The Barefoot Movement

and in breaking news...

"Scientists have found that those who run barefoot, or in minimal footwear, tend to avoid "heel-striking," and instead land on the ball of the foot or the middle of the foot. In so doing, these runners use the architecture of the foot and leg and some clever Newtonian physics to avoid hurtful and potentially damaging impacts, equivalent to two to three times body weight, that shod heel-strikers repeatedly experience"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134241.htm

I love being barefoot and luckily we live in a climate where we can do that almost
all year around. However, most of our stores have a sign outside that prohibits
people with bare feet of entering the store.
In my house, I am always with bare feet.

After reading "Born to Run" I purposely changed the way my feet strike the pavement. If you compared my shoes from before the change and after, you would see almost a complete reduction of heel-strike.

I just had a pair of shoes customized for me (a gift from a friend) and the operator of the scanning devices they use to determine what your usual running stance is couldn't get over the fact that my feet don't splay out or point in. Running naturally causes you to point your toes straight ahead without thinking about it.

Now if I could just RE-Lose the same twenty pounds that I had already lost, I would be a happy boyo.
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I would try running barefoot on the city streets but I'd have to carry a 55 gallon drum of hand/foot sanitizer. I'm not even too sure about running in the grass in Central Park.... it looks like there is a lot of fertilizer being spewed on the Great Lawn and elsewhere to say nothing of the insecticides.

Joe(get outside now)Nation

I've been reading a lot about this (big article in the NYT recently that I posted somewhere) and what I've become convinced of is that the barefootness per se is irrelevant. Running style is the important part.

Thick-soled running shoes discourage the right style, and running barefoot encourages the right style. BUT you can run in the right way with shoes, too.

My preference at this point is running shoes with thinner soles -- not barefoot, nor "almost-barefoot" like Vibram Five Fingers, but not the huge padded things either.

I remember you linking to that article at the time. I didn't respond to it at the time, but it was a good one.

My own approach: I do most of my running on a treadmill, for reasons unrelated to running style. In doing so, I try to minimize the amount of noise my feet make. The theory is that noise on the treadmill corresponds to impact onto my joints, and I want to minimize impact onto my joints. Under this approach, I still land on the heel, but land much lighter, and stretch out over the whole foot the impact of landing and then taking off.

There is a perfectly designed contrivance, into which much thought has been given over the millenia, for minimizing impact on joints.

It's called a bed.

I assume that how a person runs naturally, most efficiently, is how evolution selected in for that persons bodily conformation. To find out what it is one might try to imagine being chased by a lion but better still would be to get oneself chased by a lion in various types of footwear.

I have always found that ladies who go barefoot a lot have very off-putting feet. In the absence of a silk-stockinged foot deftly encased in a delicate high-heeled shoe there is a tendency for the foot to splay out in all directions and the bottom to become calloused and sinewy.

Nonsense, I go regularly to have my feet pampered and pedicured. After all, we're not in spendi-land here.

I presume Cal that people who pay to be pampered and prettied-up must feel the need for it. I tend to think that ladies who go in for such things are not getting sufficient attention.

Calamity Jane is a classic example of the triumph of evolution, Spendius - perhaps you should revise your views on that subject

Oh--I am very aware of that HS. Which is why I don't revise my views.

Surrender is not for me. I'm not that daft.