Al Bundy calls them
"God's Shoes". I call them "Ninja Shoes."
“Your tread must be light and sure, as though your path were upon rice paper. It is said, a Shaolin priest can walk through walls. Looked for…he can not be seen. Listened for … he can not be heard. Touched … can not be felt. This rice paper is the test. Fragile as the wings of the dragon fly, clinging as the cocoon of the silk worm. When you can walk its length and leave no trace. You will have learned. -Master Kan“
When I first heard about barefoot running a two weeks ago, I was immediately sold on the idea. How else could our nomadic ancestors have survived without Nike Air? Moccasins hardly provide the support required by our modern distance running stride (heel-strike). They must have had a totally different running stride to lightly tread over otherwise unforgiving terrain.
During the human's nomadic past, we hunted in groups. Due to our bipedal stance, we were often out-sprinted by most of our game. Fortunately, we are able to run run longer distances than our prey and catch up to them as they keeled over from over-exhaustion and over-heating.
This is how they did it without sneakers:
"Relax
Vertical torso - upright and balanced (this way, you won’t expend extra energy keeping a leaning tower from falling), no slouching
Relax
Bend the knees (feel the pressure coming off the heels)
Relax
Hips lead the way (gently push your hips forward)
Relax
Lift your feet early and quickly. Start lifing BEFORE landing (don’t worry, gravity will insure that your feet will land)
Relax
Move your feet under your center of balance (so your body doesn’t wobble side to side)
Relax
Allow hips to rotate with your legs, and your shoulders to twist the opposite direction, (to counterbalance the movement of your legs and hips)
Relax
Swing each leg around from the side, to land on an imaginary line that stretches out in front of you to that point on the horizon (one foot in front of the other)
Relax
Keep your head facing forward (focus on a point, far off in the distance, in the direction you want to run)
Relax
Use your eyes to scan the surface in front of you, but keep going back to that point on the horizon which you are running toward.
Relax
relax
Relax
RELAX!"
-runningbarefoot.org
Comments (1)
Nice quote from Master Kan there.
I never heard of barefoot running b4. Sounds interesting (and the shoes! coolio)
The best advice of all was: "RELAX" haha easier said than done.