Monday, July 18, 2011

Barefoot means barefoot.

It is interesting how certain ideas surface at the same time.  Last week I receieved a copy of Ken Bob Saxton's book, Barefoot Running Step by Step.  I've followed him a little for years and it was strange to watch the barefoot movement boom recently with vibrams etc.

Anyway, KenBob stresses that it is not enough to have minimal shoes - barefoot means barefoot.  Proprioception - the sense of your body's position in space - is driven by the feet and shoes blunt that sense.

The same idea popped up in the Becoming Bulletproof book that I mentioned last week. 

Then I saw this excellent piece from mc  Mick Wilkinson Part I: Why Barefoot Running (in shoes) Is not barefoot running 

It is an excellent piece and I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

3 comments:

Steven said...

There's a study being done to compare barefoot to some of the minimalist options.

There *are* some options that, under these testing conditions, were identical to barefoot (but not VFFs).

Anonymous said...

I've thought about this before and I decided that VFFs approximate the calluses I'd have if I had never worn shoes. You can't feel through calluses either.

Maria Abbruzo said...

This is so true!