Barefoot shoes have become one of the more conspicuous trends in modern footwear. Advocates make an apparently compelling argument: human beings evolved without supportive shoes, so allowing the foot to function naturally must surely be healthier than enclosing it within cushioned, structured footwear.
There is some legitimate science behind that argument. Minimalist footwear can increase the demands placed upon the muscles of the foot, and research suggests that habitual use can produce increases in foot strength.
But there is a fundamental problem with using human evolution to justify barefoot shoes in the twenty-first century.
Our ancestors may not have worn modern shoes, but they did not walk on modern surfaces either.
We have changed not only what we put on our feet.
We have changed the ground beneath them.
The Foot We Inherited
Homo sapiens evolved as a highly mobile species.
For most of human existence, people walked and ran without anything resembling a modern shoe. When footwear appeared, its primary purpose was relatively straightforward: protection from cold, heat, abrasion and injury.
The human foot consequently evolved as a remarkably sophisticated structure containing 26 bones, 33 joints and a complex arrangement of muscles, tendons, ligaments and sensory structures.
But it would be misleading to imagine our ancestors walking exclusively across forgiving grass, mud and sand.
Natural environments also contain rock, gravel and extremely hard compacted ground.
The more important difference is variability.
Natural terrain is rarely perfectly flat.
One step may fall upon soil, the next upon a stone. The foot may land on a slight incline before immediately encountering a depression or a different surface altogether.
The foot and ankle therefore continually adapt.
The modern industrial environment is fundamentally different.
We Industrialised the Ground
Consider the surfaces encountered during an ordinary day in a developed country:
- concrete
- tarmac
- paving slabs
- tiled floors
- hardwood
- laminate flooring
- shopping-centre floors
- office flooring
- railway platforms.
They may look different, but biomechanically many share two important characteristics.
They are hard and remarkably flat.
A person can now take thousands of consecutive steps across surfaces possessing almost no natural variation.
This is an extraordinary environmental change when viewed against the timescale over which the human foot evolved.
Roads became engineered. Pavements appeared. Factories introduced concrete floors. Homes acquired hard manufactured flooring. Shops, hospitals, stations and workplaces became enormous expanses of level artificial surface.
Footwear developed alongside this transformation.
Cushioning, structured midsoles, heel counters, supportive uppers, shaped footbeds and different degrees of longitudinal and torsional stiffness did not necessarily appear because shoe manufacturers decided that the human foot was defective.
They can also be understood as engineering responses to the environment humans had created.
The Barefoot Paradox
This exposes a weakness in one of the simplest arguments made for barefoot shoes:
Humans evolved barefoot, therefore humans should walk barefoot.
The first statement is broadly correct.
The second doesn’t necessarily follow.
Humans evolved without concrete pavements as well.
Removing the shoe while retaining the artificial environment doesn’t recreate ancestral walking conditions.
A person wearing a 3 mm minimalist shoe while walking several miles across London pavement may have removed much of the mechanical intervention provided by conventional footwear.
But they haven’t returned themselves to the Palaeolithic landscape.
They are still walking on concrete.
This doesn’t mean minimalist footwear is bad.
It means the evolutionary argument is considerably more complicated than the advertising sometimes suggests.
The Modern Foot
There is another interesting observation frequently encountered within footwear fitting.
Apparently neutral foot alignment often seems less common than might intuitively be expected. Customers are routinely described as pronating, overpronating, having low arches, high arches or displaying various apparent departures from an idealised neutral foot.
That raises an intriguing question.
Why should a structure produced through millions of years of evolution apparently require so much correction?
Perhaps the answer is that it doesn’t.
Pronation itself is not a disease.
It is a normal component of human gait.
As the foot accepts load, some pronation allows it to accommodate the surface. The foot subsequently becomes more rigid as the body progresses through the gait cycle.
Likewise, arch height varies naturally between individuals.
A low arch isn’t automatically pathological.
A high arch isn’t automatically pathological.
A foot that visually appears to pronate can be completely functional and pain-free.
Conversely, a beautifully “neutral-looking” foot can hurt.
This is why outdoor-retail staff should be extremely cautious about attempting to diagnose customers simply by looking at their feet, shoe wear patterns or scans.
Has the Environment Changed Our Feet?
There is, however, a fascinating question worthy of investigation.
