New Balance Minumus Line: A Sneak Peak

Cool video featuring Anton Krupicka and the simplicity of trail running with a sneak peak of the new New Balance Minimus shoe

How to transition to running in minimalist shoes

I’ve had several questions about my minimalist transition, how to’s, etc. So I thought I’d look back and try to put it in a generalized “how-to” post, based on my experience. With the benefit of hindsight, I put it into a generic 8 week program to be full time in a minimalist shoe in 2 months. I personally made the full transition in 6 weeks, but please keep in mind, I’m an ultrarunner and typically run a minimum of 2000 miles a year, compete in a least 6 ultramarathon races per year and have been doing this for nearly a decade. So, my transition may be a bit quicker than most. However, if you spend time barefoot and re-learn your proper running stride (barefoot), listen to your body and don’t overdue it giving your body time to adapt, I truly believe you can do this. And, it won’t take as long as you might think. Happy natural running!

Read the rest of the article on Jeff Brownings blog!

Why expensive trainers could be worse than useless

Western runners, of whom 90 per cent suffer injuries every year, would be better off leaving their sneakers at home, and running barefoot.

By Chris McDougall

Published: 7:00AM GMT 12 Jan 2010

(photo by Luis Escobar)

Science and sceptical runners are catching up with something the Tarahumara Indians have known for ever: your naked feet are fine on their own. According to a growing body of clinical research, those expensive running shoes you've been relying on may be worse than useless: they could be causing the very injuries they're supposed to prevent.

Perhaps the best research in the field has been going on for hundreds of years in a maze of canyons in northern Mexico. There, the reclusive Tarahumara tribe routinely engage in races of 150 miles or more, the equivalent of running the London Marathon six times in the same day.

Despite this extreme mileage, as I learnt during several treks into the canyons, the Tarahumara are somehow immune to the injuries that plague the rest of the running world.

Out here in the non-Tarahumara world, where we have access to the best in sports medicine, training innovations and footwear, up to 90 per cent of all marathoners are injured every year.

The Tarahumara, by contrast, remain spry and healthy deep into old age. I saw numerous men

and women in their seventies loping up steep, cliffside switchbacks on their way to villages 30 miles away. Back in 1994, a Tarahumara man ventured out of the canyons to compete against an elite field of runners at the Leadville Trail Ultramarathon, a 100-mile race through the Rocky Mountains. He wore homemade sandals. He was 55 years old. He won.

So how do the Tarahumara protect their legs from all that pounding? Simple – they don't. They

don't protect and, most critically, they don't pound. When the Tarahumara aren't barefoot, they wear nothing more cushioned than thin, hard sandals fashioned from discarded tire treads and leather thongs. In place of artificial shock

absorption, they rely on an ancient running technique that creates a naturally gentle landing. Unlike the vast majority of modern runners, who come down heavily on their foam-covered heels and roll forward off their toes, the Tarahumara land lightly on their forefeet and bend their knees, as you would if you jumped from a chair.

This ingenious, easy-to-learn style could have a profound effect on runners, not to mention the multi-billion dollar running-shoe industry. Ever since Nike created the modern running shoe in the Seventies, new joggers have been repeatedly warned that their first step should be through the door of a speciality store. Without proper footwear, they're told, crippling injuries are inevitable. Take this recent comment by Dr Lewis G Maharam, "the world's premier running physician" as he's known, and medical director for the New York City Marathon. "In 95 per cent of the population or higher, running barefoot will land you in my office," Maharam said. That's because only "a very small number of people are biomechanically perfect."

Shortly before the New York City Marathon, David Willey, the editor of Runner's World magazine, broadcast a similarly dire warning on the radio. "If a lot of runners or all the runners out there in America did that tomorrow [ran without shoes], the vast majority of them would get hurt very quickly and would have to stop running for a long time." And why? Because, Willey said, "the vast majority of people are not blessed in that way. They've got some biomechanical inefficiencies."

This logic has at least one major flaw: the vast majority of runners, "blessed" or otherwise, are getting hurt anyway. The injury rate among all runners has hovered somewhere between 60 and 80 per cent for the past 40 years. You'd expect casualties to decrease as technology improved, but you'd be wrong: there are more heel and Achilles' tendon injuries now than ever, even though Adidas sells a trainer with a microprocessor in the sole to customise cushioning, and Asics spent $3 million, and eight years – three more than it took the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb – to invent the awe-inspiring "Kinsei", a shoe that boasts "multi-angled forefoot gel pods" and an "infinitely adaptable heel component".

Astonishingly, there's no evidence that any of this technology does anything, which may explain why Nike ads never explain what, exactly, those $190 shoes are supposed to do. In a 2008 research paper for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dr Craig Richards, a physician at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed that after scouring 30 years' worth of studies, he couldn't find a single one that demonstrated that running shoes made you less prone to injury.

