What in the World is Wrong with our Running Shoes?

by Jeff Bell

I just finished an amazing book “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen” by Christopher McDougall. It’s a book about the Taramuhara people who live in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. The Taramuhara culture is deeply rooted in long distance running. And they do it barefoot!

I love to run. Millions of people run for cardiovascular fitness, to lose weight, to look lean and healthy. However, researchers are discovering that the running shoes we thought were protecting us from injury are actually causing us to be injured! According to Dr. Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, “a lot of foot and knee injuries… are actually caused by people running in shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate giving us knee problems.”

Stanford University track coach Vin Lananna agrees. ”We’ve shielded our feet from their natural position by providing more and more support…I believe when my runners train barefoot, they run faster and suffer fewer injuries” and this he told to Nike reps!

Up until about 30 years ago, most running shoes were very thin-soled, allowing the runners’ feet to move in its natural motion and respond to the ground through the soul of the foot and Achilles heel. Then running experts began to preach that running shoes should supply more and more support and because of that we have the running shoes we all wear today.

The running shoes we have been wearing all these years were designed using "Motion Control Technology,” ultra built-up heels and foot soles that prevent natural foot pronation during while walking, running, jogging etc. This technology is severely altering the natural pattern of foot strike on the landing surface. These alterations produce excessive impact forces that we don't feel but are masked through the soft shoe. Instead of landing on the whole foot, those wearing these type of shoe overextend their stride, crash through their heels (poor shock absorber) sending greater shock throughout the whole body. This produces:

• Back Problems
• Knee Injuries
• Hip Pain
• Shoulder Pain
• Neck Injuries
• And who knows what else?

Today, many experts and researchers are beginning to connect the dots between foot pain and injury and the “technologically advanced” running shoes we’ve been wearing. According to Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern, “runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123% more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes”.

So what’s the deal? Did we all just swallow the blue pill and line up to buy our one hundred and fifty dollar Air Jordan’s, or the latest spring loaded, mega-bounce Converse and expected that the shoes, not our own conditioning would take care of our chronic conditions and improve our performance? What if we had been running barefoot all these years or wearing thin “track flats” that I remember using in high School track meets? Would we be better off?

Next: my own experience with barefoot running.