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Two years ago I bought my first pair of barefoot shoes (no elevated heel, thin and ultra flexibel sole) after listening to an episode of TED Radio Hour, where they featured the talk “Born To Run” and started reading more about the whole idea. I started to learn how to walk forefoot strike and did a running course for how to run forefoot strike properly. This was the start of going down a never ending rabbit hole. Some of the things I learned during the past two years:
* Learning a new walking technique is super hard, it takes at least months, if not even years.
* Wearing barefoot shoes and walking forefoot strike seemed to significantly decrease my lower back pain (although I’m not a 100% certain if there is a correlation, I just know that my back pain decreased a few months after switching to barefoot shoes)
* Got rid of my neck pain completely (I’m extremely certain that there is a correlation here, because my posture changed, more on that in a later point)
* I realized that my leg muscles (especially hamstrings and calves) are extremely tight and possibly also shortened. In the beginning I had trouble to get my heel to the ground without feeling tension in the calves.
* Just because I adapted my style of walking, my posture increased significantly. I walk and stand way more upright than before (I compared recent pictures to older pictures)
* Significantly decreases the number of migraine attacks. I’m also quite sure this is because of the forefoot strike (although not 100% certain) since heel strike puts a lot of pressure in the neck and head. You can easily Test or experience this Stress on the neck and head yourself if you stick your fingers in your ears and walk barefoot with heel strike over firm ground. You should “hear” it. For me it works best when I put in noise cancelling over ear headphones and walk heel strike (no music, just the noise canceling effect).
Of course all of this is highly subjective and many/all things I described may not correlate at all. This is just my personal experience.
Fellow "minimalist" shoe walker/runner here. Running with a forefoot strike makes sense as the idea is to tilt forward slightly and basically use gravity to help pull you forward, naturally landing on your fore-to-midfoot. I cannot imagine how walking with a forefoot strike makes sense though? Do you also lean forward when you walk?
In addition, another benefit of running with a forefoot strike is to keep momentum while leaning forward and avoid jarring pressure going up your leg on each strike as you run. For example, if I try to land on my heel when running barefoot it physically does not feel right and when I do it the collision hurts. But walking barefoot and landing on the heel feels completely natural and pain-free - the step is very light and the contact point is maybe slight-heel-bias-to-midfoot, nothing like slamming a heel into the ground while running. When walking you do not create as much pressure through your heel unless you really stomp down on it for some reason.
We have some research showing potential benefits of running on your forefoot - does any such research exist for walking as well?
> Learning a new walking technique is super hard, it takes at least months, if not even years.
I guess that this might strongly vary with age. Anecdotally, the two times I consciously adapted a new gait, it went pretty quick:
- At around age 13 I adapted a "bouncy" gait with outward pointing toes, because I thought that it looked cook (cringe). Took about a week IIRC.
- Around 17 I switched to what I would call a standard gait (toes pointed straight ahead), because I was afraid my previous gait would cause bowlegs (probably an unfounded fear). Took me about two days (with a lot of walking though), and also had the benefit of better posture in general
I remember watching this David Attenborough program where he was talking about the hunting techniques of some bushmen in Africa. They did a close-up shot of their feet while out on a hunt and they were wearing regular track shoes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o&t=3m05s
I think they might have been Adidas
> * I realized that my leg muscles (especially hamstrings and calves) are extremely tight and possibly also shortened. In the beginning I had trouble to get my heel to the ground without feeling tension in the calves.
I recommend "Squat Clinic 101" video to address this issue
What brand did you buy ? The first result from google https://www.vivobarefoot.com/eu seem to have let go of the vibram finger look. Is it still the same thing ?
What would your advice be to anyone interested in getting into barefoot walking?
The Chinese idiom 邯郸学步 is about learning to walk. It's based on a story about someone who hears of a place (Handan) where people have the most gracious way of walking. He wants to learn, so he goes there and tries to imitate the people of Handan. He fails to learn how they walk and, in the process, forgets his original way of walking. Then he runs out of money to fund his travels. Unable to walk, he is forced to crawl all the way back to his home town.
I can't help to think how this story might reflect many of us who immigrated to the US for the "gracious way", forgot the way we used to "walk" and now find it difficult to return back home. It is saddening.
Seeking perfection leads to ruin?
> It’s worth the effort because there’s usually a huge leak of energy when our gait is unbalanced or restricted.
