Running Shoes: Why We Don't Need Them

sports shoe sales are thirteen billion dollar business in this country alone and the vast majority of those 350 million or so pair that are sold every year are what you and I might call running shoes now whether they're made by Nike Adidas New Balance Under Armour or whatever they all have in recent years been offered with ever-increasing amounts of padding cushioning and support yet today a growing number of running enthusiasts are turning to shoes with little or no padding at all and some are even running careful to explain why there's our Barnard goal Chris McDougall may look like just another guy out for an easy run but he's a lot more than that he's a major voice of a new movement a revolution he says and his message is simple take your running shoes off and throw them in the garbage I believe running shoes can be the most destructive force ever hitting your foot running shoes are dangerous yeah so if I go into a store and I see shoes that are pretty expensive and they have a lot of cushion I say to myself this is great right this feels comfortable this is bad for me totally bad for you awful for you the worst thing you possibly do get out of the store honestly yeah the star Y in there in the first place McDougal who lives and runs in rural Pennsylvania says the multi-billion dollar running shoe industry is built on a myth that running shoes help you run longer and faster and cut down on injuries my belief is that they caused the very injuries they're supposed to reduce that by encouraging you to run in a way which has unnatural to the human leg they actually caused the damage according to mcdougal the problem started in 1972 when Nike invented the modern running shoe with a comfortable cushion in the heel unfortunately you have the law of unintended consequences you put that little cushion under there and you're slamming now but look what happens to your leg this knee instead of flexing backward nice and easy it's now locked out and vulnerable secondly you create the straight line for all that impact to run up your leg and slam into every single joint and the result is one knee problems ankle problems your problems foot problems hip problems back problems headaches and bad backs and when Chris McDougall speaks runners listen barefoot first you know that's where you getting the input he wrote a book about his theories called Born to Run which became a big national bestseller he used to run in the same kind of fancy shoes most runners wear these days but he had to quit he says because they were causing him more harm than good I gave up running because I was consciously getting hurt and then I discovered that there are people they can run hundreds of miles at a time and never get hurt and that's where I want to find out what are these guys doing that we're not doing and the difference is what's on their feet what's on their feet almost nothing he's talking about a tribe of Indians that Tara who marries who live in a remote desolate part of Mexico so mcdougal set out to find them and what he discovered were a people lost in time they basically been there untouched for thousands of years and you know it's fastly but the tamada is that not only do they run deep in the old age 70 80 years old they're still running 50 miles at a time but they're running injury-free with nothing on their feet and was so cool about that no burning is that you look at them and they are us they are doing what humanity has done for millions of years were the ones that were off the rails not them what did you conclude from all of this that the cause of the harm is the shoes that the less shoe the better nice theory but that's all it was except Daniel Lieberman a professor at Harvard who teaches human evolutionary biology was making his own trip back in time this one to the plains of Kenya to try to figure out why people from this poor undeveloped place dominates so many of the world's long-distance races and what he found there was strikingly similar to what MacDougall had found in Mexico we went to a part of Africa where where people have never worn shoes in their lives these kids because there there's you know it's very rural part of that and they run oh my god they run they're the best runners in the world no shoes no shoes at all they don't have shoes that part was no mystery lots of people knew that but what Lieberman learned from videotaping the bear foot runners of Kenya was startling first he discovered that runner after runner landed on the front of their feet unlike most runners who wear high-tech running shoes and land like this squarely on the heel where the shoe is thickly cushioned then he ran a few tests and found something counterintuitive it turns out that runners who hit the ground with their heel on all that cushioning are shocking their body far more than those Kenyans who are hitting the ground the natural way on the front of the foot with no artificial padding at all when you heel strike a large percentage your body comes to a dead stop all at once right at the weight of your foot plus your lower leg stop all of a sudden like that so you hit the ground with a certain amount of force and the ground hits you with the same amount of force so what barefoot people do is they land on the ball of the foot just in front of the arch right here and they land right there and then the heel comes down that's the natural that's that's a completely natural normal barefoot way to run and the reason it's comfortable is that when you land like that much less of your body comes to a dead stop dr. Lieberman says that for two million years this is the way most people ran but everything changed that day in 1972 when the modern running shoe was born a major blow Chris McDougall says to the human foot and to human evolution what kind of expert are you I mean you're not a scientist you're not a doctor I believe that my legs are better we're tested by two million years of evolution than they are by twenty years of mad sides as playing around but the new shoes were comfortable and looked great and were marketed with the best ads money could buy so it didn't take long before a full-blown arms race for the feet was underway there was more padding more technology more stuff for more money we have $250 sneaker with a computer chip a computer chip right embedded in the shoe what do you make of that that's junk it's overpriced useless junk it must do something yeah it makes a lot of money you know Bernie there's a shoe out now that is designed to adjust to women's hormonal cycles so that during their menstrual cycle oh you're making this up the arch support rises and lowers depending on the woman's menstrual cycle because women have unique needs and therefore they need a unique shoe to accommodate their needs I know I wish I was making this stuff up we checked he's not making it up this is the shoe that supposedly helps women run during their menstrual cycle that's all I know and all I want to know but it does raise a question one I asked Michael Pahlavi toe who heads the running shoe department at adidas one of the companies that put a computer chip in their shoe when did it get so complicated I mean I mean our ancestors were running across the plains for not 20 miles at 30 they were running a hundred I know I know but you could whistle - but I mean iPods are here it's just there's been advancements that depends on what you mean by advancements because for all that cushioning and scientific technology there is no evidence not a single study suggesting that these shoes actually improve performance or cut down on injuries but at Nike headquarters in Beaverton Oregon they say if running shoes don't do any good how did so many world class runners break so many records wearing their shoes Geoff Posada and Toby Hatfield a part of Nikes design and research team so we like themselves to being chefs you know kind of shine a little bit of this trial whether that but we only try it because we're hearing and listening to the athlete in and then we give it back to them and said is this does this taste good but they never expected to hear what they heard a few years ago from a coach of one of America's top college track teams a team sponsored by Nike he happened to just tell us I don't know scientifically but I just know that when I take your shoes off and we do a bit more barefoot training that I think their feet are stronger their feet are stronger I can push them harder if I can push them harder their performance is that much better I mean you're given this guy free shoes free expensive shoes and he says to you you know we're running barefoot around here we took that as something to learn from said okay let's let's let's listen and and how can how can we improve it and just like that after years of building thick cushion high-tech shoes Nike did a 180 and went the other way they created a simpler flexible shoe they call Nike free which is nothing like those shoes they've been selling us for forty years their slogan run barefoot there are no current studies that say if you wear our running shoe you won't get as many injuries as if you don't is that a fair statement except for Nike Free there's actually been a couple of studies is not done by us by external universities where they have shown a decrease in running related injuries in people that trained and ran in Nike Free well that's interesting because Nike Free most closely approximates barefoot running of all the shoes that you have all our shoes there so now there's a new movement of foot in the running shoe business adidas has also come up with a near barefoot shoe which they call the adizero and a small company in New England called Vibram has come up with the Fivefinger shoe which basically is a glove for the foot three years ago business for this shoe totaled a measly four hundred thousand dollars a year today Vibram says it's 40 million a year but for the purest running barefoot is not just about running it's practically a religion a spiritual journey of sorts back to nature professor Lieberman hits the pavement every day at Harvard shoeless Jerry already let's go and this footnote Chris McDougall is running around giving clinics to runners who want to join the revolution let your foot tell you what it wants to do don't touch if you don't want to go barefoot because of the hazards of the modern world concrete and broken glass to name a couple mcdougal says there's still a pretty good rule of thumb and foot to follow when it comes to running less is more thankfully it's a very hopeful message that you're born to run that you're designed to run that running is not this dangerous thing that we're always told it is runnings not going to hurt you that when you get rid of all the shoes and all the technology and actually rely on your legs the way they have evolved to be used you can run injury free the rest of your life now I'm living proof Bernie I can I I found this stuff fascinating but I can just see all the bad end results people going out and trying to run differently and now the podiatrists are going to complain yeah well if if you've been running the traditional way and you want to start running the natural way on the front of your feet this is a very important piece of advice go slow don't run a lot don't run hard and long because you will tear up your calf muscles on the podiatrist point I want to make clear about this whole thing it's a debate some people think running barefoot or with minimal issues is good for you some podiatrists say very few of us are biomechanically perfect you need the cushioning so it's a debate going and even the whole idea of oh if you run barefoot you can run hundreds of miles I mean doctors still say that running a marathon is not good for you I mean the first guy who did it fit it buddies he yeah well what weather if you're an Indian in Mexico maybe 100 miles but but as it pertains to this look some people need the cushioning and all that because they feel better they can go longer they think they can go faster they think there's no hard evidence to suggest any of that but other people and this is where the movement is is the direction the movement is going less is more minimalist if not barefoot because of the modern hazards of our world concrete glass stuff like then at least a lesser shoe and the shoe companies are listening because they're going in that direction too big word it is a debate yeah it is a debate Bernie thanks

