Dan -

Another option, if you haven't done it already, is to see what the major shoe manufacturers are calling "ramp delta". I know Brooks uses "heel-to-toe offset". Maybe you already looked and found there was no consensus, but if not, it'd probably be a good place to start.


-Tim

I think you make some interesting and valid points. I would think that trail runners would stay away from "taller" shoes because of stability issues running on uneven surfaces. Even while running on road surfaces, I notice a difference when the edge of the road angles down for drainage. If the angle is too severe, I tend towards the middle of the road because the angle puts pressure on my ankles. I would think that a "taller" shoe would make this more of an issue.

In regard to terminlogy, I think "heel drop" is a pretty god description.

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When I read "ramp delta", I see images of aircraft carriers.

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"Regarding "ramp delta" as terminology - its a problem to my ears because a ramp already implies a change in value from one location to another. "ramp delta" is double dealing."

i hear you. still, what seems to get used a lot is "ramp angle" and what i'm reading is often a conflation of that term with the "delta" i'm talking about. for example, it's not uncommon to hear about a ramp angle of 12mm. now, angles aren't measure in length increments, still, that's what i often hear. so, my intent was to match the notion of "ramp" to the correct type of metric. hence ramp delta. but i'm not wedded to it.

"you quote Jewell saying "Clearly they are running in what’s most appropriate to their running style" but I don't see any evidence at all that this is clear"

well, fine, but take it up with dave. i'm quoting dave. note that dave is a bright and intuitive guy, a long time runner, long time shoe dog, long time triathlete, so, i'm assuming that what he's seeing out there in kona (he was there, watching, for this specific phenomenon) matches what it is he's reporting.

i'm CERTAIN that he's not saying that EVERYONE is running in the shoe that he or she is best in, or ought to be in as a match for his or her running style. what he's saying, i think, is that it takes a lot of hubris to say that ALL runners ought to be running in low ramp angle shoes (as seems to be the implicit message from the new breed of shoe and technique "experts".) rather, he's saying that we ought to give some credit to runners themselves, who are not yet ready to be herded en masse into the natural running corral.

"where being as far off the ground (mud) as the Hoka puts you is a real issue."

i also was very suspicious of the hoka's overall height. i came to this shoe with a jaundiced eye. i tried it against what i thought was my better judgment. i haven't yet found this to be a concern, and, mind you, this shoe is the darling of the very folks who have the most to lose if it's unstable: ultra trail runners. so far, i haven't found it to be a problem. but i might still. we'll see.

my hope is really for the new shoe, the bondi b. this is a somewhat lower shoe, and is a 9-ouncer, rather than the 11oz beast that the mafate is.

still, i must tell you, when my legs are beat and i have to go on a run, the mafate is the tool i pull out of toolchest.

thanks for your comments. you clearly understand the issues. i'm toying with establishing a database of shoes here on slowtwitch, with ramp delta (or whatever we're going to call it) overall heel/midfoot heights, weight, structural features, etc. the problem is getting shoe companies to give up the actual data. i don't know if i want to invest the bank to buy all these shoes just to cut them up. i'm noodling how best to do this.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Dan - can we donate old shoes for being cut up? I have a ton of shoes sitting in my closet. As long as you promise to recycle, I will gladly send you stinky old shoes.

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how about consult our very own, knowledgeable (and extremely helpful) poster rroof before publishing such an influential article.

i'm all for hearing from all sides, rroof included. this is the first of several articles on this subject, should rroof chime in those comments will likely be included.

my main interest was to invite the shoe companies. i've received relative silence from most of the mainstreamers. extract from this whatever message you will.

still, i didn't consult all the mainstreamers, and those that wish to reach back to me certainly are welcome to. what i'm finding, however, is that i'm pushed off to the PR folks at the larger companies. which is fine, but, unless i can talk to folks with intimate knowledge of the technical issues, such interviews are meaningless.

basically, i'll tell you where we're at. it's like talking to big bike companies 10 years ago. since that time, the bike makers have gotten religion on the value of triathlon. consequently, i know the product managers, designers, engineers, well and personally. the shoe companies aren't there yet. they haven't figured out whether triathlon matters to them or, if they have, they've figured out that it doesn't matter.

but i haven't given up hope. at some point, these companies will learn that if they consider their companies wrongly-sized for attention to be paid to triathlon, the technical running division of these companies will eventually be "rightly-sized."

