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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

I honestly thought this was just a fashion trend, and not particularly practical for running. Although I imagine some heel-cushioning is essential for heel-runners.

As far as I understand (I'm not a runner), running should really be on your toes, and that's how professional and historical runners always used to run, though the invention of shoes and heels on shoes has made us walk and run more on our heels, which gives us bigger shocks on our knees and spine, which makes the cushioning necessary. My impression is that this is actually a wrong technique due to laziness, but I could easily be wrong; maybe cushioned heel-running is better than toe-running. I don't know.

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I used to run in minimal shoes when there were more options. I am older now, and, perhaps more importantly, a bit heavier too. The idea of minimal running shoes is that you do a mid strike the whole way as they offer very little heel cushioning.

I don’t go for the chunky running shoes mentioned here, but I do need a bit more cushioning then I did a decade ago. A lot of this comes down to form. When I am in better shape I can mid strike throughout a long run, but when I am out of shape I start falling back to a heel strike.

These chunky shoes can help people Keep running who are a bit heavier, have non-optimal form for pavement, or have minor joint injuries that slow them down.

As an aside, I wish more shoe companies created consistent running shoes year to year. Every time I find a shoe I like they discontinue it.

Runner who reads a lot about the sport here. Like another comment said, there isn’t really a consensus that any particular foot strike is better. Even pros have variation in foot strike when wearing very minimal racing spikes [1]. There’s some thinking that the thing to focus on is your cadence, and as long as it’s not too slow then your form should just naturally become whatever is most efficient for you (for some that actually is a heel strike or mid-foot strike). And it’s also worth noting that you naturally have different form at different speeds. The most useful variable for shoe choice is honestly whatever you find to be most comfortable.

[1] https://youtu.be/uJSJSETFPwI

Consensus isn't required. Heel striking is provably detrimental to human physiology.

Big thick extended heels are designed today to lever the foot into position and place heel & toe on the ground concurrently, reducing impact at the heel.

Spending an entire lifetime walking with augmented feet means that people do not use their stride correctly or efficiently in the the manner it has been evolved to operate.

There is little argument about these facts outside of the realms of marketing and sales from shoe suppliers. You can't very well advocate for your product if you admit that it mostly acts as a crutch for poor form

Could you provide a source for these statements? In another comment I gave a link to a publication that summarized the literature comparing heel striking to forefoot striking, which showed no consensus on which is better.

I would direct you to the studies on the natives of Copper Canyon and the various studies completed at Harvard on impulse loading in the knee and hip relative to foot orientation.

Here's a crappy article about it:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/01/barefoot-runn...

The take away here is that while you can make a big ass goofy shoe that takes all the force away from your poor form and prevents injury, the natural body mechanics are subverted. If you grow up and spend a lifetime with a prosthetic (soft shoe), everything about your movement is altered and augmented by the use of the prosthetic.

Just think on that for a moment as opposed to directing me to some argument or article in a study.

This is indeed a popular theory in the running community, and many runners have made an effort to transition to landing on their forefoot rather than their heel. However, there does not appear to be a scientific consensus whether runners with forefoot strike patterns are faster and/or less injury prone [1]. There are also professional runners that heel strike.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6189005/

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