Humans have evolved as persistence hunting runners and cooperative animals. This is why we are now the most evolved species on Earth. And this is why the key to our happy and sustainable future on Earth depends on how we use persistence, cooperation, gentleness, and, of course, running.

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.

The Human Foot

Under construction

The human foot is a masterpiece of Evolution

-Leonardo da Vinci-

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If you take a look at the human lower leg, you can see that the combination of the calf muscle, the Achilles tendon and the plantar fascia, makes a structure that is stronger than any running blade made of the toughest alloy of Kevlar and Carbon.

Especially the Achilles tendon and the plantar fascia are made of fibers so dense, so strong, so big, so resilient, that no man-made material can be a match.

When you run correctly, you land first with the forefoot or the midfoot, then your heel. Just after, your plantar arch will collapse, causing a stretching of the plantar fascia. Then, your ankle will make an angle that will stretch the Achilles tendon and the calf muscle. This combination makes a HUGE spring that will absorb the energy of the landing and store it to spring back like a giant coil. That is the magic of running and the result of millions of years of evolution of humans as professional runners.

And this is just the beginning. If you go deeper in the human foot, you will discover a huge level complexity as illustrated in this picture.

And if you go even deeper, you will discover a wonderfully complex arrangement of bones and ligaments, all designed to do 3 things in an optimal way, stability, motion control, together with shock absorption and spring.

And finally, you must know that you have 200’000 nerve endings in the sole of your foot. These nerve endings, together with propioceptive input from the whole foot, will sense the ground in real time, and will tell your brain how to adjust your foot and leg movement to adapt to the ground in just milliseconds.

You realize how much signal can come from your sole nerves when you get a foot massage.

So why put your feet in casts when running? It is like putting boxing gloves on to play violin.

Shoes, especially running shoes, should be used only to protect the foot (against heat or cold, sharpies, pebbles, etc), and certainly not to prevent it to work how it is supposed to work.

However, the vast majority of modern shoes sold in “running stores” are built in such a way that they seriously hamper proper foot movements, and are thus responsible for lots of injuries on the long term.

Let us review these injuries:

• Blue toe nails. Because these shoes have narrow toe box (part of the “motion control” bullshitting) the toes cannot dorsiflex (bend upwards) upon landing like most runners do. Result is knocking of the nails on the top of the shoe thousands of time (more than 10’000 per hour) leading to hematomas under the nails often followed by loss of nails.
• Deformed feet. Also because these shoes have narrow toe box (part of the “motion control” bullshitting) the toes cannot spread upon landing, which is a natural movement of toes when running. They are constrained in a very un-natural position and suffer a lot.

• Plantar fasciatis. Because these shoes have “arch support”, another part of the “motion control bullshitting”, the plantar arch cannot collapse upon landing, like it is supposed to do for millions of years. So not only the plantar fascia cannot work correctly but also the “arch support” will rub, press and knock on these fibers until they get deformed, inflamed or even torn. Then, it will take months to repair. This is one of the most serious and debilitating injury that you can gain thanks to “modern running shoes”. Once you have plantar fasciatis, it will take weeks or months to get back to a normal and functional plantar fascia.

• Achilles tendonitis. Elevated heels in “bad running shoes” are supposed to ease the workload of the Achilles tendon. The problem is that this tendon is the biggest of the human body for a reason. This reason is that it has to work very hard. If you make its work easier, it will become weak and will get into trouble as soon as it has to work properly again.

• Sprained ankle. Thick cushioning means “bad running shoes” because it totally blunts the feedback from your foot. You are basically running “blindly”, not able to sense the changes in ground shape, texture or angle. As a consequence, when running on uneven ground, your brain cannot sense the changes in texture and angle of the ground, and cannot respond in real time by appropriate muscle contraction. This is why most runners with super thick shoes now have a lot of these injuries. Apparently, these shoes are now also associated with torn knee meniscus, more or less for the same reason. When these “runners” are tired, instead of stopping running, they land very hard on their legs without using their leg muscles as shock absorbers. Any idiot can tell you that in this situation, the joints will have to take the shocks. Since they are rigid structures, they just get destroyed over time from this heavy pounding.

• Displaced talus. This is another injury caused by high heel shoes. If you have more than 3 or 4 mm of drop in your shoe, your foot will land with an angle which is NOT physiological, especially when running. The result for some runners is that the talus, which is the big bone above the calcaneum (heel bone, see the blue picture above) and serves as central pivot for the whole leg-feet structure is out-of-whack upon landing. When you do this millions of times, you logically get a displacement of this bone. This will cause a block in the angle of your foot. When you try to bend it more, you will get an excruciating pain like someone is stabbing you. That can be very hard to correct (months or years of good running form plus a good chiropractor).

• Other injuries, like IT band syndrome, torn knee meniscus, hip arthrosis, misaligned pelvis, back pain, prolapsed vertebral disk and sciatic, etc, all caused by heel-striking which is a direct result of bad running form promoted by high-heel cushioned shoes and people selling them, are reviewed and described in the sections “Gentle Running” and “Biomechanics of Running” in this site.

• Finally, you can check for yourself the 2011 recommendations of the American College of Sports Medicine for the choice of a proper running shoe, by clicking on the logo just below.

One result is this:

Another result is that: