Rehabilitation was today’s theme at work. All day long, it seemed, people were looking to Fivefingers as a way to fix something going on with them. It started with me offering advice to a guy who was trying on Fivefingers to add to his new fitness regimen: he was doing P-90X at home and wanted something that would help work his feet out. I told him how much I love using mine for CrossFit–a somewhat similar fitness modality–because they don’t get in the way of any activities the way a pair of clunky cross-trainers sometimes does. You can jump, you can sprint, you can stretch, and your feet are ready for it all.

Then he asked me if it would help his knee problems. I haven’t yet run into anyone who has tried Fivefingers on the recommendation of a podiatrist. But I did offer him my personal experience, which was that I trained to run a half-marathon in running shoes, which always made my knees feel tweaky after eight or nine miles. I never had a heel-strike running gait, as is the plague of so many runners’ knees. Mine was always a forefoot strike, even before switching to Fivefingers. I had twitchy knees and just assumed that that’s what you get when you run so much.

When I switched to Fivefingers, for a while I couldn’t run quite as far or as fast, mostly because my calves would get sore, but my knees never hurt. After a few months, I could run seemingly forever and I got faster than I ever was in regular shoes. I started trail running, and even on varied and rocky terrain, still no issues. In fact, when my feet hurt now I know it’s because I haven’t been on a good long run in a while.

My hunch is that it had less to do with padding and running gait and more to do with a neutral heel. In almost every running shoe (although a company called Innov-8 is making an awesome exception) the heel is raised at least a tiny bit above the level of the ball of the foot. This sets your ankle at a slightly different angle than what’s natural for your body, which sets your knee up for a slightly different angle, which travels up into your hips…

I was explaining all of this to the P-90X guy, who was trying out some KSOs, and his eyes lit up at the mention of hips. “My hips hurt all the time,” he admitted. I told him I couldn’t say if Fivefingers would help him fix that, but I thought getting a neutral shoe and working on good posture was probably worth a try.

A coworker of mine had a stress injury to her Achilles’ tendon and had been walking around in a big plastic boot all month to immobilize her ankle. Today she put her Fivefingers back on for the first time, hoping that they would help strengthen the whole network of muscles that had atrophied.

I spoke with another woman who was buying some Fivefingers for the first time. She was ecstatic about being able to run with them: a treat that was a long time coming. She had spent several years trying to rehabilitate her feet. Her first metatarsal heads used to be swollen with bunions, and one big toe drifted so far over that it cramped itself under the second toe. Hammer toes afflicted the rest of her joints. All these ailments were products of wearing heels to work every day at a hospital. The woman explained that when she began her career, heels were required as part of the professional dress code. She had worked very hard with a brace and with strengthening exercises running in sand to get her feet into better shape, and by the time she walked in our store and showed her feet to me, they looked like pretty normal feet, which is a huge accomplishment for feet that were once bound by such painful shoes.

This woman was getting Fivefingers as a last training tool to help free her feet. She ran around the store, jumped over benches. She was so excited with being able to wear such shoes and use her feet in such a way.

It all got me thinking about the contrast between Fivefingers and orthotics. We carry Superfeet at the store, which is a great insole that gives the foot a lot of support. We recommend these insoles for most shoes, and folks come in for them all the time because they were recommended by their doctors. And yet, when you go to search online for the benefits of orthotics, you’ll see a lot of explanations and opinions–just like you’ll see with Fivefingers–but no scientific studies backing up the efficacy of insoles. The Superfeet rep told me once that this is called “evidence-based research,” meaning: it’s been working for a lot of people for many years, so it’s worth a shot.

I don’t really care if Fivefingers ever get legitimized by scientific studies, or by medical professionals, or by running magazines. I agree with the concept: let your feet work as they were designed. Protect them a little bit. Be sensitive to your body and how it needs you to move. Keep good posture. I think you can’t help but see good results from all that.