Very Fine Fellows
Yesterday I bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers “shoes” (hereafter, VFFs) at City Sports. Though I did take a quick walk around the park in them last night, today I really put them to use, so I figured I’d record my thoughts here to answer people’s questions.
Since I have a desk job, pretty much all my walking was on my commute. I walked just over 2 miles, today—0.5 mile each way to Waverley Station, plus 1 mile from the office to North Station after work. (In the morning, I took the subway for most of that mile, since I wasn’t sure how my feet would hold up.) The walk is pretty urban, with most of it on cement sidewalks and asphalt roads. Near home I did a little bit of walking on grass next to the sidewalk, and part of the walk from the office to North Station is on a walking path that is supposed to be soft gravel but is mostly just hard-packed dirt.
Here are the things that really struck me:
- I’ve never spent so much time thinking about how to walk (with the possible exception of several unremembered months in my very early childhood). As I’d been warned, transferring my shoeing gait to these things was a disaster. Taking a long stride and landing on my heel, as I do in shoes, was remarkably painful. Every time I got up after a long sit, I had to be reminded of this by a couple painful jolts. By paying a little attention, though, I was able to use a shorter, more natural gait that didn’t hurt much at all. If you spend a lot of time walking barefoot (I don’t), this may not be as much of an issue for you.
- Wearing these is not as much like walking barefoot as Vibram would have you believe. The soles, while much more flexible than a normal shoe, are still much stiffer than a bare foot. Also, those funky toe things wrap each toe up snugly, and maybe a little too warmly for something that looks like a sandal. They also spread your toes a bit, which increases stability and is a more natural barefoot position, but it feels odd to someone who spends most of his time in shoes. So, I feel like VFFs give half the barefoot experience—feeling the ground—while flip-flops are better for the other half—feeling the air on your feet.
- Initially, walking in the VFFs hurt more than I expected. Throughout the day I experienced a number of aches and pains in various places, including my shins, calves, knees, ankles, heels, and toes.
- Overall, it hurt less than I expected. In spite of the last point, I felt like things went really well, considering that I used a barefoot gait for an entire day. None of my aches were bad, and most of them were very transient. I had thrown an extra pair of shoes in my bag, in case things got bad, but by the end of the day I felt so good I chose to walk the mile to North Station in addition to the half mile home from Waverley.
- There’s a huge difference between walking on concrete and walking on grass. This seems like a no-brainer, but I figured it was worth mentioning lest there be any misunderstanding. If you’re planning on using VFFs mostly on soft surfaces, like grass or sand, you can probably disregard most of my comments about pain and adjustment.
- It’s amazing to be able to feel the ground under my feet. One thing I loved about my commute today was finding new things to walk on—cement, grass, manhole covers, gravel, the yellow warning stripe at the train station, a steel drawbridge.
So, overall, I think this was a terrific day. I’m not ready to call my VFFs by BFF quite yet, but if things go well from here (which I expect they will, as I adjust) they may reach that point.
Finally, a couple people have asked why I decided to get a pair of VFFs. I can’t deny that part of it is because they’re cool and will soon be trendy, so let’s get that out of the way first. There are a couple other reasons, though. The first is the notion of a natural gait. Vibram hypes this some on their website, and you’ll see it in lots of reviews and related articles. The idea is that shoes, especially shoes with an elevated heel and a narrow toe box, work against the biomechanics of walking, balance, and posture. I think the science is still up in the air, but it seems like an interesting idea. With the foot and knee problems I have, I thought I’d conduct my own experiment. The second reason is that there is a certain zen aesthetic to the notion of wearing a thin-soled shoe that puts my feet in closer contact with my environment. Feeling more of the ground beneath my feet, and thinking more about how I walk, becomes a catalyst to greater mindfulness.
If I’ve piqued your interest enough that you might want a pair, I suggest you buy some in person. Vibram has a store locator that should help. Also, I’ll repeat the sizing advice I posted on Facebook: start at your regular size and try on smaller and smaller pairs until you literally can’t get them on, then buy the next size up. I went down a size from what I typically wear, and I think I still ended up one size too big. Because the heel is adjustable, it’s easy to convince yourself that they fit when they’re still a bit large.
