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Comment by starpilot | Hacker News Reader

>Roll the feet: First place the centre of the heel, then roll the outside edge of the foot down before placing the outer toes, and rolling down the inner toes.

Do we know if this is better? I mostly wear barefoot/minimalist shoes and have switched to mid/forefoot strike, from a heel strike.

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You mid-foot strike while walking? When I wore barefoot shoes, I could mid-foot strike while running but doing so while walking always felt extremely unnatural and I couldn't adopt it.

As a kid I was obsessed with cowboys and indians. Indians were the good guys in my book so I learned to walk like them to reduce noise - mid-foot first.

20 years later and the shriek my girlfriend lets out when she turns around and I’m right there materializing behind her back like a ghost.

It’s amazing. Took about a week of conscious practice in middle school and now that’s just how I walk. Heel first when barefoot or in slippers makes my feet hurt.

yea I don't know if I adopted this because my hamstrings are stunted or if my hamstrings are stunted because I adopted this but its just been how I walk since I was a teenager.

and like your anecdote, I've had to be mindful of things like neighbors or coworkers in a hallway, going out of my way to scuff my feet or something while I'm still 10+ft out. people really don't like it when you register as instantaneously in their personal space.

I read this too and I am apparently accidentally sneaky for the same reasons.

I'm not sure if I've gone too far though, I got bursitis last year and my hip can feel a little tight when walking briskly for a while. Something is rolling around all wrong in there.

>As a kid I was obsessed with cowboys and indians. Indians were the good guys in my book so I learned to walk like them to reduce noise - mid-foot first.

I've never really thought about it, but I also walk like that. When I lived in apartments, my downstairs neighbors probably loved me for that.

I've read before that striking the ball of the foot first is more natural without shoes, especially when running. I think the article was in context to ultra-marathon runners. Heel first was said to be an adjustment to shoes and can cause issues.

Edit: Can't find the original but this is similar. They say walking heel first is natural but you want a rolling gait, not a stomp like a lot of us do with shoes. That sounds like this article. They say running should be similar but with an even softer heel drop which is different to the other article that I remember, which I think looked at tribal south americans who didn't wear modern shoes.

"But (you might say) if you walk or run with no padding, it’s murder on your heels—which is precisely the point. Your heels hurt when you walk that way because you’re not supposed to walk that way. Wrapping your heels in padding so they don’t hurt is like stuffing a gag in someone’s mouth so they’ll stop screaming—you’re basically telling your heels to shut up."

https://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

> striking the ball of the foot first is more natural without shoes, especially when running.

It absolutely is for sprinting, even with shoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH-3cHxXAK0&start=46

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