I have watched many barefoot videos on YouTube and I am amazed at what some people are doing while barefoot. I discovered barefooting this past summer and I love it. So my foot toughening journey began. I started out with very tinder 70 year old feet. The pads under the balls of my feet were very thin and walking barefoot on hard surfaces like hardwood floors was uncomfortable. My heels weren’t as thin probably from the fact I walked with a hard heel strike. A doctor recommended walking everyday to help with depression and brain fog. I enjoyed walking and one day I decided to take my shoes and socks off and walk in the grass along the road I was walking on. That felt amazing. When I got home I started researching walking barefoot and discovered earthing or grounding and its benefits. I located some convenient parks and began walking barefoot in them several times a week. As soon as my naked feet hit the grass stress melted away and I felt like a boy again. I am no longer taking an antidepressant and my brain fog has also cleared up. As time went on my feet slowly began toughening and the balls of my feet thickened along with the outer edge and heal. In addition to walking on grass I added mulch, uneven dirt trails and hard surfaces like blacktop and concrete. There is no earthing benefit to blacktop but it does help toughening. I liken the toughening process to working out. Your feet are going to get sore and you do have to use common sense so you don’t injure or discourage yourself. A few days ago I was able to hike barefoot on a wooden trail with some discomfort, but I managed over a mile and a half barefoot. The next day I did over two miles barefoot on grass. Today I did over a mile and my feet feel great. the weather is getting colder, but I am determined to press on with the toughening process. There are some YouTube barefoot walkers who don’t let the cold stop their barefoot walking. So I, too, am continuing to walk barefoot in cooler temperatures so as to not loose my hard earned foot toughening. Today I walked over a mile barefoot with the temperature at 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I hope to work up to a mile with temperatures down to 30. I virtually have stopped wearing socks and when I wear shoes I wear soft, flat lightweight canvas shoes without socks. I have started driving barefoot and as soon as I walk into the house I am barefoot. My goal is by spring to be able to walk comfortably over most hard rough surfaces so when I go hiking I can do it barefoot. I am curious to hear from others as to how they toughen their feet.
This definitely helps. Every spring and summer now I go to a nearby forest trail just to walk barefoot there. Grounding, real or not? Point is I don't care, I'll happily take even the placebo effect because it's that damn good. I just jumped straight to the deep end. To paraphrase that quote from the Bible, "Take off your shoes and walk". You just have to keep doing it, and let time do its thing to your soles. Challenge your feet on a variety of surfaces to train them. Never surrender, and the reward awaits. My Holy Grail was to finally manage winter walking on snow. It was a real sense of achievement for me and felt worth the effort, even if I can only keep it going for a limited amount of time because of obvious laws of physics.
Today when I left the house it was just 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I walked barefoot from the house, across the black top driveway to my truck approximately one hundred feet. Then I drove barefoot for thirty minutes to my appointment. Following my appointment I went to the park and walked almost two miles barefoot on the grass and a short mulch trail. Last night it was down in the low thirty’s and my feet found some squishy wet sections that really felt good and extra cold. Afterwords I drove home barefoot and now I am sitting barefoot as I enter this update.
Fuck...you're doing everything right! The key to successful barefooting is GO SLOW, which doesn't mean walk slowly but rather build up your body's agility by barefooting a little (30 minutes, 45 minutes) each day or so. Your calves may ache for a bit as the muscles get used to "walking naturally," i.e., without shoes. The sensations are indeed wonderful, and they supply the impetus to keep going barefoot. At the same time, the body is NOT a machine, so expect a little moaning and groaning from your legs until barefooting IS your new normal.
It’s not my legs that are complaining it’s my feet. They love the grass and I give them lots of grass, but they don’t like the hard wood mulch trail and rocks. But I can tell my tolerance is increasing and my feet are slowly toughening. I can hardly wait for my next barefoot walk.
Just want to update my foot toughening progress. I watched a video on how to walk barefoot on gravel. Gravel has been my most difficult advisory. First, I continue to walk barefoot everyday pretty much all day. The video I watched suggested a flat foot strike on gravel so my body weight is evenly distributed over the entire sole. I have found this technique does make gravel walking more tolerable. Which encourages me to walk on gravel so my soles can toughen even more.
That term toughen is so vague and implies its all about the skin. I notice with training like hiking the rougher pavement after a wile the padding what ever its called under the skin in the ball of foot adapts and grows almost like gym exercise on muscles but different its reacting to pressure I guess. Me it seems to take a good month to build that up. Way more to it then thicker skin. Thicker padding. The store I would hike barefoot to for my nightly 24 oz beer closed : ( One block was really rough but I got to where that didn't hurt anymore. Now the other store if I really want a beer I bicycle. I think I liked the walk more then the beer cause I don't get a beer every night anymore.
I love walking barefoot to the convenient store and I never get asked where are my shoes and the walk is over some rough road and the sidewalk doesn’t go all the way to the store it goes through a vacant lot where theirs grave and weeds and I walk that like it was paved. I really love walking around barefoot
