This assumption goes against the personal experience of multiple runners who have made the switch to maximalist shoes and report drastic reduction in injuries.

completely agree. Even when the cushion begins to wane, I feel a lot more pain

Wtf they used a stability shoe with a 4mm drop, compared to a 12mm drop neutral shoe? ...I stopped reading.

This study mirrors results from a 1960 military study on over 40,000 boot camp cadets. Besides assessing incident of injury, they also did force impact studies, and found that with more cushioning came higher impact loads on the legs.
In my own N=1 “study”, at 63 years old this year I finally decided why not at least try barefoot running. For this I did not actually run barefoot, I used a “shoe” from a company named Skinners (http://www.skinners.cc). These shoes are mistaken as socks by most people, as is it essentially what they are, except with a very thin protective material on the bottom- glass, etc cannot cut through. My first run I was very skeptical, and cautious, starting very slowly. It felt much better than expected, and I gradually increased my pace, and within about 1/4 mile was running my normal training pace. It felt great! I limited the run to 1.5 miles, and continued to do this for a full week. Over this week, my feet got noticeably stronger, and I enjoyed running in Skinners much more than my regular mix of conventional neutral shoes.
I have now been doing this for almost 2 months, am up to 45 miles a week in my build up period, and my feet, legs, knees, and back have never felt better.
Before starting this experiment I never thought I could run without some form of cushioning. I am glad I tried, for me, running without cushion is definitely better.
I doubt this would work out for everyone, but I do think everyone should give it a try and find out :-)

This personal experience goes against the personal experience of multiple runners who have made the switch to maximalist shoes and report drastic reduction in injuries.

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***

Why would either drop or stability alter ground contact forces?

IDK if these results are relevant to current shoes, clearly it's interesting given that Hoka seemed at that time to lay claim to being a max cushioning shoe. IIRC these shoes were out around 2012 or 2013. if I had to bet I'd bet on 2013.

The Conquest was a shitty shoe (my opinion ymmv) and isn't being made any more. The Ghost 6 is vastly different than the Ghost 11 that is the current edition. The ghost drop has grown 1.5mm to 12mm, maybe that would have some impact (no pun intended) on results if you redid the study.

IDK if we can extrapolate these results to today's foams that Hoka and Brooks use. They are vastly different foams today.

Would the results change with the Ghost vs the Pegasus? Or Asics Cumulus and/or Nimbus from that era or that era vs today's era? Are current shoes better? Worse? Lots of questions in my mind. I do love me some running shoes though and thought this was interesting research for sure.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

pretty sure the Ghost 6 was <12mm drop.

10 I think although for some reason I think 10.5mm


ETA: There isn't a ton, if any research to support one drop over the other as being a benefit.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Both drop and stability add unwanted variables to the study, which is just trying to establish a relationship between force and the incidence of injury. Especially considering that those are both, in themselves, things people alter to try and avoid injury makes it seem like a bad study setup.

This choice of shoe is interesting, because I was always under the assumption that a big part of the “minimalist” movement was having a shoe with little to no drop.

Causative or coincidental? (Same can be said for me, except I have tried BOTH, and had a strong bias to cushioned). Try yourself, over a reasonable period of time, and then comment :-)

Pretty established in the running medicine/rehab world that all the latest shoe company "technology" and "innovation" isn't going to reduce running related injuries and most of their claims aren't true. Runners run, shoes are simply tools. Runners will get injured in all types of shoes.

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CB
Physical Therapist/Endurance Coach
http://www.cadencept.net

Did you mean 'isn't going to reduce running related injuries' or 'isn't going to eliminate running related injuries'?

Logically this makes complete sense. You can have the spring in the body that stores and releases or you can just dissipate it all in a soft shoe with a stiff leg (vs gradually eccentrically contract and release on push off). One way of looking at this is skip rope for 10 minutes in hard shoes on a hard floor or soft shoes on the same floor and report back on which shoes you perform better in. I think if we do this experiment, we'll have zero benefit skipping rope in soft shoes since the proprioception with the ground is lost (thus the stiff leg).

