Zero Drop, Barefoot, Wide? Are all these the same thing? Can a dress shoe really be healthy?
The term "barefoot" seems to get thrown around a lot lately, and we wanted to clear up the definition. Welcome to our guide to what is barefoot, and what is just good marketing.
The term "barefoot shoe" first emerged around Vibram FiveFingers, the wacky toe shoes that everyone loves to stare at and nobody really likes to wear. Don't get me wrong..people wear them, myself included for a season, but it's a love hate relationship. Barefoot shoes are really just shoes that facilitate your foot being in a barefoot position and having barefoot sensation (this part gets tricky later on).
Your body performs it's best when left as natural as possible. This is a concept most people can get behind, and really does apply to most people. So barefoot shoes sound like a good deal, enabling you to be as natural as possible. While most of the time yes, sometimes no. It really depends on the use case of a given shoe. For example a steel worker wouldn't want a shoe with really high ground feel and flexible upper, while someone who's doing yoga in a park would.
This brings us to the tricky part we mentioned earlier, where sensation matters. Sensory does affect motor, but greater sensation means less material, and less material means less longevity, less longevity means you buy the shoes at a higher rate since they break down.
So a thicker outsole, or tougher outsole may sacrifice ground feel for longevity. It really comes down to what the customer needs or wants the shoe for...Use case. If a shoe is used in a gym higher ground feel would mean more reaction from those intrinsic foot muscles. If a dress shoe is just in a board room or a cafe, and the activities are limited to walking on predictable surfaces at low speeds and low impact, then having a more durable outsole can be nice. Quality dress shoes aren't cheap, and I for one, am a big fan of products that last.
Ground feel is the area we sacrificed most, this was for the sake of longevity. Product longevity to be specific. At some point there is internal awareness of body position, for example the scapula doesn’t have any external sensation for us to know if it’s in position or protracted, etc.
