worry less where you land and worry more about over striding.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

What desert dude said. And the easiest way (for me at least) to do that is to keep a high cadence (~90 steps/min).

The drop will not cause you to land on your heel. You will cause you to land on your heel. So...focus on your stride and you can manage it in any shoe.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

merrell trail glove

0 drop, giant toe box

Just enough shock absorption to attenuate the landing but not enough to get in the way

http://www.merrell.com/...-glove-3/17571M.html

I used the original trail gloves quite a bit. However, it had almost zero shock absorption, no foam, just puncture protection. I also have a pair of Vapor Gloves which have absolutely nothing except a very thin and flexible sole. The Merrell Bare Access 4 is my current shoe for most runs. It's also zero drop like the others but does have several millimeters of foam and I find it more comfortable on long distances, especially if the surface is poor. Feel ground feel isn't as natural as the really minimal Trail Glove and Vapor Glove but still better than anything else I've tried. I tried a pair of Newton Gravity shoes recently out of curiosity, having not run in more substantial shoes in years. While I could run in them, it felt all wrong.
I've used Merrell Bare Access 4 for IM without any issues.

As some have said, drop doesn't affect where your heel hits. I run in a variety of shoes from 0 to 10mm drop. My racing "flats" are 10mm drop (NB 1400). You will land on your heel when you get tired, and you do heel off. So actually having some oompf in the heel isn't the worst idea.

That being said, transition to the new shoe over a period of time if you haven't run in something so radically different in a while. Stick to short easy runs to get things working right (2 to 3 mi or so over a couple of weeks depending on your propensity for getting injured).

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Ian

I don't think I'd agree with that entirely.
If you have a good gait then the extra heel height may not be a factor for the contact point. But if you're borderline a greater heel to toe drop will increase the issue. If you overstride dramatically, then taking away the heel-toe drop won't fix the problem (except by introducing pain and perhaps persuading you to address the problem) and the consequences will be worse. If you have a very good gait, there'll be no change with regard heel strike since you're not doing it anyway. If you're somewhere in between, your margin for error is reduced or eliminated.

I agree, especially if you're reducing both cushioning and heel-toe drop simultaneously. You'll likely feel it in your calves after initial runs but may not feel it during the runs making it easy to overdo it. Be cautious. Start very short and add distance very slowly until you're confident you know what you're doing.

Thanks all for your honest advice!

I really want to see you running in those Adidas 4 inch running heels. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CQVvTg2oyo

A question no one has asked - why switch shoes? Are they not working for you anymore?

This is false. A shoe can't tell your foot where to land. You tell your foot where to land. You want to run completely on your forefoot in a 12 mm drop shoe? You can do so. Want to heel strike your way through a pair of Vibrams? You can do that, too.

For what it's worth, when most people say "I land on my midfoot" they really mean "I land slightly rearfoot but without a straight leg and diminish the time from principal point of contact to actual stance/loading phase of the gait cycle."

Drop decreases are also generally not going to result in calf issues; it's the lack of cushioning that most of that first round of shoes had that did. Very few people need to transition into Hoka for a reason - it's the cushioning.

Speaking as somebody who worked in stores for the better part of 10 years...we spun some yarns. One of them was this idea that drop mattered. Drop, just like amount of cushioning and the height of the arch underfoot, is more a matter of personal preference and influenced by every day habit (e.g., shoes worn outside of activity) than it is a matter of "what's best for the body."

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

rrheisler wrote:

This is false. A shoe can't tell your foot where to land. You tell your foot where to land. You want to run completely on your forefoot in a 12 mm drop shoe? You can do so. Want to heel strike your way through a pair of Vibrams? You can do that, too....

I don't understand what you mean by this.

For the same motion of your body, a bigger heel-toe drop changes the angle of the bottom surface of the shoe to the ground. Thus if your current running motion happens to align the sole of your foot parallel to the ground at the point of contact, a shoe with drop will produce a heel down slope in the bottom surface of the shoe. This is indisputable. I argue that this means you must change your stride or at the very least tilt your toes downwards from your previous position in order to maintain the same strike point with a larger drop.

