Why Expensive Running Shoes Could Be Worse Than Useless

I've posted on this topic before, but it's worth repeating: runners, of whom 90 percent suffer injuries every year, would be better off leaving their expensive running shoes at home, and running barefoot.

Science and sceptical runners are catching up with something the Tarahumara Indians have known for ever: your naked feet are fine on their own. According to a growing body of clinical research, those expensive running shoes you've been relying on may be worse than useless: they could be causing the very injuries they're supposed to prevent.

Perhaps the best research in the field has been going on for hundreds of years in a maze of canyons in northern Mexico. There, the reclusive Tarahumara tribe routinely engage in races of 150 miles or more, the equivalent of running the London Marathon six times in the same day. Despite this extreme mileage, as I learnt during several treks into the canyons, the Tarahumara are somehow immune to the injuries that plague the rest of the running world. Read more

Are Expensive Running Shoes a Waste of Money?

The $20 billion running shoe industry wants us to believe that the latest technologies will cushion every stride. Yet, Christopher McDougall claims that injury rates for runners are actually on the rise, that everything we've been told about running shoes is wrong, and that it might even be better to go barefoot...

At Stanford University, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred.

Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing.

'Didn't we send you enough shoes?' they asked head coach Vin Lananna. They had, he was just refusing to use them.

'I can't prove this,' the well-respected coach told them.

'But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.' Read more