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[Sappho]

Ladies and gentlemen, Sappho's tutorial for how to tie huaraches without going between your toes!

1. Cut out the material. I used a thin sheet of leather from a secondhand leather jacket I bought for $5. Rubber tires are a popular option, and they give more protection, but offer less of a real "barefoot" experience. You should trace your foot loosely and leave up to a cm (or around half an inch) on every side. You can always trim it off later if you don't need it, and the laces will pull most of the material around your foot anyway, so don't worry about making them too big.



2. Stick your foot on there, center it where you want it, and poke your holes. There will be one hole on the outside of your big toe, one on the outside of your pinkie toe, and one on either side in the back, just in front of the ankle. Try to put the front holes closer to the tips of the toes if you can, since this will help hold the material and prevent it from flapping around if you've got thin leather like I have.





3. I poked my holes using a small hole puncher designed for paper. The holes were not nearly big enough for the laces, so I enlarged them by pushing a philips-head screwdriver from my pocket knife through there. Just right.




4. Time to tie. For laces, most people use paracord since it's very strong and durable, but I found it to be too heavy for the leather huaraches. Instead I tied together two shoelaces for each sandal and that worked great.

Tie a big knot at one end (so it doesn't get pulled through the hole) and push it through the big toe hole, from the outside going in.



Pull the lace across your toes and out the pinkie hole, then pull it tight and loop it around so it goes under the toe lace, from front to back.





Cross over your foot and head for the ankle hole on the opposite side, down through the hole, then back and threaded under the lace, heading back around your ankle. Use your finger to hold the lace just in front of your ankle as you pull it tight so you don't lose the slack you'll need later.





Around the heel (hold it up so it goes above the heel and holds on to your foot), through the hole on the other side, looped around and under the lace again.





Now you head for the front, for the spot in front of your ankle. Go under it, then pull it back towards the ankle.




Now you'll start a pattern. When you approach a hole, you go under the lace you're heading towards, then around and under the other lace. so it's under the front, loop, under the back - but above the new lace. Basically, you always go under the tight laces and over the loose ones you haven't pulled tight yet. This creates a strong pattern that holds the sandal well.



You'll go from this ankle back around the heel again, then back to the top of the foot, then back to the pinkie, then the big toe (you'll have to go through the hole here and loop around the outside of the sandal), then back to pinkie, top of foot, ankle, heel, ankle... until you run out of laces.









When you are about out of lacing, tie it off somewhere with a simple overhand knot and tuck the lace end in somewhere so it doesn't flop around when you walk.



And now you have your very own homemade huaraches! Go for a run!



You can slip them on and off by just pulling the laces behind the hell down to get your foot out.

Warning: Running barefoot (or with minimal/barefoot shoes/sandals) is different from running with running shoes. You'll figure out quickly that you can't take long strides or run heel to toe. This is only possible with the cushioning that running shoes give you - and this is what causes the overwhelming majority of running injuries. Your body was made to run with quick, short steps. You are never supposed to land on your heel or take long strides, or you'll mess up your ankles, knees, hips, and back. Barefoot runners almost never suffer injuries. So give it a try! You'll be amazed how much farther and faster you can run and how much healthier your body feels.

Let me know if any of you try making these. I want to see pics!

[Sappho]

Update (sorry for the triple-post, but the last one is pretty long already and I want to separate ideas). I took the leather huaraches out for my first test run and found an interesting result. As I walked, jogged, or ran, they slid around my foot. After about 15-20 steps at any speed, I found that the outside edge was curled around my foot, and the inside was pulled away, so my big toe was bare on the ground.





I found that if I looped part of the toe laces around one of my little toes, the sandals stayed put much better, but of course it felt a bit odd and definitely wouldn't be healthy to keep that way for long (with all the pressure of the lace pushing up on the bottom of that toe). So I'm going to try having three holes at the toes: one in between two toes, and the other two on the sides where they are now. I'll see if that's any better.

I wonder if this same thing would happen to other people. I suspect that this movement is what causes the between-toe lace to push into me and cause pain. It's not going straight in to the foot, but off to the side, as my feet seem to be trying to move sideways. I have no idea why this happens. As far as I know, there's nothing abnormal about my gait. Maybe it's something in the structure of my foot.

This needs more !!SCIENCE!! - anyone willing to try it out and offer a comparison?

EDIT: Another update. I tried this way and it worked much better. The sandals still slid slightly toward the outside, but not so much as before, and the inner sides of my feet didn't end up exposed to the ground. I'm open to suggestions for improving it so that they don't slide at all, if anyone can think of anything.

[Tiruin]

This is amazing o-o

Also @Sappho: There's a way to small-ify pictures without losing original...resolution(?)

[img height=x width=y]http://^ x/y = pixels

Spoiler: So your cat pic at 400/600 would be... (click to show/hide)

I like how vivid it is.

[LordSlowpoke]

* LordSlowpoke takes notes

yep these are sandals

i were satisfied at the point where the cat was posted honestly but then you went forward with the rest

also that is a large cat

or a cat amplifying camera angle

one or the other maybe even both

[Sappho]

He is enormous. Not fat, actually, just... BIG.

I know I can resize the images but I didn't realize they were too big. They are already shrunk down to 25% of their original size. Should I make them 800x600 instead of 1024x768?

Also, does anyone have any ideas about why the sandals tend to slide around towards the outside like that? Does that happen to other people? Any thoughts on how to prevent it?

