People Walked Differently in Medieval Times
mentalfloss.com
mentalfloss.com
Their main advantages are (a) they are more waterproof, (b) they are more durable (especially on hard rough surfaces canvas or thin leather shoes wear out quite quickly), (c) they offer some protection against sharp objects that you otherwise have to pay more attention not to step on.
My orthopedic doctor had me switch from arches and heels (typical running and dress shoes) to flat souls and minimal pressure on the back of my heel (flip flops, Keen sandals, those thin shoes from New Balance). It both helped clear my plantar fasciitis and my flat feet got some arches.
Any forensic or surveillance grade gait analysis software can easily distinguish between the sexes and it’s not fooled by sex reassignment operations or sexual orientation.
That's pretty damning.
Note that until Muybridge did his first time-lapse photographs, pretty much every single painting of a horse in motion was grossly inaccurate.
Compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop
to:
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/fox-hun...
That’s ridiculously interesting, but is it really comparable to a walking speed human? Sounds more like an issue with the human eye than older paintings in general
Now I heel-toe as I'm a dancer, but running is another story
Since then my gate has changed from heel to toe walking. The reason is that heel walking hurts when walking (nearly) brarefoot. However the change is subtle.
The guy in the video is anything but subtle. Based on my recent experience I strongly doubt people walked that way.
Since switching, my feet feel better, my knees feel better and my back feel better.
I’ve bee wearing xero brand shoes. They are super comfortable but I’ve been disappointed in their quality. Can anyone recommend “minimalist” shoes they like?
Why do you say that “not built to last” is a characteristic of minimalist shoes? To me that is a characteristic of the brand. The soles of my xeros have hardly any wear but they are ungluing from the upper and split at the edge.
Alternately, thin leather moccasins can also often be pretty cheap (or can be made yourself).
If you want something a bit more durable, I find that most styles of Vibram’s finger shoes last a fair while, but plenty of people seem to dislike their appearance.
You could try a knee-high leather moccasin or the like.
I have 7 pairs + sandals from them for various occasions. I have no affiliation, I just really like their shoes.
Vivo is hit and miss in terms of quality. Some models are quite good. In my opinion, their classic desert boot Gobi is the best item in their lineup. Some variations are offered with insulation and/or water resistance.
IMHO, the very best minimal shoe money can buy is a Russell Moccasin [1]. And I say this as a European that in principle prefers high end English (Edward Green), Spanish (Carmina) and Austrian (Saint Crispin) shoes.
Some words of warning, though. It's a traditional company. Orders are very slow and there's little feedback. Plus their QC is sloppy. Some pairs are very well finished, others are not.
[1] http://www.russellmoccasin.com/minimalist-footwear-custom-ma...
- http://www.russellmoccasin.com/huron-thula-thula/
- http://www.russellmoccasin.com/thula-thula-ph/
I’m relatively fit and work at a standing desk (mostly standing sometimes sitting). I have small miniscus tears in my knees. When I exercise regularly (bike or elliptical 2x per week) my knees don’t bother me. I also had some pain the balls of my feet.
For the past few months I have not had the chance to exercise regularly.
After switching to minimalist “barefoot” shoes, the pain the balls of my feet are gone and even without the regular excercise my knees feel pretty good. I’ve even felt good after working our booth at 3 long tradeshows this past fall.
I don’t think I’m one to fall for fads. I’m converted to this style shoe now.
Ymmv
I really like the New Balance Minimus Cross Trainer. 3 reasons: Quality is good, New Balance makes wide sizes, and the design isn’t overly loud.
The guy in the video is exaggerating his motions a lot though (could explain part of why he finds it takes so much work for his calves). In particular, my steps end up being small, with my feet staying under my center of mass, my stepping leg is bent, my steps are almost directly in line, and I find that my torso moves very smoothly without bouncing up and down or stopping and starting.
It seems that he wants to make his movements clear to the audience, but in practice I would expect he is walking with short balanced steps.
I walk like you describe you do, but in the end I also developed calves like those you see on the folks in paintings from the 1400-1500s!
A parenting aside: I want to make sure that my daughter grows up walking the way she already naturally does, but it is hard to find good footwear for it in kids. The materials are all heavy relative to the size of the shoes and so it is hard to find a shoe that is both flexible and resistent to the weather. I'd love to hear any suggestions.
Not too cheap though.
I can't really speak to the quality of the kids shoes, but I own quite a few pairs of their adult shoes and am very happy with them.