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Depends on how worn you made them, as the compression and rebounding mechanism will probably result in a variance in the overall midsole height of the shoe...

Dan--
The most common term used in the footwear industry is "drop." E.g. there is 4 mm drop in the Saucony Kinvara.

I also like how you illustrate the difference between a natural running shoe, and a barefoot running shoe. To further illustrate the difference, pulled from my blog:


This then allows you to further differentiate between shoes (for example, the Nike LunaRacer line is more minimal, versus say the Kinvara, which is more natural). Neither is wrong; it is necessary to get into an inquiry as to the technique used by the particular runner at hand. Those who have had a lot of calf/Achilles distress typically are avoiding the heel too much, at which point a more traditional drop would be proper. (Generally, these runners land further forward on the foot, rather than more midfoot, and will need a touch of heel height to help engage the back end of the foot.)

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

i don't mind what you're reporting, but i don't know that the consensus exists that you think exists. as for "drop", i'm happy to use this as a consensus term, but, of the three dozen or so shoe companies out there, and the dozen or so running systems out there, how many use this term? if we can coalesce around a consensus, i'm happy to accede to it.

"Minimal running shoes are merely stripping away at the cushioning underneath the foot."

i'm cool with that, but, i prefer more technical and descriptive terms. if what you want to describe is a low-profile shoe, fine, low-profile it is. but low-profile doesn't address ramp or structure. what you've so far done is conflate "minimal" with "low-profile" and you've added no other modifying themes. are you saying that "mimimal" and "low-profile" are synonyms in this context?

further, there are higher-profile shoes (sir isaac, terra momentus) that newton makes that still offer (according to newton) a high degree of feedback thru certain technical features in the shoe. so, do you think newton would agree that some of its shoes are "minimal" and others are not?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

In terms of consensus, it is the same terminology that the New England reps for Saucony, Brooks, Mizuno, New Balance, Newton, and Nike have used. The Zoot rep and I had a bit of conversation about using drop as the central terminology as well, as it is simplest to convey to customers.

I agree in that I would prefer more descriptive terms. However, I would argue from a sales front perspective, less is more.

To break down further:

Natural shoes will vary in terms of the amount of actual midsole heights, but will all feature no more than 6 mm of drop. Minimal shoes will feature more than 6 mm of drop, but will feature no more than 16 mm of midsole height at the tallest point.

This is where other descriptive terms come in, as you describe: you can have more responsive natural shoes (e.g. the Newton line), or you can have well-cushioned natural shoes as well (the Hoka line-up). But anything that has more than 6 mm of drop, by it's nature, can't be natural. This is where you find minimal shoes, or you find more "traditional" footwear as well.

What you have described as "feedback" is generally regarded as "responsiveness." I would argue that these terms would still apply, even within the natural running category. So you have some models (e.g. the Gravity), which provides a more isolated feel as compared to, say, the Terra Momentus, which is more responsive. Does that follow?

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

+1 on this - great idea, one that would be extremely useful to us.

I wonder if the various running/ tri mags would be put off - how many issues do they sell based on their shoe reviews. Personally I rarely find most of the information to be very helpful. All I care to know (before I go in to Playmakers to actually try them on) is weight and heel-toe delta/ drop/ whatever we call it.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

"In terms of consensus, it is the same terminology that the New England reps for Saucony, Brooks, Mizuno, New Balance, Newton, and Nike have used."

yet, when i go to NB website, the word "drop" appears to be used once, in connection with the trail minimus, and the term they use is the more expansive, "drop from heel to toe." no other appearance of that word in concert with NB technical running.

saucony's website uses the term "drop" once, in connection with its progrid peregrine. it refers to "heel drop" which, to me, makes no sense, because the heel doesn't drop, the midfoot drops.

brooks uses the term "heel-to-toe offset" on its website, rather than the word "drop". no consensus so far.

i can't find any reference to either the use of "drop" nor of any reference to the metric on mizuno's website. nike's website is so slow and buggy i stopped looking, and i couldn't find any reference to "drop" on newton's site.

don't get me wrong. i don't mind that you establish terms and metrics and categories. i do it all the time. but i'm careful to note when i think a consensus has been reached, versus when it hasn't. i don't see anywhere that the descriptions of either terms, or metrics attached to these terms, that you used are used by anybody other than you and a few to whom you talk.

