Barefoot like Kentucky

How much time do you spend on your feet?  If you're like me; then quite a bit.  When I'm at the hospital, I'll go whole shifts and not leave a single butt-print on my chair.  It can be brutal on us, and our "dogs are barking" by the end of the day.

How is your posture?  Do you naturally stand up straight or do you slouch a little bit?  There are days when we sit in a chair a little too long.  Our spines come out looking like we're trying to be the next humpback whale.

Do you have back pain?  Does it hurt to stand for long periods of time?  Sometimes, just standing up to wash the dishes can be a daunting task if your lower back is in pain.

I have one last question; did you ever think that what's on your feet could be the cause of your problems?

Most people who shop for shoes have one primary concern: how they look.  A lot of us don't think about our shoes that often, especially when it comes to what they're doing or what they're meant for.  Some people have shoes set aside for certain occasions like work, exercise, running, lounging, dancing, walking, hiking, and "going out."  Some people even have a pair of shoes set aside for every one of those occasions!

I'm a man of simplicity though.  I have a pair of boots I wear for work, a pair of boots for everyday/hiking use, a pair of sneakers, and my Vibram FiveFingers KSO's.

You see, a few years ago I met a friendly barista at a Starbucks in Northern Kentucky.  He had on the weirdest shoes that I had ever seen, and I had to ask him about them.  We proceeded to "shoot the breeze" for another hour just discussing these shoes.  He told me they were called Vibram's and that he had never loved a  pair of shoes footwear so much.  He explained that he got them for going kayaking but learned that there were so many more uses than that for them.  I hadn't really thought much about them until a couple of months ago.

A trusted friend that I discuss exercise and fitness with brought these up in a conversation.  He said that he had been using them for running!  I couldn't believe it that people would run in something like this.  I was unaware at the time that barefoot running has been such a huge thing now in the running world.  This lead me to doing some personal research on it, and finding this at Barefooters.org:

"People who perform activities involving high impact while wearing footwear currently promoted as offering protection in this environment are at high risk for injury. Unlike the natural state (barefoot and natural surfaces), where impact is sensed and, through impact-moderating behavior, is maintained at a safe level, an inadequate understanding of the physiology of human impact control has resulted in footwear which makes chronic overloading inevitable by providing plantar comfort to the wearer even when enormous vertical impact is experienced."

 -Steven E. Robbins and Gerard J. Gouw. "Athletic footwear: unsafe due to perceptual illusions," Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 23(2), 1991, pp. 217-224

This website along with discussions with personal trainers and other trusted sources lead me to many other great discoveries.  One of the biggest being that lifting barefoot could improve my results.  

When doing lifting movements, like squats and dead-lifts, we are told to make sure that our heels stay firmly on the ground for balance and posture reasons. This is why many professional "lifters" will go barefoot in the gym.  This was also recommended to me, but I had conflicting issues with it.

The gym in my local town in great, but it's still new and its members are not entirely progressive yet.  I didn't want them to think I was the lazy bum of the gym, walking around without any shoes on and pretending like nothing was wrong.  I also feared somebody might ask me to leave because they would think it unsanitary for somebody to be going barefoot at the gym.  Besides, Kentuckians are just getting out of the stereotype that we don't wear shoes, and I wouldn't want to mess that up.

The Vibram FiveFingers KSO's ($85) were a great help for me in this area.  They let me go to the gym and exercise comfortably and safely, they protect my feet from sharp objects and rocks when I walk outside, they're extremely comfortable to wear, and they give me a great conversation topic when I meet somebody new.  The best part about them is that they have relieved back pain for me that I didn't realize was there, and my posture is better than ever!

I do understand that not everyone is in to this style of footwear.  For those of you with more specific needs, there is a long list of variations at VibramFiveFingers.com.  If you're looking for a cheaper option, Fila just came out with their new Skele-toes ($60).  There are also options for those of you not looking to draw attention to your feet, like the Merrell Barefoot True Glove ($110) or the Nike Free 3.0 v2 ($85).