On Tuesday, March 10, I ran a 5K in Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. It hurt. When I coach on a heavy strength day, I always tell people to take off their shoes. Footwear or lack thereof is a valuable tool for optimizing workout performance. There is ideal footwear for heavy slowlift days, heavy olympic lifting days, running days, and mixed modal metcons.
Let's start with a little physics, specifically Newton's third law of motion: "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." When you stand on the ground, you push down on the ground and the ground pushes back on you. When you are working out, you want to get back as much of that energy as possible, which brings us to physics point number 2: harder materials transfer energy better than softer materials. When you are standing on the hard ground in barefeet, there is no little to no buffer for the transfer of energy. Soft surfaces and cushioned shoes dissipate this energy. In some cases, such as running, jumping, and olympic lifting, a little dissipation is a good thing, as your foot needs protection from the violent forces you are applying. In many cases, dissipation is not a good thing, since you need every watt of energy back. Footwear obviously serves to protect the skin and musculoskeletal structure of the foot, and it may also helps facilitate certain movements by improving or compensating for flexibility or movement problems. Somewhere along the line, the industry has gone way overboard with the protection idea to the point that our feet are actually atropyhing and losing some of their function. Think of it like our feet are sitting around on cushy pillows all day, getting soft and weak. Footwear must balance the need to protect feet and improve function.
Training and living barefoot have their benefits, though few people in industrial nations have realized them. Crossfit and the lifestyle it promotes is in many ways elemental, going back to the old school way of training (functional movements) and eating (paleo diet). This train of thought might also imply an endorsement for elemental footwear, ie no footwear. In his New York Magazine article : "You Walk Wrong," Adam Sternbergh lays out how shoes have weakened our feet and altered the way we walk and run. Your feet are much like your hands in that they are full of nerve endings that send the brain information about the environment, and tell your brain how to interact with it. If you have a big buffer between your feet and your environment, you overcompensate to get sensory feedback. It has been shown that the more cushioning you have in your shoe, the harder you pound the ground when you walk and run, leading to great stress on your muscles and joints.In barefeet, instead of taking big strides and heel striking hard when we walk, we take shorter strides and the heel contacts the ground softer with a bent knee. See this comparison from Sternbergh's article:
When we speed up from walking to running in barefeet, we take even shorter strides by landing on the ball of our foot, popping the foot back up again, and letting our momentum carry us forward. Barefoot running technique is the basis of the POSE method.
Now let's take a look at our footwear options for Crossfit. Most expensive are olympic lifting shoes. Available from manufacturers like Adidas and Do-Win, these shoes have a hard, raised sole made of wood or plastic. Straps run across the width of the top of the shoe to secure the foot against lateral movement.

Next on the menu are typical running or crosstraining shoes. These shoes are the most common shoes seen in the gym, made by Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc. Running and crosstraining shoes typically have a slightly raised heel with lots of cushioning via a patented and overmarketed technology.
Vibram Five fingers are a relatively new "close to barefoot" option. Think of a five-toed sock with a rubber coating on the bottom, and you're most of the way there. Unless otherwise noted, when I refer to barefoot in this article, these uber-socks are grouped in with the term "barefoot." The main difference between these socks and a true barefoot is a slight muting of the sensory feedback from nerve endings due to the rubber sole.

Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars have been a staple footwear for many communities since 1918 when Chuck Taylor put on his first pair. Basketball players, punk rockers, and now Crossfitters have bought into the classic, minimalist sneaker. These shoes are characterized by their hard, flat rubber sole and canvas upper.

The final option is provided by good old mother nature. Barefoot allows your feet to roam free and get dirty.

