Was at a shoe store to buy a pair of shoes for my little daughter who is 2 years old. Searched the range of products at the shop and unfortunately could not find what I had on mind. I tried every shoe by bending and twisting them to see how flexible they were, unbelievably none were. I asked the shop keepers for zero drop shoes and they had no idea what I was talking about. All the shoes had a thick and inflexible sole, and an elevated heel to provide “support” for kids’ feet. That is what the proud owner of the shop enlightened me with.

Those who know me in person or have read my earlier blog posts should probably know how much I appreciate the idea of minimalism at running. A big chunk of the fuss about minimalism is due to the negative impact of our modern lifestyle to our posture. The support from shoes tend to provide comfort, which means it does the job or a portion of the job of some parts in our feet to take the pressure off them. Therefore those parts become weaker and lose their coordination to act properly at walking or running or even standing, because their jobs are taken over by shoes.

It is very common to feel pain at knee, shin or ankle shortly after running in a new pair of shoes. Such pains are due to the adaptation of our lower leg soft tissues (muscles, tendons, whatsoever) to the new condition. They naturally want to take their designated action at a phase of running but their job is already taken so they conflict with the shoes, but our body is smart enough to adapt, so those parts would stop their behaviour or lessen the force exerted behind the actions by a new wiring developed in the brain to turn such movements off or be replaced by some others and that is it: we deviate from natural movement of our body parts to serve a purpose, which is either comfort or speed (cannot think of more, can you?).

I wonder if mobility scooters were cheaper than shoes, how many of those runners in highly supportive shoes would buy one?!

Joking apart, have you ever seen athletes who proudly say that they have manged to skip working out some muscles in their body?! I have, shod runners with cushioning, arch support and elevated heel in their shoes do it all the time. They skip strengthening their feet, you know why? because it is bloody hard! it takes time to work out those tiny creatures down under your legs but it is possible and comes with great benefits. It is like building the foundation of a house, is not it the most important very first step?!

What I am trying to conclude here is there is a cycle of wrong unnatural doing, mainly driven by the [growing] tendency for [more] comfort, and is enforced to the world of the little ones too. A kid is so light and fast growing compared to an adult. Let them develop by their nature and grow stronger feet. They can manage because their proportion of strength to body size is much more than that of a typical adult. Have not you seen little kids who can hang off a bar one-handed?! I cannot do it for longer than a second but my daughter can for an impressively longer time. It is very simple, her body is too light for her hands until she grows up so that the balance of strength would be about to tip. If she keeps practicing she would likely be able to maintain that proportion for longer or maybe even a life time but probably the modern lifestyle would stop her at some point. That does not mean we are allowed to weaken our kids’ feet, make them be demanding support for the most natural sport just because we, as their parents, have gone on such a path. It does make no sense to me at all.

So we went online and found these ones at Zemgear, kids love them and my wife and I are so happy about it. Go strong kids, never follow suit blindfolded. 

Was reading Meb for Mortals recently and Advanced Marathoning a while back when noticed both authors, despite being elite long distance runners, mentioned the mental pressure at kilometer 30+ at marathon races. That is very true. No matter how fit you are, you start feeling breaking apart at that mileage and that is where the mental challenge starts. You try to put yourself together while your body wants to be out. As soon as you get close to 40km mark, the euphoria of seeing the finish line soon would be enough to keep you going to the end.

Succeeding at such a challenge takes believing in yourself. If you doubt about your abilities, you have low mental power at that stage of the race to overcome the down-feeling. Worth mentioning there is a fine line here between realising the risk of getting injured, and having confidence to push through the pain in hope of success. That is your call, but if you have trained enough, I would say believe in yourself and push!

Well, believing in yourself is always easy on paper, sometimes real tough in real life. Sometimes you can be talked through, sometimes you have to practically prove it to yourself.

A while ago I was challenged to jump over a bench, and although I was able to jump that high, I just could not do it. My mind kept telling me my feet would hit the edge of the backrest. There were two benches, same height and next to each other. I practiced a lot jumping over the benches with no luck jumping over from stationery position. The best I had done was with a little step forward before jumping. Today I thought of a trick to break my mental barrier. I used a sticky tape to link the top edges of the benches and then tried jumping over the tape. If I hit the tape there would not be any danger, so I just jumped, and it worked. Once I practiced a couple of times I jumped over the bench with no hesitation, and bang, nailed it. Looked like a small step, could be a giant leap for one.