Tinea Pedis wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 6:31 am
Everything you have said in this - and subsequent - posts I agree with...except the parts highlighted. Speaking as a podiatrist:
- heel strike or midfoot strike, go with whatever comes natural. There is no efficiency or injury prevention gain to be had by prescribing midfoot. It's like cadence, we all differ and self selected is best. Avoid injury by all the other means you noted. Not by altering from heel to midfoot strike.
- motion control shoes are not a marketing gimmick. Many people need them. However many who wear them do not. Get a good, in-person fit around shoes. Much can be done remote nowadays but something like this is still done best in person. I've gotten plenty of people out of shoes with excession pronation control. But still more than one or two into them who thought they were 'marketing'.
Thanks for your views - my thinking has been, if you are using a heel strike or toe strike, I think you are very close to injury and these are symptomatic of a wider problem with your muscle balance and biomechanics that need to be remedied. In other words, I believe a midfoot strike is the natural result of a well balanced body (and if you're not well balance and are unintentionally heel striking, this is no good). Heel striking (symptomatic of lower cadence) results in much more "impact" or "force" having to be absorbed by your heel, ankles, knees, hips and spine, as opposed to mid foot striking. And it is almost impossible to heel strike if you have a 80-90rpm cadence.
I also believe human beings all have a natural evolved cadence that is similar across all humans (roughly 80-90rpm), much like dogs, cats or horses all share similar cadences within species. It is lifestyle factors and imbalances that cause us to deviate from our natural tendencies, and thus raise our risk of injury.
And the motion control shoe ties into the heel strike. If you are midfoot striking at 80-90rpm as is our natural state, a motion control shoe can actually hurt you due to heel drop or "over" control of your natural foot strike given that most motion control shoes have bulky heels which assumes a heel strike (I understand there is debate among podiatrist on this issue).
(I'm a pronator and I ran on racing flats or at most, a minimalist neutral shoe like the Adidas Adizero, doing 60-80 miles per week, only ever had 1 injury during an intense buildup to nationals when I was doing 4 interval sessions a week...so boggles my mind when I see people getting injured off of 10-20 miles a week!)
My views only.