Chapter 18: Foot Freedom, Health, Function, and Strength - The Practice of Natural Movement

Studies show that populations who grow up or live mostly barefoot have significantly healthier feet. Of course, being barefoot isn’t beneficial on its own; it doesn’t do much for you if you sit barefoot all day. Moving frequently on diverse surfaces supports the natural health, strength, and function of our feet. Because our feet are our foundation, their health and function strongly affect the health and function of our spines.

First, let me explain the ways in which conventional footwear is detrimental to your movement practice.

Unless you are practicing the combative aspect of Natural Movement, would it make any sense to practice movement with your hands encased in boxing gloves? No, you would look silly, like a clown pretending to play the violin while wearing boxing gloves. If you were wearing gloves, you couldn’t feel and grasp surfaces with your hands to efficiently ensure friction, gripping, support, and balance. Furthermore, if you were to wear boxing gloves all day, every day for decades, your hands would certainly soften and weaken. If this makes sense for your hands, doesn’t it make sense for your feet as well?

Wearing conventional heavily cushioned and elevated-heel sports footwear is just like wearing boxing gloves. The thick cushioning of the socks and thick plastic and synthetic layers of the shoes disrupt the natural “biofeedback”—exteroception—that you get from your feet when they contact the ground and that enables you to adapt your gait and positional control so you can stay balanced and light on your feet. Because most movement takes place on our feet or involves them, our feet are designed to be highly adaptable in terms of position. We have no fewer than fifty-two bones, sixty-six joints, and forty muscles in our feet, but we’re able to collect an enormous amount of information thanks to an extraordinary number of nerve endings* that normally need to have almost unobstructed contact with the environment to perform their job optimally.

NOTE

 

For information about a study into the value of being barefoot versus wearing footwear, read the article “Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?” at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958259207000533.

 

Natural sensory feedback from the feet is altered in two significant ways when we wear conventional types of footwear:

• Sensory feedback is significantly less intense. You may not feel as sharply as you should that a surface is unstable or stable, soft or hard, slippery or not, and so on.

• There is latency. The feedback you get from your feet about the point of support that you’re establishing as you step is significantly delayed. With too little information from your feet, each step you make arrives at your brain later than it would if your feet were bare, and your central nervous system is challenged for ensuring movement efficiency because it greatly depends on the information you gain from the environment where you stand. For instance, if a surface on which you step is slippery or unstable and you can’t feel it instantly and precisely, you might not adjust your position and movement with enough reactivity and speed to avoid getting off-balance. Another common issue is that, because your perception of the impact is dulled as your foot lands, your foot tends to land harder than it should. Ironically, the goal of thickly cushioned footwear is to decrease landing impact forces and minimize stress on the joints—especially the knees—but the exact opposite occurs.

Numbness in the peripheral nerves of the feet (and hands as well) is the hallmark of a disease called neuropathy, and it causes serious gait issues that lead to falling and injuries. To some degree, we impose a slightly milder version of this condition on ourselves every time we put on conventional sports shoes. Think of the difference between moving in socks and moving in snow boots: Which option gives you more sensitivity and reactiveness in movement?

The shoe “platform” on which your feet are resting reduces the range of motion of your feet and ankles, preventing optimal positional control during movement. The shoe also encases your foot in a plastic “cast” that prevents natural motion. This reduced range of motion, thick cushioning, and exaggerated protection of the foot for prolonged periods softens the skin and weakens the bones and muscles of the feet, which eventually reduces foot function and makes them injury-prone.

The elevated heel, which is nothing but a convention without any relevant functional purpose, forces the rest of the body to vertically align with the base of support in unnatural ways, leading to structural issues over time, such as lower-back pain. Most shoes also have an elevated toe box that keeps your toes artificially elevated unless you stand with all your body weight pressing this area down to the floor. The point of the rounded toe box design is to create an assisted rocking motion when your forefoot goes down to the ground and pushes off rather than letting the foot do the work in its natural state.

