The journey of my feet, from custom, made orthotic solitary, to freedom.
When I was a kid, I hated being barefoot. I quit karate because I did not like my bare feet touching the cold gym floor. I viscerally remember that feeling chilling me to my bones. I hated it.
I remember growing up my feet kept growing and growing. Felt like I was outgrowing my sneakers at a rapid pace. Next thing I knew I was up to a size 12 shoe.
Then came the shin splints and stress fractures in my shins. The repeated running motion accompanied by flat feet was a recipe for this kind of trauma. I was playing football at the time and would toggle back and forth between football during one season and track and field the other. Finally, my junior year of high school is when I initially was thrust into orthotic purgatory. The doctors gave me a “custom” pair of orthotics that would allegedly get rid of the problem. It did for some time, but it never addressed the root cause of the problem.
Then came college, and I was told I wanted my cleats to fit snug, with no room for my feet to slide inside of the cleat. This started to shrink my foot as I would stuff my feet into a size 10.5 shoe. Since your feet can only get so small, this began to exasperate some of the deformities I already had present in my foot. In a search for sports performance, I began to make my feet less human.
The closest I was for years to being barefoot was Jordan sliders. A shoe that doesn’t help those whose toes have curled under or feet are flat.
I didn’t begin to address my feet until I began my career as a strength coach. The only thing I started to do to address that was to work out in flat-soled shoes but during the day I would still wear a mountain of cushion under my feet.
When I went to seminars people frequently mentioned my ankles pronating or dumping in and all guessed that I had flat feet. Most suggested I start doing something to address it or expect issues to arise.
I began by slowly adding in some foot strengthening drills and ankle and foot mobility that I had learned at a few continuing education seminars that I would frequent. My feet quickly started to at least feel better. Then I dove quickly down the kettlebell rabbit hole which highly recommends training barefoot so that you can feel the floor which is the most important part of kettlebell swings. I could feel a connection with the earth that I had never felt before. My gait pattern began to change and when I ran and changed directions while playing basketball or flag football, I no longer felt like I couldn’t feel the ground below me and stay low. I was suddenly more balanced. This was a powerful feeling for me and slowly started to make me understand the importance of having foot strength. However, I still didn’t understand the importance of having good foot function.
That lesson came at the hands of my client in New York who specialized in bringing proper health back to the feet of professional ballet dancers and mixed martial artists. He asked me to perform a simple drill which was to take your big toe off of the floor while keeping your other toes on the floor and then do the opposite. I struggled, hard. Plus, I could not create any space between my big toe and the rest of my toes, they were always touching, smashed together. I started attacking my feet like I would any other part of my body after that; determined to regain human feet once again.
All of the work I was doing was great, however, I would still smash them into small and heavily cushioned shoes and sneakers for most of the day when I wasn’t working out. I was hindering my progress and perhaps even halting it. I didn’t notice this until I bought my first pair of barefoot (vivobarefoot.com) shoes and realized how much space I had within the shoe, my feet could actually splay. I could feel the ground when I walked which was a new feeling to have with shoes on, even the flat-soled shoes like vans or converse that I had switched to wearing didn’t allow me to feel the ground. My mind was blown, and then I heard the terms shoe-shaped foot and foot-shaped shoe and. I knew I had not been wearing foot-shaped shoes and as a result, I had a shoe-shaped foot.
I loved my sneakers, I would buy a pair a month for a while. Jordans, Nike Roshe Runs, Vans, Converse you name it, I loved sneakers. Now, they no longer serve me. Over the last two years, I have slowly gotten rid of the sneakers I had with cushion and the sneakers that weren’t foot-shaped. I now only wear barefoot shoes unless I am going to a wedding and that’s only until I can find a pair of barefoot shoes that’ll pass at a wedding.
My Vivobarefoot collection, each shoe used for specific activities.
I am now a full believer that the same way sitting at a 90-degree hip angle is not good for the human either is wearing shoes that disconnect you from the world and misshape your feet.
We currently have the perfect moment to begin spending more time barefoot. The time is now!
Watch this video here to learn more about why it is a smart idea to slowly work yourself away from footwear that is unforgiving on your feet and why going barefoot is one of the best things for you.