What did the Five Finger say to the foot?

I've been religiously wearing my Vibram (Vee-Brum) Five Fingers for over 3 years now. What I've learned over that time is how to react to the floor. That has allowed me to more efficiently and effectively walk, run, jump and stand.

Follow me for a second while I attempt to simulate your brain. The largest organ in your body is... Your skin! It's very challenging to stimulate your skin without contact, damn near impossible. We wear more clothes in the colder months to keep us warm and close off much of our skin from that cold stimulus. Adversely in the warm summer months we wear less and allow our skin to get stimulated by the sun and experience more i.e. sand, water, etc...

Now tell me showering doesn't feel good. It does for a few reasons, but mainly it "feels" good because your nerves are getting stimulated by the water.

Back to my point - What the VFF accomplished is creating a minimal sneaker that allowed you to feel the ground without being completely barefoot. I'm totally an advocate for barefoot conditioning, but the mainstream public rather have something on.

In college we test, "ground reaction force" which is the amount of pressure one's body hits the ground. We found out that people created more force with the more cushion between them and the ground.

For example, if you were to run on gymnastics mats vs concrete the forces applied would be different.

Let's break it down..
Force = Mass x Acceleration
F=MA

Your body mass is fairly constant, however you can change the acceleration and/or deceleration to the ground.

As humans we have a muscular system that moves our skeletal system to get around. Say you jump up, you dictate how soft your landing is. While in motion you can only control your deceleration force towards the by increasing the time that force is applied.

Huh?

Say I jump into a pool with 3 feet of water, my impact force at the bottom of the pool will be low. Now jumping into that same pool without water I could produce the same low impact if it takes me the same time to hit the bottom. It could happen, but would require your entire body to react slowly to the ground from a pencil to fetal as you touched the floor.

Another amazing benefit of these funky sneakers is the toe box.

What's that?
-The space distal from the balls of your feet.

The toe box is open and wider than almost all sneakers on the market and it has toe separation. That allows you to be more stable on your forefoot.

Lastly, it looks bad-ass and people know your serious about your fitness if you're rocking a pair of VFF.

Which is best for you?
Check out birthdayshoes.com for all the latest and greatest reviews of VFF and all barefoot/minimal conditioning shoes.