For example, I spent a few hundred on the first Porto iteration, and it fell apart in less than 2 months. Their German shop refused to honor the guarantee.
My son is about 17 months old and has been walking for about 5 months. We live in one of the warmer parts of San Francisco, so for the first 3–4 months it was warm enough that he could just walk barefoot around the neighborhood. We sometimes get strange looks/questions from other pedestrians, and his feet get very dirty, but it’s easy to wipe them before going inside. When it gets too cold (i.e. he would sit down and refuse to walk on the sidewalk) we put some of these soft leather moccasins on him. https://amzn.com/B014EQ6OXM/
For cold rainy weather or older kids I’m not sure what the best choice would be. I’m somewhat of a mind to just buy some leather and make shoes at home; it doesn’t seem impossibly difficult (there are many straightforward patterns from e.g. North American tribes).
I noticed differences in how I walk, especially on incline, decline, and walking up/down stairs. These squats teach you better balance and strengthen more muscles. My range of motion is also fuller when biking, instead of the newbie's typical "pedal pushing".
Running barefoot and dancing also affects gait, so why not type of shoes ?
But i agree that shoes are terrible for your posture but not if you walk like he describes
And personally i believe that a full foot strike is better than heel/forefoot strike.
And I wore "leather socks" for the events, not modern shoes, and my gait didn't change at all. Unless I was walking on wet stone, grass or concrete. Leather is really, really, slippery when wet.
This is sort of like saying “I’m used to using a fork, and I couldn’t pick up anything when I tried chopsticks a few times. There’s no way people actually eat with a pair of these, I’m sure they actually just stab their food with it like a skewer.”
If you want to learn, I recommend you try switching to walking entirely barefoot all the time for a month or two, including while walking on hard surfaces (e.g. concrete sidewalk). You’ll be forced into a dramatically shorter more balanced stride irrespective of which bit of your foot touches down first, because a long straight-legged stride will be painful for all of your joints. It will be even more dramatic if you try walking very fast or running. Frankly the difference between forefoot striking and heel striking when walking is relatively minor, compared to the difference between a long bouncy straight-legged stride and a short balanced bent-leg stride.
Walking on rough surfaces (e.g. loose gravel, trails strewn with twigs and small rocks, ..) and warm or cold surfaces (within reason; don’t burn your skin off) will also be instructive – after a lifetime of walking in protective shoes which prevent you from feeling the ground this will seem very painful on your sensitive nerves/skin, but within a few months you will become desensitized and tougher and be able to handle walking barefoot in a much wider variety of conditions.
It’s also fun (feels nice) to walk barefoot in the grass, in the mud, in the rain, climbing up trees or over rocks, on cobblestones, ...
Changing to a posterior pelvic tilt (or just neutral I guess), yeah I felt like I was doing ballet. My posture immediately improved, my core was engaged, even walking toe first made more sense.
But, I dunno. Unless I'm barefoot in the woods at night with feet used to being wrapped in shoes, toe first doesn't come naturally. Landinf on the ball of my foot? Yes.
What do cultures that don't use shoes at all, do?
If anyone is interested in ant. and post. pelvic tilt, the great aha moment for me was the Cat/Cow poses in yoga. Practicing flossing between them gave me a ton of awareness over my posture.
I also run on the balls of my feet, but I never thought about why I might do that until I read an article about it a few years back.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Across_the_Nightingale_Floor
But it's partly out of taking short steps - to maintain balance. If your feet are too far apart you're vulnerable to tripping and leg sweeps and getting unbalanced by being hit in general.
I find it impossible to do toe first if my step is the usual length.
I've moved to a house with hard / laminate flooring recently though, and it took some time to adjust - even with my weird gait the floor was uncomfortable to stand on for extended periods of time without shoes.
But I got a pair of Leguanos anyways (for the barefoot shoe experience) and I definitely walk different in these shoes. Before, my stride was quite far. Too far for my body height. Now I take smaller steps, there’s less pressure on my heel. Overall, I can say that barefoot shoes are great. First shoe that I actually enjoy wearing.
So I guess going toes-first could make sense, but simply taking smaller steps with less pressure on the heels could have a similar healthy effect.
Myself, I naturally heel-walk and rather heavily as well. You can imagine the wear-pattern on my shoe soles.
Midsole compression and heel counter distortion better correspond to force pattern, but they are integrative and themselves affect gait.
Seems like you'd want both for a good model.
Warning: "foot binding" on the Internet may contain disturbing images (including on Wikipedia). You may not like what you see, so I recommend just watch [2].
I don't have cerebral palsy or Duchenne, but not sure about autism :p.
