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Do We Need Running Shoes To Run?
prostoalex writes to tell us The Daily Mail has an interesting look at current research in the field of running and injuries related to running. Most of the evidence pointed at a lack of any need for running shoes. Some of the more interesting points: the more expensive the running shoes, the greater the probability of getting an injury; some of the planet's best and most intense runners run barefoot; Stanford running team, having access to the top-notch modern shoes sent in for free by manufacturers, after a few rounds of trial and error still chose to train with no shoes at all."
'Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet and had a much lower incidence of knee injuries.'
And football supposedly had a much lower incidence of injuries before the introduction of "pads" (which quickly became an offensive weapon allowing harder hits)
Of course, this could just be "numbers". Many of the running injuries treated today are repeat injuries. Prior to the invention of the running shoe was also pretty much prior to modern sports medicine, meaning a single injury would have prevented you from running again. Today's numbers may be higher than historical numbers due to the vast number of people who continue running after recovering from surgery to correct their problems.
John
I'm 46 and I'm a casual runner. For years I had intermittent knee and hip pain during and after a 4-6 mile run. I finally broke down and spent more money ($90-$110) on good quality running shoes. The pain is gone. I can run 6 miles regularly with nothing but plain old muscle pain. I can tell when it is time to buy new shoes too. After a couple of hundred miles and the shoes lose their cushion, I can feel it when I run.
I've run at least three miles a day. I've run one marathon and I am currently training for another. I've had multiple long runs that have exceeded twenty miles. At one point, I was running at least forty miles a week. I can tell you from my experience is that shoes make a huge difference. Once my shoe starts to go, I'll start to get intense pain in my hips and knees. Changes the shoe, and the pain goes away. It's a form issue in my case which the shoe helps to correct. I'm guessing those people who run barefoot have really good form. Take away my shoes and put me on a flat area without any rocks, I figure I might be able to run a few miles before I'm forced to stop because of knee or hip pain. I'll keep my shoes, thankyouverymuch.
... when a new runner starts to experience pain, the quickest remedy to buy new shoes.
No joke
Barefoot running would be more accepted if there were international level athletes winning competitions barefoot. Of course it is harder to get to those comptetitions without the financial support of sportswear manufacturers, who might be, er, less than sypathetic to the idea of running without actually using their product.
The importance of running to early Homo is, of course, conjectural. But it does make sense: few other animals are capable of long-distance running, and none can do so under a blazing sun. (Wolves and hyenas, for example, require cold weather or nightfall for long-distance hunting; otherwise they overheat.) Endurance running might have set early humans apart from the pack.
According to study co-author and Harvard University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman, many modern anatomical features make sense in the context of savannah marathons. Achilles tendons act as springs to store energy. Our hind limbs have extra-large joints. Our buttocks muscles are perfect for stabilization, as are regions of the brain uniquely sensitive to the physical pitching generated by the motion of running.
Informative indeed.
I know you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but they've found that the appendix actually DOES have pretty good use: Here is a tech-minded summary, and here is the full article.
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
I'm guessing the Stanford running team has access to spongy, soft tracks for training. I know I could run barefoot rather comfortably on a track made of cork or whatever that is.
Here's an anecdote... if we get another one then we have data :)
About half way through my first semester at uni, I was getting out of my car and my sneakers fell apart. I took them off, chucked them in the car, and went barefoot for the next 2 years or so (mostly - they don't let you into cinemas etc without shoes on :).
My feet got really tough, 40C days walking on hot tarmac didn't bother me (unless I stood still for too long). I never got stung by a bee, never had any major injuries. I would only notice small pieces of glass stuck in my foot by the noise they made on concrete when I stepped :)
I did quite a bit of walking too, 5km each way too and from uni when my car wasn't going, which was often.
Then the first joint on my big toe started hurting on one foot. A day or so later, the other big toe started hurting in the same way. It was like an ache that shot up each leg every time I took a step. I put some shoes on (workboots) and the pain went instantly. I didn't go barefoot for a few weeks, but the next time I tried both feet were aching within hours. Haven't gone barefoot since.
Now that was about 12 years ago so I may have some of the facts muddled up, but obviously going barefoot just wasn't for me. I didn't really do any running so it's not completely relevant to the topic, but I can't imagine that running would have been any kinder to my feet than walking.
Maybe shoes mimic the sort of ground that humans evolved around, vs the rock hard tarmac and concrete that I was doing most of my walking on?
