Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement where Steven rants about running research.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How running-related injury rates have increased despite advancements in running footwear.
– Why runners in the1960s and the 70s didn’t experience as many running injuries.
– How switching to barefoot running or minimalist shoes can’t be accomplished in five minutes.
– Why footwear has an impact on your gait when you run.
– How running with proper form feels good.
Connect with Steven:
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@xeroshoes
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Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
In this whole barefoot versus maximal world or minimal versus maximal world, people want to see the research and I think that’s really important, unless the research is complete bullshit. So we’re going to take a look at that on this little rant on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs that are responsible for helping you stand and walk and run and play and do all of those things enjoyably and efficiently and effectively. Wait, did I say enjoyably? I know I did. It’s a trick question. Because if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep doing it, so make sure you’re doing something you enjoy. And I’m Stephen Sashen, CEO, co-founder of xeroshoes.com. Here’s the T-shirt to prove it.
We are breaking down the mythology you may have heard about what it takes to do all the things you’d like to do on your feet, and we call this The MOVEMENT Movement because we are creating a movement that involves you, more about that in a second, about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do naturally without getting in the way unnecessarily. So how do you get involved? It’s really simple. Just spread the word. You know how. Give us a review. Give us a thumbs up. Like us on Facebook. Give us a thumbs up and hit the bell icon on YouTube. Go to our website and subscribe to hear about future episodes. That’s www.jointhemovementmovement.com.
Nothing you need to do to join, that’s just the website. So anyway, let’s just dive in. I’m going to do a quick screen share and show you two things that just blow my mind. All right, let’s see. Where am I going here? Going there. Okay, so now I’m sharing this screen and there are two, these are PDFs about some studies that have been done about, well, natural movement or about barefoot versus running, et cetera. And this is my all-time favorite. So a paradigm shift is necessary to relate running injury, risk, and footwear design. Clearly it’s important that for running, we want to make sure that running shoes do not get in the way, do not harm you in some way. And there’s a line in here that just blows my mind, I’m going to make this bigger, that I think sums up everything I could possibly say, and it’s all right here.
Just let’s read this. This is mind-blowing. Despite advancements in research and subsequent improvements in running footwear design over the years, wait for it, the rates of running-related injuries have not decreased. Now, I don’t want to sound too obvious here. I don’t want to be captain obvious, but if running injury rates have not decreased, then how is it that advancements in research and improvements in design have occurred? Because if you look prior to these advancements, prior to the mid-’70s, there weren’t running injury rates like this. In fact, there’s almost no record of running injuries almost at all, despite there were a whole lot of runners who were running.
My friend Dr. Irene Davis, now the president of the American College of Sports Medicine, told me a story, so pardon me for the hearsay, that she spoke to someone who was in the Stanford Running Club way back when, in the ’60s, early ’70s. And she asked them what they did about running injuries, and his response was, “What are you talking about? We had legs of steel.” So the fact that all these advancements, running injuries have not decreased, that’s a problem. So that’s the biggie. I mean, that almost encompasses everything. But now I’m going to throw in another one when we get into the influence of barefoot and barefoot-inspired footwear. And I’m going to scroll down pretty far until we get to the methods here. We’re looking at methods, and I will make this a little bigger so you can see the key thing that I’m going to show you, which blows my mind. Am I getting bigger enough? No, it’s just going back and forth. Wait, let me try that too. Yeah, it’s not going.
All right, let’s see if I can find this in here somewhere. Procedure, is it in the procedure? No, it’s a little further up. Ah, here we go. So, participants were non-habitual barefoot runners. And I hope you can see this. I want to see if I can make it a little bit bigger. This is making me kind of crazy. I should be able to, but it’s not working. Anyway, participants were non-habitual barefoot runners, and were thus given time to accommodate to the barefoot and barefoot-inspired footwear prior to the commencement of the data collection. Wait for it. This involved five minutes of running through the testing area without concern for striking the force platform. I’m going to stop sharing. If you switched from a current running shoe that you have to a new version of the exact same shoe or just a new of the exact same shoe because you wore it out and you bought the exact same shoe, or maybe you bought two at the same time, wore out one, you kept the other, it would take you more than five minutes to acclimate to the new shoe.
