There are muscles for you to do 27 different things with your feet.



OK, here is what you want to know:

at any given time, your skeleton is ten years old after age ten.
Bone is VERY active tissue.

One-inch heels change every bone in your body for the worse.
AND
the front of the foot is supposed to be a wide rectangle
NOT ROUNDED


Yes, I am saying that you should saw off the heels of your shoes and cut the front open.
Yes, I recommend Vibram-five fingers
Yes, all other shoes are pathetic
and
Yes, i have inventions of yet another sort on my feet, yes-yes I do.


Here is what else you can do:

Stand on one foot while you brush your teeth in the AM and the other in the PM.
This is affordable and effective.

questions?

I just read up on the Vibram-five fingers... Seems interesting but without different wideness or foot type options, they don't seem very professional. They don't even mention supination or pronation support. And it seems they have little to no arch support. What happens if you have high arches? Mine are so high that the heels almost seem like an afterthought. I don't even bother using them anymore when I walk around barefoot, I just walk on the front plane. Might seem weird, but it actually helps you practice your balance and stealth too. Hard to make a lot of noise when you don't have all your weight slamming blunt heels into the ground with every step. If I wear shoes, I have to buy shoes with something called a "roll-bar" and special insoles to basically fill up the giant, dome-like gap under my foot. Feels cool, though. Feels like I'm always standing with a ball under each foot.

Personally I like Sketcher Shape ups. They have helped take the pressure off my feet, knees, and ankles from working on concrete floors for 12 hours a day. Also, my wife has been able to return to work for the first time in 16 months since she got hers. She suffers from Fibromyalgia and a knee injury, but with the shape-ups she's able to work a full time job again.

I have seen the Vibram 5 fingers. They seem like a pretty good piece of footwear. They are the closest I have seen to not wearing shoes.

There are a lot of benefits to barefoot running. Even if you switch your training to barefoot only half of the time, you will see improvements in all kinds of places. You will start moving like your supposed to in every day movements.

I haven't gone barefoot yet, but I am seriously thinking about it.

I'd imagine that decades of wearing boots have probably caused my feet to adapt to them.

But I have friends who swear by those five finger shoes (worn with five finger socks).

I think a lot of the rumors of the benefits of barefoot running were started by Vibram and the other toe sock companies. Try running barefoot sometime, your feet aren't weighed down so you feel light, but run on anything but grass or smooth concrete surface, you'll soon realize why shoes were one of the first human inventions. Then they get you to buy Vibrams to feel like you're running barefoot with the protection of a shoe. I'm sure they work great, but they're more expensive and won't last as long as a decent running shoe.

I wore boots for the last 18 years I swear by them and will never go back to shoes again

I have Sorrels
Is that what you wera?

PS. the little squirrels were out again yesterady.

I was able to give them some water.

I'm pretty sure that the mom is dead

No Shes not She gave them some water and is watching out for them

Is Sorrels the brand name of the boots? no right now I am wearing Baffin technology steel toe rubber boots with linning inside them Im wearing them bwecause its the rainy season right now so it can get very wet any time of day or night + side is its supposed to be really nice tomorrow so I might be out picking mountain berries

I have a bit of experience with Vibram 5 fingers, here are a few things I have noticed:

Grass, and natural terrain, are perfect for bear footing around in. Vibrams make it even better because you have that much more protection.

Asphault, cement, and such are not bad, but I do find that my feet are really sore(bruised sore, not tired muscles sore) from walking too long in just the vibrams.

Traction wise, these work like racing Tires as far as what they get the best traction on. Any surface that can form a layer around stuff and slide will do just that with the vibrams. You get little to no traction on surfaces like these (Snow, Mud, Sand) because they do not have treads like a normal shoe. This may be a little different now, I ordered my vibrams a year ago. On surfaces that are slick, but don't shift- Vibrams kick ass in. Wet rock, grass, dirt, cement, asphalt, any flat hard surface except maybe ice- these all seem to work well for the vibrams.

"barefoot is a short path to feet-scrape-and-puncture."

My Dad goes barefoot during the summer every chance he can get... 73 years old now and last time I was out to the farm he was out in the yard walking around barefoot. thistles, rocks, gravel, you name it... he never noticed. The callouses on his feet are like leather, so thick and tough I've seen him walk over a piece of jagged broken glass and never even notice till I mentioned it to him. We checked his foot and no sign of damage... at all.

A friend of mine has a set of vibram five fingers, only thing he finds annoying about them is if he's walking in long grass he ends up with a ton of grass stuck between his toes, lol. He DID find out that without the socks he's gotta powder his feet to get the vibrams on.