Ultralight Footwear
Why do shoes exist? Why do we seek to put shoes on children even when they are indoors? What would happen to our hands if we grew up always wearing mittens and never used our fingers for anything?
If you look at pictures from large parts of Africa you will notice that shoes are not exactly in use and even when they are they are flip-flops or some other flimsy shoe. Likewise if you look at Sherpas carrying huge loads you will see they are wearing some rather unexceptional trainers. So what is it then that makes us rush to put on boots the moment we start to contemplate carrying less than 10% of our own bodyweight in the form of a backpack. What is it about our human bodies that make them so fragile that they need such special treatment?
Could it be that we have forgotten how to walk? Could it be that we are no longer in touch with how our bodies work? Could it be that we've trained ourselves through ignorance to abuse our feet? Could it be that we think that we walk with our feet and not with our bodies?
Meet your Feet!
It's worth starting off by looking at our feet. If we understand feet and walking we can work from there and understand what we need shoes to do.
The picture shows my left foot shot from two slightly different angles. It shows it on the left when it is raised off the ground - like it is in mid-step. Then it shows it when I'm standing on one leg and so it is carrying a full load.
The first thing I want to draw attention to is that the foot is a dynamic sprung structure and not a flipper. On the left you can see the big-toe tendon is prominent and that the whole foot has a distinctive shape with the toes naturally curved upwards. Note also how the arch of the foot is a very distinct arch.
When I place my foot on the floor and put a load on it you can see that the shape of the foot changes. The arch is a lot flatter, the big toe tendon is no longer visible and my whole foot has spread out. In fact if you look carefully you will see that the toes are actually gripping the floor. The big toe provides the major balancing point together with the heel and the instep. The big toe actually does a lot of work to provide balance.
So feet are dynamic structures that spread load onto the ground and provide dynamic balance. If the surface is uneven - such as pebbles or rocks - then the normal behaviour of feet is to deform to maximise grip and balance on the surface.
In terms of complexity our feet and our hands are about the same. Both have equivalent numbers of nerves and equivalent sensitivity and musculature. It might be tricky to play a piano with your feet but in principle the wiring is there that you should be able to do it. Likewise our feet are very sensitive to texture in the same way that our fingers are. If you walk around the house barefoot you will become aware of all the different surfaces. In my house I've put in flooring that give my feet different surfaces to be aware of - from short and long pile carpets to laminate flooring to 'stone' tiles.
There is a reason why our feet are so complicated. The reason is walking, running and jumping.
The above video shows precision jumping in parkour. What it shows is how feet handle the dynamic loading of take-off and landing. You can see how naturally springy feet are.
It's worth taking a quick look at how feet are constructed in order to understand a bit about what they are capable of.
The foot is attached to the leg via the ankle. The ankle is roughly a ball-joint which is cross-braced all around with muscles (not shown). Here you can see how the ankle has a big muscle attached to it and each toe has at least one tendon attached to the end nearest the toe-nail. All the muscles that control the toes and ankle are of course in the calf. The calf has lots of space for large muscles and each toe is wired to operate independently of the others.
Natural Walking
From the above you can see that feet are rather complicated and capable of doing rather a lot. Now let's take a look at what walking looks like. (This is not me!)
This woman is walking barefoot on concrete (something it takes a while to get used to). As she walks you can see how her feet are placed and how they spread out as the come into contact with the ground and how the toes are naturally curled up when raised off the ground. You will also see that her body shows no sign of shock-loading. Her feet are not slamming into the ground, they are being placed on the ground. Note also that she is placing the middle of her foot down first not the ankle. This is a typical style that you develop when walking barefoot and allows the foot to make best use of all that sprung musculature to absorb some of the shock. You will also see how her walking is different to those of the people around her, it looks a lot more fluid and she is not slamming her heel into the ground.
Basically when we walk we do so using our whole bodies. A lot of work is done by the core stability muscles around the abdomens. These muscles control the weight transfer to and from the feet.
When walking barefoot we get feedback from the ground about how hard the ground is, how much stabilisation is required and how much we are going to have to compensate for the ground. Natural walking involves feet being placed on rather than slammed into the ground. When we are walking over a surface barefoot we place our feet down with sufficient force to do the job and no more. We naturally adapt to the surface. When we wear shoes we don't get good feedback from the ground and we walk in a way that creates the impact of solid ground - by putting our feet down much harder!
Walking barefoot is something I recommend doing if only around the house and garden. It helps you to relearn how to walk and it helps you to develop the core stability muscles and the natural control that they are designed to be providing. Barefoot running is a big movement now and one that I also support, people are realizing that letting feet be feet is a good thing!
Of course one problem that you will hit when you first try this is that your feet feel exceedingly sensitive. This is a natural side-effect of them not being used. It is just as if you'd gone through your whole life wearing ear-muffs and suddenly had taken them off. Your feet have been so starved of stimulation that they've become overly sensitive.
After a few weeks of walking around the house or office barefoot they will become a lot less sensitive and your walking style will become more natural and more kind to your body.
Before we begin to worry about load carrying and rough terrain it's a pretty good idea to be able to walk naturally and efficiently on flat firm terrain.