Long time distance runner here. While running barefoot converts more of your energy into forward motion, shoes can protect us against those oh-so-prevalent sharp things on the ground. Granted if you run barefoot enough you will develop thicker skin, but (speaking from experience) I would still check the ground first before I ran barefoot on it. The last thing I need is to step on tiny shards of glass when training for a marathon. Ouch.
The article also spends little time discussing one big factor in the increase of running injuries: the surface on which most people run these days. Soft earth is infinitely more forgiving than asphalt, but due to its convenience asphalt/pavement is probably used the most. This leads to more running injuries as more and more runners are literally out in the streets, pounding their poor feet on a surface that doesn't give.
df -h
I've been a runner, someone who runs/jogs for the majority of my exercise, since I was a kid. I've always viewed shoes as a means of protection 1st and foremost.
Over the years I've had many different shoes that I've run in. And have always preferred running shoes that are light and broken in. The worst shoes that I ever run in are always the new ones that try to make my feet contort into ways that they aren't naturally.
Once a shoe gets to the point where they are more like my feet than like the way the shoe started as they work best.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
There has been some research (reg.req.) on the benefits of barefoot running. BUt, the article also mentions having to pull glass from your foot... I've tried running barefoot once, on the beach, but wouldn't dare doing it on my standard run through the city. Does anyone here have any experience with the ultra thin Five Fingers running shoes (basically protective gloves around your feet)? Sure, you look like a dick -- almost as bad as Crocs -- but they appear a great alternative.
Everyone has a different body, gait, etc.
It should be no surprise that what works for some might not work for you.
I think the main point here is that barefoot is an option and that folks should actually try out different footwear before assuming the most expensive is the best.
Coincidentally, I recently asked a marathon runner at work if i should buy proper shoes for jogging instead of flat soled skateboarding shoes. He told me the exact same thing stated here, different shoes are to prevent injuries. If you have no pain in your current shoes then there is no real reason to switch.
http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/
I can't even imagine the blisters I would get running barefoot.
You mean the almost none? Blisters are generated by overheating of the skins upper layer which your body reacts to by putting an insulating layer of water under to protect the new skin thats forming. Barefoot your foot cools more efficently theres less friction so more cooling less heating == less blisters
YEAH, RIGHT !
Only true for someone who has grown up barefoot.
First, I think the relationship between running injuries and shoes might be reversed. There's a group of people called overpronates who are prone to injuries and need "control" or "stability" shoes. Those shoes are among the most expensive. I have a mild case of it; my arches look flat from a distance but leave normal looking prints behind. My shoes have more padding than normal to help that. I also have orthodics to help more. The combination of both have basically stopped me from getting shin splints. I have had that problem in nearly two years, despite upping my mileage more than 100% over that period of time.
Second, from what I've read the Stanford track team, who inspired the Nike Free shoes, run bare foot but only once a week. They don't practice all the time that way. They also run it on grass.
The argument for running barefoot is compelling though and it's something I want to try some day, perhaps starting with something like Nike Free. Also, I'm not sure how well that carries over to distance running that I do. One of the benefits of barefoot running is that you tend to land the ball of your feet. However, long distance running tend to involve more heel striking with short, low strides. I might do what the Stanford track team does, which is to mix it in but for shorter distances.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I say no, especially for me. I constantly had problems from walking and running until I read the book, "The Maffetone Method" by Phillip Maffetone. (Maffetone trains bicycle racers and super-long-distance runners. Stuart Mittleman, the holder of the record for the 1000-mile run, was one of his clients.) The two things I changed as a result of reading his book were:
1. I changed to low-cut Converse All Stars, and
2. I went on a low-carb diet. (I gained 40 lbs in four years on a low-fat diet. Maffetone hypothesized that some people were carbohydrate sensitive and suggested that trying a low-carb diet might work better for those people.)
The end result was that I lost 20 lbs in two years, and my legs and hips quit hurting almost immediately.
Check this link http://books.google.com/books?id=1ehUeFPfch0C&dq=Philip+Maffetone&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=PMPtSa-HJKb0MvqC0AI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA62,M1 for excerpts from his book, "Fix your Feet, and click on the "Picking the right shoe" entry in the TOC.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"Despite pillowy-sounding names such as 'MegaBounce', all that cushioning does nothing to reduce impact. Logically, that should be obvious - the impact on your legs from running can be up to 12 times your weight, so it's preposterous to believe a half-inch of rubber is going to make a difference." Hmm. The padding in my bike gear is a lot less than the thinkness of my running shoe soles, yet I'm fairly certain that it is proven to significantly reduce impact forces. Its one thing to say that padding is not a good thing, but to suggest it does nothing seems a bit far fetched.