Why do I want my walk to leak less energy / be more efficient? A fast walk is nowhere near my aerobic limit, so what would be the benefit of using less energy? Having a sedentary job, I generally need more exercise, not less.
A better thing to optimize for would be less impact on knees and back.
Your argument doesn’t really makes sense. I spent a lot of time fixing my run and posture and indirectly how I walk due to injuries.
You 100% want to be moving correctly. Correct, efficient movement also helps with injuries. They’re related.
Once you are moving correctly, getting more exercise injury free is trivial. You just work longer, heavier or faster. You don’t need to move inefficiently (and probably incorrectly) to “get more exercise”.
I think efficiency and impact are generally inversely proportional, so you're good either way.
If walking isn't near your aerobic limit then you'd be much better off doing something else for exercise than making your stride less efficient.
Walking as a kind of meditation or just to relax might be quite valuable. Then, the more efficient (relaxed) the better.
I wonder this sometimes about bicycling— I'm fortunate enough to be able to commute by bike year-round, and to have a separate winter bike to ride in the snowy months. But the winter bike is a lot heavier and therefore more work to ride, so I'm sure I get more exercise riding it.
On the other hand, I also have more fun riding my summer bike and therefore ride it further and farther (eg, choosing it for errands above and beyond my commute). So I think the performance gain is still a win for my exercise regimen.
An energy leak could mean the wrong muscles are firing. I sometimes get hip issues when I walk since I got in the habit of, for want or a better word, "floppy" and less intentional motion for some reason. This means one muscle can be doing most of the work and the supporting muscles aren't playing their role. When this happens I have to slow down and ensure I'm using my full suite of muscles or it gets worse.
> A better thing to optimize for would be less impact on knees and back.
I have osteoporosis, and my endocrinologist told me to do weight-wearing exercises, including running. For me, we _needed_ high impact exercises to strengthen the bones.
If you're going to be just walking, the slight impact might very well be something you need. Different goals for every body, but I'm just saying this out loud so that "less impact for knees" doesn't become a goal for folks who read that statement.
I assure you that while you definitely should be walking more, walking alone is by no means exercise.
By walking inefficiently you aren't getting "more exercise" than walking efficiently.
I guess one way to waste energy is to have a big impact on your knees and back. If you want to recycle your energy, you can't waste it on impacts?
More energy means more heat. You don't want to walk fast and arrive all sweaty and out-of-breath at a shop or a meeting etc.
I grew up on a skateboard, went on to martial arts; did a lot of rock climbing, running, hiking, yoga, etc.
Then I managed to smash a vertibra in a climbing accident which meant spending the next two months learning how to do all of those things, including walking without putting strain on my spine.
There's a good book with the name Born To Run, one of the basic ideas presented is that the human body is a perfect running machine. You don't need to add anything, just stay out of its way and let it do what it was built for.
Here's what I would encourage anyone interested to try:
Start by balancing the spine sitting on the edge of a chair. Roll shoulders backward, relax the stomach, tilt the hip forward and pull the chin in until you feel your upper body is balancing on the root of the spine in your hip. Do a body scan and release any sign of muscle tension, the idea is to use bone structure and tendons to carry the weight. It should feel effortless, like the upper body is floating mid air.
Then repeat the same procedure standing up.
Now comes the slightly tricky part, unlearning the funny walk you've most likely been practicing your entire life. I recommend starting barefoot.
Keeping the same pose, and making sure not to tense any muscles, including the muscles in the feet; lean slightly forward. If you manage to do it without tensing, your body will start walking by itself and the feet will land exactly where/how they're supposed to. Leaning further increases the speed.
Adding muscles will increase the speed further. Just make sure the energy is directed backwards, pushing the body forward; and not straight down into the ground which is what people usually do when running, especially with bouncy shoes.
For all citywalkers: check how the sidewalk slopes to move rainwater to the street.
I was always walking on the right side of the city roads. This resulted in pain in my right leg because most weight was put on that side.
The solution was simple: also walk on the left side of the road. I never thought of this before.
Apparently this is a known problem that can affect people who run/jog on the same side of the street all the time.
>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.
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.
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."
If you want to learn more about how to walk and move better I can't more highly recommend the content by biomechanist Katy Bowman https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/blog/ ... She has a blog, a podcast, online classes, books, and a whole gamut of content around restoring basic movement - and talks a ton about walking. So important for all us desk jockeys.
