Forums >Gears and Wears>Matching foot type to shoe type? (eg. mc for overpronation)
I stumbled across this study which evaluated different types of shoes (neutral, stability, mc) on different types of feet (neutral, pronated, highly pronated) and pain in women.runners while training for a HM. MC shoes seem to result in more pain across the board while stability shoes worked better for neutral runners than neutral shoes did.
Not a perfect study by any means (are there any), but found their results interesting as well as their subjects - women recruited through newspaper ad and word of mouth. It seems like most studies are dealing with men, elite mountain runners or orienteers, younger folks, older folks (balance issues), people with some disease, or whatever.
Foot note: It does appear to be funded by Nike, and one of the co-authors works there. (Whether he's a true author or courtesy author wasn't obvious to me.) I'm not sure source of funding affects conclusions in studies like this other than only Nike shoes were used but models were clearly identified.
I'm not a scientist, so I'm a little reluctant to comment for fear of saying something dumb. I read this a few years ago when it came out; the NY Times had a piece about it http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/phys-ed-do-certain-types-of-sneakers-prevent-injuries/ and I think it was mentioned in Runner's World as well.
For me, this is the most interesting point in the NY Times article, also something that I asked myself while reading the study:
The problem is that “no one knows whether pronation is really the underlying issue,” Dr. Jones says. Few scientific studies have examined how or even if over- or underpronation contributes to running injuries. “There is so much that we still don’t understand about the biomechanics of the lower extremities,” Dr. Jones concludes.
As for Nike's involvement, well...to this lay person, at least, the central question the authors seek to answer could be rephrased as "which of these three NIke shoes is most awesome for every foot type (not that foot type is even a valid indicator of anything, but anyway, back to the shoes!)" And then they conclude that stability shoes are the most awesome and motion control shoes are the least awesome.
As I read, I asked myself if it wouldn't have been helpful to have a group running barefoot...but I'm not sure that would have worked with the study design because you can't just have people who are used to wearing shoes start training barefoot for a half marathon. But they wouldn't have done that in any case because barefoot is not relevant to Nike's interests.(Helloooo conspiracy theories! I'll just run and put on my tinfoil hat
I'm not a scientist, so I'm a little reluctant to comment for fear of saying something dumb.
I am a scientist, and I say dumb things all the time. But consider this: I don't know anyone that runs 50+ MPW in Motion Control shoes. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it does suggest that MC shoes are pure marketing hype. I started running in New Balance 854 a very long time ago. They were heavy (16+ oz) and had a "Roll Bar". I had shin splits once I got over 15 MPW.
I am not a scientist, but I know and have tried to run with a former D-1 runner who runs way more than 50mpw in motion control shoes, Brooks Beasts, to be exact. He has done so for many years.
Just sayin'