Why I Boycotted Nike
TL;DR
Nike and most running shoes might not be good for your feet and may not help you run faster. They’re a *marketing company* and design shoes, apps, and other gear that they can sell. This has been baked into their company DNA since their waffle trainer was invented. Whether you like or dislike their latest campaign, I recommend experimenting with alternatives and considering whether you really need what they’re selling.
Background quickie
I was an ok athlete and runner in high school, but not the most dedicated guy on the team. I topped out at a 2:14 800m. When I got to college, I dove into the books, beer, and pizza and grew quite out of shape. When I graduated and entered the workforce at the beginning of the recession in 2008 I quickly burned out, started questioning my mental and physical health, and thankfully stumbled across the 4-Hour Body.
You can be a world class runner without fancy shoes or apps
A chapter in this led me to a little book called Born to Run, a big part of which focuses on a race with the Tarahumara, a group of Indigenous people of the Americas living in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico who are renowned for their long-distance running ability. They are capable of running distances of hundreds of miles wearing nothing but huaraches, basically a simple sandal. To me this sounded like a super human genetic abnormality, and very weird. I’ve since learned that most people are quite physically capable of this, but it sounds crazy because we’ve grown up in a world where running is a chore that you do to tick off an item in an app, where of course you must wear sneakers with good cushioning when you run because it’s bad and weird if you don’t, right?
But until very modern times, reality was quite different. Google the name Abebe Bikila and you’ll find the story of a man who won the Olympic marathon in 1960 barefoot. In 1964 he became the first athlete to successfully defended an olympic marathon title and for that race did wear shoes, but ones that hardly resemble the cushioned monstrosities most people think they need today.
Nike and the modern sneaker have only been around ~50 years. Modern man has been navigating this planet for some hundreds of thousands of years. Take a moment and let that scale sink in; the running shoe is a tiny blip in the timeline. I highly recommend this video by Barefoot Ted at Talks at Google, where he explains how incredibly capable a machine the human body is. Feel free to watch the entire thing, Ted is a truly interesting guy. One great bit:
A goal that I had at the very beginning early on, particularly after I qualified for Boston and realized I could keep running like this, the first thing I started thinking… I realized that there was no way in hell that this barefoot running thing was ever going to become a fad or a hit in the United States unless there was a product. There’s just no way. You tell people “You got it (already), it’s free”, it’s like “Ok man, right on, whatever”. We are so trained to purchase a solution, we’ve got to have a purchasable solution.
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The skin on the bottom of my feet is not a hard calloused unfeeling thing (that’s a shoe). The skin on my feet is a supple, pliable multi-layered feeling living material. People think “Oh man, don’t you want to get into technology or something? You know, isn’t there something better?” How about a self-healing, self-nourishing gets stronger and smarter with use material that has a direct interface with my brain and that even better, all I have to do is eat good food to grow it? I mean come on, give me a break. It makes a lot of sense when I’m at the farmers market and I’m getting ready to buy a tomato that’s like 3 or 4 bucks, it’s like “But it’s going to be my shoe”. In reality when you really think about it your foot is like nanotechnology. I mean you’ve got cells building themselves and it’s so fascinating.
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Look at all the martial arts. First thing you do, you take off your shoes. You want to be a gymnast? You want to be good at balance? You take off your shoes. You want to do a spiritual art? Take off your shoes. The idea of being connected and being part of your body and being present, all of these things come with the package and it’s just such an incredible journey.
I was red-pilled. I’d done treadmill running, morning runs, sprint work, distance days, etc for years and every time I put on my shoes there was a subconscious twinge of anxiety. I thought I was a runner, but I secretly hated it. I started to experiment and something that was a chore started turning into something I loved deeply. I took off my shoes and could suddenly feel the ground. Every step. It was like I’d been wearing gloves and a blindfold my entire life and had finally figured out it was ok to take them off. Maybe that sounds obvious to some, but it wasn’t to me. I realized I’d wasted years stuffing this amazing piece of nanotechnology into a crappy sneaker every time I went outside.
At the same time, I learned to stop obsessing over mileage, time, heart rate… the things that I guess most people believe are important. I started either silencing my ‘digital coach’ or leaving my phone entirely at home, and I can’t fully express the joy this freedom gave me.
I became a better runner. Faster, lighter, easier. On any given day I’d hop out the door to who knows where and who cares how long. Just running, feeling my body moving through space, exploring a path I hadn’t taken before. I’d return home and see I’d been out for 3+ hours and done 20+ miles and think ‘cool’. I was a distance runner before, but a half or a full marathon went from something I’d never even thought about to something I was doing on a whim. Running and exercise went from inducing anxiety to being like a moving meditation.
Nike wants to sell you something
This isn’t all to say I don’t think some good can’t come out of apps or that all shoes are bad. I usually now run with a silenced tracker app and wear Monos when not fully barefoot, and barefoot is more often something I mix in as a training tool rather than my primary method of moving around. I do however recommend people start questioning the marketing they are fed by the folks at Nike (and to a lesser extent, Apple), because you might not really need the things they’re pushing, and they may in fact be making you worse off.
Question your paradigms and do your research. Nike’s history is… mixed at best. But one thing we do know is they are many $billions in annual revenue and > 70,000 employees; they know how to sell stuff, and they’ve got something to sell. It may not be all they are, and maybe their shoes actually do help you run faster, or run farther, or jump higher. But keep in mind Abebe Bikila was world class before Nike was even a thought. Get comfortable with experimentation and you’ll have your own, unique results where at the very least you’ll have learned something about yourself.
Full disclosure: some of the links above are affiliate links to Amazon. This post isn’t meant as an ad to make me money, but they all had a big positive impact on my life and felt they were worth sharing. Feel free to stick it to me and not use any of them :)
