I love the barefoot movement it’s wonderful but for distance running I have always run In shoes. I’m wondering what other people’s thoughts are about low back pain and deferred pain into the legs. I imagine I’m not the only one who suffers from being a sitting all day person to active. How do you guys get around this issue? I had always just assumed I needed to be shon to disperse impact
The flawed assumption for decades has been all about "impact" and how that's somehow the source of all running injuries. Cushioned shoes have been the solution desperately searching for that problem. But every time a study is performed to try to find a link between horizontal impact or load and injury ... inconclusive.
More recently they've found a very strong link along the horizontal axis:
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a21343715/lower-your-running-injury-risk/
tl;dr - step your feet too far in front or scratch them back too far behind and you get injured. You know what also happens when you over-extend your feet like that? Your hips twist too far, your lower back twists too far ... you get lower back pain.
Turns out human legs are incredible shock absorbers. We can handle vertical load all day long just great. What we can't handle is a lot of excessive horizontal jarring. Put on a pair of modern athletic shoes and what to you get? A snug fit and super grippy rubber tread. Get those out on a solid, paved surface and you've got way more grip than evolution prepared us for.
Take the shoes off. Run on concrete. If you're over-extending your legs that skin will hurt. Keep going and that skin blisters. Maybe tougher skin will help? Nope. Skin gets thicker over months and years of unshod running but excessive horizontal braking will now result in thicker blisters. I spent a year praying to the Magical Tough Foot Fairy that one night she'd bless me with tough feet. All I got was more bruises and blisters. Just doesn't happen that way.
Not only are we able to handle vertical load better than horizontal think about what direction your momentum is going while running. How much does your head bob up and down? A few inches? That's your vertical oscilation. How long is your stride length? A few feet? That represents your horizontal movement. It's greater than your vertical by an order of magnitude. Literally 10x more is going horizontal than vertical when you run.
That's why even just a little bit of over-striding is so bad. If you never got injured over-striding you're still slamming on the brakes with each step making you inefficient and fighting against your efforts to move ahead.
So think about that for a while. The idea that "impact" is a problem is an old, flawed assumption that's simply not been proven. Your legs aren't just great shock absorbers they're loaded with springy, elastic tendons that have evolved to bounce you along hard ground effortlessly. What would you rather bounce a basketball on? A wrestling mat or concrete? What would you feel more stable standing on? A waterbed or concrete? That's what your relationship should be to soft surfaces vs hard.
And all that is to further prove why forums like this exist. When you take the shoes off and expose that easy-to-blister, super sensitive skin to concrete you finally start learning how to move better. Evolution crafted our legs to work their best and strongest in tandem with the specific properties of bare feet. Shoes with a snug fit and super grip encourage you to over-extend those legs and use them where they're weak and vulnerable. The whole rest of your body takes the brunt of that abuse resulting in a host of problems including back pain.
Sitting all day certainly doesn't help. But keep all this in mind when you run. Square your hips, square your shoulders, tall posture, head high, feet working the ground directly under your hips. Those same tips apply to every sport not just running.
edit: and since you ask about distance running and barefoot: I've done two full marathons in totally bare feet on city streets. I've also done 20 miles of a 50k across gravel, dirt and rocks unshod and 11 miles of a 50 miler that way. The rest of the miles for those ultras were done in my trusty, hard-soled Luna Origen sandals. Literally car tires with leather straps. Best trail footwear I've ever had! Even after all that ... I ran a 1/2 marathon in bare feet in October after training all year for that 50 miler. Blisters! I hadn't run at that kind of fast pace for that long before. I supposedly have "tough feet" due to years of unshod long distance experience. But push myself too hard, do something I haven't done, let my form slack. I got those thick blisters I talk about. It inspired me to start doing 100m dash repeats on the street unshod to learn better.
More recently they've found a very strong link along the horizontal axis:
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a21343715/lower-your-running-injury-risk/
tl;dr - step your feet too far in front or scratch them back too far behind and you get injured. You know what also happens when you over-extend your feet like that? Your hips twist too far, your lower back twists too far ... you get lower back pain.
Turns out human legs are incredible shock absorbers. We can handle vertical load all day long just great. What we can't handle is a lot of excessive horizontal jarring. Put on a pair of modern athletic shoes and what to you get? A snug fit and super grippy rubber tread. Get those out on a solid, paved surface and you've got way more grip than evolution prepared us for.
