Names You Need to Know in 2011: FiveFingers

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s something you need to know about: Could we be seeing the beginning of the end of the modern running shoe? A growing legion of runners and recreational joggers—I am one—backed by a rising number of physiologists, believe that running shoes do more harm than good for millions of people. With their inflexibility, cushioning, and raised heels, they almost force you to crash down on your heel and send the impact of all your weight in every step straight into your knees and hips.  That’s not how our bodies were designed to work, and it does terrible harm. 

Millions of years of evolution gave us a much springier way of running, which begins with our coming down on the front of our foot, a little like when you run in place.  You necessarily run that way when you run barefoot, because hitting with your heel would be unbearably painful.  But who is going to run barefoot in the modern world?

Enter FiveFingers, a line of shoes by the Italian company Vibram that are really gloves for the feet, with minimal protection and a finger for each toe. They look like the feet part of a gorilla costume, and they feel almost like being barefoot. They have grown a cult of devotees over the past few years, and they’re starting to go mainstream. You see them on more and more runners, and the stores that sell them can’t keep them in stock. The running shoe industry has begun trying to figure out how to either beat them or join them, and they and other new minimalist shoes are the subject of a long article in the November 2010 issue of Runner’s World.

I’m a believer.  I became one after seeing the wacky-looking things on someone, asking about them, learning more online, and deciding to spend the $85 to try out a pair of FiveFingers KSOs (a model that covers the top of the foot and “Keeps Stuff Out”).  I feel freer, faster, lighter on my feet, and my knees and hips don’t hurt anywhere near the way they used to. Pronation and plantar fascitis seem to disappear when you start using your feet the way they were designed to be used.

You have to adapt to barefoot or FiveFingers running very carefully and slowly. Much of the impact that used to shoot into your knees and hips now gets absorbed by your calf muscles. Those muscles will get very sore at first and then very strong. You have to wake up muscles all over your feet that you haven’t been using. You have to toughen the bottoms of your feet.  You can get blisters—I wear five-fingered socks to prevent that. But I’m loving running more than in many years. I feel throughout my body that I’m doing something right that I always used to do wrong. If my experience and that of thousands of others is any guide, the FiveFingers phenomenon can only grow and spread. The age of the modern running shoe that began in the 1970s with Phil Knight and Nike could just possibly begin to enter its twilight.