Barefoot Running Science

Prevent injury-  By walking barefoot you are reverting back to how you were born to move.                                  

In turn you effectively reduce your chance to sustain an injury from running or walking. The heavily padded heel of our modern day shoes encourages a "heel-to-toe" foot strike on the ground. This is opposed to the natural "forefoot" strike and can lead to injuries including heel spurs, plantar fasciitis, runners knee and back pain.

Observe this:

This awkwardly large chart shows 'vertical ground reaction forces and foot kinematics for three foot strikes at 3.5 m s^-1 in the same runner." 

 It sounds disgustingly boring but..

Figure a. and b. shows the heel strike form wave has a rough and abrupt impact upon initial contact with the ground.

          When our heel connects with the ground first, there is little to nothing that the body can do to absorb the impact (other than the thick sole of the running shoe provided). This initial impact is what is causing injuries in runners. We much prefer to naturally land on the forefoot, which produces that clean sine-wave-like curve in figure c.

So there.