Is this the END of hiking boots?

check this out I bet you've never seen a hiking boot do this that is crazy I didn't even know how you could call that a hiking boot so there's two types of hikers watching this video there's the boot lover who tends to prefer a more structured heavily rigid supportive boot like this one and then there is the hikers like me that tend to wear trail runners and prefer something more lightweight and minimal but there is one thing that we all have in common and that's we'd all rather be out hiking in the mountains than being stuck at home with a foot injury so in this video I'm going to be sharing with you a couple of things that you can do off trail to make sure that you are preparing your feet for the trail so you can get out there and enjoy the mountains and I'm also going to be giving you my first impressions of this boot the vivo barefoot tracker and talking about why I believe this style of boot is really the future of hiking boots so before we get into it I want to point out that this is not a sponsored or paid review I reached out to the company and I asked them to send me the boot because I really think it's worth a discussion point because of the style but also it's pretty sexy looking boot and I wanted to pair [Music] welcome or welcome back to the channel my name is chase I'm a keen hiker but also a strength coach and over my time coaching people I've really been trying to figure out what it is that leads us down the path of injury you know is it our choice of footwear is a lack of strength and conditioning in the feet or is it something else entirely and the one thing that I keep coming back to is this barefoot minimal style of footwear along the way I've become more interested in what constitutes a strong foot I began to encourage barefoot training in my gym because the research showed that that was the best way to passively strengthen muscles so what does barefoot Footwear actually mean it seems like a bit of an oxymoron well I'm going to cover as I talk about this but what I think constitutes a barefoot or minimal style of footwear and this is also what the researchers identified as being minimal style Footwear that they did the research on so I think there's really four things that constitute a minimal or barefoot style so the first thing is a wide last you know our last is the outside of the boot here it is the footprint of the boot itself so the one thing you notice immediately about the bottom of this shoe is that it is very flat you don't see that typical arch support that you would generally see in a typical hiking boot and certainly not with the sole OTPs 520 the other boot that I have here so the theory with this is that rather than the shoe supporting your foot and particularly your arch you are training your own muscles and your own supportive structure of the foot itself to be self supportive rather than having to rely on the boot and what that leads to is a stronger more independent system that's able to look after itself and in the end of the day I think that would lead to less injuries and certainly the evidence and the research tends to indicate that so are there any drawbacks to having a wider shoe not really I mean the only thing is that they to look a little more goofy and a little less stylish but if you're like me and you tend to prefer function over fashion and it shouldn't matter too much to you [Music] so the second thing that constitutes barefoot minimal style Footwear is that they are thin so you'll notice this has a lot less structure and a lot less material at the bottom of the foot when compared to the solo and I know you're thinking especially if you're a boot lover one of the main reasons that you buy boots is for protection but I feel like this is plenty enough for me and often I find that when I'm wearing a thicker heavier more supportive hiking shoe like the Isola is that I can't feel the ground beneath my feet figuratively speaking so I'd like to be able to feel rocks to a certain extent I like to be able to feel the ground change as I move over it and obviously you don't want to feel every single rock underneath your foot but you certainly don't feel that when you're wearing this boot I think there's the perfect amount of protection provided with this boot but not so much that you can't get that sensory information from the ground which is so important the third thing that constitutes barefoot Footwear is that they are flexible I mean that is crazy I didn't even know how you could call that a hiking boot so having a flexible shoe like this enables your foot to move more naturally rather than being restricted by the structure of a very rigid boot and for my experience wearing minimal shoes like this that means better connection to the environment that I'm walking over it means less Falls and at the end of the day less likelihood of being injured I find that when I wear really heavy rigid hiking boots I end up slipping and falling more often they just make me feel clumsy they are very cumbersome at times and of course there's certain times though you would want to have more protection and more structure but more often than not I'm looking for something light something nimble something that enables me to go fast and to be able to feel the environment that I'm walking over so the drawbacks of having a more flexible sure is that certain times you're going to want and perhaps need more rigidity in a boot and one good example of that is when you get into more higher mountain areas where everything is a little bit more steep sometimes you just need more rigidity and that's why when you see these more kind of serious high mountain boots and mountaineering boots they are very rigid they are not able to twist at all and of course there's times where you'll need crampons and crampons don't particularly work well with you know a flexible boot there's just too much movement so certainly there's going to be times where