This morning in the news there was an interesting article on running and how shoes affect it:
Runners wearing top-of-the-line trainers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap ones. This was discovered as far back as 1989, according to a study led by Dr Bernard Marti, the leading preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern.
But surely we’ve improved in the last twenty years, right? Not really. Here’s why:
For decades, Dr. Hartma has been watching the explosion of ever more structured running shoes with dismay. ‘Pronation has become this very bad word, but it’s just the natural movement of the foot,’ he says. ‘The foot is supposed to pronate.’
To see pronation in action, kick off your shoes and run down the driveway. On a hard surface, your feet will automatically shift to self defence mode: you’ll find yourself landing on the outside edge of your foot, then gently rolling from little toe over to big until your foot is flat. That’s pronation - a mild, shock absorbing twist that allows your arch to compress.
Now this is truly amusing. This explains the way that I walk as well as run when barefoot and I’ve had friends complain about it. Now I feel vindicated.
Read the rest of the article! It is well worth the time. The author explains some of the history behind the jogging craze and how one of the Nike founders created it. Our nation probably needed the reminder to get out and exercise more but there is a conflict of interest.