hellbound
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2013
Mourning Dove said:So I did a little research and learned that my high-maintenance flat feet need special foot support when running/jogging. I then bought shoes specially meant for running, since the New Balances I was wearing were only meant for walking. PROPER RUNNING SHOES ARE EXPENSIVE! But the fact that my feet don't hurt like hell when I try to jog, and the subsequent health and fitness from jogging regularly, is priceless!![]()
There's a pretty extensive body of research suggesting that things like flat feet are actually more often caused by our extremely supportive shoes than corrected by them. Think of it them like a cast: it holds your feet into a shape so they don't have to, and the muscles that provide proper shape atrophy.
THIS IS NOT TO SUGGEST YOU SHOULD THROW OUT YOUR SUPPORTIVE SHOES AND GO RIGHT TO LESS-SUPPORTIVE ONES. If you already have flat feet, that's a recipe for injury and pain. Instead, work slowly towards it. Start walking barefoot or in a minimal, unsupportive shoe for short distances and increase it over time. Say, whenever you're home, go barefoot if you can. This helps build up the supporting muscles in your feet slowly. Your feet will begin to normalize. After you become comfortable walking a reasonable distance without the support, maybe throw in some short-distance (<1/2 mile) jogging and build that up over time.
I can understand not a lot of people want to walk around in our modern world barefoot. Broken glass, nails and screws, dog crap, lots of things we don't want on our feet. Shoes branded as minimalist are usually fairly expensive too. However, since they don't have padding to compress over time, they generally last longer than most running shoes so the cost over time may be cheaper, particularly if you only wear them for workouts because they're almost always ugly, and actually Chuck Taylors are a surprisingly decent low-support walking/running shoe if you don't have terribly wide toes.