Research comparing habitually barefoot and habitually shod populations has identified differences in aspects of foot morphology, strength and plantar loading.
Similar research involving children suggests that footwear habits and environment may influence the developing foot.
This creates an interesting comparison between highly industrialised populations and populations where habitual barefoot walking remains more common.
That comparison must be approached cautiously.
It would be scientifically unjustifiable to claim that people in developing countries universally possess “neutral” feet while Western populations pronate.
Genetics, body mass, occupation, nutrition, activity, terrain, culture, footwear and numerous other variables complicate that comparison.
But there is nevertheless an intriguing hypothesis.
Perhaps Industrialisation Is the Experiment
Consider two hypothetical children.
One grows up frequently walking and running barefoot across variable natural terrain.
Every step presents a slightly different mechanical problem.
The toes move. The foot adapts. The ankle continually adjusts. Intrinsic and extrinsic muscles work while sensory information from the ground contributes to balance and movement.
Now consider another child growing up predominantly wearing structured footwear.
Much of their walking occurs across pavements, school floors, shopping centres and domestic flooring.
Their feet aren’t necessarily unhealthy.
But the mechanical stimulus is very different.
Move forward into adulthood and the distinction potentially becomes greater.
The modern adult may sit for eight hours, drive or use public transport, walk relatively short distances and spend most of those walking hours on manufactured level surfaces.
The foot may receive remarkably little varied mechanical stimulation.
We then examine that foot and sometimes conclude that it requires additional mechanical support.
That raises an important question:
Could some characteristics attributed to weak or poorly functioning modern feet partly reflect reduced conditioning rather than inherent structural abnormality?
That remains a hypothesis rather than an established explanation.
But it deserves consideration.
Enter the Barefoot Shoe
The minimalist-footwear movement may therefore have identified a genuine issue.
By removing substantial cushioning, heel elevation and structural support, minimalist footwear asks the foot to do more of the work itself.
Research provides some support for this.
Studies have reported increases in foot-muscle strength following periods of minimalist-footwear use, although the overall quality of the evidence remains limited.
That makes biological sense.
If an external structure performs less of the work, biological structures have to contribute more.
But there is another side to this equation.
Removing support doesn’t remove mechanical forces. It redistributes them.
The Load Has to Go Somewhere
Reducing cushioning, changing heel-to-toe drop and increasing flexibility alters loading throughout the kinetic chain.
Some research into barefoot and minimalist running has demonstrated reductions in certain loads around the knee while simultaneously increasing demands around the foot, ankle, calf and Achilles tendon.
That distinction is extremely important.
Minimalist footwear doesn’t magically make impact disappear.
It changes how the body manages it.
Imagine someone who has spent 30 years wearing conventional shoes with an appreciable heel-to-toe differential.
They suddenly change to a completely flat, zero-drop shoe.
The operating relationship between the ankle, calf and Achilles tendon has changed immediately.
Muscles can adapt reasonably quickly.
Tendons and bone remodel much more slowly.
Unsurprisingly, research into transition to minimalist footwear has identified problems including calf pain, Achilles problems and metatarsal bone stress.
The problem isn’t necessarily the minimalist shoe.
The problem may be asking tissues conditioned for one mechanical environment to tolerate another without sufficient adaptation.
Barefoot Shoes as a Training Tool
This leads to perhaps the most rational application of minimalist footwear.
Rather than viewing barefoot shoes as replacements for every other category of footwear, perhaps they should be regarded as one tool among many.
Progressively wearing minimalist footwear for appropriate everyday activities may provide additional stimulus to intrinsic foot musculature, allow greater toe movement and encourage the foot to work through a greater range of movement.
That can coexist perfectly well with wearing conventional footwear for other activities.
A mountaineer might use minimalist footwear as part of their general conditioning and then put on a rigid B3 boot and crampons to climb.
There is no contradiction.
The minimalist shoe is helping condition the biological structure.
The mountaineering boot is providing the mechanical characteristics demanded by the environment.
The same principle can be applied to hiking, running and everyday footwear.
Different Shoes Solve Different Problems
This is where barefoot ideology can become problematic within outdoor retail.
A shoe isn’t simply good or bad according to how little structure it contains.
Footwear is equipment.
A trail-running shoe, road-running shoe, approach shoe, walking boot and mountaineering boot have been engineered for different purposes.
