Free the Animal

Birthday Shoes Interview

Some may recall my post from the past, Learning to Walk, where I recounted my significant experience in daily walking, developing chronic foot pain, and retraining myself to walk in the process. Pretty much all shoes are awful for feet.

Now I have an interview with photos up on the website Birthday Shoes - for the love of feet and vibram fivefingers.

Barefoot

It's just hard to beat several million years of evolutionary adaptation, even accounting for the fine craftsmanship of Church's handmade English shoes (all the rage in France, when I lived there).

Nonetheless, just as I blogged in my entry Learning to Walk a few months back, barefoot or nearly so is best. I love my Vibram Five Fingers (which have been dubbed my "feet" by my wife; as in: "should I toss down your feet?") and I even walk just plain barefoot now and then. People tease me about the soles of my feet, often on display, and thoroughly black.

It's quite easy to get used to.

Matt Metzgar dug up a study, and guess what? Shoes increase stress on your knees and hips (pdf). He quotes a portion and I can personally attest to part of the speculation: "A final explanation of the biomechanical advantages of barefoot walking may be attributed to increased proprioceptive input from skin contact with the ground compared with an insulated foot contacting the ground." This is exactly what I have been noting when discussing the issue with people (the Vibrams are quite a conversation piece). Just as I have often commented that flexible, intermittent fasting gives you high resolution into your personal hunger and appetite signaling, so too does going barefoot outside where there exists all manner of things that can cause pain and injury give you high resolution into your walking. After a time, you don't even notice small sharp pebbles as you lighten your step on the fly, instantly. You also gain awareness of your peripheral vision and avoid stepping on things you shouldn't -- without even being conscious of it. At first, it's sensory overload. After a time, it becomes thoroughly natural. Go figure.

Now, I don't know about you, but my gut reaction is that any modern thing that actually cuts me off from sensory perception (the root of knowledge of reality) had better be good and damn necessary. Guilty, until proven innocent, I'd say. Given the added stress on joins and hips, and the resultant chronic injury with surgery and replacement experienced by so many, I'd say the jury is in. ...So go frollic barefoot. What the hell? You know people are going to envy you for it.

Walking. Bi-ped hominoid. It's pretty damn fundamental.

Life Tweak #57

If you sit at a desk a lot, as I do, perhaps you've at times experienced an irresistible urge to stand. Often, I'll turn my chair around and work bent over the backrest just to stand. If I get deep in thought about some thing or the other, I'll often stand and pace back & forth.

I sit to the right.

Now, I stand to the right.

That was this afternoon's project. A solid 8' long surface. Four pieces, 12 bolts, and 15 minutes of assembly. $200 at Costco.

Thanks to dad with his long bed pickup and enthusiastic willingness to help haul it up into the loft space. I will get some sort of bar stool, as I'm quite sure I'll not desire to stand all the time. But mixing it up is the key -- intermittency and acute stimuli, not chronic.

Walking in Gloves

I said I'd let you know how it goes, but Justin has written up a review of the Vibram Five Fingers that can pretty much stand up as my own. Take a look.

Five Fingers have helped me be a kid again

That's the most important part. I haven't gotten yet where I wear them much on my morning walks. Frankly, the sensory explosion is a bit overwhelming. I like to focus on the dogs, enjoy the morning. So, the deadening effect of padded running shoes is OK. However, I love to use them at the gym, and then my favorite is the shorter evening walks. It's like a treat. Last week, for instance, Bea had already taken the dogs out for the evening walk when I got home. I tossed on the Vibrams, tracked her and the dogs down, and continued on the walk. It's quite a pleasurable sensation I highly recommend.

Learning to Walk

I've been spending time in the evenings catching up on some of the blogs I'd not read in some time and Modern Forager is on the list.

Did you know that "You Walk Wrong And Your Shoes Are To Blame"? I do; that is, I did, but I don't anymore. If there's anything I know a whole very lot about, it's walking, and I've never even read anything about it. I walk. I walk a lot. I walk a fuck of a lot. It began in February, 2003, so nearly 6 1/2 years ago. Every weekday morning, very nearly 100% without failure, my day begins -- be it 6 am or 8 am -- with a morning walk with the dog -- now dogs -- for about 3 1/2 miles which, with all the sniffing an peeing -- them, not me -- takes just about 55 minutes. I figure we're coming up on 7,000 miles, and that doesn't count the one or sometimes two additional walks in the afternoon and evening, many of which Bea does, but I do plenty. A very lot of what I believe I now understand about health and fitness and our maladaption to many aspects of civilization in an evolutionary context, comes from observing my two rat terriers. And once I began to remove things harmful to them, they improved too. Rotor is now 9 and spunkier and far, far leaner than he has been for many years. I just looked at a photo from when he was 1 1/2 and I cannot tell the difference.

Nanuka ("Nuke") on the right is about 2 1/2 when this was taken, Rotor is 9. Notice those ripped hind quarters. Essentially, they're miniature pit bulls and just as viscous towards anything they deem prey.

Notice also: they don't wear any shoes. (Continued...)