Barefoot feeling, wide toe box shoes have become much more popular these days as we're beginning to better understand the long term consequences and detriment of wearing modern day shoes that scrunch up your toes and numb the nerves of your soles.

I changed to wearing barefoot shoes well over a year now, and I'm never going back to wearing mainstream brands until they start selling barefoot, wide toe box options. The only exception I make at the moment are for my football cleats since I haven't been able to find a decent company that sells wide toe box cleats, but for everything else I wear barefoot, wide toe box shoes, specifically I wear Xero Shoes.

From the first day I purchased and put on my first pair of Xero Shoes (now I own 6 pairs lol), I was hooked and in love! It was like my feet were awakened from being in a coma from all these years wearing "normal", extremely fiat shoes. The fact that your toes can move freely within the shoe, and you can actually feel the ground with every step you take is so refreshing and greatly stimulating. And just by wearing and moving around in Xero Shoes regularly, you are able to train your feet to become more sensitive and aware as well as strengthen your feet as the lack of sole "protection" forces you to keep your feet muscles engaged and active. Whereas regular shoes have all this cushioning that can lead to the nerves losing their sensitivity and the muscles in your feet atrophying. A weak and under stimulated foot can often be the root cause for issues above the foot such as ankle and knee issues, and even higher up with hip and lower back issues. The foot must be strong and have the ability to root itself to the ground whenever in an upright position, similar to that of a tree which can only remain tall and strong if it's roots dig deep into the ground and keep everything above ground stable.

Although once you start wearing barefoot shoes, chances are you'll become addicted and want to do everything with them on, from my experience I believe it to be smarter to gradually increase the capacity of what you do. Start by getting your feet used to the barefoot feeling by walking and doing low intensity activities. And then from there as your feet become accustomed and reawakened essentially, increase the intensity to jogs and more moderate forms of exercise. Early on my feet would ache getting used to the barefoot feel but now after over a year wearing them on a daily basis I wear them for my higher intensity workouts such as sprinting and playing football. Xero Shoes don't sell cleats, but they do have hiking shoes that have decent grips on the soles which I wear for indoor football games or training sessions on grass or turf fields.

There's an overwhelming amount of information out there when it comes to improving health, but from my personal experience, I feel switching to barefoot shoes is a simple yet effective and affordable way to improve one's health one step at a time.

Does any one else own a pair of barefoot shoes?