[quote rrheisler]...Drop decreases are also generally not going to result in calf issues; it's the lack of cushioning that most of that first round of shoes had that did. Very few people need to transition into Hoka for a reason - it's the cushioning.[/quote]Assuming weigh is placed on the heel at some point during the stride, this can happen with the foot in a position anywhere from heavily heel down when heel striking to slightly toe down (dependent on the degree of heel toe drop) when the underside of the shoe is parallel to the ground. A shoe with no heel-toe drop requires the sole of the foot to be level or heel down in order for the heel to be significantly weight bearing. So the slope of the shoe is obviously relevant to the angle at which the foot is operating.
It's obvious that a heel-toe drop means either the foot is oriented in a more toe-down direction or the heel of the shoe is closer to the ground, or a combination of the two. All else being equal:
> The former involves the calf operating in a less contracted position and in my experience, such shoes require some adaptation during which the calf can feel very tight - the change in fot angle seems to me a fairly obvious reason for that. > The latter would result in an increase to heel striking.

I accept that some may feel shoes are the wrong place to look for a solution or that any change in shoes will have knock on effects in the bio-mechanics, and I don't entirely disagree; but the basic premise remains: heel-toe drop DOES change the contact point for the same motion of the runner unless they already heel strike or already land very much on their toes.
I can't see how that's debatable but I'm willing to hear what I'm missing.

No, actually, it doesn't. The shoe itself might have an actual ground contact point difference of somewhere between 3-5 mm, even when you have a 10-12 mm "drop" in midsole stack heights. This also fails to account for the difference in lasting techniques, whereby shoes with higher "drops" may in fact have lower angles of attack in them due to the way the foot actually sits inside the shoe. Think - sitting on top of the midsole versus sitting in it.

Furthermore, the runner chooses the stride. The shoe does not. The runner will more often than not select their preferred motion path that is most effective for them. It is then a matter of finding footwear that best allows the body to succeed on that preferred motion path.

The shoe simply does not cause someone to land somewhere. A runner is going to wind up changing their stride to land in the same place regardless of the footwear because it is their preferred motion path.

You're thinking that the shoe is an input into this system. It's not. The inputs into footwear selection are motion path of the body, physiological limiters, and personal preferences. Drop is but one of those personal preferences that is influenced by a number of factors, most of which surround everyday footwear selection.

You're also ignoring that "heel striking" is not inherently bad. There are multiple ways to heel strike. Some are efficient. Others are not.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Which if any of these is heel-toe "drop"?

1. A measure of the difference in thicknesses of the sole beneath the heel versus the toe
2. A measure of the difference in distance from bottom of the heel to the ground versus the toes to the ground
3. A measure of some arbitrary component of the shoe
4. Something else

This is oversimplification. The two are coupled. You cannot realistically say that the runner decides how his foot lands regardless of the shoe when a major component of the geometry involved in defining the situation IS the shoe.

Again, as above, an oversimplification. Of course the runner will change their stride based on the shoe, that incidentally, supports my argument, it doesn't rebutt it, but what causes you to assume that this change is in order to land in the same place? Is there evidence of this? Regardless, if you land in the same place it is due to a change in foot angle as I said in my previous post. And that supports my suggestion that the calf is effected, which you rejected. I may be wrong but your position appears inconsistent to me. The implications of one assertion contradict the other.
This is just a re-statement of the point at issue.
I don't see what you're getting at. Drop is not an input? If you want to state it that way, you're goingto have to clearly define the problem you're trying to solve.
No I'm not. I'm saying that shoe drop can effect it due to it's implications for the relative positions of the foot and underside of the shoe. I have not said this is good, bad or otherwise. If the bio-mechanics are unchanged, point of contact changes, if bio-mechanics are changed, the shoe geometry effects muscle usage among other things and thus calves etc can require some adaptation, which you have rejected.

So, does heel-toe drop effect bio-mechanics or not?

Clearly you've never tried to forefoot strike while running in 5 inch heels...

Drop has zero measurable impact on a runner's disposition to land on one section of a foot or another. Drop also is shown to not impact calf issues. Cushioning does. You have the same calf calamities whether moving to a more minimal 10mm drop model of a minimal zero drop model. Because the calf generally gets overloaded with cushioning ask (generally because of a lack of recruitment in the hip/glute, but that's going way too far down the rabbit hole).

You've focused your premise on the flawed idea that the principal point of contact is what matters. News flash - it doesn't. As stated in a previous thread:

And, once again, drop doesn't do that. I land on the same spot whether it's in my 10 mm drop Mizunos, my 6 mm drop Hokas, my 4 mm drop Saucony's, or my zero drop Altra's. The shoe is merely a variable of the system controlled by the guy wearing it.

You're trying to make the case that somehow low drop shoes will make it easier to change someone's stride. I'm here to tell you: 1.) that's incorrect, and 2.) not only that, but you probably shouldn't be bothered trying to move somebody off of their body's preferred motion path and instead finding the right variable to support it.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Hello! I would like to try a more cushioned shoes... I'm thinking about Adidas Supernova glide 8 or Ultraboost 3.. any suggestions ?

