Five more days on this project. I am seriously considering doing another one of these because it helped so dang much.

I workout nearly every weekday morning on the beach. Many of my workouts involve running, jumping, push-ups, bear-crawls, those kinds of things in the sand and waves. For the last several months I have been wearing old tennis shoes to these beach workouts and I hated having to clean them (and my socks) after every workout, then let them dry for the rest of the day.

Last year I saw friend in Alabama, Kim Norris wear Vibram Five Finger shoes and I thought they were the weirdest looking shoes I had ever seen, but after doing some research and asking around, it turns out there is a lot of research that backs up that they are better for you to exercise and run in than normal running shoes.

Genetically, we have been designed to walk and run barefoot and the modern running shoe has only been around for a few decades. The gist of it is that running shoes force us to run differently, generally striking our heels on the ground, which in turn generates unnecessary impact. Running on the balls of our feet (the front part), essentially eliminates the striking impact associated with modern running shoes.

Vibram Five Finger shoes allow runners to wear a very thin protective (and comfortable) shoe that closely mimics a barefoot as much as possible. The fingered gloves allow for your toes to spread out, increasing their flexibility and surface area on the ground. There are many other theories about why these types of shoes are better, but its too much to go into here. All I know is I keep on hearing wonderful things about them. They are water proof and don’t really work with socks. Seemed like a good candidate to replace my old running shoes on my beach workouts.

I don’t really know if the Vibrams are everything I hear about them, but I will say that after 2 workouts, they are very comfortable and I enjoy wearing them while working out on the beach.

Vibram Five Finger Shoes