In practice there is a tradeoff between running on hard ground with zero padding and running in highly cushioned shoes and losing proprioception. Its actually interesting watching people running from the swim to the bike tranition in bare feet vs their final 1km during a tri. Most people seem to have better form out of the swim and have more spring in their legs vs at the end of the race in shoes. But, of course there is more fatigue. But watching Frodo or Gomez or Brownlee running after the swim or end of run and its exactly the same form.

This claim ('runners are continuing to get injured as steady rates') is brought up a lot, but I haven't been able to find a source that controls for shifting demographics (older population, fatter population, etc). The paper makes a similar claim, but only cites a 3 decade old review. Any works regarding recent trends?

I think that's a really good point? What is even the metric for injury rate in a population? Injuries per mile, per year?

Can someone put the 41N impact difference in perspective for me? Not sure why they don't mention the total impacts rather than the differences. The way I figure it it's a pretty small proportion of the total impact force for the 75kg +/- 6kg runners they used isn't it? Isn't 3 x force as a peak on landing a typical approximation? So am I right in thinking it's 41N difference in a overall figure of about 2250N? So 2% ish? Or did I get that completely wrong?

 
Extract 1 : "Each subject had sports experience (team sports, running), several years of training and ran with a heel striking pattern."

So... running with heel striking pattern, mostly used to higher drop shoes probably, don't need forefoot cushion, then expected to adapt quickly to lower drop shoes with high mid-foot cushion they don't need... smell like bullshit...


Extract 2 : "at the slow speed in MAX shoes, runners applied 38 N less force on the ground than in CON shoes, whereas at the fast speed, the force was 41 N greater in MAX shoes (Fig. 3e)."

But... the title concentrate on "increased effort with Max"... smell like bullshit again


So, let's take heel striker, lets give them a shoe adapted to their gait (Ghost), and another not at all (Conquest), eliminate the speed range you want, get a clunky conclusion on there other speed range, and affirm this increased force (which might be linked to the inadaptation of the shoe to runner gait, but who care) will deliver more injuries... any proof ? No, just say it.


OK... do this study with cohort of half heel striker, half mid foot striker, with 2 reasonably adapted shoes, and really test correlation between forces and injuries, and we can talk.

Sample size of 12, eh?

If this wasn't Nature I'd completely dismiss it but man, *Nature*. Even though its Scientific Reports, hard to ignore.

I seriously can't believe this paper made Nature. I'm actually kinda in shock about it. The paper seems perfectly fine, but has enough small sample size, small choice of shoe type limiters that it can be justifiably judged as a small-case study, not an overarching paradigm-producing shift in the field. And the conclusion isn't some shockingly unexpected finding - this kind of research result has been suggested for years (decades) now.

This is honestly the type of research I thought may have made it to a high school science fair, performed by an aspiring high school student with an interest in running, who goes and does a summer research project with a legit human physiology lab. This doesn't mean I'm discounting the research - it seems solidly performed, yet is seriously limited in scope, and is so far from what I'd expect from a typical Nature paper that I'm pretty aghast at that being in there.

FWIW: https://www.nature.com/...es/referees#criteria


But yeah, even by that minimized bar I'm amazed that its worth publishing.

Ok - I see that I missed that this is in Nature "SCIENTIFIC REPORTS", which apparently is a VERY different standard than for the original Nature paper. (I"ve been out of original science long enough that this offshoot wasn't around when I was doing it!)

I googled 'impact factor' for each paper:
Nature (the original): 41.8 (higher is better)
Nature Scientific Reports: 4.6

So we shouldn't judge this as a paper published in the prestigious giant Nature, but as a much smaller scale paper on the scale with most small-journal findings. By that criteria, I'm less surprised, but I don't like how confusing these journals (have intentionally made it) by sharing the name so closely.

