My knees freaking killed me when I was running. I started using the supports my wife bought for me and it instantly improved, and far beyond any placebo effect. Before: my knees ached after I ran 100% of the time. Now: they never ache anymore.
My knees freaking killed me when I was running. I started using the supports my wife bought for me and it instantly improved, and far beyond any placebo effect. Before: my knees ached after I ran 100% of the time. Now: they never ache anymore.
And if you are overweight and sedentary DON'T RUN TO GET INTO SHAPE.
Walking, hiking, swimming, biking, and weight training. Mix all of it so you get cross training effects and distribute stress across many domains.
Running is, by the standards of the statistical hole America is in terms of obesity, an "advanced" activity. We're talking about something that involves a stress increase of 2.5x to 4.x over walking.
Now consider that an obese person with an extra 50 lbs of fat is on their body. Running will be an extra 200 lbs of stress on your feet, and none of that fat tissue is absorbing impact or stabilizing that impact. And on top of it, the fat will disrupt the neuro-biomechanical flow of your neuromuscular system, making you less coordinated and therefore also harder to absorb the impact.
As I said elsewhere: use GLP-1 to get the fat down and simultaneously employ a gentle ROUTINE activity program that morphs into more and more exercise and exercise variety.
This. Many people aren't in good enough shape to run. And if they do run their form is often terrible.
There was a website years ago at WasWayFat.com about a guy that lost a ton of weight just stepping on an aerobic stair in his home.
Wayback machine has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20170710225625/http://www.wasway...
BMI of 29 starting so not obese but overweight and running has me down at 27 now.
And doing it is close to the maximum calories you will burn per unit of effort and time.
About 20 years ago, I was riding my bike everywhere and hardly walking. I went on a trip to NYC and was walking 10+ miles a day. I developed severe shooting pains in my feet. Getting some supports helped dramatically and so I started wearing them whenever I wore shoes.
I did this for about 15 years and completely swore by arch supporting shoes. Then, one day I was playing basketball and landed on someone's foot going for a layup. My foot basically folded in half in the opposite direction of the arch. This was a major injury and I could not walk at all for a week and it took multiple years before I stopped feeling pain regularly in that foot.
After the injury, I completely stopped wearing arch supports. I had a theory that my feet had been weakened by using them and that this weakness was the underlying reason for the severity of my injury. For the last few years, I have averaged about eight miles of walking a day and mostly wear zero drop minimal shoes. I have developed the ability to run on concrete with them, though I do not particularly enjoy this (primarily because my running efficiency is poor).
If I were running a marathon, I would certainly wear shoes with padding, but I don't find much padding or support necessary or even desirable for brisk walking for hours at a time. And for almost 15 years, I never left the house without bulky supports.
Bracing a body part weakens that body part in the long run.
Anybody who has ever had a cast on their arm knows this firsthand.
Probably Vibram FiveFingers
Also: wearing them makes you understand that you wear gloves when everyone is stuck at mittens.
A lot of my problem also related to back pain when growing up, and I realized also in my 20's how much going to the gym helped with the back pain. As my back got stronger via strength training, I no longer suffered from back pain. Additionally I invested more in things like a good office chair at home and ensured I had a good one at work.
Overall I no longer have back problems and no longer require any inserts in my shoes.
(Beleaguered parent of a toddler here struggling to find ANY workout time, or the energy for it! It's killing me, literally and figuratively)
I found that there is only one type of shoe on the market that prevents me from getting injured (Asics Gel-Kayano). Everything else - low drop, high drop, HOKA, Brooks, Nike, even Asics' own GT-2000s - is a quick route to knee injury for me. And I don't need arch supports when using the Kayanos, even though I am a very clear overpronator.
Matches my own experience, first season of cross country in HS I had neutral shoes and they were perfect, went back for new shoes next season and they put me in motion control shoes which gave me instant knee pain.
The point of my post was that these experiences are highly personal and specific to your physiology. Different shoe models labeled the same type can have drastically different dynamics depending on their design and the specifics of your gait and strike. If you have pain or injuries, don't trust the studies, try different shoes and cross-training/stretching techniques until you find what works for you.
Don’t ever get what someone else likes instead of what you prefer. Your feet aren’t theirs.