It's my solid opinion (not backed by science though! ), that running shoes are extremely important, unless you are able to run on a soft underground, like in a forest. Solid shoes, with airpockets and all new techniques ensure the 'thud' of landing your feet is being absorbed, which is crucial for keeping your knees healthy.
Furthermore, no-one has 'perfect feet', and needs some correction, to ensure they run properly, landing your feet in the most comfortable way, and correctly distributing the weight and impact equally along your entire foot. Yes, some can run barefoot, just like some can climb mountains without any equipment, or waterski without the skis. The average western human being just doesn't have the right 'build' any more to run barefoot.As to which running shoes are good for you, really depends on 'you'.
Depending on your running style, type of foot, and actually the motion you go through when running, defines what shoe is best for you. That's why there are specialized running shops, who will put you on a running band, video your actual performance, analyze that, and THEN come up with the right shoe for you. Nike, Adidas, Converse, ASICS and New Balance all create new types of shoes every year, and they keep pushing the envelope of bringing more protection to your knees, legs and feet.
It's quite easy, but you have to change your habits, not to land on the heel. I've tried, and you have to increase your cadence, and to shorten your tread. Try with short distance first.It's really great, but I feel uncomfortable because of the fear of injuries (glass, little rocks, etc).
I think I'm gonna try Vibram Fivefingers.
It’s so easy that no one ever has to teach you how to do it. It’s so easy, in fact, that we often pair it with other easy activities—talking, chewing gum—and suggest that if you can’t do both simultaneously, you’re some sort of insensate clod. So you probably think you’ve got this walking thing pretty much nailed.
As you stroll around the city, worrying about the economy, or the environment, or your next month’s rent, you might assume that the one thing you don’t need to worry about is the way in which you’re strolling around the city. Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: You walk wrong. Look, it’s not your fault.
It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet.
I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk.
In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet. Last year, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, published a study titled “Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?” in the podiatry journal The Foot. The study examined 180 modern humans from three different population groups (Sotho, Zulu, and European), comparing their feet to one another’s, as well as to the feet of 2,000-year-old skeletons.
The researchers concluded that, prior to the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet. Among the modern subjects, the Zulu population, which often goes barefoot, had the healthiest feet while the Europeans—i.e. , the habitual shoe-wearers—had the unhealthiest.
One of the lead researchers, Dr. Bernhard Zipfel, when commenting on his findings, lamented that the American Podiatric Medical Association does not “actively encourage outdoor barefoot walking for healthy individuals. This flies in the face of the increasing scientific evidence, including our study, that most of the commercially available footwear is not good for the feet.” Okay, so shoes can be less than comfortable.
If you’ve ever suffered through a wedding in four-inch heels or patent-leather dress shoes, you’ve probably figured this out. But does that really mean we don’t walk correctly? (Yes.) I mean, don’t we instinctively know how to walk?
(Yes, sort of.) Isn’t walking totally natural? Yes—but shoes aren’t. “Natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person,” wrote Dr. William A.
Rossi in a 1999 article in Podiatry Management.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.