Product Review - Nike Free's

Thanks in large part to Pavel Tsatsouline and the dragondoor crew, people are becoming more and more aware of the benefits of training barefoot.

According to Vibram, some of the benefits of being barefoot are:

1. Strengthens Muscles in the Feet and Lower Legs - wearing FiveFingers will stimulate and strengthen muscles in the feet and lower legs, improving general foot health and reducing the risk of injury.

2. Improves Range of Motion in Ankles, Feet and Toes – no longer ‘cast’ in a shoe, the foot and toes move more naturally.

3. Stimulates Neural Function Important to Balance and Agility - when wearing Vibram FiveFingers, thousands of neurological receptors in the feet send valuable information to the brain, improving balance and agility.

4. Improves Proprioception and Body Awareness – those same neurological receptors heighten body awareness, sending messages about body mechanics, form, and movement.

5. Eliminates Heel Lift to Align the Spine and Improve Posture – By lowering the heel, our bodyweight becomes evenly distributed across the footbed, promoting proper posture and spine alignment.

I've also heard of studies which show that native peoples who run bare foot have almost zero instances of running related injury and that the more expensive your shoe, the more likely you are to experience injuries like sprained ankles, etc.

Sounds great, but in the West, outside of the dojo or home, being barefoot isn't always an option and if you're not quite up to wearing a pair of five finger shoes then behold the Nike Free!

Technically any shoe that passes the "flex test" should provide most of the benefits of going barefoot, since, as I understand it, it's the thick, stiff sole of modern shoes that cause most of the problem. In order to pass the flex test you should be able to easily fold a shoe clean in half at the mid-sole.

The Flex Test

As you can see from the photo above, the Free is made with half a dozen or so deep grooves in the sole that allow it to flex freely.

My Results

Since I started wearing my Free's I've had less low back pain, less fatigue at the end of the day and less knee pain, which is significant when you consider that compared to the same time last year (training for san da) I'm doing more walking and lifting at work AND training harder (than last year) and last year I felt like I had, or was about to tear the meniscus in my right knee.

I've also noticed that my gait has improved without any conscious effort on my part. I used to walk with a slightly externally rotated foot (i.e. duck toed), but after consistent use of the Nike Free as my main work shoe, the rotation has pretty much disappeared.

Not bad for $40 bucks.

As a word of caution, it took me several weeks to accustom my feet to wearing these shoes. I had been wearing a thick soled "service" type boot with a custom orthotic, which had resulted in a VERY stiff tendon on the bottom of my right foot, and often caused me to have to cut my training short as it caused me quite a bit of pain at times. After about three weeks of switching back and forth between my Free's and my old boots (and some pain in the right foot) the tendon loosened up and no longer gives me any trouble.

This product gets five stars from me.