Without any context as to what shoes you are currently running in...it gets difficult to make a recommendation.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I use Newton Gravity (neutral), before that I run short distances using VibramFF.

Duhr, totally missed you were the OP.

I would probably go with the Supernova (which is the replacement for the Supernova Glide, don't get me started on their naming conventions). Alternatively, you could go with the Saucony Freedom (similar material to Boost, 4 mm offset if you care about that sort of thing) or the Brooks PureFlow.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Agreed, we're not yet in an era of automated shoes that run for you and set your stride... To switch from a heel strike to a midfoot strike, you need to do it gradually, and work at things like cadence, foot placement and flexibility to make that transition.

That said, lower drop shoes do afford several advantages for true mid-foot strikers. Firstly, they get out of your way.... it's not going to happen with a 10mm drop shoe, but some of the shoes with steeper drops, can almost force an artificial heel strike, because there's so much there. a more reserved drop (4-6mm range) gets out of your way, and allows your own mechanics to take over and control the foot contact. They also allow you to get a better pre-tension on the foot to prepare for contact. Secondly, many (not all) of the lower drop models, because they are promoted to encourage a mid-foot strike (or marketed that way) will have better cushioning in the forefoot of the shoe than traditional beefy heeled shoes (as someone who has always run with a midfoot strike, I used to eat through shoes at a torrid pace in university, because they would have all of this heel padding that I would never use, but very little in the forefoot, so at times I would only get 2-300miles out of a pair). Thirdly, some (again, not all) of the shoes in this category also try to give you more proprioceptive feel, which for me is the most important factor of the shoe, with too much cushioning, you lose the feel of the ground and the ability to adjust the trajectory of the foot based on the proprioceptive sensations. With some of the newer shoes with lower heel toe drops, you get that ability to get that feedback...

Great feedback and info here. ST has some great contributors; thanks to all. Although a bit biased, here's some info I've been looking at:

https://www.salming.com/...owledge/the-science/

I'm sure others will pick it apart, but I like it when companies at least have their take and research on their pages. Yes, I am on a team that is sponsored in a small part by them, but so far I am very impressed with their shoes.

You're essentially arguing the same points.

1.) A shoe does not force any kind of strike, period. A runner makes any type of adjustment in any footwear to land in the same place regardless of shoe due to their preferred motion path. You can run with great form in a pair of Brooks Beasts. You can also do the same in a pair of Five Fingers. You can run with bad form in either one. This isn't caused by the shoe. My Mizuno Sayonaras, my favorite marathon shoe, had all the hallmarks of a low offset shoe in the platforming: flatter outsole, max ground contact in the midfoot, etc. But it was a 10 mm offset shoe. Does that mean I would run in it differently? Nope.

2.) "Propioceptive feedback" is a whole host of garbage. Please see the thread about the Nike 2 hour marathon project and how cushioning actually improves running economy.

2012 called. It wants its argument about drop mattering back. Find a shoe that works well for you, and run in that. Period. There's things that people should be trying to run more in, that don't because "what's the drop?" Just run.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

In my opinion, based only on my own experience, cadence change is not something that needs to be changed gradually. In fact I think, at least in some cases, it shouldn't be gradual.
I found that I have two cadence ranges that feel natural. One around 150-160spm (varying across this range depending on pace) which is what I did naturally when I started running and wasn't paying any attention to cadence. I tended to overstride a little.
The other is 180-190spm (again varying depending on pace) which is where I settled after actively trying to shorten my stride and raise my cadence. I run very comfortably now in this range and my gait is considerably better.
I cannot comfortably run at cadences between these two ranges. It's one mode or the other. If I'd persisted in trying to gradually increase cadence, I would likely never have found a comfortable technique.
The notion that cadence and technique is automatically selected is IMO flawed. Specifically so for adult onset runners. I expect optimisation takes place automatically to a large extent but only within a mode as it were. There is no stimulus to jump the gap. I would expect the existence of two discrete cadence ranges that I've experienced is the result of natural frequencies/harmonics associated with limb lengths and moments of inertia and perhaps also muscle contraction rates. But that is just speculation. I understand the basic physics but not all the variables in this complex system. It surprises me that I've never seen this idea discussed. It's clearly not something considered either at all, true or useful in the mainstream.

I won't go into the drop side of things. I agree with some of your comments to some extent but I think that discussion is going nowhere in this thread.