The Bare Foot is Good. The Nike is Evil.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html

At Stanford University, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred.

Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing.

'Didn't we send you enough shoes?' they asked head coach Vin Lananna. They had, he was just refusing to use them.

'I can't prove this,' the well-respected coach told them.

'But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.'

Nike sponsored the Stanford team as they were the best of the very best. Needless to say, the reps were a little disturbed to hear that Lananna felt the best shoes they had to offer them were not as good as no shoes at all.

When I was told this anecdote it came as no surprise. I'd spent years struggling with a variety of running-related injuries, each time trading up to more expensive shoes, which seemed to make no difference. I'd lost count of the amount of money I'd handed over at shops and sports-injury clinics - eventually ending with advice from my doctor to give it up and 'buy a bike'.

And I wasn't on my own. Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, fast or slow, pudgy or taut as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone.

But why? How come Roger Bannister could charge out of his Oxford lab every day, pound around a hard cinder track in thin leather slippers, not only getting faster but never getting hurt, and set a record before lunch?

Then there's the secretive Tarahumara tribe, the best long-distance runners in the world. These are a people who live in basic conditions in Mexico, often in caves without running water, and run with only strips of old tyre or leather thongs strapped to the bottom of their feet. They are virtually barefoot.

Come race day, the Tarahumara don't train. They don't stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old.

When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they're a track coach's nightmare. They drink like New Year's Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army.

Unlike their Western counterparts, the Tarahumara don't replenish their bodies with electrolyte-rich sports drinks. They don't rebuild between workouts with protein bars; in fact, they barely eat any protein at all, living on little more than ground corn spiced up by their favourite delicacy, barbecued mouse.

How come they're not crippled?
Modern running shoes on sale

Modern running shoes on sale

I've watched them climb sheer cliffs with no visible support on nothing more than an hour's sleep and a stomach full of pinto beans. It's as if a clerical error entered the stats in the wrong columns. Shouldn't we, the ones with state-of-the-art running shoes and custom-made orthotics, have the zero casualty rate, and the Tarahumara, who run far more, on far rockier terrain, in shoes that barely qualify as shoes, be constantly hospitalised?

The answer, I discovered, will make for unpalatable reading for the $20 billion trainer-manufacturing industry. It could also change runners' lives forever.

Dr Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, has been studying the growing injury crisis in the developed world for some time and has come to a startling conclusion: 'A lot of foot and knee injuries currently plaguing us are caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate (ankle rotation) and give us knee problems.

'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.'

Lieberman also believes that if modern trainers never existed more people would be running. And if more people ran, fewer would be suffering from heart disease, hypertension, blocked arteries, diabetes, and most other deadly ailments of the Western world.

'Humans need aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy,' says Lieberman. 'If there's any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it's to run.'

The modern running shoe was essentially invented by Nike. The company was founded in the Seventies by Phil Knight, a University of Oregon runner, and Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon coach.

Before these two men got together, the modern running shoe as we know it didn't exist. Runners from Jesse Owens through to Roger Bannister all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: their only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. Thumping down on their heels was not an option.

Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention

Bowerman didn't actually do much running. He only started to jog a little at the age of 50, after spending time in New Zealand with Arthur Lydiard, the father of fitness running and the most influential distance-running coach of all time. Bowerman came home a convert, and in 1966 wrote a best-selling book whose title introduced a new word and obsession to the fitness-aware public: Jogging.

In between writing and coaching, Bowerman came up with the idea of sticking a hunk of rubber under the heel of his pumps. It was, he said, to stop the feet tiring and give them an edge. With the heel raised, he reasoned, gravity would push them forward ahead of the next man. Bowerman called Nike's first shoe the Cortez - after the conquistador who plundered the New World for gold and unleashed a horrific smallpox epidemic.

It is an irony not wasted on his detractors. In essence, he had created a market for a product and then created the product itself.

'It's genius, the kind of stuff they study in business schools,' one commentator said.

Bowerman's partner, Knight, set up a manufacturing deal in Japan and was soon selling shoes faster than they could come off the assembly line.

'With the Cortez's cushioning, we were in a monopoly position probably into the Olympic year, 1972,' Knight said.

The rest is history.

The company's annual turnover is now in excess of $17 billion and it has a major market share in over 160 countries.

