Vibram FiveFingers. Check it out.
It's been a circuitous route that's ended with me wearing gloves on my feet and I want to tell you about the journey and how it feels to have arrived.
Kit Laughlin and Christopher McDougall are to blame.
I was in Kit's 5 day Stretch Therapy workshop up in Vancouver in May and Kit wears FiveFingers and he advises that we all wear them. Kit didn't mention Christopher's book.
And because things seem to reign down on me all at once, as soon as I returned to Seattle from Kit's workshop I heard a local NPR interview with author Christopher McDougall who was in town touring on his new book,Born to Run. His interview was fascinating and as soon as I could get my hands on my Kindle, I bought his book, it came through the air and was mine.
Christopher recommends FiveFingers. I was seemingly the target of a FiveFingers conspiracy and was bound to give in.
Here's a link to a YouTube video of Christopher telling you what his book is about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv4Se5ka9Pk and here's a link that will give you a look at one of the main characters in the book, a guy named Caballo Blanco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o375sYfPC3w&NR=1.
Born to Run is non-fiction and is a must read for all Pilates teachers and for any clients with foot problems. There are particular chapters that focus on foot physiology; if you only read those you're still way ahead of the game.
I've never had foot problems but I have had the occasional blister and foot injury.
In my 20s I threw the frisbee in the street for hours and hours until I eventually wore a deep hole, shaped like a perfect circle the size of a silver dollar, in my pivot foot, it was embedded with asphalt and filth and the next day, for work when I put on panty hose and high heels (idiot!), my shoe filled with serous fluid and I knew I had trouble on my hands. Actually, on my foot, I had trouble on my foot. I spent weeks - weeks - going to a sports podiatrist who used a metal brush to debride the wound, removing all the specs of dirt and debris that were embedded in the new skin until eventually, all the dirt was gone and I was healed.
There was also the time I forgot my running shoes at a triathlon down in Tampa and although I biked in my hurachi sandles, I ran in my Thorlo socks and my feet hurt a bit after that. I was also bit by a dog on that run and, always the optimist, the dog bite took my mind off my aching feet and I did get a mini-Thorlo sponsorship out of the deal - a dozen or so free pairs of socks.
I have clients who struggle mightily with foot problems. Bunyons. One has a navicular bone on the floor. Another has a short tendon on top of her pinkie that lifts it to half mast. Yikes.
Irene Dowd's book Taking Root to Fly contains a chapter called In honor of the foot and it's a great education about what goes on in there. So complex. Such a hard working body part. I know teachers who think everything about you can be read by a foot reader - all our mysteries, all our stories, are there for the trained eye to decipher.
I'm not quite sure about that but I am sure about one thing, if your feet hurt, your health is in serious jeopardy.
In Harper's magazine several years ago, there was a featured piece on the medical specialty of Gerentology, how so few doctors are going into it and they author followed one particularly empassioned Gerentologist through several weeks of appointments and the author was surprised that, for patients who had slow growing cancers and other background type illnesses, the physician was most concerned about their feet. The exam would begin and end with the feet.
It's for certain, folks, if our feet hurt we'll be less likely to walk on them and we stop walking, we're essentially screwed. That's a technical term. Screwed. No, it's not, but you know what I mean.
The whole system relies on movement and when we stop moving, bearing weight, shouldering the responsibility of being upright, the whole system begins to break down.
That's why we as Pilates teachers play such an important role in helping clients with foot problems manage the long term care of their feet.
I've had a brand new client who was going to have bunyon surgery and I asked her to give me 6 months to try and address her foot pain but she was already committed to the surgical path, she had the surgery, had complications and is still, almost 9 months later, battling for mobility. My plan for her was not to cure her bunyons - there is no musculature along the inside of the foot that could pull the big toe joint back into alignment - but to get her so strong in her spine and hips that the weight of her wouldn't be falling down, down, down into those feet. I also taught her plenty of exercises to help strengthen the arches in her feet, I love doing foot massages for her and by the end of every session, her feet felt wonderful.
We've had other clients who've rolled their ankles more times than they can count, and one client who's broken both feet twice.
So, I'm always interested in learning more about feet and I sure got a great education from Christopher McDougall.
I went to REI and bought 3 pair of FiveFingers, two for me (a running model and another, the ones in the pictures, that I use for more formal occasions) and one pair for Heidi.
I'm not one to go slowly into new things. When I began wearing thong underwear, I went out and bought $150 worth of them and threw out all my other panties. I've essentially done the same thing with my conversion to FiveFingers.
The beautiful pamphlet that comes with the shoes (can we call them shoes? I think not. I think we need to call them floves (foot+gloves+floves)) says you should wear them for 1 - 2 hours a day at first, breaking your feet in slowly but I've been wearing mine all over town, for hours at a time and I've been doing fine.
The only thing that's been surprising about my FiveFingers experience is that my little toes have separation anxiety - they do not want to line up and go into their little slot and if I'm in a hurry, it's possible for me to slip on my Floves with my pinkie toes riding piggy back on their neighbors, nestled completely into the slot for toe #4 and laying low in hopes I don't notice. I've begun a toe check, quick 1-2-3-4-5 touch and wiggle that let's me know I'm locked and loaded and ready to go.
Wearing them feels quite a lot like going barefoot, which is the whole point, but even in the city streets, full of glass, rocks and uneven pavement, the sole is thick enough for me to freely jog through it all. They make a winter model that's more insulated; I'll get those once the weather turns.
Our feet contain about a quarter of the bones in our bodies, they are unique in that they not only can be as articulate as our hands but they also form a strong lever for propulsion during running.
Kit taught me that there is more sensory perception in our feet than our hands. Feet really don't do well crammed into shoes which rob them of their stabilizing power. I remember in my UW sports medicine human performance program, one of the professors told us how when Husky athletes are waiting for their turn on the taping table, they have to do ankle strengthining exercises while they wait. That's because by taping ankles, you're weakening ankles.
Simple heel lifts in parallel, turn out and turn in are sufficient to strengthen feet and ankles and you can assign that as homework for clients to do every day, twice a day, at home while their brushing their teeth.
Anyway, I suggest you hitting your local outdoor shoe store and trying on a pair of Vibram FiveFingers, they're great for in the studio, on the street or on the trail. If you feel silly wearing them because of the way they look, try to get over that and focus on the important stuff, like letting your feet do the work they were intended to do.
Here's wishing you happy feet!
