Masai Barefoot Technology

has anyone got/tried/ever had a pair of these? i tried a pair on last weekend and oh my lord are they ever fun. the deal is, they're meant to improve your posture, sort out your joints and back, toughen up your leg, bum and abdominal muscles, and prob do something else i've forgotten too, by deliberately unbalancing you and making you use all the muscles we evolved to use but don't use any more because we wear sturdy-soled shoes on hard surfaces rather than being barefoot on uneven, springy ground (like the masai, right?). the science sounds a bit shonky to me (and as the russian pointed out, check out the marketing - "hey wow you can be totally fit but like without actually DOING anything, just wear these shoes..." and there's all this tat about how managers and models wear them) but tbh i don't really care about that, i wanted to try them because they looked like they'd be fun. (besides, my leg and bum muscles are well buff anyway (er, underneath all the lard they are) bc of all the cycling.) and oh boy, they are fun. i walked/ran around the shop giggling for about twenty minutes. they've got rounded bottoms in all directions so you're kind of standing on a ball, and you can really feel when you put your foot down in what i guess must be the "wrong" way (although the woman in the shop said i was the first person to say that, so perhaps it's not that noticeable. otoh they had only been selling them for two weeks). once you've taken a few steps and built up some momentum they naturally roll you forward, but if you don't control your muscles to keep yourself upright they'll also roll you sideways, so you do find yourself paying attention to how you put your feet down. after 5 minutes or so you get a bit used to it and start developing a kind of long loping stride, which admittedly feels lovely. even standing still feels different - i found myself reminded of what the yoga lady told me, that your foot has three arches (toes to ball, instep, big toe to little toe, i think) and you're meant to use all of them for balance and weight distribution. but then, of *course* you're thinking about it more, you're trying a pair of shoes on and they're filling your head with all this guff. when you take them off and put your own shoes back on, it's a bit like everything going black and white.

they're meant to be worn like normal shoes, you can do whatever you normally do in them - run, go to work, cycle, the shopping. they have some that look like trainers and some that are sandals and some that look like office shoes. shop lady said for the first week or so you should only wear them for an hour a day, then build it up until after a couple of weeks you can wear them all the time. i thought that sounded like something they'd tell people to reassure them they are doing exercise by wearing these shoes, but she was at pains to impress on me that no, she meant it, REALLY, only wear them for an hour a day at first. (i liked her, she wasn't pushy. it was a health food/natural whatnot shop.)

i was sorely tempted - not really for health benefits, my main influence when buying shoes is what they feel like, and they feel incredibly fucking cool - but they are charging A HUNDRED AND THIRTY POUNDS for them. and i think half that price they've just bolted on for the "science", and i suspect buying them might make me a sucker. reminds me of friend v who, living next door to a lovely park, used to drive to the gym, pay to park outside it, spend however much a gym session costs to spend an hour on a running machine, and drive home again. although it's different, as going barefoot in london prob is not a great idea. for the two years when i was 16-17 i was barefoot about 90% of the time, and that was lush. i dunno. housemate s is getting herself a pair for her birthday. she's been talking herself into it slowly - i'll wear them for at least a year, that's only £11 a month, etc etc. £130 is a shitload of money but then, i always wear shoes til they fall apart, and with these ones if they do fall apart you can get new parts for them anyway. and they feel wicked. i had a quick scout around uk interweb sales and on ebay, and £130 seems to be about the cheapest they're going for (sandals £125 i think but i would want trainer ones so i could wear them all year).

but i dunno. i don't know anyone who's ever had a pair. have any of you had them? good/bad/meh?