Look at this:
Wow! It's just cool! Read it!
Vibram FiveFingers are a type of shoe manufactured by Vibram, originally marketed as a more "natural" alternative for different outdoors activities (sailing, kayaking, canoeing, and as a camp or after-hike shoe).
The footwear has thin, flexible soles that are contoured to the shape of the human foot, including visible individual sections for the toes. Vibram FiveFingers are meant to replicate being barefoot and allow for the natural biomechanics of the foot to work.
OriginVibram FiveFingers were originally designed for yacht racers to maintain grip on slippery decks without compromising the barefoot experience. Their potential usage as a minimalist running shoe was suggested to the Vibram CEO by Ted McDonald. The FiveFinger line of shoes was introduced in 2005.
Minimalist shoesIn a report on an article in Nature, co-author Daniel E. Lieberman stated that "People who wear conventional running shoes tend to run with a significantly different strike than those who run in minimalist shoes or barefoot. By landing on the middle or front of the foot, barefoot runners have almost no impact collision but most runners wearing shoes generate significant impact collision."
Lieberman et al.'s study was an experiment that involved 5 groups of runners from Kenya and the United States. The two American groups were adult athletes who had run with shoes since childhood, and those who habitually ran barefoot or with minimal footwear such as Vibram FiveFingers (mentioned by name in the study). The three Kenyan groups were adults who had never run in shoes until late adolescence, as well as two teenage groups: Those that habitually wore shoes and those that always ran barefoot.
The runners were instructed to run over a force plate that was embedded in a 25 meter track, and were recorded during the run using a three-dimensional infrared kinematic system. These measurements were used to assess the pattern with which the foot strikes the ground and how forcibly it does so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibram_FiveFingers