No More Mr. Fat Guy!

I’ve never paid more than $30 for my walking shoes, and usually a lot less than that. I either buy them at Sam’s or Costco, or I go to one of these small, independent shoe stores that are everywhere and look for clearance items and closeouts, You’d be surprised at the quality of shoes you can get for $10 to $25. I’ve read a lot of articles advocating expensive running or walking shoes, but I’ve never had a problem yet with my cheap walking shoes.

Now there’s a new study that backs me up. In this article from New York magazine, experts say that ideally we should walk barefoot; that shoes harm our feet. Of course, walking barefoot isn’t a realistic option for most people. In fact, I can’t believe anyone in America is going to start fitness walking barefoot. But, here’s the really good part. In more than one study, people who wore cheap walking and running shoes had fewer injuries than people who wore expensive, premium shoes.

Consider a paper titled “Athletic Footwear: Unsafe Due to Perceptual Illusions,” published in a 1991 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. “Wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (e.g., more cushioning, ‘pronation correction’) are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes (costing less than $40).” According to another study, people in expensive cushioned running shoes were twice as likely to suffer an injury—31.9 injuries per 1,000 kilometers, as compared with 14.3—than were people who went running in hard-soled shoes.

The article goes on to talk about several companies that are designing shoes that are much closer to the experience of walking barefoot. Some of the companies are Masai Barefoot Technology, Vivo Barefoot, and Vibram Five Fingers. They’re not cheap, but some some are no more expensive than most running or walking shoes. If you’re having foot problems, you should check them out.