It takes months if not years of frequent deliberate practice to change your unconscious gait as an adult (or at least it took a year or two for me; maybe some p

It takes months if not years of frequent deliberate practice to change your unconscious gait as an adult (or at least it took a year or two for me; maybe some people are prodigy athletes and can master new physical skills faster). Just switching shoes won’t do anything by itself or overnight. This is sort of like saying “I’m used to using a fork, and I couldn’t pick up anything when I tried chopsticks a few times. There’s no way people actually eat with a pair of these, I’m sure they actually just stab their food with it like a skewer.” If you want to learn, I recommend you try switching to walking entirely barefoot all the time for a month or two, including while walking on hard surfaces (e.g. concrete sidewalk). You’ll be forced into a dramatically shorter more balanced stride irrespective of which bit of your foot touches down first, because a long straight-legged stride will be painful for all of your joints. It will be even more dramatic if you try walking very fast or running. Frankly the difference between forefoot striking and heel striking when walking is relatively minor, compared to the difference between a long bouncy straight-legged stride and a short balanced bent-leg stride. Walking on rough surfaces (e.g. loose gravel, trails strewn with twigs and small rocks, ..) and warm or cold surfaces (within reason; don’t burn your skin off) will also be instructive – after a lifetime of walking in protective shoes which prevent you from feeling the ground this will seem very painful on your sensitive nerves/skin, but within a few months you will become desensitized and tougher and be able to handle walking barefoot in a much wider variety of conditions. It’s also fun (feels nice) to walk barefoot in the grass, in the mud, in the rain, climbing up trees or over rocks, on cobblestones, ...