What have shoes done for us?
As an experiment it would be worthwhile for you to try standing on one foot in different ways - barefoot and with different shoes on. Then it would be worthwhile to walk over a surface (maybe indoors) barefoot and then with shoes. You might notice quite a difference.
First of all what shoes do is inhibit natural foot behaviour. If you pay attention you will be aware of your toes curling up and uncurling as you walk and you will be aware of how force is fed into your big toes. You may also notice that your shoes prevent your feet spreading out - the sides of the shoe interferes. Often you will find that shoes actually prevent your foot behaving naturally.
Almost all shoes that you buy have a raised heal and a curved base. This design is not there to help you, it's there to compensate for a rigid sole. The problem is that walking on a raised heal means that your muscles are used differently and your foot strike is different when walking. Shoes tend to make you walk heal-first but natural walking is usually on the big pad of the foot closely followed by the heal. Shoes change how you walk!
Then we come on to the sole of the shoe. Most shoes; especially trail shoes have larger rather mushy soles. These soles mean that your feet think that every ground you walk on is 'soft ground'. Every time you walk your toes sink into the sole of the shoe and your feet wobble a little as they do so. The sole of a shoe is basically unstable when compared with walking barefoot.
If you are really unlucky your foot will have 'arch support' and so your foot is not even allowed to do it's natural spreading-out movement.
Fundamentally I feel shoes are tantamount to foot abuse in so many ways. So why do I still wear them? Obviously shoes give us some benefits even if they are not perfect. The big thing that you will notice is that shoes provide grippy soles. A lesser thing is that shoes stop biting insects and they stop sharp painful thorns and stones. After that shoes just prevent our feet from behaving naturally.
Ultralight Footwear - Principles
I've obviously gone into rather a lot of preamble about feet. I've done this because it's important to be clear about the problems we are trying to solve with shoes and the problems we are trying to avoid.
The big thing is that we want soles that are grippy. If you try barefoot walking in the countryside especially muddy countryside you will soon realize that human feet are not very grippy in the mud. It's also not fun walking barefoot in the mud.
The next big thing is a little bit of cushioning. Walking barefoot on rock or pebbles can be uncomfortable even after training for it. With training you can get used to it but it's always more comfortable if you have a little bit of padding.
So we want our shoes to provide some protection from the ground and we want a bit of extra grip - over what bare feet can give us.
Ideally we also want our shoes to allow our feet to behave naturally so that we naturally place our feet and walk with our body rather than our legs. That means we want our shoes to encourage natural movement and natural dynamic stability when walking. We want feedback about what the ground is like, we want our toes to be able to move around and 'grip' the ground. We want our feet to be able to move in the natural springy way that they do when walking barefoot.
The more naturally that we walk with shoes on the less wear and tear we will suffer on our bodies and the less that weight carrying will impact us.
As an aside: We know as backpackers that we will be carrying stuff but that stuff is not very heavy. My pack when fully loaded with food and water is still only around 7-8Kg and that is less than 10% of my body-weight and so in biomechanics terms it's hardly noticeable. With ultralight load carrying I pay a lot of attention to how I carry and distribute weight. I want the weight to be carried in a way that is as natural as possible so that my walking style when carrying a pack is almost exactly the same as without a pack. I want my feet to behave naturally when carrying a little extra load. They cannot do this if the centre-of-gravity of my body is shifted a lot or I need to walk with a stoop or if my dynamic stability is worse because a pack wobbles for instance.
What I do not not need is ankle support. If I require ankle support then it should be clear that my feet are not being allowed to behave naturally and also that something must be going on to with the way my ankle is being used that is making it behave differently to how it would behave if I was not carrying a load.
What is usually happening is that a load is being carried badly and that is changing the weight distribution into the feet and it is changing the dynamic load on the feet during walking and ultimately feet are being used in one way for everyday walking and another way for backpacking. This is an avoidable problem. In many countries it's normal to carry large loads on the head. This trick basically means that the biomechanics of walking do not change and so the body copes just fine.
Ultralight Footwear - Examined
Here are a selection of shoes that I own. It's worth looking at each of them in turn and seeing what effect they have on the biomechanics of walking and how they help or hinder my goal of walking with a pack in the countryside in safety and comfort.
That's quite a spread in styles and weights. The lightest shoe (KSO) is 1/4 the weight of the heaviest boot. So how are these shoes different? How do they help or hinder my walking?
Vibram Five Fingers KSO - 184g ea.
Let's start with these rather odd looking shoes. These shoes are about as close as you can get to the experience of walking bare-foot. They allow my feet to move in a totally natural way and adapt to the terrain in a natural way. They are absolutely awesome for scrambling around on rocks and pretty lousy in muddy fields. The KSO has some (4mm) of flat padding on the sole and that provides just enough cushioning that it feels fine to walk for several hours on concrete or whatever. They are also OK cross-country unless the path is rather rocky (but that's just due to my own feet conditioning).
The big thing against the Five Fingers is that they are lousy at keeping the weather out - they are after all mesh and lycra on top. So in damp conditions your feet become cold and damp and stay that way.
