Walking In Vibram Five Fingers

Dr. Nick Campitelli, a medical advisor to Vibram Five Fingers released this response to repeated customer inquiries into the proper way to walk in your Five Fingers:

Walking in a Minimalist Shoe. By Dr. Nick Campitelli 

As with the controversy and debate over the proper way to run, we also have questions as to weather or not we should be heel striking when we walk. I will do my best to answer this question, and I want to emphasize that we do not have a preponderance of evidence to support walking barefoot.  What we do know however is that the information we base our decisions on for proper gait and the phases of walking (heel strike, mid stance, and toe off) are all based on theory and evaluations of subsets of people and then deemed as being normal or abnormal.  We have never directly randomized foot strike patterns and compared injury rates.  

My belief is that we have "trained" our feet into walking as if we had an inch to even higher heel under our foots own heel.  When we walk we tend to swing the foot forward, lift ourtoes to get that heel off the ground, and then drive the heel into the ground to land.  So in essence what we are doing is accentuating heel strike because we have either cushion or a blockunder our heel. 

Our minds and bodies are now subconsciously trained to swing our foot forward and strike the more posterior or back part of our heel on the surface and have the heel counter of the shoe "grab" or "cup" the heel.  When we remove our shoes and walk barefoot we continue this so called "habitual" form of walking. 

The foot was engineered to work without the shoe, more importantly without a heel.  Having said this, when we walk barefoot, instead of trying to land on our forefoot/midfoot as we do with barefoot running, we should land with more of the bottom or plantar surface of the heel first, as opposed to the back. As this is done, our foot tends to land flatter as opposed to the accentuated heel strike with toes pointing up in the air.  

Of course simply removing our shoes and walking barefoot for miles at a time would create overuse injuries to the foot or leg muscles as they have not been adapted.  I would recommend a little moreaggressive transition with walking.  First I would adapt to the VFFs by wearing around the house, then I would begin first start with the 10 % rule with respect to the amount nor miles your are doing, but you may be able to increase faster then 10% each week.  Listen to your body and do not overdo it.  When in doubt, walk 10-20 % of your workout in FFs then switch to a traditional shoe, but try to use the short stride and not accentuate the heel strike.  By 3 months you should be transitioned.  

Dr. Campitelli recommends consulting a physician prior to starting any exerciseprogram and the information provided here is not recommended to be advice in place of seeing your doctor for a medical problem.  

~more about Dr. Nick and Barefoot Education @ Vibram's Website

Welcome To Vibram Five Fingers

~via Vibram's youtube site... 

Vibram FiveFingers isn't a product, it's a community. And when we asked you to help us make a video introducing newcomers to Vibram FiveFingers, boy did you deliver. By the end we had over a thousand submissions, and picking 100 finalists was no easy task. All finalists received 2 pairs of VFF's, and one lucky winner got a VIP Trip to Chamonix to attend the North Face Ultra-Trail Du Mont-Blanc. Thank you all for your help. This project just confirmed what we've known all along: we've got the best fans in the world.

Skinny Raven: Free studs with any purchase!

Skinny Raven's very own Seth Stetson shows us one way to stay on your feet when crossing those icy Anchorage parking lots:

~ see the full story here

Barefoot Running: No shoes, No Problem via Homegrown Evolution

 
Photo by Magalie L'Abbé

Beekeeper Kirk Anderson has a simple message, lets bees be bees. Let them form their own comb, raise their own queens and generally go about doing what they want to do. In short, work with nature rather than try to control her. "Duh," one might say, but Kirk's beekeeping method just so happens to run counter to a hundred years of conventional beekeeping practices and "expert" advice. Kirk calls his method "backwards beekeeping" after Charles Martin Simon's eloquent essay, "Principles of Beekeeping Backwards." Simon's essay is essential reading, in my opinion, even if you have no interest in bees. It gets you thinking about what other things the so-called experts might be wrong about.

How about shoes for instance?

I was addicted to running throughout my 30s until a series of injuries in recent years, arthritis in the knees and plantar fasciitis, a painful inflammation of connective tissue on the bottom of the foot, effectively ended my happy morning runs. In the case of plantar fasciitis the doctors and physical therapists I consulted all said the same thing, that I should wear shoes with arch supports at all times, even around the house. A routine of stretching, incessant shoe wearing and abstaining from running beat back the pain for a year or so. But then it returned for no good reason.

Time to take those feet "backwards"

All the interventions of conventional beekeepers, the pre-built comb and endless treatments, have produced weak bees. It may seem crazy, but I began to see an analogy to our feet. We ain't born with shoes on, after all. So why do we think we need to improve on nature's design? Could it be that shoes, by atrophying our muscles, cause plantar fasciitis? Could the ever more massive cushioning of running shoes cause biomechanical changes that damage knees? For several years I'd been fascinated with barefoot running, but was always to chicken to try it. Two videos, done as part of a research project on barefoot running at Harvard, convinced me.