rather, what i hear when i talk to running execs is religious attachment to their own views. i don't have conversations with running execs. i get lectured. this appears typical in this industry, based on my recent interviews. views have become hardened, and the lectures generally refer to the "science" based on the cracker jack box doctorate each of zealot or prophet carries in his back pocket. they talk past each other, they've made decisions, they're unchangeable, unteachable, frozen in amber.

so, here's my concept. every shoe ought to be like every bike. it's subject to real metrics. every bike's metrics are available via a geometry chart, as well as a list of other common themes and features, such as weight.

on that shoe's geometry chart ought to be heel and midfoot height. perhaps also overall length and width inside the shoe. stuff like that. does that seem reasonable?

further, i think you're right. minimal ought to mean something. you've stuck your own metric out there. i'd be obliged if you'd show me where, on the web, it seems to be a commonly held understanding that 16mm or lower constitutes minimal. otherwise, no, no consensus there, but, i'd be happy to help you build one.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

How about "ramp height"?

Dan--

You're completely right on a lot of those points. Mr. Rapp and I have been going a bit back and forth in the "What does barefoot mean?" thread about this same issue: what vocabulary are we going to settle on within the industry? It seems like right now, even within companies, it does not equate. (Perhaps some of the field reps I see monthly have, but their parent companies, it seems, have not.)

100% true statement--running execs are so attached to their own systems, their own beliefs, that there can't possibly be a way that anybody else has done this. (The closest thing I can come to thinking of something is Brooks, who originally said they would never do anything in this natural debate, and now next spring will be going in, full bore). Your "cracker jack box doctorate" bit on is so close to true, it hurts a bit.

I think that what you have proposed is something that I would like to see done as well. I think weight (based on the average sizes for the US, and not the Mens 9, womens 7 that have been the published weight for years), midsole height, width at ball of foot, arch length, and length from heel to toe would be the most important metrics.

I can't, with certainty, show you anything that says "minimal is under 16mm." I picked that height because, in general terms, published midsole heights of performance trainers (think Asics DS Trainer, New Balance 905) will have heel heights no less than 21mm. You could argue that anything under that 21mm height would therefore fit into that minimal category...but as stated, I think we want minimal to mean something.

This all being said, I'd love to help out with anything to build this database and vocabulary.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I think about the only correct term would be "heel-to-toe height difference."

Still in that dimension, I think another thing to think about (harder to measure, but real) is the other ramp at the front of the shoe. Most running shoes (in their unflexed state) put your big toe uphill, not so much from the thickness of the midsole as from its curvature. I don't know if this matters, or how, but having messed around with VFFs which are flat from heel to toe, I now notice the toe lift as much, perhaps more than heel lift. So, while we're proposing ramp deltas...

Ah, yes, the forefoot last...

The old measurement for that was how many fingers you could get underneath the forefoot of the shoe until you hit outsole/midsole, which told you how quickly that shoe would roll through toe-off. My old Brooks Adrenaline 7s were threes; the old Infiniti and Axiom combo were four.

Of course, we'd like to have a quantifiable measurement available (probably go from the end of the midsole, down to the floor, measured in millimeters).

So far, it seems like we've agreed that we'd want to have the following data standardized:

weight
midsole height in heel + forefoot
"ramp delta" / heel-toe drop / whatever we are going to call this
width at ball of the foot
total length
arch length (often times, more important than total length above)
forefoot last height (I'd like to come up with something better than that)

This doesn't get into classification by pronation control (if any), nor do we begin to address the categorization of shoes into natural/traditional/minimal metrics. But I think we could agree that we first want to come to terms with what metrics we're going to use, and then figure out what labels to put things under.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Hey Dan, et al:

Just as a datapoint, I often buy my shoes from Runningwarehouse because they have great prices, but more importantly, they provide some of the data you are looking for. Heel height, midfoot height, toe height, volume, etc. Very helpful, and perhaps worth including in your database as a source.

--Tris

Someone mentioned runningwarehouse.com and I shop there mostly because of the data they provide on most shoes. Let's see I lately have preferred to run in more mimalist, low to the ground, low profile, low ramp, low heel to toe drop, etc. shoes! I can see where there's confusion and I also would like to see more consistent verbiage for shoe structure.

This area of discussion is very interesting though. It does bother me that we are mixing barefoot with minimalist...to me barefoot is just that...without shoes. I get that the term is being used to mimic natural foot motion. And while on natural foot motion I think that if you heelstrike that this should not necessarily be considered not natural...it might just be how you naturally run and maybe you don't need to change! My foot strike is all over the map...forefoot, midfoot, heel strike and so far these minmalist shoes seem to feel really good to me. My view is that if a heel striker shouldn't run in these shoes then why have a heel on them? The Newtons have a heck of a heel on them! I try not to think too much when I'm running. I do try to focus on a shorter stride and usually carry a run cadence of 180 give or take depending on pace.