Since then, running-shoe companies have had more than 30 years to perfect their designs so, logically, the injury rate must be in freefall by now.

After all, Adidas has come up with a $250 shoe with a microprocessor in the sole that instantly adjusts cushioning for every stride. Asics spent $3 million and eight years (three more years than it took to create the first atomic bomb) to invent the Kinsei, a shoe that boasts 'multi-angled forefoot gel pods', and a 'midfoot thrust enhancer'. Each season brings an expensive new purchase for the average runner.

But at least you know you'll never limp again. Or so the leading companies would have you believe. Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention.

If anything, the injury rates have actually ebbed up since the Seventies - Achilles tendon blowouts have seen a ten per cent increase. (It's not only shoes that can create the problem: research in Hawaii found runners who stretched before exercise were 33 per cent more likely to get hurt.)

In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.

It was an astonishing revelation that had been hidden for over 35 years. Dr Richards was so stunned that a $20 billion industry seemed to be based on nothing but empty promises and wishful thinking that he issued the following challenge: 'Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?'

Dr Richards waited and even tried contacting the major shoe companies for their data. In response, he got silence.

So, if running shoes don't make you go faster and don't stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, thrust enhancers, air cushions, torsion devices and roll bars?

The answer is still a mystery. And for Bowerman's old mentor, Arthur Lydiard, it all makes sense.

'We used to run in canvas shoes,' he said.

'We didn't get plantar fasciitis (pain under the heel); we didn't pronate or supinate (land on the edge of the foot); we might have lost a bit of skin from the rough canvas when we were running marathons, but generally we didn't have foot problems.

'Paying several hundred dollars for the latest in hi-tech running shoes is no guarantee you'll avoid any of these injuries and can even guarantee that you will suffer from them in one form or another. Shoes that let your foot function like you're barefoot - they're the shoes for me.'

Soon after those two Nike sales reps reported back from Stanford, the marketing team set to work to see if it could make money from the lessons it had learned. Jeff Pisciotta, the senior researcher at Nike Sports Research Lab, assembled 20 runners on a grassy field and filmed them running barefoot.

When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found. Instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own - stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan.

'It's beautiful to watch,' Pisciotta later told me. 'That made us start thinking that when you put a shoe on, it starts to take over some of the control.'

Pisciotta immediately deployed his team to gather film of every existing barefoot culture they could find.

'We found pockets of people all over the globe who are still running barefoot, and what you find is that, during propulsion and landing, they have far more range of motion in the foot and engage more of the toe. Their feet flex, spread, splay and grip the surface, meaning you have less pronation and more distribution of pressure.'

Nike's response was to find a way to make money off a naked foot. It took two years of work before Pisciotta was ready to unveil his masterpiece. It was presented in TV ads that showed Kenyan runners padding
along a dirt trail, swimmers curling their toes around a starting block, gymnasts, Brazilian capoeira dancers, rock climbers, wrestlers, karate masters and beach soccer players.

And then comes the grand finale: we cut back to the Kenyans, whose bare feet are now sporting some kind of thin shoe. It's the new Nike Free, a shoe thinner than the old Cortez dreamt up by Bowerman in the Seventies. And its slogan?

'Run Barefoot.'

The price of this return to nature?

A conservative £65. But, unlike the real thing, experts may still advise you to change them every three months.

Edited extract from 'Born To Run' by Christopher McDougall, £16.99, on sale from April 23

My preference for shoes without padded soles has merit, it would seem. Any runners of APS care to chime in? More articles/excerpts are found in the original link. 

[makattak]

Former runner here. (Ironically, problems with my knees made me stop).

I can't speak to the science, but the reason I wear shoes is comfort. Running barefoot stretches my arch horribly. If I were to run as many miles barefoot as I did in shoes while a cross country runner, I would no longer have an arch in my foot.

I also question their statistics. I would think that running barefoot would be better for you because of where you train.

I'm not running barefoot on asphalt or concrete.

I also think that running (barefoot or not) on grass and other soft surfaces would be a far better training method. All their examples are individuals who train in environments without asphalt or concrete. Their statistics, therefore, may not have controlled for all other influences.

As for the importance of running to health, I quite agree, though. I just wish I still could run. (More than a mile and my knee just burns.)

