Barefoot Running

I have been reading a few articles about barefoot or lightly shod running.  Interesting!


The basic premises are that

• all the talk of cushioned soles and overpronation is not backed up by science.
• modern shoe design has done nothing to reduce injury or improve performance.
• running barefoot is a natural thing that we have done for millions of years, and we only added padding to it in the last 50 years.
• the foot and brain work well together to ease impact stresses, and a natural running action is more efficient and less injurious than running in modern shoes.
• hell striking (landing on your heel and then rolling forward on the foot for tak-eoff) is not a natural way to run.
• the padding in the modern shoe makes us hit the ground harder to get the necessary feedback that the bodybrain needs to react.

This sounded interesting, so I tried a short barefoot run round the garden, and noticed the different posture and lighter action, with no heel striking.

Advocates say that when you start using more basic shoes (such as Inov-8s or Vibram FiveFingers) you feel the extra strain in your foot and achilles tendon to start with, but you soon settle into a more natural rhythm.

More on this as I think and research and experiment more.

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A few links

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Run-Hidden-Ultra-Runners-Greatest/dp/1861978774/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276853447&sr=8-1


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Run-Hidden-Ultra-Runners-Greatest/dp/1861978774/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/01/why-running-shoes-do-not-work-looking.html

http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

http://www.inov-8.com/