The Science of Shoe Selection May be not so Sciency.
Hopefully, we’ve all had the experience of buying running shoes at a real running store. If you are a new runner, or asking for help, the salesperson will have you stand with your shoes off and look at your feet and advise you about a shoe that will best fit your needs. (The better shoe stores will put you in the shoes and actually watch you run in them.)
In the US Military, the most typical injuries for new recruits are running related. To address this, they decided to evaluate the feet of recruits and supply them with shoes that shoe companies promote for the recruits’ foot shape.
Normally, the story would stop there. However, this time the Marine Corps decided to actually test the results and see how these recruits fared. It turns out the results were about the opposite of what the shoe companies would have liked. The New York Times reports:
Over the course of three large studies, the most recent of which was published last month in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers found almost no correlation at all between wearing the proper running shoes and avoiding injury. Injury rates were high among all the runners, but they were highest among the soldiers who had received shoes designed specifically for their foot types. If anything, wearing the “right” shoes for their particular foot shape had increased trainees’ chances of being hurt.
In another study of experience women runners by the University of British Columbia, researchers found similar results. Again from the New York Times:
By the end (of the 13-week study), about a third had missed training days because of pain, with a majority of the hurt runners wearing shoes specifically designed for their foot postures. (It’s worth noting that across the board, motion-control shoes were the most injurious for the runners. Many overpronators, who, in theory, should have benefited from motion-control shoes, complained of pain and missed training days after wearing them, as did a number of the runners with normal feet and every single underpronating runner assigned to the motion-control shoes.)
So where does this leave us? If you’re having discomfort, try a different pair of shoes. Use these recommendations as a starting point. Just because your feet look like they should be in a certain type of shoe, you still need to listen to what your body is telling you.
(Thanks to Mark for the tip!)