Saucony's Jared Ward publishes scientific paper showing that Nike's 4% shoes really do work

3hr-marathoner wrote:

In that article the authors suggest that at marathon pace you pretty much can. At "slow" paces like marathon pace the relationship between aerobic power, efficiency and pace is nearly linear so a small improvement in power or efficiency corresponds roughly to the same percent improvement in the pace.

If that's true. Then Kipchoge really isn't any better than anyone else in history.

So Kipchoge is really a 203-204 guy like Haile.

Rupp is a 208 guy like Salazar.

Anyone know what Fauble ran his 2:09 in Boston in? If he did it in regular shoes, man he should be feeling good about his Olympic chances if he's willing to wear the 4% shoes in the Trials.

I'll tell you what though. If I'm Ward and I know the data behind all of these shoes, there's no way in hell i'm running the Trials in anything but the 4% shoes unless I'm CERTAIN my prototypes are just as good as Nike.

rojo wrote:

I'll tell you what though. If I'm Ward and I know the data behind all of these shoes, there's no way in hell i'm running the Trials in anything but the 4% shoes unless I'm CERTAIN my prototypes are just as good as Nike.

Why do you think Saucony and Ward are doing this research? It's an arms race and Saucony sure as hell has to be testing their own prototypes against Nike.

Saucony has something unique in Ward because of his education, running expertise, connections to a top facility & researchers at BYU. Saucony better be paying Ward good money for all that. He doesn't have Gupp's times but he's much more than just a runner for that company. If I were Nike, I'd be pursuing Ward for all those intangibles. Hell, if I were any shoe company, I'd be chasing Ward with my checkbook.

Arms Race wrote:

Why do you think Saucony and Ward are doing this research? It's an arms race and Saucony sure as hell has to be testing their own prototypes against Nike.

Saucony has something unique in Ward because of his education, running expertise, connections to a top facility & researchers at BYU. Saucony better be paying Ward good money for all that. He doesn't have Gupp's times but he's much more than just a runner for that company. If I were Nike, I'd be pursuing Ward for all those intangibles. Hell, if I were any shoe company, I'd be chasing Ward with my checkbook.

It's unique in one person. But if what saucony wants is help from smart people, there are tons of professors who are practically begging to help with anything they think is "cool" like this.

I had an engineering professor who found out I was in the track team and suddenly wanted me to read all his papers on the discus, javelin, etc. Amongst all his paying research, he was spending his free time trying to perfect technique in the throwing events. If saucony wanted help with their shoes, all they need to do is find a professor like that, and there are tons of them. The researcher doesnt need to be a professional runner.

800 dude wrote:

The only way I could see shoe tech really getting "out of hand" is if you start seeing thicker and thicker shoes, to the point that they start to resemble small stilts, greatly extending stride length, where running gait has to significantly change in order to take advantage of them.

Turning shoes into stilts isnt the best way to take advantage of thicker shoes. A thicker sole allows you to have a much greater deflection in your spring- mass system. From a physics standpoint, there is no difference between a leaf spring plus foam (ie carbon plate in a shoe) and coil springs.

But this has to be balanced against weight penalties of a thicker shoe. This is pretty basic physics/ engineering, I'm sure they've already looked at these tradeoffs. They've either gone with a fairly thin/ light shoe because it is more efficient, or because they're afraid to push it and have their shoes banned, but my gut feeling is the former.

UA Runner wrote:

Truth Only wrote:

Reality is more important. It all sounds like junk.

Twice in the study, Jared Ward said the mental aspect is most important. He basically summed up all the research by saying , paraphrased here, "which ever shoe makes me feel the best, I will perform the best in". Which I agree with 100%.

Thats a nice saying but it's not reality in the framework of this discussion.

We are talking about how footwear can help improve or benefit performance.

A flex plate in a shoe we know now gives a flexed forward rebound that requires less energy by the runner. We know new midsole foams are giving greater rebound effects, more engery return meaning less effort to impact the runner.

What we are seeing is the technical improvement in running footwear long overdue that will change running footwear as we know it today. Think how carbon replaced wood in tennis rackets, think how carbon in bike frames replaced steel and aluminum. What we are seeing now is just tip of the iceberg.

Did we really need a full formal study to confirm this?

What’s his next project? Proving if the sky is really blue!?

