When was the last time you sprinted? For some people, the answer is years, even decades.
Unless you’ve been competing in basketball, soccer, or football, you haven’t sprinted in a very long time. Next to lifting heavy weights, sprinting is one of the most powerful primal workouts you can do. Running is our most important fight or flight survival instinct. If you don’t have it, prepare to get run over and trampled in a stampede, chased down by predators, and have your carcass devoured.
You’ve watched The Olympics before. Ask yourself a question; out of all the Athletes—who do you think looks the most triumphant? The distance runners look like overworked slaves and the weight lifters look like behemoth ogres. The tennis, soccer, and baseball players look like regular guys for the most part. You could make an argument for the swimmers, basketball players, or the boxers, but in my view—the sprinters are the most electrifying athletes of the Olympic Games.
How does the average person achieve this high degree of athleticism? Sprint. The best and most practical method is to sprint barefoot on grass.
Even if you live in an urban environment like New York City or Los Angeles you can find an unoccupied outfield or a soccer pitch to run in. These aren’t just resources for recreational sports, these are arenas for barefoot running. Even in my most professional urban time period, I was still doing barefoot sprints.
“Oh, no! What if I step on something?”
Think of it as an agility exercise. Avoiding hazards is part of the game. If I’m running in an outfield or soccer field, I avoid stepping on the spray-painted white lines—filled with chemicals and poison. It’s part of the workout.
Barefoot sprinting is for strong athletes only. Barefoot sprinting isn't for you if you’re a hypochondriac constantly afraid of getting sick or injured.
I typically do ten 100-yard sprints. I go about 80-90%, occasionally kicking it up to the all-out sprint. You will get a high from this.
Why barefoot on grass?
A: It’s fun.
B. It’s easy on the joints. Recovery is optimal.
In terms of long-distance, I can easily go 2-3 miles barefoot, whereas if I was wearing sneakers on pavement, I would get sore after a mile-and-a-half.
People think I’m crazy. Good. I think they’re crazy for “jogging” while wearing running sneakers on a concrete surface.
YUPPIE MODEL vs. BAREFOOT MODEL
A yuppie, high on amphetamine in a new tracksuit, a full playlist of early 2000’s hip-hop in his ear—glad he has the latest earpiece for his disgusting brainwash music wearing new sneakers, ready to run a few miles on a sidewalk—conscious of what other people think about his outfit and appearance. If the yuppie is a real idiot, he’s probably wearing a surgical mask cutting off his oxygen because the television screen told him to.
Between sneakers, an outfit, an iPhone, and headphones, the average yuppie now requires $800 to run. This doesn’t include a subscription for amphetamine salts, antidepressants, or anti-anxiety medication—or the money spent on alcohol the night before.
Let’s compare this to the barefoot running model:
Running barefoot in the elements, a shirt is optional, feeling the grass on your feet, getting in touch with the electromagnetic currents of the Earth.
No headphones or iPhone. You want to hear nature and become immersed—even in an urban environment. You want to hear the wind, the birds—you couldn’t give a fuck about your outfit. No pre-workout “shake.”
This is in sharp contrast to the yuppie who has to motivate himself artificially. While running, the yuppie dismantles his foot strength with his fancy running shoes, and pile drives his joints with the impact of concrete on his kneecaps.
When you run long distances with sneakers on a hard surface, you will be sore the next day. Your joints will suffer pain. It’s going to suck. Every time your feet hit the pavement, your knees experience trauma. This will train your mind to hate running.
Why would you sprint in an urban environment unless you were in a life or death situation or running from the police? You wouldn’t. Sprinting in an urban environment can be dangerous because you’re prone to serious injury if you wipe out.
Running barefoot on a soft surface lessens the impact on your joints and forces you to run properly while you build ankle, leg, and foot strength. If you want to build calves, I have two words: run barefoot. I have the calves of a University of Miami defensive back due to my barefoot running practices.
BORN TO RUN
Born to run by Christopher McDougall chronicles the path of a running journalist that hears about a tribe of ultramarathon runners in Mexico. The Tarahumara as they are called, run barefoot, or with minimal shoes. They are some of the best ultra-marathon runners in the world.
I pulled a few telling quotes from the book that back up what I’m saying about barefoot running:
(Page 10) “only the face and hands compare with the feet for instant-messaging capability to the brain.”
“You support an area, it gets weaker. Use it extensively, it gets stronger… Run barefoot and you don’t have all those troubles.” (Page 182)
“Leonardo Da Vinci considered the human foot, with its fantastic weight-suspension system compromising one-quarter of all the bones in the human body, “a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” (Page 156)
“A lot of foot and knee injuries that are currently plaguing us are actually caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate, give us knee problems. Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented by Nike, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet, and had much lower incidence of knee injuries.” (Page 168)
Imagine running on grass with sneakers. It’s like wearing jeans playing basketball or wearing a T-shirt in the pool. You look like a nerd.
Observe the size of our lungs and our legs. We’re born to run. With barefoot running and especially sprinting you can go from hating running to loving it. I get a high from it. Not an intoxication—a natural runner’s high.
Ask yourself a question. Who loves sprinting? The running back sprinting away from the defense or the point guard on a fast break? Both of them love it; that’s the correct answer.
Who hates it? The imbecile who thinks sprinting is a form of punishment when in reality it creates a fight or flight like high. I always sleep like a rock when I run barefoot.
It’s not pivotal but if you have a pack to run with like horses—that is very powerful.