What makes a barefoot shoe from BÄR truly unique!
Watch the interview live on YouTube or read the full interview here. The interview is about the anatomy of the foot and important stabilizers that are required when walking:
INTERVIEW BETWEEN DR. CLAUDIA SCHULZ AND CHRISTOF BÄR:
Dr. Claudia Schulz: There are now a lot of brands that focus on barefoot shoes and as a consumer I sometimes find it difficult to distinguish what is best for my feet. Now I see a foot skeleton lying on the table. Perhaps you can explain to me, Mr. Bär, what is different about BÄR, what makes it so comfortable and what makes BÄR barefoot shoes so unique.
Christof Bär: Through our experience and the 40 years we have been working with feet, toe freedom and the positive effects on the body, this is a recurring theme: the body has actually made sufficient provision for us to be able to move forward and lead a healthy life. And we are now squeezing our feet into shoes that no longer reflect this. That is the big difference to the wide field of shoes. With barefoot shoes, it is often not taken into account that we have a masterpiece of construction that carries the greatest weight of the body in the smallest of spaces. So the strain is extreme and this is often neglected. Here we see a foot skeleton with ligaments and tendons and we see the thickest bone at the back: this is the heel, which has an important function. When I step on it, it needs a strong bone, which is then encased in a layer of fat and a thick layer of skin to cause cushioning. In other words, when I make a shoe now, I should take into account that the main impact takes place at the back. I can see this exactly on the bone. This means that I also need a certain amount of cushioning or stability at the back of the shoe to ensure this.
Dr. Claudia Schulz: I think both. Only cushioning would also be bad and a shoe that is too soft would also give too little support.
Christof Bär: Quite right. Sometimes you see people walking in front of you and waddling very unstably. At some point, that's no longer healthy. And things can happen. You fall over, you don't have the support of your feet. Very few people are aware of this and that is what we are always trying to convey or offer via shoes. Back to the skeleton: we can see the long bones in between, they are covered a little by these muscles, but these are bones that should not bend. I'm transporting the body weight forward at this angle via a lever and I need guidance. Guidance in the sense of the Archraiser briefly mentioned earlier, which provides the stability here. And not by doing something like in a wooden box and saying that you have to be in there now, but by saying that I can bend and stabilize the natural strand here with the solid bone a little or grasp it further, but in any case not ignoring the fact that you have the softest part in the sole here.That would be wrong, I need stability here. And then I have the front, and that's the most fascinating thing for me, how small these bones are. We still have very small bones underneath that carry nerve ligaments. And if they are missing and inflamed, the pressure goes directly to the nerves. This means that I can do a lot wrong with the weight of my body on these small bones when running. A lot can be damaged and if I know that, then of course the question is always how I can counteract it. Counteract it by activating the foot muscles. These small bones have to balance. They have to move forward. The foot comes down on the heel. It comes down over the ball of the foot and the weight is on the toes and now I'm already initiating the next step and have to bring my body in the right direction with these bones at the front. And I only need these little bones to balance my gait and my body in the right direction, and these are the bones on my toes. And if you tuck them in now, I reduce the function. If I pinch the big toe in that direction, then I no longer have any leverage at the front. So I practically buckle here beforehand and that's exactly what we take into account with the toe clearance. And if you look at my foot now, you can clearly see that I have a heel guide at the back. If it is guided to the front, then I have stability in this area and that is the difference to many other shoes, which are far too soft in this area and do not guide the foot or support the arch. Here at the front, with our toe freedom, I can give each individual toe its function and vary it. If this area is too flat, without a certain amount of flexibility, then I forbid the foot to perform its function. And that's where clinical pictures come from. This is exactly the point where we have the know-how to say: there is a lot of talk on the market about comfort and how soft the shoes are. But the foot doesn't need a bed in the down, it needs something with which it can safely make contact with the ground in order to really transport this body weight in the smallest space of the body. If you are aware of this and then apply a bit of physics to the shoe technology, then we are way ahead of the game with our shoes, in contrast to where many people don't think about it. Of course, people often say that this is the best shoe because it is the most beautiful, but in terms of function, we often don't do ourselves any favours and we are simply specialized in this area.
Dr. Claudia Schulz: I would say damping, dynamics and leadership in a nutshell. So you really need all three aspects.