Some runners think it is shoes that are heavily cushioned and others prefer the more traditional thin-soled shoes.
A new study published in Scientific Reports suggests that running in those comfortable, highly cushioned shoes often marketed to prevent injury, might actually increase leg stiffness and lead to greater impact loading when your foot hits the pavement.
The small study looked at 12 healthy men — with an average age of 27 — who were accustomed to running.
Each of them had some sort of experience running regularly or playing sports. The men were given pairs of the thickly cushioned Hoka One One Conquest shoe and the thinner Brooks Ghost 6 running shoe.
A 3-D analysis was done on the men as they ran at both 10 km/hour (6.2 miles/hour) and 14.5 km/hour (9 miles/hour) jogging speeds.
Video footage of the men wearing the more cushioned shoes revealed they bent their knees less, hitting the ground harder than with the less-padded shoes.
This difference was more noticeable at the faster speeds.
Lead researcher Juha-Pekka Kulmala, PhD, wrote in an email to Healthline that he and his team expected to see similar impact loads when it came to wearing both types of shoe. The fact that there was a noticeable difference was an “unexpected result.”
“Highly cushioned and compliant shoes compress under the foot during the ground contact of running when three times body weight load is placed upon the lower limb.
The leg tends to compensate this to maintain a preferred bouncing movement of running and therefore become stiffer and compresses less,” Kulmala wrote.
“This typically results in similar impacts across different cushioning properties.
However, it seems that very heavily cushioned shoes even increase impacts.”
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