Vibram Five Fingers Introduction

Over thousands of years man has evolved. To enable us to be one of only a few animals that is able to walk on two feet, evolution has given us the gift of feet that support our weight and enable us to balance. In the late 1800s, a real fashion for the healed shoe came along and with it thousands of years of ergonomic refinement were eroded. Now we spend our days wearing ill fitting shoes that squash our toes and damage our posture. The result is numerous skeletal and muscular problems that are becoming more and more common. 

Enter Vibram Five Fingers. These revolutionary shoes give your feet the benefits of the strengthening of walking barefooted but with the protections from the hazards of modern walking surfaces such as glass, stones, twigs and wires. The shoes may look strange, but many of their owners swear by them as the most comfortable shoes they own and something they would not trade in to go back to shoes that squash their feet.

When you first get Vibram Five Finger shoes, you need to take it slow. It is likely that for most of your life you have been walking around in highly padded shoes that offer you cushioning as you walk and protection from the elements. When wearing the Vibram shoes you can feel everything you walk over and you’re the muscles in your foot work as they evolved to, maintaining you balance and posture. It is recommended that you wear them for just a short walk on the first few days and alternative them with your normal shoes. You will certainly feel them working, strengthening your feet and improving your posture with every stride.

If you stand with no shoes on a flat surface, your spine is at a right angle to the floor (and your feet stood on them). Now if you put on shoes with even a slight heal your body starts to become out of line. You legs bend and twist to compensate and this continues up your body to your spine that also tries to compensate for this frankly unnatural posture. This causes pressure points throughout your skeletal system that over time can cause problems such as back pain. In fact many first time users of Vibram Five Finger shoes report that their aches and pains clear up within a few weeks of using the shoes. Barefoot is how our body evolved to run, with the natural shock absorbers of our legs taking the strain of the impact for running, walking and jumping. When you look at it from this point of view, it seems silly to alter than with man made contraptions such as shoes with a heel, which upsets our natural balance.

With their appearance of a glove for your feet, the vibram five fingers certainly get a lot of funny looks and questions. The real person most people would purchase them however is for their benefits of the barefoot way of living, but as something different for your wardrobe they are certainly a shoe to consider.