Try running on pavement without shoes. When I started running I wore my converse all stars and my knees hurt. I bought a pair of good running shoes with padded insoles and my knees are fine.
There is no magic here. Heavy padding in the soles of the shoes cushions the impact. It is as simple as that. Early man ran on dirt and grass and rarely made it the age of 53. I do not think their experience is relevant.
First of all, when our first child was around the age where she started learning to walk, a nurse told us we should not make her wear shoes, at least not regularly. If a kid has shoes on while learning to walk, that can cause serious imbalances in muscle/ligature/bone buildup, leading to damage in them. This was just something the nurse had reasoned out based on other experience about things that are natural.
Add to that the fact that industrial manufacturing can hardly adjust for individual differences. Even the best shoes, if industrially manufactured, are not made to measure. Expensive is just fashionable - but sloppily designed - as often as high quality.
Our muscles were designed to work, to move - however that design came about. From a certain point of view, a law of physics can be considered a design. Randomness also. Let's just try to learn as many as we can about them without inferring things that are not necessarily even related.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
I did not get much from the link. But I met a guy once who hunted elk by walking them to death. It took he said about three days; an not much running. The the elk would be too exhausted to get up and he would kill it with a knife.
I took up first fast-walking and then running after many (MANY) years of near-zero activity, grossly overweight (almost 140Kg). Of course, my body was quite over what evolution anticipated - I have a weak ankle which bended from time to time (now, 40Kg slimmer, much less often and much less painfully). Of course, I didn't buy top-of-the-line running shoes, only a pair of decently resistant, well-formed jogging shoes. I would not have done it without them.
On the other extreme, we have high-performance runners - Be it my marathonist/ultramarathonists friends, be it the speed runners. Once again, evolution provided us with strong skin soles, but not strong enough to endure a 100m race in ~10 seconds (I still cannot believe a human can do that). It provided us with strong skin, but not strong enough to endure 40Km. And there are humans doing it - Take away their shoes, and they will really suffer.
Hell, same goes for regular shoes for moving in a city at a calm pace... I like wearing sandals, but I really don't like somebody stepping over me barefooted. And as I often go into people-crammed places (think of, say, the subway), I prefer wearing regular shoes. Odds are I will suffer less, even if I don't really really need them for my day-to-day activities.
I have a lot of trouble believing this.
Humans aren't capable of long distance running 'in the wild' so to speak. In the context of Savannah marathons, we'd be dehydrated severely after a few miles. We have great cooling but it comes at a huge cost, it uses a lot of sweat up. If you run 5 miles in the blazing hot African sun without stopping to drink and there's no water at your destination, you're finished. Most mammals which don't use heavy sweating will have to stop in the shade a often to cool down when running distances but won't be as much at risk of dehydration.
We're designed for running in hot weather but not distance running.
Evolution also didn't have any use for post-reproductive individuals
This isn't true at all. Children with surviving grandparents tend to survive at a higher rate than children without grandparents, so evolution does select for longer lifetimes. In fact, menopause seems to be a human-specific trait that evolved to keep older women from dying in childbirth.
This article sums it up nicely.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I used to run cross country with sprinter spikes(first link on the goog), which are basically slippers with metal spikes near the toes...They effectively have no heel.
There are plenty of shoes out there that offer some protection without being heavy clod hoppers.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Also if you currently run or jog even casually, bring in your old pair. The wear pattern tells alot about how you run.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But, those with flat feet, in need of arch support, could still benefit from good shoes...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This has got to be one of the most interesting hunting method I have ever heard! Genius or funny, probably both. :-)
Well, it is about as well explained as by science. I've yet to hear them explain where everything started. Big Bang? Ok, what was there before that?
To me, everything just suddenly exploding into existance is just as well explained as a supreme being creating it all.
