Monday, April 28, 2008

"You Walk Wrong..."
Great NYMag.com article

http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

Adam Sternbergh has a very good article here on the effect of shoes on our feet and our bodies - as he says in the article "Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk."

Pavel and the RKC has been advocating getting people out of their shoes for quite some time now and of course there are resources like "chi running" and other barefoot walking, hiking and running sites that you can find.

Thoughts?

Light training today:
Prep work - Z, Thoracic rotation
Windmill 24kg x 5 r+L
Goblet Squat 24kg x 5
{Clean + Front Squat + Press + Swing} x 5 x 10 sets with double 16kg
16 kg Snatches x {20+20+15+15+10+10+5+5}

A light day of training but still some good work - each set of 5 of the complex above is 20 reps and the snatches are very light but continuous so still some good conditioning there.
My back is a little tweaked on the right side - possibly from the shoes I wore to hike on Thursday (see article above).
The workshop went well and I know I will be returning to the Shenandoah National Forest very soon. We had a beautiful drive and a great hike (5 hours).

7 comments:

Sean Schniederjan RKC said...

I run faster and can lift more when I'm barefoot.

P. J. said...

I definitely think the foot needs to be able to move properly and receive sensory input from the ground, so that's makes most of the shoes on the market a joke. But Pottenger ( as in Pottenger's Cats )and other nutrition researchers in the the early 1900's found nutritional deficiencies result in improper develop of foot bones. Rothbart found up to 80% of the population to have deficiency of the first metatarsal which results in hyperpronation or muscle splinting. If you fall into this large category you would be better off not going barefoot but wearing a thin soled shoe and PCI's. www.posturedynamics.com for the research and more details

Taikei Matsushita said...

Whenever I go to the States, once I get to the hotel room and the shoes are thrown.
Japanese are accustomed to be bare footed at home. I don't think Koreans and Chinese do this.

Mark Reifkind said...

couldnt agree more. the less I wear rigid shoes the better my feet, ankles, knees and back have become.my gait changed dramtically and now my 'everyday' shoes are wrestling shoes.
I started with tactical boots, progressed to wrestling shoes then finally full barefoot training and now I find it impossible to train in shoes!

Lauren Brooks said...

Amazing article! Thanks for putting this up. I love training barefoot and encourage my clients to train barefoot as much as possible.

Brett Jones said...

Thanks everyone -
PJ - In general I agree - meaning flexible shoes and the correction for the metatarsal issue but with activities like KB training you can go barefoot very well since the foot is static so to speak and not used for propultion like during walking etc...
BTW - the PCI are going in my shoes today.

P. J. said...

I can see what you are saying about the lifting being static. But I would speculate that the tension and concentration devoted to maintaining a "short-foot" posture could be redirected to the lift if one were to use PCI's. We will have to experiment with this. And Brett can be our first case study. Keep me posted with your progress and use of these.

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