All of a sudden, everyone's saying you got to switch to barefoot shoes. You got to switch to barefoot shoes to fix your feet. Is that true? I'm not sure it's that simple. The world is catching on to healthier footwear. And more and more there's a bunch of other options besides just barefoot shoes, like these, these, these, or maybe those. But none of that's going to matter or make any sense unless I also tell you what makes shoes more or less healthy.

And I've spent years getting a bunch of different shoes, testing and analyzing them. And I want to break down everything I've learned and just give you the tools to evaluating shoot um including the four qualities of healthy footwear that I've come up with and the cushioning cheat sheet I made to make that kind of easier. But we'll get into all that later. First off, why is this even matter at all? I remember going to my company all hands event and we're walking around all day sitting standing whatever and I'm wearing these Reeboks and by the end of the day my feet hurt so bad that as soon as we were outside on like turf I had to take them off and my feet smell as weird that I'm wearing socks at a work event and that discomfort was a part of my life for a long time but I happened to be looking up like flip flops with an ankle strap just cuz I thought that would be cool for some reason.

I bought some from a brand that just so happens to make like super minimal footwear that's just flat. And to my surprise, when I started wearing these, some of the problems started going away. Okay, so standing around and walking around all day isn't the problem. It's the shoes I'm wearing. But it's not as simple as just switching to 6 mm flip flops for everybody. I got my dad a pair of barefoot shoes, but eventually his planer fasciitis, pain in the arch in your of your foot that was flaring up so bad that he had to just completely stop wearing them.

I think yeah, barefoot shoes have a bunch of great qualities that are generally good for your feet. But the attributes that really matter can be found in other shoes. You just got to know what to look for, which is why I'm going through the four qualities here. What makes shoes more or less healthy? There's a spectrum of how much any shoe has these individual attributes that makes it better for your foot. Before you roll your eyes at any of these, there is more than meets the eye to almost all of them.

So, first off, constricted toes to free toes. This one's not very controversial. Your toes are made to play out when you press into them, and they spread and give a dynamic foundation for your body. They're essential to the function of the foot, how it's supposed to lock and spring and everything. And it's no secret that if you cram them into a small shape, they will change over time and they'll look freaking weird. So, you get the idea.

Less constriction on the toes is typically better, right? So, this was going to be my example. This is a Converse shoe. Yeah, there's good things about it in a lot of ways. It's kind of light and flexible, a thinner flat sole, but it constricts the toes. Next one. Uh, moving to a flat sole from an elevated heel. Now, if you're not paying attention, it can feel like not a lot of shoes actually really elevate the heel that much, but it can be deceiving.

Check that out. The heels actually elevated a decent amount in this shoe. And what that does is changes your posture. You stand in a different way. Obviously, this is an example with high heels, but same thing happens to varying degrees, right? Your posture is different. You walk different. Your feet get kind of pressed into the bottom of the shoe. And having a flat sole, even maybe without arch support, allows you to stand flat on the earth and have a natural posture with balance displaced across your feet.

Right. Next, more cushioning to less cushioning. Think of Hokas and Nike Air Maxes. And there's a bunch of shoes that have like memory foam and they're supposed to be super comfortable, but do you like standing on like a memory foam mattress? Your feet can't. It's a little uncomfortable. It kind of sucks. Regardless, here's an example. There's just all this cushiony squish between your feet and the ground. And that just kills the dynamic relationship that your feet are kind of made to have with the earth.

They're made to stand on solid ground and respond to the sensory feedback from it. But if you're thinking, "Dude, we live in a new world. We live in a man-made world with all these concrete, flat, hard surfaces. That just ain't going to work." Don't worry. There's actually a catch to this one that not a lot of people talk about, but I'm going to get into it later. And then, okay, you might be thinking, free toes, flat sole, less cushioning.

How about I just wear a Japanese gheta traditional sandal? Why did the screen just What the heck happened? I'm just going to tell you that's a mistake many have made, but you don't want to do that cuz you want a more flexible shoe. If your foot can't move around and have that same kind of dynamic feedback with whatever you're walking on, it's not going to be able to function how it's supposed to. it's not going to be strong, right?

So, all these things contribute to letting your feet work, build up strength. These are all things that you want your feet to have cuz they're setting the foundation for your whole body. Not necessarily in order of importance, by the way. But just to drive at home, your feet are like hands and they need to work how they're supposed to, right? Imagine having to wear boxing gloves all the time or boxing gloves that are too small.

We jam our feet into these little boxes and they can't do anything. They're just like So that's kind of something we hear a lot when we're talking about barefoot shoes, but that's just a matter of fact about how we treat our feet in general these days. So my take is that maximizing the healthy attributes in your shoes is the best way to help your feet after taking your individual needs into account. Little nuance there.

You thought I wouldn't do that. But this whole conversation is important because the way your body moves in the world starts with your feet. I'll give my kind of suggestions for how much you should prioritize each one. But first, let's also talk about cushioning. Remember the catch with cushioning? Turns out there's a bit of debate about how much cushioning you really need in a shoe or how much you should have. Even within barefoot shoes, there's quite a bit of variability because some people really just need a little bit more cushioning or they're going to get injured, right?

Or if you're going on crazy hikes or if you just if you just want more cushioning, there's room for that. And there's kind of a spectrum. All you got to know is how to decipher how much cushioning you want. So, that's typically talked about is stack height, how much material there is between your foot and the ground. 8 mm or less, I'm calling the most minimal. 8 to 12 mm, I'm calling minimally cushioned. And 13 mm plus, we're going to call more cushioned.

