Are We Built to Run Barefoot?
Barefoot running remains as popular and contentious a topic among Cheap Vibram Five Fingers exercise scientists as it is among athletes, even though it is practiced by only a tiny subset of American runners. These early-adopter runners, however, tend to be disproportionately enthusiastic and evangelical. Many cite the best seller “Born to Run,” by Christopher McDougall, which touts barefoot running, and claim that barefoot running cured them of Wholesale Cheap Vibram Five Fingers various running-related injuries and will do so for their fellow athletes. “There are people who are convinced that barefoot runners never get injured,” said Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard who runs barefoot himself and spoke on the topic during last week’s symposium.
But in the past year, anecdotal evidence has mounted that some runners, after kicking off their shoes, have wound up hobbled by newly acquired injuries. These maladies, instead of being prevented by barefoot running, seem to have been induced by it.
So what really happens to a modern runner when he or she trains Vibram Five Fingers Shoes without shoes or in the lightweight, amusingly named “barefoot running shoes” that are designed to mimic the experience of running with naked feet? That question, although pressing, cannot, as the newest science makes clear, easily be answered.
Most of us, after all, grew up wearing shoes. Shoes alter how we move. An interesting review article published this year in Cheap Vibram Five Fingers found that if you put young children in shoes, their steps become longer than when they are barefoot, and they land with more force on their heels.