How Shoes Cripple Our Feet

Watching the Tsuyazaki Jr High students get ready for sports day... at least half of them run barefoot, on dirt tracks with tiny bits of stone and gravel. And they're fast too. Reminded me of having read about people who run marathons barefoot and the school of thought that shoes weaken the feet instead of protecting them. I think there's probably a lot to be said there. Certainly the guys I train with at the dojo have far stronger and more flexible feet and toes than I do, and much moreso than the average Westerner, I'd think.

http://www.runningbarefoot.org/

Running Barefoot, Flat Feet:

"However, if your feet are flat, arch supports in shoes are NOT going to make your arches stronger. That's like trying to strengthen your ankles by putting your ankle in a cast!"

How Shoes Cripple Our Feet:

"...foot trouble among children is almost always caused by shoes, and that most adults' foot trouble would either not exist or would be much less bothersome if properly-shaped shoes had been worn during childhood or, better yet, if those people had gone barefoot (or the equivalent)...

I have since examined thousands of children's and adults' feet, both in the United States and in foreign countries, determined to learn to what extent shoes can disable naturally healthy feet. I have conducted numerous tests in accredited hospitals and published my observations in widely distributed medical journals, presenting my views for the scrutiny and criticism of other doctors. There is now no question in my mind but that THE MAJOR CAUSE OF FOOT TROUBLE IS THE TYPE OF SHOES WE WEAR.

There is nothing astonishing about this theory. What is astonishing however, is that while the cause of foot trouble is so evident a child could understand it, few persons know about it. Most people continue to acquire permanently and unnecessarily deformed feet simply because of the evolution of a fashion which started a hundred years ago...

My father was born in a rural district in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was not until he was fifteen that he owned a pair of shoes. During the warm weather he went barefoot, and in the winter he wrapped a kind of burlap around each toe and over the foot; after that he put on a felt-type boot. Never in those years were his feet damaged. My father today, at seventy-five, has more physical vigor in his limbs and gets less tired than many shoe-crippled youngsters fifty years his junior.

How different it was when I first began my chiropody practice in 1933. Husbands used to bring their wives to my office complaining that the women were crippling their feet. The wives would explain that they could not go out in the street in flat-heeled shoes because it was unstylish-they would rather suffer pain than be comfortable. Whenever the subject of women's styles in footwear came up, people would throw up their hands in horror and say, "That's one subject you can't talk about reasonably with a woman.""

[HA!]