My 2 cents:

These results should not be surprising and have been reported in other studies changing footwear or removing it for that matter don't produce anticipated results. The main issue is they are not allowing for habituation/adaptation to the change in attenuation mechanics...

We are creatures of habit and often when "healthy" runners are first placed in maximalist shoes (or shoes that attenuate more force) we will seek mechanics based on sensory adaptation i.e. we drive into cushion shoe (increased stiffness) to match legacy sensory feedback.

This often changes when placing symptomatic runners e.g. knee pain/back pain into these shoes as they have guarded mechanics and the additional attenuation has an immediate effect, or overtime a healthy runner will adapt to new mechanics from footwear.

Yeah,

1) let's give a "heel strikers only" cohort a clunky low drop high forefoot cushion shoe not adapted to their stride / gait
2) let's ignore results for the 2 speed range are opposite, considering only one of them
3) let's affirm that more force give more injury... despite this is not proven, can come from lower angles, or...

May be the test protocol is OK, for evaluating the forces.

But the cohort is not : heel strikers only
The shoes are not (especially given heel strikers only) : why not NB1400V6 vs Vaporfly ? Same drop, different cushion.
They kind of ignore half of the results (lower speed)
They affirm a correlation not proven

Totally biased claimed results, from biased cohort, shoes, speed selection, and final claims...

Bullshit ^4

This study is made with a cohort of peoples 100% heel strikers (extract presented in post 17).

So it would make sense if the shoes used were, for example :
- a 10mm drop racing flat : NB 1400, or other similar
versus
- a 10mm drop cushion shoe : Vaporfly, or Glycerin, or...

Then, the result would be significant, in term of force.

Then correlation between force and injury would still to be established.

For example, in the Vaporfly study (the serious one, not the NYT bullshit study, with margin error much higher than result delta) :
https://link.springer.com/...07/s40279-017-0811-2

comparing exactly that (racing flat vs high cushion)
the increased leg stiffness with cushioned shoe is not attributed to higher forces in muscles, tendon, ... but to lesser knee angle.

So, increased leg stiffness with less muscular effort... with 2 consequences :
1) more efficient : 4% versus racing flat
2) less fatigue and injury

If you run a marathon with Vaporfly instead of flat, legs feel better at the end, and injury rate is lower... if you are not a pronator, because if you are VF will destroy you. Not a matter of cushion, then, matter of stability. Life is complex.

This study show nothing. Biased cohort, biased shoes, biased speed selection, clickbait like title announcing things not proved.

Well... it show that bullshit is easy.

Why is taking only heelstrikers a problem? The vast majority of all runners strikes with the heel and I imagine that it is really hard to find enough people who are real mid- or forefoot strikers for a study. Moreover, especially a heel striker should profit from maximum cushioned shoes compared to mid- or forefood runners. If that effect cannot be observed with heelstrikers, it will not be observed with forefoot runners either.

Concerning the different drops of the shoes: I do not get why this should make a difference regarding the impact force.

Finally, "citing" anecdotal evidence like "so many runners report that maximum cushioned shoes reduce the risk of getting injured" is not really a strong argument against a peer-reviewed paper published in a scientific journal such as nature.

Hello

1) heelstrikers
it is not bad to select heel strikers, but if you select a cohort 100% heel striker, why don't use shoes adapted to heel striker :
10mm drop racing flat : NB 1400, or lower drop flat such Hanzo, ...
vs
10mm cushionned shoe : Vaporfly

Then, you would really compare no-cushion vs cushion

Instead of choosing a cushioned shoe for heel strikers : Ghost, vs a shoe ..... well.... a bad shoe for heel strikers.
Ghost is cushionned for heel strikers. Conquest is... non sense.

Shoe selection make this study mean nothing.

