I’ve been getting into barefoot running lately, motivated by the book – Born to Run. Which goes into the bio mechanics of barefoot running and the benefits to your arch and such. One of the most fascinating things that Christopher McDougall references is Alan Webb’s barefoot odyssey, in which he has begun to incorporate barefoot running into his training and has seen his foot size shrink from a size 12 to a size 10! He attributes this to the foot becoming stronger, more compact with a higher arch. The arch is the part of the foot that supports our weight on foot strike… a stronger more compact arch, means a stronger push off from the ground. Barefoot running also repositions our body. It forces you to run on the pad of your foot rather than a heel strike, which is easy to do with air padded shoes, but is rather uncomfortable when running barefoot. When you run on the pad of your foot your back is forced to straighten, which reduces the stresses on our lower lumbar vertebrae. In order to really experience this type of running, I got some Vibram Five Fingers, pics below:

I didn’t go straight into running barefoot everyday, rather I started nice and easy with a few 10-15 min jaunts on grass and dirt, letting my muscles in my foot and lower leg get used to the idea. This past week I elevated it to 20-25 min (2x’s a week) and still felt soreness in my feet and calves the next day, but nowhere else… The video below is my homemade Vibram Five Fingers advertisement. Enjoy!

What did you do outdoors this week?