Our feet have become dulled and sluggish. For most of us today (or at least those of us who are likely to be reading this), our feet are encased in a cast of sorts from birth until death. Out of the womb and into a pair of “supportive” shoes. In addition, most of us carry out our lives primarily indoors. Our feet live on flat, solid, uniform, and predictable surfaces; and on the occasion that we do present our feet with an irregular surface by going on a mountain hike, doing some outdoor labor, or going for a walk in the woods, most of us take this occasion to strap our feet into the thickest, most protective, restrictive, and sense-deadening boots we can get our hands on. All of this results in our feet becoming unaware, inexperienced, unadaptable, dull, atrophied, and dysfunctional.
Think of a parallel situation: from birth, you have a thin cloth draped over your eyes. The cloth obscures visual detail and filters out most light. How adept will your eyes be at making out details and adapting to various levels of lighting? Or take the mind for example. If you live your life never being mentally challenged, never having to analyze and make sense of unfamiliar ideas, never having to push yourself to learn something new, how much mental acuity are you likely to display in the face of even a moderate mental challenge? The same principles hold true for the feet.
(For another interesting example, we can look to the infamous "cavefish," which dwells in deep/dark waters and has evolved to have non-functional or minimally-functional eyes, a more extreme case of the "use it or lose it" adaptations that can take place over an extended length of time.)
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| Nerves on nerves.1 |
The structure and function of the human foot is an absolutely incredible feat (hah!) of engineering. Capable of easily handling incredibly high loads and forces, but also of very delicate and precise movement, our feet can be both strong and dexterous. The feet are one of the most heavily innervated parts of our bodies, and with good reason. As bipedals, almost any sort of ambulation we do starts from our feet. Our ability to move, our ability to execute precise movements, to accelerate, decelerate, and change direction, our physical perception of our immediate surroundings, our standing balance, our ability to lift, throw, jump, run—it all originates from the feet. The feet are our primary connection to the earth. And yet, along with the hands and neck (two other enormously important parts of the body) they tend to remain largely ignored and untrained in the fitness community, even among high level athletes. When you step back and think about it for a moment, this makes no sense—training the rest of the body intensely while ignoring the feet is like putting bicycle wheels on a Ferrari. But I guess it’s just not sexy enough to have strong feet.
So what about this footwear business? Isn’t this 20+ billion dollar industry that makes well-engineered, highly-protective footwear supposed to make our feet invincible, high-performance machines? The greatest irony of all is that in addition to our feet being largely untrained and incapable, our best efforts to preserve them in a protective casing 24/7 have been mostly unsuccessful. Foot pain and dysfunction are hugely prevalent over a lifetime, for active and sedentary populations alike. Population studies have found regular and/or ongoing foot pain in ⅕ - ⅓ of the participants, with higher prevalences among sedentary populations 2 3 4 5. That should be baffling to you. Sedentary populations—people whose feet are “challenged” only to saunter from the couch to the car to the office chair and back to the car every day—are having high incidences of chronic foot pain.
In order to combat this wholesale atrophying of our feet and optimize our physical performance, function, and health, the feet need to be used in a way that allows the senses to be stimulated, that allows the structures to move through a full range of motion, that challenges the joints and muscles to move over irregular and unfamiliar surfaces, and that strengthens the muscles and joints. Unfortunately, this does not happen in daily life for most people. Therefore, we must put intentional effort into training our feet, just as we train our legs, our core, our shoulders, our lungs, etc. We must challenge our feet more. This can take numerous forms, and I am by no means an expert on podiatry; however, there are a few simple things we can start doing to build up the strength and “intelligence” of our feet.
1. Start slow and be sensible. I’ll start with this, because it really precedes and applies to all of the other suggestions about training your feet. If you’ve spent the last 30 years of your life wearing thick, “supportive” sneakers, it’s not a good idea to throw them away and start going on 10 mile barefoot hikes through the mountains right away. Start slower and more conservatively than you think you’ll need to, and be sensible about it all. Also remember: this isn’t about making your feet macho and tough by walking on shards of broken glass and climbing Everest in sandals. It’s about restoring function and optimizing performance. Now that we’ve cleared that up...
2. Ditch your shoes when safe/possible. Shoes do provide necessary protection in many cases, and some special medical circumstances require shoes to be worn at most/all times. However, for most of us, we’d be better off ditching our shoes and going au natural more often. Shoes, particularly dress shoes, boots, and running shoes designed for more “support,” tend to have three main detrimental effects on the feet.
- First, shoes provide a thick barrier that dulls sensation and removes your connection to the surface you’re standing/walking/running on. Have you ever had thick winter gloves or work gloves on and tried to do a task that requires a bit of precision and fine motor control with you hands—something like tying your shoes, digging your keys out of your pocket or bag, or using a small tool—and found the task nearly impossible? Having shoes on our feet has a similar effect, and keeping the feet encased in shoes all the time has a lasting impact on our feet’s ability to perceive and make sense of its surroundings, and to perform precise movements or adjustments that should be relatively easy.
- Second, shoes often overprotect. Don’t get me wrong, the protective abilities of modern footwear are a wonderful advancement (no hookworm for me, thank you very much), and absolutely necessary in some cases. I would much rather wear some thick boots at a construction site than have a nail through my foot, or wear winter boots than lose my toes to hypothermia. But for surfaces that are not outright dangerous, there’s no need to wear shoes. Having shoes on all the time makes our feet weak and wimpy. You should be able to walk on coarse sand, grass, and cement without pain.
