it'll be interesting to see if the running community as a whole and the shoe industry will ever actually start to fully support the less is better truth to running shoes. So far we have the nike free, hopefully one day there will be a industry-wide switch back to shoes that are as thin as possible. Afterall, the only purpose of a shoe is to stop our feet from getting damaged by stepping on rocks, broken glass, sticks, etc. All you need in a running shoe is a piece of leather to pad the bottom of your foot.
personally, i'm in the nike free 3.0's right now and have been for just over a year, the upper finally started to tear wide open a couple weeks ago so its time to get me a second pair. and before that i had the free 5.0's for like 8 months. after adjusting to the 5.0's and then spending a bit over half a year adjusting to the 3.0's i'm finally running healthy for the first time in 4.5 years. a lesser shoe has finally rid my legs of the constant, never ending injuries beset upon me by bulky modern trainers. and from the very first day i began running in the free 5.0's my terrible shin splints that had been haunting me for a couple years went away immediately and have never come back. can't argue with results: less is more in running shoes.
one day, for the sake of all the runners out there, fast and slow, i hope the shoe industry realizes that evolution made the human foot to work beautifully and trying to throw technology between it and the ground only causes problems.
I've gotten to the point where I don't feel comfortable in any shoe that has any significant cushioning or that weighs more than about six ounces. All of the shoes that I run in now are racing flats that are at least a decade old. Today, I finally took the next step, and ran back and forth on a football field in bare feet. It felt great.
...all the while, the best runners in the world still wear normal trainers.
...which proves absolutely nothing other than the fact that bulky trainers are what populates the running shoe industry so most people have them, which logically means most of the best people will also have them. and actually i'm pretty sure a lot of elite runners do train in lighter, flatter shoes, like racing flats.
Reality calling wrote:
...all the while, the best runners in the world still wear normal trainers.
Is this true? Do any of you know what shoes the super elite Africans are wearing? I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing a lot of their training in racing flats. What about the top U.S. guys?
The idea that we should wear our trainers much longer is nonsense. It seems to me that the injury rate shoots up after 400 miles on a pair. That is certainly my case. After that point, the softening of the heel gives me achilles problems and the only things to make it better are new shoes and eccentric calf raises. But then if we were running in whatever they used to run in prior to Nike, maybe the achilles problems wouldn't happen.
"To add weight to their argument, the acute-injury rehabilitation specialist David Smyntek carried out an experiment of his own. He had grown wary that the people telling him to trade in his favourite shoes every 300-500 miles were the same people who sold them to him. But how was it, he wondered, that Arthur Newton, for instance, one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, who broke the record for the 100-mile Bath-London run at the age of 51, never replaced his thin-soled canvaspumps until he'd put at least 4,000 miles on them? So Smyntek changed tack. Whenever his shoes got thin, he kept on running. When the outside edge started to go, he swapped the right for the left and kept running. Five miles a day, every day. Once he realised he could run comfortably in broken-down, even wrong-footed shoes, he had his answer. If he wasn't using them the way they were designed, maybe that design wasn't such a big deal after all.
He now only buys cheap trainers."
A second problem in the article is the notion that the half inch of rubber doesn't make a difference in cushioning because 12x body weight impact is occurring. I wear three socks on my left foot and two on my right because I start to get soreness in my feet when I wear any fewer socks (and run on pavement) and I physically can feel the difference dramatically on the pavement downhill if I wear two on my left (it hurts a bit in fact). So, I'm pretty wary about the stress fracture likelihood with minimalism.
Reality calling wrote:
...all the while, the best runners in the world still wear normal trainers.
Not the Japanese, and probably not the Kenyans living/training there.
The shoe industry has created a monster....it has convinced the hobbyjoggers and soccer moms that heavy trainers are the way to go....at $110 a pop.
Nike, etc is not going to kill the golden goose of expensive, heavy trainers.
How say u?
I like my Brooks Adrenaline.
This all makes sense if you're running on natural surfaces i.e. nice trails, grass and so on, but if you're logging 100mpw on concrete pavements then I don't think it holds true. Yes, human feet may be designed to run barefoot but I doubt they're designed to repeatedly train on concrete. I had more problems when trying the minimalist route, when I switched to heavier trainers which I swore I'd never run in my problem cleared up. That's just my experience anyway.
