Masai Barefoot Technology Shoes – What Are They?
MBT (Masai Barefoot Technology) shoes are the brainchild of a Swiss engineer, Karl Müller. During a trip to Korea, he noticed that walking barefoot across a paddy field seemed to alleviate his back, knee and Achilles tendon pains. He later discovered that the Kenyan Masai tribe don’t suffer from back pain and are famous for their excellent posture. Müller put these two pieces of information together and concluded that the Masai posture and lack of back pain was due to the fact that they walk barefoot on ground which yields slightly. Hard surfaces, such as sidewalks, have no give in them and have, according to Müller’s theory, caused us to have problems with our backs, knees and ankles. Müller decided that the fix for this was to produce a shoe which would mimic the effect of walking barefoot on soft ground. What he came up with was the MBT range of shoes – which feature a specially designed curved sole.