- Third, shoes often restrict movement, encourage poor positioning/movement patterns (such as the heel-strike), and limit the development of foot strength. Like a mold or a cast, your shoes will, over time, change the shape of your feet. In addition, the shape of your shoe affects your gait, your joint movements, your positioning, and how the muscles of the foot, leg, and hip are used. The most common shoe design is to have an elevated heel—dress shoes, running shoes, boots, even sandals all tend to have this design to varying degrees. In addition, many shoes (particularly traditional running shoes, heavy boots, and really fancy-shmancy dress shoes) have a toe spring: a sole that is molded to have an upward curve in the front, intended to allow the shod foot to “roll” from toe to heel rather than having to (*gasp* God forgive) bend at the toes when you walk/run. To make matters worse, most shoes (dress shoes and women’s shoes in particular) run narrow in the toe box, squishing your forefoot and putting your poor toes in a crunched-up position. Over time, this literally changes the structure of our feet, and can lead to bunions, ingrown toenails, overlapping toes, as well pain and a change in gait and foot function. This devious combination of elevated heel, toe spring, and restrictive forefoot design gradually shortens the length of the heel cord and posterior lower leg structures, puts your toes in a constantly extended position, prevents the toes from gripping the ground, puts extra stress on structures of the underfoot, limits the muscular and other soft tissue involvement in movement and shock absorption, forces a heel-strike, and makes your foot and ankle an all-around inflexible, weak mess.
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- A flat sole. Always remember: flat butts are bad, flat soles are good. The heel-toe drop should ideally be 0mm, but if you’re just working your way into minimalist shoes, a slight heel-toe drop (<4mm) is fine to start out.
- A thin, flexible sole. Just having a flat sole isn’t enough to make it minimal (sorry 1990s, your weird Spice Girls platform shoes don’t count). You want a thin sole that allows you to have some ground feel, and a flexible sole that allows your toes to bend just like they would if you were barefoot. The application of the shoe will determine some of these qualities (for example, minimalist boots will generally have a slightly thicker sole), but in general, the more minimal the better.
- No/minimal “arch support.” Yes, you should probably throw away all of your preconceived notions about arch support. “But what about my poor arches?! Won’t they collapse into a heap of skin and bones and sadness if they don’t have support 24/7?” I don’t know, does your head flop around side-to-side because you don’t wear a neck brace 24/7? Do you need to wear a reinforced cage around your torso to keep your upper body from collapsing? There are certainly some more extreme medical circumstances in which some form of arch support or orthotic can be beneficial, but for the average person, all arch support does is allow the structures that naturally form your arch (which has an important function, by the way) to get lazy and go dormant. Most people don’t need arch support. They need stronger and more functional feet.
- An adequately wide toe box. The toe box should be wide enough that your forefoot/toes are not being compressed in any way when your full weight is on that foot. Toes need room to splay. If your toes are scrunched together or bursting out of the sides of your shoes when you walk, the shoe isn’t wide enough.
- Thin, flexible upper. This one’s pretty self explanatory. Your shoes should be able to move the way your unshod foot moves, so a relatively thin, flexible upper will be necessary so as not to restrict movement.
- Sturdy construction. Because your minimalist shoes will have less material than your standard running shoe, it’s important that you get a pair that is well constructed and uses durable materials. Otherwise, you’ll be wearing through your soles every few months, and then you’ll have no choice but to go barefoot.
- Something you’re willing to wear. There’s no point in buying a new pair of minimalist shoes if you’re too embarrassed to wear them. I would say, first off, that youshould not be embarrassed of taking care of your body and being an efficient, high-performance human being, even if it means your shoes look a bit different. But if those weird toe-shoe-foot-glove things aren’t quite your style, that’s fine! There are enough options out there that everyone should be able to find a shoe that suits them. It’s easy to find any style of minimalist shoe, from trail shoes to crosstrainers to huaraches sandals—there are even some pretty stylish minimalist dress shoes and boots out there, so you can look dope and move right.
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| A - Good (though could possibly be wider). B - Bad! Toes should splay, not squish. 7 |
4. Challenge your feet more. This, in my opinion, is the most fun (and often most overlooked) part. Take off your shoes and find ways to make your feet work, to give them new challenges. Once you’ve gotten used to walking around barefoot, you can start with something like walking or running in the sand. Sand is excellent because it’s both relatively forgiving and quite challenging to your feet. The uneven and unsturdy ground challenges your feet to move at different angles, to feel the ground and adjust to shifting surfaces, to push, pull, grip, and spring in a constantly changing environment. If you’re a runner, study up on barefoot running form (Google forefoot/midfoot strike running form, Pose method, etc.). Look for opportunities to strengthen your feet, to move across uneven surfaces, to move nimbly. Grip the ground when you’re walking barefoot. Walk around the house on your toes for a few minutes per day. Jump. Climb a tree. Go on a mountain hike and hop around from rock to rock like a happy little mountain goat. Pick things up with your toes. Practice balancing on odd objects like rocks and logs. Walk through the woods as silently as you possibly can. Play “don’t touch the lava” in your house or at the playground. Hop around on one leg. Play some frisbee barefoot in the grass. Give your feet a good massage with a lacrosse ball every day and practice some yoga poses that stretch your foot/ankle musculature and challenge stability and balance. You can be really scientific and precise about it if you’d like, or you can just have some fun with it do whatever you feel like—either way, challenge your feet regularly and they will benefit from it.
Whether you’re a professional athlete or just trying to stay healthy and live a good life, chances are that you’re not giving your feet the love they deserve. Challenge your feet more and force them to become better. Optimize your performance from the ground up!
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Follow me on Twitter @PSprimont and on Instagram @PSprimont
Stay swole.
1 By Dr. Johannes Sobotta [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons↩
2 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304395911005616↩
3 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F1757-1146-1-2↩
4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6115797↩
5 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20382520↩
6 By Seth Cochran (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons↩
7 By Ada S. Ballin (Science of Dress, to face of page 240.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons↩
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