April 22, 2008

• Barefoot is the answer? Here's my retort: But a very interesting article that may well convince me to buy some of those Vivo shoes at some point in my life. Unfortunately, I also have a foot problem that requires a lift, so maybe that just nixes the whole thing.
• Great post, H-Dogg. The artwork was fantastic as well. Additionally, I think shoes gave the world stinky feet and toe jam. I'm reminded of when my kids were small and learning to walk, and how I had to fend off some cranky old folks when they complained, "your child needs to wear firm shoes if they're going to be able to walk!" I thought that was complete baloney. Seems only natural that one would learn to walk with the feet bare. I imagine that if I were to ride the subway barefoot, the bumps and sudden bends would be easy to "ride" without grabbing onto a pole. However, I'm not sure how I would feel about stepping on dried fecal matter and gum droppings...
• Interesting, but not practical. If I could only walk on grass or sand (not too hot, of course), I might consider it. Now, pants...those things we can totally do without.
• It's another one of those things they do well in China; you get these pebbled/cobble-stone walks in the parks for the old tai chi practices of bare-foot walking. Though I mostly agree with with rocket, except about the pants.
• "It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot" "the great Lord designed us perfectly to walk around without shoes" I think they're mixing their metaphors. I can't finish reading it - it's way too long, and feels like a sales pitch for new barefoot shoes. come on people, stop surfing and start shopping!
• I find it difficult to believe that either millions of years of evolution or an intelligent designer came up with the oversized lumpy things that pass for my feet. I would go barefoot more of the time if they were a bit more attractive. I do go in stocking feet most of the time indoors.
• Oh, and get some Crocs!
• I spent most summers as a kid completely barefoot. Now I'm amazed at how my feet dealt with the streets that were roughly as hot as the surface of the sun, when now I can't even deal with the sidewalks on an 80 degree day. (Of course, now my feet look prettier in sandals.)
• I don't know if I'm walking wrong or not. All I know is that if I try to walk more than about 50 feet either barefoot or in the wrong shoes, I get terrible shin splints because I supinate. And that this crippling pain doesn't happen if I wear shoes that correct for supination. No crazy-ass six-page New York Magazine article is going to convince me to throw away my New Balance walking shoes, no way no how!
• After all my physio earlier this year, I think it's safe to say my feet are wrecked. That's just a result of genetics, though. I would like to see some study into the muscle attachments of feet, calves, and ankles of a human skeleton from 40k years ago, or even 10k years ago, compared to those now. What's changed, and are the changes purely environmental or are some evolutional?
• this is bollocks.
• No, actually it's feet ;)
• Nope, Hank! It's fereal!! I go barefoot whenever possible, have done since a toddler. I credit that with finally ending my planter fasciitis, keeping my feet overall healthy, and spreading my toes till I look like a duck and wear clown shoes. Don't care. Now that I have Morton's Neuroma, I can't walk around the block without inserts in my shoes, but I can go barefoot forever. See? You truly do get used to gravel, hot pavement, snow, and some prickerweeds. Never, ever, ever to the goathorns. Those things aren't called puncture vine for nuthin'! I will persist in my footie nekkedness until they come to tie shoes on my cold, dead feet. MonkeyFilter: Now, pants...those things we can totally do without. YEAH ROCKET!!
• Oh yeah, GREAT POST, homunculus! Anybody think our friend, the homonuclus, needs bigger feet? Or something?
• Whatever do you mean? I think my feet look just fine.
• geez, h-dogg, NSFW!!
• also you, gramma, only not so much
• Interesting article. I'm an overpronator, which can cause serious problems in your ankles, knees, and hips, especially if you run. Strengthening the muscles in your feet and ankles is recommended to help with this, but I was always curious why running long distances in $120 shoes wouldn't, you know, do that. Doubt I'd ever be running barefoot over any real distance (surely I'll always need some kind of motion control to correct the problems with my gait), but this has me interested in at least trying it out on the treadmill and buying some barefootish shoes for walking around and hiking. Because, seriously, WANT.
• Don't talk to me about barefoot, woman, I have foot leather half an inch thick from walkin' around barefoot in the blazing Oz heat since I was a nipper, with boiling toasters and lazer beams and shit bouncing off.
