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Tracked/Treadmill Shoes

Like a pedal-powered bulldozer shrunk to the size of a shoe
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These shoes are each like a tracked vehical, such as a bulldozer or an army tank. They don't have engines, though; they are human-powered.

While wearing these shoes and standing, you will, inside each shoe, move your foot like you were trying to stand on tip-toe, and down again. You will be moving a platform inside the shoe in a kind of rocking or see-saw motion. Also inside the shoe is a mechanism that can convert this rocking motion into rotary motion of the "tank treads" or "treadmill" that are the main feature of this shoe design.

Think of the exercise you will get!

You don't have to always use these shoes in that manner, of course. (For one reason, you probably can't move very fast that way.) But you can always just lift your legs and walk almost normally --you probably have to lift legs a bit higher than usual, and since the shoes will weigh more than regular shoes, you STILL get good exercise!

Vernon, Sep 03 2011

Grass skis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_skiing
Partial Prior Art [8th of 7, Sep 03 2011]

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       I though you were going to have the person walking like normal but going nowhere because the treads were going in reverse: kind of like a treadmill... Of course then you'd need a motor and some mechanism to ensure you don't step on the power cord.
scad mientist, Sep 03 2011
  

       What [scad] said. Nice twist! +
daseva, Sep 03 2011
  

       There is a design of "grass ski" (footwear that permits fast downhill ski-like travel on grassed slopes) that closely resembled this, although it lacks the foot-movement element.
8th of 7, Sep 03 2011
  

       We call them "cross country skis".
FlyingToaster, Sep 03 2011
  

       or it could simply induce a 1 to 6 slip into your motion forcing you to walk far further on any given path: you could jog next to a person walking conventionally, although unless you have a way to boil off energy the actual effort will be more like skittering across a buttery piece of glass.
WcW, Sep 03 2011
  

       It occurs to me that there are much simpler and less expensive ways to move very slowly.
Alterother, Sep 03 2011
  

       [8th of 7], interesting. I had never heard about Grass Skis before.
Vernon, Sep 04 2011
  

       That's because the borg reverse-time engineered them into the fabric of our history in order to diminish the importance of your individual thoughts.
daseva, Sep 04 2011
  

       Sp. "Borg".   

       The rest of the anno is entirely correct.   

       Oops ...
8th of 7, Sep 04 2011
  
      
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