The first shows a runner in shoes with a graph of the impact forces. When you run in shoes you tend to slam down your heel first. Note the spike in the graph indicating the force of this heel impact:: 

When you run barefoot you tend to strike with the ball of the foot first instead of the heel, which eliminates that initial impact spike: 

Desperate and with nothing to lose, I decided to VERY slowly adjust to not wearing shoes. I gradually wore them less and less around the house. I began to feel a noticeable difference immediately. My feet felt stronger. In the past few weeks I've begun to carefully transition to running barefoot. I'm using a program adapted from a book, Run Less, Run Faster:  minus all the advice about shoes: I only run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, resting on all other days.

Week 1: (run 1 minute walk 2 minutes) x 4
Week 2: (run 2 minutes walk 2 minutes) x 3
Week 3: (run 2 minutes walk 1 minutes) x 4 
Week 4: (run 3 minutes walk 1 minutes) x 4
Week 5: (run 4 minutes walk 2 minutes) x 4  
Week 6: (run 4 minutes walk 1 minutes) x 6
Week 7: (run 5 minutes walk 1 minutes) x 6   
Week 8 run one mile
Week 9: run 1.5 miles
Week 10: run 2 miles
Week 11: run 2.5 miles
Week 12: run 3.1 miles

While I'm fairly certain I'll have setbacks, I'm hoping this conservative program will minimize my chances of injury and get me back to running modest distances. So far is seems to be working. I just have to contain my enthusiasm for being free of shoes and keep myself from running too much, too soon. Barefoot running really is liberating. It feels like being a kid again.

Everything we've been told is wrong

Dr C Richards, of the University of Newcastle in an article, "Is your prescription of distance running shoes evidence based?" discovered that there is not a single peer reviewed study proving the need for running shoes. He issued a challenge to shoe makers,

"Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?" 

He was met with a resounding silence. 

That is, until Nike came out with the "Free," a shoe that simulates barefoot running. In other words, caught with absolutely no evidence to justify their existence, Nike attempted to sell a shoe that's not a shoe. Now that's marketing in action! There's also the Vibram Five Fingers, an odd looking slipper-type non-shoe. While the Vibram has it's adherents, especially when it comes to preventing cuts from sharp objects, I feel that one of the points of running or walking barefoot is that it forces you to be more careful about the way you put your feet down.

A paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, "Hazard of deceptive advertising of athletic footwear".  concludes,

"(1) deceptive advertising of protective devices may represent a public health hazard and may have to be eliminated presumably through regulation; (2) a tendency in humans to be less cautious when using new devices of unknown benefit because of overly positive attitudes associated with new technology and novel devices."

The point about "overly positive attitudes associated with new technology" is a lesson well worth remembering, it seems to me. I could go on and on. I think this poetic video of a young man from Kenya, who has never worn shoes in his life, says it all:

As Kirk Anderson says, "Backwards is the new forwards." It ain't about nostalgia for some mythic past, the point is we're actually going forwards here by working with nature rather than arrogantly trying to control her. And don't worry dear readers, my hair won't get "long and shaggy", but you can bet I've bought my last pair of $100 running shoes.

For more information on barefoot running see http://therunningbarefoot.com/

via: Homegrown Evolution

'Barefoot running' craze hits Charlotte

by NewsChannel 36 Staff
Posted on May 4, 2010 at 11:00 PM
Updated yesterday at 6:51 PM

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The latest craze to hit Charlotte's fitness fanatics is called "barefoot running." But it's really running with sock-like shoes called Vibram Five Fingers. 

"When you run you don't get bored as much," said Brett Bumeter, who wears the shoes. "It's like having an instant tough callous on your feet."

"It's the closest thing to being barefoot and still have something on," said Bill Bartee, owner of Jessie Browns. 

Bartee said his store can barely keep the shoes on the shelves. 

"In the past one year they've definitely taken over the active lifestyle running market," Bartee said.

The store recently received a shipment that was ordered in December.

"They're hard to get and hard to keep in stock," Bartee said.

So what's the big deal?  

"It's like a playground for your feet," Bumeter said.

Some say these Five Fingers are a way to free your feet. 

"A lot will argue this is reverting back to what we've done forever and ever," said Dr. Carroll Jones, a foot and ankle surgeon with OrthoCarolina.

There's some evidence the shoes could be good for you.

"There's information coming now that barefoot running is lower impact when the foot hits the ground than traditional running. The theory there would be lower injury," Jones said.

But if you're thinking of taking the barefoot plunge, do it carefully.

"The biggest problem we're seeing is runners transitioning too quickly from traditional running to barefoot running," Jones said. "The injuries we are seeing are runners that are doing it too quickly."

Jones said you should learn the technique of wearing the Five Fingers -- use a track or flat surface to start. 

For more information, visit http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/.

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