This is purely my opinion, but let's just show you the whole cheat sheet here. But in the most minimal territory, you've got shoes like this with like three or so millimeters feeling super minimal, like you're basically not wearing anything at all, just walking straight on the concrete to like 6 to 8 mm where you at least kind of feel like you have a shoe on. Then around that like 8 to 10 mm, still feels really minimal, but there's a little bit of cushioning between you and the ground, less hard feeling.

And once you get more to like 12 mm, you're going to start to feel a little bit of squish, right? And then with the more cushioned stuff, like around 16 mm, 15 mm, you're going to kind of lose your ground feel, but you're getting into a pretty nice territory if you're in the camp where you need or want a little bit more cushioning. And then you have plenty of space even above that with here's like an Ultra shoe that has a 25 mm stack height.

All these shoes, by the way, have wide toe boxes, flat soles, and are flexible more or less to varying degrees here. Lots of websites will just tell you the stack cut of a shoe. Sometimes you got to do a little bit of research or even just having this kind of point of reference will get you most of the way there. So you can have an insole, a midsole, and an outsole. Not all shoes have all of them. Some shoes have removable insoles.

The point is shoes can be made out of all sorts of stuff. Rubber, leather, foam, synthetic, cork, and the materials that the bottom of the shoe is made out of will contribute to the cushioning. Take it into account. The more you minimize the total stack height of the shoe, the less any of this matters anyway, right? I just didn't want to totally ignore this side of the equation. So, that kind of leads us into finding the best ones for you.

So, there's a couple directions you can go in here, right? There's the kind of more alternative route and there's the classic like barefoot route and then there's what I do and my kind of thoughts on everything. So, starting with the alternative non-barefoot route. Basically, step one, you're going to look around for cool shoes. Just do what you normally do. Look around. And then step two, you're going to apply the stuff we just talked about.

With just a little bit of pickiness and thoughtfulness, you can find tons of stuff. Here's that rough order of importance. Uh, for when you're thinking about what attributes to prioritize, I would say freetos are more important than having a flat sole. Those are really big ones. That's a rough order. I'm not even totally sold. It really just depends on you a a lot more than the shoe, right? What's going to make a shoe healthy has more to do with you than it does with a shoe.

So, okay, applying some of this. Here's some exampes. Number one, like a martial arts shoe, like a fu or a bellow. My friend Isaiah actually bought some of these shoes after I made a video on them a couple years ago. They're flexible. They have a flat sole. Like they're probably 12 mm thick, and they're only like $30, which makes them the perfect like work beater shoe. He's a barista at a coffee shop. So, I don't even know how many pairs he's had, but that's one cool option.

Or you could get some flatish thong sandals like this with a heel strap. These are going to let your toes spllay out. They're going to be pretty much flat. You're going to have that grounded relationship with the world. I would say that's a pretty good option. Or what about work boots? My brother is an electrician and he needs a safety toe shoe and the best thing he's found is the Keen San Jose shoe. He gets it in a wide.

So once again, he has room for his toes to move around. And it has a much flatter sole than most other work boots. So he's making the best choice he can for his feet while also getting the job done. Or what about the New Balance MT10? Check this thing out. And basically, even some bigger brands like this are dipping their toes into more minimal kind of anatomical shoes, right? This looks pretty light. It looks like it has a wider toe box.

It looks flexible. But it seems like a great option. And I'm sure we're seeing more of those and there's probably more out there. Just takes a little bit of looking around. I found this one so fast. So, exactly. There's tons around. You just got to know what to look for. And then you got the more classic barefoot route, right? Just type in barefoot shoes on your web browser and see what comes up. I just called it a web browser.

But before you just trust the first results you see, there's some steps for this kind of path, too. Step one, look them up. Step two, ignore the lingo. Don't pay too much attention to barefoot style shoe, barefoot inspired, minimalist shoe, and funk biodnamic hybrid, whatever the heck. It's a den of hyenas. They are trying to trick you. For some reason, there's a bunch of weird little barefoot shoe brands coming out.

And instead of paying attention to the lingo, just do the same thing. Apply everything we talked about here. Just look at the specs of the shoe. So, surprise, you basically do the same thing either way. It's just a matter of where you look and how kind of extreme you want to go, right? But also barefoot versus minimalist shoes, there is a difference. Sometimes they're talked about at the same time. But while barefoot shoes typically maximize all the four qualities that we talked about, especially the minimal thin outsole to feel like you're basically walking barefoot, a minimalist shoe is kind of just a diet normal shoe.

I tried to explain minimalist shoes here, but I think no one actually knows what they are. If you look up minimalist shoes, you're going to find all kinds of different stuff. They aren't really an actual specific thing. That's why I'm saying there's so many different options now. The lines are being blurred. It's no longer black and white. You just got to know what you want to get out of any shoe that you're looking for.

So, so then what's my real take? I'm taking a more nuanced, no BS approach in this video. I'm not trying to convince you to buy barefoot shoes. I just want to give you the tools to make the best decision for yourself. That being said, I've kind of committed to the bit on the more minimal barefoot type shoes, if you want to call it that, and I would never go back on being so stable on my feet and being so strongly grounded every day.

Having the foundation of strong and healthy feet has benefits that make their way all the way up your body, from promoting good posture to improving balance to driving strength, each of which could deserve a video of their own. But the point is the way your body moves in the world starts with your feet. I take this kind of seriously. That's why I have a whole channel about it. So my encouragement to you is to push yourself.

Be daring wherever you're coming from, whatever that means to you. Cuz there's a whole world out there waiting for you to step on it. Your feet are like hands. And barefoot shoes are pretty good at enabling that. But they're not the only shoes that can. So yeah, there's way more options for good shoes nowadays, but how do you know where to start? If you want to see 20 plus pairs of cool, healthy shoes super fast,