Do you walk-walk into store-stores or walk-skip? Are we going to have a war-war with Iran/Syria or war-peacekeeping? I'm kinda digging this new double-speak.I take a pair of stability control running shoes cut the soles off and just run with the uppers. Saves time and explanation whenever I want to walk into a store
Hawkbilly, I agree completely. I didn't take your comments as being flippant, and I hope my rushed writing didn't come off as snide. I don't know to what degree injury is a concern, but others have reported that one is more likely to get injured in the 'transition phase' with minimalist shoes than barefoot-barefoot skin-to-ground. As a mediocre linguist, I do have a bit more invested in semantics (and as a citizen, I also have a problem with military/corporate/media double-speak in general), but Jason has made a fairly convincing argument that adoption of the marketing moniker 'barefoot shoes' may do more good than harm. Ken Bob has contested this claim. I run alone and have almost no contact with runners outside of BRS's forums, so I have no way of judging this debate. Mostly, I was just having fun with words. I didn't mean to alienate you and anyone else.
TMo, I, for one, wasn't intentionally gate-keeping or claiming elite status. Just poking fun at the terms involved. I agree with Hawkbilly that the only really important thing is to run for fun and stay healthy. Footwear or its absence is secondary--although relevant--to that goal. Your case though is instructive--you got injured with barefoot shoes. Also, I'm not sure what's holding you back, but once you build up your callous a bit, I think you're really going to enjoy the sensuousness of barefoot-barefoot skin-to-ground running. It's makes running all the more addictive.
Maybe we should switch our imperial slogan from 'freedom and democracy' to 'love and oligarchy' . . .
I think the problem is that a lot of people will make that leap. If they have barefoot shoe-shoes, they'll think they're running (exactly in the same way that they would if they were) barefoot-barefoot, and get injured. So it can go beyond silliness, and enter into the realm of perniciousness. I think that's Ken Bob's argument. Jason on the other hand, I think has said, in effect, that the silliness may not lead to perniciousness, but rather recruitment of the bare-curious into a more natural way of running, converting from a shoe-as-corrective-brace-and-protection perspective to simply a shoe-as-protection perspective, which will lead to a reduction in 'traditional' runners' injuries. All I know is I like the simplicity, both physical and semantic, of running barefoot (that is, barefoot-barefoot skin-to-ground BFR, that is, that is, without footwear, including but not limited to shoes and sandals).
There's barefoot and then there's the "barefoot" running style/form. I run barefoot and at times with VFF; there is a difference.
I'm surprised how much debate sprang up.
So we are discussing how politically correct and inclusive we may or may not be. I'm a liberal and open minded kind of guy, but last I checked being barefoot required a lack of shoes and socks. Basically, people need to be educated on the differences between running barefoot and running in a barefoot form with minimalist shoes.
I'm totally with you T Mo. Everyone has to figure out what works best for them, depending on their goals and motivations. I think it's useful to distinguish between barefoot purism in practice and barefoot purism in ideology. I'm fairly purist in practice, but only because it fits with the kind of running I'm doing/want to do. If I wanted to do a different kind of running that required some sort of footwear, I would put it on without hesitation.
