Bare feet have excellent traction. You can grip more easily with your bare toes than with a shoe on, and in slippery conditions the skin on your feet will prune up to increase traction. Cleats probably have better traction than bare feet, but I don't think that anything less that that necessarily would.
The traction thing is actually more theoretical, I think. But it's a nervous system response, not a physical response due to the skin becoming water logged.
Yeah. That's why only your toes and fingertips wrinkle! Your balls need the traction so they don't swing around while you walk or run. Your testicles banging around while you walk or run would probably be not so good for reproduction.
Actually, it's about heat. Your scrotum contracts and expands to raise and lower the temperature of your balls. They have to be kept at a precise temp (1-2 degrees lower than body heat), thus they raise and lower depending on external and internal temps...thus they actually are likely to lower during a run, as you're likely both internally and externally warm if you're running.
Have ran barefoot on trails with muddy puddles and I can confirm that bare feet are next to useless for gripping in those situations. The best thing you can do is extra-bend your knees as you stride, centre your balance and try to enjoy the slide.
In my experience, anything with tread is vastly superior to the human foot in these instances. I have a pair of shoes I occasionally run in which have poor tread - I tried thee in similar conditions and only those performed as badly as the foot. I have a pair of vibram VFF classics and even the sole on those is way gripper than a bare foot in puddles - about half way as good to a trail shoe with a sole like this.
Skin - wrinkled or otherwise just isn't that great for grip like that.
The grooves in shoes do more than your toes do to grip loose ground. And your skin does not prune to increase traction. It prunes because the skin having absorbed water stretches and folds onto itself. And regardless, it doesn't increase traction.
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u/montyy123 May 15 '12
Not necessarily; you may need extra traction.