The Barefoot Professor: by Nature Video

Lets start with the feet

I have for the last 2 years been wearing bare foot trainers. I started wearing them because of my interest in what happens when your foot hits the floor (without shoes). And as you may or may not know the foot goes through a lovely 3D motion. A typical human foot is 26 bones, 33 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments By walking or running you stimulate those muscles in your feet along with the whole body which will not only make you stronger and healthier, but it improves your balance, agility and proprioception. With that in mind I set about tracking down a pair of trainers that looked liked trainers. Some of you may have seen the Vibram Five fingers which are great but I wanted something a little less obvious. So I found Vivo barefoot at Terra Plana which in their words, ‘employs an innovative approach to shoe making. We strive to achieve our goals of urban respect and eco-sustainability whilst producing shoes that are good for your feet.’ What more could a girl want! And two years later have never looked back. It took a bit of time for my feet to get used to working a bit harder muscle wise, but now I run (5k so far) and teach my aerobic classes in them. But the exciting bit is they have designed a running shoe which I have just ordered so in later blogs I will let you know how I get on. In my next blog I will write how important it is for the foot to be fed by proper ground reaction. Have a look at bare foot running

Dont you just love to move

I love the idea that you can create better movement through training functionally, and that it not only helps the body too move better but it is fun. The word 'movement' is a word that I am more and more interested in.
Without it the body as a whole is not fed, I feel that as we are 3D humans we need to use all the envelope however big it is. As I write this blog on what I discover by functionally training my clients and working on my on training, the world of human biomechanics opens up to me (what ever that my be) and that is indeed very, very exciting, something that I will write about on a practical and personal level.