Review: Vibram FiveFingers Shoes (KSO)

Walk a Mile in my Shoes
(or even sixteen!)

I waited until I'd walked about 16 and a half miles in my new shoes (a little less than two weeks of wear -- I would normally put more miles on in two weeks but I'm trying to ease into the shoes) before writing a review because I wanted to have a good selection of data with which to analyze my reactions to these shoes. The short version is: it would feel like a punishment to have to go back to a more traditional shoe.



Vibram FiveFingers KSO Review

What are they?

You've probably heard of Vibram (pronounced "VEE-brum") as they have been making soles for hiking boots for many decades now. The company decided they wanted to produce their own line of shoes as well and FiveFingers was born. (http://www.vibramfivefingers.com) (Rather than reproduce a photo of the shoes here, I leave it to the reader to visit the site and see the entire line for themselves.)

These shoes are designed to imitate the biomechanics of walking barefoot (trust your feet!) while simultaneously offering protection from the rough and sometimes sharp surfaces humans tend to walk on. They have been around for a few years, gradually growing in popularity, and even have their own dedicated fan site run by a VFF lover who has no official affiliation with the company. (http://www.birthdayshoes.com/)

Do they really feel like being barefoot?

No. Yes. No. Sort of. My experience was that a LOT of the subtle sensations generated by barefoot contact with the ground were muted but most of the sensation and mechanics of walking barefoot were preserved.

My analogy at this point would be this: With nothing in or over your ears, you hear naturally (my apologies to any Deaf readers for this choice of analogy.) If you put, say, a cotton ball in the shell of each ear and held them in place with a light pair of foam Walkman/iPod headphones with no sound coming through the headphones, you would still hear pretty much everything you would with naked ears but it would be slightly muffled and you might lose a small range of pitch/volume. With a heavier pair of headphones -- the sort people might use with their home stereo that are heavily padded and completely cover the ear with a "cup" that blocks out the world -- you might not hear very much of what is going on around you, even with no sound coming through the headphones.

Walking barefoot is like listening with naked ears. Walking in traditional shoes is like having that big, muffling, home stereo set of headphones on your head. Walking in Vibram FiveFingers is like a little bit of cotton held over your ears. It's close to barefoot -- much, much closer than traditional shoes -- but, to use horseshoes vernacular, it's not a ringer.

Why did I want to try these shoes?

This section is long and autobiographical. If you're not interested, skip to the next section and you won't really lose anything out of this review. The short version is: my feet were killing me so I tried something different.

Growing up, I was one of those kids who kicked off her shoes as soon as possible. I spent most of my twenties barefoot whether in the city or the forest. I never put a lot of energy into shoes because they just weren't that important to me. No Manolos on my feet and when I had a job where I was required to wear high heel pumps I bought a high-quality pair of basic black shoes and wore that one pair for years. I'm just not naturally very "shoe focused."

I gained a lot of weight with a pregnancy at the end of my twenties and that affected my health in myriad ways, including the health of my feet. I developed plantar fasciitis and achilles tendonitis -- so bad at times that I couldn't get to class. So bad for a while that I couldn't even leave the house and had to crawl to the bathroom.

The usual round of podiatrist interventions ensued: coristone injections in my feet, tape wrapped around my feet, very expensive (and very useless) orthotics (which came completely out of pocket since my insurance wouldn't cover them), and finally very expensive shoes (a Mary Jane style shoe made by Birkenstock) that finally solved the problem enough to let me hobble around well enough to be productive again. But in the process I went from a person who loved to walk and run around to someone who rationed out steps. The worst was standing in one place -- I was okay so long as I kept moving but if someone stopped me to chat and I had to stand there for twenty or thirty minutes I couldn't walk the next day.

My podiatrist told me never, ever, ever, ever walk barefoot again, not even to go from the bedroom to the bathroom late at night. Always wear shoes with lots of arch support. Always.

Well, that was fine (although I've since learned that what I was doing was the rough equivalent of wearing a cast on a broken leg except that a broken leg mends while my feet were never going to truly mend in their "casts" but the muscles of my feet and legs would gradually atrophy from being locked in place and unable to work naturally.) But I was still trying to lose the weight and chair exercises just weren't cutting it for me (and I get a better work-out and more muscular endurance from my lower body than my upper body - partly due to being female but probably a general human characteristic to one degree or another.)

In the dead of winter I decided to try a workout tape to keep active. It was one of Leslie Sansone's videos where the viewer marches in place with a few variant moves to simulate walking or jogging several miles. The downstairs neighbor expressed a deep lack of appreciation for the noise this created on his ceiling so I started working out barefoot. I started slow with an easy 15-minute workout and built my way up and that's when I discovered something that seemed miraculous -- after a couple of weeks of sticking with my gentle workout, my feet were much less painful!

I dug into the medical journals for a little research and found many articles about plantar fasciitis and how it was prevented or healed by barefoot running. I was surprised to see all the scientific research about the healthy qualities of barefoot activity and surprised to see how wrong (at least for me) my podiatrist's advice had been.

I healed my fasciitis and tendonitis through barefoot exercise and afterward I found that whenever my feet started to complain again, I could pull out the exercise tapes and heal things up in a couple of weeks. I still had to wear shoes outside because my feet were weak and tender and I still couldn't stand in one place without seriously paying for it the next day, but I felt like I'd come to the end of my journey . . .

. . . until I was watching Matt Monarch's show and saw his shoes. Once I realized that there were shoes out there that imitate being barefoot while protecting the feet from pointy things, I knew I had to try the Vibram FiveFingers.

