This story starts with a very interesting (brutal) workout at my local CrossFit gym. It was five rounds for time, of running 400 meters followed by 10 squat thrusters (a front squat into an overhead push press) at the prescribed weight of 135 pounds.
Combining the short 400m run with the thrusters basically prevents you from catching your breath, and turns this into a monster metabolic conditioning workout. The total 2km of running was actually the most I’d done in a while since busting up my knees.
They had been healing nicely, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to work on my barefoot running form in my Vibram Five Fingers.
Be prepared for sore calf muscles. It’s going to to happen, but it will pass.
I soldiered through the workout and was pretty happy with my performance, but the running really did a number on my calves. Up until then, I had mainly been wearing my Vibram Five Fingers for weight lifting and indoors training. Because this was my first time running in my barefoot shoes, I inadvertently made a rookie mistake in regard to my form.
I purposefully (and wrongly) avoided letting my heel strike the ground.
I focused on landing on the balls of my feet, which is an important component of a proper running form, but only half of the formula. By the end of the workout my calves were so tight I had trouble walking to my car. After three days I was still walking down the front steps to my apartment sideways!
After some advice from one of my trainers and from the website of “Barefoot” Ken Bob, I later realized how essential it is to let the heel “kiss” the ground to some extent after initially planting with the ball of my foot. This brief period of heel touch allows the calf muscles to temporarily relax (something they didn’t experience during my workout). Here is an excerpt from Ken Bob’s website:
“Letting the heel touch allows the calf muscles to relax. Do relax! Don’t fight to keep the heel off the ground, otherwise, you will end up with extremely sore calves and achilles tendons. You probably will have sore calves, and possibly sore achilles tendons, too, at first anyway. Especially if you are new to running, or have been a chronic heel striker (over striding).”
Along with this critical mistake in my form, I also neglected to realize that years of wearing shoes had affected the conditioning of my leg muscles. Not only are very few of the leg’s muscles activated while running in shoes, but the calf muscle becomes shorter in relation to the amount of cushioning between the heel and the ground.
When switching from my old sneakers to Vibram Five Fingers, that change amounted to a difference from 25mm to 6mm! After taking shoes out of the picture, the lever action between the foot and the leg increases significantly.
Even when using proper form, new barefoot or minimalist runners will notice that their calf muscles are very sore and tight in the beginning. When allowing the heel to kiss the ground in the middle phase of the forefoot landing stride, the calf muscles do a lot of work towards controlling the heel’s descent.
“Controlled descent” is key here because it insinuates that your heel is safely and softly touching, instead of banging and driving into the ground like in the typical heel strike landing. If this sounds complicated remember, it isn’t rocket science. Just relax and let your body do what it needs to in order to prevent you from hurting yourself and causing pain. You don’t need to force something your body was naturally engineered to do!
If you remain patient and proceed with your training at a slow but progressive pace, your body will soon adapt and your legs will get stronger.
In fact, a body composition test I had done revealed that during one period of my training my calf muscles grew faster than any of the other major areas of my body.
Be sensible about your training and don’t do any hard running if your legs are already really sore. Just get plenty of rest and keep working at it! Focus on running with good form and with a light step, rather than trying to reclaim your previous mileage as fast as possible.
I’ve also made this video to help explain some of the issues that contribute to muscle soreness from barefoot running.
If you want to learn more about the muscles and soft tissue which interact during human running, you should check out the book Running Anatomy. It offers an intriguing inside look into what the human body is doing while you’re tearing it up out on the track.
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91 Responses to Sore Calf Muscles From Running in Vibram Five Fingers
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I had my first run in Vibram Sprints today, after which my left calf was really sore, because I also avoided landing on my heels. There were times when my heel kissed the ground and I thought I was doing it the wrong way. So glad I found your post! Despite the soreness and a half developed blister, I love Vibram! Felt great running in it! I don’t know if it was really Vibram or the excitement of running in one, I clocked one minute faster than usual! =)
David, really appreciate your posts! =)
(By the way, Counterpain works well on a sore calf. Just after an hour, the soreness disappeared!)
Thanks Euforica, I’ll check out that stuff.
Got my VFFs a little over a month ago, and definitely didn’t acclimate properly. 2nd time out, I didn’t even make it a half mile, and my right calf suddenly started spasming. I took it easy, iced, stretched, and after a week or two I was back running again. Then, just last week, feeling pretty good I decided to up my pace, and right at the end of my mile, my left calf spasmed – hard.
I guess I need to pay more attention to letting my heel kiss the ground, and continue to acclimate more gradually.
I bought my Bikilas 4 days ago and today was my 3rd day running. I used to run in my Nike Shox (love them) but looking at something different and challenging so I bought the VFF….Up until now, my calves and achiles tendons are very sore. Day 1, I did Shaun T’s Insanity for an hour then ran for 1.5 miles without socks on and I ended up with a blister on the ball of my left foot…I ran my usual 1.5 miles a minute faster than usual (12 minutes) and I also ran the whole 1.5 miles landing on the balls of my feet and didn’t touch my heels at all (I thought I was supposed to do that)….Day 2, I bought the Injinji socks (best decision I made)…my blister didn’t get worse…..I did Insanity again for an hour then ran….it was so painful that I had to stop running…only ran for a mile…..I read up on the proper way of running and I was doing it wrong so today (Day 3) after I finished 1 hour of Insanity, I ran slower and tried to kiss my heel on the ground…..felt so much better and ran for 1.75 miles…..I think prepping myself by doing Insanity first loosened up my leg muscles…….
Keep an eye on those blisters, you might be pushing off too hard.
