Went to Seattle a bit ago and trained with my friend Emily who exclusively trains barefoot and is barefoot allll the time. I have my bouts of barefootism but i would often come back to shoe world because I wanted to do something that barefoot wouldn't allow, like a massive jump, or some sort of rock stride line. But since I have been back (and it has been about a month or longer now) i've trained exlusively barefoot. Okay so there was the time where I hit my foot on a rock while hiking in tahoe. I split a part of my foot off much like a callous rip on the hand and I had to wear shoes when training for about a week. It's okay now though!
I'm starting to collect some data on the advantages/disadvantages of barefoot training (BFT). There is a parallel with bft and bar brachiation. Basically I stop doing stuff on bars once my hand skin starts to wear out and become painful. The next time I train, I can go a little longer than usual. Not sure if there is a linear relationship here or just a variable cap of time that stops me from moving. Never thought to measure that until just now. It's hard to measure how long I can brachiate because there are so many different hand placements and conditions. Regardless it's clear that there is some sort of natural limit here and I think it is a good way to determine the length of a pk session or to know when to move on to something a little less leggy. The natural cap limits my training in a way that encourages me to move in more lateral ways.
Barefoot has just made things more interested. I often feel with parkour that I've "seen it all before" (though I know this is not the case) and this almost existential dread starts to seep in when I start a session. I just feel caught in a timeloop doing the same thing again forever. So barefoot training brings a huge amount of novelty to what feels old now, refreshing my experience with pk as if I'm a total beginner.
The flip side to this is that I have a metabolically taxing experience when I do put shoes on again. Just the other day I did a few huge jumps (huge for me) and my legs were almost immediately exhausted. My whole body felt exhausted. So I can see that my legs will not be as strong as they could be when I'm wearing shoes, but hopefully I can edge toward my higher ability as my feet get tougher. My familiarity with bft has already increased dramatically overall but I have to learn parkour all over again. I may switch off from time to time in the interest of novelty too if things get to stagnant.
Novelty and more generalist movement is a whole other topic I need to discuss as my ideas on that have shifted. Lately I've been hula hooping and playing hackysack as part of this push to open myself up to other movement attributes. More on that in a future post.
