shoes – Mark Havel

My new Vivobarefoot shoes arrived today. Its mad to think that they are the only brand of shoe I wear. Minimalist shoes have really helped strengthen my feet and ankles. Running has become low impact and pain free. As an example, I give you a tale of two races.

Walt Disney World Half Marathon 2012

I had a standard pair of Nike running shoes, nice big soles on them
I trained for the race using Jeff Galloways training programme, two timed runs a week, and one distance run a week that gradually got longer
I ran the half marathon in 2hrs and 5 seconds.
My knees were in agony. I hobbled back to the hotel.
I was in Disney World so after I’d showered and changed, I went to the Disney Studios theme park. With my knees too sore to actually walk around, I spent most of the day on a bench people watching, envious of the other runners I saw with ice packs strapped to their knees, “clever” I thought

Walt Disney World Half Marathon 2014

Between this race and the last I had learned to run with a professional running coach (yes, running is a skill that has to be learned) and on their advice I now wore Vivos, a minimalist shoe
I trained for the race using Jeff Galloways training programme, two timed runs a week, and one distance run a week that gradually got longer
Ran the half marathon in 2hrs, 9mins and 24 seconds.
I felt fine and walked back to the hotel
I was in Disney World so after I’d showered and changed, I went to the Disney Studios theme park. I spend the day in park, went on all the rides and had great day

If you have 9mins to spare, the below video from Vivobarefoot is a great watch.

Below is a video by Klaus Sports Chiropractic showing the effect shoes have on the newest walkers. Aside from being ridiculously cute, the video shows that shoes take away propreception. The soles of your feet are very sensitive to touch because they have a high concentration of nerve endings, similar to your hands, tongue, and nose. When this poor kid had all the sensory input from their feet blocked off with thick shoes, they had no sense of their body position in relation to the ground. I love how they tried to take the shoes off! – an obvious solution.

At the same time that the above video made its way into one of my feeds, so too did the below picture of some running shoes. I mean honestly, they look almost nothing like a human foot, its like its designed to impede movement. You won’t get much sensory inout from these. Walking around barefoot is not practical, but we need to move away from these massive soles, they don’t help human movement and we end up adapting our natural human movement to suit the shoe, rather than the shoe suiting human movement. Once you’ve gone far enough down the massive sole path you’ll have forgotten your natural running gait (it can be re-learned) and you’ll have to buy shoes like the ones below, to help solve the problems that you created by wearing shoes like the ones below, its a vicious cycle.

Screenshot 2019-10-07 at 22.07.45 — Lets make sure you can feel nothing

“Get out of those corsets, they’re killing you”

– Catherine Beecher

Catherine Beecher lived during the 19th century and is mostly know as a proponent of education for women. The quote above is directed towards physical health rather than education. In Catherines time, corsets were tight, and designed to hold and shape the torso of women into a more desirable, aka fashionable, shape. Without question, these 19th century corsets were not good for your health. Using an item of clothing to re-shape your body to something other than its natural shape is a bad idea.

Today I’d say, “get out of those shoes, they’re killing you“. Shoes started out as a means to protect your feet, and your feet do need protection. But we’ve flattened our world. Gone are the rough and rugged terrains we used to wander, replaced by flat footpaths and flat floors. Even as the ground beneath our feet has gotten flatter, the soles on our shoes have gotten larger. How much protection do you need from a flat surface?

The modern shoe is not a functional item, its a fashion item, and it re-shapes your foot to something other than its natural shape in the name of aesthetics. Most day to day footwear is harmful. Men have it bad, women have it worse, high heels anyone?

Most running shoes are harmful too. Gift wrapping your feet in fully padded, air pumped trainers will disrupt the natural biomechanics of your run and do harm to more than just your feet, it will ricochet upwards to your knees and hips.

The new normal is to have shoe shaped feet, instead of feet shaped shoes. This needs to change. The number one priority of your shoes should be function, not fashion. If you’re interested, these are what I wear. These guys also make nice children’s shoes, Anna and Paul

Tag: shoes

A tale of two races

Can you feel the ground beneath your feet?

What shoes should I be wearing