[pct-l] Barefoot Hiking

[Yoshihiro Murakami]

Dear Mark

A supplementary short opinion

The function of arch support is questionable. It works well for
someone, do not work for others. I found that the extensive research
in which the kind of insole proved to be unrelated to injury.

The minimum shoes ( including five finger shoes ) are different from
the normal running shoes. They eliminate the the function of cushion
at heel, then they require slight gait change. That is, the fore foot
or mid foot strike walking and narrow step is needed to avoid the
strong strike at the heel. It works for some one as curative effect.
But, if the knee joints is used for cushioning pourpose, our energy
consumption of walking will increase.

The bare foot hiking may be come from the "Born to Run" hypothesis. I
had read several articles.( I had saved a few abstracts in my site
http://bit.ly/rWf06A  ) I had run 10 or 15 Km several times with fore
foot strike running. The burden of  calf and  Achilles' tendon is
large. This running gait may be for selected strong people ( excluding
me ).  Now, I  doubt this hypothesis.  I had  changed my gait to the
mid foot strike running. It works well for 10 Km, but if the distance
increased to 15 Km, the burden of  calf and  Achilles' tendon became
big.





-- 
Sincerely
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Hiro    ( Yoshihiro Murakami  村上宣寛 )
facebook  http://www.facebook.com/completewalker
Blogs  http://completewalker.blogspot.com/
Photo  http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/CompleteWalker/
Backpacking since about 1980 in Japan
JMT, 2009, 2010, 2011(half).
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