One of the biggest known challenges in running is avoiding injury, but unfortunately, all along, runners have been asking the wrong question about injury prevention: how much underfoot cushioning does it take to reduce injury? The answer is none because less protection is actually more protection which is why barefoot runners run safer than runners in cushioned shoes.

What goes unrealized is that safe running starts with proper running form and the best way to develop the proper running form is by engaging the nervous system which can only be done by running barefoot! This is because the spinal cord and brain does a better job at coordinating safer mechanical outputs when sensory and tactile information are received from the bare foot, not when you run in cushioned running shoes. This is why barefoot runners are on record for running more safe than shod (shoe) runners.
- Barefoot runners produce significantly less overall damaging forms of impacts because the spinal cord’s impact-moderating reflexes as well as pressure and pain-sensitive sensory processing in the feet are most optimized, but are severely impaired in thickly cushioned running shoes.


Ground-feel is also referred to as proprioception, which is the sensory feedback loop in the nervous system thats responsible for limb and joint position sense, and its proven to be most optimized when you run barefoot.
- Barefoot runners achieve the best proprioceptive sense because the underfoot proprioceptive nerves are most activated to levels that immediately activate our nervous system’s built-in reflexive defence mechanisms. This in turn engages lighter, softer, more controlled footfalls in the form of a forefoot strike, not a heel strike.
Barefoot Running Trains Your Brain to Run Your Best!
In looking more closely at how heightened proprioception when running barefoot optimizes running form, the nerve cells in the bare foot become better at conveying pressure and tactile information to areas of the nervous system that have intimate connections with the most primitive parts of the brain: the cerebellum and brain stem. Therefore, constant protection from high impacts when running can only come through activating these brain areas, which can only be done by running barefoot.



Conversely, running in thick cushioned running shoes causes proprioceptive interference, therefore the sensory feedback isn’t there to engage the brain and reflexes for safe, functional mechanics. In this condition, running safely becomes self-defeating because your initial reaction isn’t to land lighter, but to land harder with greater downward force because the foot is trying to ram through all the compressible materials to reach a more stable, natural surface.


The Take Home Message
The evidence is abundantly clear that ground-feel is everything when it comes to running because its directly responsible for shaping how you run!
What you wear on your feet has the strongest influence on your entire running form whereby the thicker the underfoot cushioning, the less you can feel the ground, the more mechanical displacements will occur, the more impact you will produce, and therefore, the more injuries you’ll be vulnerable to.
Humans were born to run, but not with thick cushioned clunkers on our feet. Luckily, thanks to our evolutionary lineage as barefoot endurance runners, barefoot running will always be there to help us reverse the damaging effects of modern running shoes.
Reference:
Nurse MA and Nigg BM. Quantifying a relationship between tactile and vibration sensitivity of the human foot with plantar pressure distributions during gait. Clin Biomech, 1999; 14(9):667-672.
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