The Ugly
I was so stoked. My very first pair of VFFs
- A very thin sole.
Yes, they certainly are!
I get more comments about my five fingers than pretty much any other crazy thing that I have worn. Fortunately, I have never really been one to follow fashion trends. This is something that Vibram has embraced to some extent, and their choice of colors and styles just seems to get louder and crazier as the years go on.
They have tried to create less offensive versions, and I think this is a line that should be explored more.
So come July 2010, my very first online shopping excursion into buying a pair of five fingers began. I was so stoked, and yet so shunned by my wife, clients and family all at the same time.
The Good
As a little glimpse into my medical history, I have pretty big feet and unusually long toes. Not freakishly long, but you get the picture. Along with being moderately hyper-mobile, this meant that after a barefoot volleyball incident in Sri Lanka and dislocating my little toe, it would only take a knock for it to come out again.
It got to the point where I would be hesitant walking on beach sand for fear of it popping out again.
Years of wearing close-fitting army boots and running shoes had left my feet pretty knocked up.
I wear five fingers pretty much every day. Now, if I could live barefoot, I would. Having retrained my feet and toes to function properly, I no longer have any problems with my arch, my ankle, my knees or my toes.
The flexibility of the Vibram sole, especially in this model which has a very thin and flexible sole, is such that the 60-odd joints in your feet are allowed to function as they were originally intended. This is opposed to a regular shoe, where they are constrained so much that they aren’t allowed or needed to move.
As the body works on the least energy principle, this means that if something doesn’t have to work, it pretty much shuts down.
This is what had been happening to my feet all these years. My knees, ankles and hip had been overworked in trying to create stability at my ankle in the absence of my natural ability to do so from my toes and ankle as a team.
When your foot functions the way it was designed, this means that as your foot strikes the ground, the arch pronates (rolls in), creating a rotational force around your knee, your hip, your lower back and up into your opposite shoulder. This rotational force winds up not only the connective tissues and fascia of the leg, but also your lower back, your upper back and your shoulder.
The angle of the facet joints in the spine is such that as you step forward, 50% of the connective tissues around the facet joints are on stretch and the others are relaxed at any one time. When that stretch is released, it creates kinetic potential, something like a rubber band.
The very act of walking, and your foot striking the ground, creates a ground reaction force that is harnessed by your connected tissues and actually used to unwind you into the next phase of gait. You literally spring yourself forward, and dissipate that load throughout the whole of your body.
The more cushioning you have under your feet, the more out of sync this whole process becomes. Therefore you aren’t as effective at dissipating those loads throughout the whole of the body, and you end up with knee, ankle and hip injuries as the muscular system takes more of the heavy lifting.
If you don’t believe me, try running in soft sand and see how much more tiring this is.
It took some time for my body to re-learn how to do this.
I wear these every day for work, and they are without question the single most comfortable thing I have ever worn on my feet. More than thongs (yes this is the correct usage of the word, even though you may incorrectly term them as “flip-flops,” or even more obscenely as “jandles”), and even more comfortable than being barefoot, as there is no hesitation about bindies, broken glass, and the ever present dog sh*t when out and about.
I use these to squat, deadlift, lunge, push, pull, twist, stretch, wander along the beach, and everything else.
I was told once by my Platoon Sergeant never to run, running only makes the men anxious. So I don’t run in these. Or at all.
The Bad
1. We live in a world where if you don’t have three blocks of warning signs, flashing lights, high-visibility tape, and an in-depth community-based education program leading up to a pothole, someone will fall into it. This would be fine, as you would think this would weed out oblivious walkers, but sadly somehow this is all our fault.
This means that some people sadly buy barefoot shoes like fivefingers two weeks before a marathon. I sh*t you not! Then they get all sorts of issues with their feet, shins and knees. If you want to transition to barefoot running, take time to do this.
I wanted to write you a program to demonstrate my absolute and unquestioned cleverness, but I found that Vibram had done one much better. I highly recommend that you check it out.
2. They stink. They need to be washed every week. This isn’t too much of a problem as long as you can get them dry. Once they start, you can’t stop it. They have to be binned. Fortunately, they do last at least a good year (remember that I wear them every day) before this starts to happen. This is much longer than a standard running shoe would have lasted me previously.
Socks help, but then takes twice as long to get the bastards on, which generally means that they get left in my sock drawer to make friends with all the other pairs of odd socks that have collected over time.
3. I live in the UK. This means that for the pleasure of wearing my beloved five-toed foot apparel, I must therefore spend twice as much money for the privilege. Yep, its a rip off. I would never again buy a pair in the UK, and I will be waiting until my next trip to the US to invest again.
4. Sizing is really bizarre. They seem to change from model to model. I have been told that this has been rectified. To get your initial size, you really should try them on. My first pair were too big by one size, which meant that, try as I might, I just couldn’t pick up stuff off the floor using only my toes like a monkey. Clearly this was an important factor that needed to be addressed!
5. They take time to break in properly. You can feel everything under your feet. The first few times you wear them, unless you buy a pair with a thicker sole, its going to feel a little weird. Not only that, I made the mistake of wearing them over concrete pavements for several hours, only to find that over the course of my adult life, the fat pads in the bottom of my feet were no longer doing the job they once did.
My feet hurt for days. It felt like I had a piece of glass in my heel.
Start walking small distances only, maybe even on grass. Build into it. I can happily report this is no longer an issue.
I am still wearing them and loving them. I, for one, hope they stay in business forever. Don’t care that they look funny. That’s what feet look like.
