My wife decided she wants a treadmill at home, so I’ve jumped on this as a way to avoid heading to the gym for my weekly treadmill speed intervals session (much preferred over going to the track). Now I’m thinking that since only our family’s feet are going to be on this treadmill, including our dog’s if we can train him to like it, that I can go barefoot for my treadmill workouts. This should help promote a quick turnover and forefoot running, and strengthen my feet, with no worries about picking up glass or other objects from the local beach or the park. So, ST peeps, is this smart or dumb? Only for recovery-type runs or everything including speed intervals?
Well, treadmills are a slightly more forgiving surface than concrete or asphalt, but still, that doesn’t make them overly forgiving. Start out slow. I could never get into barefoot running, but it could definitely be fun.
I do it regularly, so yes. However a) you need to build the endurance of your feet soles slowly. It’s very easy to get carried away, think your soles (or toes) are only a little bit hot, only to discover after you have a nice blister (personal experience ;-(. At the beginning maybe 10’ could be enough; b) it’s not forgiving, you need to use your stride to absorb the impact rather than rely on your shoes. So recovery run? Maybe not, rather technique orientated runs. Think drills. You can for instance start fresh barefoot, then put your shoes on, and at the end of your run take your shoes off and check your technique when tired. Good luck, what you will spend on electricity you will save on shoes
I would encourage you to run barefoot. Best decision I ever made. When not running barefoot I wear water shoes. I picked them up for $5.00 at Wal-Mart. If you afraid of glass or anything like that I would wear those. I finished the Chicago Marathon in a pair. If you do decide to run barefoot take your time. You have to allow your bones to become more dense and your muscles to strengthen. You can easily break a leg if you push yourself.
I have been injury free for five years since giving up shoes. Best core workout as well.
I’ve been running barefoot quite a bit over the past 2 years and it’s really help with injury prevention, and efficiency. If you can, go run barefoot on grass though. The treadmill is somewhat too perfect a surface.
Keep in mind that you need to build it very slowly. I’d start with barefoot running at the end of a 45min run or so, with 10min very slow, and build from there.
I went through the whole cycle of checking out consumer reports and online review sites first, ranking a set of features, including reliability and support, visiting a couple of local showrooms to see what home treadmills look like in real life, and then looking at ebay and craigslist. Finally decided to buy new so as to not inherit anyone else’s problems, especially since a 5 year old treadmill is often at the end of its parts warranty. So, had a mild heart attack when I realized the kind of prices a decent mid-range treadmill with the features we want goes for. After several weeks of hemming and hawing over some pretty good Internet deals we almost decided to buy a new Smooth 9.45ST - great price and a lifetime warranty on everything. But, we got worried about after-sales and support services, especially as we’re in Canada, so we went with a local fitness store where the customer service was top notch and they were willing to deal (Fitness Town for the Vancouver peeps). After almost 4 hours of trying out 5 different treadmills x 4 (me, wife, kids x 2) and getting used to their consoles, we went with a Vision T9600 Premier. It is by far the most solid feeling for my 200 pounds, has an ortho belt for barefooting, a wide variety of built-in programs for my wife and multiple custom programs for me, and they gave us an extended in-home warranty that covers us until the cows come home. We’re picking it up this morning from the warehouse (this will be my strength-training session for the week).
I love it. I run 2 mile warm up with shoes, 2 miles without and then finish with 2 miles shoes on. You will not burn up your soles too bad (I leave my socks on), and will smooth out your stride significantly. The last 2 miles will feel like you are running on marshmellows.