And it’s the same shoe you’ve been wearing. Your running form would not change in any way as a result of just taking off that shoe, except your running form actually would change. Because when I was in the lab a little bit with Dr. Bill Sands, former head of biomechanics for the U.S. Olympic Committee, what we saw, what he showed me, is that runners, when they put on new shoes, every different shoe, I don’t mean new shoes, if they try all their different shoes, every new shoe that they tried, geez, let me try that again in actual English. He had people bring in every shoe they run in and when they switch to different shoes, their gait changed and they didn’t know it nine times out of ten. So if you’ve broken in a shoe and gotten used to it and then you switch to the exact same version of that same shoe but it’s brand new, your gait will change and you probably won’t know it.
And that’s just running the exact same way fundamentally, overstriding, heel striking, whatever you used to do, but if you switch from a regular running shoe to barefoot or a truly barefoot shoe, your gait will have to change because if you’re overstriding and heel striking, landing with your foot too far in front of your body, landing on your heel with a relatively straight leg, you can get away with that in a regular run issue with a big thick, well, here, like one of these things, big, thick, cushioned sole that elevates your heel. But if you try to run with that same gait pattern, foot out in front of you, landing on your heel, leg relatively straight, if you do that barefoot and run a truly barefoot shoe, it’s going to hurt. And that’s why running barefoot, good form feels good, bad form feels bad.
But the idea that you could switch from a habitual gait of overstriding, heel striking, legs straight, to the proper natural movement version of barefoot running in five minutes, completely absurd. Why people thought that that’s makes sense is a mystery to me. But then there’s this paper that goes on and on and on and on and on about fundamentally saying that running barefoot could be bad for you. But how do they know? Anyway, the Holy Grail study would be letting people acclimate to natural movement. And more importantly, it’s not just about being barefoot or being in barefoot shoes. It’s about form. We say this all the time, it’s about form, not footwear.
It’s just different footwear informs your form. So anyway, this is just a world’s fastest little rant about something that just blows my mind of just how bad research can be and how bad some of the conclusions that people are starting with to inspire their research can be. And there’s many, many more examples of this. Actually, I’m going to give you one more without pulling out the study. There was a study done in a lab here at the University of Colorado, a lab that, by the way, sponsored by Nike, doesn’t mean that it’s bad research, but we do know that in pharmaceutical research, for example, when the research is sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, that it tends to err in the favor of the pharmaceutical. But when it’s done independently, not so much. Again, not saying that’s what happened here, don’t know. Here’s the part that I do know.
In this period of research, that really kicked off the whole maximalist super shoe, hyper cushion shoe movement, it’s because it said that people running in these shoes, actually this is a different study, my apologies. Part of that all getting the ball rolling thing for maximal issues. This one was just trying to see if barefoot was better than cushioning or vice versa. Okay? Well, in the study, it said that they used accomplished barefoot runners. And I bought a beer for the guy who did the study one evening and I said, “Look, I know all the accomplished barefoot runners in town. I’m one of them. And neither I nor anyone that I know was in your study. So it was 12 people. And what I suspect, because you won’t tell me, is that the people that you studied are accomplished runners who do a little bit of barefoot training on the turf, on the infield of a track, when they’re done with their regular training.”
Those are not accomplished barefoot runners. If you can’t run at least a mile on cement enjoyably, you are not necessarily an accomplished barefoot runner. So that whole study that, again, was one of the first couple of studies that kicked off the whole maximalist footwear movement, I would argue flawed in many, many ways. Too small of a sample size, and this idea that the cohort, the people in the study, were accomplished barefoot runners, there was no evidence for that whatsoever. And yet, that study got a huge amount of attention.
Anyway, point being, yes, we need good research. Yes, research is important, but you need to know when you look at the research, whether again it’s based on ideas that make sense and a methodology that is testing what you want to test and a procedure that, again, makes sense. And often, you need to know more than what’s actually written in the study. Again, nowhere in the study did it list the names of the people, the one I mentioned about cushion versus barefoot. Nowhere in that study did it list the names of the people who were the accomplished barefoot runners. It just was coincidence that I happened to be in a town where I know all those relevant people. So anyway, that’s my rant for now.
I’m dying to hear what you think about this whole thing of the importance of research, the lack thereof, how to evaluate a study, or even worse, a meta-analysis, which is a study about studies. So leave that in the comments below and thanks. Just a reminder, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com for previous episodes of the podcast, of which there are many right now. Four ways you can engage with us on social media. Oh, and if you have any questions or requests, people that you think should be on the podcast, especially if you can find someone who’s willing to talk to me who thinks I have a case of cranio-rectal reorientation syndrome, that’s my head up my butt, then drop me an email, [email protected]. But most importantly, go out, have fun, and live life feet first.