2) drop
is just a consequence of heel cushion vs forefoot cushion (if we assume heigh is cushion, not always true).
When I was heel striking, I loved 10mm drop shoes with good heel cushion and not much front cushion (Ghost for example, is a cushion shoe for heel strikers)
Now mid foot striking, I want forefoot cushion, and not having the heel "scratching" : I love low drop cushioned shoes.

For a 100% heel striker cohort, make coherent choice.

3) anecdotal evidence
was not cited by me

4) This study was "Peer reviewed"
type "fake peer-review article" on Google and have a look. Everybody in scientific community knows hundreds of "peer reviewed" article are just plain bullshit. lot of noise around this last 2 years.

This article is clearly bullshit^4
So either reviewed by peoples not really aware
Or biased
Or...

Did you noticed that at 10km/h, the Conquest reduce the forces very significantly ?

Is it reduced very significantly? It's seems reduced to a similar degree to it is increased at the higher speed but I'm not sure either is very significant. I tried to put the figure in context in an earlier post, someone with a better grasp of the physics could do a better job.

Regarding the study I would of been interested in what is the margin of error in force measurement?

What interests me is that this studies the force on the ground. I'm fairly sure the shoe manufacturers would be making claims about the forces on the body and could care less about the ground. Maybe the study is aimed at engineers maintaining side walks? Isn't the whole point that the cushioning between the ground and the body mitigates some of that force? If the force of impact with the ground is slightly increased (at some speeds) when the cushioning is increased to a higher degree then isn't it entirely possible the net result on the impact to the body is reduced?

Totally agree with this.

This study confirms what studies I was reading back in the 90's at university were saying.

 
Hello,

yes, similar in value, but higher in percentage.

But the main issue is (apart cohort selection, shoe selection, speed selection) that force measured mean really nothing.
Because we don't know how this force is produced.
As said in one of my post above, in the real Vaporfly study :
https://link.springer.com/...07/s40279-017-0811-2

they "think" more force can be produced with less muscle impact, due to lower knee angle. Could also happen with different use of the body, when moving from heel strike to mid-foot strike, ...

Saying "more force is more injury" is just .... not proved. For VF article, it seems that more force is produced with to less muscle and tendon impact, because of the cushion.

I remember reading an older study saying : "with more cushion, runner need to produce more leg stiffness. And more leg stiffness is requiring more energy. So cushion leed to less efficiency."
The Vaporfly study show exactly the opposite, and the reason is : leg stiffness can be produced with less energy and impact on muscle and tendon, ... because joint work differently.

If it was as simple as put shoe on and run then everyone would do it! It’s not that simple and likewise we can’t simply blame the shoes. Just like there isn’t one shoe that works for all runners there isn’t one fix for all runners. It really comes down to an N=1.

In my experience working with triathletes and my experience watching hundreds of thousands of runners running every year it comes down to some basics:

1. If there in an imbalance in your structure either skeletal or muscular your run will be compromised. Some like the favorite pro in this forum can. muscle through that imbalance and do quite welll. Most can’t.
2. Running heavy - If you don’t have a running background from high school you probably didn’t learn the basic drills you need to perfect that teach you to be light on your feet. It’s the easiest way I can explain it. When you do your drills imagine your are Eulid Kipchoge.
3. Your body weight - Just read about the 70 year old breaking world records in running. In that article weight is a key statistic for him. It should be for anyone who wants to run injury free too!
4. Shoes - Yes sometimes the shoe is simply a bad match and needs changing out. With the athletes I work one on one with it’s usually about 20% that need to address their shoes. Same in the marathons I watch, roughly 20% need to address their shoes. Sometimes that means simply replace the darn things and a faster rate.
5. Recovery - Listen to the interview Tim Ferriss did with King James. Why is LeBron able to play at such a high level after so long in the League? It’s the recovery practice. We can attribute a large amount of running injury to lack of recovery. Instead of telling you, you are doing too much training I’ll just say your aren’t doing enough recovery.

