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With so many people having foot problems in the modern day, what’s the one thing we all have in common? We all wear shoes! And for most of the day! It is my belief that the shoes we wear are the underlying problem in ALL, yes all, of the foot/ankle problems we experience today and i’ll explain in great detail why this is and i will offer my best solution to this issue. I’m talking about flexible flat feet, plantar fasciitis, tendonitis, bunions, overpronation, and collapsed arches. If any of these resonate with you, stick around and find out what might be causing your pain.

To define “traditional shoes”, i’m talking about any shoe that is worn every day by people that can be bought in a retail store (no specialty shoes included). These could be gym shoes, dress shoes, boots, high heels, etc. They all have very similar, uniform features that i’m going to identify and discuss why they are hurting your feet.

You will see that all of these symptoms contribute to a very harsh domino effect and they all seem to compound each other’s condition. It took me about a full year of hardcore research to realize this but now I’m happy to shed light on this issue.

Narrow Toe Box

First is the narrow toe box, one of the most popular criticisms of our shoes today. If you look at your bare foot next to the shape of your shoe that you wear to work every day, it’s usually pretty clear to see that your toes have to rearrange themselves to be able to comfortably fit in those things over a long period of time.

Likely, your two smallest toes have curled in to accomodate for the shoes we wear (nope, that isn’t natural after all). Your toes want to splay outward as much as they can so they can gain maximum traction to grip the ground. Think about your toes as the fingers of your feet. If your fingers were all smashed together and they became really weak, you would have trouble gripping things and using them for things like typing or tying your shoes.

So the toes have been pushed together for probably your whole life in these shoes, making them weak and unable to spread out and grip the ground with any kind of strength.

Being that the big toe is responsible for upholding the largest part of your foot arch, this becomes a problem when the toes are weak. Now, your arch will also be getting weak and can potentially collapse. This can lead to flat feet, clearly, and even overpronation as that big toe and arch are no longer strong enough to keep your foot from caving in too far when you walk or run.

I’m still dealing with this condition because my left big toe has a small bunion on the outside of the joint which makes it hard to strengthen because of the pain. I need that big toe to get stronger again so I can stop that same foot from overpronating, because it hurts!

Speaking of bunions…. uh oh. Yes that narrow toe box is a HUGE contributor to bunions. Remember how your toes want to spread out to reach their full potential? Well, it’s tough to do that with the tight shoes but sometimes your feet will rebel anyway and try to compensate by pushing that big toe joint outward to make it happen. This is a problem though because that toe is still stuck in its new, unnatural position, causing a lot of pain.

Elevated Heel

The next part of the shoe to look at is the elevated heel. Another addition made to every shoe I’ve seen and for what reason, to have more cushioning or look taller? I’m not sure but I certainly don’t want it.

It turns out that these elevated heels in our shoes shorten the overall length of our calf and achilles muscles over time, making them very tight. You can demonstrate this yourself (because it’s hard to notice when your shoe is on your foot) by standing barefoot and observing the near-right angle that your foot sits in, and then place a small platform underneath just your heel.

Notice how your foot is now in a more plantar-flexed position (toes pointing down and away from body) which is the enemy of our lower leg flexibility in this case. We need those muscles to be long and able to stretch so we can pull our toes back towards us (dorsiflexion).

When these lower leg muscles get too tight, our body wants to re-mobilize this area so we have proper flexion again but the problem is that we can’t dorsiflex well anymore so it has us move laterally into more pronation, which quickly becomes overpronation.

Our feet already pronate naturally, it’s how we absorb some of the shock from walking and running. This little bit of pronation is all that’s necessary here but then our body has us undergo more pronation which is undoubtedly problematic.

Now you are more susceptible to plantar fasciitis or general heel pain, especially if you don’t have the big toe/arch strength to stop some of that pronation. It is predominantly the tightness of the tendons that run from the calf down into the inside and outside of your heel and through the foot that will cause pain in the heel.

I see a lot of videos and articles addressing random areas of your feet when trying to heal plantar fasciitis that have very little to do with what the actual problem is. Remember to not treat the symptom, locate the cause of the pain and fix that. In this case, it’s almost always tension in the calves.

Large, Clunky Heel

Here’s the other thing wrong with our elevated heel platforms; they’re big, clunky, and heavy. Look at the shoes you usually wear and now look at your bare foot, specifically the heel.

Why are shoes made to look like we’re walking on broken glass all day? They’re so thick and padded that the shoe barely resembles a human foot anymore. All this cushioning is so counter-intuitive.

We don’t need to be walking on a cloud because we’re in pain, the cushioning has caused that pain. It’s made our muscles weak and inflexible. This is just more treating the symptoms and not the source of the problem.