Take the shoes off. Run on concrete. If you're over-extending your legs that skin will hurt. Keep going and that skin blisters. Maybe tougher skin will help? Nope. Skin gets thicker over months and years of unshod running but excessive horizontal braking will now result in thicker blisters. I spent a year praying to the Magical Tough Foot Fairy that one night she'd bless me with tough feet. All I got was more bruises and blisters. Just doesn't happen that way.
Not only are we able to handle vertical load better than horizontal think about what direction your momentum is going while running. How much does your head bob up and down? A few inches? That's your vertical oscilation. How long is your stride length? A few feet? That represents your horizontal movement. It's greater than your vertical by an order of magnitude. Literally 10x more is going horizontal than vertical when you run.
That's why even just a little bit of over-striding is so bad. If you never got injured over-striding you're still slamming on the brakes with each step making you inefficient and fighting against your efforts to move ahead.
So think about that for a while. The idea that "impact" is a problem is an old, flawed assumption that's simply not been proven. Your legs aren't just great shock absorbers they're loaded with springy, elastic tendons that have evolved to bounce you along hard ground effortlessly. What would you rather bounce a basketball on? A wrestling mat or concrete? What would you feel more stable standing on? A waterbed or concrete? That's what your relationship should be to soft surfaces vs hard.
And all that is to further prove why forums like this exist. When you take the shoes off and expose that easy-to-blister, super sensitive skin to concrete you finally start learning how to move better. Evolution crafted our legs to work their best and strongest in tandem with the specific properties of bare feet. Shoes with a snug fit and super grip encourage you to over-extend those legs and use them where they're weak and vulnerable. The whole rest of your body takes the brunt of that abuse resulting in a host of problems including back pain.
Sitting all day certainly doesn't help. But keep all this in mind when you run. Square your hips, square your shoulders, tall posture, head high, feet working the ground directly under your hips. Those same tips apply to every sport not just running.
edit: and since you ask about distance running and barefoot: I've done two full marathons in totally bare feet on city streets. I've also done 20 miles of a 50k across gravel, dirt and rocks unshod and 11 miles of a 50 miler that way. The rest of the miles for those ultras were done in my trusty, hard-soled Luna Origen sandals. Literally car tires with leather straps. Best trail footwear I've ever had! Even after all that ... I ran a 1/2 marathon in bare feet in October after training all year for that 50 miler. Blisters! I hadn't run at that kind of fast pace for that long before. I supposedly have "tough feet" due to years of unshod long distance experience. But push myself too hard, do something I haven't done, let my form slack. I got those thick blisters I talk about. It inspired me to start doing 100m dash repeats on the street unshod to learn better.
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And I thought I was an enthusiastic foot person! It does make a lot of sense. I know right now I’m dealing with pt because of my l4-l5 punching nerves which create pain in my leg and hip region. Not fun and a little terrifying because.. I’m not allowed to run. I’m also not getting any better. I do sit all day unfortunately I drive for a living and even with all the knowledge and physical fitness training I’m still in a position to be a candidate for injections or surgery. But I have to figure something out. In the mean time I’ve been working on my feet. Reanimating the arches and toes. They can’t keep me from running forever and when they give the green light I wanna be ready.
Man, let me tell ya: you struck gold here for foot nerds!
I do believe in trusting experts, especially when it comes to medical experts and health. I will say that they tend to err on the side of caution which I can't fault them for either. You've been getting injured due to running so they're going to say "don't run." That's not entirely wrong and they're just using logic from their POV and erring on that side of caution.
But from their POV they only deal with people who got injured running. My wife works for a hospital as a social worker and she has to constantly remind herself that not every kid is dealing with drug addict parents. Some cops have to remind themselves that the scenic lake near the community they patrol is more than just a body of water full of dead bodies and drugs. That last one was an actual quote from a retired cop my wife heard about at a conference for "compassion fatigue."
In my opinion as a freaking software developer and not a doctor at all but I'm passionate about running ... I think too many people are running with terrible form that gets them injured. Doctors are right in that they mean stop running like that. Your doctor may not know much about the art of running form quite like other doctors like Harvard's Dr. Daniel Lieberman who could talk both our ears off about how incredible the human body is at running with bare feet. That's to do with him not being an MD but a paleoanthropologist.