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Dave Jewell
Free Run Speed

What I would really like to learn the correlation of highly cushioned shoes and the type of injury trends, ie. is there a correlation between that type of shoe and hip injuries. I am no expert but somehow it seems to me that we are only moving the occurrences up the kinetic chain.....curious, any knowledge there.

Can't think of any particular study that answers your questions. In general what I've seen in evaluating/treating the gamut of running related injuries.

1) Regardless of shoe type, runners get injured.

2) Too much motion control or "pronation control" often does more harm than good (knee/hip injuries)...I didn't say EVERY time, but very common.

3) Training errors ( ie poor recovery, avoiding any sort of ancillary work on their bodies, too much intensity, etc) account for I'm gonna guess 80% of running related injury.

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CB
Physical Therapist/Endurance Coach
http://www.cadencept.net

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.

There is this study.

Regarding barefoot -

I think it's a reasonable guess to assume the opposite pattern for highly cushioned shoes.

No evidence that overall injury rates are lower in minimalist shoe folks, and I'm going to wager than the incidence of OA today is due to higher BMI vs shoe wear. And actually there is evidence to support runners have lower incidence of OA vs non-runners.

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CB
Physical Therapist/Endurance Coach
http://www.cadencept.net

The response of 'no injury reduction' is more complex than the studies make it out to be.

Shoed vs unshoed actually get different types of injury. It's definitely not true to say 'they're the same for injuries.' The weightloading from cushioned to noncushioned is pretty dramatic.

It's definitely reasonable that someone who suffers from predominant ankle arthritis but has good knees may do better in a cushioned shoe that relieves the calf/ankle loading, whereas someone with pristine ankles but somewhat limiting knee/hip arthritis might actually benefit from switching to a less cushioned shoe.

Yes someone with a particular medical history may benefit from a certain type of shoe vs another...agreed.

And yes, types of injuries may vary a bit between types of shoes, but prevalence isn't any different. Folks get injured with any and all types of shoes.

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CB
Physical Therapist/Endurance Coach
http://www.cadencept.net

There are a lot of variables that are not controlled or not mentioned that affect biomechanics of running adaptation, that we simply cannot infer anything about injury prevention... But it's an interesting start.

This is similar to an experiment I did in my graduate program. We had subjects run downhill for 5 minutes comfortably, then stop (no walking flat at all), immediately carted them over to a flat surface with a force plate and kinematic background and had them run. Boy was that hilarious to watch. The GRF numbers showed off the chart impact and heel strike and saw a prancing gait for a solid 20 meters or so. The runners were still in down hill mechanics. The problem with making real world applications with it, as with this article, was that it only shows what happens when you change the environment/ tools we use. It doesn't even show the adaptation to the change. Guaranteed if they had more than a measly 100 meters of running in the new shoes we would have seen a different result, which is what we should be interested in (after which there's a whole additional set of variables)

Basically, If you take a runner and change their mechanics via the shoe or anything in their environment to the opposite of what they're used to they'll have stiffer legs and because the mechanics required to move forward are different. This is called degrees of freedom in motor learning when you attempt to change or learn a new pattern. The more joints involved, the more complex the movement, the more likely you will see "limb stiffness" when a variable is changed. It takes practice to refine and perfect that movement, new or old, when we change a variable.

Its good basic stuff, but more work needs to be done to get any meaningful application to training, injury prevention, or gear development.

Do running drills with whatever shoes you find comfortable and we'll be better off in the meantime.

