Barefoot Running

[Susan]

I get the point that it is wrong to believe that barefoot running will magically prevent injuries and that some problems will be more common in barefoot runners (PF) than in shod ones.

I don't however get why anyone, especially a scientist, would come to the believe that most humans where not made to walk or run without shoes. The author of the article compares shoes with wearing glasses. He would have a point here, but would anyone believe, that because there are humans that need glasses, human eyes generally were not made to be used without them?
Also, how can we know if the problems caused by barefoot running in new barefoot runners aren't caused by the fact that most of us are used to wearing shoes all our life, from early childhood on?

A really neutral scientific discussion about barefoot running seems to be difficult because a lot of "believe" seems to come into play when ever it is discussed.

[KnottedYet]

"I don't however get why anyone, especially a scientist, would come to the believe that most humans where not made to walk or run without shoes."

Nobody believes that.

However, everyone recognizes that humans were never meant to be sitting on their butts all day long in front of a computer and then rip off their shoes after wearing them for 40 years and start running barefoot on asphalt.

And everyone recognizes that some folks are better runners than others. Hot and sexy runners will be hot and sexy regardless of shoes or bare feet. Crappy runners can be better runners with shoes that help them. Some feet (especially "Irish" or "Greek" or long-second-ray-long-toes feet) do better without the highly engineered shoes on the market these days, because they were made for the other foot structure ("Egyptian" or short-second-ray-short-toes feet).

I have to roll my eyes at most of the barefoot hoorah from both sides in the media. Folks who grew up in the country (where we spent the summer barefoot outgrowing our shoes) spent a lot of time barefoot as kids. I've been running barefoot my whole life and still do. But I fall out laughing when some soft city-slicker goes out running on asphalt and concrete barefoot and goes rhapsodic over how "natural" it is. Nope, dirt and rocks and cow pies are "natural." Asphalt is a repetitive stress injury just waiting to happen, and it does regardless of the fitness of the runner: metatarsal stress fractures and plantar fasciitis are a'comin' down the pike.

Look at your foot. It is an amazingly beautiful thing. Flexible and irregular to interact elegantly with irregular surfaces. In one split second it is soft and molds itself around the surface it lands on, in the next split second it is a rigid lever and pushes off that same surface. All those little muscles let the foot change its shape so one step it is domed up over a sharp rock and the next step it is sagged down into a hole in the path, constantly interacting and adapting to the changing world so your legs can do their work. Asphalt is just slamming this beautiful foot onto the same flat hard boring surface over and over again. Slam-slam-slam. No variety. Muscles fatigue and fail, while others don't get the chance to do their job. Some bones crack under the constant unremitting unvarying pressure.

I don't blame shoes for modern man's foot woes. I blame asphalt.

[Jolt]

Nobody believes that.

However, everyone recognizes that humans were never meant to be sitting on their butts all day long in front of a computer and then rip off their shoes after wearing them for 40 years and start running barefoot on asphalt.

I have to roll my eyes at most of the barefoot hoorah from both sides in the media. Folks who grew up in the country (where we spent the summer barefoot outgrowing our shoes) spent a lot of time barefoot as kids. I've been running barefoot my whole life and still do. But I fall out laughing when some soft city-slicker goes out running on asphalt and concrete barefoot and goes rhapsodic over how "natural" it is. Nope, dirt and rocks and cow pies are "natural." Asphalt is a repetitive stress injury just waiting to happen, and it does regardless of the fitness of the runner: metatarsal stress fractures and plantar fasciitis are a'comin' down the pike.

Look at your foot. It is an amazingly beautiful thing. Flexible and irregular to interact elegantly with irregular surfaces. In one split second it is soft and molds itself around the surface it lands on, in the next split second it is a rigid lever and pushes off that same surface. All those little muscles let the foot change its shape so one step it is domed up over a sharp rock and the next step it is sagged down into a hole in the path, constantly interacting and adapting to the changing world so your legs can do their work. Asphalt is just slamming this beautiful foot onto the same flat hard boring surface over and over again. Slam-slam-slam. No variety. Muscles fatigue and fail, while others don't get the chance to do their job. Some bones crack under the constant unremitting unvarying pressure.

I don't blame shoes for modern man's foot woes. I blame asphalt.

I agree. I'll bet these guys were running primarily on hard, flat surfaces as you are describing, and that's how they got into trouble. If they had been running trails at least part of the time, they likely wouldn't have gotten the overuse injuries that they did. Asphalt is kind of a crappy surface to do a lot of running on whether barefoot or in shoes, and you're right, it's NOT natural. Better to mix things up so you're not overloading the same structures all the time. As for me, I'll continue running barefoot or in VFFs because it's been working well for me and I know not to overdo the hard flat surfaces (they're horribly boring anyway!).