In the modern environment, our feet need some protection from all the hard, artificial surfaces we’re on, but minimal protection. These large, clunky heels actually cause your heel and joint pain all throughout your body: knees, hips, back, neck, etc. This is because those heels have taught us to heel strike no matter what. They’re so big that you can’t avoid hitting the ground with them and this is what causes a big shock through our body that we can’t use our natural shock-absorbing systems against.

We ideally need to be landing in a more midfoot or forefoot fashion because it keeps our body propelling forward and is a natural shock absorber. When we land like this, we don’t take the shock into our joints like we do when we heel-strike.

Also, it’s so much more energy efficient because when we land heel first, we take the momentum out of our stride because we just came to a semi-halt. Now we have to regenerate that force every step because our technique is so poor.

Think of yourself running right now, if you were moving fast and needed to all of a sudden grind to a halt, how would you do it? You would dig your heels into the ground more to stop that forward momentum. If this is how we stop, why would we ever run like this?

It’s completely backwards. We need to be landing closer to the ball of our feet so we can keep ourselves moving forward without wasting energy digging into the ground.

To summarize, these overly large and cushioned heels rob you of your leg flexibility and they ruin your gait (walking and running form). They teach you very poor and detrimental habits that make us more susceptible to pain and then we’re told that we need more cushion because it hurts but really that’s just the symptom of all this madness.

Trust your feet, they have been adapted this far to have us walk and run for LONG periods of time over the course of MANY years. They don’t need cushion, they need simple protection.

Flat, Non-adaptive Sole

While we’re on the subject of overly-big and thick heels, we might as well cover what’s going on with the rest of the sole just under our feet. To continue on about the density of the underside of the shoe, this can cause a few more problems that don’t receive enough attention considering how much we all wear shoes.

Most shoes offer a thick, flat surface that does not adapt to the terrain it is on. The difference with a human foot is that its very adaptable. It will bend, flex, and change the points of pressure to adapt to the surface it is currently on. However, inside of a shoe, it cannot do this because the thickness of the sole doesn’t allow for the foot to recognize the different surfaces it is on.

The ideal sole would be flexible so when you are stepping onto uneven surfaces, like rocks, your foot will feel those rocks push into the sole and your foot can process how it needs to position itself to best gain traction.

With our current soles, our feet think we are walking on a constantly flat surface that never seems to change because that’s all they ever experience. This lack of surface variation will lead to the weakening of the underside of the foot muscles and lower leg muscles that help us stabilize our bodies yet again.

Realistically, we’re not just going to start walking on rougher surfaces every day, but what we can do is wear a shoe that has a thinner sole for better overall feedback to our foot. A thinner sole would also allow us to be a little lower to the ground, enabling us to have better balance and agility.

Another downside to this thick sole we stand on is that it severely decreases the sensation we get from the ground. This takes away from the potential feedback and stimulation that the nerve endings on the bottom of our feet would send to the brain about the surface we are on.

This is how we understand what kind of position our body should be in and how we should contour our feet to best stabilize us on this surface. Without this feedback, our feet still think we are on a flat surface so they don’t flex and bend appropriately, leading to weak foot and lower leg muscles because they are not getting the signal to be used.

Built-in Arch Supports / Orthotics

Moving on from the flat, unadaptable sole of the shoe, many shoes also have a built-in arch support. This is typically thought to be an added bonus to a shoe and very helpful if you have flat feet or any kind of foot/ankle pain or general postural aches throughout the body.

In fact, it’s one of the very first things your doctor will recommend or that you will find doing a quick Google search of how to alleviate some symptoms. While this sounds like a straightforward idea, there is actually no available research to back up the claims that arch support (or orthotics) can solve foot/ankle related issues.

This is very interesting because I certainly believed that this would be a natural solution to many injuries and I have supplemented my shoes with orthotics in the past as well. The orthotics, along with Birkenstocks, were actually the beginning of me getting out of constant heel and ankle pain.

The problem is though, I still am wearing Birkenstocks right now, but they are never going to be the cure for my plantar fasciitis. The reason is that they may hold my foot in an improved position so there is less pressure on my weak spots, but they’re never going to enable my foot and lower leg muscles to do the work themselves; and that’s the key.

I would still recommend these things to anyone who is in serious pain every single day, but I’d keep in mind that they are just a really good Band-aid, not a full solution.

By holding your foot in a fixed position, these arch supports never allow your muscles to do any work. So you can think of it as having a really effective cast for your injury. To rely on these to do the healing for you would be foolish, however, because they are going to keep your natural arch-supporting muscles from working properly (very counterintuitive if you think about it).

What we are actually looking for, is a shoe that allows us to bend and flex our feet while using our toes so we can uphold that arch on our own. Remember that the big toe is essential in maintaining a strong arch that holds on its own. So yet again, we have another feature in the traditional shoe that is leading to further weakness.

Heel Counter

On the subject of locking the foot into fixed positions, we also have the heel counter which is included in most shoes, specifically athletic shoes. It is meant to control the motion of the heel while we are moving.