I don't see observable phenomena explaining either one of those hypotheses.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Prior to my military stay I trained barefoot on old, broken city sidewalks. Never had a single injury. After joining I trained in boots. Again, no injury. Until I was issued a pair too narrow. It caused a pinched nerve in my foot. The right size fixed that. Once assigned to a unit, for our daily PT/run we had to wear running shoes. The frequent high impact without adequate protection caused the pinched nerve to flair up. It had to be removed, leaving the facing halves of two toes numb. The end of the nerve formed an inoperable stump, causing a permanent condition just like the injured nerve. It is a minor but permanent part of my service connected disability. "Minor" to the tune of $100+ a month for the rest of my life. Those running shoes are proving to be very expensive to US taxpayers. I can still run in hard soles, including my $10 all plastic Chinese cowboy boot knock offs.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I can second this. As someone who ran track and cross-country during all four years of high school, I can attest that your choice of running shoe is a very personal decision. Everyone's foot is different and everyone's running form is different. For me, I have fairly narrow feet, so that means Adidas, which had a relatively wide toe box, did not feel right. On the other hand, Nike and Asics generally fit slimmer, so to me, they fit very nicely. This would generate a level of brand loyalty, but it had nothing to do with commercials, marketing or even price. But even still, then you have to figure out if you over/under-pronate or not. I had what was considered a "normal" form, so i didn't need any kind of motion control, nor did I require special arch support or any other corrective action. I'm also fairly light, so cushioning wasn't an issue. This always directed me towards the much lighter shoes, while someone who weighed more, would go for more cushioning. Every time I went to buy a new pair of shoes, I would go it saying I loved my Asics, but every time the guy at the store (this was a running specialty store) ALWAYS made me try on at leat three or four different brands just to make sure. I always ended up chosing the Asics, but I always gave the other brands a serious look. To me it was all about how the shoe felt, not about the logo on the side.
The only exception to the "buy for feel" rule would be when it comes to Nike. I originally bought Nike because they felt the best, but the shoe wouldn't last all the way through the season and I would have "blow-outs" in the middle of a run. That's when I decided to find an alternative. Something that felt as good as the Nike, but wouldn't fall apart. The owner of the running store I go to once told me that most competitive runners hate Nike for that very reason, and even the ones who are sponsored by Nike, only wear them during high profile races when the sponsor is looking. Any other time, they wear the shoe that's right for them, whether that be Nike or some other brand.
I never unerstood the teams that all had the same shoes, who pretty much got a deal from a manufacturer or a sponsorship. There is no one shoe for everybody. Everyone on my team shopped at the same store and rarely did two of us have the same shoe.
In regards to barefoot running, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, when I raced, the shoes we wore were much like being barefoot. Very little padding, put you on your toes a little more. The whole point being weight reduction. You put them on and you feel faster. But we were always told NEVER to train in your racing shoes because they did not provide the support necessary and you were more prone to injury. Times I had left my racing shoes on and walked around in them for a while, I noticed my calves would get sore, so I assumed that it was bad for me. However, this would make sense because I always "heel striked" in my regular shoes, but these shoes put me up on the balls of my feet more, thus using my calves more. I was sore because I wasn't used to it, not because it was bad for me.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
The spring effect from your heel after landing varies depending on the type of running you do. Distance running uses a slightly different form than sprinting (the former being all about the most energy efficient gait). When sprinting, you typically don't see the heel slap, and the runner stay entirely on the balls of their feet. The heel slap is more common in longer distance events.
My knee was always sensitive after my injury, but I found that the surface made a huge difference. I can't do more than a couple miles on a hard surface like asphalt or a treadmill. But trail running is much less stressful (dirt is nature's shock absorber). I usually do about 7 miles per run (the length of the longest loop at the state park I run at) with no pain at all.
Posture helps a lot as well. Staying vertical and not pronating too much keeps much of the strain where it belongs, in the muscles and the arch. Heel striking or landing forward of your body puts a lot of stress on your joints and bones, which can be painful if you have weak knees. The nature of trails helps. Uneven surfaces, roots, rocks, etc will strengthen all of the smaller support muscles in your legs that normal track running doesn't work. Strengthening these muscles distributes the force of the impact even more, further reducing strain to your joints. If I hadn't come across trail running a few years ago, I likely wouldn't be running at all, either. Hard, man-made surfaces are a beast compared to soft trails.
I'm rather curious which is better, because you didn't specify in your post, and the difference sounds dramatic.
I'm in the 1 percent (aparently) that walks on the outside of the foot, and I tend to end up sliding onto my outside ancle if I'm taking corners a bit too fast. Always beeen curious if that'd be better with corrective shoes
As a teenager I went about a year without shoes. I had a pair of cheap shoes I'd put on in class when told to, and would take them off again as soon as I could. This was in Southern California where the ground is generally hard and dry and the weather can be hot. After the first couple of months, I could pretty much walk anywhere: hot asphalt roads, gravel, you name it. So it definitely can be done.
Yes, but this surely presupposes that there are no observable phenomena with unobservable causes?
I confess I'm not remotely an expert in the field, but my interested observer perception is of a bootstrap problem in pretty much all scenarios. If we believe all matter was formed in a Big Bang of which we detect traces that match current hypothesese, what was the cause of the Big Bang event? I love and value science, but am deeply uncomfortable with the quasi-religious assertions from some that if it can't be measured then it isn't real. We've learnt to measure a great many things which we previously couldn't.
