One of the more fun exercises we did last month during my first week of Feldenkrais training was a drill in which the instructor had us interlace our fingers with our toes, first from the bottoms of the feet, then from the tops.  After that we interlaced our toes together like fingers, rather like the swami on the cover of Dr. Suess's Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

It was a fun exercise, and I've since become mildly obsessed with trying to pry my toes apart so that each one has individual sensation, like much fingers.  It seems to make sense that if we have ten toes--and not a blunt club at the end of each foot--we're probably supposed to know how to use them.  But a lifetime of shoe-wearing has crammed mine more or less permanently together, dulling the dexterity they should rightfully have.  My ten-month old, who has, of course, never worn shoes, has toes that appear more supple than mine.  

Here's an article about a guy who's been fighting the good fight against the tyranny of shoes for decades (Italian fashion designers, beware!).  "Barefoot" Ken, as he calls himself, has run dozens of barefoot marathons, often with impressive times.  The reason goes beyond an arbitrary preference for that natural feeling:

Injuries decimate runners. Studies indicate that about half of all runners are injured every year. The London-based Sports Injury Bulletin puts it at 60% to 65%. The cause? "The heel strike," says Santa Monica physical therapist Robert Forster, who provides videotaped running-form analysis at his training facility, Phase IV. "During running, you land with an impact of five times your body weight. When you land on your heel, the shock goes right into your joints. To lessen the shock, you have to land 'softer' -- and that means on your forefoot or midfoot with a bent leg, not on your heel with a straighter leg."  A 2004 study by Dr. Timothy Noakes in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that the forefoot landing inherent in barefooting (in which heel-striking is painful and unnatural) transmitted up to 50% less shock through the knees than heel-to-toe landings.

This makes sense to me--though it's frowned upon, I usually sneak onto the gym basketball court for my warmups and do them barefoot when no one's around.  And I've become an inveterate barefooter around the house.  With more and more barefoot runners posting impressive marathon times these days (the article mentions a recent race in which the top two finishers ran barefoot), perhaps we'll be seeing more and more people going au natural while doing their road work.  The foot-fethishers would sure love it.  

Great weekend--

Andrew