Channel: Run Forefoot

Views: 426,870

Rating: 4.6607823 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher McDougall (Author), Daniel Lieberman, forefoot running, heel strike running, is heel strike running bad, does heel strike running cause injury, is forefoot running better than heel striking, heel striking, rearfoot running, forefoot running beneifts, heel strike running bad, heel strike runners, running with a heel strike, running heel strike injuries, running heel strike vs forefoot, forefoot strike vs heel strike, forefoot strike running technique, shod running

Id: F90D418SFZI

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 08 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/PM_Trophies]

just dont run heel to toe. still nice to have shoes on, just run properly.

[u/SageKnows]

As a runner with 12 years and counting now [tho I bike more], it is the TECHNIQUE and not what you WEAR. I was a sprinter so we had special shoes, but for running training, we used regular running shoes. There is a special way to run, it a way it must be graceful and elegant, it is hard to describe with words for me, but essentially you do not run flat, you put the pressure first on your toe and slowly roll it out to the 3/4 of the foot. So your heal usually never touches the ground per se. I am probably explaining it wrong but I would run for hours and what would get tired is my overall stamina and not my legs. If you use your body properly the muscles are the last to "give up". For me it was the stamina at least.

[u/[deleted]]

NYT says otherwise

[u/secaedelcielo]

This feels like a Nike commercial.

[u/suppow]

So, make shoes with cushion on the front of the foot.

[u/letsgocrazy]

Everyone is acting as if those Vibram finger shoes have't been a thing for years.

[u/sonofdick]

I don't feel like anyone commenting actually watched the video. and if they did they are very closed-minded about it.

Make up your own mind, people.