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Comment by amsully | Hacker News Reader

I see many recommendations for 'Born To Run'. I want to warn that the Tarahumara rarely (if ever) run on pavement. If you switch to a minimal shoe (or want to reduce injury risk) you should be primarily running on dirt or grass.

Interesting to see this on Hacker News.

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I'd love to read citations for this; this is a topic of interest to me. I ran barefoot for several years (on pavement and grass; stopped because occasional thorn or glass became too obnoxious) and read various peer-reviewed running injury studies, and never found anything correlating with higher injury rates other than history of past injuries and doing "too much, too soon".

Well, the caption of the first image in the article is:

For the Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon, Ramírez and her brother told KFOR-TV they wore "sneakers for this race because they knew the pavement would be hard on their feet and knees."

So, there's a marathon winning runner corroborating, which is something.

Lower extremity alignment and risk of overuse injuries in runners, Wen 1997 found a significantly decreased risk of injury with less mileage on pavement. There's no ability to see the temporal relationship here, though-- people with higher reported injuries reported running more on pavement, but causation could even be in the opposite direction.

Predicting lower-extremity injuries among habitual runners, Macera 1989 found an increased risk of severe injury running on concrete... for female runners only.

There's a few more studies "for" and a few studies "against", so I'd say the evidence is decidedly mixed. But there's at least some cause to believe that hard surfaces could be worse.

As far as minor complaints, though, who knows. I strongly believe that I feel worse after running (with athletic shoes) on concrete than softer surfaces like dirt path, etc.

Another thing which could be related: there's strong evidence that terrain can be too flat/uniform and resultant repetitive stress effects screw people up. A degenerate case of this is treadmill running.

Aren’t those studies about running with shoes. And the discussion was about running barefoot on pavement.

You're not going to find enough high quality studies about running barefoot on pavement. This is the data we have.

One of the arguments often repeated for barefoot running is that modern shoes make it possible to run with bad techique, which increases injuries, in particular on hard ground. Running barefot with bad technique is too obviously uncomfortable from the start. This means that using studies about shoed running as an argument that barefoot running on pavement is bad for you is rather useless.

My first 24hr race was on an asphalt track. It was my first so it was harder because of that, but it also strained my legs a lot more then my 2nd 24hr race which was on a dirt&grass track.

Nah, I've been running in Five-fingers for years on pavement. As long as you take your time to ease into it so your body has time to adapt, you'll be fine.

Seconded. I've covered nearly 4,000 miles largely on tarmac/pavements in the last 2 years in Vibrams alone. I suffered with numerous running injuries in trainers before I switched. I've not had any running type injuries since I made the switch. They may not be for everyone, but they've certainly worked for me. Additionally I'm only on my 2nd pair in that time, although they are now slightly overdue for replacement.

It reduced my knee and hip pain dramatically switching to Vibrams.

This. Take your time. Baby steps. My wife and I use Vibrams as camp shoes for backpacking and I regularly wear them to the gym (treadmill) or around town. They've also helped me train to walk barefoot which I'll regularly do on lunch walks on the sidewalk. I've never had an injury in nearly a decade of using finger shoes casually.

Transitioning to barefoot style footwear has changed my life. My feet are stronger. My posture is better. I’ve been slowly retraining my body from a life of sitting and cycling, which has totally thrown my entire body out of whack.

Gotta start with your feet. They need to be able to be feet, not constrained to a tight little shoe.

I can squat heavy weight barefoot now!

Highly recommend the book, it’s a great read. (I don’t enjoy reading, so this is saying a lot)

Barefoot squatting is safe and easy compared to barefoot running. Running imposes stresses of 3x body weight, which is a lot more than most people can squat. As a person who got a runner's fracture using barefoot-style footwear, I still use them for weightlifting because the added control is important there and the forces are actually less.

People with running shoes tend to heel-strike increasing the amount of force dissipated into your joints. People who run barefoot tend to forefoot-strike, distributing a lot more of the impact into the calf muscle instead. The calf is also naturally springier than the cartilage, which makes it easier to run also -- and calf muscle grows back, cartilage much less so.

My runner's fracture is in the forefoot, just where I was supposed to land. Take my word for it, it's not a complete protection. I agree that you don't want a whole lot of foam between you and the ground under any circumstances, but you can run with good form in many kinds of shoes.

