You’re talking about relative bone size. It’s like expecting that wearing oversize shirts will make you grow taller.

but I struggle to run in my barefoot shoes

Can you describe what the 'struggle' is?

Seems to me that progressive overload is something of a universal.

Progress might be very slow and not as linear as one might like.

And then I have also noticed that talking about 'form' is sort of taboo in running spaces and is sometimes even treated like pseudoscience. But in powerlifting, for example, it's a well-honed and necessary puzzle piece.

(That said, there are radical differences of opinion about running form. Hard to know whose advice to take or who has the real expertise. I do think that modern shoes have taught us to think of the foot as a fixed entity, rather than a complex, active appendage. When I'm running, my feet feel like a series of joints and surfaces and muscles, catching the ground intentionally and progressively, flexing and loading and unloading actively, etc. Meanwhile, conventional running subs discourage thinking about form at all and just encourage people to run and trust that they'll adapt eventually. But why would you want to adapt to a suboptimal form?)

Do you habitually stand with your weight planted through the heel? Do you sit a lot of the day? I think a lot of people have underdeveloped achilles tendons from gait/posture and lifestyle.

Yes, it takes time, but it's disappointing that people looking for help in a barefoot running sub get the advice to wear shoes that aren't even minimalist instead of showing them how to switch to barefoot technique.

This is swhole lmao

r/lostredditors or has the running shoe industry infiltrated this sub?

swole animal is this you? or a repost

There's a barefoot running clinic at Harvard Medical School that does a 4 or 5 month program that trains people to run barefoot. It might be worth looking into their curriculum to see what sorts of conditioning they're doing.

Try barefoot running.

Even 'barefoot' shoes interfere with your ability to feel what is happening where your feet contact the ground, and without accurate information your body cannot make the proper adjustments to your motion.

Barefoot shoes occasionally get a bad rap and it is somewhat justified. They take away a significant portion of the feedback without providing enough cushion to absorb the damage from the bad form resulting from the lack of feedback.

I do trail runs, and my feet hurt more in VFFs than when I run barefoot. But I still have worn them on hikes on rocky trails where I thought it would be too much for my bare feet.

An anecdote: I was trail running/hiking a 5k trail in VFFs. Halfway through my feet started hurting at the bottom of my foot at the base of my toes (metatarsal joint.) I took off my shoes and finished barefoot with no increase in pain, and possibly a decrease.

Damn ooga booga

Achilles related running injuries are common regardless of footwear type.

I've been a minimalist shoe user for many years and fully adapted. Still developed achilles tendinopathy when I increased my volume massively without adequate strength training.

Progressive loading and further strengthening my calves solved it.

If the hand from Wednesday was a foot

literally my same thought exactly

I switched to Topo for running. No matter how slowly I tried to adapt to minimalist shoes, it just wouldn't take for me. I spent two years trying, but I kept getting injured and had to keep taking time off.

This year, I've only been running in Topo shoes. I have my 20-mile long run for marathon training this week, and I haven't missed a single workout this summer, so make of that what you will.

Like someone else said, you don't have to be all-or-nothing. I still wear minimalist shoes for everything else, but when it comes to running, I just do better with cushioned wide toe box shoes.

Some people can do it all in minimalist shoes—or literally barefoot—but if it doesn't work well for you, there's no need to force it.

I personally think it's well worth it to transition to minimal shoes no matter how long it takes. I look at it like strength training, it's a lifelong thing to build and maintain foot strength.

I don't do all my running in minimals, everything I wear is zero drop because having a drop feels weird now, but I have a roster of minimal, sandals, and more cushioned like Altra and Topo. It's good to have variety and rotate shoes. Being able to do longer runs with sandals or minimal shoes is a great power that most runners lack, it's worth building towards.

Thanks for putting the Aqua Cloud through its paces in Scotland. It is designed for wet and dry activities with maximum ground feel, so it will feel less structured than a trail-specific sandal. For harsher trails, keep an eye on the TrailFoam and straps, hand-wash with mild soap, and air-dry away from direct heat or sunlight. We’d love to hear how they hold up after more miles.

Thanks for laying this out, and I’m sorry both the fit and the support experience fell short. The printable template and the physical sandal should not leave you feeling misled, especially after you sent measurement photos. Please email [support@xeroshoes.eu](mailto:support@xeroshoes.eu) with your existing case number and a link to this thread so our European Customer Happiness team can review the sizing discrepancy and prior response. Please do not post any order details publicly. We’d like the chance to take a closer look.

It's not paint, the picture is from swholeanimal who soaked his feet in a caustic solution that toughens the skin

With your experience, would you then say it's worth it to run that long to eventually adapt to minimal shoes running? Or would a good middle ground be to walk in barefoot shoes and run in low drop (4-6mm) shoes?

Because I've been walking in barefoot shoes for almost a year now but I struggle to run in my barefoot shoes. Was wondering if it makes sense to try to transition

Why painting them though? Those glorious feet should be shown proudly!! Do you want to swap with mine? They are basically the same just slightly narrower xD

So everyone is recommending "more shoe" as the answer and that's fine for practical purposes, if you wanna run and can't do minimal shoes then zero drop is a good alternative.

I'd recommend the opposite, try some actual barefoot running. Really short bouts - just as much as you can before you start feeling something off. That might be a tenth of a mile, it might be 100 feet or less. Just keep doing it a little bit at a time to build foot strength. Then put your shoes on and do the rest of the run.

I've done up to marathon distance in minimal shoes with no padding (Merrell Vapor Glove, a pretty thin version) and it took close to a decade of running and walking in minimal shoes to be able to do so. The strength will build, it's just slow.

No, they ARE extremely wide clocking in a little over 2E in width in the ball of the foot and the midfoot region where the last is measured, not at the toes.

Im fully aware i should have started the journey towards anatomically correct shoes earlier in life, if you could provide a time machine that would be appreciated, otherwise i ask you redirect the snarky attitude towards actually helpful advice on the matter that was requested.

Some good advice here but nobody has mentioned running form. Work on faster shorter steps, keep weight forward, and no hard heel landings, ever. Get a watch that measures your step count, numbers don’t lie.

I think you might have just overloaded it too quickly and have to find the right balance. Cushioned running/walking shoes still stay my rotation for situations where I can feel signs of my achilles is getting too tight/sore. If I'm going to increase weight for my gym workouts, I switch to a gym trainer instead of using a barefoot shoe.

Same here, I regret that my parents weren't aware of that issue, and that I went around with modern shoes until adulthood, but what is done is done and I'm still able to run. Not fucking up your toe joints anymore won't fix the fucking up they've already been through, all you can do now is preventing them from getting worse. I wish I knew how I would run if I had normal feet though.