My name is Erik and I'm 40 years old. I've always been walking barefoot indoors and outdoors as much as I can. In my life I've never found normal shoes to be very comfortable as I've got wide feet and a size US14.
About 1,5 years ago I bought my first pairs of barefoot shoes, Skinners and Saltic, for slacklining for in winter time or whenever the ground had too much hard stuff that hurt my feet. For the rest of the time I do slacklining barefoot which is also the best.
A couple of months ago I bought the Freet Flex Black which I absolutely love and last month also ordered a pair of Feelground Original luxe for more casual use. My third pair, the Vivobarefoot Geo Court II are on it's way right now and I'm more and more switching to barefoot shoes on a daily basis.
About a month ago I started to do more research into barefoot running as I've picked up running outside again during the pandemic. I already did some running on the treadmill in the gym as warmup and cooling down for 15minutes per session at 13-14km and hour twice a week. For the last year I've been doing 10KM runs twice or three times a week in around 45minutes and focused on landing on the ball of my feet.
So here comes my progression which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. I thought my feet would be stronger then most beginners as I was used to walking barefoot, slackline and do climbing. My first "barefoot running" (on Vibram 5 fingers) was a smaller run of 7KM and I couldn't walk for the next 5 hours as my calfs totally cramped up, fortunately I didn't hurt myself. After that the next 1,5 weeks was figuring out what my starting point was doing 1000m running, 200m walking in intervals working up to 1800m running and 200m walking for 9KM as my starting point. Now after a month I did my first 10km on the vibrams in one session without walking in between which felt great and I broke my PR at 44:30. It all feels so nice but my calfs still need to get a bit stronger as I do have a tight feeling in them after running but that goes away after an hour. I'll never go back to normal shoes for running as this transition made running so much more fun. Looking forward to getting my calfs up to strength and doing the 10KM easy and maybe do it completely barefoot sometime.
About 1,5 years ago I bought my first pairs of barefoot shoes, Skinners and Saltic, for slacklining for in winter time or whenever the ground had too much hard stuff that hurt my feet. For the rest of the time I do slacklining barefoot which is also the best.
A couple of months ago I bought the Freet Flex Black which I absolutely love and last month also ordered a pair of Feelground Original luxe for more casual use. My third pair, the Vivobarefoot Geo Court II are on it's way right now and I'm more and more switching to barefoot shoes on a daily basis.
About a month ago I started to do more research into barefoot running as I've picked up running outside again during the pandemic. I already did some running on the treadmill in the gym as warmup and cooling down for 15minutes per session at 13-14km and hour twice a week. For the last year I've been doing 10KM runs twice or three times a week in around 45minutes and focused on landing on the ball of my feet.
So here comes my progression which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. I thought my feet would be stronger then most beginners as I was used to walking barefoot, slackline and do climbing. My first "barefoot running" (on Vibram 5 fingers) was a smaller run of 7KM and I couldn't walk for the next 5 hours as my calfs totally cramped up, fortunately I didn't hurt myself. After that the next 1,5 weeks was figuring out what my starting point was doing 1000m running, 200m walking in intervals working up to 1800m running and 200m walking for 9KM as my starting point. Now after a month I did my first 10km on the vibrams in one session without walking in between which felt great and I broke my PR at 44:30. It all feels so nice but my calfs still need to get a bit stronger as I do have a tight feeling in them after running but that goes away after an hour. I'll never go back to normal shoes for running as this transition made running so much more fun. Looking forward to getting my calfs up to strength and doing the 10KM easy and maybe do it completely barefoot sometime.