So if shoes aren't the solution, could they be the problem? That's what Dr Daniel Lieberman, the head of the evolutionary anthropology department at Harvard, began to wonder. Humans, after all, are the only creatures that voluntarily cover their feet, and we're also the only creatures known to suffer from corns, bunions, hammer-toes and heel pain.

Last spring, Lieberman recruited Harvard students for an experiment: he had them kick off their sneakers and run every day in either bare feet or wearing a thin, rubber foot-glove called the Vibram Fivefingers. The results were remarkable. Once their shoes were taken away, the students instinctively stopped clumping down on their heels. Instead, they began landing lightly on the balls of their feet, keeping their feet beneath their hips and bending at the knees and ankles. Without knowing it, they were mirroring the Tarahumara.

Lieberman was so taken by his discovery that before long, he was startling undergraduates by loping past them in bare feet for miles at a time through the streets of suburban Boston.

In Germany, meanwhile, the world's leading researcher in human connective tissue, Dr Robert Schleip at the University of Ulm, began a similar experiment to see whether he could end his own battle with plantar fasciitis, a vexing heel pain that is almost impossible to cure fully.

"If you encase the foot in thick shoes," Schleip says, "you not only lose ground awareness, you limit your natural elasticity." Schleip began slipping out of his shoes to run barefoot through the parks of Berlin. Soon, his heel pain vanished, never to return.

So harmful are running shoes that you're better off walking in high heels. That's the conclusion of a study published this month in PM&R, the journal for the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. A team of researchers put 68 young adult runners on a treadmill, and found that they suffered 38 per cent more twisting in their knees and ankles when wearing shoes than they did in bare feet.

"Remarkably, the effect of running shoes on knee joint torques," the lead researcher said, "is even greater than the effect that was reported earlier of high-heeled shoes during walking."

Similarly, a study in The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness in March 2009 found that even when running on hard surfaces, barefoot runners experience less impact than runners with shoes because – as the Harvard students discovered – they naturally take shorter strides and bend their knees and ankles. No one needed to feed those numbers to Abebe Bikila, the two-time Olympic champion, or Zola Budd, who held the

5,000 metre world record and competed for Britain in the 1984 Los Angeles Games: both preferred running in bare feet.

Sceptics like to argue that runners bring injuries on themselves by doing their miles on hard, man-made surfaces and being less athletic than marathoners of yore. That reasoning ignores the fact that barefoot humans got along quite well on hard terrain for two million years, running on cement-like surfaces like the sun-baked African savannah, the beaten-dirt trails of the Amazon, and the stony canyons of Mexico.

When it comes to novices, no one has more experience than the military and less margin for error. For centuries, armies have had to train out-of-shape recruits to cover marathon distances on their feet. Rather than dispensing plush trainers, the military took another route. As described in the classic military text The Soldier's Foot and the Military Shoe, all new recruits are taught to land lightly on the balls of their feet. They keep their feet under their hips, swinging their legs in a quick, light shuffle to a beat of 180 strides per minute – which, not surprisingly, exactly matches the ancient running rhythm of the Tarahumara.

Barefoot Running Shoes

Dr. Jenny Sanders interview with Podiatry Today.

Have you seen an increased demand for shoes that simulate barefoot running?

Yes. Questions about barefoot running seem to parallel the introduction of new barefoot running shoes into the marketplace. The most common I’ve seen in my practice include NikeFree, Vibram Five Fingers and Newton Running.

NikeFree was the first introduced in 2004. At the time, Nike who was sponsoring Stanford’s track team discovered that some of their training had been done barefoot. Stanford’s coach at the time, Vin Lananna felt that barefoot training reduced injuries and improved foot and ankle strength. Seizing an opportunity, NikeFree was developed. Basically it has a soft, non-supportive cloth upper with a wide, cushioned midsole having deep grooves to enhance flexibility.

A little slower to catch on has been Vibram Five Fingers, which were introduced in 2005. Vibram originally designed these to be worn while yachting and was surprised initially that anyone would want to run in them. Once they discovered this however, this shoe with individual toes became mainstream.

Newton Running was developed in 2007 and is similar to NikeFree in appearance but provides more forefoot cushion. It was designed by Runners and is heavily endorsed by runners. The shoes are expensive and cost between $150-$200.

Other than the debut of a new barefoot running type shoes, Christopher McDougall’s recently released book entitled Born to Run, has re-ignited the barefoot running controversy.

Chris is an ultrarunner and writer for Men’s Health. His book is a page turning, entertaining read about his own personal journey of barefoot ultrarunning, which started, with the simple question of “why does my foot hurt?”