A simple way to assess whether you have grown proprioceptively dependent on footwear is to observe how you feel when you take off your shoes after having worn them for some time or immediately after physical activity. If you feel off-balance and the barefoot sensation doesn’t feel “normal”—it feels awkward even on the indoor surfaces you’re used to—you are already stepping outside of your comfort zone. But the true test is transitioning from shod to barefoot when you’re outside in nature. The greater the change in speed and movement behavior you observe in your gait, the weaker your feet are.

It’s no surprise that attempting to move barefoot in natural environments without a thoughtful, patient, progressive transition feels awkward and painful. Barefoot motion should be, by default, comfortable on most terrains, but instead we have been led to see being barefoot as uncomfortable and “unnatural,” whereas we see wearing shoes as the “natural norm”—almost as if we were born wearing footwear. Your body may be strong, but if your feet are weak, then your whole foundation is weak, which has implications to your movement performance. I have seen my young children wearing winter boots—with elevated heels and rigid rubber—that caused them to start to move awkwardly and to stumble more frequently than usual. The problem was immediately solved when they returned to their usual thin and flexible footwear. The boots had an immediate effect on their proprioception, reactions, positional control, and overall gait. They made their movement unsafe. Continuing to wear the boots or similarly designed footwear during their early growth would have permanently altered their foot function over time.

Conventional footwear is ill-adapted to the natural function of the foot and promotes foot dysfunction, back issues, and even injury. Despite several decades of so-called innovation—in terms of structure or material used—from the commercial running footwear industry, injury rates among people engaged in frequent recreational or competitive running have never dropped. By protecting the foot more than necessary and modifying the foot’s function and overall gait, “technical footwear” creates more issues than it solves. The best protection for the foot is efficient, natural movement and progressive strengthening and conditioning of your feet, ankles, calves, knees, and so on until you have a natural and efficient gait.

Of course, this is not to say that Natural Movement should be done exclusively barefoot. There are many reasons why you would want to wear footwear, such as for social and professional reasons or because of weather or terrain. In fact, it is a no-brainer that wearing footwear can enable you to run faster on rough terrain—such as a hot rocky desert full of cacti—and prevent deep cuts and other injuries. There is a reason why most hunter-gatherer tribes living in nature have their own form of footwear with a simple design: thin, flexible, and light. Today, there are “minimal footwear” alternatives that protect your feet from harm (cuts, puncture, burns, freezing) or help you remain socially acceptable but also enable foot function to be as close as possible to its natural, healthy form.

Aside from the times when you’re engaging in Natural Movement practice, I strongly advocate barefoot movement whenever possible, although the goal is not to turn barefoot for 100 percent of your life or during 100 percent of your physical practice. Being barefoot more frequently in to your day-to-day motion, however, will start strengthening your foot structure, which in turn will support your physical practice.

Regular barefoot motion makes your feet stronger, more functional, and “sharper,” which in turn benefits your functional health as well as your physical practice and performance. Walking barefoot in nature (known as earthing) is grounding, releases stress, and raises your energy levels. Furthermore, if you find yourself in a situation where your shoes are lost or you have no time to put them on, at least you have a basic ability to move despite the disadvantage of having no shoes.

Barefoot practice is just like other areas of physical practice: It must be progressive to preserve your tissues and allow them time to recover, get stronger, and become healthier. Too much stress in a short time can generate discomfort, pain, and even injury and can hinder the very adaptations you are looking for.

No one can tell how long it will take you to adapt to barefoot Natural Movement; it depends on the type of movement you do, at what volume and intensity, and on what surfaces. A healthy overall lifestyle also supports adaptation in this regard. A certain level of minimal discomfort is necessary to trigger adaptations in your feet as a process that should be very gradual rather than a brutal exercise in self-inflicted pain.

Pay attention to the feedback from your feet as you work on adapting. A good strategy is to consider three different “grades” of footwear, each with a progressively thinner and more flexible sole. Instead of transitioning directly from conventional footwear to barefoot, or even to minimal footwear, you could find a pair of shoes that is simply thinner and more flexible than what you are used to. When this footwear becomes comfortable enough even on uneven terrain and more challenging surfaces, switch to a slightly thinner and more flexible pair. In any case, practice barefoot whenever you feel comfortable enough and occasional discomfort is manageable.

I grew up barefoot, dirty, climbing trees. It made me appreciate things more.”

—Elle King