Photograph by Natalie Harding
“If the midfoot and arch creates the first spring, the second spring in your natural shock-absorption system is your Achilles tendon–the strongest, most resilient, and elastic tendon in your body. Your achilles tendon connects your calf to your heel and can handle a ton of weight. The achilles is essential for efficient running and forward propulsion. Unfortunately, when you land on your heels, you lock out almost all of its abilities.” – Excerpt from BAREFOOT RUNNING by Michael Sandler
(Biomechanics)
This is the story, before the story on stretching.
A few days ago, I received a notice in the mail–it was informing me that I didn’t stop at a red light on a street that I have driven on hundreds of times.
The upper right corner of the notice reads like this: RED MEANS STOP
The frontal lobe of my cerebrum (my modern brain) was trying to figure out the logic in this traffic violation, that unfortunately…I don’t even remember.
It went something like this: I must have been past the point of no return, and could not stop that quickly–maybe the light changed faster than normal that day…
It must be true; the document provided me with a image of my car *and* license plate. I can even see two additional images and a video of my traffic violation online.
Now, whenever I’m approaching a light and the the light turns yellow–my prehistoric brain (that is identical to a lizard’s!) is screaming…RED MEANS STOP.
“With barefoot running or minimalist shoes or footwear you get everything about barefoot running except the nutrition–the stuff that actually makes barefoot running beneficial”. – Barefoot Ken Bob Saxton
(Proprioception)
I’m going to ask you to use your occipital lobe–a underutilized section (lobe) of your cerebrum– for a moment: Imagine that you and I heat up a small piece of hard taffy candy in the microwave–when we take out the taffy, we notice that the structure of the candy has been altered–it is no longer hard. It is actually very pliable.
If you hold one end, I can stretch it really far with very little effort.
Then both of us can grab a strand of the original strand, and stretch each of the new strands in a different direction.
By heating up the hard candy–we not only changed the structure–we also changed the function.
*That* piece of taffy will never return to its original shape. (emphasis added)
