Scientists kick off debate over barefoot running
"Barefoot professor" says shoes are unnatural
"devices":
Big sports shoe brands keen to get in on natural
trend:
By Kate Kelland
LONDON, (Reuters)Despite the cold and many other potential hazards,
naked from the ankle down is the way Anna Toombs likes it, and she gets
plenty of catcalls in the street as a result.
The 35-year-old co-founder of the personal training company Barefoot
Running UK says she's lost count of the times people yell "where are
your shoes?" as she and partner David Robinson negotiate London's parks
and pavements to indulge their passion and train their clients.
"People give you a lot of weird looks," says Robinson.
They are also getting a lot of inquiries.
A surge of interest in "natural", or barefoot, training has seen
runners around the world kick off their arch-supporting,
motion-controlling, heel-cushioning shoes and try to feel the ground
beneath their feet.
Top scientists - from sports physicians to podiatrists to
evolutionary biologists - are jumping in too.
At a recent sports science conference in London, hundreds of
participants, many of them shod but a few daringly barefooted, flocked
to a two-hour long discussion about the merits or otherwise of running
without shoes.
"It's a really polarised debate - there are what you might call the
barefoot evangelicals on one side and the aggressive anti-barefoots on
the other," says Ross Tucker, an expert in exercise physiology at South
Africa's University of Cape Town and a middle- and long-distance running
coach.
Born to run
The current barefoot trend has its roots in the book "Born to Run",
by Christopher McDougall. In it, he tells of time spent with Mexico's
Tarahumara tribe who can run huge distances barefoot, often very fast,
apparently without suffering the injuries that plague many keen runners
in the developed world.
The debate centres on whether running in shoes with cushioned heels
and supportive structures changes the way people move so dramatically
that it's more likely to cause injuries.
Proponents of barefoot running say the natural way is more likely to
prompt a runner to land on the padded and springy part of the foot,
towards the front, rather than strike the ground with the heel as many
shod runners do.
In a study published in the scientific journal Nature last year,
Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biology professor at Harvard
University, sought to find out how our ancestors, who ran and hunted for
millions of years in bare feet or simple moccasins, coped with the
impact of the foot hitting the ground.
Lieberman and colleagues from Britain and Kenya studied runners who
had always run barefoot, those who had always worn shoes and runners who
had abandoned shoes.
They found that barefoot endurance runners often land on the
fore-foot before bringing down the heel, while shod runners mostly
rear-foot strike, prompted by the raised and cushioned heels of modern
running shoes.
Impact
In a series of analyses, they found that even on hard surfaces,
barefoot runners who fore-foot strike generate smaller "collision
forces" - less impact - than rear-foot strikers in shoes. Barefoot
runners also had a springier step and used their calf and foot muscles
more efficiently.
Lieberman, who spoke at the conference after an early-morning
barefoot run along the banks of London's Thames, is keen to stress that
the scientific evidence on whether barefoot running is better in terms
of injuries is still very unclear.
"A lot of people are arguing on the basis of passion, anecdote,
emotion or financial gain - but what's quite true is there are no good
data saying whether it's better for you or worse for you," he said.
Having said that, he has already voted with his feet.
As has fellow biology professor Daniel Howell, who teaches human
anatomy and physiology at Liberty University in the United States.
Howell, dubbed the "Barefoot Professor" by his students after he
began living his life 95 percent shoe-free, admits he's an extremist.
He's spent almost all of the past six years in bare feet, he's run
thousands of miles in all weathers and across many terrains without
footwear, and he refers to shoes rather suspiciously as "devices".
"Barefoot is the natural condition. It's the most natural way to be,"
he told the conference.
"Walking and running are extremely complicated from a biomechanical
perspective ... and if you add a device to your foot, it alters it."
"When you put on a device, it changes the way you stand, the way you
walk and the way you run. Those changes are unnatural, and generally
negative."
Shoes or devices?
While it's true that almost all modern athletes use running shoes in
international sporting competitions, a few barefooters have been
trailblazers for the cause.
Back in 1960 Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila, one of the world's greatest
Olympic marathon runners, won the first of his consecutive gold medals
without shoes, covering the 26.2 miles in 2 hours, 15 minutes and 17
seconds.
And in 1984, South African barefoot runner Zola Budd set a track
world record when she ran 5,000 meters in 15 minutes and 1.83 seconds.
Simon Bartold, a sports podiatrist and international research
consultant for the sports brand Asics, says most athletes, amateur or
otherwise, should stick to wearing shoes.
"I'd come down pretty heavily in favour of footwear," he said. "It
does offer some real protection and some real performance advantages
over barefoot."
Still, Asics and other big running shoe brands like Nike , New
Balance and Saucony see no reason to be excluded from this new and
potentially lucrative form of the sport just because it's about running
in bare feet.
A nifty rebranding of the trend to "natural" or "minimalist" running
has opened up a potential new market in "barefoot running shoes" that
promise to be the closest thing to wearing nothing at all.
For Howell, even minimalist shoes are a step too far. "For most
people, under most circumstances, most of the time, barefoot is the
healthiest and most natural way to be," he said.
Toombs, whose clients often come to her with injuries or illnesses
that are restricting their movement, is concerned that scientific rows
about the biomechanics of foot strikes, and efforts by sports brands to
cash in, are robbing barefoot running of its best bits.
Formerly an enthusiastic shod runner, she says training without shoes
is partly about getting back to nature, but it's also about learning a
better way to run, using the body's bounce and balance to improve form
and reduce impact.
"With barefoot running ... each time my foot strikes the ground, it
lands slightly differently," she told Reuters. "In other words it's
adjusting to what's underneath it."
"I'm constantly scanning the terrain, dodging rougher areas and
taking a much more meandering line, which works different sets of
muscles. It's almost like dancing. But the moment I put shoes on, most
of that sensitivity is gone." |