Minimalist Shoes Won't "FIX" Your Foot Problems
Why simply buying a different pair of barefoot style shoes alone isn't the answer
I recently saw an advertisement by a minimalist shoe brand that I actually like and recommend. The Ad was a collaborative piece by a couple of Australian Social Media Influencers who do a lot of post talking about how just moving around randomly is going to solve all of our current human physical ailments.
This couple loves to make the claim of getting “FREE GAINS” from exercises, using the very popular marketing template that all the Fitfluencers seem to be subscribing to.
Let me start by saying I own multiple pair of minimalist shoes and I’ve owned multiple brands over the years. I love my minimalist shoes and they are a part of my rotation.
The problem I have is that influencers are selling partial truths, which in my opinion is worse than a flat out lie. The most successful influencers out there have mastered the partial truth. They have discovered the same thing that feeds stereotypes, the same thing that makes comedy funny, and the same thing that allows politicians to garner support despite being absolute trash.
Just as some people on the one hand throw the baby out with the bathwater in many circumstances, others will keep the filthy bathwater because there’s a baby in it.
If you use a piece of truth that everyone knows is real and you surround it with utter nonsense, you can move the masses. Just as some people on the one hand throw the baby out with the bathwater in many circumstances, others will keep the filthy bathwater because there’s a baby in it.
So here we are in a space where people don’t want to use critical thought and have been conditioned to be so impatient that it has become a bore to look for or listen to a nuanced argument.
Some years ago barefoot running became popular. With that, the craze for how minimalist we could get drove revenues and so many companies made massive profits exploiting this.
Books were written, workshops and courses were created. People were told that our ancestors evolved to be barefoot and despite all the years we spent conditioning our feet to the comforts of soft shoes, people all over decided I should just go run my next 5K training run completely barefoot.
What many people failed to understand that just like any adaptation or biological accommodation, change takes time.
You don’t walk into the forest for years and expect to come out in a few days.
You don’t walk in a gym after years of not lifting and decide today we’re going to load up the bar with 400lbs and go for it.
So why did we think that all the joints, bones, ligaments and tendons of our feet should suddenly be able to adapt to the volume of loads being placed on them after years of being in soft cushioned soled shoes? Furthermore, the notion that our ancestors walked around on terrain as hard as concrete (a man made substance) is absurd.
Not only did our ancestors walk on many different terrains, but as soon as they had enough sense to realize that covering their feet might be a good idea to prevent death by something as simple as a cut on the bottom of the foot or the bite of a ground based venomous creature, they covered their feet.
So let’s get back to our “FREE GAINS” influencers.
The Universe does not give us anything for free. Everything bestowed upon us as human beings is earned. And to earn things from the universe we have to be very specific about the requests we make.
From day one, gravity and the laws of physics has demanded that we earn the ability to walk upright. From the time we were placed on our belly as a baby, we had to learn to resist gravity’s pull on our tissues. We had to develop abdomen strength. We had to develop spinal erector strength. We had to push ourselves up with our arms and we had to learn to twist against the forces of gravity to rotate and roll over.
Once we stood upright, our feet began to interact with the earth and those bones, ligaments, joints began to develop based on everything we did. If you placed large soled shoes on your kids from day one then their feet developed based on that. If your child spent a lot of time barefoot then they developed based on that.
But as an adult, you have to consider that you’ve spent however many years adapting your feet to cleats, sneakers, dress shoes, etc.
Those shoes provided very specific constraints to your foot’s development.
Minimalist shoes provide a very general solution to a very specific problem though.
It is for this reason that minimalist shoes are simply a supplement. They are an accessory. They are a supportive structure for the overall goal that people desire, but they are not the “FIX”.
The laws of specificity apply to all strength and conditioning and to adapt your muscle tissue and connective tissue, we must provide very specific inputs.
Muscle and Connective Tissue adaptation require:
Force
Directionality
Time Under Tension
The claims made by people pushing minimalist shoes is that your feet get stronger. Of course your feet will get stronger. That’s a no brainer. When you remove the artificial support structures of most running, basketball or tennis shoes and place more demands on the tissues of your foot to support itself, then your foot will get stronger, but in a very general way.
What’s missing from this removal of the supportive shoe is the actual work that needs to be done to create specific strength.
When you wear minimalist shoes you’re simply relying on the foot to try and adapt to however your foot interacts with the earth.
But as I’ve mentioned in previous writings, connective tissue requires Directional Force and Time Under Tension to improve load bearing capacity.
If you are not spending time doing specific isometric and eccentric work on those tissues of the foot then you’re pretty much just moving within whatever capacity you already have for movement.
For example, if your Big Toe is not used to flexing and bearing load as you roll over the foot because it’s been in a shoe that doesn’t flex and you’re suddenly in a shoe that allows that, then you’re putting more force and load into the tissue of the bottom of the foot than it’s able to bear.
Although they will make claims that wearing these shoes “prevent” Plantar Fasciitis, what is more often seen is people suffering from Plantar Fascia issues after switching to barefoot shoes, because their feet are not prepared.
My point is that we still have to do work to strengthen our foot, just like we would any other aspect of our body.
Would you take your Knee joint that hasn’t moved freely in years or months even, and say, “ok, let’s just move and it’ll get better”. We literally send people to Physical Therapy to do SPECIFIC work to bring the joint back to a baseline for performance. But for some reason we just expect a foot that’s essentially been inside a cast for years and say “you’re free to be who you want to be so go out and do all the things”.
In summary, Minimalist shoes are a supplemental tool.
They are a piece that you should consider adding to your overall healthy plate. However, the majority of your time should be spent on specificity of training to build a stronger more capable foot. The vast majority of that training should be improving the Strength & Mobility of your foot and ankle with specific exercises.
Finally, Minimalist shoes should be a part of a rotation of shoes and over time maybe they become a bigger percentage of your life. But just like any training, it’s important to start slow, progressively load and manage your volume.
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