Hey Ba
Hola Bare Lee,
I tend toward thinking of it as a thickening of the foot pad, versus thinking of it as a callus, growing up in Ohio, and doing a lot of manual labor on farms growing up, especially a lot of digging and wood splitting, I think of calluses as the hardened dead skin that developed from repeated abrasion.
I use to get such thick calluses on my hands that I could run a needle through them and not feel a thing...haha, once as a very bored teenager I sewed my fingers together and made a kind of webbing with the thread going through the calluses on my fingers and hands lol.
I could not do that with the thickened pads on my feet, which are not covered in deadened hard outer skin...
Yes, it's unfortunate that some people don't understand the definition of callus. But that's true of many things. What to do? Some people think capitalism = market economy.
One of the great things about barefoot running is it gets one to question received wisdom and established preconceptions and take a more scientific view of matters. The body is very adaptable, callusing is but one adaptation, doesn't matter if the stimulus is good/natural (e.g., varied surfaces), or bad/artificial (e.g., tight shoes).
A few BRS members object strongly to the use of 'callus' to describe the thickening of the plantar skin. So do we posit a separate physiology for the feet?
Hola Bare Lee,
I tend toward thinking of it as a thickening of the foot pad, versus thinking of it as a callus, growing up in Ohio, and doing a lot of manual labor on farms growing up, especially a lot of digging and wood splitting, I think of calluses as the hardened dead skin that developed from repeated abrasion.
I use to get such thick calluses on my hands that I could run a needle through them and not feel a thing...haha, once as a very bored teenager I sewed my fingers together and made a kind of webbing with the thread going through the calluses on my fingers and hands lol.
I could not do that with the thickened pads on my feet, which are not covered in deadened hard outer skin...