Today there was an intriguing video about barefoot running; specifically running marathons barefoot.
One of the people interviewed in the story, Julian Romero, has ran 13 marathons barefoot. Romero put it bluntly: if you run barefoot the same way you run in shoes, you are going to hurt yourself.
And it’s really difficult to make a wholesale change from running shoes to barefoot. Instead the transition to racing barefoot should be a stepped methodical approach. Here is an article to a basic approach to beginning barefoot running.
In hot climates like the desert southwest, barefoot may be too extreme. But you can simulate the barefoot experience with a minimal shoe like the Vibram Five Fingers. From the reviews I am hearing these babies are comfy, and they are great at strengthening your feet. And they look pretty dang cool to boot!
There is a fantastic Q & A series barefoot running on the Science of Sport blog; this is a must read prior to beginning any barefoot running. One of the main topics addressed is that the weight stress put on the feet still exists, shoes or not:
Your calf muscles and ankle joint, in particular, do more work running barefoot than in shoes. The same is true for newly-trained Pose runners incidentally – the loading on the ankle goes up while the loading on the knee decreases.
The series starts here: Barefoot running and shoes – the Q & A Part I , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Additionally, a great study was done by Daniel Lieberman et al at Harvard University. This study offers up some interesting facts and history on barefoot and shod running including:
- Approximately 75% of shod runners heel strike (Hasegawa et al., 2007)
- No study has shown that heel striking contributes more to injury than forefoot striking.
I’m not necessarily an advocate for all out barefoot running, but, I will admit that it is a great approach for improving a runner’s economy. If you’re skeptical of that, you can try a test mentioned by the Sport of Science article: Run 100m in shoes and without, and count the strides, feel the landing of your foot, and you’ll have confirmed the running science within 30 seconds — your stride while running barefoot will likely be more under your body, and your stride rate will likely be higher than while wearing shoes.
In other words, barefoot running economy, when developed as part of one’s general running form translates into faster runs.