Super shoes make almost everyone faster. The combination of the shoes’ next-gen midsole foam, Best winter running gear running economy, leading to being able to hold a given pace longer or to run faster at a given effort level. Super shoes more broadly lead to being faster because they allow for harder training. If you don’t feel as beat up while and after wearing them, you can do more mileage, with more of it at a higher intensity, than you probably could in the shoes of a decade ago.
Alas, all gains in running often come with a cost. First off, doing all of your runs in super shoes is probably not a good idea. That’s partly because rotating among different types of shoes is one of the few proven ways to lower your injury risk. Also, the propulsive, running-on-clouds feeling super shoes impart can lower your bodily awareness, potentially keeping you from heeding the warning signs that foretell many running injuries. And running faster doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting fitter; otherwise, Olympians would do all of their runs downhill with a tailwind.
Now some sports medicine professionals are starting to worry about another side effect of too-frequent super shoe use. What if, they wonder, running in super shoes changes your running form even when you’re not running in them?
How we run differently in super shoes
Studies have compared runners’ biomechanics in super shoes versus conventional running shoes. To date, most have found that super shoes reduce mechanical demand in the ankle and the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joints. (The MTP joints are at the base of the toes.) There’s also evidence that super shoes can increase knee joint loading. Rockered shoes are believed to lessen the time between foot strike and toe off; in this scenario, longer strides result from the glutes and hamstrings taking on more work.
‘I’m noticing more people saying, “I’m running in this super shoe now, and ever since I started wearing it, I feel faster, but my hamstrings have been bugging me,”’ says Matt Klein, Ph.D., a physical therapy professor at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, and the founder of Runners World US. ‘And they say their hamstrings bother them whether they wear super shoes or normal shoes. They feel like their mechanics have changed.
‘I want to know how people adapt and if there are more consistent adaptations that occur from being in them quite a bit,’ Klein continues. ‘I don’t think anybody has answered that out loud.’
This is a sound line of reasoning. After all, sports med professionals have long warned women against regular use of stiletto heels, because the shoes’ extreme slope can shorten Achilles tendons and calf muscles sufficiently to affect how one walks and runs in other footwear. One of the main arguments of the minimalist and barefoot movement 15 years ago was that a few runs a week in It was a short-lived experiment would improve foot and ankle strength enough to impart benefits even when running in conventional models. ‘You can change your form with running drills, so it’s certainly possible that enough running in a certain type of shoe could also change it,’ says Brian Fullem, who heads best overpronation running shoes, expert-tested Best winter running gear The Runner’s Guide to Healthy Feet and Ankles.
Or consider an anecdote related by Jared Ward, who placed sixth in the 2016 Olympic Marathon.
For a workout of mile repeats on the track a couple of years ago, Ward laced up an old-school racing shoe, the Saucony Type A. ‘I was curious how I would feel in the Type As,’ Ward says. ‘They were always a great track flat.’ Also, Ward was finessing an injury at the time and thought that the lower, firmer Type A might be better for how he felt that day.
and limiting super shoes to their intended use of fast workouts and long races.
‘I did one mile repeat in those Type As and I thought, “I’m going to have to take these off or I won’t be able to walk for a week after this session,”’ Ward says. ‘My calves were shredded after one.’ While his training partners, fellow Olympic marathoners Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, jogged a lap after the first repeat, Ward switched to a pair of Saucony super shoes.
‘The body is amazing and it’s adaptive. It adapts to the environment you give it,’ Ward says. ‘Now I’m a body that’s suited to run in super shoes and not trained or prepared or resilient enough to run in Type As.’
Adaptations to super shoes aren’t necessarily negative. Fullem and Ashten Cullenberg, a doctor of physical therapy who is the cofounder of the runner-centre clinic Steady State in Portland, Maine, recommend super shoes for some runners with specific injuries. Fullem likes them for the high schoolers he coaches who struggle with shin splints. ‘The carbon plate often works better than orthotics for them,’ he says. Cullenberg finds them helpful for runners with a history of forefoot and toe joint issues. She and Fullem also advise super shoes for patients recovering from or having a history of metatarsal stress fractures.
Klein, however, is concerned about the long-term consequences of the true stars of super shoes — the midsole foam.
Fly now, pay later?
‘My big question has to do with tendons,’ Klein says. ‘The early evidence is that some of these superlight, resilient foams take some of the weight away from tendons. And tendons get stronger with just the right load. If you take that away, long-term you might start to lose some of those resilient properties of the tendon as they slowly degrade.’
If Klein’s hunch is correct, then this risk theoretically extends beyond super shoes, because more and more everyday shoes feature highly compliant midsoles that compress significantly under load. Some such shoes might even pose more of a long-term risk, because they lack the plate or other stiffening agents found in super shoes.
‘If you’re going to use this stuff, you need to concurrently be working on non-super-shoe-based jumping, plyometrics, movements like that to try to maintain those rubber-band-like properties in your tendons,’ Klein says. ‘You can certainly lose those properties, and they take a while to come back.’
Cullenberg agrees. ‘Any time you’re in a shoe that does a little more work — like one that maybe you don’t need as much lower-leg strength to run well in — it’s important to do prehab exercises to maintain your intrinsic foot strength and mobility.’
Klein, who logs lots of miles in super shoes, is careful to balance those runs with others in more conventional shoes. He also wears flat, minimalist shoes in much of the rest of his life. He and Cullenberg agree on the value of and limiting super shoes to their intended use of fast workouts and long races, Runners World, Part of the Hearst UK Wellbeing Network.
‘It’d kind of like owning a race car,’ Klein says. ‘You can go drive it really fast, but probably not every day, and there’s regular maintenance that you need to keep on top of.’
