Why do my calves hurt so much now that I’m running barefoot?
This is a pretty common complaint which stems from people learning that pushing off with their legs, or so called “power running”, puts a lot of stress on a small muscle group. Your calves are engaged when performing the push off.
If instead if you pick your feet up in more of a controlled fall forward, the big quad muscles are engaged in a task they can more than handle.
Another reason the calves can be sore is due to a change in form. If you progress from a heel-to-toe to a more mid foot landing you will probably be sore in new and wonderful places. Your body is adapting to the changes and you are feeling the results.
To ensure you do not hurt yourself it is prudent to perform short duration but frequent runs. This ensures your body has multiple small recovery periods instead of a few larger ones.
My calves are the only thing that get sore anymore… a big improvement over my chronic knee pain ;)
Yeah that’s my dilemma too. Thank you for tackling this here in your blog. This is a big help for me.
This has been a major problem for me – twice I’ve been injured in the past 6-months as I try to add more barefoot/minimal shoe. I think the easy/hard rule applies here in that after each hard workout, do an easy one. Mistake I made is thinking the easy run minimally shod is an “easy” workout. I am now, as my calf lets me run more, thinking about a non-shoe workout as “hard” even when it’s 3 miles at 60-70% max. heart rate.