Please learn more about biology and reality before making uninformed statements. You would rather have the soles of people’s shoes there? Soles that never have been washed in 99% of the cases? How about his hands, which is how most germs are spread? And all those things do not matter, whether shoes that were all over the city or bare feet touch that mat. Microbes control the chemistry of the earth, and we have an immune system that does well to protect us. Come on, you remember how so many people were going barefoot everywhere during the 1970s? And the sky did not fall.

I think its up to the individual to make up their own mind. Some people are perfectly happy with running shoes. Some don’t like them at all. Some fall in the middle. I’m in the middle. I run in shoes a lot, but run in VFF’s at times, and occasionally completely barefoot on concrete. It teaches you to land softly and has great carryover to shod training, increasing step turnover speed and minimizing ground contact time per step. I personally wouldn’t do it all the time, but there are those like Ken Bob Saxton who have run on thousands and thousands of miles barefoot with no problems on concrete. They could be the exception rather than the rule, but it obviously can be done and is done regularly.

As for running inefficencies and gait issues, I personally think that our constant chair sitting is as much a cause of problems with form as anything else. Tight hip flexors, poor lumbar and thoracic posture, and internally rotated and hunched shoulders certainly don’t help one to have good running form.

I have been having athletes go barefoot or minimal shoes for almost 3 years now. While that is not a ton of people, pretty much everyone loves it and will not go back to normal shoes.

The key is to get the foot to work like normal again, and most people have horrible working feet. This takes specific mobility work and then training (stress) in specific positions to get the foot to re-model back to “normal”

Even though you may not think you apply much force during the day, most walk about 5,000 steps easily in a day at 2-4 X bodyweight with each impact; so it adds up (thanks to Dr. Cobb of Z-Health for pointing that out to me years ago).

I see lots of athletes with bad hips and almost everyone of them can be traced back to bad feet and ankles. Fix up the feet and ankles and the hips work much much better. Decreased power in the hips is a protective move by the body to protect the bum feet/ankles (aka arthrokinetic reflex).

Off my soapbox I go.
rock on
Mike T Nelson