Thursday, January 28, 2010

Barefoot Running in Nature

Maybe I'm suffering the wrath of Benjamin Franklin's ghost for invoking his words in the context of barefoot running.  I'm awake in the middle of the night.  Apparently, ol' Ben used to take "cold air baths" reading naked in a chair in the middle of the night.   Thanks Ben.  On the other hand, this might be normal.

But here, in the middle of the night, watching YouTube, not quite naked, in a chair, I came across this video on barefoot running from Nature.



You might want to watch it on YouTube directly in it's full 720p glory.  It has some nice footage of forefoot strike running verses heel strike running.

After a bit of searching the interwebs, I found that this professor has a site with even more on the subject.  Notice, though, the disclaimer at the bottom of the page that this research -- and therefore the video -- is sponsored by Vibram, makers of the Fivefingers footware.  That said, I didn't find too much bias in the information presented and would recommend the read.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The BBC covered the story and has more foot-footage http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8483401.stm

Unknown said...

Ah... so this is what you were doing in the middle of the night :)