All of these options are legitimate for different kinds of workouts. So what would one pick for a running workout such as a 5K or 4 800m repeats? It depends on your ability to run correctly using the POSE method. The POSE method, as taught by CF Endurance Coach Brian MacKenzie, safely uses muscle elasticity to keep the runner in the air and off the ground as long as possible. Traditional running shoes promote incorrect running technique by cushioning the heel. A heel cushion allows for heel strike, full foot follow-through, and finally a push off, keeping the athlete on the ground. If you take away the cushioned heel, an athlete starts to run more correctly by striking on the ball of the foot and popping up quickly. Though this method is instinctive in the absence of a cushioned heel, running is a skill, and fatigue can make old habits rear their head; an athlete will regress back to heel striking unless they have learned the POSE technique well. If you have no POSE experience, stick to your traditional cushy shoes. It is better to heel strike in a cushioned heel than with no heel. If you are somewhat confident in your POSE ability, or a are willing to take some punishment trying to learn not to heel strike, you might choose to wear Chucks. If you run POSE well, you might wear the Vibram Five Fingers.
What about a slow lift (squats, press, or deadlift) strength day? Again, it depends. For squats you must ask: how is my squat flexibility? Squatting in barefeet helps improve ankle flexibility by forcing you to proper depth without the assistance of the raised heel of a shoe. One can see that the angle of the ankle joint in the bottom of a squat is much sharper without shoes as opposed to with shoes. Can you comfortably and soundly squat in barefeet? If the answer is yes and you are training on a relatively clean and dry surface, you should squat in your barefeet. If the answer is no, you may benefit from the additional flexibility afforded by the raised heel of a lifting shoe. The press and deadlift can be be done in barefeet, lifting shoes, or Chucks. The deadlift and the press have none of the flexibility hang-ups that will be assisted by lifting shoes, and good old foot on floor contact is the best way to ensure stability and force transfer. Solid-soled Chucks and lifting shoes will ensure force transfer and are also acceptable options. Cushioned running shoes are the absolute worst option for the slow lifts. They have a compressible heel which dissipates force from the floor. Also, as Lon Kilgore and Mark Rippetoe point out in their article: "Weightlifting Shoes 101," you never have a chance to train subtle technique points if you are constantly training on an unstable surface. "And there is an increased chance for a balance or stability loss-induced injury while lifting heavy weights, since perfect balance cannot be assured on an imperfect surface" (Kilgore and Rippetoe).
For fast olympic lifts, where you will be jumping and landing with a loaded barbell, such as cleans, snatches, and jerks, lifting shoes or Chucks are best. Both are solid-soled shoes that transfer force well, though the wooden or synthetic heels of lifting shoes transfer force better than the hard rubber soles of the Chucks. Lifting shoes offer the added benefits of stability straps and the raised heel. When performing snatches and cleans, an athlete may benefit more from the added flexibility of a raised heel even more than in the slow squats. In the slow lifts, depth of a squat is pretty well determined, regardless of weight; the athlete is picking the bottom of the squat and standing up once they have reached that depth. In the squat clean and the squat snatch, depth is determined by weight. An athlete may have to squat deeper than normal to catch a heavy clean or snatch, and the raised heel of the lifting shoes will provide the assistance to allow the athlete to squat to those depths. Barefeet are not a good option here. Though they offer good stability and force transfer, it is easy to bruise your feet doing heavy or high-rep Olympic lifts. Since you are trying to drive yourself under the load for all of the Olympic lifts, you feet will be moving fast and hard back to the floor after jumping, which can bruise your soles. A little bit of the dulling of the sensory feedback from wearing hard soled shoes in this situation is not a bad thing, because you don't want pain from your feet keeping you from moving fast and hard in these lifts. Again, running shoes are the worst option for the reasons listed above in the slow lifts section. The stability and force transfer problems described for the slow lifts are exacerbated by the speed of the olympic lifts.
So what about your mixed-modal metabolic conditioning workouts, which blend running, slow lifts, olympic lifts, and gymnastics? One answer, Chucks. Chucks give you the best of all worlds: flat, hard, thin, grippy rubber sole, sturdy canvas upper. Good for running short distances regardless of POSE ability. Good for lifting. Not too heavy to impede gymnastics. A close second is the Vibram Five Fingers. These are tough to run in if you don't run POSE well, and you may hurt your feet doing oly-lifts, but your feet will be somewhat protected either inside or outside. Barefoot may be the way to go if you are not running, box jumping, or oly-lifting. Lifting shoes can be worn if you're not running. Cushioned running shoes are not a good option.They interfere with lifting and they are not good for running.
Post about your choice of footwear to comments. What influences your decisions when you buy shoes: cost, looks, performance, etc?
Sources/ further information: Weightlifting Shoes 101, You Walk Wrong, Running Shoe Technology, Brian Mackenzie ...[wmv][mov]
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