I mentioned the book in my spin class the other day and told everyone that I started running. After class, 2 people came to tell me that a friend of theirs got injured running barefoot. A doctor also told them that barefoot running was the best thing that happened to him. The doctors practice apparently is booming because of all the barefoot running injuries. REALLY? Even if all the barefoot runners in the SF Bay Area were suddenly injured and each one of them went to that single doctor, his practice would not be booming. Why are people trying to convince other people not to run barefoot? I understand why a shoe company would want to convince us but why an individual. The reason is that people want simple explanations for things. Once that explanation is anchored it is very hard to replace the old explanation with a new one.

People’s explanation for running injuries is that people are not meant to run. But if human have to run then they need to be supported otherwise they’ll get injured. People are fully onboard with these ideas and they have answered questions and solved problems with these concepts. Now running barefoot is showing them that it was all a lie. People don’t want to look stupid in their $300 Nike when you pass them with $30 pair of flip flops. It is shaking their world. That is why they are trying to convince us to follow the crowd.

First of all, you haven’t seen the many runners who have no problem or injuries from being barefoot. Secondly, there are millions of runners who wear shoes who get injured every year. So, “injury rate” is, in addition to being unscientific, incomplete, at best.

Third, wrapping your feet in animal skins (which we’ve only been doing for about 12,000 years) is about as close to barefoot as you’ll get. It adds a bit of warmth and a bare amount of protection — very similar to what our Invisible Shoes add, which is why we sell them — and VERY different from a padded shoe that restricts movement and sensation.

Suffice it to say, with good barefoot form, you’ll be putting WAY less stress on your body than otherwise.

Of course, we survived for years before learning to domesticate animals.

We learned to map terrains in detail with our eyes and memory for thousands of years without a gps.

We’ve learned that our bodies are able to develop super fast reflexes long before we tried to fictionalize it on movie screens with vampires and magic potions.

We were built to achieve perfection because our design was virtually perfect.

However, when I first tried on my huraches and wore them around the house for the evening my feet got really sore and tired. I realized that the feel of something on my foot was triggering the usual tension that I have to hold in order to fit my feet into shoes. Once I consciously relaxed into normal barefoot posture I had no problems whatsoever. I’ll admit I’m really not a runner, but I walk a lot and enjoy it so much more now that I’m thinking about starting to run!

As someone who’s spent a lot of time out of shoes from birth, I can tell you my feet are smooth, flexible and muscular, and I’ve never had a foot injury, never gotten a disease or parasite (in spite of numerous warnings from well-meaning bystanders), never cut myself seriously. The only leg and hip problems I have are from when I got hit by a car, and even those are improving now. Oh, and last year I stepped on a bee, but I was wearing flip-flops

I was just watching a commercial for shoes that are supposed to help with your running, cut down on the pounding, etc, and it turns out that they assume you’ll land on your heel, so the entire mechanism is in the heel to basically do what your arch is designed to do.

the one time I scraped my big toe real good, on the front, was when I went to run, thinking my goal was about a mile further than I thought, I was a little tired towards the end, and didn’t pick my foot up properly while crossing the road.

I did notice I don’t have tight arches or calves as I did when I started bf running, so I think the muscles must be stronger. I thought I was getting planter fasciitis, and did a lot of stretching, but it hasn’t bothered me recently. Of course, the weather’s also warmer.