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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday November 23 2016, @12:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-running? dept.

Runners who wear running shoes with no cushioning and land on the ball of their foot rather than the heel put significantly less demand on their bodies, new research suggests.

Researchers compared how quickly the force acts when runners' feet hit the ground -- known as the loading rate -- which has been shown to influence running injury risk.

The study of 29 runners found significantly lower loading rates for those who wore so-called minimal running shoes and landed on the ball of their foot, compared to people in normal running shoes, regardless of whether the latter landed on the heel or ball of the foot.

The article may be of academic interest to Soylentils.

[Editors note: I wonder if Vibram will get its money back based off this study? Also, we ran a somewhat related story a few months ago on the detriment of shoes to the foot's natural spring action...]


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:03AM (#431760)

    I'd take that over my feet deforming due to nails or shards of glass. Or stepping into poo or boiling hot asphalt. I've been wearing shoes for decades and the deformation is tolerable (just some calluses).

    Those who think padding is the problem are basically making the argument that running on rock hard ground is better than running on softer ground.

    People should buy decent comfortable shoes and learn to walk and run in them properly (e.g. when running you don't land heel first). As far as I can see if you do stuff right, shoes should be superior to barefeet under most circumstances. Running with shoes should be like running with barefeet except that your feet always hit "friendlier ground".

    I'm sure some people can run barefoot on hard surfaces with no problems, but for the rest shoes will be better.

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  • (Score: 2) by quintessence on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:10PM

    by quintessence (6227) on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:10PM (#432556)

    Do you keep broken glass or poo inside your house? There are people who wear shoes all the time.

    The difference isn't between running over hard or soft ground as much as keeping your foot in essential a mini sensory deprivation chamber.

    Even with padding, there are tremendous forces that are transferred, but the full extent of which aren't transmitted through the entire suspension of the leg. You can see this with cars that are using higher sidewalls than the suspension was designed for, consequently the ball joints wear out prematurely since the full load isn't being transmitted completely through the entire suspension.

    +1 automotive analogy