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Matt Leu, M.S. Kinesiology
San Pedro Fit Works, Los Angeles, CA
Endurance Athlete and Coach
Consistency/time=results

Yes, reduced very significantly. The t-test here is the comparison between CON and MAX shoes for a single speed. At 10 km/h (AND for 14.5 km/h), runners in the MAX shoe experience a greater impact peak force. How significant? The t-test says '0.001'. This means that, if the same study were carried out 1000 times, only once would the results be reversed (i.e. the CON providing the greater impact force 1 time in a thousand). This is how science/statistics is done. Typically,a p value of 0.05 or less is considered a 'significant difference' from a statistical POV - i.e. the same result 95 times out of 100. There are statistical models behind this calculation that take into account the mean values, the standard deviations (deviation from the mean values) and the number of observations. Now, does a peak impact force of 2.25 x body weight cause more injuries than 2.01? That is not part of this analysis/study. BUT, according to the t-test value, in this study (i.e. these mean values, these standard deviations, these observation numbers), yup, 2.25 is very significantly different than 2.01. That may not be what you're after (if you're trying to predict injury frequency/intensity from peak impact), but the peak impact forces are different.

Wow, I never realized that 37-56% of runners are injured every year. I guess I must be fortunate then b/c I've run for about 33 yrs and have only ever been injured once. I've never run huge amounts but have run up to 50 mi/wk for 6-7 wks at a time. My long-term avg is about 20 mi/wk, low due to lots of swimming (20,000 yd/wk) and some cycling (70 mi/wk). I've never tried to be a pure runner, mostly b/c I just don't enjoy it that much.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Saw that! Interesting to say the least.

My +1 is I'm getting old and I'm a little broken. I can run in Hokas much more comfortably than Brooks. I came to Hoka from Brooks. Yes this is completely subjective and not scientific but if it works for me, right?

Edit: Gah! They modeled a mass and spring system. I must stop reading that paper. It is giving me school flashbacks. :p

I get PF every few years, and IT band issues that come and go. Mostly gone past few years. Also got ball of foot pain last year that luckily healed. Was not indicated in imaging at all, but was there during exam. This year so far so good. These are never mid-run injuries like a stress fracture or rolled ankle would be. They crop up after usually the morning after.

Thanks for the discussion. You're obviously more familiar with this sort or area than me.

Is 2.25 to 2.01 a ratio you are using for the purposes of discussion or specifically what we are talking about at 10km/h in the Hoka ? If it is not the ratio in that instance then what is the correct ratio.

Have a look in Table 1, next to last line on the right (14.5 km/h). Running in CON delivers a max force of 2.01 in units of BW, so body weight. Running in MAX has a max force of 2.25 BW. The numbers in parenthesis next to each value are the respective standard deviations - essentially the variability of the results. The most RH column says '0.001***'. That is the t-test result of comparing the CON and MAX max force results and imply that the CON max force would be less than the MAX max force 999 times if the experiment were repeated 1000 times. So, these results indicate high confidence that the MAX max force is bigger than the max CON force. But that does not mean that the difference results in differences in injury rate or injury type or injury location or...anything else. Just a statistical evaluation comparing the max forces.

Fascinating study! It highlights a common debate about heavily cushioned shoes. While the immediate 'plushness' is appealing, there's definitely a trade-off when it comes to how your body adjusts its stride.
Some runners find a happy medium in shoes with a sock-like construction. You still get cushioning and comfort, but the more minimal, flexible design encourages a lighter footfall. Companies like https://comfysockshoes.com/ specialize in this type of shoe. It might be something to explore if you're interested in a responsive feel without sacrificing comfort.
Of course, everyone's biomechanics are different! What works for one person might not for another. Has anyone else switched up their shoe type and noticed a change in how their legs feel during a run?"

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https://goodhgh.com/

Nothing new in the horizon: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08723

If the winner of the men's or women's marathon in this summer's Olympics, or any or the top ten for that matter, are in Nike Frees I will reconsider my "bouncy" shoes.

my orthopedic surgeon commented to me a few years ago, that he's made a bunch of money from people reading Born to Run and running a bunch of miles in barefoot shoes or doing CrossFit.

What is good to win the Olympics might not be your best choice. Actually, and without knowing you, I would guess it's a different sport altogether.

Like one top swimming trainer used to say; swimming is what happens under 1"/100. 1:15 has merit, but it's a different sport.

