For the past couple of years I have done ALL my runs in my racing shoes. i.e a low profile non controlling or built up shoe commonly know as a racing flat. Now this goes against all supposed wisdom, but I have had no running injuries since that time!
I do look after myself with my trusty tptherapy tools but I do believe that my feet are stronger, therefore have more feel and my foot strike is actually softer than it would be in built up shoes. This I believe is a big factor in having had no running injuries in years.
So how much of the injuries runners get bogged down with are in fact caused by their running shoes and other supposedly ’supportive’ objects thrown in the show?
I remember one of my athletes, a great runner but he was getting lots of upper calf area (gastrocnemuis) problems. He’s heel was landing in front of his hips which not only acts as a breaking force but hammers a lot of impact through the body. We were at the track so I got him to take his shoes off and do some laps on the grass. What happened? Well he straightened up a little, couldn’t physically land on his heel and his ‘new’ run stride looked effortless and fast.
We put the shoes back on… bam, straight back to heel striking. With the built up heel area he couldn’t do anything but heel strike. So we found some shoes that didn’t have all those motion controlled features or that ’safety’ cushioning and we were pretty much able to mimic his barefoot run style. We coupled this with getting the muscles back healthy with the tptherapy tools and his lower limb injuries just disappeared. Amazing huh!
Just recently I had an athlete tell me about a must read book called “Born to Run” and then immediately another one of my athletes mentioned it and sent me a copy. It’s essentially about a guy who just wanted to run but kept getting hurt. Doctor after doctor telling him how ‘bad’ running was and that he just wasn’t designed to run. Christopher McDougall’s epic adventure started after a simple question: Why does my foot hurt?
He discovers a tribe of the world’s greatest ultra distance runners and finds out that everything we knew about running is wrong!
Now I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water but I wanted to give you some parts from the book that may just engage your mind and make you think of things a little differently. Enjoy… and get the book, it’s well worth the read. Running is meant to be one of those truly liberating things we do because it can be a total joy… just look at little kids running around with smiles on there faces. Freedom!
Below are some excerpts from the book:
…consider the words by Dr. Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University: “A lot of foot and knee injuries that are currently plaguing us are actually caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate, give us knee problems. Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented, people ran in very thin soled shoes, had strong feet, and had much lower incidence of knee injuries.”
Vin Lananna a highly acclaimed running coach at Standford who’s track and cross country teams had won five NCAA team championships and twenty two individual titles and sent runners to the Olympics say’s “I can’t prove this, but I believe when my runners train barefoot, they run faster and suffer fewer injuries." Coach Lananna also states that "companies try to do all these corrective things with shoes and overcompensate. You fix things that don’t need fixing. If you strengthen the foot by going barefoot, I think you reduce the risk of Achilles and knee and plantar fascia problems.”
Every year 65-80% of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same…
A 1993 study of Dutch athletes published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, one group was taught to warm up and stretch, while the other group received no “injury prevention” coaching. Their injury rates? Identical. Stretching came out even worse in a follow-up study performed the following year at the University of Hawaii; it found that runners who stretched were 33% more likely to get hurt. (italics by me) I knew I was onto something there!
The book continues with some painful truths.
Runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123% more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes according to a study led by Bernard Marti , M.D., a preventive medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern. Something more surprising from the study was that the most common variable among the casualties wasn’t training surface, running speed, weekly mileage or “competitive training motivation” It wasn’t even body weight or history of previous injuries: it was the price of the running shoe.
The more expensive the shoe the greater the chance of injury.
Dr Hartmann who is Paula Radcliffe, Haile Gebrselassie and Khalid Khannouchi’s go to man, has for decades watched the explosion of orthotics and ever-more-structured running shoes with dismay. “The de-conditioned musculature of the foot is the greatest issue leading to injury, and we’ve allowed our feet to become badly de-conditioned over the past 25 years.”
“but once you block a natural movement” Dr Hartmann said “you adversely affect the others” we’ve done studies and it shows only 2-3% of the population has real biomechanical problems. So who is getting all these orthotics? Every time we put someone in a corrective device, were creating new problems by treating ones that don’t exist.
There are many more statements from the book and it doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me. Shoe companies have spent billions on motion control and shock absorption to make a ’safer’ shoe but to date there have been no evidence based studies to demonstrate that these running shoes make you less prone to injury and I am 100% in agreement with the study on the more expensive the shoe the greater the chance of injury.
My thoughts: Forget about orthotics, forget motion control and cushioning… start with strengthening your feet by walking around barefoot as much as possible, always when at home. Do some foot strengthening exercises like the ones shown here and if you can, find some clean good grass you can do some short runs on a couple of times per week. Look after your muscle tissue by doing self myofascial release with your tptherapy tools and for the love of your feet, lower limbs and the enjoyment of running, get a low profile shoe that allows just that.
Empowering you to be your best
Kristian Manietta
Hi Kristian, my name is Paul McGlynn, I met you a couple of times at IM events - at your Trigger Point exhibitions - I purchased the TP gear from you and it has "saved my life" (read saved my IM life). In, short it has been the best IM purchase I have ever made.
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