• I don't know about you guys, but I plan on walking bear foot. RAWRRRR, biatches!!!!
• I've been thinking about this post for the past couple of days because I did something over the weekend and wrecked my knee. (I'm not sure what I did, honestly, but I woke up one day with a big bruised and swollen knee. I'm not the most graceful person, though, and I knock into stuff all the time and immediately forget I did it.) I ended up doing the exact opposite of what this article said by putting on my squishiest and most supportive sneakers, and my knee's feeling a bit better.
• Your knee is living in a FOOL'S PARADISE, meredithea. By 9:32 this evening it will be weeping and reeking with gangrene! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING??!! FOR GOD'S SAKE STOP WALKING WRONG.
• Oh no! Oh noooooo, the knee gangrene!! The horror... the horror....
• Just did a mile barefoot on the treadmill to see what it was like. Spent a few minutes beforehand just walking around the house in my bare feet, paying attention to any and all feedback from my tootsies and trying to concentrate on levelling my gait. I've tried doing this in my super-cushy motion control shoes as well and couldn't, but this was much easier. As for running, yeah, my impact was way less -- usually I bring the thunder on the treadmill, but this was noticeably quieter. Kept concentrating on what my feet were telling me, and I learned a lot more from that one mile than I did from the last six months of running. Not just with my feet, either -- I could feel myself making a dozen little corrections with my hips, spine, neck and shoulders as well. Now I'm feeling a bit of soreness and tiredness in foot and lower leg muscles I previously wasn't conscious of using during running, and that's just after a single stinking mile. This is pretty interesting. I've pretty much made up my mind to buy me some of those weird shoes I linked above just for walking around, and I'm Googling exercises for building up my feet and ankles. Doubt I'll ever run in "barefoot" shoes any real distance, but this is a good learning/building experience. It would be awesome if I could get my mechanics to the place where I can run in lighter-weight shoes -- the motion control ones are notoriously Frankenstein-ish, which sucks when you go distance and your legs get tired. Please pardon the interruption, we now return you to the smell of Koko's butt.
• any and all feedback from my tootsies So... feetback. Can I have another helping of boiled toaster?
• > Just did a mile barefoot on the treadmill to see what it was like. I'm tempted to try this, but isn't there a danger of slipping? I guess I've no idea how much my feet would sweat if I jogged barefoot.
• I didn't really have a problem at all. My treadmill's belt has good traction, and I sweat very easily, but I never missed a step.
• So I bought these and have gone on two runs so far with them, a one-miler and a two-miler just this morning. So far it's much harder to run, because I can't take a longer stride to speed up, and a considerable part of my muscular effort goes into simple shock absorption. Also, I'm definitely going to have to pay way more attention to stretching my calves and Achilles tendons while I'm still building strength and readjusting my gait. However, both runs went well, the first one even while pushing a jogging stroller. No ill effects so far, other than the aforementioned lower-leg stiffness that I need to keep an eye on. Time will tell, I suppose, but at the very least, if I can do this enough to really correct the problems with my gait and go back to shoes for the real runs, then I will consider this experiment an unqualified success.
• I wasn't aware that you'd already had sex on Flickr. They're interesting...
• I think "nerdy" and "weird" are the adjectives you're really groping for here.
• Less Batman, more Kong.
• They'd look great with evening wear.
• Since I was going to go running immediately afterward, I wore them to drop Jack off at daycare this morning, and bumped into my 5-year-old niece in the hall. She could only point at my feet and laugh uncontrollably.
• I spent my entire childhood barefoot. I could pick things up with my toes (which my father thought was shockingly primitive and uncivilized), and used to tidy my room that way. Hot, cold, gravel...it's not so much that your feet toughen (well, they do to a point), but you learn to walk in such a way as to not get hurt, like a hot-coal walker. Now I have nerve damage in my spine and can't feel a good number of my toes, and I feel the loss very greatly. I am still barefoot as often as possible, though. I've recently done some major knee, leg and back trauma, and I'm really interested in any new kind of shoe. I'm going to look into this.
• Also, my mom, who could be argued to be the author of my feet, thinks they're hilariously-shaped and laughs at them any time I'm barefoot. Bitch.