you misunderstand what i'm saying here. I don't expect people to understand the systems that are at work here. Most of them are utterly ignorant of why their body works the way that it does. But when you get a number of people who know, after years of living with the same knees that hurt, that a certain shoe stopped their knees from hurting, how can you discount that type of information? Tell them that they're imagining things? I think that is hubris to the point where you invalidate the arguement. first and foremost, you listen to the "patient". We may not understand perfectly why something works, but its stupid to ignore it when it does work. And, as an adjunct question, why does everyone assume that the shoes are to blame? Or why do we make the assumption that we won't get injured running? In an impact related activity over a variety of terrain, why do we blame the shoes when our bodies don't turn out to be utterly perfect mechanisms? No runner wants to turn the tables back upon themselves and realize, "I wasn't actually born to run." And yet, sometimes, that might actually be the answer. So then, if we want to run, do we not try to find artificial mechanisms that will allow us to run? To counter act whatever it is that causes the injury?
middle professor wrote:
I believe well executed studies over anecdotal information any day. People have a very poor ability identifying cause in complex systems. And we just make stuff up too (check out the split brain patient stores of Mike Gazaaniga). Unfortunately, the few studies on shoes and injury are poorly done. That said, if "correct" shoe fit made much of a difference, we'd easily see an effect in these studies. We don't, so even if they do make a difference the effect must be very small. I think the physiologists studying foot biomechanics and the shoe companies that developed the different shoe models all had good intentions. But 30+ years of continued injuries suggest this model of injury and correction is deficient.