Please bro these are no comparison to the 5 Fingers. Also these have been around for a lot longer than the Nikes, The only reaso why Nike created the air frees & branched off other versions of those is the Stanford running team. Research them, see what you can learn.
Bare feet is the essence to good back health
These are the epitome of comfortable. If you enjoy waking around the casa barefoot, strolling basically anywhere barefoot then this is the shoe.
My balance has really increased also due to these. I used to only workout in Chucks but not anymore.
Gay.. yeah they look gay but I don't give a fuck if the end result is better health.
Nike came out with the first version of the Air Rifts in the mid 90's. I was working at Footlocker during the summer in college and saw my first pair. They were lace ups. A guy came in with them. You had to buy special socks for them, as they were split toe, like Ostriches or mimicking the Kenyan barefoot runners. I believe Nike was the first to mass produce such a design in Running shoes, the Huraches were the forebearers, they were experiments in minimalism. Then came the Air Prestos and the Second gen Air Rifts (I own three pairs of the 2nd gen, one pair of the Air Prestos), then the Nike Free 5.0's, which were trying to mimick the natural movement of the foot, and were minimalistic in design (I have a pair, and they
are not durable).
In terms of comfort, the Prestos were the most, followed by the Frees, the Air Rifts the least, because you have to get used to your big toe being seperated from the foot, and it's worse with their special socks. The first gen shoes are very hard to find, almost non-esixtant. I've owned alot of their experimental shoes. Huraches, Frees, Pumps, Zoom Air, Tuned Air, Shox, Combos of technology (Shox and Air, etc). Some are gimmicks, but most are functional technology that Nike spends millions, if not billions into research.
Their research in Carbonfiber was the reason why they were the first to put Carbonfiber in Jordans.
They spent considerable money bending and breaking pieces, trying to use them as springs. As you probably know Catbonfibet is mostly used for race cars and high end exotics. It's lighter and stronger than steel and is used for lightweight applications. But it is expensive to produce. More so back when Nike was experimenting with it. Each piece must be made in a autoclave, heating the carbon weaves in a a resin, then letting it cool and set in place.
So, you can imagine the money that Nike was throwing into research of this material---no gimmickry with that.