[zahc]

I've been saying the same thing for years. It's folly to think you need shoes for running. God didn't design the human body to need shoes. People have been running for millenia long before the idea of a running shoe existed. I've always worn skateboarding shoes with thin soles. If I can't feel a sidewalk crack through my shoes, I feel like I'm wearing blocks on my feet.

[Jamisjockey]

When I was really running, I wore sprinters shoes for anything under 3 miles, as those events were always on a track.  They are basically slippers with traction, some had toe cleat holes for short sprinting.  And then I wore regular Nike or New Balance runners for cross country running.

[Matthew Carberry]

I think the major finding is that modern shoes cause us to run with heel impact, which is not a natural running style and are overly padded, which allows our feet to not develop properly in response to use.

If you run with thinner shoes your body will re-learn how to run properly thus reducing injury.  That your arch muscles will strengthen in response and your foot will develop tissues where necessary is, I think, the point.

The article isn't saying "run barefoot on concrete", it is saying run properly with the minimum shoe necessary to protect your foot from the surface.

The problem isn't "wearing shoes" it is wearing overly padded and formed modern shoes that actually impede proper (natural) running form and foot muscle development.

[makattak]

I think the major finding is that modern shoes cause us to run with heel impact, which is not a natural running style and are overly padded, which allows our feet to not develop properly in response to use.

If you run with thinner shoes your body will re-learn how to run properly thus reducing injury.  That your arch muscles will strengthen in response and your foot will develop tissues where necessary is, I think, the point.

The article isn't saying "run barefoot on concrete", it is saying run properly with the minimum shoe necessary to protect your foot from the surface.

The problem isn't "wearing shoes" it is wearing overly padded and formed modern shoes that actually impede proper (natural) running form and foot muscle development.

I am aware they were not saying "run barefoot on concrete."

I am saying, though, that their statistics may be suspect as they chose cultures that run on surfaces other than concrete or asphalt.

If they control for those characteristics, I will be more willing to accept their findings.

Otherwise, it could be shoes have little to no relationship to injuries as the surface upon which you run may have greater bearing.

[Matthew Carberry]

I think a larger part of the article dealt with how overly cushioned shoes cause us to run, which is with strong heel strikes that are damaging to the foot and lower leg joints, and how their "over-support and cushioning" causes a weakening of the necessary muscles for real foot/ankle health.

Surface doesn't matter if the technique is wrong.  If the shoe causes (or permits) poor technique then the shoe, as currently developed, is bad.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Later mini-articles following big article in same link:

Runners wearing top-of-the-line trainers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap ones. This was discovered as far back as 1989, according to a study led by Dr Bernard Marti, the leading preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern.
Running in muddy terrain

Dr Marti's research team analysed 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand Prix, a 9.6-mile road race. All the runners filled out an extensive questionnaire that detailed their training habits and footwear for the previous year; as it turned out, 45 per cent had been hurt during that time. But what surprised Dr Marti was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn't training surface, running speed, weekly mileage or 'competitive training motivation'.

It wasn't even body weight or a history of previous injury. It was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.

Follow-up studies found similar results, like the 1991 report in Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise that found that 'wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (eg, more cushioning, 'pronation correction') are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes.'

What a cruel joke: for double the price, you get double the pain. Stanford coach Vin Lananna had already spotted the same phenomenon.'I once ordered highend shoes for the team and within two weeks we had more plantar fasciitis and Achilles problems than I'd ever seen.

So I sent them back. Ever since then, I've always ordered low-end shoes. It's not because I'm cheap. It's because I'm in the business of making athletes run fast and stay healthy.'

[makattak]

I think a larger part of the article dealt with how overly cushioned shoes cause us to run, which is with strong heel strikes that are damaging to the foot and lower leg joints, and how their "over-support and cushioning" causes a weakening of the necessary muscles for real foot/ankle health.

Surface doesn't matter if the technique is wrong.  If the shoe causes (or permits) poor technique then the shoe, as currently developed, is bad.

IF the technique is wrong. As I pointed out, their examples cannot prove this.

All they can say is people ran differently without running shoes. They theorize that it is running heel-toe that is the cause of injuries.

My contention is that they have not proven that. At best there is a correlation.

Edit: And Savalas has provided better statistics. There now is more support for causation rather than simply correlation.

However, this suggests it is not running heel-toe (as people in cheap running shoes do that too) but rather over cushioning... interesting...

