Barefoot Running and Barefoot Kung Fu

Hi, folks!

What a gorgeous day it was for a barefoot run!  The joy of barefoot running truly returns with the spring.  Even though it was possible to tough it out in the colder snowy weather, there is no doubt that the full joy of it blooms in the spring.

Had planned not to give play-by-play descriptions this season, as I did last year, but so much happens out there, it's hard not to come back and talk about it.

One excitement is that cobblestone sidewalks and asphalt do not feel rough and hurt-y this season!  The feet are definitely reverting to a state once known in childhood, when they walked over all the hurt-y things all summer and didn't seem to notice.  Don't know why, exactly, but there's a kind of elation in this.

Wisdom From Guy on Bicycle
Today at the finish of my run, a guy rode up to me on a bicycle.

"You should buy those new shoes," he said, definitely with the tone as if he thought he was telling me about something really cool that I would like.

"I've got 'em," I said (not smugly).  "You mean the Vibram Five Fingers, right?"

"Yeah," he said, and then he rode his bike back in the direction he had come from.

I got the distinct feeling he made the trip just to tell me that.

**pause**

DOES HE NOT KNOW WHO I AM?  I ... I  AM BAREFOOT FRESCA!  OF COURSE I KNOW ABOUT VIBRAMS.  I WRITE A BLOG.  I READ BOOKS. I TAKE PICTURES OF MY FEET.  I ... I ... I KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!

Lol!  This is quite different from the girl who a mere year ago wrote: 

"I have started a barefoot blog even though the only knowledge I have of barefoot running is what I have read and exists as an appealing theory to me."


"I have started a barefoot blog even though I am an absolute beginner who has only run barefoot about six times."


"I have started a barefoot blog even though I have no idea if I'm going to stick with barefoot running or not?"

Barefoot Fresca: "Beginning the Barefoot Journey" 

Okay, enough with that.

In my next post I'm going to tell you about some warm-up exercises I've been using before I go for a run.  I was going to tell you about them in this post, but I realized there was a lot I wanted to say about it (don't worry -- not too much), so it would warrant it's own separate topic.

And Now Some Barefoot Kung Fu
I also took some videos of me practicing Kung Fu barefoot outside.  I'm not sure about showing you the practice videos because I'm not that good.  But they are of interest because it's being done barefoot, so perhaps I will show them to you.

I'll show you one.  It's me practicing a roundhouse kick.  First I'll show you a couple of pictures of the surface I'm practicing on:

Here is me practicing some aspects of a roundhouse kick:

The first part, where I just lift my leg -- called "chambering," I think -- is something that I need to do over and over again because a while back I couldn't do that part without falling over.  What good is going on to try to kick something if you can't even get that part right?  So, some of my Kung Fu practice is very un-glamorously repeating that motion over and over again.

Okay, since it's not a big deal to just stand there barefoot -- didn't move across the ground surface -- I'll post another video where I'm moving around a bit.  This one is me practicing the first part of one of my forms -- Long Fist II:



I had worried about pivoting while barefoot, but that doesn't seem to be a problem here, does it?  In fact, doing it barefoot has been as great as discovering barefoot running was.

If you liked these videos I can show more. As you can see, it may sound impressive that I'm going through black sash training right now, but I have a long way to go to master this stuff.  In fact, I'm not sure exactly why I was invited into the training, but we'll just go with it.