COMMUNITY: Running barefoot helps prevent injury

Editor's note: Adam Rees is Founder of GRIT GYM, a gym based on results, creating a culture and lifestyle of performance, strength, health and freedom. Rees attended Wartburg College, worked under nationally recognized strength coach Matt McGettigan and is a glutton to information and improvement in all forms.

By Adam Rees, community contributor

The genius of barefoot running has extremely little to do with stimulating your feet nor dorsiflexion of the ankle.

The genius of barefoot running is it is a 'self limiting exercise.” It will stop you before you doing harm to your body, and force you to find far superior means, like shorter distances done much faster on surfaces such as grass, dirt or sand, instead of concrete.

A human's endurance/heart almost always will outlast the rest of the body (i.e. the joints). Modern footwear is so amazing we can now repeatedly place extremely large volumes (miles and/or time) on the body for months or years without realizing the damage it's doing up the chain - knees, hips, hormones, soft tissues - until it's too late.

At the simplest level, pain and injury are our bodies telling us to stop. Running barefoot makes you limit yourself before you're able to do something stupid - as in run too far, too slow, too many days in a row.

Yes, humans are extremely good at running long distances. We ran our food to death for a long time, this is why we can run at a galloping pace for so long. Sun hits us on the top of the head and shoulders and we sweat. Most animals take sun on their entire torso and don't sweat. We process heat better. So we ran them to heat exhaustion and then killed them.

However this does not mean we're set up to do this every single day, especially as we age.

Whatever shoe type you're going with:

l Go shorter faster. For example: 6 by 400 yard repeats with 60 seconds of rest

l Less frequency. If it's 'your time” then take up a new hobby or start meditating. Get it touch with your diaphragm.

l Start lifting. Strength is your best friend in the endurance game.

Other self limiting exercises include, but are not limited to:

l Stand up paddleboarding. This happens to be one of my personal favorites.

l Jump rope. You're going to say 'I've had enough of this” before the body develops problems. You also will not slouch as you can while running. You're foot will likely hit the ground much better and you'll be learning how to move properly simply through an act you already know how to do. It let's your body work the way it should and wants to but cannot from the way we've treated it for years.

l Rock climbing.

l Wrestling/sparring/martial arts. These could be considered self limiting on some level.

l Lifting weights. This can be considered self limiting, as well - if you know what you are doing. In theory, one would stop when they can't lift a weight, but at some point many of us get an ego going hard enough to sacrifice technique for a PR, which many times actually sacrifices a joint to injury. It's not worth it.

Remember the grind is important but pain is not.

Do not take barefoot running to concrete, treadmills or other hard services. This would negate the purpose. The point is to learn to run better, in order to feel and move better.

l For more of Rees' advice go to www.GRITGYM.com/resources and adamrees.blogspot.com Adam Rees