Musings on Barefoot Running (and training) part 2

"...Without arguing that the external stimulus causes the emergence of a reflex, the modern physiological theory puts main emphasis on the fact the an organisms reaction to a stimulus (both unconditioned and conditioned reaction), in its form and content, is the determined not by the stimulus itself but by its significance for the individual; that is, the most important role is played by factors of internal purposefulness  against the background of which an external stimulus is frequently reduced to a trigger signal.
All the facts from modern behavioural science mean that any reflex ( in the narrow classical sense of the word" is not the element of an action, but is an elementary action as integral as any other action.

Nicholai A Berstien.

This aligns with a little bit that I remember from the Bhagavad Gita about the difference between, sense objects (external stimulus) and the sense's themselves. The passage meanders around a fair bit but the basic gist is that the reaction to the thing is more important than the thing itself.

So theory aside we can think about this in day to day terms. The reactions to a subject that you might have negative associations with or stepping on a Lego block have everything to do with your response in these moments rather than the things themselves. Of course things do happen that are out of our control but these moments are actually fewer and far between than most of us realise.

The human foot, like any other animals foot, is well designed for the tasks at hand. The basic architecture utilises arches, hydraulic supports in the form of sacs of synovial fluid that protects the major joints, and a series of semi cuboid bones that alternatively slide past one another and lock into one solid mass that braces the entire structure. Below this we have an elastic complex to hold and release kinetic energy and below that we have the sole of the foot that feeds sensory information to the rest of our body's.

Unfortunately when you lock a foot in a hunk of leather atop a pillow we essentially become blind to a fairly large part of the world. For the rest of the body this means trouble, we adapted to utilise this information and the sole of the foot MUST have this information and it doesn't care how it gets it. The lack of stimulus creates an autonomic nervous system reaction. The result is we pound the ground until we can see it through the shoes we put on to protect our feet from a world that they adapted to show us.

In my conversations with military personnel I heard non stop complaints from the older soldiers and officers that there knees, hips and backs were done and they blamed it directly on there boots. I can believe it, I've been around soldiers forced to run and march in their boots and the synchronised impact of the group was more than cringe worthy. It frankly looked like fucking torture to this guy and this guy has done some brutally hard work in his time.

Which brings me full circle to sense events and senses themselves. When I go camping I tend to peer about the camp-ground watching for adults attempting to take there first steps of the summer out of their shoes. I almost always see the same thing. Shoulders pulled back until the scapula are tight and inflexible and stiff legs and even stiffer feet. This is also accompanied by the "chicken walk" of a person gritting their teeth and trying to get there hard as a plank foot to adapt to the compacted surface of the camp ground that is strewn with gravel and sticks..

I personally think this is the same as wearing a blindfold for a year, tearing it off and throwing your eyes wide open and then trying to read Dostoevsky (the terrible fine print, soft cover editions) in full noonday light.

So it goes for our feet and thus it goes for the body. If you overload the sensory capacity of your feet you are completely shorting out the human body's amazingly well tuned ability to store, transfer and release energy. The solution is ease yourself into it like a hot bath until the body relaxes. When that happens your ability to adapt to the terrain is likely to be a pleasant surprise.

Next post on this subject, for any who care to drop by, will begin to discuss how to begin to reclaim the foots pliability and stability. Increasing systemic vascular circulation by using footplant and push off and maybe the counter intuitive nature of callous build up. Or whatever I can muster up.

Ciao