FiveFingers Revolution

You may have heard of the Vibrams FiveFingers and have already come up with an opinion on them (cool, freaky, totally unacceptable...). Why are these causing a revolt? Well, they are the one product that allows people to begin the transition to using our feet like they were designed to be used. Far too long (since Nike came about basically) have we abused our own physiology by strapping on over structured, expensive shoes that really only make us weaker and more prone to injury.

Running barefoot is how we were designed and how we have ran throughout the majority of our history, and so it doesn't take much intellectual firepower to come to the conclusion that for most people running on our own structure make sense. If you have heard about, or even read 'Born to Run', then you know of the Mexican indians that run crazy distances over insane terrain on basically a rubber slab strapped to their feet. Or you may have heard about persistence hunting, where humans actually ran down their prey before they had weapons (and still do in some parts of the world).

I could go on, but really what I am trying to share is that running barefoot is not going to become the new standard. But, rebuilding our feet so they can actually support our needs by using FiveFingers and really lightweight unstructured running shoes will allow us more time running and less time recovering from injury. It will also leave some money for other needs as expensive running shoes will disappear from our budgets.