Parkour barefoot training... without shoes!
by Eric Jusino
Barefoot parkour training is essential for learning good form, strengthening your feet, legs, and landing gear, and learning sustainable parkour practice. Our recent video gives you a quick intro and rationale for barefoot parkour training:
There’s a ton more information out there about barefoot training, especially in light of recent studies like Daniel Lieberman’s barefoot running study (Youtube) and books like Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run.
Why you should train barefoot
The human foot evolved into its modern configuration about 2 million years ago. The first evidence of shoes is 30,000 years old. Early shoes were just wraps to keep feet warm, not to provide support or encourage a certain kind of stride.
When the foot naturally develops barefoot, it becomes very strong, mobile, and sensitive. People can do some pretty amazing things barefoot: watch India’s Monkey King climbing barefoot at 1:08:
The problem with shoes
When you put on shoes, it’s like putting on a cast, and if you wear shoes habitually, the muscles, bone structure, and connective tissue in your feet all atrophy, making your feet more susceptible to injury and less able move you where you want to go. The skin becomes soft and easily broken and cut, and the proprioceptive ability, flexibility, and mobility of the foot are diminished. So when we try to walk barefoot, initially it’s painful, our feet are easily cut and bruised by terrain that a hunter forager wouldn’t think twice about.
For more info on the specifics of how shoes mess up your feet, check out this video from APEX Movement
High-level barefoot parkour is definitely possible
The environments our ancestors moved through weren’t all dirt and leaf litter. There was lots of hard rock and broken terrain. Your feet are capable of a lot more than you think. Watch these videos of Phil Doyle and Justin Ganguly training big jumps, precisions, and long strides barefoot:
How to get started training barefoot parkour
First, understand that only true barefoot training (without shoes of any kind, even those marketed as “barefoot shoes”) will develop all the physical capacities of the foot optimally. FiveFingers are great, but wearing them will still limit your proprioceptive capacity, toe mobility, and skin toughness compared to true barefoot training.
It will take years to completely develop your barefoot capacity. You need to transition slowly.
To start with, avoid wearing shoes whenever possible in your day to day non-athletic activities. If you can find time, take regular walks barefoot. At the same time, find a shoe with decent padding but a zero heel for training.
When you start feeling comfortable walking around barefoot, start doing warm ups and light training without shoes. Once your feet can handle warm ups and light training well, get some low profile or minimal shoes for use in as much of your practice as you can. You can find all sorts of these shoes online by searching for “minimal shoes” or “barefoot shoes.” Good barefoot shoes have a wide toe box, zero heel rise, and are flexible.
You can still use padded zero-drop shoes for your highest impact training, but over time, wean yourself off padding and shoes in general as much as possible.
If you’re in the Puget Sound region and would like some more pointers on barefoot training, stop by our gym and ask our instructors!
There’s a ton more information out there about barefoot training, especially in light of recent studies like Daniel Lieberman’s barefoot running study (Youtube) and books like Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run.
Why you should train barefoot
The human foot evolved into its modern configuration about 2 million years ago. The first evidence of shoes is 30,000 years old. Early shoes were just wraps to keep feet warm, not to provide support or encourage a certain kind of stride.
When the foot naturally develops barefoot, it becomes very strong, mobile, and sensitive. People can do some pretty amazing things barefoot: watch India’s Monkey King climbing barefoot at 1:08:
The problem with shoes
When you put on shoes, it’s like putting on a cast, and if you wear shoes habitually, the muscles, bone structure, and connective tissue in your feet all atrophy, making your feet more susceptible to injury and less able move you where you want to go. The skin becomes soft and easily broken and cut, and the proprioceptive ability, flexibility, and mobility of the foot are diminished. So when we try to walk barefoot, initially it’s painful, our feet are easily cut and bruised by terrain that a hunter forager wouldn’t think twice about.
For more info on the specifics of how shoes mess up your feet, check out this video from APEX Movement
High-level barefoot parkour is definitely possible
The environments our ancestors moved through weren’t all dirt and leaf litter. There was lots of hard rock and broken terrain. Your feet are capable of a lot more than you think. Watch these videos of Phil Doyle and Justin Ganguly training big jumps, precisions, and long strides barefoot:
How to get started training barefoot parkour
First, understand that only true barefoot training (without shoes of any kind, even those marketed as “barefoot shoes”) will develop all the physical capacities of the foot optimally. FiveFingers are great, but wearing them will still limit your proprioceptive capacity, toe mobility, and skin toughness compared to true barefoot training.
It will take years to completely develop your barefoot capacity. You need to transition slowly.
To start with, avoid wearing shoes whenever possible in your day to day non-athletic activities. If you can find time, take regular walks barefoot. At the same time, find a shoe with decent padding but a zero heel for training.
When you start feeling comfortable walking around barefoot, start doing warm ups and light training without shoes. Once your feet can handle warm ups and light training well, get some low profile or minimal shoes for use in as much of your practice as you can. You can find all sorts of these shoes online by searching for “minimal shoes” or “barefoot shoes.” Good barefoot shoes have a wide toe box, zero heel rise, and are flexible.
You can still use padded zero-drop shoes for your highest impact training, but over time, wean yourself off padding and shoes in general as much as possible.
If you’re in the Puget Sound region and would like some more pointers on barefoot training, stop by our gym and ask our instructors!