I would be very careful of any claims made by barefoot shoe manufacturers regarding it being more natural/it's how we evolved, especially if running on roads or other hard surfaces. While I agree they can be beneficial in small doses and/or on natural surfaces, I'm not sure the human foot evolved to run on concrete surfaces.
Suunto makes sports watches, heart rate monitors and dive computers, not barefoot shoes :)
Many years ago at an Apple WWDC event I saw a presenter give a talk about how they used genetic algorithms to find out what the most optimal walk for a dinosaur could be based on its bones and skeletal structure.
I wonder if such an optimal gait could also be discovered for humans, perhaps for different heights, and when carrying different loads. Maybe the best way of walking for a person who is very tall is different from someone who is very short for instance. By constructing random human bodies and allowing them to evolve over millions of iterations, we may be able to discover unrealized walking techniques.
I'm in the camp that whatever bodily motions you learn as a young child, your body adapts enough to it that you won't get any kind of damage. I mean, we even had articles here about children having extra bones on the back of the head to counter constant smartphone gaze.
It is the weakening of the muscles that creates issues later in life, mostly due to lack of movement, gaining too much weight and similar.
My whole spine is straightened (from neck down, I have lost the natural lordosis of spine) because I've been sitting and looking at computer screens ever since I was a child. My spine is fine, I do not have any pain, but did start feeling pain in the upper back when I did not exercise for 3 years. Once I started exercising pain went away (still slouched and sat a lot).
Also, there's absolutely no way I could return back to natural lordosis of spine, my spine was straightened since I was 11 years old, my spine shape is the result of adaptation to prolonged sitting.
Walking “properly” is a topic of interest for me. I believe it can be reduced to one main constraint: ensure most effort is spent by abdominal muscle in your core, with limbs and the (importantly) neck as relaxed as possible. Other characteristics of “proper” walk naturally emerge as the easiest way of following that constraint[0].
I find that walking “properly” wakes me up, has some positive effects on my well-being, and can be difficult at times. Unevenly paved surfaces (like some cobblestone pavements) seem to complicate walking “lazily”, forcing me into the proper way of walking.
[0] IMO articles like TFA tend to focus on those “cosmetic” characteristics, thus entirely missing the point.
You should be walking with your hips primarily. Your core is important though.
You can't improve your walking technique unless you improve your life. Your posture, your gait, your movements are a complete reflection of how you feel.
If you feel like you're carrying a load on your shoulders... your shoulders are gonna show that. If you feel like you have to clench and grind through your days, your jaw is going to show that. etc. etc.
A really interesting question to reflect on is when someone gains weight, what determines where the weight goes? Their stomach? Their thighs? Everywhere evenly distributed? etc.
I agree, for the most part. However there is definitely something to be said for reversing the cycle. That is, when you feel down or frightened, purposely sit/stand/walk as though you are fully in control and on top of things. You'll find with some practice, your mood will improve. I think I heard it first from Tony Robbins years ago, but I'm sure it's well known technique.
True from a yogic perspective.
A really nice realization arising from this basic mind-body connection is that if you have a handle on one, you have a handle on the other. Or, practicing the posture of well-being can help make you well.
Doesn't this go both ways? Improving your posture does reduce your stress and improve your life (in the way that you mean).
The movement in the videos are demonstrated by a woman and one of them focuses on the pelvis. Are there significant differences between how a woman's body and a man's body walk ?
Next week: teaching your grandmother to suck eggs!
Any tips for people like me who have flat feet?
This kind of reminds me of Feldenkrais or the Alexander technique.
During my time as conscript in the Swedish army, I got a lot of experience from marching around with fellow soldiers. Eventually I could recognise each one of them (about 25) just on how they moved their legs. I could even close my eyes and go through them on by one in my mind and recall their gait.
Just as important is your breathing, focusing on nose instead of mouth breathing, and tongue posture
For some fun re-learning how to walk, take a latin dance class.
They claim the second one where she is just shimmying is "freeing the pelvis", but all of the motion is in her upper thoracic spine.
Amazing that there are 32 comments and somehow this article avoided tripping the HN This-Is-Just-A-Marketing-Blog-Post silent alarm.
I guess you have to be pretty far down the path of self actualization to worry about things like this
"The head adds six to eight kilograms of weight, but by tilting the head forward it increases to something like twenty kilograms"
Astonishing. My head's mass (or is it weight?) can be increased simply by moving it slightly it? Someone alert the physicists!