[Vector]

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[LordSlowpoke]

i think it's because of the way in which you place your foot? with the majority of your weight being placed on the inward rather than outward side of such so when you move to get it forward the material slides a little to compensate?

this is really frivolous speculation

only idea i get right now as to prevention is even more lace

[Sappho]

I haven't worn traditionally-soled shoes in a long time, but no, they never wore out in any particular place. Actually, I wore several pairs of shoes for many years without them ever wearing out. And I've been paying attention to how I place my foot when I walk: most of the weight goes on the outside of the foot first, which is what I've read is natural. The weight is taken by the part of your foot with the most padding, then rolled over the rest of the foot.

Also, I find that the left foot stays put better than the right foot sandal. No idea why.

I'll have to ask more people as well... I haven't gone to tai chi class in a long time, but maybe my teacher would be willing to help me figure it out, since he's the one who got me started on the barefoot/minimal shoes.

I really want to see one of you guys make some of these sandals, too. Try them out. They're super comfy!

[Vector]

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[Sappho]

Pronation is natural and necessary, actually. This one guy around 50 years ago got the idea out of his ass that maybe pronation was bad for you and caused injuries, and thus the running shoe market was born, telling everyone that they need to support their arches and prevent pronation (an idea which has spread even to doctors, although this is finally starting to change). Every single study ever conducted has demonstrated that shoes, especially running shoes, especially *expensive* running shoes, actually *cause* injuries. People who run/walk barefoot do not suffer these injuries, At All. No, not even on asphalt and concrete. Runners who wear running shoes have an 85% chance of getting a "running injury." Shoes that "support your arches" and such things are actually undermining the essential workings of the foot, causing unnatural movements and eventually injuries.

Seriously, don't take my word for it. Read "Born to Run" and other books on the subject. The explanations are very simple and logical, and the proof is running everywhere: people who had "running injuries" they were told would never heal, were told they could never run again, who threw away their shoes and started running barefoot and found themselves almost miraculously cured as their feet returned to the shape they were meant to be and all the problems were corrected naturally. I myself had bad knees that hurt all the time until I started wearing minimal/barefoot shoes. Since then I haven't had any pain at all - except on the rare occasion that I'm forced to wear "normal" shoes. Then I get blisters and the knee pain comes back with a vengeance.

Today I got off the tram 2 stops early after work and ran most of the way home. Normally it's a 15-20 minute walk, but I got through there in just a few minutes, and I was barely even out of breath when I reached the end. And that was carrying my backpack! I was wearing my new sandals and they worked great. I think the current tying method is working out quite well. I wore them all day without issue. They do still sometimes flip underneath my toes at the front, so I think I'll just put one more loose loop around my big toe to keep them there, and they should be "finished."

[Vector]

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[Sappho]

Haha, don't thank me. Thank my taiji teacher for introducing me to barefoot stuff, and Christopher McDougall for writing the book that brought it to the world's attention. Seriously, grab a copy of Born to Run if you can. (If you have an e-reader I can help you find a copy very easily.) It's great read and it'll completely make you rethink... just about everything.

By the way: flat-footedness is not bad either. Doesn't do any harm. But it's usually caused by shoes with a lot of arch support. Arches... don't need support. That's why they're called arches. You wouldn't stick a pillar up in the middle of a Roman archway because it'd make the whole structure weaker. That's what arch supports in shoes do. They weaken the whole foot and eventually the structure just sort of falls apart. Easily fixed by going barefoot for a while or wearing minimal shoes.

I wear VivoBarefoot shoes in the winter, spring, and fall. I don't like their sandals, hence my experiments with making my own. I've never felt healthier. They're not cheap, but they're durable: grab a pair if it's at all possible and I guarantee you'll notice a lot of improvement.

[Ogdibus]

.O.

Thanks for that book title.  I heard a radio show interview of the writer about a year ago, and forgot what it was.  I've had "arch problems" since I was about seven years old. It's good to know that constantly forgetting to use those supports actually helped me. x3

[Sappho]

Yeah, all that stuff was mostly made up by random people a long time ago and somehow it became accepted "common knowledge" among doctors even though it has no scientific backing. Sort of like how when I was 3, the doctors declared that there was something wrong with me because my feet pointed inwards slightly when I walked. They put metal braces on my legs, like Forrest Gump, and straightened them out. Years later I discovered that it's healthier to have your feet turned slightly in (better for your back), and the braces probably caused my scoliosis (which, sadly, cannot be corrected with barefoot shoes and appears to be genuinely permanent).

Did you know that not that long ago people thought that babies' legs needed to be strapped down while they were growing in order to prevent deformity? They literally strapped down every baby's legs until they reached a certain age. We're only talking, like, a hundred years ago. Everyone did this. Looking back we realize how completely and utterly ridiculous that is. Babies' legs grow just fine on their own, and in fact putting them in straps like that will screw up their development. Yet we still put braces on teeth and legs, give people special shoes that will force their feet to conform to a particular shape... It's kind of crazy.

[LordSlowpoke]

uhh

i understand and get from where you are coming from but there is a legitimate reason why people have their teeth straightened and that is not cosmetic at all

you do know there are people who actually require this treatment because otherwise their jaw would be full of fuck

like mine was but now isn't the teeth aren't even perfectly straight it's just that they're not wrecking my gums for no good reason