And another thing: I wonder how many of these "PF" cases from barefoot running are really referred pain from trigger points in foot and calf muscles that are being used in unaccustomed ways and knotting up. Could be that for some of these patients all they need is to work those out and their problem will go away.

[colby]

I don't blame shoes for modern man's foot woes. I blame asphalt.

And concrete. EVIL

[OakLeaf]

Unpaved roads are actually worse. I run on a lot of them. They're noticeably harder than asphalt (on a par with concrete), AND they're covered with 1-2" diameter crushed stone with sharp edges that I wouldn't dare ANYONE to run barefoot on.

I blame roads. Which were originally created for wheeled vehicles. It's the wheel's fault.

[Jolt]

Another thing to consider re: the overuse injuries: weight. I remember from reading McDougall's book that he's a fairly big guy; don't know about Lieberman. I would guess that heavier (and I don't just mean obese--I'm talking about the very solid, muscular builds as well) people are more likely to get the stress fractures and other issues from running barefoot on asphalt and concrete just because there's more force being exerted on their foot structures with each step, no matter how good their form is, than for a lighter person.

[KnottedYet]

Another thing to consider re: the overuse injuries: weight. I remember from reading McDougall's book that he's a fairly big guy; don't know about Lieberman. I would guess that heavier (and I don't just mean obese--I'm talking about the very solid, muscular builds as well) people are more likely to get the stress fractures and other issues from running barefoot on asphalt and concrete just because there's more force being exerted on their foot structures with each step, no matter how good their form is, than for a lighter person.

They'll have the appropriate robustness in the bones for their build, regardless if they are built to be large or small. Stress fractures are just RSI's, which anyone can get if they are doing the same motion too many times. I've got tiny skinny women with stress fractures, even multiple fractures over a history of many years of running; and I've got big burly guys who run and have never had a single one.

The difference I see when I do their gait analyses is that the people with the RSI history (mostly tibial stress fractures, secondarily metatarsal fractures) are over-striders. An occaisional over-stride is not a problem, it's a valid strategy in some situations. Just like running barefoot on asphalt occaisionally is not a problem, it's a valid encounter with a surface. The problem is when people overstride CONSTANTLY, and to extend my analogy, when they run barefoot on asphalt CONSTANTLY.

Repeat the same stress over and over again, and the tissues never get a chance to do their normal recovery, regardless of how strong or weak or big or little a person is.

[OakLeaf]

Knott, I just caught your new sig line.

But now you've given me scary visions of deep well sockets and pneumatic impact tools.

[Susan]

Nobody believes that.

However, everyone recognizes that humans were never meant to be sitting on their butts all day long in front of a computer and then rip off their shoes after wearing them for 40 years and start running barefoot on asphalt.

And everyone recognizes that some folks are better runners than others. Hot and sexy runners will be hot and sexy regardless of shoes or bare feet. Crappy runners can be better runners with shoes that help them. Some feet (especially "Irish" or "Greek" or long-second-ray-long-toes feet) do better without the highly engineered shoes on the market these days, because they were made for the other foot structure ("Egyptian" or short-second-ray-short-toes feet).

I have to roll my eyes at most of the barefoot hoorah from both sides in the media. Folks who grew up in the country (where we spent the summer barefoot outgrowing our shoes) spent a lot of time barefoot as kids. I've been running barefoot my whole life and still do. But I fall out laughing when some soft city-slicker goes out running on asphalt and concrete barefoot and goes rhapsodic over how "natural" it is. Nope, dirt and rocks and cow pies are "natural." Asphalt is a repetitive stress injury just waiting to happen, and it does regardless of the fitness of the runner: metatarsal stress fractures and plantar fasciitis are a'comin' down the pike.

Look at your foot. It is an amazingly beautiful thing. Flexible and irregular to interact elegantly with irregular surfaces. In one split second it is soft and molds itself around the surface it lands on, in the next split second it is a rigid lever and pushes off that same surface. All those little muscles let the foot change its shape so one step it is domed up over a sharp rock and the next step it is sagged down into a hole in the path, constantly interacting and adapting to the changing world so your legs can do their work. Asphalt is just slamming this beautiful foot onto the same flat hard boring surface over and over again. Slam-slam-slam. No variety. Muscles fatigue and fail, while others don't get the chance to do their job. Some bones crack under the constant unremitting unvarying pressure.

I don't blame shoes for modern man's foot woes. I blame asphalt.

I was referring to the linked article that says:

"Hence, “If we can say that everyone is built to run barefoot we can say that everyone is built to fly a fighter jet without glasses,” says Pribut. “We don’t all have 20/20 vision.”

