OddSlug wrote:
lightheir wrote:
... but I'm gambling that adopting a technique that is closest to what nature designed us for and using my achilles the way it was meant to be used rather than shielding it with a shoe, will pay off down the road. There will never be a convincing 25+ year series of studies to prove this definitively in any way, but I'm going to go with our anatomical natural motion as my best defense against aging joints etc. It's already paying off with regards to my horrible ankles for me by eliminating ankle rolls from the big stack, and I'm hoping it'll pay off more as I get older.
There absolutely will be studies. There may not be the studies that proves speed. But injury occurrence? Absolutely there will and we've started to get them. Why wouldn't there be? Interview enough people who report type and severity of injury, running style, shoes, etc. Maybe not 25 years because of problems keeping contact with people but long enough to see trends.
My guess is the barefoot peak came some time after the publication of 'Born to Run' (2009?). So whenever the peak was it's less than 9 years. 7 or 8 years isn't really long in Achilles terms. But I think we'll start seeing early adopters reporting these types of injury more as the peak gets to 10, 15, 20 years of running in that style. But someone has to ask the right questions and collect the data.
I did link a study on post #29 that is worth reading.
Yes, there will be more studies, but it'll likely be opaque.
Heck, even the current data on 'injury reduction' is really opaque. When I first heard "doesn't significantly reduce injury", I assumed injuries were equal and the same. Then I looked at the one of the barefoot vs shod studies they reference, and it turns out the injuries are different - barefoot runners reported a LOT more scrapes and small lacerations of the sole compared to shod, and get more reported short-term achilles strains. The shod runers got different types of injuries. Cumulatively, the numbers were similar, but they were farrrr from saying 'same thing, same effect, same injuries.'
I suspect you'll get more of the same with more studies. And for 25+ year studies, they'll at best be correlational, not causational, so even softer. But still, more data can give us clearer picture, so I'm all for it.
Again, what I think it is still important to emphasize is that all the motion control, neutral, fivefinger toe style, etc. were not developed based on science - they were all developed on marketing. There are no 'seminal papers' that these shoes were based on, and you're fooling yourself if you think a running shoe sales clerk is using science to 'match' you to a shoe by looking at your stride for a few seconds in the store. (They are going by the marketing brochure recs.)