Barefoot Running Step by Step by Ken Bob Saxton

Author:Ken Bob Saxton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781592334650
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Published: 2011-07-11T10:00:00+00:00

IDEA 4: LEARN LIKE A CHILD

A barefoot child learns good running technique without “working” at it. Children naturally respond to the senses in their bodies by playing and experimenting until they find the best technique, just like they learn language: by listening and playing with sounds, so that, eventually, they can imitate the sounds they hear, and later the words of the language in their environment.

But they aren’t thinking, “Gee, I have to learn this language so that I can tell my parents what I want for dinner,” or “so I can recite Homer’s Iliad to my luncheon club.” They’re just being curious children. And from the child’s point of view, they have all the time in the world. That is, they aren’t so impatient that they want to go out and give an hour-long speech within the first week they begin talking. From a child’s point of view, it’s all about listening, experimenting, and discovering (between eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom). When a child is born deaf, however, like my wife was, then learning to speak does require intensive training and conscious effort.

If we have no sensation in the soles of our feet or constantly wear shoes while learning to stand, walk, and later run, we have blocked the nerves in our soles, thus making the process of learning to stand, walk, and run more of a chore, and often requiring some external coaching (much like trying to teach a congenitally deaf child to speak). Since we are not as able to feel the way we are running, someone may need to watch us run and explain to us what should be changed. Otherwise, unless we just happen to get it right, which a few out of the millions of shod children do, the rest of us will probably grow up running rather awkwardly and, at some point in our lives, probably just decide that we weren’t “born to run.” That’s something our friendly neighborhood shoe and orthotic salesperson will be happy to confirm.

It’s easy to tell by the sound of the voice whether someone was born deaf and has never been able to hear or accurately imitate the sound of human speech. Likewise, there are plenty of runners who have clearly never run barefoot, especially on rough, hard surfaces. And it’s obvious, because they run as if they expect their shoes, or the running surface, to protect them from impact and abrasion.

But most of us have a choice, and once we remove our shoes it often takes a bit of time to figure out how to interpret what our soles are telling us. Our habit, from years of wearing shoes, is to try to ignore the pain, so that we can continue running the way we learned (with the senses in our soles muffled by shoes).

Alternatively, we can take the time to relearn, and pay attention to what our soles are telling us. As I’ve said many times, this could be a short or long time,

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