Running shoe research was a really hot topic for a few years -- all the controversy that followed the rise of minimalist running, all the studies that were launched, and so on. These days, you don't hear so much about it. There's still lots of research going on, but people are less interested in it. Why is that? I think part of it is that those who were expecting a knockout blow -- definitive proof that Shoe A is better than Shoe B or vice versa -- have been disappointed. Even the most interesting studies turn out to have lots of caveats and complexities. Wiping out running injuries turns out to have as much to do with fighting human nature (e.g. impatience) as it does with picking the right shoe.
Anyway, I decided to take a look at the current state of running shoe science, five years after Born to Run, for my column in the Globe and Mail. Initially I was thinking of doing a complete breakdown of the current thinking on all the various aspects of shoe design -- cushioning, motion control, stack, drop, compliance, weight, ground feel, and so on. But it quickly became clear that it would be impossible to do justice to any of those topics in the space available. Instead, I decided to focus on a small but growing sub-group of runners who I think illustrate something important about the current thinking on running shoes: people who run in both minimalist Vibrams and super-cushioned Hokas. What does this apparently contradictory behavior mean?
[...] “I think in 2009 people were pushing minimalism as the cure-all to running injuries, whereas now we have research showing that injury rates are pretty much the same in traditional and minimal shoes,” says Peter Larson, a biologist and running scientist in New Hampshire who left a tenured academic position in 2013 to focus on his shoe review site, Runblogger.com.
More From Runner's World
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a different injury potential between minimalist and conventional shoes, Larson points out. When the minimalist trend took off, shoe researchers launched dozens of studies that now are appearing in academic journals. The results paint a more nuanced picture than the sales figures. For example, biomechanical studies show that different shoes distribute stress to different parts of the body: feet and ankles from minimalist shoes, knees and hips from more-cushioned conventional shoes.
“The challenge now is finding the right shoe for the individual and their particular injury susceptibility,” Larson says. [...]
To me, that's the key takeaway: looking for the right shoe for you, rather than the One True Shoe that humans were meant to run in. There's another point about the similarities between Vibrams and Hokas that I didn't manage to fit into the piece, but is worth mentioning. Richard Ehrlich, one of the runners I spoke to for the article, notes that while Hokas have lots of cushioning (a big stack), their heel-to-toe drop is minimal, so the transition from Vibram to Hoka isn't as radical as you might think.
Anyway, I feel bad that the article doesn't conclude with some simple advice, like "If you're X type of runner, you should run in Y type of shoe." Unfortunately, I don't know any rules like that -- the best I can offer is that you should try different kinds of shoes to figure out what works best for you. Or you can consult one of the labyrinthine shoe prescription charts that people assemble: here's one from Blaise Dubois of the Running Clinic, and another from RW.
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