If you switch too quickly from conventional running shoes to lighter, lower models or to barefoot running, you could be asking for trouble. Your feet, calf muscles, and the surrounding tissues and bones may have been so coddled by high, heavy shoes that running more naturally could lead to strain, pain, and even injury. Some postrun calf tightness after your early experiments with less shoe is almost inevitable; what you want to avoid is something that’s going to interfere with your progression or, worse, sideline you.
Jay Dicharry, a physical therapist who is the director of the Center for Endurance Sport at the University of Virginia, recommends these three tests to see if you’re ready for running in less shoe. If you can pass them, you should be ready to begin barefoot or minimalist running. If you can’t, proceed cautiously. Add more time to the step-by-step process detailed later in this section, or, if you failed the tests spectacularly, hold off for now. Instead do the maintenance exercises at the end of this section a few times a week until you can pass Dicharry’s tests.
These two stretches will reveal whether you have the range of movement in your feet to handle less shoe. That foot mobility is necessary because you’re probably used to running in shoes with a large drop in midsole height from heel to toe; as a result, your feet are used to running at an angle, not flat, and they’re used to running with the soft tissues along the back of your leg in a shortened position. If you lack the necessary mobility, suddenly running in flatter, lighter shoes will lead to calf, Achilles, and plantar fascia strain.
First, sit on the ground with your legs straight. For each foot, have a friend grab your foot while you move the foot toward your shin (this is called dorsiflexion). Dicharry says that, with your friend’s assistance, you should be able to dorsiflex both feet at least 25 degrees.
Second, dorsiflex your foot about 5 degrees. With your friend’s assistance, dorsiflex your big toe (i.e., point it toward your shin). Dicharry wants to see at least 30 degrees of dorsiflexion here. Otherwise, he says, your big toe is currently incapable of serving as the key element in the push-off phase of running as it should.
Here you’ll find out what happens when you try to support your weight on one foot. After all, part of the running stride basically consists of balancing on one foot with bent knee; if you’re unable to maintain balance in that position, that instability will be transferred throughout your body, resulting in wasted energy and transferring shock body parts ill-equipped to handle it.
Stand with your hands on your hips and your hips level. Raise one foot a few inches behind you. Slightly bend the other knee while keeping that foot pointing straight ahead. Dicharry says you should be able to hold this position equally well on both sides for 30 seconds. Wobbling indicates you have work to do, even if you can hold the position for 30 seconds.
Just as you need your opposable thumbs to write like a human, you need freely functioning big toes to run like one. If years of confinement and coddling have robbed your big toes of their natural ability, then when you run in less shoe you’ll be unable to stabilize your arch; the resulting instability will then flow right on up the rest of your body.
Stand barefoot with your feet pointing forward. Try to drive the big toe of one foot into the ground while slightly raising the other toes on that foot. Then do the reverse: Lift your big toe while slightly pressing the other toes into the ground. Repeat on the other foot. Maintain a stable foot position throughout; don’t let your ankle roll to either side.