Comfort priority for running shoe

Some runners wear the wrong shoes for their particular stride, and some wear the right shoes for the wrong reasons, according to a new scientific review about running shoes and injury risks.

The study, published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, concludes that there is a reliable, scientifically valid way for each of us to pick the right running shoes, but it's so simple that people discount it.

The connection between running shoes and running injuries is a subject of much debate and, from a scientific standpoint, unsettled.

For years, runners who read sports magazines have read that they should choose shoes based, for the most part, on two broad technical criteria. The first is how much the foot pronates, or rolls inward as it lands. Orthopedists, coaches and runners have long taught that overpronation or underpronation contributes to the risk of injuries and should be controlled using particular types of shoes.

More recently, impact force, or the pounding experienced with each stride, has also been receiving attention, especially in relation to barefoot running and the question of whether runners should wear shoes at all. Some barefoot-running proponents say that running without shoes or in minimal, slipperlike models somehow changes impact and substantially reduces the risk for injury.

But Benno Nigg, the lead author of the new review, and his colleagues were skeptical. An emeritus professor of kinesiology at the University of Calgary and an expert on biomechanics, Nigg wondered whether science actually supports the notion that the right shoes can alter and fix someone's running form and reduce injuries.

For the new review, Nigg and his colleagues went through decades of studies about running injuries, shoes and their relationship.

It soon became clear to the researchers that most of the popular beliefs about running injuries and shoes are, in fact, myths.

FOR EXAMPLE

Overpronation does not seem to be a problem requiring correction.

In the one large-scale experiment studying pronation, almost 1,000 novice runners, some of whom overpronated and some of whom did not, were given the same running shoes and followed for a year.

At the end of that time, many of the runners with normal feet and form -- who did not overpronate -- had become injured, but a much smaller percentage of those who overpronated had been sidelined.

Nigg and his colleagues write in their review that this finding suggests "that a pronated foot position is, if anything, an advantage with respect to running injuries."

'BETTER' SHOES WEREN'T

Similarly, they found little evidence that forcefully striking the ground causes injuries or that changing or removing your shoes alters those impacts much anyway.

Perhaps most unexpected, running shoes designed to "fix" someone's running form turned out often to be ineffective and even counterproductive. In a series of studies, when military recruits were assigned running shoes meant to control their particular level of pronation, those soldiers were as likely, or even more so, to suffer running-related injuries than soldiers given shoes at random.

SO WHAT HELPED?

If shoes are chosen for the right reason, they can reduce injuries, Nigg and his colleagues concluded after parsing the relevant studies.

And the right reason does not involve pronation control or impact forces.

What matters, the researchers conclude in their review, is comfort.

In one study from 2001 (overseen by Nigg), researchers asked soldiers to try six shoe inserts, which varied in terms of cushioning, arch height, heel shape, thickness and other variables. The soldiers were asked to pick the one insert that felt the most comfortable to them and wear that insert during subsequent training. A separate group of soldiers wore standard footwear as controls.

After four months, the soldiers wearing the shoes fitted with comfortable inserts had a much lower incidence of injury than those wearing standard shoes.

This finding makes scientific and common sense, Nigg said. Our bodies are actually "very good judges" of how each of us should move and run, he said. When we ignore or fight our bodies' natural movement pattern, he said, such as by trying to control pronation, the risk of injury rises.

Instead, he said, we should pay close attention to our body's opinion about running shoe options.

"Try on four or five pairs," Nigg said. Jog around the store or the block in each.

"People can usually tell right away which shoe feels the most comfortable," Nigg said. "That is the one to choose."

ActiveStyle on 08/24/2015

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