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: (more…)