actually. An extra layer of protection is crucial when running through cold weather and over sharp obstacles. There’s a problem with modern running shoes though: they are advertised to “protect” your feet from the very basic motions of running. Offering fancy foams, “stability” and “arch support”, the features of modern running shoes would lead you to believe that the human body wasn’t made for running. FALSE! YOU ARE EXTREMELY CAPABLE! Your great10000 grandparents, if they happened to live in a hot and arid environment, probably went out for lunch by chasing animals until they fell over and died of heat exhaustion. Without running shoes! Admittedly, I don’t know anybody today who could pull off that hunting strategy. But we have the same DNA as the people who did, just sayin…
Shoes with thick cushioned soles nerf your feet and divert the impacts of running higher up in the body. The countless moving parts meant to absorb and rebound the impacts of each step have been incapacitated and encased in a piece of foam. A study from nature.com’s Scientific Reports found that the higher the stack height, the greater the impact force upon the foot landing. When the feet lose their mobility to thick running shoes, the legs have to overcompensate and undergo greater forces. And in my own experience, it just feels a little weird to run on platforms above the ground rather than running on the ground. The incredible human running stride, which is supposed to be automatic and effortless, already feels slightly off the moment the shoe hits the ground.
The main reason I gave up on running shoes has to do with the I word: injury. Ew. In the interest of not boring everyone to death talking about my leg hurting, let’s fast forward to around the beginning of this school year.
Ditching the cushioned shoes was no magic pill–my first few months of running without them were painfully slow. If you’ve worn shoes for most of your life, your foot muscles probably have the tensile strength of room temperature string cheese. So did mine. Starting out I dealt with some pretty horrendous aching and soreness in my fankles (foot+ankle, cool word right?) and my calves got decimated on top of that. Something didn’t hurt though… My shins. That was a new and strange experience. It wasn’t too long until my previously dormant foot muscles had been brought to life, then they didn’t hurt either. Then nothing hurt. And with the exception of a couple of oopsies involving jumping and landing funny and another involving skiing, it’s been that way since. Now I can just cruise out the front door and frolick for an hour on a random Tuesday without the fear of my shins getting vaporized.
So basically, here is my thesis: unless you really need to race faster, you probably don’t need running shoes. The minor performance improvements of running shoes are, in my opinion, not worth the elevated injury risk for most people. Athletes can train and race with physics experiments strapped to their feet because they practice it a ton and have coaches and experts watching out for them. But I just want to get out and run.
Before I wrap up my weirdest article yet, I need to mention this: modern life has all of us bent out of shape. It’s important to start slow and not get discouraged just because some eight year old in Kenya can run like fifty miles without trying.
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”