getting back in shape - minimal or traditional shoe?

[Mark Kosmowski]

I'm in the market for a pair of shoes for exercising. I'm grossly out-of-shape and overweight (yeah, I'm that "somewhere" everyone talks about ). If I slow things down to a slow jog, I can do at least 400 m continuous running.

Remembering high school track and cross-country, I naturally am a toe / ball-of-foot striker. I heel strike going down hill and transitioning from run to walk, but otherwise I remember being a toe-striker. I wasn't an elite runner (iirc PR was 5:20 mile) but I could sometimes help the team get points.

Since no matter what I do is going to be easing into things, should I consider VFF or someother minimalist shoe? If so, at what level of strength do I want to consider switching to a weight-lifter shoe for the Oly type lifting (I'm assuming that at my current state of feebleness, shoe choice for lifting is almost not an issue - please correct me if I am wrong)?

Some details that might be helpful. I am male, 6', 35 years of age, soon to be 36, 290 pounds (down from 310 in April ) and am new to this whole Crossfit idea. In terms of fitness, I think my "1RM" for the assisted pull-up is 140 lbs assistance (machine at a globo gym), I have difficulty doing more than 10 push-ups and can do about 20 sit-ups at one sitting.

My recent personal best running distance has been 3x: run 200 m, walk 100 m, walk additional 100 m then 2x: run / walk each 150 m then sprint 100 m. This has given me a knee injury of some sort and I slow jogged 400 m shortly after the injury and am now just not running for a bit. I don't think I want to time myself on the track until I can at least run continuously 1 mile.

I want to work myself fairly hard (maybe not as hard as I imagine some of you other folks here do), but I also realize that injuries are rather counterproductive.

Thanks!

[Matthew Mills]

Yes, injuries are not productive.

Learn to workout enough to elicit a compensatory response, that should be enough. That means scaling.

I don't really see how you can go wrong with a decent pair of running shoes at this point. Go socks/barefoot for your slow/oly lifts. MOST of us don't have a real reason to progress beyond that point, unless you have a hole burning in your pocket.

Good luck bud!

[Mark Kosmowski]

Thanks for the advice. I picked up a pair of Converse One-Stars (kind of like low Chucks) for lifting to comply with globo footwear policy. Less than $10 on clearance from Target including tax.

[Nick Hoffman]

I currently own 3 pairs of shoes: 1 for running, 1 for lifting, and the last as a "general" shoe. It's a minimal shoe that I'm fairly comfortable lifting and running short distances in.

I didn't buy them all at one time...