Everyone seems to be on this barefoot kick. We have been training athletes in the gym at Joint Ventures for over 3 years with no shoes on and I am not surprised to see how now it's "trendy" to go barefoot or wear the 5 fingers/Vibrams (even if they are pretty ugly).
Why do we work with our athletes barefoot?
Well, it's pretty simple- they are in a safe environment, we are working on creating mobility and stability and that starts in their feet. We do all our warmups barefoot and it's a different experience for these athletes to really stretch and stabilize when they aren't wearing shoes. Testimonials from our athletes will show you that they feel better working out barefoot, that their mobility and stability is improving and best of all- they don't have to remember to bring running shoes to the gym!
Well today, Eric Cressey, a very well respected strength coach sent out his response to the community about barefoot training. Below is an excerpt from his post. If you haven't read or followed Eric Cressey, I highly recommend reading his blog and newsletter. He is brilliant and trains successful athletes of all kinds.
From his blog:
"What I want to know is that specifically with my feet if wearing a supportive shoe with orthotics is such a bad thing. Everyone is on this barefoot kick, but it just doesn’t work for me. If I go barefoot my hips move out of correct position and my ankles and calves ache. In fact, when I was a child, my dad had to massage my calves and arches at night because I’d be in tears from the pain of being flat-footed. Once I got my first orthotics at age 7, I was so much more comfortable. I feel that orthotics and a nice flat shoe for me helps me use my feet correctly and allows me to stay away from internal rotation of the tibia and femor, and reduces pelvic tilt, etc.
Or, I could be mistaken? What do you think, and have you heard anyone else talk about this? Other hypermobile people and I have talked about this and we all seem to feel the same: barefoot is not the way to go for us."
Eric: Extensive barefoot stuff is definitely not for everyone, and if you were having issues that significant at such a young age, you’re probably just someone with a structurally different foot type. There are definitely scenarios where orthotics are indicated, and the fact that you’ve gotten so much symptomatic relief from them tells me that they’re a good thing in your case.
That said, you might still benefit from just a bit of barefoot training - like deadlifting barefoot and doing some bowler squats and the like. Basically, just use it for situations where foot positioning doesn’t change. Then, you don’t have to mess around with how it affects the gait cycle. I think you’ll get some of the benefits of strengthening the small muscles of the feet and improving proprioception (in light of your history of ankle sprains) without all the unfavorable compensations further up. I wouldn’t say that it’s specific to hypermobile individuals, though. A lot of them probably have issues with barefoot training because they lack the strength and underlying stability required at the lower leg and hip to take the ground reaction force stress off the feet. Remember that mobility and stability are always working at odds with one another; if you’ve got too much of one, you have to train the other one to pick up the slack.
Of course, in the general population, we see it for this reason, as well as the fact that most people walk around in terrible cinder blocks footwear that completely “tunes out” the joints and muscles of the feet.
A lot of the folks that try barefoot training and wind up in pain get that way because they’re idiots and jump right in full-tilt. You can’t go from wearing cross-trainers to wearing thin pieces of cloth/rubber overnight. And, as Nick Tumminello wisely pointed out recently, while our ancestors were barefoot all the time, they weren’t barefoot on CONCRETE for loads of mileage. And, they weren’t as overweight as today’s society is, with such low relative strength. As always, people get hurt because they are stupid and not because a specific training modality is bad.
Typically, in a broad sense, I recommend that people do their 1-leg (pistol) squats, all deadlifting variations, and box squats without sneakers. As long as they aren’t really overweight - or presenting with a history of foot problems - we’ll also have them do their warm-ups without sneakers.
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