Runner's fractures in the fore-foot were something that came up when I was researching running with toe-shoes. You're definitely right that it's a risk. I've heard of it mostly happening when people don't ramp up slowly, as bones, like muscles, become stronger when you use them [1].

Switching to Vibrams and then running further and harder than usual may well cause stress fractures, though I think that has to do with the changeover from cushioned shoes, not intrinsic to the shoe or running style -- it's common for many folks in Latin America and Africa to run barefoot by default without higher incidence of fractures.

[1] http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bonehealth/conditioni...

Chuck Tees are the official squat shoe. Anything else is blasphemous.

https://www.roguecanada.ca/adidas-powerlift-4-mens-core-blac...

While you wanna dead in low heel, hard sole shoes, I find that an elevated heel helps with depth, and that's not blasphemy, that's personal preference.

I have a pair of Nike Romaleo’s that are collecting dust. Can’t imagine ever wearing them again. I miss the feeling of the hard sole doing cleans but the toe box is just so tight.

I would definitely not do deadlifts with an elevated heel. If you struggle with depth, I would address that muscle tightness issue.

Adidas? You serious? Why?

No on elevated. Definitely not lifting heavy then.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Look at these pictures: https://9for9media.com/10-burning-powerlifting-questions-201...

With the exception of Ray, everyone is squatting wearing shoes with a lifted heel.

It’s a common lifting joke, you nerd

This is I what I get? Look, guy, you need a little heel height if you got some messed up rusty hips, stiff ankles, or some mobility problem. I’m not like that.

If you really think you have to wear a little higher heel because it makes your numbers better, then yeah, I suppose I forgot I'm on HN

I showed a link of some of the best people in the world squatting, but you're like "nah, I'm better than that". Well, all right then.

You don’t even know why people wear those shoes in the first place

You’re just looking at pictures

Good pivot.

I switched to Vivobarefoot shoes for work. So much more comfortable in the office and taking walks during lunch.

Here's on article on research that shows barefoot / minimalist shoes produce less impact force https://www.outsideonline.com/2390686/barefoot-running-biome... . I think the idea is that the area under the force curve is the same, but that barefoot has a fatter curve. So, the maximum force impact goes down and it's more gradual overall.

Concrete is particularly awful, even with decent shoes... but that's what sidewalks generally are and people generally run on sidewalks.

Even asphalt is so much better.

Concrete is awesome. No roots, flat and a predictable response (non) on hitting it. Just do not strike with your heels first and train slowly and methodically(not just running, this is true for walking as well).

One thing I like about running barefoot is that it forces you to ramp up slowly, because the soles of your feet are the limiting factor (blisters, abrasion, etc. ) If you're already in good shape and want to get into running it can be tempting to start out with long runs instead of following the +10%/week recommendation.

For the pavement: I recommend the opposite. Running barefoot or in almost barefoot shoes on pavement is the most honest thing you could do while practicing barefoot running. You will receive direct feedback to your motion. Later if you "broke in" your tendons and muscle can handle the pavement easily. Doing this for years regularly now. Running on dirt or grass could be dangerous to your bare feet because you cannot see if there is something harmful you could probably step on. But if you have some protection on your feet, sandals for example, this is not a problem of course, but still not ideal for practicing.

> almost barefoot shoes on pavement is the most honest thing you could do while practicing barefoot running

I'd second that, though I'm a very casual runner.

I grew up running in flip-flops ("hawaii slippers") & once I tried to be more serious about it, all my running injuries were from a Nike which let me run faster than I should have. I liked the fact that I was doing faster 5ks, but invariably the longer runs would injure me.

The effect of barefoot shoes was to slow me down to a more "normal" pace and a normal stride - if I was running with bad form, my heel would hurt before my knees and my bridge would hurt before my shins.

The pain comes early and fast, which is sort of like a strict teacher when it comes to running form.

It's been seven years of barefoot & zero-drop shoes, with almost no knee or shin injuries. I'm way slower, but I feel happier, because it feels like I'm floating up hills instead of pushing myself up.

I love this book so much that I bought a dozen copies and gave them out as Christmas presents back in 2009! To this day, my wife and I joke about the seriousness of running hydration because neither of us would ever want to drink out of a mud puddle [book reference]. I always bring a water filtration device on trail runs over 15 miles because of this book.

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