"Running shoes may be the most destructive force to ever hit the human foot." Thus starts Chapter 25 of the book "Born To Run", by Christopher McDougall. (The book is more narrowly focused on 'ultra' runners and the Mexican tribe of Tarahumara, who are called the 'Running People,' but often discusses running in general. I plan to write a review of the whole book soon after I finish it.)
The author then proceeds to list a whole bunch of research that has essentially come to one conclusion: the more cushioned/supportive the shoe, the worse it is for your feet. A very influential book for the pro-shoe lobby was "The Runners' Repair Manual" by Dr. Murray Weisenfeld, which made the case that the foot is the one part of the body that stopped evolving when we started walking on land and hence is imperfectly suited for running. He even went as far as to recommend surgery to remove cartilage from the knee to create the "runners knee", but most people who had the surgery came out with a painful condition that precluded any running.
One strong argument comes from a study published by Dr. Craig Richards in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2008 (Summary, Authors Blog) in which he found no evidence that high tech running shoes provide any reduction in foot injuries. In fact, the author went so far as to challenge any shoe manufacturer to produce such evidence, but nobody has responded so far. More about this later.
As in many other aspects, I was struck by the prescience of our yoga teacher Shashi. I find his insights into life and the human body to be very deep and powerful and have opined about this before. One of his bugbears is shoes - the manner in which they insulate and isolate our feet from the sensory experience of walking on the ground. He makes us do several exercises that are meant just to stimulate the foot. This knowledge is also used in Accupressure, of course. Contrary to the claims of Dr. Weisenfeld, the human foot is a marvel of engineering. The centerpiece is the arch, which as any civil engineer will tell you is the greatest weight bearing design ever created. The genius part is that an arch gets stronger under stress - the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Supporting the foot's arch is a web of 26 bones, 33 joints, 12 tendons, and 18 muscles, all stretching and flexing as required. The argument for barefoot running is very simple: the foot and the human body already know how to adjust to the impact of running. Shielding the foot with a highly cushioned sole is tantamount to cutting off the feedback loop. Sports car drivers call this having a "feel for the road." A sports suspension is tuned to allow you to experience every bump in the road because that directly translates to a more skillful driver. Every shoe store employee and several doctors (including mine) recommend replacing running shoes every 3 months. The research in fact shows the opposite: using older running shoes (the ones that have lost their cushioning and are essentially a flat piece of rubber that work only to protect you from stones/thorns/glass) are in fact much better at preventing injuries than brand new shoes.
I could on and on about this - the research, the anecdotes, the various big name runners who ran bare feet or with bare-bones shoes, but I will leave something for the potential readers of the book. Lest anybody think that I am questioning running as an activity, perish the thought! I am firmly in the camp (along with many researchers and doctors in the field) that there is no better aerobic activity than running. Done properly of course.
Is this all propaganda from the anti-Nike (the inventors of the modern running shoe) lobby? Hardly. Nike themselves know this and have implicitly acknowledged it.
In 2001, the highly respected coach of the Stanford track team (Vin Lananna) started training his athletes in bare feet, despite being a recipient of Nike sponsorship. When challenged by the Nike reps he simply countered that they had fewer injuries this way. To Nike's credit they did not play ostrich and proceeded to study it on their own and like any good business tried to find a way to make money off the 'barefoot movement.' After a few years of research and study Nike introduced a new shoe, the 'Nike Free.' A shoe that has almost zero cushioning and is meant to allow you to run "naturally." In true Nike style, the shoe was accompanied by an enticing marketing campaign with a very catchy slogan for the shoe:
"Run Barefoot."
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