The Barefoot Running Book - Jason Robillard [10]
The conclusion that shoes are the primary cause of running injuries is strongly supported by the scientific literature. I’ve already mentioned Marti’s work showing more than twice the incidence of running injuries with expensive shoes compared with cheap ones. Rao and Joseph (1992) examined 2300 Indian children between the ages of 4 and 13 and found that the incidence of flat feet was more than three times greater in those children who used footwear than in those who did not leading them to conclude that shoe-wearing in early childhood is detrimental to the development of a normal arch. In 1988, Hamill and Bates showed that as running shoes lose their cushioning through wear and tear, subjects improve foot control on testing and presumably decrease their risk of injury, i.e. shoes get better with age. Robbins and Gouw showed in 1991 that modern athletic footwear creates a perceptual illusion in subjects whereby they consistently underestimate impact. Simply adding surface irregularities on the insoles (to simulate barefoot like conditions) markedly improves subjects’ estimates of impact. Robbins and others (1994) studied the balance ability of men walking along a beam wearing shoes with soles of varying thickness and hardness. Results confirmed that the thinner and harder the soles, the better the balance. In one of their most elegant and widely publicized studies, Robbins and Waked (1997) examined the effect of advertising on landing impact. They asked subjects to step down barefoot ten times onto four pressure-measuring platforms, the first one being bare and the other three covered by identical shoe sole material made to look different by different colored cloth. The subjects were given different messages for each of the covered plates: the message for the first covered plate suggested superior impact absorption and protection (deceptive message), the second suggested poor impact absorption and high injury risk (warning message) and the third suggested unknown impact absorption and safety (neutral message). Results showed that subjects landed with the highest impact when given the deceptive and neutral messages and with the lowest impact when given the warning message or with the bare plate. The authors conclude that running injury rates are greatest in users of the most expensive shoes because advertising has deceived these users into believing that the shoes provide a superior level of safety thereby inducing an attenuation of impact moderating behavior, increasing impact and injury. The authors add that deceptive advertising of protective devices is a public health hazard and should be addressed. Humans are less cautious even when they use truthfully advertised products because of excessively positive attitudes toward new products and wrong impressions of the standards of truth in advertising.
“So,” you think, “is this guy telling me that NIKE, REEBOK and all those big corporations just put this new stuff out on the market without any proof that its safe? Can’t be!” Well, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. I can be a real pain in the ass when I try, and some years back, I was in the mood. I got on the phone and tried to talk to the directors of research at all the big athletic footwear companies. I tell you, getting to talk to one of these guys is harder than talking to the Pope. I finally got to speak with Mr. Gordon Valiant, then director of research at the NIKE Sports Research Lab in Beaverton, Oregon.
JF: “Mr. Valiant. My name is Dr. Froncioni and I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I treat a lot of runners and I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the whole issue of running injuries possibly being caused by your