Barefoot shoes. Worth It?

Published ,enter date>: This is a different piece than normal, and it doesn’t cover anything that relates to anyone but me. I have two pair of gym shoes. One is a “barefoot” shoe made by Xero Shoes, and which my daughter bought me for Christmas. or perhaps my birthday or mother’s day. I don’t remember which. I do remember that the reason she bought them is response to a comment I made that the new shoes that I bought for running, were affecting my back squats because my heels were too elevated.

Yes, I could have just taken my shoes off, but that’s just not something I wanted to do at the gym. I mean to say… “ew.” So that was off the table. (To be fair, there are people who take off their shoes at the gym, I’m just not one of them.)

So fast forward in the story, and I no longer run. I found that I couldn’t recover fast enough when I was running. So I no longer run. Mostly because I didn’t want to give up lifting weights, because I do that for maintaining my msucle mass and hopefully my bone density. Although that second point runs into the reailty of aging, but again, the alternative is worse (as I’ve had two occasions to learn this year. 2026 is NOT a good year.) The running or cardio was in service of my heart, and because I wanted to see if I could still run a 5k. The answer is yes I can, but not if I also want to train at the gym 3 days a week on weights. So now I walk as my cardio workout. I don’t like cycling or rowing or the elliptical, I just don’t. Plenty of people do and I will not be in your way if you want those machines.

I have decided to use my “running” shoes as the shoe I wear everyday— they are VERY expensive to be put to that use, but they work. So I just have a single pair of shoes for the gym and they are barefoot (Xero) shoes. Also not cheap, and frankly I’m not convinced they are better than a cheap pair of converse.