I teach barefoot running.  If anyone has any questions, feel free to email me at robillardj "at" gmail "dot" com.

I also have a website with barefoot and minimalist shoe informration- http://barefootrunninguniversity.com.

I would be very cautious of running barefoot.  You could do some very serious damage to you feet if you were to step on glass, sharp gravel etc.  running shoes do much more than protect you feet from sharp objects, then cushion the foot from the many, many pounds of force that one places on them from motion.  I am concerned for the long term effects on your muscles, joints, and bones of your feet from barefoot running....

I have done some barefoot running - not a lot and none since the weather really got cold.  I haven't encountered the "sharp object" problem  but maybe I've just been lucky.

Increasing foot strength is one of the benefits touted for barefoot running.  In my limited experience that is true.  I cannot vouch for the claim that you run more midfoot - I'm a heel striker with and with out shoes.  Nor did any of my aches and pains miraculously disappear.  Take it for what it's worth.

Here are a couple of interesting articles.  The first tries to be balanced.  The second is a study comparing shoes to barefoot.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/phys-ed-is-running-barefoot-better-for-you/

http://www.pmrjournal.org/article/S1934-1482(09)01367-7/fulltext

Len

I've been a runner for over 20 years, and have had all the usual aches, pains and injuries you would expect from running over that period of time.  I recenlty started running in Vibram Fivefingers because I'd read several articles and McDougall's book "Born to Run", and decided to see if I could put some life back into my running regimen, and to calm down a few foot and left groin issues.  I started off the first day planning to go around the neighborhood, maybe do a couple miles.  I got to the 2 mile point and felt great so kept going.  I finished at about 5 miles, and aside from sore calves felt great!  No foot pain at all and my groin felt great too.  Since then I've done my usual workouts and haven't had a single problem with pain anywhere.  Today i went 7 miles at an 8 min/mi pace and never got sore, no blisters or hot spots.  The Fivefingers force you to run with proper form, because if you don't you're going to have pain right away and you'll automatically correct whatever it was you did wrong, whether it be overstriding, heelstriking, or whatever.  As far as it being "dangerous" to run barefoot, this is what I think:  100,000 years ago our ancestors were chasing after antelope barefoot, and we're the living proof that they were successful, so they must not have had major foot problems running barefoot.  Our foot was engineered to run.  Modern shoe companies have tried to improve upon an already fine-functioning system, and often when you try to change something that has been fine-tuned through millenia of genetic refinement, you end up causing as much harm as good.  That's just my 2 cents.  Try it yourself.  go out to a nice park, golf course, or cross country course and run around for 2 or 3 miles barefoot and see how your feet feel afterwards.  I bet you'll be surprised!

Len,

you're right, that was a bit of late-night speculation on my. part.  I agree that more experimentation needs to be done.  I wonder if anybody is doing any clinical trials comparing lower-extremity running-related injuries in standard running shoes versus barefoot runners.  I'm sure no shoe company is going to want to fund that for obvious reasons.  In the end, you just have to keep experimenting and find what works for you.  Brian

I went to the American College of Sports Medicine conference last fall and saw Dr. Lieberman's presentation on the evolution of running...pretty neat stuff! He had a cool video (narrated by David Attenborough of course!) of an African tribesman running down a gazelle or some other form of horned running beast. This guy ran this animal to exhaustion, killed it, and ate it. Go Humans!

Anyways, Dr. Lieberman's lecture touched on running barefoot (he runs barefoot in Cambridge, MA....not exactly the "safest" place for feet) so I decided to give it a shot. Put my shoes on my hands and cooled down barefoot. Running barefoot is just plain fun. I've been running barefoot and with VFFs ever since. But the problem with barefoot running is that it is fun...you may not realize that you're hurting. Went too far a few times and I paid for it with some pretty good calf and metatarsal pain. Just like anything else, you've got to ease into it. I started just doing portions of my runs barefoot and eventually progressed to barefoot/VFF only. I'm running around 60 mi/wk without complications (fingers crossed.) Give it a shot, you may like it!

i read an article entitled "Running barefoot versus running shoes" that discusses about Steve Magness' interesting article about the link between injuries and impact forces and how running shoes companies want you to think that they’re inhibiting it.

Running barefoot has been all the craze lately, what with the release of vibram and all, it’s very interesting to see where this will go, I don’t think running shoes companies will go down without any fight, though, if they’ll go down at all!

ExperiencedRunner wrote:

 

I would be very cautious of running barefoot.  You could do some very serious damage to you feet if you were to step on glass, sharp gravel etc.  running shoes do much more than protect you feet from sharp objects, then cushion the foot from the many, many pounds of force that one places on them from motion.  I am concerned for the long term effects on your muscles, joints, and bones of your feet from barefoot running....

Emphasis mine... Actually that statemeent has been proven false many times.  Running shoes , in fact , do NOTHING to reduce the impact forces your body feels while running. Your body still takes that exact same hit, each and every step. In fact much research is showing that  barefoot runners  actually DO begin to run more gently, less actual impact forces.  All those cushy shoes do is block the pain until later when your body cools down.

http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/4BiomechanicsofFootStrike.html

That's a link to a study conducted at harvard that shows that heel striking runners actually absorb a double peak of impact  and the impact hits much more suddenly than a barefooter.