I'm currently running in Newtons, Kinvaras, and Mirages. Now, can we categorize them all in the same type of shoe? Maybe as they both seem to be minimalist at least from what I've read. They both have low heel to toe drop (or low ramp, or whatever!). But, is there enough difference for them to be in the same category. I wouldn't consider the Newtons low to the ground...they are 25mm to 22mm heel to toe drop. Are we moving towards several different categories of shoes? I think we're there but the nomenclature is all over the map.

I have this unstable feel in the Newtons and feel uneasy on sharp turns and have rolled my ankle in them. However, the Kinvara's/Mirage's are 18mm to 14mm heel to toe drop. They feel more stable to me from an ankle stability standpoint and a tad more arch support which I like. I haven't run in either enough to give full review by I really like them from a first impression.

Anyway keep these discussions and articles coming because I'm enjoying them.

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John Mickle
ECI Endurance

I would generally call all of these shoes "natural" running shoes. They are attempting to facilitate better form by utilizing less heel-toe drop (or a lower ramp delta, if that's the term we are going to use), and in the case of the Newtons, attempting to accentuate the forefoot aspect of the strike by giving you a target (the lugs). However, I would argue that none of these are "minimal" shoes, as they continue to have a large midsole heights, as you have pointed out, that provide a relatively well-cushioned experience. The Newtons are quite responsive, providing good feedback from the road, but there is still a larger degree of isolation than, say, the New Balance Road Minimus (still also a natural shoe, but features a lower midsole height).

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

>how quickly that shoe would roll through toe-off
that's an interesting way to think about the effect of forefoot last curvature. I came at it from a totally different angle. Last fall I began to incorporate significant amounts of barefoot running (I mean, literal no-shoes, glass-be-damned, yes-I-am-a-nut bare feet. Please don't flame:I'm just trying it, not preaching it). And something I came to notice was that while in shoes I really did feel like I was 'rolling through toe-off', as I figured out a comfortable barefoot stride, I didn't feel like I was rolling so much as putting my feet down and picking them up again. When picking them up again, my heel lifts first and toes last, of course, but there is a fully-down instant, where from toe-tip to heel my foot is flat on the ground, and quite relaxed. Also, when I have one foot in the air coming forward, it's very relaxed, and I bring my toes up just a touch before that foot hits the ground. If I've run a few times barefoot or in the VFFs, my first few minutes in *regular* shoes I feel like I'm wearing elf shoes, with my toes pointing up all the time. All that to say, I don't perceive any difference at all in quickness of roll-off, what I perceive is the difference in the shape of my relaxed foot in various parts of my stride: curvy all the time, instead of flat. FWIW, I like the feel of barefoot better, but I can go much faster and farther in shoes. For me it's kind of like swimming: nothing feels as good as skinny dipping, but a wetsuit is faster.

I don't disagree from that point, either, as in specific shoes I feel that a bit (Brooks Ravenna, for example). This would be why I would recommend shoes with less heel-toe drop (or ramp delta), and feature a nearly constant in contact forefoot: say, for example, the Kinvara, or heck, the Minimus Trail if you want to get less midsole underfoot.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

on runningwarehouse.com, how do we know that their heel-to-toe drop is the same thing that Dan is referencing? I was unable to click on the little box that talks about that.

Turns out, my shoes (Adidas SuperNova Sequence) is 11+, but doesn't give any other details...or at least I was unable to find it.

This is excellent timing, as I'm looking to possibly switch it up, moving to the ecco BIOM. Which of course isn't listed on the runningwarehouse.com site.

That is the same figure, being described by yet another term.

That being said, ramp delta (or whatever term you would like to use for it) is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is pronation control. Particularly with the way the Sequence is constructed, the Pro-Moderator (the support system) only works on that shoe IF you actually overpronate onto it, as it is laminated onto the side, rather than being "baked in", cutting into the actual shoe. The difference? If the Sequence accidentally gets sold to a neutral customer, they shouldn't (key word) notice the support built in. An overpronator wouldn't tell the difference in the amount of support between it and, say, a New Balance 860 or Asics Gel-3020.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter