By: Heather Rozen
If a person has a fundamental understanding of how the human body works in general it is clear that when a body part is supported artificially (splint, brace, etc) it gets weaker. If you want said body part to be strengthened, it has to be gradually strengthened without the support (or weaned off the support).
When choosing a running shoe, I tell people to go for the thinnest sole that they work into and the lowest drop that they can work into and to strengthen the feet as much as they can. It is relative to what they are starting with. If I could go back in time I would have paid much closer attention to the shoes that my kids wore as toddlers and as young children.
A little bit of background from a PT’s perspective… I worked in many fields of Physical Therapy but primarily in outpatient settings as well as rehabs. Some years ago, I noticed that my patients with neurological or proprioceptive issues had a difficult time feeling where the ground is when they are walking. I noticed that some of them wore very thick soled shoes and would start to slam their feet down in order to find the ground. When I had them wear thinner soled shoes their balance improved and they landed lighter. I started to check if I could see a difference in people doing plyometrics. For sure I could see a difference. When I wore a thinner sole during plyometrics I landed lighter. Those are the things that had me start investigating thinner sole shoes although at the time I had not heard of “barefoot running.”
I continued to use myself as a guinea pig and then my children as well. It took me months of walking barefoot in the summer as well as doing ankle mobility work and arch exercises before I even considered a minimalist shoe for running. With my kids I started to buy thinner sole sneakers gradually. Each time I did it was at the end of the summer when they had been running around barefoot. My thoughts have been, and continue to be that shoes work as a type of splint. I would never just take a splint or a cast off of someone’s wrist that they had been wearing for 2 months and have them start performing activities without it. I would gradually increase their mobility, strengthen them, and wean them off of the splint as they are able to tolerate more and more activities without the splint. If I didn’t do that, they would get hurt. Same thing with shoes. To take someone who has been wearing thick “supportive” shoes and jump into barefoot running is just asking for an injury. It’s a question of when, not if.
As it stands, neither I, nor my children have been able to strengthen the foot enough that we would be able to wear a true “barefoot running” shoe (i.e. Gorilla Vibram) but we have been able to tolerate a much thinner sole with a much smaller drop (difference in height between heel and forefoot). Both my kids do require a minimal arch support because I just don’t have the time, energy, or wherewithal to argue them into training to run with barefoot running sneakers.
It really is different for everyone but, it is clear that the thicker the sole is on the sneaker, the harder you will land in order to orient yourself to the ground. That is just how our nervous system works. How much support a person needs under their foot varies for many reasons and it especially depends upon the type of “splints” that they have been wearing on their feet for many years. With every aspect of the human body, when a body part is supported it does get weaker. In order to take the support away from that body part, it has to be strengthened gradually in order to avoid injury.
