What? Get rid of my athletic shoes? But how will I protect my fragile feet from pain and injury? Easy – by realizing the idea that we “need” shoes to keep our feet safe and avoid injury while working out is a mythology foisted upon us by the marketing executives of athletic shoe companies. It’s a mythology that has become Conventional Wisdom; “everyone knows” that shoes protect us from sprained ankles, joint problems, and the impact of running. Bare feet are outlawed in gyms, and the first bit of advice a fledgling runner gets is “Spend the money for a good pair of running shoes.”

The entire concept rests on the assumption that humans are inherently flawed, that somewhere along the way evolution got it wrong and gave us feet that aren’t built to withstand exercise. Shoe companies have gotten rich exploiting this, and even orthopedists have joined in. I don’t know about you, but the idea that I was born with feet with a fundamental, fatal design flaw isn’t just insulting to me; it’s insulting to every student of human evolution and natural selection.

Think about it for a second. Every physical characteristic on an organism is there for a reason: it makes a positive impact on that organism’s chance of surviving and reproducing. Our opposable thumbs made the creation and manipulation of tools possible. Our large brains made it possible for a relatively slow, weak species like Homo sapiens to compete with other species, most of which are generally faster and stronger. The human foot is no different. In fact, the modern, bipedal human foot has been around far longer than the human-sized brain – about two to two and a half million years if you go by fossilized imprints. What shoe companies would have you believe is that two and a half million years of evolution wasn’t enough to produce a working foot that can stand on its own without artificial assistance. Good thing Nike has access to time machines, because – using their logic – there’s no way early humans or their ancestors would have survived for millions of years without a nice stash of running shoes specially delivered from the future.

That’s ridiculous, of course. Our feet are perfectly capable of supporting us. In fact, the foot – seeing as how it is the only body part in constant, direct contact with the environment – has been subjected to the most selective environmental pressure, more than any other part of our anatomy. If the human foot wasn’t up to the task of letting us move around, hunt, and forage over a wide range of surfaces, I wouldn’t be here typing this post. We never would have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, foot structure intact, if a major component of our anatomy was so fragile and unreliable.

The truth is that there’s growing evidence that going barefoot is actually better for you. In societies where bare feet are common, foot health is generally superior. A recent study by the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa found that recent shoe-wearing human populations suffered from far more “pathological lesions” to the feet than did barefoot populations. Another study found that children in India who spent their days barefoot or in minimalist sandals were far less likely to suffer from flat feet; of the children who wore footwear on a regular basis, 8.2% developed flat foot. And in patients with osteoarthritis, walking barefoot reduces the load on the lower extremities (PDF).

Exercising barefoot may be even better than just walking. When you run in athletic shoes with a pronounced heel, you are forced to land heel first. When you land heel first, your legs are straight. The impact of the landing travels straight up your legs and through your joints. When you run barefoot, you tend to land on the forefoot, or on the balls of your feet. Your strides are shorter, and your knee is bent when you land. This allows your feet, ankles, and muscles to absorb the impact of the landing, instead of your joints and bones. Our muscles are excellent shock absorbers, and going barefoot – as nature intended – allows us to take advantage of them. Studies have shown that running barefoot also increases oxygen efficiency, so ditching the shoes can even improve your performance.

Another advantage is the increased sensitivity of your feet. Instead of sticking them in thick shoes and preventing your feet from getting sensory feedback from the environment, going barefoot gives your nervous system instant access to all the information it needs to keep you safe. When you step on an unsteady stone without shoes, your brain gets the message instantly and autocorrects your stance, giving you a better chance at avoiding a rolled ankle. When you step on that same stone with shoes, the nerve endings in your feet are unable to relay the message to your brain. Instead of letting your subconscious instinct take over, you’re forced to actively react to the situation. That half-second delay could be the difference between a sprained ankle and a healthy one.

Even strength training is enhanced with bare feet. You may want to exercise extra caution when heavy weights are around (but c’mon, it’s not like a pair of Nikes is going to protect you from a 45-lb weight dropped from five feet up), but the sense of grounding a bare foot offers is unparalleled – and when you’re deadlifting or squatting or pressing a heavy weight, you need a stable base to work from.

Of course, if you’ve been working out in shoes for most of your life, your feet are bound to be unprepared for a full-on leap into the barefoot world. Don’t go for a five mile run without adequate preparation; the musculature of your feet is probably underdeveloped, so ease into it. Spend a couple weeks walking around without shoes. Spend a lot of time on your toes and go for light jogs on the grass or in sand before you tackle anything serious. It won’t take long – after all, we were born to use these things – but you don’t want to strain yourself. It’s like going back to the gym after a long hiatus. You’re going to be sore and overtraining is a real possibility.

Instead of strengthening our feet and developing natural arch support, we get prescribed orthotic shoes with built-in arch support. Instead of allowing our foot’s automatic response systems to self-correct and save us from rolled ankles, we blunt them with heavy soles and expect a few inches of rubber to protect us from the impact of landing straight-legged, heel-first on hard surfaces. Why not take advantage of millions of years of evolution? Why not save a hundred bucks on expensive running shoes and save yourself from a lifetime of nagging injuries and arthritis?

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