Why is it even considered a matter of debate whether some shoes can make you run significantly faster than others? We know this is true of tracks. Do speedwork on a few different tracks and you'll sense that one is the fastest (due to rebound but also wind).

Juice Springsteen wrote:

Did we really need a full formal study to confirm this?

I think we did. I mean this isn't cancer research but as far as exercise science goes, knowing if a novel racing shoe is outperforming other state of the art racing shoes by 3 or 4% is a big deal.

zzzz wrote:

UA Runner wrote:

Those were actual springs, however. Sure, there are various types of springs.. coil springs, leaf springs, etc. But, there are plenty of shoes out there with plastic plates in the midsole that increase the rigidity and change the characteristics of performance. Because the Vaporfly has a carbon fiber plate, it should be banned?

The "actual springs" in Spiras were useless and just a marketing gimmick. Someone here said they extracted them from a Spira shoe and they were so soft that would be flattened with a can of soda (or something like that). There's no reason to believe coil springs would work any better than any other type of spring in a running shoe midsole.

So why were they (Spira) banned if they were so ineffectual? Because IAAF saw a disturbing trend.

If IAAF can ban Spira (precedent set), why can't they ban Nikes?

IAAF could set parameters for legal shoes. They banned Volzing in the pole vault.

I did my own independent research on Nike 4% = I checked the 2018 Cal International Marathon results.

Ur welcome.

Are the Spira shoes actually banned? Wikipedia seems to indicate they were not, and only claimed to be banned as a marketing gimmick

A track can have several different layers of various materials that might even extend to 6 to 8 inches under the track surface. That's what Harvard engineers did when they designed the famous Harvard indoor track in the late 1970s. A running shoe can't be that thick (at least not with any degree of stability). Hence the design issues with running shoes are much more complex and difficult than with a running track.

jamin wrote:

Why is it even considered a matter of debate whether some shoes can make you run significantly faster than others? We know this is true of tracks. Do speedwork on a few different tracks and you'll sense that one is the fastest (due to rebound but also wind).

Nobody said it was up for debate if some shoes were faster than others. If people thought that wasnt the case, everybody would be running in converse all stars, because they're cheap, so why waste your money?

The debate was over how much fancy design could go into a shoe before it was unfair.

Said it 100 times.... but remove all of Kipchoge's advantages (clown shoes, wall of pacers, EPO) and we're looking at maybe a 2:09 marathoner.

I've done a little (very little) research of my own. I believe Nike's ZoomX foam (the foam used in the 4% and that the NY Times found to be the effective component in the shoes) is just a rebrand for a foam called Pebax. It was super easy to figure out so maybe this isn't the groundbreaking work I think it is, but I haven't seen anyone talk about Pebax.

If you Google "shoes made with pebax" this shows up on the front page:

https://www.pebaxpowered.com/en/find-product/running/

It appears these shoes all have varying levels of the exact same foam. Some have carbon plates, some mix the foam with other materials. At that point you'll have to do the research to see which ones have a pure Pebax midsole and what people are saying about each pair, but I'd love to see a full-blown study done with lots of the shoes on this particular list.

DC Wonk wrote:

This morning I ordered a pair of the new Zoom Fly 3 that became available at about 10am. Will see if they're worth $160. I have no need for the Next%. Glad to see Nike lowered the drop to 8mm.

Everything about this post is dumb. The ZF3 sucks, just like 1 & 2. You'll be disappointed. But maybe you'll tell yourself they're worth $160 because you wasted that money and were too cheap to spend a few shillings more on real shoes. If you have no need for Next% (or 4% even), then you're slow. Period. Also, who cares if Nike lowered the drop to 8mm? What benefit does that give you over 10mm? And have you run in either to know why it's better or how it feels different? Everything about this post is dumb.

Pebax is not only a foam. It's more commonly used as a hard plastic piece in running shoes.

2:03 was run in different shoes.

If it is 2.7,% why had Kipchoge not already broken 2 hours? The record would be 1:59:30.

Best in mind that Kipchoge is s better runner than the other 2:03 runners.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

2:03 was run in different shoes.

If it is 2.7,% why had Kipchoge not already broken 2 hours? The record would be 1:59:30.

Best in mind that Kipchoge is s better runner than the other 2:03 runners.

Maybe we are overrating Kipchoge because of the shoes and he isn't that much of a better marathoner than peak Kimmeto/G Mutai/E Mutai/W Kipsang etc.