Minimalist Shoes- A Great Alternative to Barefoot Running

Hello everybody, I hope you are all having a great day. It is finally Wednesday, which means the weekend is in sight! Maybe only with the use of binoculars, but it is in sight nonetheless! Today’s tip is going to be about another way to run “naturally”. So take a break from the regular reviews, read on, and enjoy.

So I’m sure you all already know about barefoot running, or least you should since I gave you the skinny on it not too long ago. Well, in case you haven’t heard about them, the reason why people will run barefoot is because they want to get back to a more natural way of running. They believe it is much better for your body to run barefoot, than to run in shoes that elevate and do all sorts of bad things for you. It is also believed that running on your bare feet will save your knees from developing serious injuries, but I don’t know if there is any science behind that.

Now you might be thinking, “Well gosh, I’m a green person, I want to start running more naturally.” But at the same time you don’t want to go barefoot and risk stepping on something sharp or nasty, or both. There is something you can do, and I think I mentioned this in the barefoot running post as well, but I’ll give you more information on it; but it can be viewed as an alternative to barefoot running, or as a step to totally losing shoes and going barefoot. They are called minimalist shoes and they are designed to give you all of the great benefits of running without shoes, while still wearing shoes! They are a great alternative to barefoot running if you don’t want to take the bold step out and go completely shoe-less. Many brands that manufacture these shoes will have a quite a few different pairs that progressively get more and more minimalistic. They are made like that for people who want to go completely barefoot by easing your body into a state where it is comfortable to run barefoot. They do this by reducing the padding of each shoe according to how minimalist it is, and making it more basic until what you basically get is a glove for your foot, like the Vibram Five Fingers. There are many brands out there that have this kind of shoe, like: Nike, New Balance, Asics, and Altra, so you can research them a bit and find out which one is best for you.

You are probably wondering what is so special about these shoes, because they all look like regular shoes. Well most of them have a reduced heel-to-toe drop, or it is even at zero. This means that your heel isn’t elevated above your toes like they would be in regular shoes. Brands like Altra make their shoes with zero-drop, so your feet are like how they would be if you weren’t wearing any shoes.

So there you go; you now know all about minimalist shoes! Good luck if you decide to go that way.