FiveFinger Fandom

You stub your toe on a hidden geological feature. You cut your heel open on the remnants of a broken beer bottle. You burn your feet on concrete when it’s hot outside and if it’s cold enough they turn black and fall off. Generally then, it’s not such a good idea to go outside barefoot. As liberating as it may be to walk without the standard pair of sneakers, sandals, boots, or flats, such a luxury was reserved for indoors only. Then Vibram introduced FiveFinger footwear.
This rather peculiar shoe, made by Italian company Vibram and introduced in 2007, has grown in popularity on campus because it isn’t much of shoe. FiveFingers are designed to fit the contours of the human foot, right down to the toes, giving them the distinctive shape of a foot and earning them the common nickname of “toe-shoes” on campus. Essentially, they are gloves for the feet. The reason for the shape: research has shown that the common shoes we wear do not stimulate or exercise our feet and legs fully, leaving them weak, underdeveloped and prone to injury.
Josh Listen, a European studies junior, has owned his pair of FiveFinger Classics for over 2 years. He rides almost any board you can think of, and wears them anytime he knows he will be in and out of water. “I do anything from walking around anywhere in them to longboarding in them, and they hold up really well.” Listen also says that textues and temperatures can be felt, giving you sensations that would otherwise be missed with standard footwear. When walking on grass, “it’s like walking on a cushion.”
Vibram’s claims that by wearing FiveFingers your legs and feet will become stronger and improve your balance and agility. It also states that you will have better “proprioception,” a word that does not mean that you can foretell the future, but refers to the sense of the relative position of parts of the body. Pam Cherek, the sales manager at Backwoods in Norman, stands by the claims from experience and based on the number of success stories she hears from customers who use FiveFingers.
“They come back and are just absolutely blown away by the injuries they have disappear, running times that have increased significantly, and have been able to increase their distances. If they take their time to porperly train, the benefits we hear from our customers are incredible.”
Vibrams have nearly tripeled their sales since FiveFingers have gone on sale. With so many varieties offered for different uses, from basic walking to extreme trail running, their popularity is of little surprise. Cherek, who owns a pair of TSO FiveFingers, says that Backwoods sells out of them as quickly as they get them in stock.
Word of mouth is by far the greatest reason for their growing success in Norman and elsewhere. “If anbody asked me and asked if they should but a pair, I would say without a doubt to buy them, because I love them,” says Listen. He has promoted two of his friends to FiveFinger fandom, and possibly countless others he doesn’t know of. I think that I might become one of them.