One thing all of these studies fail to mention, which I find critical in my experience of cushioned vs noncushioned shoes, is WHERE the load occurs.
With cushioned shoes, I find it very quad/hip/knee loaded. If you do steep hillclimbs, your quads will be the ones taking the brunt of the load (and might get sore the next day.) There's relative sparing of the achilles and calf until you get to super steep 18%+ grades. Similar with impact - most of the impact gets cushioned, but with the load sent up the chain to knee/hip (you can really feel it.)
With barefoot or minimalist, your achilles and calf get most of the load, with sparing of the quads/hip/knee. I was really surprised to find how little my quads were used once I was fully converted to minimalist - even on 18%+ climbs, the achilles/calf did most of the work, and the quad just moved things along. Impact here is absorbed mostly by the achilles and calf. Which is why it's so hard for most folks to jump to minimalist without months of acclimating their achilles to this load.
This loading location is really important but not well studied. Most folks get arthritis in their knees and hips, and much less commonly in the ankles (it's like 10x knee/hip vs ankle for occurence.) So one way to extend your running longevity if you have joint arthritis is to use footwear that favors your good joints.
I can't help but wonder if the super common prevalence of knee/hip arthritis today (apparently it's much more common today than decades ago) has something to do with the type of footwear and loading we use, which almost remove the achilles/calf from the run motion.
With cushioned shoes, I find it very quad/hip/knee loaded. If you do steep hillclimbs, your quads will be the ones taking the brunt of the load (and might get sore the next day.) There's relative sparing of the achilles and calf until you get to super steep 18%+ grades. Similar with impact - most of the impact gets cushioned, but with the load sent up the chain to knee/hip (you can really feel it.)
With barefoot or minimalist, your achilles and calf get most of the load, with sparing of the quads/hip/knee. I was really surprised to find how little my quads were used once I was fully converted to minimalist - even on 18%+ climbs, the achilles/calf did most of the work, and the quad just moved things along. Impact here is absorbed mostly by the achilles and calf. Which is why it's so hard for most folks to jump to minimalist without months of acclimating their achilles to this load.
This loading location is really important but not well studied. Most folks get arthritis in their knees and hips, and much less commonly in the ankles (it's like 10x knee/hip vs ankle for occurence.) So one way to extend your running longevity if you have joint arthritis is to use footwear that favors your good joints.
I can't help but wonder if the super common prevalence of knee/hip arthritis today (apparently it's much more common today than decades ago) has something to do with the type of footwear and loading we use, which almost remove the achilles/calf from the run motion.