How These Weird Barefoot Boots Saved My Feet

I don't think these boots are for everybody for the last year I've been walking hiking cycling and even doing a little bit of running in a very weird looking and honestly controversial which we'll get to pair of barefoot style hiking boots these the Vivo Barefoot tracker Forest ESC and I'm probably the last person who should be trust it around a pair of barefoot style Footwear because like a lot of people about 10 years ago I bought this book Christopher McDougal Born to Run I read it and I was blown away by all the amazing claims of all the amazing benefits from going Barefoot so I finished the book and immediately went outside and took off my shoes and went for a walk on a Tarmac Road and took all the skin off the bottom of my toes and I couldn't walk for a week I bought a pair of those toe shoes the first time ien out in them I ran 1 kilometer and did myself so bad of an injury that I couldn't run for at least 2 weeks I properly tore something so the question is why 10 years after that complete disaster do I love these boots so much and that's what we're going to discuss today I'm going to talk about The Good the Bad and the Ugly and the controversial of these boots after one year of use and I'm going to do that as I climb the slippy tricky treacherous and Rocky tallest mountain in Ireland C tool here in kindy carry now if you want to see my video of this hike that's going to be separate I'll link it up here or I'll link it down in the description but one of these boots actually like to wear well the first thing you're going to notice is that you can actually feel the ground through them as I walk along here I can feel all the individual rocks and stones I can feel the edge sort of The Sharper Edge in that rock it doesn't hurt but I can feel it you can tell the difference between different types of terrains your feet do feel more connected to what it is you're walking on when you step on these your foot sort of bends a little bit molds to the shape of that rock and there's also flexibility in the entire Bo if you look here when I step put my toe up against this and bend the toe of this boot bends and flexes really really easily it's quite a remarkable feeling it's it's almost a little bit like you're wearing a really really thick pair of socks so if you look at a traditional pair of boots they're very rigid flat sold they've got rigid sides on them they're designed to immobilize your foot they're designed to stop your ankle moving around Barefoot boots in the other hand are designed to connect you to the ground and allow your feet to move in a way that strengthens them so that in theory you'll have stronger ankles and you're not going to roll them anyway so you don't need that rigid support traditional hiking boots and traditional Footwear in general tend to have quite pointed toes and in cultures like ours where we wear more pointed Footwear our feet are a different shape than cultures where they don't wear shoes or they wear very different types of Footwear one of them you can see the toes are squashed together perhaps even overlapping you might recognize that as what your feet look like and in the other photograph the toes are SPL almost like fingers and in some Barefoot cultures they're almost able to use their toes as extra fingers oh no their feet are healthier stronger and conditions like bunions are virtually unheard of the simple idea is that traditional Footwear is actually bad for your feet and barefoot shoes and boots are here to make it right and the other claim of course is the Barefoot boots allow you to connect more with nature feel the magic of the ground and the blubby BL hippity Dippity dud all right let's take a closer look at these they look like quite solid bits but then you do this with them you can practically roll them into a ball they are unbelievably flexible and I bought these despite all my previous problems with Barefoot Footwear because I know a few people who have these absolutely love them who swear by them hike in them all the time and say they're the best thing ever and they also mentioned that since getting these their ankle strength had improved a lot and that was something that really interested me because I went through a couple of years of rolling my ankles really really regularly it happened about four times a year it was awful I just ended up with permanently weak ankles and it kind of made me a little bit reluctant to go out as much cuz I was worried oh here we go I'm going to roll my ankles again so I got these over a year ago and I did make an initial sort of first thoughts review after a month or two and then vivil contacted me to say well why don't you make a video after a year to see if there's anything you've changed your mind about and there is one significant thing that I've actually changed my mind on so yes this video is sponsored by Vivo Barefoot but they have zero control over anything I say which means I can say stuff like I don't think these boots are for everybody they made my feet hurt once they're actually quite expensive a big advantage of Vivo sponsoring this video is that I have a discount code right well let's get a little bit more in depth tonight as we discuss The Good The Bad and and the Ugly about these boots including the two most controversial issues waterproofing and durability okay let's start with the good and the good is simply that these are my favorite pair of boots to wear that I've ever had possibly purely just for that experience of feeling the ground it's a really unique way to hike completely changes your hiking experience compared to a pair of boots that isolate you from the ground you're walking on the grip on these is fantastic it's super super aggressive and yeah I just feel really confident when I'm hiking in these Since switching to these I have rolled my ankles a total of zero times I had a pain in my