i’ve been spending the last few months trialing mexican huarache running sandals, the sandals shown above.
getting to the point where i could wear these crazy awesome sandals was a journey.
i’ve had insanely flat feet for as long as I can remember. while they aren’t rigid flat feet (where you can’t see an arch when your foot is suspended), they are pancake-flat under load, like the example shown below.
left unattended, flat feet like this can be Very Bad™ for one’s kinetic chain. i’m not a podiatrist, but this is my ELI5 understanding of what “Very Bad™” means here:
your arch is super important for keeping your ankles, shins and knees aligned while under load. when the arch isn’t there, they compensate in ways that cause unwanted stress. this leads to osteoarthritis, bunions and other inconveniences that making mobility difficult later in life.
my parents put me in orthotics very early in life to prevent this. (my first pair of orthotics were constructed from plaster molds of my feet that an podiatrist made. podiatrist’s NPs use iPads now.)
while this definitely prevented my feet from getting flatter (and my ankles and knees from running further inwards), this completely eliminated any chance of me wearing sandals.
not being able to wear sandals didn’t bother me much…until I moved to Texas.
seeing everyone, including my wife, being able to take advantage of Basically Summer for six months out of year (and Diablo Sauce Summer for an extra three) with super-comfy Birks made me jealous.
so in January 2023, I finally set out to end this once and for all. i decided to completely rid of my orthotics.
this wasn’t the first time I’ve sworn off from the things. when I first discovered Reddit in 2013, I stumbled upon /r/BarefootRunning while I was looking for info on weaning off of orthotics. it was here that I was introduced to minimalist shoes.
minimalist shoes aim to make you use your feet more actively. they do this through four key features:
- they incorporate a wide toe box that allow the toes of your feet to fully splay out, as they are designed to do,
- they are also “zero drop” or “zero heel”, meaning the sole of the shoe is flat from heel to toe and your feet are fully planted on the ground,
- they remove cushioning between your feet and the ground to improve stability, and…
- they have no arch support.
despite not having any arch support, /r/BarefootRunning could not stop talking about how minimalist shoes completely fix flat feet, completely without orthotics. i was hooked and bought the Vibram Five Fingers shown above.
for months, I ran and walked tons of them. i switched out all of my sneakers for low-profile tennis shoes. (I only wear vivobarefoot sneakers these days.). living life without orthotics was amazing…until my right knee started aching. and then screaming.
orthotics were the only thing that would quell the screaming, so I would ultimately go straight back to them.
the one thing that /r/BarefootRunning didn’t talk much about, and the one thing i didn’t learn until literally this year is this: minimalist shoes are good, but useless when your feet are weak.
As someone who deadlifts and squats heavy weights and has for years now, this was a shock to me…but it made total sense when i thought about it.
again, not a podiatrist, so here’s my ELI5 level understanding of what was happening.
almost everyone learns how to walk as kids. walking and running as kids is what builds up our arches.
however, when kids begin to wear shoes, the shoes offset the work that feet would normally do, reducing development.
elevated heels reduce tension on the calves and tendons, and arch supports absorb shock that would normally be captured by ones arch.
as a result, arch development is mostly a function of how much time they spend barefoot while not wearing shoes (and other factors). put another way, children who are more at-risk of developing flat feet are much more likely to have them once they wear shoes.
additionally, your walking gait and standing positions adapt to your shoes instead of the shoes adapting to your gait and stance.
this is likely why the pain in my right knee always came back.
my right foot is much flatter than my left. consequently, when i walk, my right foot angles slightly outwards.
because my arches never fully developed, and because i grew up with shoes that did the work for me, the obvious fix (and the fix that most podiatrists will prescribe, even today) is to develop custom orthotics that provide more support.
wearing the orthotic eliminates everything, since it provides the support your shoes were providing for you. however, once you take the support away, your feet are on their own…and your tendons, ankles, calves, knees, hips, etc.
all of these muscles and joints contribute to mobility, and all of them were too weak to support me, so my body adjusted. i think my right knee twists outwards whenever my right foot is under load, likely to compensate for weak calves and ankles. this was probably always a problem, but years and years of it eventually catch on.
i didn’t give up. i was done with orthotics, and if i needed to rebuild foundational strength to do it, so be it.
i signed up for a program that strengthens flat foot arches. these won’t create arches — that ship has sailed — but it will strengthen the low arch I have and the rest of the foot/lower kinetic chain around them to reduce injuries.
it’s been eight months since I’ve started strengthening my feet, and eight months since I wore my last orthotic (which I got completely online, since many podiatrist’s offices are kind of slimy; for example, paying $400+ for orthotics that you can get for $100, and that’s all out of your pocket since American insurance doesn’t cover them!). i’ve walked hundreds of miles since then. I’ve even started running again (I am very slow).
while I had a small stint of knee pain during a road trip, it has since disappeared. (i was trying out Correct Toes to attempt at reducing the crazy bunion I have in my right foot. The thought was that having more, well, correct toes would be net-positive long term. My knee did not agree.)
i don’t want to jinx it, but i think i am finally free from orthotics. to celebrate, i bought sandals.
there are tons of minimalist sandals out there. many of them are good. however, i wanted sandals with a leather foot bed, and my only real options were mexican huaraches. since they look badass and are not very common, i got myself a few pairs.
they have been an adjustment (to say the least), but I absolutely love them. i love how comfortable they are getting as the leather breaks in and molds to my foot. super cool. they are also amazing to run in, which makes sense given the tribe from which they originated.