Baring My Sole

These first few posts will be an overview of how I got to where I am today. After that I’ll take a deeper dive into specific times and adventures and see what I can unearth. If I’m feeling it, I may even come back and link those to the proper spots in these overview posts.

Doing a fun exercise nicknamed “gassers” circa 2011.

Ok, “completely changed my life” may be slight hyperbole. On the other hand, it did almost completely eliminate my knee pain, so it did make my daily life better. So, what am I talking about? Barefoot shoes.

I’m sure you probably remember those Vibram Barefoot shoes in the shape of a foot with toes and everything. They started popping up in the late 2000s, and I had the same reaction most people did: they were kinda cool, kinda ridiculous-looking. 

I had a reason other than aesthetics to not wear them, too: my toes are slightly off. I have “Morton’s toe” which means my second toe is longer than my big toe. On top of that, I broke one of my toes and it’s fixed in a slight “c” shape. And I’m susceptible to toenail injury. All that added up to those Vibram shoes not being a good fit for me.

Still, I was intrigued and started researching the whole barefoot idea. To sum up, while foot protection has been around for thousands of years, shoes with support are relatively new. And there’s some research that shows that all the arch supports and cushioning and tech in our shoes actually weakens our feet and legs and leads to injuries*. Our feet are designed to absorb all the impact from walking and running, and have done a great job for thousands of years. This piqued my interest, so I thought I’d give it a go when Merrell came out with barefoot shoes that just looked like shoes.

This is not something you just jump into, you need to ease into wearing them so the proper muscles and tendons can build all the strength they’ve lost from supported shoes. I took my time, walking a little more each day, and definitely felt new sensations in my legs and feet as I did so. After a month or so I felt ready to workout and run in them.

It didn’t take long for me to notice several things. One, my running form improved because the shoes force you to run properly with your weight forward. Two, my calves really started to get a good workout. And three, my knee pain went away within a month or so. 

Within a year I could play an ultimate tournament and feel only a twinge in my knee on Monday. It was amazing. Was it just the shoes? No. I had really started amping up my workouts and focusing on weighted squats and deadlifts and cleans and all those movements really help the leg muscles. I think it was a combo of the shoes and the workouts.

This was in the early 2010s and something really fun started happening: I was now over 40, and each year I was in better shape than the year before and in far better shape than I’d ever been in my life. 

*To be fair, there is also research that doesn’t support this. It’s still a matter of debate, but it works for me in my particular situation (I run short distances and sprint a lot) so I’m a proponent.