At the 1960 summer Olympic Games in Rome, an Ethiopian man named Abebe Bikila won the marathon with a record-breaking time of 2:15:16—and he did it without wearing any shoes.

Bikila won the first of his two Olympic gold medals while running barefoot, like many runners in Africa do. Humans have been running barefoot for millennia, and although footwear has been standard for centuries, it’s only in the past thirty years that humans (especially Westerners) have become accustomed to the idea of wearing bulky, supportive athletic shoes. Barefoot running is a growing trend within the athletic community, and believers say that when it comes to running shoes, less is definitely more.

Stuck in the Shoe Trap

Ultimately, modern running shoes are unnatural, forcing feet to move and flex in abnormal ways. Up until the 1960s, athletic shoes had simple, flat soles, like Converse All-Stars. In 1972, Bill Bowerman, the founder of Nike, created the modern running shoe, fabricated from plastic and polymers, based on the idea that a better sneaker would correct incorrect movements. Nowadays, running shoes cushion heels and they prevent feet from pronating or rolling side to side. Shoe designers spend millions of dollars to research the most common mistakes in a runner’s form and the most common injuries, and they try to design shoes that prevent or correct most problems. Yet despite all the technology surrounding running shoes, there is no evidence that proves running shoes make an athlete less prone to injury.

Many exercise physiologists and podiatrists feel that humans simply don’t need to wear shoes at all. The human foot is a marvel of engineering, with twenty-four bones that work in perfect concert to give humans our distinctive upright walk. When we’re barefoot, most people naturally walk in a biomechanically correct gait—it’s putting on shoes that negates those millions of years of evolution and possibly even causes our running injuries. Many avid runners have begun to run barefoot, citing studies that show barefoot runners tend to have far fewer injuries like ankle sprains and plantar fasciitis than traditionally-shod runners do. On the other hand, barefoot running allows the foot to flex and absorb shock exactly the way it was meant to, and barefoot runners have been shown to have a more efficient gait.

Michael Warburton, an Australian physical therapist, is the author of the 2001 paper “Barefoot Running.” According to his research, the extra weight added by athletic shoes results in significantly higher energy expenditures. The weight of an average pair of running shoes makes a runner up to 5 percent less efficient, even worse than if they weighed a few extra pounds. When you’re barefoot, the body’s biofeedback system can sense and react to changes in road surfaces, allowing the runner to moderate their stride, impact, and the movements of bones and tendons in the leg unconsciously. This affords a runner some extra pro

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