If you’re like me, you probably have always thought that a good shoe, with good support, is the best option for, not only your workouts, but everyday life. Human feet developed over the course of millions of years and while our ancient ancestors covered and protected them, they surely didn’t have any nike airs. But aren’t our feet healthier now for it? From what I can see, probably not, in fact, it seems we may be hurting ourselves more than helping.
A lot of recent research is now indicating that our feet are healthier and stronger when we don’t wear any shoes at all, and when we have to, that we wear ones with little to no support. What? No support? That’s right. It sounds counterintuitive but if you think about your foot as having been trapped and immobilized in casts and splints for your entire life, it would make sense that you’ve weakened it and made it dependent on such crutches to function.
Now if you threw your shoes out the window, and went for a 5k run today, you would hurt yourself. So if you run 5ks regularly, then it makes sense that you need shoes right? Well, true but still, wrong. We do need shoes today because we’ve weakened our feet to useless blocks of bone and skin over the course of our lives. The way we walk and run depends on having a decent amount of cushion for our heel strike and rolling forward correctly. The interesting part of this however is that the heel strike and foot roll is a peculiar evolution, instigated by, you guessed it, our shoes. If you could build the muscles and tendons in your foot back to their natural state, you would walk better. You would run more efficiently with less of a heel-strike, and land more on the ball and front of your foot. You’d have more spring and you’d be able to run and sprint faster. There are tribes around the world that are known for incredible running speed, and they run barefoot and on the front of their feet. You would be less injury prone because you were depending on naturally evolved mechanics instead of manmade ones, based on old and wrong assumptions.
Now this whole shoe theory may sound as absurd as, “carbs are bad fat is good” (off topic but read this article about diabetes and diet - simply mind-blowing), or “45 minutes of cardio is bad, 20 is better“. It’s an obscure notion and will involve a sea change of some sort to see any shift in the masses. I am a true believer in that the more you train your body for functional movements, the better the quality of life you will enjoy so I kind of think of this topic as, if I can build my foot strength (and who ever thought of building foot strength) everything else will benefit too.
Anyone lifting weights properly should already know that the more supportive the shoe you wear, the more counterproductive it can be for your workout. For instance, a proper squat involves resting most of your body weight on your heels, sinking low while keeping your back arched properly, and then thrusting back up to standing from your heels. If you tip forward to the front of your foot you can easily misalign your whole body including your spine, which is not somewhere you want to misplace a large load of overhead weight. If you’ve ever seen someone do this wrong, you know. If you’re wearing running shoes, built with extra heel padding, this form is near impossible. The shoes tilt your foot up and make it very difficult to maintain form and protect your back. Often we curl our toes up or even put a weight plate under our toes to keep our feet in the right position. It’s not uncommon to see a lot of chuck taylors or other basic flat street or skate shoes on the weight floor. They allow for not only better form, but better sense of ground grip, and overall balance too.
So what can you do to get in on the foot building trend? You can buy some chuck taylors at target for $25 bucks or you can try something new. There are a few brands of very strange looking shoes hitting the market. They promote minimal support and encourage development of natural foot muscles, preparing you for fixing this biomechanical predicament. Most of them come with guidelines for introducing them into your life and your workout slowly, because you don’t have the right strength to wear them everyday.
Here’s some of the lineup:
Nike Free
I spent a lot of time researching this shoe. The line is extremely confusing because it is made up of a series of shoes progressing from more to less support. The Nike site advises starting with the most supportive and working your way down to the least supportive. The make this even more confusing, the shoe descriptions don’t really explain this and they have a “training” line, meant more for cross-training, but also refer to their running line as needed for steps of a “foot strength training” program. Abbreviate these titles and you have two different shoes both referred to as a “training shoe”. On top of it they are phasing out some models and introducing new ones and relabeling some existing ones. Lastly, they’re pretty hard to find and even at Niketown there were limited options. I bought some 5.0s and love the feel around the house but they are bizarre looking and I’m afraid too aggressive so I’m returning them shortly for a pair of the phased out real training ones.
Nike Free 5.0 (the color pictured here isn’t bad…and you can build your own in the colors you want online. Most of the shoe is a thin spandex material. They are truly bizarre in person. The ones I’m returning are an unfortunate combo of orange and black)
Nike Free Dynamic TR Men’s Training Shoe (This shoe is phased out and I got a good clearance price. I figure I’m going from a well padded supportive saucony stability shoe to a “free” so this should be good enough for me to see if it’s for me or not…and it’s much cuter)
Nike Free Everyday (this seems to be somewhat easier to find. I called Fleet Feet Shoes and they seem to have this in some limited availability. It’s marketed as the first step to moving towards the more natural shoes. This is meant for everyday wear and everyday workout and runs and offers the most support of the whole line…as least as far as I can figure out from my research)
Vibram Five Fingers (this is the king of natural, and weird. I think you need some balls to wear these but you also need to work to a point where you are strong enough to wear them. These are truly like being barefoot)
I will keep you posted on my experience with the Frees. Wish me luck!