In all honesty though, if you wish to oppose intelligent design, let it be taught. The underground, opposed, rebel argument that They don't want you to hear will always have power - if you honestly believe it's rubbish, teach its tenets and then teach why you believe they don't match the data. If you're a good teacher with good information and the students are intellectually up to the argument, they'll likely agree and the rest weren't likely to have their minds changed either way in any case.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Wear moccasins for a while, with just that one thin layer of leather between you and the rocks. You'll soon learn to ALWAYS come down toes first, and NEVER come down on the heel -- because you can't recover from stepping on a sharp rock if you do so heel-first (all your weight lands on it, willy-nilly). But if you come down toe-first, you can change your balance and step off that sharp rock instead.
By now they're pretty much all gone from the world, but decades ago I knew American Indians who grew up in the era before their tribes had European-style hard-soled shoes, and from childhood habit, they always walked toe-heel rather than heel-toe.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Let me start off by saying I was a runner in High school. Fast enough to make the Olympic sprint team for some countries but a little below average in Jamaica.
Not only did we find shoos necessary, we had to pick them according to the terrain.
Thick soft soles for running on Roads. Long spikes for running on grass, Shorter spikes for running on the rubber based surface at the Stadium.
Once you got to boys who ran at close to the same speed, wearing the wrong shoos or running barefoot would virtually guarantee defeat.
The reason is skidding. Basically: The soles of our feet were relatively smooth, so at each stride we would slide a little. The direction and scope of the slide varied with each stride and you expend so much effort just trying to remain upright your speed over the 100M drops by as much as a second.
With Long distance and running shoos and cross trainers (I am less of an expert here). Where the problems come in is probably a lack of understanding of what each shoe is designed for. While this is bad with running shoos it was most glaringly obvious with Basketball shoos. The high end (and price) shoos were made for use on a cushioned wooden surface, polished to a mirror finish. Guess what happens when you wear that onto a Rough asfoult court?
I'm just betting that expensive cross trainers "fail" for the same reason. I.e. People buy $200 shoos that are only good on a treadmill and try to go cross country.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
You're conflating "supernatural" with "religious." Why? The existence of a supernatural designer doesn't imply anything about its nature, or whether it should be worshipped. Merely being outside of our current scientific understanding of nature is not sufficient to make a thing religious.
Suse vivo vixi victum reduco is ea id creatura absit decessus a facultas Linux! Dev root, dev root!
What was there before the Big Bang? Researchers don't know, and right now no one has figured out how to make experiments to test any theories on the idea.
But there are hypothesis about the Big Bang itself and experimental evidence to suggest they are true. The universe is expanding, all of the galaxies are moving away from one central starting point. That has data to back it up. There are certainly gaps in the knowledge, and a lot more to learn. But it fits all of the information we have at present.
Intelligent Design cannot be verified by experiments. There's no way you can prove or disprove it. And why did the Intelligence give men nipples? Why did the Intelligence give men and women Appendixes? Why did the Intelligent Designer design mosquitoes, malaria, smallpox, scarlet fever, autism, spina biffida, mumps, and leprosy? You can explain all of those things with current evolution theory. You can't explain them with Intelligent Design, unless maybe God likes LSD.
And of course, many reasonable Christians, Muslims, Jews, and so forth take the logical view that God created evolution and the Big Bang, or whatever the real beginning of the universe was.
I humbly submit that shoes are man's greatest invention. Just ask Tom Hanks' character in Castaway. If you were isolated and could only have one "invention", what else would it be? A house you can never leave? A fire you can not bring food to? Shoes allowed us to gather more food and all our other great ideas came from the leisure time that afforded us. I could get by without a car, or without fire, but I would be utterly miserable without shoes. I wouldn't last one day in the winter. Sure, I enjoy a good barefoot walk on the beach, but without shoes you can't even go into a store to buy groceries.
Hi, I've also had experience with running barefoot, in my high school and uni days I spent most of my time barefoot. I started wearing shoes when I started work.
I started having knee problem a few years back and struggled to even jog. I went back to walking with bare feet and after a few months could run in bare feet on grass, I can now run on concrete.
I suspect the cushioning might hinder the stabilizer muscles of the knee. I do not understand what stops the jarring but when I first tried running bare foot, it was incredibly painful because of the jarring on the ground, that does not happen now.
Possibly a psychological thing.....
BM3