Take Off Your Shoes

Twice a week, I encourage my athletes to find a nice, relatively-flat grassy field, take off their shoes, and fly like the wind.

Running barefoot on natural surfaces is a great way to get back in-touch with your natural gait--the optimal stride and mechanics intrinsic to each runner. Besides feeling great (and freeing), running without shoes is a good muscle-memory exercise to remind your brain what it feels like to "run correctly."

The current Vibram and barefoot trend (OK, let's come right out and call it a fad) is promising; however, while we were born to run barefoot, we were not born to run barefoot on asphalt, concrete or other hard pavement. If you're going to run in your Vibrams, do so on natural surfaces--and start small. Give yourself 6 months to ease into the...shoes?...to prevent any injuries; doing so will actually gradually strengthen your foot and help prevent injuries.

One of the most important take-aways I give runners from the barefoot movement is simple: let your feet breathe! Let your shoes or trainers be a performance/workout tool for you, but otherwise, try to go barefoot (safely) or as close to barefoot as you can, as much as possible. Not only does it improve your form and mechanics-awareness, but once in a while take a look down and marvel at the natural wonder of the feet that God gave you!