you'll need a more structured supportive boot like this solo the fourth and final thing and probably what I think is most important aspect of a minimal barefoot shoe is zero drop so zero drop means there's zero difference between the heel height and the foot height so that means not just having a lack of the heel itself but there's no boost within this part of the boot as I heels in boots are obviously something you see all the time but there's no real reason why they exist in modern Footwear the reason why we had heels initially was because most of us used to ride around on horses and we needed that heel to be able to capture the stirrup when we were riding on horseback but what happened is that heel made its way into dress shoes it made its way into athletic shoes and designer Footwear and it became fashionable but there's no good reason to have a heel in footwear nowadays certainly not in Footwear that we use in the mountains one of the biggest problems that comes from having that high heel is that we get false range of motion in the ankle so having the heel higher means that we don't need to flex our ankle anywhere near as much when we're walking and one thing that I've noticed being a strength coach are over the last seven or eight years is that people really struggle with ankle mobility even myself I have limited range of motion in my ankles and that's because I've spent my entire life wearing shoes with heel in them but from my experience and for the research that I've done I'm very confident in saying that switching to a more minimal style of footwear for everyday use is one of the best things that you can do to strengthen your feet and ultimately reduce your chances of being injured when you're out in the mountains I've added links to the research that I've done for this video in the description obviously we're all different and this is not for everyone but encourage you to do the research and make your own decisions so now I'm going to share with you three exercises that you can do at home to start strengthening your feet and prepare yourself on trial and the first one is calf raises start by elevating the feet placing the balls of the feet onto an object like a step or a foam block and then dropping the heel below that height hold that for two seconds and then slowly raise up by pressing the toes as much as you can into the step or block try and use minimal assistance from your hands as you transition between those two points and really try and focus on keeping your hip and knee locked out straight often you'll find it's fairly easy to do this with a slight bend in the knee and the hip so it's really trying to focus on locking them out perfectly straight throughout the entire movement so calf raises will strengthen the posterior the back side of the leg and the next exercise that we're going to work on is toe raises which is going to be strengthening the front of the leg in particular the tibialis anterior so leaning up against the wall so your shoulders are in contact with the wall placing your heels into the ground and lifting your toes up off the ground and what that's going to do is start activating and strengthening the muscles in the front of the leg particularly the tibialis anterior but also a lot of the smaller muscles in the foot itself now in terms of progressing this exercise you can move your feet further away from the wall that's going to increase the resistance and make you exercise more difficult and as you become very strong then he can move down into a wall set and perform the same exercise third exercise you might find a little weird because it's not dealing with the foot itself we're actually going to start lying on the ground and this is a sideline hip abduction and aim here is that we are strengthening a small muscle on the outside of your hip called the glute Meade so a number one glute Meade's drinking exercise we're gonna do lying on our side as the name suggests we're going to abduct the hip now that just means we're lifting the heel up here so we're going to come up to about a 45 degree angle and we're going to perform a few reps to see if we can get the glute made activate it so you should really really feel it on the outside of the butt here now couple of things that are quite complex when it comes to this movement we want to make sure that the toe is pointing down and that way we tend to get more glute mid activation we also want to make sure that the hips are basically stacked one on top of the other we don't want to be rolling backwards nor do you want to be too far forward you want to find that nice balance point that enables you to really focus on the abduction movement so one thing that I'll point out especially when it comes to strength training is that strengthening one section of the body in isolation is not the best way to go about it and I've found over the years that the best approach is simply strengthening everything strengthening the whole body so guys I hope you've enjoyed this video hit the like button if you've got something out of this I will leave you with a couple of videos here this is my ankle mobility routine you can try that out to start through strengthening your feet a little bit more and if you want to learn about the elements program there's a whole video here that I encourage you to check out join our community start getting involved start strengthening your body so you can get out there and enjoy the mountains I'll see you on the summit [Music]

Channel: Chase Mountains

Views: 397,613

Keywords: best hiking boots, hiking boots, vivo barefoot review, vivo barefoot tracker, vivobarefoot tracker fg, hiking boots vs shoes, hiking boots vs trail runners, hiking boots vs hiking shoes, trail runners for hiking, trail runners vs hiking shoes, best hiking boots for men, best hiking boosts for women, best hiking boots 2020, shoespiracy, vivobarefoot

Id: YBlDhf1I_18

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020