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Well, as my liking for barefooting (and extreme barefooting) comes from past real life experience, I get directly from (... painful) memories my personal answer. My ex-girlfriend used to tell me that there are two kinds of painful situations you have to endure when you’re barefoot: she used to call them “hits” and “pressure” (I hope to choose quite right words in English), and she explained me that the two kinds of strength you must have to endure them are very very different.

“Hits” are when something ... hits you, for example when you run or you land after a jump, or walk and something little and sharp hits your skin for a while ... small and sharp stones, broken glass ... She use to tell me that not staggering in those situations is relatively easy: you simply have to have ... “leather soles”, and they “simply” come from continuous barefooting. “Hits” - she used to tell me - are apparently harder to endure, while they really are not: in a while the pain disappears, and if you’re not wound it doesn’t cost you any strength: the foot doesn’t remain “damaged” or weakened ... moreover, anyone can develop this strength in a few weeks, simply removing shoes, also because they’re the 95% of painful situations.

But her fetish (and now mine) for extreme barefooting was related to ... the remaining 5%, of situations, I mean “pressure”. For “pressure” she meant all those situations when your soles have to endure ... pressure, obviously. They’re not frequent, but she used to tell me they’re the “real hard core barefooting”. For example, they’re when you have to pose your foot onto steps of a small iron ladder, like the ones used to climb barns. Or when you’ve to climb something (a tree, or something else) posing a foot onto a very small ledge. Or when you’re in a stony place where stones are rounded and very big (so apparently not troubling), but they’re so big that they penetrate your sole without allowing your foot to touch the ground but in the small point posed on the stone (the classical example: a shingle river bed). Or when you’ve to press something with your bare sole (in a gym it can happens ... another EXTREMELY hard example is turning on a bike with the kick starter!!). Or ... why not: when you’ve to demonstrate you’re bare foot strength to someone: you can be sure that if he likes feet he’d ask you to endure the pressure of his hands. And all of this without saying that in a REAL no holds barred fight the bare sole is the ... most popular pressure point among sporting foes (and bare toes among NOT sporting ones!). I mean this because my ex was a martial art instructor (... obviously, considering her liking).

Well, my ex used to told me that this kind of situations can induce excruciating and long lasting pain! And that, even when the pain is not excruciating (the river bed is an example, I remember), is a kind of pain that drains your strengths: both “feet strengths” - numbing foot muscles that are the protection vs this kind of pain - and “generic physical strengths”, because when strengths in bare foot fade the pain appears, and you’ve to hang on your physical strength to endure it, with the result that after a while you find yourself completely weak, and (this is the worse) those weaknesses can last for hours (for many hours the one in feet, until sole muscles regain their stamina).

This one was the domain where she defeated any barefooter she met (honestly, anyone but the one that broke her, I should say), because “leather soles” don’t work in this case. You’ve to have very STRONG feet, and to train both your soles and soul to develop the strength that, in those situations, allows you not to vacillate, or not to fall to your knees, or not to stop yourself because you’re not able to do that thing or to walk that way (that’s maybe the most humiliating defeat for anyone who claims he prefers living barefoot and he’s able to).

And this could be the domain where girls could challenge each other ...

Well, I’m very sorry for my English ... I’ve waited until this free Sunday to write because it took me half an hour … :-) ... this is not my language (obviously).

Bye,

Flowwer

(PS: I post this as an answer also in another forum)