Running shoes and running injuries: mythbusting and a proposal for two new paradigms: 'preferred movement path' and 'comfort filter'
BM Nigg, J Baltich, S Hoerzer, H Enders Br J Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-095054
But does injury rate in isolation give any evidence for or against anyway? Injury is always going to be multifactorial and it also assumes everyone is already running in shoes that allow their preferred movement path.
Not sure about anyone else but a number of the runners I see have basic training errors and if somebody over trains they'll get injured whether in their preferred path or not.
If you can shoot me over a copy of the paper also, I would greatly appreciate it.
I don't think that Irene agrees with much of what Benno Nigg says these days.
Her comments don't surprise me.
Even with all the scientific evidence otherwise, Irene and Dan Lieberman are still trying to "prove" that barefoot running is best....good luck with that...:bang::cool:
I've never been a fan of the preferred movement pathway theory.
One of the first things I saw when I was a student was an orthotic change late stance phase pronation to "a more normal" gait.
I do like the comfort filter idea.
It seems like it would be very uncomfortable to pronate into the arch of a rigid plastic device.
At some level, the style of gait is chosen.
My opinion is that the "preferred movement pathway" is that of the centre of mass (CoM) not of the individual segments per se, with metabolic efficiency being key. In other words, the lower limb kinematics observed are all about maintaining a preferred movement pathway of the CoM, to minimise metabolic cost; the movement paths of the segments themselves are merely a means to an end to maitain the pathway of the CoM.
"Why animals have a preferred leg stiffness.
Shen Z, Seipel J.
J Theor Biol. 2014 Sep 16. pii: S0022-5193(14)00547-5.
Further, when animals׳ effective leg stiffness is measured and normalized for size and weight, the resulting relative leg stiffness that most animals prefer lies in a narrow range between 7 and 27. Understanding why this nearly universal preference exists could shed light on how whole animal behaviors are organized. Here we show that the biologically preferred values of relative leg stiffness coincide with a theoretical minimal energetic cost of locomotion. This result strongly implies that animals select and regulate leg stiffness in order to reduce the energy required to move, thus providing animals an energetic advantage."