I have carried small packs using the KSO but I wouldn't want to use them on a multi-day hike because of they are not very good for damp UK weather.
The KSO's are kindest to my feet and has least impact on the biomechanics of walking. They are so light that you really do feel like you are wearing gloves or something. In 2011 I'm hopeful that some really good footwear will start to appear. The one to watch is I think Merrell and their barefoot range. This has the minimal flat sole that I want and weather protection and of course they look like shoes!!!!
Salomon Speed Cross 2 - 306g ea. (with mud)
So now we have something that looks like a shoe. This is one of the next generation of minimal footwear which is starting to undo the harm caused by shoes. Innov-8 also do something similar.
Now my feet are not quite able to behave naturally - they cannot grip the ground in the way that the Vibram Five Fingers do. There is obviously more padding in the shoe but it is not as bad as some. Instead the sole is reasonably firm and also reasonably compliant. They are light enough that I don't really notice that I'm wearing them.
When I walk with these shoes they behave in a similar way to walking bare-foot; there is some padding but the padding on the sole doesn't interfere too much with how I walk.
The sole has an aggressive tread pattern and that works well on many surfaces but is not so great on smooth rock. Even so this is my trail shoe for 2011. Eventually I think they will be replaced with something even closer to a barefoot shoe when they become available in late 2011. I'm really keen on finding a shoe that doesn't cause problems for my feet and for the biomechanics of walking.
I'm hoping that the sole is sufficiently firm that it will not collapse with extended use.
Update: In fact the Merrell Barefoot range came out in early 2011 and I'm using those a lot more instead. The Speed Crosses have been hardly used :-(
Astroturf Football boot - 305g ea.
In 2011 I've started to take a real hard look at what I want shoes to do. My starting point was "If KSOs are perfect for my feet then why can I not use them for two weeks of hiking"?
I started by looking at a list of things I wanted from a shoe:
- Protection from weather and biting insects and thorns
- Minimal weight
- Minimal padding (after lots of issues with shoes collapsing after extended use)
- Grippy sole for trails
I then went and looked for shoes that had these criteria and existed for other sports. The obvious one was football boots!
You can see these boots are light, have minimal weight and padding and a grippy sole. They have everything I am looking for.
However, they are not perfect. I found that this particular pair cause a blister on my toe because of the offset tongue. I think this is fixable. Apart from that these football boots behave almost identically to the Salomon Speed Cross 2s which of course cost a lot more.
Merrell Continuum - 482g ea.
The first thing to notice is the jump in weight. All that extra padding and that big soft EVA Sole is heavy. This particular pair have done a two week walk (Offa's LDP 2009) and are a good example of a modern trail running shoe. Now I start to notice the weight of the shoe when I'm walking; it's starting to have a bigger impact on the natural movement of my legs.
They have a good grippy sole and are good at keeping the weather out. They have no waterproof membrane but that's a preference I have; I'd rather have damp feet than sauna feet.
The problem with them is the thick padded sole. On a single-day walk this might feel nice even if it does isolate me from the feeling of the ground underfoot. (Being able to feel the varying texture in the ground gives you a real sense of place). However over 1-2 weeks of walking the footbed collapses. This is common to all trail running shoes.
The result of this footbed collapse is blisters on the boundary of the footbed insert and the shoe. I've used several different pairs of shoes and they all suffer from this. The EVA sole does seem to recover with a week of rest but of course that doesn't help with thru-hiking.
If these shoes had a non-compressing sole they'd be just about perfect.
Zamberlan Boots - 754g ea
These are a really old-skool 'lightweight' leather boot. They have a good grippy Vibram sole and no padding to speak of on the sole. The only padding on them is provided by the footbed insert.
These boots feel heavy. They change how I walk in the same way that wearing ankle weights changes how I walk. The sole is almost solid and does not adapt to the ground that I'm walking over.
However, the solidity of the boot does mean that they do not collapse and so I don't get blisters caused by the boot failing. The boot is roomy enough that my feet can grow and shrink naturally.
Ironically they are often better for my feet than the more specialist trail-running shoes.
In theory the boots provide ankle support. In practice I lace them so that my ankles are allowed full natural movement.
I've had these boots for many, many years now but they no longer see much action. Somehow I seem to have moved over to trail-running shoes for almost all the time.
However I still wonder sometimes if boots would be better for multi-week hikes simply because of the EVA footbed collapse issue. I just never quite get round to doing it....
Summary
What I'd like to suggest is that you start looking at shoes as a way of solving particular problems rather than a must-have thing. In lots of ways shoes interfere with the natural working of feet and there has to be a corresponding pay-off for that. Usually the payoff is in 'comfort', weather protection and a grippy sole.
I think it is well worth checking out some of the new much lighter shoes on the market to see how they feel. In 2011 Merrell are bringing out their Barefoot Collection and I'm going to keep my eyes open for them. You can now read my Merrell Barefoot Trail Glove Review.
I've tried lots of things and I think that minimalist footwear is definitely the way to go - it's ultralight and kinder to your body. Walking using minimalist shoes changes how you interact with the ground and it makes you feel much more sure-footed. You tend to skip over rather than walk on ground.