Weekly post: What did you do?

[cereta]

You know the drill!

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I really doubt that the calves and ligaments in my feet are strong enough to race semi-long distances in two/three months wearing them without completely shattering my legs.

Can't comment on running, but what I found was that switching to the Vivos (which are very very minimalist) forced me to shift my gait completely when walking. I found that if I walked as I'd normally walk in shoes, it was uncomfortable as hell; if I reset my brain to think I was walking barefoot on a hard surface (most of my walking happens on London pavements), I rolled through my feet in a different way and it became fine.

(Apparently there's some interesting research suggesting that barefoot walking produces less impact on the joints, for that reason.)

I tried barefoot shoes initially because I was trying to correct the alignment of my legs while walking to fix my knee problems, and found that it was easiest to do when I was wearing an ancient pair of shoes with very thin, flat soles. The barefoot shoes turned out to be even better, and my knees are now fine a good 95% of the time.

It'll be interesting to see how the shoes work for occasional sprints on turf, but indications so far are positive.

So, yeah, I suspect it depends whether you want to try a full-on "barefoot" mode, which will probably require shifting your running gait quite a bit and is generally a big change. Or go for a shoe that encourages forefoot landing but has enough cushioning where you want it.

Individual choice, individual needs, YMMV, etc.