Thanks…the blister is gone (injinji socks helped a lot). Just now working on my sore calves. I think I’m going to take it slow today.
Youch! I made the same mistake and am really suffering in my left calf. Thought I was doing so good too! Thanks for the tip
Great article! I started transitioning to VFF’s about three months ago and for a long time couldn’t run more than 1-1.5 miles before my calves would knot up and I’d have to limp home. It was getting really frustrating and I was almost about to give up when I made a couple changes to my form that made a huge difference:
First, I had been focusing so much on my feet that I was basically propelling myself entirely with my feet and ankles. This of course put a huge strain on my calves. I made a conscious effort to relax my calves, which forced my larger quads and glutes to engage.
Secondly, I was overstriding. I had read many times over the importance of shortening your stride during barefoot/minimalist running but for whatever reason never did it. I finally realized that by extending my leg too far forward I was having to point my toes downwards in order to maintain a forefoot strike. This meant that my calf muscles were contracted more than necessary when my foot hit the ground. By shortening my stride and making sure my foot comes down directly underneath me, my foot is in a more neutral position at the point of impact and it doesn’t strain my calves.
So now I finally feel like I can start building up distance without destroying my calves. I was able to run 3 miles yesterday. I hope this is helpful to some of the other newbies. I can’t stress enough the importance of establishing good form at the beginning.
Thanks for the info. After 2 days in a row of running on my new NB MT10 trails, my calves felt like two liter bottles and were extremely sore! Heel kiss will definately be in my mind from now on! Barefoot Ken link is great too.
Yeah, I ran a ton of stairs yesterday in my Bikilas (which is awesome since they weigh so little), but I quickly discovered that no extra space on the stair = no heel touch… and super sore calves today!
Will go back to indoor training until I’ve acclimated my calves a little better. Thanks for the article!
Thanks for the post. I just started running in VFFs this week. I hadn’t read anything about altering form until after my second run. I began to suspect that the loud slapping noise couldn’t be right. Of course, I was landing heel first and didn’t realize that was incorrect. So today, in my third run, I focused on my posture and landing initially on the ball of my foot. Needless to say, as I write this, my calves are quite sore.
In my research, I found this video:
http://www.vimeo.com/12551218
It’s also an ad for another type of shoe, but if you can get past that, I thinks it’s pretty helpful. At least it was for me.
Thanks again for the post.
Nate
@Nate
Here’s another solid video that is on run drills and technique for the fore-foot strike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaYQwq6TnXY
@Jacob
Thanks, that’s a great training video.
Great post.
@Jimmy – you hit the nail on the head – form is everything. Start there and build.
I’ve been completely barefoot for 3 months now (have tried a few of the minimal shoes – nothing’s beats pure bare foot for me) and just finished a 5k two days ago. My calves are SORE. The last 1/2 mile I could tell I was not keeping good form, I should have stopped and walked, but do you think I did? NOPE (this being my first race since ACL transplant last spring) – I was way too excited to be running/racing again and barefoot to boot that I kept going and am now paying for it.
I am also acclimating to the Vibram five-finger shoes. When I bought them from Sandy Point Progressive Sports in South Daytona, FL, the guy who helped me took the time to train me and explain the acclimation process, including a warning about sore calves and to “take it easy for awhile and use the shoes for everyday use before running hard.”
I took his advice, but this week I started a heavy training routine for a triathlon and my calves are super sore. A little Tiger Balm helped tremendously. It loosened me up quickly and took most of the pain away.
Thanks to everyone for the great talk and exchange of ideas. Running barefoot is so much better. Though my calves are sore, I have not had one hint of shin splints, which I tended to suffer from in the past.
Cheers and thanks to David for initiating this talk,
Jim
Thanks for this post David – I have been for about half a dozen runs now and my calves are sore but getting there. Reassuring to know that I’m not the only one!
@Nate and Jacob – those are great videos, the YouTube one in particular is just what I need I think.
I’ve been running for about 3 weeks on Bikila LS (in mix with Kinvaras) now and currently limiting myself to 10km on them. I still have somewhat sore calves after long VFF runs but not enough to stop me from running the next day on my Kinvaras. Before switching I already ran with a midfoot strike and +/- 180 spm cadence.
Thanks for the great info here. I am 48 and just started running again after a few years off. I combine running with cycling, rowing, and weight lifting. I gave up running because I would develop pain in my lower back and shins. I decided to try barefoot with the VFF KSO. I run on the local university track which is a nice rubberized surface. Prior to buying the VFF shoes I would mix in a 400M run in my socks and it felt tremendous. I live in Southern California and spend much of my day barefoot so I thought this would be an easy transition. Wrong. I still ended up not listening to the advice and the other day I attempted to run 2 x 400M laps and ended up with severe left calf spasm. I had to call it a day and limped home where I applied ice through the night. The pain is mostly gone but I can feel it is still tender and would easily re-spasm if I tried to run. I will back off the running concept for a few months and will wear these KSOs out on errands and the gym. Hope I can get this sorted out – I really want to run again.
I’ve been running in my Vibrams since May – I had done some running barefoot on the beach so I was a little acclimated when I started. I still had the sore calf muscles, especially when I started to increase my miles. Luckily, it did go away but I did have to change my running technique.
The bad thing is I am about a minute slower per mile than I was with regular running shoes. The good thing is that I am now training for a marathon and I am not achy when I finish my long runs…
When I slack on my form and go back to my old style of running – typically when I try to speed up or I am running with someone who has on normal running shoes – the soreness comes back in my calves and feet.
Otherwise, I love them and can’t wait to do my first marathon in them in November!