I lived in New Zealand for a number of years and I clearly remember my older brother playing rugby barefooted. I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but your seventh birthday in New Zealand was a big deal as it was the day you got your first pair of rugby boots. Prior to that, in the lower age groups, it’s played barefoot.
The coaches and I were chatting this week with a local physio who is treating one of our students and he believes barefoot running/training leads to fewer ankle and knee injuries later in life. His comments resonated with me as I’m largely at a loss to explain the relatively high incidence of lower leg injuries/syndromes in sport these days.
When you’re running in studs or regular running shoes, your ankles and feet have a certain level of support, and that transfers to a more stable running platform for your knees and hips. Running barefoot on grass or sand, however, is a totally different feeling. When people run barefoot on sand for the first time, they get sore in muscles that they don’t even feel when they’re running in shoes or studs. These are all of the little stabilizer muscles waking up and being forced to work – the same lower leg muscles that typically get twisted and injured in soccer, rugby, (American) football and similar sports.
It would be interesting to ask Matthew O’Neill if these types of injuries are common in martial arts, where the participants are often training exclusively barefoot. If you go to a sports store, you don’t find knee and ankle braces near the martial arts gear or punching bags – you usually find them near the football and soccer boots. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
It might be that the most inexpensive way to prevent these ankle and knee problems is to get a soccer ball and go kick it around at your local field – barefoot. Do a couple of barefoot laps around the field, zig-zagging and dribbling the soccer ball and you’ll be training your ankles and knees to react to a totally different kind of stimulus.
You’ll find that you can’t make the same kind of drastic direction-changes without the traction provided by footwear. And that’s a good thing. You’ll be training your body to react to different stimulus and avoid injury in the future.
I’m inspired now – as are all of us coaches – so please don’t be surprised if barefoot 4v4 games/competitions, barefoot beach foot tennis and just a bit of barefoot running are introduced at some point soon. Promise it won’t be in winter though!
I’ve included a video which explains the mechanics of the foot and the problems these days possibly being a result of the introduction of supportive footwear. Please ignore the blatant advertising at the end.
Thanks Julie! We will definitely be trying this 🙂
Sounds like fun if nothing else, ay ? !!
Hi.know an emma dolan any relation.
Does julie dolan know an emma dolan.any relation?she lived in Nz. Now in wales .she’s thirty nine now.
Hi. Lynda j may be able to help you