Stack height, drop, rocker geometry, torsional rigidity, longitudinal stiffness, outsole compound, lug depth, heel structure and upper construction all influence what that footwear does.
Even cushioning isn’t intrinsically good or bad.
The question is whether it is appropriate.
Standing for eight hours on a concrete shop floor isn’t the same activity as walking across woodland.
Walking the Camino predominantly on hard tracks and roads isn’t the same as running a fell race.
Carrying a 15 kg pack isn’t the same as walking around the garden.
Climbing with crampons isn’t the same as walking along a beach.
The sensible question is therefore not:
“Are barefoot shoes healthier?”
It is:
“What footwear characteristics are appropriate for this person, doing this activity, on this surface?”
The Importance of Correct Fitting
This also returns us to something increasingly important in modern footwear retail.
Technology such as a Volumental foot scan can provide valuable information about the dimensions and characteristics of a customer’s feet.
Length alone isn’t enough.
The fitter should consider:
- foot length
- width
- overall volume
- heel dimensions
- instep characteristics
- arch characteristics
- asymmetry between the feet
- forefoot shape
- and the relationship between the ball of the foot and the shoe’s flexion point.
A customer requesting a barefoot shoe because they have been told they “need a wide toe box” still requires properly fitted footwear.
Simply increasing shoe size to obtain additional width isn’t necessarily the answer.
As shoe size increases, not only does length increase but the overall internal volume changes and the designed flexion point moves forward.
Eventually a shoe can become long enough that it no longer articulates where the customer’s foot naturally articulates.
A bigger shoe isn’t necessarily a better-fitting shoe.
The correct solution may be a different last, width or model.
Retail Staff Are Fitters, Not Diagnosticians
There is another important boundary.
If a customer says:
“I have plantar fasciitis.”
“I have a Morton’s neuroma.”
“My podiatrist says I overpronate.”
or:
“I’ve been told I need barefoot shoes.”
the member of staff isn’t being asked to diagnose the condition.
Their responsibility is to understand how the characteristics of available footwear interact with what the customer has told them.
They can discuss width.
They can discuss volume.
They can discuss cushioning.
They can explain drop.
They can demonstrate stiffness.
They can identify where the shoe flexes.
They can establish whether the heel is secure.
They can assess whether there is adequate room around the toes.
And they can ask what the customer intends to do while wearing the footwear.
What they shouldn’t do is diagnose pathology or promise that a particular shoe will treat it.
Have We Created a Footwear Feedback Loop?
There is therefore a fascinating possibility.
Human beings evolved barefoot across variable terrain.
We developed footwear for protection.
We industrialised our environment.
Our surfaces became progressively harder, flatter and more uniform.
Our lifestyles became more sedentary.
Footwear became increasingly sophisticated, providing greater cushioning, structure and mechanical assistance.
Some feet may consequently experience less varied muscular and sensory stimulation.
In reaction, a movement emerges advocating a return to minimalist footwear.
And then we risk making precisely the same mistake in reverse by assuming that less shoe must always be better.
Neither extreme is particularly convincing.
Conclusion: We Changed the Ground Beneath Our Feet
Barefoot shoes are not simply a ridiculous fashion.
There is legitimate science behind the idea that allowing the foot to work harder can strengthen some of the structures responsible for controlling it.
But neither are barefoot shoes an evolutionary cure for modern feet.
The argument that “humans evolved barefoot” ignores half of the evolutionary equation.
Humans evolved barefoot in an environment very different from the one most of us now inhabit.
We have covered enormous areas of the planet with roads, paving, concrete, tiles and manufactured flooring.
We have reduced the variability of the ground beneath our feet while simultaneously reducing the amount many people walk.
Modern footwear has developed within that environment.
Some of it may undoubtedly be unnecessarily complicated. Some may provide more cushioning, structure or correction than an individual actually requires.
But that doesn’t mean footwear itself represents an evolutionary mistake.
It may equally represent an engineering adaptation to the artificial environment humans created.
Perhaps the objective shouldn’t therefore be to wear as little shoe as possible.
Nor should it be to place every foot inside increasingly complicated structures designed to “correct” normal anatomical variation.
The objective should be considerably simpler:
Condition the foot. Understand the foot. Understand the environment. Understand the activity. Then choose the footwear accordingly.
Because the most important development in the history of footwear may not have been what humans eventually put on their feet.
It was what humans eventually put underneath them.
