Barefoot Running

Ok, so I'm sure that pretty much everyone reading this blog knows that I run (and train) barefoot and that I have done so for several years. In that time I have had no injuries due to running, not counting the couple times I bruised my heels in the early stages of learning, and not counting minor inconveniences like having to remove cactus thorns during trail runs. Now I'll admit up front that I have probably only once run any further than six miles, so maybe I could have been injured by now if I ran longer distances more often. On the other hand there are many people who have been running barefoot a long time, and for long distances who are injury free, and there are now a number of studies supporting the conclusion that barefoot running is safer and more efficient than running shod. The first video is about a Harvard scientist, Daniel Lieberman, who has been studying running for a while and is now a barefoot runner. We had an article about him and his most recently published study kicking around the gym a while back.



The next few videos are of the foot strike of a couple Kenyan runners, both of whom grew up running barefoot. The first clearly is a forefoot striker.



The second is considered a forefoot striker as well, but you can see that he lands more "flat-footed" than the first runner, and in the video of him in shoes, he would certainly be considered a mid-foot or potentially a heel striker. You can see how the huge wedge that it the sole of the running shoe changes the contact with the ground even though nothing in his stride has changed.





Any way, if you want to find more info on barefoot running I recommend

http://therunningbarefoot.com/

this was the first website I found when I started running barefoot and it has a lot of good info. I also just came across this site

http://www.runningbarefootisbad.com/

which does not support barefoot running, in case you want to see a different point of view. I personally feel that the author of this site is guilty of many of the same kinds of inaccuracies he accuses barefoot runners of, but he does raise the issue that people often make assumptions about studies that do not reflect the actual data presented.