Do my Vibram Five Fingers Shoes Smell?
People ask me that when they see me at the gym with my five fingers shoes. Because I don’t wear socks with them, they assume that all your foot sweat just oozes into the shoe. Well, I guess it’s true. I don’t think you can do anything to get pass that except wash them regularly or wear socks.
I learned this while in boxing class. We use the same gloves everyday and they get sweaty and smelly. However, what I do is that rub hand sanitizer on my hands and then put my hands into the gloves. I also do this again at the very end of class. My boxing gloves have never smelled.
So, with my shoes, I don’t use hand sanitizer, but I do use baby powder and I do put some into the shoe and shake it when I take them off. It’s been working.
But even with all that, you have to wash them once in a while. I just toss mine into the washer and air dry them. They come out good as new!
If you wanted to go the sock route, I suggest getting the Injinji five finger socks. But honestly, if your feet fit into them without socks, it will be real tight with these socks. So if you plan to use socks, I would get a size larger than what Vibram suggests.
Five Finger Shoes for Boxing
I workout in a boxing gym. During boxing, we normally go barefoot or wear very thin soled boxing shoes. Look at the boxing shoes below.
I didn’t want to buy boxing shoes so I was going barefoot for months. Barefoot was not very good for boxing because of a few things. First, the mat got slippery once your sweat dripped all over it, this was very dangerous. Not to mention the gross feeling of stepping on other people’s sweat with bare feet. You couldn’t wear normal shoes because then you lose the feel of the ground.
Also, I sucked at jumping rope. We used these plastic jump ropes and whenever I missed a jump, the rope would hit my big toe and hurt like hell! Jumping rope was the worst part of boxing for me. My five finger shoes provided all the protection on the front of my toes needed. They saved me from alot of pain from many missed jumps. So if you box, give them a try!
Wearing Five Finger Shoes into a Club
One night I decided to try to wear my Vibram Five Finger Shoes into a club. I mean they are technically shoes, but I thought the bouncer might view them as socks or even barefeet. As I showed the bouncer my ID, he didn’t even glance down and see my awesome five finger shoes.
Oh well, into the club I go. And really, I didn’t expect people to see them in a dark club at all. I just wanted to wear them around. A few hours go by and nobody is feelin my shoes but now I gotta pee. And this is when these shoes sort of felt really weird.
I am sure that none of you would walk into a restaurant or bar bathroom barefoot. I mean the floor is wet and filled with undesirables. But I knew that my shoes were fine. My barefeet would not be touching any of that crap. However, you can’t erase 30 years of filthy bathrooms in a second.
This is what happened. With these shoes, you “feel” like you are walking barefoot. As you step into the bathroom, you can feel the uneven tiles under your feet, you can see the floor is nasty, you know your feet aren’t touching the floor but you also know that there is a super thin layer of rubber between your feet and the floor. There is no thick padding, followed by an air cushion and then a thick rubber sole. You might as well walk into the bathroom with a plastic bag on your feet. So I had to calm down and just do my business and leave. As I left the bathroom I really felt like I needed to wash the bottom of the shoes.
You see, the shoes make you feel barefoot, hence you treat the bottoms like they are your soles. It’s hard to step into mud with them, because it’s like putting your foot into the mud. You can feel the mud squeeze up between your toes.
My First Use of My Five Finger Shoes
The first day I got my shoes I decided to wear them out the entire day. Mine fit like a glove on my foot. All my toes slid in perfectly. When I backed out of my car, I felt like I was driving barefoot. It did take a second to get used to pressing the gas pedal and brake with them. I met my friend John for lunch at a local cafe. Walking around barefoot, or at least feeling like I was barefoot was odd, but it also felt great or liberating to my toes. Actually, after about 1/2 hour of having them on, I totally forgot about them.
I was eating lunch and the cute blond waitress came up to me and said, “those are cool shoes. Where did you get those?” She went on to ask me about how they feel and what I use them for. Of course, I’ve only had them on for less than an hour but it dawned on me, I can pick up girls with these shoes! Ok maybe not. But they sure can start a conversation!