I am guessing your aerobic engine relative to your body weight and is good and your body weight relative to height is trending on the lean side.

If you take an overweight person with also a below average aerobic engine, each stride has a ton of force and if the aerbobic engine is not great, then the muscles can't be supplied with a ton of oxygen. There is a virtuous cycle that happens with a big engine and being light and not everyone has that, meaning they are more likely to get injured than people like you (or I). I got to watch this in action coaching youth sport for 15 years. You knew some kids would be more likely to have injuries while others would thrive because they already picked the right parents and had decent body composition on top of that. Like is not fair when it comes to running.

I am not surprised by the percent of people who get injured. Running is really hard. Here at the pointy end of ST, we don't generally represent the overall bell curve of what is out there.

And now he is making a lot of money thanks to bouncey shoes with a spring leading to ankle/Achilles injuries. As others are stating injuries will happen no matter what shoes type,just differently.

Regards to leg stiffness and cushioned shoes, have other people noticed decline in ability to jump?

We are all confident in ideas that seem to make sense.

For example a few weeks ago LS put out a video saying he was done with carbon shoes because the advantage of racing in them was lost if you trained in them as well. Made perfect sense. I used to do swim practices in a drag suit (which was still faster than the suit I wore as a teenager, but that's another story). So running in "drag" shoes made perfect sense. Out came the Hokas and the Altras of old and off I went. And I now have my first black toes in 15 months......😥

Of course I will still train on my Dutch bike...🤣🤣

Research papers are often like busses.
If you wait a bit one will come along that will take you where you think you want to go.

It’s funny that there is so much unfounded confidence in people who push a particular running style, and then you encounter someone like Dr. Philip Skiba’s take and he cites studies showing experts fail to predict running efficiency. The more you know.

Another thing that irks me is the “run by falling/let gravity do the work” description. Gravitational effects are generally orthogonal (vertical) to the running direction (horizontal), and power is dot(F,v) … which in this case is near zero save for inclines/declines. A natural lean angle arises from having to cancel the rotation due to the static friction force at the contact patch, by having the center of gravity somewhere forward of the contact patch. This makes sense… we lean hard when accelerating from a stand and less so at cruising speeds. In theory a very efficient, low-drag runner would have a smaller lean angle for a given speed than a less efficient runner.

Without proof, I speculate that recreational runners get injured more than recreational CrossFitters.

Elite runners and elite CrossFitters are almost always fighting some level of niggling-to-serious injury. Just the nature of being elite that you're pushing your body to the limits of overuse.

One advantage of recreational CrossFit is that if you get a niggling pain in some bodypart, you can just keep on CrossFitting and not stress that part of the body. There are two guys in my gym with niggling shoulder pain from the recent CrossFit Open, and they're just coming in doing all the squats, box jumps, etc, and just going light on the shoulder stuff. Overuse injury in CrossFit is rare since the programming tends to vary which part of the body is being stressed from day to day. With running, every day is leg day.

I know from hard-won experience that when you get a running injury as a runner your training is pretty much hosed. You can sometimes do aqua jogging and stuff...but that's not quite the same.

I agree that the "falling/leg gravity do the work" instructions are dumb, and I instantly tune that stuff out.

I'd push back a little bit on gravity effect being "near zero" except on incline/decline, and the simple power model as description of the the complex kinematics of running Most of the energy expense in running is fighting gravitational force (part of why bodyweight is highly correlated with running performance), and there's some evidence that vertical oscillation of center mass is inversely correlated to energy use efficiency. (source)







X-axis is a measure of mass oscillation over a stride, using the pelvis as a measuring point. Doing mental linear regression, that looks like a near-perfect diagonal line to me.

Ya I think I more or less fit your description: about 6'1", 175 lb, 7-ish% fat, with long arms and legs. Decent aerobic engine, ran 18:55 for 5K and swam 20:37 for the 1500 scm in my younger days. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I didn’t word it properly, but I had initially written about “negative work” required to fight gravity, so I agree that it contributes significantly to the cost of running.

