product review: those weird shoes with toes

the Vibram Five Fingers—aka barefoot shoes, foot glove shoes, ninja turtle shoes, those shoes you saw some guy wearing on the subway, world's geekiest shoes, world's greatest shoes—represent one of the strangest leaps [forward?] for shoe design in recent history. It’s easy to see why.

(begin rant)
These shoes take a less-is-more approach to walking and running. It’s like being barefoot, but the bottom of your feet are invincible, thanks to a thin, tire-like layer of rubber. Rather than giving your feet additional sole support like most "traditional" sneakers, Vibrams don't have any cushion, allowing the muscles in our feet to develop and strengthen the way good ol’ evolution would appreciate. Sneakers keep adding "inventive" ways to cushion our feet, encouraging a heel-first step, which distributes the impact unfairly to our knees. Our bare feet are designed to absorb the impact of a step by landing toes-first.  This relieves pressure on our knees, improves our balance, and does other good things. Ok. Dudes in Africa run barefoot all the time and they win Olympic marathons and stuff.
(end rant)

 

So I’ve been wearing these guys for a while now, but I’ve only been running with them twice. They do not mess around. Running in these shoes kicks your ass! They work out muscles that you don’t normally use in a run. And my calves have never been so tired in my life. If you want to get serious about running barefoot/with Vibrams—start slow; your legs are not used to this type of run.

And that’s really the only downside, because they obviously don’t look weird or anything. I love my Vibrams. The feeling of being barefoot is great, especially when you don’t have to worry about stepping on glass or something else mean. There are a lot of other great things about these shoes, so if you’re interested, read about them online. That way you’ll know the … bare … truth.
(had to)

Hey try them out!

-Jakey