7 Responses to “Do Your Shoes Suck?”

1. Mark Young says:

   July 30, 2009 at 8:09 am  (Edit)

   Great audio post Mike!

   I’d love to see/hear a post on your thoughts about flexible shoes for people with fallen arches, pronation, supination, etc. What about orthotics? Some people are strictly for or against.

   Are you in either camp or somewhere in the middle? If you’re in the “it depends” camp. What would be your criteria for determining who would find them useful and who would not?

   Keep up the excellent posts. I visit your blog often.

   Cheers!
2. Mike T Nelson says:

   July 31, 2009 at 9:20 am  (Edit)

   Thanks Mark, much appreciated!

   Excellent idea and I will try to get a follow up out on it next week hopefully.

   In short, my thoughts are to train the foot/ankle first, and then get out of the way—find the most minimal shoes. Despite what most say, you can change the shape of your foot, even if you pronate, supinate, have bad arches, etc. It is the FUNCTION of the foot that matters over the form.

   More soon
   Rock on
   Mike T Nelson
3. Greg says:

   January 8, 2010 at 4:39 pm  (Edit)

   Yes! Hell, I run marathons in running flats and do quite well, thankyouverymuch! Great post.

   Btw, I know you are not a runner, but I recommend very highly Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (http://tinyurl.com/yenkt78). it is a very entertaining book on various aspects of running. He covers how he went from being an injury-prone weekend jogger to training for an ultra marathon held on one of the most brutal courses imaginable, involving the indigenous Tarahumara who run super distances in sandals. He also has a scathing look at how evil the athletic shoe industry is and makes a great case for minimal footwear. Incidentally, one of the characters in the book in fact, Barefoot Ted, was the person who convinced Vibram that the FiveFinger foot gloves would be great for running.
4. Mike T Nelson says:

   January 10, 2010 at 9:29 am  (Edit)

   Hi Greg!

   Yes, Born to Run was my fav book of all last year (see this list http://extremehumanperformance.com/blog/the-top-15-things-i-learned-in-2009-a-review/)

   I have been working on a monster post on this and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and I think I will just have to cut it off and publish it.

   I love my Vibrams and do all my strongman type training here in the summer too–tire flips, farmers walks, etc

   Thanks again!
   Rock on
   Mike T Nelson
5. columbus computer repair says:

   March 1, 2010 at 4:13 pm  (Edit)

   Thanks soooooooooooooooooo much for the article. this was exactly what I needed to see
6. Mike T Nelson says:

   March 3, 2010 at 8:42 am  (Edit)

   Thanks! Glad you liked it and appreciate the comment!

   Rock on
   Mike T Nelson
7. Digital Photography Classes says:

   July 30, 2010 at 7:58 am  (Edit)

   I’m starting to find my way in Photography. Since institution that offers photography study is very limited here (in Turkey), I bought books to study it myself. I would like to ask, is it helpful to invest in an online photography study?