What I was trying to point out though is that unless you’re running downhill, the weight force cannot contribute to work done in the direction of travel — even though it is a force we must perform “negative work” against to keep our bodies from just crumbling to the floor.

WTF - why are you trying to make running as complicated as swimming. Just Run!

37-56% is a huge range. I'm wondering how inclusive "injury" is. Lots of runners get a slight flare up of their ITB, some shin splints, a sore Achilles, etc. Do those count as injuries? Exactly how sore do my knees have to feel after a run to be injured?

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

I hope nobody in here takes any advice from orthopedic surgeons. They literally make a killing off of your poor running form and are always happy to operate. They are a part of the problem IMO. That being said, increase the cadence, land on your mid foot(yeah it takes concentration) and run in whatever shoe feels good. Moon boots, military boots, dress shoes, or a strap of rubber. Anybody landing on straight legs without using the body as it was meant to mitigate and then absorb that shock through muscles, tendons, and many bent joints VS extended knees is going to get injured. Increase mileage too quickly, and you’re going to get injured. Changing from thick Hokas to carbon race shoes without adapting to them, you’re going to get injured. The body adapts well but TIME is what most runners fail to give their bodies in training. Everybody wants a quick fix.. i agree. Dumb “study”

I'd be interested in your "5 year review" of the barefoot experience.

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"Good genes are not a requirement, just the obsession to beat ones brains out daily"...the Griz

We know how this works out already. Late 2000s to early 2010s barefoot running trend. Vibrams and all that horseshit.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Running barefoot in a grassy field once a week helps to initiate good running form. One of my favorite workouts. Beginner runners strapping on toe shoes and running marathons on concrete was never going to be a good thing. Why do people always think in such extremes? This or that?

I find running on grass or astro turf either barefoot or with vibrams ideal. I still jog slowly a few times per week for ten minutes in the winter on my treadmill with vibrams as I have some nerve damage in my left lumbar spine and doing easy jogging with almost nothing on my feet is good for my coordination.

Other than that, running with reasonable stack in the 35mm range on pavement most of the time. Best of both worlds.

I don't think it makes any sense running with thin shoes on concrete and pavement. As you said, things don't need to be so extreme.

Yeah, concrete is a man made thing. Not a great running surface in general. Give me trails all day every day over the asphalt jungle. We can learn a lot about running barefoot and then carry that information over to wearing shoes. The shoes by themselves will not solve any problems. Proper biomechanics and running efficiency paired with a host of shoes for different types of runs. Best of both worlds.

“5 year review”…barefoot running or walking should be considered like any other shoe choice, make the correct choice for your application. There is absolutely no question that being in traditional shoes all day, or most of the day is harmful to your foot and overall health. Running barefoot on grass, sand and soft surfaces feels great, but running on hard surfaces for shorter durations can also be a good experience. For longer runs, and higher intensities I prefer shoes with minimal stack and smooth feeling midfoot rocker, such as the Asics Noosa Tri and Asics Metaspeed Edge. Keep in mind that shoe choice is highly individual, and a proper fitting shoe should feel great immediately! This is particularly the case with Carbon Plated shoes, the first 5 I tried were awful (for me). I had actually given up, but tried the ASICS Metaspeed Edge when a good friend with my same size, 9.5, had a pair he did not like and allowed me to try them. Finally a carbon plate that felt just like my favorite ASICs.
So, I will still do shorter recovery runs barefoot, training and racing in a more conventional shoe- but I am immediately out of them when done with the run. Just walking around, hiking (even technical), I use Skinners, which are essentially low cut socks with 2mm of Kevlar for the outsole!
BTW- just doing your everyday walking barefoot or in a minimal shoe will provide the maximum benefit in foot health- great on the knees too :-)

TY

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"Good genes are not a requirement, just the obsession to beat ones brains out daily"...the Griz