Gentle Running and Living
by Dr Patrick Salmon, PharmD, PhD
Member of the Barefoot Runners Society
Founding Member of the Tarahumara Spirit
Be gentle
to yourself
and others!
“Life is hard enough to add extra suffering to it”. We propose here a way to build a stronger, healthier and happier self through gentle running. Then, this “ascetic hedonism” can be translated into several aspects of life, to humbly contribute to a better world.
You can help your fellow humans and the world in general by sharing this site and its links.
You can join me at this email: drbarefootpat@gmail.com
Version française (en construction) à ce lien.
My blog
First thing: Barefoot Running is the Ultimate Gentle Running Technique
The Gentle Guide to become a Barefoot Runner
Running barefoot is the best way to improve your running style !
- Your bare foot is your best teacher for the correct running technique
- When you run barefoot, you simply cannot run “wrong” because it will hurt immediately
- So you will naturally do the correct moves
- Those moves are the most gentle and the less stressful
- Those moves are also the most efficient
- It is the best way to construct a healthy, strong and efficient foot and leg
- This will progressively cleanse all bad moves in your technique, to end up with a super clean, smooth and efficient foot strike and stride
- At the end of the Barefoot season (say October), your feet soles will look awesome (totally smooth).
- If you run barefoot only 5 minutes per week, it is already useful for your running form
To learn Natural Running, nothing compares to true Barefoot Running on roads or tracks, since you have to have the perfect stride. If you do anything a tad wrong, you feel it immediately.
So you can practice true barefoot running, carefully inserted into your shod Natural Running sessions.
Important note: It is useless to run on sand or grass. It is nice but useless to learn good-form running because your feet get no feedback from the ground. Only a hard surface such as smooth roads or race tracks can make your feet learn the good-form because you will have the maximum feedback at each strike. Also, you cannot see what is in the grass (broken glass for example) thus it is useless and dangerous.
That is why hard surface is the best teacher, once again if you allow yourself to progress slowly.
But remember, your sole skin is not made of Vibram.
- So you must avoid tracks or roads that are too hot (no direct sunshine). Too hot, the blisters may appear in less than 500 m.
- Too wet, the same because your skin will get soft very fast. Progress slowly and try to avoid blisters.
- After a very slow progression, you can run more than 10 km on cool dry roads without blisters.
Here again, Too much + too early = injury !!!
Once you get hurt, your progression is stopped. So, at the beginning, resist to run those extra 5 minutes because you just cannot stop now, because it feels so good….
True barefoot is also very good to correct foot problems. Flat feet will re-learn to grasp the ground, and the sole arch will correct itself as it sends messages to rest of the body. So unless you have a genuine malformation, you can forget about pronation and supination marketing.
Obviously, we all have this image of weirdos running barefoot and/or naked, just to show off.
They run on all sorts of things and end up injured most of the time.
Barefoot Running is not that at all !
Barefoot Running is all about being gentle.
So my advice, is, whatever your level of training or weekly mileage, remove your shoes for the last 5-10 minutes of each run and run smoothly on a hard smooth surface. If you do not run for some time, try 5 to 10 minutes each day, when you come back home, after taking off your shoes and before starting your evening routine. You can wash your feet just after this barefoot session which makes a nice ritual for the transition between work and home, stress and rest.
…... To be continued
5 convincing reasons to let your kids be barefoot
The perfect DEMO that running is smooth when done correctly