left ankle if I mov my foot a certain way that Pain's gone it no longer exists so whatever they've done 100% they've strengthened my ankles and my feet my traditional pair of hiking boots I hate now because they just feel so incredibly heavy on my feet these they're just like glorified slippers and one other unexpected the benefit of them being so flexible like this means they're much easier to put on and off than a normal pair of boots let me show you so two seconds and those are on and this matters a lot more when you're camping because it means when you're camping you can take your boots off you can take the laces tuck them down the inside of the boots and then you have a really easy pair of slip on slip off boots that you can wear around Camp I mean often people bring separate Footwear for around Camp because of just how incredibly uncomfortable their boots are that should tell you something because they're made from natural leather they're really breathable so they dry out really fast so if you do get your feet wet and you're out camping and you take these boots off and it's you know it's reasonably warm andbe there's a bit of Breeze overnight they dry out quite quickly I get really bored when I'm hiding out of the mountain and sometimes I just like to try and run a little bit and you can't really do that normal pair of boots they're not flexible or light enough but you can do it in the vivos woo all right so that was the good but now we've got a couple of things that sit in between the good they're they're the controversial issues and the first one is the question of waterproofing cuz some people say these aren't waterproof at all they're an absolute Nightmare and other people say they're absolutely amazing waterproofness they're bombproof so what's going on there both people can't be right and both people can't be wrong well the fact is these are water resistant and waterproof up to a point but they are designed to be breathable more than they're designed to be completely waterproof they're made of natural leather which has a natural waterproofness and you can improve that and you can maintain that by regularly cleaning them and applying um sort of natural wax product to these boots I can go out for a Day hike into these Splash through puddles it can rain and you know I can step in some mud and my feet are absolutely dry for an entire day's hike in typical conditions now there are a couple of circumstances where these do start to let in water and I found the first one was if I'm walking all day in really really long grass that contact forces the moisture into them so when I spent a day hiking through lots of really wet and damp grass and undergrowth I did find that they got a little bit damp on the inside and then the other condition is if you're just like hiking in incredibly damp days bogs for hours and hours and hours moisture will eventually get in but that is a tradeoff with the breathability that these boots have now if you do want a pair of barefoot style boots that are 100% waterproof fil Barefoot do make a pair but honestly I I much prefer these other controversial point then is durability because some people look at these and see how they roll up and squash and so on and think well they're going to fall apart I've been wearing these for pretty much all my hiking for the last year and there is still tons of tread left in the sole the stitching is all there the seams are all good now that's been my own personal experience with these boots but I thought I'd maybe give you a few insights from someone who's hiked in these a lot more than I have here's Mike third and last take hope you're all doing well Steven has asked me to review these boots uh particularly H how durable they are as you can see four years well over 1,000 km later they are looking absolutely fantastic I've given them such a Bing and they're still doing really well and um yeah so this was the biggest durability issue has been the scuffing on the the the the front there there've really been a game changer for me in terms of uh Footwear as most of my Footwear are now Vivo Barefoot and it's primarily because of these so we worth the money I wash these down remove the mud after every single hike and reapply that bam and no issues whatsoever something that vvo offer is a service called Revo where you can go and you can pay a fee to get your boots completely revived I think for £80 they'll completely reso them they'll refurbish the upper they'll fix the laces eyelets they'll pretty much have them um as good as new as they can without replacing absolutely everything a lot of other brands would simply say oh just spend £200 and buy a new pair of boots right let's talk about the bad and probably the first thing is that if you want to wear these you have to transition into them you cannot just go from traditional shoes stick these on and go out because your feet aren't used to them they might be a bit weak in certain places um and also you use different muscles when you hike with these because they have a flat sole they've got no heal on them it's called zero drop what that means is you need to use your Cal muscle a lot more so if you put a pair of these on for the first time you'll probably notice a bit of extra strain in your Cales you got to take time to transition and that transition period can take you know it can take months for me it took about 6 months but the other bad point is I think some people will just never get on with these because if you spent your entire life wearing normal restrictive shoes well I don't know maybe your feet might be too far gone so I am kind of open-minded to the point that it might be the case that they're just not going to work for everyone something that really frustrated me with these boots and nearly made me return them was the very first time I put these on they gave me pain not on my foot but on my Achilles heel because the