I’ve been using barefoot shoes since July 2021.
And as I’m sitting down this cold morning to write about why that’s important to me, I’m missing something critical.
“Why the hell did I start using barefoot shoes?”
It’s one of those things you’ve been doing for so long you forgot what led you to that decision in the first place.
Probably a random YouTube video titled “Shoes are destroying your feet” I watched in 2021. And it just clicked. Like I had unlocked some hidden truth.
It was more of a leap of faith than having read hundreds of studies on shoe-wearers vs. barefoot-people.
And I’m glad I made the transition.
What the hell are barefoot shoes?
They’re shoes that make you feel you’re walking, well, barefoot.
But they also look like clown shoes.
They are designed to accommodate your feet:
They’re all extremely flexible
They have very thin sole (zero drop)
And with a large toe box they let your toes move freely.
It’s the opposite of what 99% of modern shoes are designed to do, where you can’t move your toes 1 millimeter.
Do your feet hurt? You can blame fashion.
Back in 1905 (yes, beginning of the century) Phil Hoffmann wrote:
The manufacturer through ignorance and self-interest fits the desires of his patrons rather than their feet, and places upon the market footwear that more or less crowds the front of the foot.
This guy, a century ago, already knew the fashion industry was destroying your feet.
But nobody listened. And today we still have the same issue. A society that is in love with small and pointy feet. While turning normal feet into something as repulsive as vomit on the sidewalk of a nightclub.
And how do we deal with these nasty-looking feet?
We hide them inside a nice cover! Inside beautifully designed pointy-and-toe-crushing shoes.
And this is not new. It started in China. Men thought small feet were awesome. The smaller your feet, the better wife material you were. So foot binding begins. This technique involves breaking a child’s feet to keep them very small. It has to be done from a young age since the bones are still flexible enough to be crushed. And this keeps going until they’re grown up and the body can’t recover from the damage. And are married to a rich guy (this video explains the tradition).
Europeans discovered this and started to get FOMO. Now the nobility was in the small feet game. And so pointy shoes were born. It was a way for them to separate themselves from peasants wearing normal and “ugly” shoes (because having lavish parties and more than enough to eat wasn’t enough).
At some point this translated into fashion. Now shoes featuring feet-deforming properties were available to everyone:
Narrow toe box
High heels
Stiff sole
The opposite of what your feet should be doing when you walk.
But that’s not all.
It gets worse.
All that cushion is destroying your feet as well
Your feet are the result of 4 million years of bioengineering evolution.
26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, and 19 muscles.
Still, Nike et al. think they can do better than that.
Their solution? Cushion. Lots and lots of it.
Cushions are designed to absorb impact. That enables you to move in a different way. And so heel strike is born.
I transitioned to barefoot shoes 2 years ago. Before that, all I knew was heel striking.
The first week was painful. My heels were hurting from all the heel striking I was doing since I wasn’t used to not having cushions. I also discovered muscles on my feet I didn’t know existed. Just like the first time I did pushups at home 12 years ago, they were sore as f*ck for 2 weeks. That’s because your “normal” shoes have stiff soles. So they strangle the muscles on your feet and keep it from moving, like they’re using a straightjacket. But once you go barefoot, they are free to do whatever. To move around. To do what feet are supposed to do.
I want you to do a test. Walk around your living room barefoot. Try to go hard on the heel strike, like you’re power walking.
How do you feel? It hurts, right?
That’s because it’s not how you’re supposed to move.
Sure, when you walk barefoot you touch the ground with your heels first. But it’s a soft landing because there is no cushion to protect your heels. Like in the millions of years you’ve been walking.
But since you were introduced to cushioned shoes from a young age, you think heel striking your way through life is the “normal” way of moving.
But what about science?
I’ve been slowly telling people I’ve started to run in barefoot shoes.
Their reaction is always the same:
“OMG! Your knees!”
“You won’t be able to walk in 6 months”
“You’re crazy. Just wear sneakers like a normal person!”
Everyone thinks barefoot shoes will destroy my knees and whatnot.
But the science behind it is fascinating. I recommend watching this video, where the guy goes in-depth into 5 common myths about wearing barefoot shoes:
That you can’t run using them
That you need arch support
That they can’t fix bunions
That they cause injuries
That they are not cheap
Hopefully these myths will make you rethink the way you wear your shoes.
What this all means
I’m not here to tell you to stop wearing “normal” shoes.
Just like telling people to reduce meat intake, it doesn’t work.
It’s something you need to figure out on your own.
And this is what I’m doing.
I’m an eternal empirical skeptic. And testing things out is the only way to prove me wrong.