I growed up in rural Kentucky where many of us spent most of the summer outside with no shoes on, scoffing at the prissy few who felt the need to protect their delicate little tootsies (I think we called them "Hoosiers") so this is no big surprise to me, that "Long-Awaited Barefoot Running Study Finds Sneakers Are Harmful" because "Shoes change the human foot strike and may lead to more running injuries":
Runners who wore sneakers ended up landing heel-first 75 to 80 percent of the time. By contrast, barefoot runners usually land toward the middle or front of the foot -- a dramatic difference that recalls the more natural foot strike of early Homo sapiens. Needless to say, early humans certainly were not born to run wearing Nike or Reebok.
The heel-landing without shoes means a painful collision force of 1.5 to 3 times human body weight. But cushioned sneaker heels have allowed runners to change their stride to high-impact running, and likely open up a whole world of pain involving foot and leg injuries.
"Most people today think barefoot running is dangerous and hurts," said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and lead author on the study. "But actually you can run barefoot on the world's hardest surfaces without the slightest discomfort and pain."
Our feet got tough, too. At the beginning of summer, we tended to tred delicately. At the end, we could run on gravel. Glass, though, different story. I stepped on a broken whiskey bottle once and had to have multiple stitches (youngsters weren't the only ones who enjoyed the great outdoors).
We used to call it "going butterfutted," by the way"Long-awaited" study? Must be a lot of people who get even more bored than I do.