back bit here of them it rubbed my achilles something serious it was really painful every step I take every step you [Music] take anyway and I nearly returned them but I decided to persevere I rubbed a bit of boot bam in here I stretched them and just kept wearing them and after a few weeks this softened up and the pain went away and I know I'm not the only one because I have seen people in comments say they had the same issue so just to warn you if you do get them there might be a little bit of a breaking in Period like that I find that if it's under about I don't know four or five de and it's wet and windy and cold or at Sub-Zero temperatures with snow and ice I found I started to get cold feet in these even with a thick pair of socks let's be honest they do have less protection than stronger boots and if you slip or SL slide down a Rock and you bang your toe in these it will hurt more than it does in traditional boots because there is just there's just less protection there and again it's one of those things where you're trading off the benefits of strengthening your feet and making them less prone to injury versus having slightly less protection around your feet to get the most from these and maintain their durability you do have to regularly clean them and Retreat them so if you're a lazy sod you might want to look at something that has less maintenance finally if you get used to the when you go back to try to hike in normal Boots the normal boots will hurt so I've never found my normal boots particularly comfortable but they were particularly uncomfortable after I'd spent all summer in these and finally we come to the ugly and I think the first thing is the visual these are kind of a Marmite boot when it comes to the look some people hate these they think they're hideous some people think they look quite nice I think these look quite nice I think there's some of vivo's other boots look a little bit weird somewhat subjective looks lastly they under ugly is the cost they are expensive they're £220 although if you look around at the the top hiking boots they are on all in and around that price are even more there's hiking boots up to £270 plus so you have to kind of compare like for like compare them at the same range I think the issue that some people have is because these are so you know lightweight people see them as being in a different class as like a bulky heavy boot where somehow that extra weight means more value for money somehow but personally I judge the cost of something not based on that initial cost but based on how much use I will get out of it long term and then how I feel about them in general and for me yes why these were expensive to buy I genuinely feel that they were worth the money so what did I change my mind about then from my first video and the thing I changed my mind about in the first video was in the first video I said that I didn't think these would be suitable for anything longer than maybe 6 or S miles or half a day out for a hike but a year later I don't feel that way at all I actually think these are more comfortable over long distance than my previous pair of boots and you heard from Mike there Mike has walked 2030 m in a day in these with no issues it's just a matter of getting used to them and once you get used to them they are a 100% replacement for a normal pair of boots I've been out now for 10 hours in these boots and they have been put through a stress test unlike any other I've ever done I have been walking up gullies filled with scree and loose sharp pointy rocks I have been walking through almost waterfalls coming down I've walked through bog I've walked through mud the these bits have gone through the full spectrum of conditions I've walked through loose sharp spiky rocks on the summer I've come down steep descent I've even had to do a little bit of scrambling on the way back time so the question is how do my feet feel after all of that because after all that's all that really matters first of all I will say my feet are not wet at best a hint of dampness which to be honest could just be sweat because it has been quite warm today I've been sweating all day to be honest my feet feel a little bit iy I'm not going to Al idea I've been out for 10 hours it's not the kind of egg I get in my normal hiking boots they feel it's more of like a it's like a warm tingling I wouldn't even describe as painful it's more sort of my feet are telling me hello we're here we've done a lot of work today and when I'm out in my heavy traditional hiking boots I get a deep EG that almost seems to come from right within my bones in my feet and I don't get that with face it just doesn't happen now that I've gotten used to them okay so my final thought is just Chuck everything else away and for me it boils down to the fact that I just love hiking in these I love the experience of I love to feel the grind underneath my feet I love that lightweightness of them I like how they make me feel I can hop and bounce around again and these boots genuinely bring me joy and that aspect alone is enough for me might not be enough for you let me know in the comments what you think about these boots hope you enjoyed this video and if you want to see the rest of this hike make sure and check out that video link in the description and link up here so after talking to you about how amazing These Boots Are I've just ended up spending five minutes here giving the pitch to these guys what's your names Sophie Dan Sophie and Dan who after me talking to them for 5 minutes I think they're thoroughly convinced about the virtues of barefoot boots absolutely I'm going straight to the shop after this stra to the shop I have a discount code actually I can give you [Music] oh

Channel: Stephen J Reid

Views: 106,706

Keywords: vivobarefoot forest esc review, best barefoot boots

Id: 62jbnhoQmAY

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024