Selecting a style

After looking over the four available styles (more styles coming soon) I chose the KSO (Keep Stuff Out.) I didn't like the plastic tag that flops around at the heel of the Classics. After some reading I was afraid the velcro on the strap of the Sprints would abrade my foot (I have very sensitive skin.) That left the KSOs and their sister, the Flow, which is basically a KSO insulated for colder weather. As a side note, I hope to get a pair of Flows later to wear in the ice and snow. I also chose the KSOs because I like to walk in the woods when I can and I didn't want to spend a lot of time fishing pebbles out of my shoes.

Fitting

I don't live near a store where I could try on the VFFs so I had to order online. This made me nervous as the sizes are very precise. Every time I measured my feet I'd come up with a different number. I finally came up with a solution for measuring:

1. I found a right-angle in my home that didn't have molding or other projections to confuse the measurement (in my case this turned out to be the right angle between the floor and one of the gun safes.)

2. I put a piece of paper on the floor, carefully lining the edge up against the base of the gun safe.

3. I put the back of my heel flush against the safe and stepped straight down so that my foot was entirely on the paper with both my heel and the back edge of the paper flush against the back wall created by the gun safe.

4. I held a pencil perpendicular to the floor and marked the end of my longest toe.

5. I repeated the above for the other foot.

I felt pretty confident about that measure so I went with it. My left foot was one shoe size bigger than my right foot so I went with the bigger of the two sizes.

I had my heart set on black-on-black KSOs so I was a little distressed to see they were out of stock in my size but I just checked the website twice a day and within two days they showed up as available so I ordered and waited excitedly for them to arrive!

First wearing

Being nervous about the size and the possibility for exchange, I wore them in my house for the first several hours. My big toes hurt at the inside "corners" of my toenails and I had read that if your toes hurt the shoes are too small and if your heel hurts the shoes are too big so I was a little worried. But I thought about the idea that I would have to grow accustomed to the shoes and noticed that if I got a size any bigger the rest of my toes (which are quite short) would probably not stay in their pockets, so I finally screwed my courage to the sticking place and wore the shoes outside.

Since then, my left toe (the longer one) has stopped hurting and my right toe hurts much, much less so I have decided that I either had slightly ingrown toenails or my toes had to get used to a slight pressure on parts of them that traditional shoes never touch (that curve of the big toe on the side next to the rest of the toes.) My advice to anyone trying these shoes on is to listen to pain (of course!) but also take into account that feet are very sensitive with LOTS of nerve endings and might just be reacting to the new sensations at first.

Benefits?

Oh, man! These shoes are amazing! Within the first three miles, my pinky toes started straightening out (they had formerly been curved up against the rest of my toes due to shoe-shaping.) I had long strips of painful callous on the outside edge of the balls of my feet when I started wearing these shoes. The left foot callous is entirely gone. The right foot callous is nearly gone and not as painful anymore.

My feet are singing. Thursday night I was in a pub and the seats were taken so I stood up for about an hour. It was completely comfortable and I felt like I could have stood there all night. On Friday I couldn't tell that I'd been standing so long. I couldn't tell that I'd been standing at all; my feet felt perfect.

These shoes also fixed a problem I hadn't realized was caused by shoes. Because the VFFs are so close to barefoot, they improve the proprioceptive sense (the physical sense of where your body is in space-time.) I used to stumble or fall while walking because a foot would randomly come down wrong and roll so that I was standing on the outside of my shoe instead of on the sole. Depending on the terrain and on how much off-guard it caught me, I'd trip and sometimes fall to the ground. I didn't think to blame my shoes because this has happened all my adult life regardless of the shoes I was wearing. So I figured I had weak ankles or something.

But no. I've walked for two weeks in the VFFs and not a single foot roll. By "normal" standards, I should have twisted my foot four or five times in that space of time. Because my feet can feel the ground now, I am so much more sure-footed. This will mean far fewer injuries, both to my feet and ankles from the twisting and to the rest of me from the falling. That is so awesome!

Do they freak people out?

I don't think so, but it might be a regional thing. When I walk around other people I am mostly on campus or in the University neighborhood. Our campus has received awards for having the best outdoors program in the country so people here are more likely to have seen elite or unusual athletic shoes. So far, only two people have commented on the shoes: one who said they reminded her of Missoula because "everyone there wears them" and one who paused his phone conversation to yell "awesome shoes!" I said, "you know what these are?" and he said, "yeah, I know those. They're cool!"

So my "monster feet" might attract a little more unwanted attention someplace else, but where I live people have no hassles about my shoes.

Conclusion

This review was rather wordy but I am so excited about these shoes that I could have written five times as much about them and my experiences with them. I highly recommend them with the caution that if you are not used to walking barefooted, you want to ease into them slowly because the muscles in your feet and legs will be atrophied and you will risk injury if you walk too much in VFF before you have given your body a chance to strengthen in those regions that have been constrained due to the nature of traditional shoes with their cast-like rigidity.

I hope to never have to wear any other kind of shoe -- as I said at the beginning of this review, it would be a punishment to be forced to go back to a shoe that damages my feet, causes me pain, makes my feet roll out from under me, etc. I understand that there may come a day when an employer takes issue with my choice of footwear but hopefully I will have a little leeway since I'm going into academia where it's not only accepted but a little bit expected that professors will have "interesting eccentricities."

Or maybe the VFFs will continue to grow in popularity and be completely accepted by the time I finish grad school. A girl can dream, anyway.