I had an email from a friend today who was asking for advice on transitioning to a "barefoot" running shoe and looking to change her running style as a result. As I was writing my reply to her I thought that this could well be something useful to publish on here. So here it is...
In terms of barefoot... My top tip (other than transitioning slowly) would be to run fully barefoot before transitioning into minimalist shoes – even if only for ten mins at a time. I see so many people running in “barefoot shoes” who seem to have missed out that step. When you run barefoot you can’t help but land on your forefoot, take shorter faster strides and generally “feel” the ground more. However, if you are used to running in shoes and just put on barefoot shoes then your body still thinks it’s wearing shoes – so you will tend to continue to run in exactly the same way you do now. That just opens you up to injury as you will be heel striking fairly heavily in shoes with absolutely no give at all. It makes me wince when I hear or see people clumping past me in Vibrams and I can almost feel the ground vibrating!
When you do transition to
shoes... I love my vibrams as they are
so close to running actually barefoot.
But they do rub nasty holes in my feet when wet. And there are now a lot more alternatives
than there were. Somewhat surprisingly,
Barefoot Ted’s Luna sandals (which just look like a pair of sandals) are lovely
to run in. But you have to order them
from the States so that takes a while and means you can't try before you buy.
The advantage is you can just wear them out and about though as
well - I just wear these with shorts or skirts when I'm not running.
My friend had specifically asked about the Merrell barefoot shoes. The Merrells are ok but I've got a wide foot and they are
too narrow for me – one of the key things with barefoot running is that your
foot needs room to spread and I just don’t get that with the Merrells. They constrict my feet too much. I’ve also struggled with very poor grip on
previous pairs of Merrell trail shoes – they seem to be more designed for the
American dusty type trails rather than the sticky slippery mud we get here in
the UK. So I tend to avoid Merrell now
on the basis of the sort of abuse I know I want to subject them to.
A pair of barefoot shoes that I do love are
the Vivo Barefoot shoes – I’ve got their Neo Trails and love them. They also do road shoes which also work well
at the gym in terms of getting a better feel for the ground when you’re doing
weights. An advantage of the Vivo shoes
over the Vibrams is that they have an inner sole. I’ve bought a tiny little pair of wedges (£5
in Cotswolds) that I can slip under the inner if I want to make them slightly less
extreme – it allows me to transition more slowly to zero heel-toe drop and
means I can run much further in them. In
fact, I’ve used these to run 50k and they are fine. What I love about them is that I have really
good feel for the ground so it reduces the chance of me going over on my heel
or my technique reverting to poor form when I get tired after several hours of
running.
While transitioning to a different running style, I'd recommend reading
Chi Running (Danny Dreyer) as it’s all linked in terms of
running style and that totally revolutionised the way I run. In terms of inspiration, I’d recommend
reading “Born to Run” and “Running with the Kenyans”.