[Matthew Carberry]

There are supporting studies in the same page that control for surface, fistful posted one.

In any event folks will wear what they want.

What I'm taking from this is that I reenter the running world I am going to not worry about getting a high-end shoe but work on classic (pre-specialty shoe) technique and train moderately in the hopes of making my foot act more like it was designed (evolved).

[Ryan in Maine]

Isn't that why Nike developed their "Free" technology?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Free

[doczinn]

I'm beginning to wake up to the fact that millions of years of evolution engineered us pretty well to live a particular way that isn't necessarily well-matched to the way most of us now live.

Google "Primal Blueprint" if you're interested.

[S. Williamson]

^^^ To save others time... http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-primal-blueprint/

VERY interesting read, and it makes a hell of a lot of sense.    God knows my current habits aren't exactly what they should be.

[doczinn]

There's also http://www.freetheanimal.com and wikipedia articles on Evolutionary Fitness and Paleolithic Diet. It's quite the rabbit hole, but it truly does make a helluva lot of sense. Personally I'm not there yet, but I'm workin' on it.

[Marnoot]

I've seen a lot of research disagreeing with alot of the premises of the paleolithic diet. I wouldn't make a whole switch to only foods from that diet without doing some looking at the varying scientific opinions; they're far from unanimous in support of it.

Edited to add: Not to say that said diet isn't far healthier than how most people eat; just that it's not The One Diet, either.

[doczinn]

Some of the science that would oppose it has been thoroughly debunked. If you wanna talk specifics, I'm not the guy to argue it with, but you can find some.

[Marnoot]

I've seen science for both sides. When I first heard of it a few months ago I was bored and spent some time reading about it. There was plenty of pro-paleodiet science that's been debunked, too. The paleodiet, followed strictly, is poor in calcium for one example. There's not remotely any consensus on the idea that the human genome is evolved specifically to eat that diet.

Conclusion? Good ideas to reference when deciding your own diet, but far, far, from being The One Diet. Such a thing does not exist.

Again, I'm not saying the diet is bad, just that it's not a panacea diet for all that will resolve all diet-related health issues, as is practically the claim of many of its evangelists.

[Matthew Carberry]

I like Michael Pollen's simple credo.

Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

[doczinn]

All I  have to go on is a lot of testimonials and a little personal experience. As for "mostly plants," we evolved eating meat. We didn't get these big brains on plant matter.

[Balog]

All I  have to go on is a lot of testimonials and a little personal experience. As for "mostly plants," we evolved eating meat. We didn't get these big brains on plant matter.

Show me any hairbrained scheme and I'll show you "lots of testimonials." A poor basis for making decisions.

[doczinn]

Yes, I'm well aware of that. But I do have a little personal experience and a lot of common sense that tells me that what we ate while we were evolving is what evolved to function best on.

[Matthew Carberry]

All I  have to go on is a lot of testimonials and a little personal experience. As for "mostly plants," we evolved eating meat. We didn't get these big brains on plant matter.

I submit to you that an 8 oz. potato, 6 oz. of salad, a few oz of bread and a 12 oz steak meets a "mostly plants" goal.

Advantage Carberry. 

[doczinn]

Well, if you define it that way....

[BridgeRunner]

I'm still a beginning runner, but I prefer shoes.  Fairly light shoes, but shoes.  However, I habitually walk barefoot and, having learned from previous injuries, paid attention to form when I started running and focus on mid-foot striking.  I don't use an ipod or anything when I'm running, I watch my form and breathing.  But I definitely wear shoes.  I run on sidewalks and roads, and they're really too old and broken up here to even run safety on barefoot--too hard to spot urban hazards like glass.  Cut feet *hurt*.

[Marnoot]

I'm still a beginning runner, but I prefer shoes.  Fairly light shoes, but shoes.  However, I habitually walk barefoot and, having learned from previous injuries, paid attention to form when I started running and focus on mid-foot striking.  I don't use an ipod or anything when I'm running, I watch my form and breathing.  But I definitely wear shoes.  I run on sidewalks and roads, and they're really too old and broken up here to even run safety on barefoot--too hard to spot urban hazards like glass.  Cut feet *hurt*.

A possible between-barefoot-and-wearing-shoes alternative:

http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/