I can't convince myself to make the switch to flats, but I do wear very light weight trainers. I do have a friend of my that suffered from terrible lower leg problems. This guy picked up running late in life, in his late 30's and he is NOT built like a runner.
He switched to running in nothing but the nike frees and has had zero injuries since, that includes marathon training.
this is the Daily Mail remember. They'd try and convince you your grandmother was a murdering, immigrant rapist given half a chance
track chick wrote:
This all makes sense if you're running on natural surfaces i.e. nice trails, grass and so on, but if you're logging 100mpw on concrete pavements then I don't think it holds true. Yes, human feet may be designed to run barefoot but I doubt they're designed to repeatedly train on concrete. I had more problems when trying the minimalist route, when I switched to heavier trainers which I swore I'd never run in my problem cleared up. That's just my experience anyway.
I log 80 mpw on concrete and asphalt in flats w/o any injuries. When I did the some thing in the shoes were fitted for me I had constant injuries. The human foot does fine on concrete and asphalt as I imagine it does on any naturally hard/rocky surface. I don't doubt for a moment that the transition to flats coud be a rocky one especially if you've been running in trainers for a long time. Your gait can get pretty jacked up from running in trainers not to mention the muscles that you would normally use wouldn't have been in use for years. It's really more than just running in flats or barefoot. You have to change your gait and learn how to run again. That's what I did at least and it's worked for me.
Reality calling wrote:
...all the while, the best runners in the world still wear normal trainers.
...Not in Japan...
Scott Jurek!
i like running barefoot and in vibram fivefingers. it works. maybe not for everybody but it works. with a bit of caution minimalism could work for a large number of runners.
Yup. I train in the adizero everyday, 60minutes. switching from trail to concrete and I dont suffer any injuries proned to what's on my feet.
jonesy. wrote:
A second problem in the article is the notion that the half inch of rubber doesn't make a difference in cushioning because 12x body weight impact is occurring. I wear three socks on my left foot and two on my right because I start to get soreness in my feet when I wear any fewer socks (and run on pavement) and I physically can feel the difference dramatically on the pavement downhill if I wear two on my left (it hurts a bit in fact). So, I'm pretty wary about the stress fracture likelihood with minimalism.
Jonesy, sounds like you are more eccentric than most of us. Two pairs of socks on one foot and three on the other?
Why not three pairs on both? Do you feel like the extra sock really makes a difference in cushioning? I'm not being critical, I just hadn't heard that approach before.
I guess the thread about how many times do you wear a pair of socks before washing was of particular interest to you.
I think that minimalist shoes can work well for you young, fast guys with good biomechanics. I tend to also prefer lightweight shoes a good portion of the time, despite my aging, broken-down stride. But more supportive shoes may be more appropriate for larger runners, or those with questionable biomechanics. I think it's presumptuous to generalize that one kind of shoe is right for everyone.
The implication of the article is that fewer runners were injured pre-'72 (correct)because of more basic footware(nonsense). If you could magically come up with the stat that showed the percentage of participants that had to give up because of injury, the story would be different. Those who ran back then were those who could run in those flats. Cushioning allowed many more people to be able to do big miles. Of course more people got injured with better trainers, but a far greater percentage were able to compete. Whether this is a good thing is a debate for other threads - depends who you are I suppose.
As always, the technology has been overdone/oversold to the extent that some shoes do more harm to some people than if they ran barefoot, but to suggest any cushioning a retro step is stupid.
NoGad wrote:
The implication of the article is that fewer runners were injured pre-'72 (correct)because of more basic footware(nonsense). If you could magically come up with the stat that showed the percentage of participants that had to give up because of injury, the story would be different. Those who ran back then were those who could run in those flats. Cushioning allowed many more people to be able to do big miles. Of course more people got injured with better trainers, but a far greater percentage were able to compete. Whether this is a good thing is a debate for other threads - depends who you are I suppose.
As always, the technology has been overdone/oversold to the extent that some shoes do more harm to some people than if they ran barefoot, but to suggest any cushioning a retro step is stupid.
Do you have any more BS for us? Please do just a little research before you ever comment on this subject again.
Here I'll give you a start:
http://www.quickswood.com/my_weblog/2006/08/athletic_footwe.htmlhttp://www.unshod.org/pfbc/pfrossi2.htmhttp://www.sydneysportsmed.com.au/docs/caleb_article01.pdfhttp://www.sportsci.org/jour/0103/mw.htm