Currently running in Nike’s for training and racing. The stack height for Nike’s is 8 on the Nike Infinity React to 10 on the Pegasus/turbo and Vomero. Racing in the Next% which also has a 8mm stack height. Not a big fan of the Infinity React with the arch support causing pain and looking to possibly switching to Hoka Clifton which has a stack height of 5 as does the Carbon X. Will training in the Hoka’s with a lower drop have the potential to cause injuries racing in the Next% with the higher drop? Anyone have any problems going from the steeper to lower training to racing?
Currently running in Nike’s for training and racing. The stack height for Nike’s is 8 on the Nike Infinity React to 10 on the Pegasus/turbo and Vomero. Racing in the Next% which also has a 8mm stack height. Not a big fan of the Infinity React with the arch support causing pain and looking to possibly switching to Hoka Clifton which has a stack height of 5 as does the Carbon X. Will training in the Hoka’s with a lower drop have the potential to cause injuries racing in the Next% with the higher drop? Anyone have any problems going from the steeper to lower training to racing?
Looks like we’re talking about two different things in this post. You have the stack height which is basically the thickness of your shoe, and then the drop which is the difference in height from heel to toe. Either way I don’t think there is much of a difference in the 5mm range of change here. If you were going from say a 10mm drop to 0mm, then I’d suggest to use them for a few easy training runs to get comfortable in them. There have also been some posts lately where the advertised drop in shoes can be almost double what a company advertises it as.
Lodged in my head is a commentary Jordan Rapp gave about training in a low drop shoe then racing in a shoe with higher drop because the of lower limb being in a pre fatigued state coming of the bike. Biomechanically and neurologically I can deduce that making sense but it also could have been a “correlation does not imply causation” situation. Hopefully Jordan may chime in.
Stack OFFSET which is what you are actually talking about, is all subjective. The only thing that is not subjective about it is like said above: if you usually run in 10mm drop shoes, and you suddenly get the whim to by some zero drop Altra’s, and then the first run in them you go out and run a 50km. Then you can almost bet on getting injured.
That’s my concern, training in Hoka’s with a low drop to the next% with a high drop.
I’ve had chronic achilles issues for years. When my achilles flares, I add heel risers inside my shoes. So - I can’t imagine getting injured going from training in a “lower” drop shoe to racing in a higher drop one. I mean its not like you are going from completely flat to trying to race in 5" heels. You are talking 5-8mm…
However, the opposite I’d worry about. I’ve tried running in the zero drop shoes and I just cant.