Don't Take Running Advice from Shoe Shops
There is a better way to stay comfortable, fast and injury free.
Shoe shops drive me crazy, and apologies in advance because after you read this post they will drive you crazy too. I view them as places where runners go to buy an injury in a box.
Shoe shops are like any other shop out there, they want to sell you something, probably something you don’t need. They put a bunch of fancy sounding services in front of their sales pitch like; gait analysis, foot profiling, shoe fit and pronation analysis. Why? Bullshit baffles brains as the saying goes.
Most of these services are a sudo science at best and especially in the case of the infamous “pronation” analysis, they just are not backed up by any scientific evidence whatsoever. This article from a physiotherapist gives a great deep dive on why most of this stuff is total nonsense. The TL;DR of the linked article is; you can’t take shortcuts like buying a pair of shoes to fix your running imbalances, you have to put the work in to stay injury free and strong.
Why are they allowed to sell these shoes that often cause more issues than they solve? Well, the same reason TikTok can build an app designed to keep you addicted to your phone without any real ramifications, a total lack of regulation. Now, I’m not some regulation evangelist by any stretch, in fact I like that we don’t get told what to do in every aspect of our lives. However, with great freedom comes great amounts of garbage information to sift through!
It’s kinda the same problem the sports nutrition industry has, it wants to sell you the latest silver bullet that will allow you to run a marathon as quick as Sir Mo Farah or 100M as fast as Usain Bolt. They don’t want to give you the honest truth: You need to spend months and sometimes years working on your weaknesses and your form to run well and pain free. Doesn’t really sound as good as “buy the latest Nike and you’re plantar problems are fixed!”, does it?
Nothing that requires personal responsibility, work and dedication is easy to sell. The silver bullet product in a fancy new colour way though? That’s an easy sell. Again, just like sports nutrition, most of these running shoes are designed to give 1% improvements to elite athletes, they are not built with you, the average runner in mind.
Invest in yourself, rather than shoes
The hard truth of being told by a running shoe shop that you need a “support” shoe is that you probably have imbalances in your posterior chain (the back half of your lower body muscles) or weakness in your feet & hip flexors combined with overly strong quads. This is a classic problem for people who enjoy lifting weight and for keen cyclists who also run, triathletes in particular.
You might be getting the picture by now that a pair of shoes isn’t going to fix this problem, it’s like wrapping the problem in a bandage, you’re not actually fixing the root cause. There are no shortcuts, you need to put the work in.
Pronation is exactly the same thing, running shops will cite very old and since superseded studies that claimed foot pronation was “cause for injury”, however, in no small part thanks to research coming out of Liverpool and Loughborough universities in recent years, this has been totally debunked.
In fact, Liverpool University published research that suggests more “neutral” and “minimalist” shoe choices, provided they are adopted slowly and with progression will make you more injury resistant. Not to mention the research showed that minimalist shoes in particular created increased balance, foot strength and reduction in incidents of falling by up to 60% in some cases compared with people who wore the latest high tech footwear.
So, with the latest research coming out of leading universities in this space telling us we need to avoid heavily cushioned shoes, support shoes and footwear that doesn't conform to the natural shape of our feet, what should we be doing instead? Well, you need to get familiar with your weaknesses and imbalances.
We all need to get better at knowing our own bodies and their limiting factors, Ben Patrick - AKA KneesOverToesGuy - is pioneering strength and conditioning programs that rebuild our bodies from the ground up and promote a full range of motion. He gives away most of his insights free on Youtube, Medium and Instagram. Using resources like this is a great start in getting to understand if our bodies are able to hit minimum standards for the athletic pursuits we are chasing.
Without better understanding ourselves we’re wandering around in the dark. We don’t have to accept these false claims designed to sell products to us, we can arm ourselves with science and understanding of our own physiology to better improve our running, stay injury free and not need to shell out £300 for running shoes with the latest innovations in injury generating arch support.
Invest in your mobility, strength and tackle those imbalances! Not only will it keep you injury free and happily running PB’s, but you’ll save yourself a tonne of money too!
I feel lost, where do I start?
Great question! I’ve thrown a lot of info at you and quite frankly, most of what I’m saying is frustratingly in the minority of what’s out there on the internet, not to mention the last thing you will ever be told by a shoe shop when you buy your first pair of running shoes.
The first step is to reframe how you think about your body and running in general. We are born to run and made to move, despite our technological innovations and the incredible modern world we live in, we are still quite a primitive species who hasn’t evolved a great deal in the last 2000 years. Humans of that period would be very recognisable to us, and they probably didn’t need arch support.
So our hardware hasn’t changed much over the last 2000 years, however, our lifestyles in the last 100 years have changed dramatically. We are no longer moving our body for the majority of the day, we are over consuming food, we wreck our bodies by sitting at desks all day.
I encourage you to reframe your thinking around all of this, maybe that knee problem isn’t down to moving too much like we are often told, i't’s probably from moving in the wrong way or even too little. As mad as that may sound.
I encourage you to go back to basics, don’t set your first goal to be a marathon as cool as that may sound. Definitely run marathons, it’s what we are built for! But set your first goal to run pain free and injury free, if you can do this, in whatever form that takes you will be starting down that road to lifelong running with the greatest foundation possible.
Spend time building a full range of motion, no weight, just make sure you can do everything pain free and use all your joints to their full range. Take the insights that have been built over decades by people like Ben Patrick, rebuild and bullet proof that fantastic piece of equipment we call our bodies. After all, we only get one, is it not worth putting effort in to keeping it strong and healthy?
Once you know you are functionally fit and strong, then get running, run well, run pain free and run in neutral shoes, we don’t need heel to toe drop, we don’t need so much cushioning that it resembles a mattress under our feet. Nothing fancy, just the basics. If you want to buy a pair of the latest running shoes for race day, go ahead, they will likely give you performance benefits, but don’t make them your regular shoe if you value long term sporting health.
Bringing it all together
I know a lot of this goes against our inclination for instant gratification that our modern world promotes, but much like a beautiful tasty loaf of sourdough bread, good things take time. And anything worth doing is worth doing well.
You only have one body, invest in it, treat it like you would your favourite bicycle or car. Keep it well serviced, challenge it but do so to make it better rather than to push it to its absolute limit and breaking point. Change your oil so to speak!
Once you see those first signs of pain free running, a full range of motion, the removal of chronic pain and all those niggles that have plagued your athletic career to date, you will wonder what took you so long!
Don’t invest in running shoe companies marketing campaigns, invest in that hardware that you live in, make it stronger, keep it mobile and it will pay you back in more than just great running performances. You will experience a better life all around.
A thought I want to leave you with
Modern life is amazing, I love technology, hell without tech I wouldn’t be able to give you this info and communicate with you so easily! I also work in the tech industry as part of my primary job, it’s great.
However, everything we have in modernity is a privilege and privileges need to be earned and paid for. I don’t mean money as you might have guessed, modernity has a much higher price than the £ cost. It’s our health.
We are made to move and we haven’t changed that much in the last 2000 years, we all need to recognise that movement in our daily lives and challenging our bodies is a non-negotiable. Don’t squander that amazing body by allowing it to be sedentary, don’t take the easy route that the running shoe shops will sell you.
Do the work, earn that modern lifestyle by making sure you look after that amazing body of yours. Keep it strong, keep it active and reap the rewards of an active life. Earn the privilege of running a marathon, earn that finish line.
Make movement a lifestyle not an activity, feed your body everyday with that movement.
We are made to move, don’t ignore that, embrace it!