As for me: unshod is my safe mode. If I feel an injury coming on I shelve the running sandals (I don't even use shoes anymore) for a while and stick to 100% bare skin on paved surfaces (avoid grass!) There's no better way in my mind to learn safe, efficient form. That skin underfoot is like a sacrificial layer. It's a canary in the coal mine warning you early and often about mistakes you're making in your form. You'll hurt that quick-to-heal skin way before you come close to causing worse damage further up the body. It's a pretty great feedback system.
My answers are nowhere near articulate as @trevize1138's, but I'll just add that we've had many members here who have stated that their back problems went away when they started barefoot running versus when they were running shod. I think this has to do with the change in running form and running more gently, which barefoot running forces most (not all) of us to do in order to avoid painful impacts. When we are running gently, there is less shock going up the spine, and therefore, less pain and less injury. When we are wearing cushioned shoes, we run recklessly, with a false sense of security, and with a disregard to any signals that we may have received from our bodies if it weren't for the deafened cushioning from our shoes. Even running in something as minimal as a pair of socks can throw off our gait and lead us to injury if we are not careful.
I’m not a doctor, therapist or health expert but I am someone who’s experienced debilitating pain due to the l4-l5 vertebrae. My doctor (thankfully he’s not into using drugs to heal) suggested Dr. Eric Goodman’s Foundation Training- a couple of sessions of the 12 Minute Livestrong Workout (video can be found on the Livestrong site) rid me of the pain and immobility I was experiencing. I still do it occasionally and anytime I feel any kind of twinge, stiffness, our ache it provides quick relief.
My Doc also contributed somewhat to my embracing a more barefoot lifestyle- after severely twisting an ankle x-country skiing a couple of years ago he suggested walking around shoeless as much as possible for full movement of the joint during recovery...I kinda got carried away with “...as much as possible...” . My ankle recovered and I feel that minimizing the jarring effect that boots/shoes had on my lower back has been helpful as well.
Trevise gave awesome feedback, there’s no way of expanding upon what was wrote there. Going barefoot changed my running style and improved my life tremendously!
My Doc also contributed somewhat to my embracing a more barefoot lifestyle- after severely twisting an ankle x-country skiing a couple of years ago he suggested walking around shoeless as much as possible for full movement of the joint during recovery...I kinda got carried away with “...as much as possible...”
. My ankle recovered and I feel that minimizing the jarring effect that boots/shoes had on my lower back has been helpful as well. Trevise gave awesome feedback, there’s no way of expanding upon what was wrote there. Going barefoot changed my running style and improved my life tremendously!
It wasn't until after several years of minimalist and unshod that I finally realized something hadn't happened in all that time: no twisted ankles! Holy crap! No ankle problems!
I used to just assume I had weak, vulnerable ankles and that's why I twisted or rolled an ankle once or twice a year. [knocks on wood] I haven't had that happen in about 8 years now. Unshod is the gift that keeps on giving and giving you things you didn't even think you'd get.
I realized that going Barefoot/FiveFingers eliminated the ankle rolling as well- like you I assumed weak ankles. I guess it makes a kind of sense that when you contemplate the additional ‘pivot point’ that a thick boot or shoe sole (especially if it’s looser/sloppier fitting) adds that the feet’s proprioceptors are a little confused.
No tripping because of loose laces either. I used to go down hard when I stepped on or snagged a loose lace...ones own clumsiness can be quite vexing!
I have started to read more and more about our feet. It’s a very lengthy process to adapt feet to being without shoes all the time. It’s unfortunate there arnt more “experts” in this field to go to and ask questions. I’m always worried I’m doing something g wrong or I might be missing a red flag. Can you suggest any good books that I can read? My masters is in exercise psychology but I lack some of these bits of details.
What I've come to trust is the relationship between the specific properties of the skin underfoot and its relationship to the rest of your body. Evolution crafted all of it to work together. Put on shoes with grippy rubber tread and you throw off that balance because you're chaning up the properties of how your feet interact with the ground. Add cushioning and support to the shoe and now you're corrupting things even further.
So, I don't have any book recommendations for you but I will say I've come to just trust in evolution and avoid my own misleading thoughts like "I guess my feet need to be tougher." If my bare feet hurt it should be a signal that I'm moving in ways that are inefficient and potentially damaging. If my feet aren't "tough" yet that still applies: it often means the rest of my body isn't strong enough to push those "tender" feet too hard. As my feet get "tougher" my body gets stronger. Push myself too hard, chew up my feet causing soreness or blisters and I'm also likely pushing the rest of my body too hard.