Again though, this is something unnecessary to us as our feet do not rely on any systems of being controlled other than our muscles being strong. The human foot is not meant to have its heel being fixed into one position while the rest of the foot is trying to express a different action, they should work in tandem with each other.

What we could actually use is a shoe that offers a little bit of space to move by the heel and also in the toe box area. This is something that is usually advised against by a shoe expert or foot specialist as they say that shoes should fit snug. But by doing this, the foot is very limited and can’t express any motion that the shoe itself would not allow.

Toe Spring

The last point I want to make is about the toe spring that is built into every traditional pair of shoes. It is the lift of the toes that shapes our shoes into more of an arc so we can perform something of a rocking motion while we’re walking or running.

I’m under the impression that these toe springs are included in shoes because the soles are too rigid to bend the way that a bare foot would, which would make it more difficult to move if there’s no “give” in the shoe.

This is another idea that sounds very logical in theory, but it is actually quite detrimental to our natural foot mechanics and it confuses us on how we are actually supposed to walk.

Several problems arise with the toe springs, the first being that your toes are rarely in contact with the ground. Think about walking barefoot; you probably strike the ground with your heel first but you roll into your toes having a firm grip on the ground and directing where you move next (all movement is powered and directed by the toes).

Now put a shoe on and while you’re standing, your toes are literally off the ground. You have to roll the arc of that shoe forward to have access to your toes, which is far from how our bare feet function.

While you’re walking or running, your toes are initially off the ground within these toe springs, so this means you don’t have that force generation needed from your toes to properly propel yourself forward. You are almost forced to use a lot of your heel and hind-foot to control your motion.

Again, this is not at all what our body wants to be doing to create forward movement. We lost out on a lot of strength here, making our toes weaker and therefore our arches weaker, etc.

Ultimately, this leads us into very poor mechanics because we are encouraged to heel-strike. When we strike heel first, this means we take a lot of the force from the ground into our joints (not ideal if you want to stay out of pain).

This explains why so many people seem to have joint problems: knees hurt, lower back hurts, neck is sore, ankles are sore, etc. Lowering the toes again would enable us to walk like we were meant to, midfoot or forefoot first so we can use our toes to their fullest potential and maintain healthy and strong arches, ankles, and lower leg muscles.

The Permanent Solution to All of These Ailments

We’ve now talked about each individual part that is wrong with the shoes we wear every day. More importantly, we know how these unnecessary features can contribute to common ailments such as plantar fasciitis, flexible flat feet, overpronation, collapsed arches, bunions, tight and weak leg muscles, poor posture, loss of flexibility, poor gait, back pain, and joint issues.

I have personally experienced more than half of these problems and lets be straight up about it, IT’S INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING! For a full year, I was unable to even jog, let alone run, because I had a severe injury to my left foot which left me with an acute case of plantar fasciitis, overpronating on that foot and killing me with pain, and developing a bunion from shoes that I thought would help.

I was left very confused, not understanding what the root of my pain was and feeling more and more down on the fact that I could no longer exercise and I had no idea when I might feel better. I was left to my own devices and luckily after countless hours of research, I found an option for myself that later became the spearhead of my solution.

Enter minimalist shoes (a.k.a. barefoot shoes), the best decision I’ve made through my entire recovery process. The shoes have:

• A wide toe box to let the toes spread out and get stronger to uphold your foot’s arch and avoid bunions

• A zero heel-to-toe drop to allow your calves and achilles to relax at a lengthened position so they stay flexible and avoid overpronation

• No heel counter to let the heel and foot work as one to express motion in tandem with each other

• No toe spring so your toes can be in contact with the ground and develop strength, avoid heel-striking, and run with more ease

• A thinner, adaptive sole for increased sensation on the foot and an improved foot-to-brain feedback loop, improved foot adaptability, and stronger lower leg muscles for stabilization

• No built-in arch supports so your foot is not held in a fixed position and you can build the arch through your own strength

• No large, clunky heel to avoid heel-striking, improve gait, improve posture and flexibility, and reduce joint pain

 

The shoes have been a life saver for me as I can feel my conditions improving every week. I can now do some light running without having pain or cramps in my feet immediately afterward. I can also walk barefoot around the house now for part of the day when this was too painful for me to do previously.

I was worried that my heel would hurt from the decreased padding in the shoes but it was actually the opposite. Wearing these shoes for a couple months so far so allowed my toes to spread out, my heel to not be locked in place, and I am pronating less on that foot, making my bunion hurt less.

This has overall given me hope that I will be exercising sooner rather than later when I was scared and anxious before, not knowing when or if I’d be able to work out like I used to.

My recommendation; the sooner you step up your shoes the better. They lay all the groundwork for your toes, feet, and legs to do the work they’re supposed to do. I have no doubt these shoes will be a permanent, life-long switch for myself and I hope you find the same relief I have in them.