Either way, walking with a forefoot strike (or even walking with a heel strike in unpadded flexible shoes) generally implies keeping your steps small and your feet directly under your center of mass. If you are on ice, the more you keep your center of mass over your feet, the less sliding you’ll do.
I suspect with barefoot shoes even those with a rubber sole with a pattern the depth of the pattern is just too shallow. So effectively the weight is distributed over the whole surface of the foot. With ordinary shoes pattern on the soles and heels make the contact surface much smaller and pressure higher improving traction.
And I can confirm: my calves are huge, especially relative to my skinny frame. I also find sprint sports easier, like tennis and soccer.
you absolutely cease to heel-strike in about a day. your gait shifts. when fighting, you take many quick short steps. hills and slick grass are interesting.
i haven’t tried hobnailed boots but my friends who have think they improve traction at the cost of some comfort — you’re basically walking on permanent cobbles. they absolutely destroy flooring.
Wait what
> hprotagonist
Ohhhhh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patten_(shoe)
but the rich (which more or less represent the whole lot of people found in portraits and paintings) seemingly used them commonly when outside, particularly in cities, while the rest of the people would probably have gone barefoot or had anyway wooden sandals or similar.
I own a pair of modern hiking boots that bend in pretty much the same way as pattens -- they have a huge shank that keeps the arch stiff.
So if it wasn't for Buster Brown, we would all be able to toe walk easily.
And that's despite the fact that I do two styles of dance that toe-walk (15th and 16th century Italian) during those 2 weeks.
In fact I don't own any "structured shoes" like the article mentions as leading to heel-walking, although I do wear wood patten overshoes when it's muddy.
When walking on solid, even terrain in good visibility and without imminent danger, most people would naturally use a heel-first strike, as it's a lot more economical in terms of muscle/energy usage. In that sense - if you're looking to build your calves, I have little doubt that consciously walking with a forefoot strike all the time might just do the trick, especially considering that calf muscles have a larger percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibres responding to a larger volume of submaximal loads.
You just have to make sure to take smaller steps, bend your knees a bit more than people generally do and fix your anterior pelvic tilt if you have it so as not to look too awkward (that is, if you care about the social aspect of it.)
When running barefoot or in minimal shoes on a hard surface almost everyone trying to use a heel-strike will quickly and painfully realise what a terrible idea it is and would naturally revert to a fore-/midfoot strike in order to take advantage of the body's natural shock-absorption mechanisms. Only modern thick-soled shoes make heel-first running possible, as they absorb a lot of the shock at the heel so no pain is immediately felt there.
They also make it feel somewhat natural, as when the feet are isolated from the natural ground sensation by centimetres of padding, there's somewhat of an instinct towards a stronger impact to regain that sensation. There's a reason for the extremely high number of nerve endings in the feet. Unfortunately the result is a running mechanic to which we are simply not physically adapted and a huge amount of preventable injuries, which are largely unknown in parts of the world where shoes aren't a big thing.
Feet in the western world are so universally deformed by the continuous usage of modern shoes from a very young age, that I would speculate there aren't many present day podiatrists who've ever seen a healthy real-life foot with naturally spread-out toes and a strong, healthy arch.
Big, strong supportive shoes (especially ones with pointy/compressive toe boxes) are really bad for you, unless you're walking in very dangerous terrain with lots of sharp pointy things, in which case they're great for you. Not the pointy toe boxes, those are always bad for you, but they look better, so you know. Pick your poison.
While biomechanically we're certainly screwed up quite a bit, I would say the solution is retraining according to an intuitive understanding of natural basic movement principles and their application to each specific situation, rather than blindly following a single recipe no matter what.
I don't believe for a second that people walked forefoot-first all the time at any point in human history, although without modern perfectly even roads and thick-soled shoes, they probably did it quite a bit more often. Just check out any video of indigenous people online, they walk heel-first all the time.
Source - lots of personal research, observation, experimentation and some application of common sense. I am not a professional in any related area.
EDIT: That being said, a lot can be improved in most people's heel-first gait, among other things - taking smaller steps, pushing the pelvis slightly forward into a neutral tilt, staying a bit closer to the ground (slightly more bent knees), making contact with the ground before shifting the whole weight, not throwing the legs forward and letting the heels slam on the ground. Getting all of that right makes heel-walking a lot more controlled and less bouncy. It also feels great.
I still have to be careful buying pants; I've blown the inseam out of a few pairs of slim-leg jeans below the knee pulling them on too quickly.