What is a minimalist shoe and why you might consider
What is a minimalist shoe: 3 major features:
- They allow toes/foot shape to remain in a natural, uncompromised shape. This is often referred to as a foot shaped, natural shaped, or minimalist shaped shoe. "Wide Toe Box" is often part of this description and allowing Toes to Splay is the functional description.
- Very flexible and very thin sole. The thickness of the sole is referred to as, "Stack". Performance running shoes typically exist with stack measurements in the 25mm to 40mm range. Minimalist shoes typically have stack measurements of less than 10mm.
- Zero-drop. Drop is the measurement of how high the heel of the shoe is compared to the forefoot. Typical running shoes have drops of 5 to 10mm. Zero-drop shoes, as the name says, means your entire foot is the same distance from the ground.
Why minimalist shoes?
The general concept is that wearing minimalist shoes (or going barefoot) improves the overall health of someone's feet.
Healthy feet improve performance, reduce injury, reduce joint pains within the foot and can improve knee, hip and back pain. Important for older people is that an increased toe strength can reduce the likelihood of falls. These ideas are still open for debate but there are well educated foot specialists who speak of these benefits and seem to have both the credentials, experience and patient feedback to be taken seriously.
My Own Experience
Over years of sports and cycling, my body has experienced a lot of trauma and over-use injury. Running and scrambling were once activities I would do to compliment by cycling time. I even had a couple years that scrambling was my primary activity in the mountains due to back issues and a doctor's recommendation to spend some time off my bike.
Unfortunate for me, too much scrambling and running resulted in knee pain that was severe enough and its onset so consistent that any activity, walk, run or hike would last 8 minutes before knee pain would cause me to stop. After consultation with mulitple knee specialists the diagnosis was, "I don't know why your knees hurt".
I stumbled into a two-pronged resolution to my knee pain problem. Diet and Shoes. Regarding the diet, I drastically reduced my carbs. On the shoe front, it started with a pair of Sanuk slip on shoes. The irony is that the Sanuks were bought as a shoe to just slip on after a ride because it felt nice, after a ride and having quite restrictive shoes on, to be in a completely unstructured shoe. I never imagined the path the Sanuks would set me on. I spent a couple years where the Sanuks were my work and vacation shoes. Tons of time spent in them and my body craving to wear them as much as possible.
The combination of diet and shoes were starting to result in my ability to go on longer walks and to get back into some short simple hikes: this was after 20+ years of being unable to do more than a few minutes of walking before pain would set in: in that time, fortunate for me, mountain and gravel bikes were my main mode of experiencing nature.
Then it was a trip to Moab to mountain bike. Between rides we spent a bunch of time walking around town. I had brought some old light-hiker type shoes thinking they'd be the thing for the amount of tourist walking we'd be doing. I was so wrong. Between the heel height, restriction on toe splay and excessive arch support all caused pain in my hips and knees. I wasn't looking for a solution because it still wasn't obvious to me that the shoes were the problem. Of course the assumption with things like that is that it is an age / prior injury issue.
And then I discovered my first true Minimalist shoe by a company called Lems. Zero drop, extra side toe box (complete freedom for my foot to remain in its natural shape), and zero padding between my foot and the ground.
After getting my Lems, I got a second pair, then a third. With wearing them all the time I wasn't cycling I started to add a little jogging to my walks. What was so great about the shoes is that it forced me to learn to run without landing on my heels which it turns out is a much more efficient stride style and has now allowed me to add more running into my activity. It really has been an improvement in quality of life due to food and footwear choices.
See below for a compelling interview about minimalist shoes.