It chronicles Chris’s introduction, training and subsequent 50-mile treacherous run with the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s Copper Canyon. The Tarahumara are a legendary tribe known to run hundreds of miles at a time while only wearing sandals. In it he vilifies running shoe companies, podiatrists, sports medicine specialists and orthotics as the cause of running injuries. Looking below the surface however, I was able to appreciate the book for it’s historical accounting of barefoot running, ultrarunning and Chris’s analysis of running form. I also think it will stimulate conversation and better scientific research into the question is there an optimal running form and is it the same for everyone and every foot type?

In regard to shoes that simulate barefoot running, what in your clinical opinion are the biomechanical strengths and weaknesses of these shoes in comparison to conventional running shoes?

Barefoot running shoes are designed to promote forefoot contact over heel contact. This does two things. One, it reduces the impact of heel strike, improving shock absorption throughout the midfoot and forefoot. Two, it alters the center of gravity forward with the feet being better centered below the hip, which is a much more stable alignment.

My problem with barefoot running shoes isn’t with the biomechanics of the design but rather the concern that runners will see this as the newest fad and train without proper conditioning or assessment. It doesn’t matter whether you are wearing NikeFree 5.0 or Nike Zoom Structure Triax +12. If the running shoe isn’t a match to your foot type and running biomechanics, injuries will occur.

I also think in addition to shoes, too many runners have not been adequately coached in proper form. The best running shoe design in the world coupled with poor running form has little chance of benefiting a runner. ChiRunning, Pose Tech Training and Evolution running are all running methods which simulate barefoot running form and are often helpful in reducing or eliminating injury.

Are there other considerations Podiatrists should keep in mind when asked for recommendations of these shoes by patients? Are there certain foot types that would prohibit use of these shoes?

When asked by patients about barefoot running I say it may have a place in an overall training strategy, but based on most of the patient’s pathology I see coming through the door, few would benefit from this as a primary treatment. In fact I have taken quite a few runners out of these styles of shoes because they caused injury. It amazes me that so many experienced runners (triathletes, marathoners, ultrarunners) who presumably know everything about their running are oftentimes clueless when it comes to their shoes. They are sponsored by a particular shoe company consequently have to wear that company’s shoe and no one has really ever analyzed whether it’s right for them or not. Or, they have run in the same shoe for the past 10 years but never realized that the shoe design has changed so dramatically during a version change, that in spite of the name being the same it’s not the same shoe.

In your experience in treating athletes, are there particular brands of these shoes that simulate barefoot running that you have found to be effective?

The few patients I have who use these types of shoes as well as readers of my blog find that Vibram Five Fingers are really the only shoe that simulate the true feel and biomechanics of barefoot running. NikeFree and Newton Running seem to be losing ground in the battle of barefoot running shoes. However, I’m sure as time goes on, more and more shoe companies will jump on the barefoot running bandwagon and incorporate even more designs and styles into their manufacturing lines.

Born to Run book review

Having recently finished reading Chris McDougall's book Born to Run, a brief book review seems to be in order. First of all, this book is simply a really enjoyable read. It was one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I've read in a long time. Now, I've heard people say that there is quite a bit of embellishment in this book, which may be true, but it's still a very enjoyable read. The characters are well developed and fun, the story is very interesting and there is something to be learned within. Whether all the characters behaved exactly as described in the book is irrelevant, it's a fun read based on actual events.



I had been firmly in the low profile, minimal shoe camp prior to reading the book, so this was no startling revelation. However, McDougall develops the argument for minimalist running shoes very effectively. As even Barefoot Ted (one of the main characters of the book) will admit, if it 'aint broke don't try to fix it, for many runners, it still makes sense to strive for a more minimal shoe. Learning to run more on the forefoot and dispensing with heel-striking has helped me run faster with less effort and with fewer injuries. If you're a consistently injured trail runner looking for answers, it might be worth looking at more minimal shoes and working on your form a bit. A little barefoot running on soft surfaces thrown in at the end of a trail run will also help strengthen your feet and improve your form.

I was also very intrigued by the chapter which addresses human physiology and our natural traits designed to allow us to excel at long distance running over rugged trails. Mcdougall covers this theory in great detail in the book. Briefly, humans possess several adaptations that make us natural born distance runners. We are hairless and are one of the few animals that sweat, allowing us to cool our bodies effectively during long runs. We also developed long, springy tendons in our legs and feet that function like large elastics, storing energy and releasing it with each running stride, reducing the amount of energy it takes to take another step. Our bodies are also adapted to counterbalance each step with an arm swing, and our large butt muscles hold our upper bodies upright while an elastic ligament in our neck is designed to help keep our head steady. There are other adaptations that are addressed in the book. A good discussion of this theory can be found here http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_running_man_revisited/

Overall, if you enjoy running and are looking for a fun end of the summer read, you should pick up a copy of Born to Run. Our copy is getting haggard as we shuffle it around to all of our friends, runner and non-runner alike. They all seem to enjoy it.

See Chris McDougall on the Daily Show

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