I find it misleading.
Of course what you say is true and someone used to wearing shoes for 40 years probably can't rip of their shoes and go out running on concrete for miles and miles and expect that it will do any good - I totally agree with you.
But that doesn't mean that humans were originally "not made" for going barefoot the way we are not made to fly fighter jets (with or without glasses) - of course we are. Even the not-so-good runners (like me) are born with feet made to go barefoot. While I won't ever be a world class runner, and agree that I would need the right genes or bodily features for it, with some training I am able to do the activity called "running" because the human body per se is capable of it.

The article says

"Consider this: Every cheetah is a world-class sprinter. No exceptions. By contrast, the degree of interindividual variation in distance running ability in the human population is incredibly vast."

I don't know. The authors point of view seems distorted for me. Not everyone can be a competitive distance runner, it's probably true. Take a cheetah, put it in a small cage for the most part of it's life and maybe put some strange shoe-like things on it's feet. This cheetah probably won't be a world-class sprinter when released after several years. Maybe it will be fat and not used to exercise and have problems with it's joints and knees...
So, maybe every human is a runner. There is no need to be "world class" but maybe originally every human being was designed for running. Maybe it's just modern lifestyle that makes some people incapable of doing so.
I'm not a scientist, I can't verify this, it's just a thought.

[OakLeaf]

I've read several times over the last couple of weeks, popular articles that quote scientists that totally reject Lieberman's research (without mentioning it at all, actually), and state that humans categorically did NOT evolve to run, but rather that walking is our only natural gait.

I don't actually have a citation because it just seemed so physically wrong that I just ignored the articles, but I do remember reading them.

[KnottedYet]

Susan, don't forget this is a popular media article. Not a scientific article. Read the science, none of it says humans weren't meant to walk or run barefoot.

No one is saying that.

I hate the way the barefoot thing is blown up in the popular media, and the religious fervor with which people distort the science.

Of course the article is misleading. Hyperbole sells! This is NOT a scientific paper!

The author's valid point is that there are some folks right now (now, like, right now, 2010) who should NOT be running barefoot. That certainly doesn't mean all through human history no-one ran barefoot, nor does it mean that all through human history there weren't poorly running cavemen who would have benefitted from a pair of Nike Pegasus running shoes. The point I think he missed, however, is that asphalt is not the optimal surface to run on in any case. Hence the need for shoes for a lot of people, and why barefooting on asphalt leads to so many RSI's.

Even the critiques of Lieberman are off, they are attacking straw men (things Lieberman never said). Lieberman's work was about biomechanical strategies of gait, and look at how his work got distorted! He even has disclaimers all over his website trying to get out from under the distortions people have heaped upon his work.

[Susan]

Oh yes, of course you are right. But it's sad, thats what I meant in my first post, I wish there were more "neutral" discussions and articles about this and not only this. It would be much easier and more fun to read, discuss and think about things like (barefoot)running or nutrition (and a LOT of other things) if there was more plain facts and information instead of this... like you called it "religious fervor".



Now you have mentioned it I will have to search for Liebermans website

[KnottedYet]

Have you done any searches on Scholar Google?

It's fabulous! http://scholar.google.com/

Peer-reviewed journals tend to be a bit more objective, but they can get all religious-fervor-y, too. Buyer beware. Bryan Heiderscheit's work (University of Wisconsin) is beautiful and elegant, and most of his recent papers are available free/pdf. I talked with him at a seminar, and I was ready to throw my career to the wind and start over if I could just be one of his students.

If you want to read a bunch of podiatrists (who all run barefoot and have no issues with it, but are constantly under attack and seen as "the enemy" by fervent barefooters) grumbling and grousing, check out http://podiatry-arena.com/ The fellows on Podiatry Arena are a bunch of crabby squabbling naughty boys, but they link some great papers and give some very good clear explanations (while shooting each other down) of findings.

[HillSlugger]

Quote:
"Consider this: Every cheetah is a world-class sprinter. No exceptions. By contrast, the degree of interindividual variation in distance running ability in the human population is incredibly vast."

Cheetahs in the wild still need to run down their own food; humans do not. This kind of running is still subject to natural selection for cheetahs; it is not for humans. This argument is specious.

[NbyNW]

Look at your foot. It is an amazingly beautiful thing. Flexible and irregular to interact elegantly with irregular surfaces. In one split second it is soft and molds itself around the surface it lands on, in the next split second it is a rigid lever and pushes off that same surface. All those little muscles let the foot change its shape so one step it is domed up over a sharp rock and the next step it is sagged down into a hole in the path, constantly interacting and adapting to the changing world so your legs can do their work.

Knott, I love your description of functional feet! Somewhere in there is an idea for another shoe