Ready, set, go!
This is episode 427, with the director of the Simon Fraser University Run Lab, author 233 marathoner and practicing physiotherapist, Chris Napier.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
We surround you with the same experts as pro runners.
So keep listening to hear coaches, physical therapists, strength experts dietitians, sports psychologists and other thought leaders give you the best guidance possible to take your running to the next level.
I'm your host, Coach Jason Fitzgerald.
I'm a former cross country and track athlete for Connecticut College.
I've been coaching runners since 2010, and I'm a former columnist for Trail Runner Magazine.
You can learn more about me and strength running at strengthrunning.com.
Now I am feeling pretty amazing after a very fun weekend at my old school, Connecticut College, to honor my cross country coach, Jim Butler.
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame for his 30 years of coaching service.
And it was just so great to see him again, to reconnect with teammates from years ago and be around some of the best runners to ever go through the program.
Now, Coach Butler was one of those coaches that not only made you want to run to your potential and do things the right way, but he was a guy that you wanted to be around.
He led by example.
He set a high standard himself.
And that's probably the best that you can ask of a coach to help you improve but also give you those life lessons that make you into a better person.
So congratulations, coach.
This honor is very well deserved.
Thank you for all your wisdom over the years and your help in becoming the coach that I am today.
And for our listeners, if you'd like to listen to a conversation with Jim Butler.
He was on the podcast in the summer of 2023 talking about development.
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Our guest today is Chris Napier.
He's an author of the book Science of Running, a professor of physical therapy, a practicing physiotherapist, a 233 marathoner and medal winner at the Canadian Track and Field Championships in both 1996 and 1997.
And Chris's experience encompasses the full breadth of clinical practice from private to elite sport.
He's done research and service to the sport physiotherapy community and he is also a scientific advisor to Avello, the world's smartest running shoe.
You can learn more about Avello at AvelloRunning.com.
Our conversation today focuses on the unique relationship between super shoes and your running form.
With a high stack height, squishy but responsive foam and carbon plates, super shoes present a dramatically different shoe experience than what was available even 10 years ago.
Now this has implications for our form, ranging from the stress that your legs are going to experience to how that stress is distributed compared to traditional shoes.
We're also going to discuss training ideas that help counteract some of the effects of super shoes, how often Chris recommends wearing them, and a lot more.
Now, if you're interested in improving your running form, go to strengthrunningcom slash cues to download my favorite form cues that help you reinforce proper technique without dramatic overhauls to how you run.
And now without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Chris Napier.
All right.
Hey, Chris, welcome back to the podcast.
Yeah, thanks for having me again.
So it's been about four years since you've been on the show.
We talked a lot about form and injury prevention.
And today we're going to go a little bit deeper down the rabbit hole on running form and, more specifically, talk about its relationship to super shoes.
You know cause?
I remember I don't know if you remember back in like 2010, after Born to Run came out and everyone was wearing minimalist shoes and toe shoes and all of a sudden, podiatrists started getting a lot more business and we started avoiding some knee injuries, only to get a lot more foot and lower leg injuries.
And I want to know if we are potentially in a similar scenario right now, but not with minimal issues with our super shoes.
So that's going to be our conversation today.
Maybe we can start with just you know what is a super shoe and how do you differentiate it between you know a quote.
Unquote normal trainer.
Yeah, so I'll actually just respond to your comment there about 2010.
I do remember 2010 very well because I'm also a physical therapist, and I remember seeing suddenly a change in the injuries I was seeing.
Of course I specialize in treating running injuries, and so I was seeing a lot of those newer, different injuries at the time coming in the door, whether it's sort of more Achilles injuries or stress fractures in the metatarsals.
And I've been thinking a lot about that lately as I've seen a bit of a shift to some other newer injuries that are coming through the door a little more frequently these days.
But yeah, to go back to kind of the definition of a super shoe, you know, the original super shoe you know is really the Nike Vaporfly 4, which came out in 2017, and the main differences between that shoe and other shoes at that time were the composition of foam, so it was a very lightweight, very compliant and resilient foam.
So it the foam compressed a lot on landing but also rebounded with more energy return than the other foams that were being used in other shoes.
And of course it was very lightweight, which was important for performance.
The lighter the shoe, the less cost to your energy to run with it.
And then the other main feature it had was a full length curved carbon plate.
Carbon plates themselves were not new, even full length carbon plates have been used at times in the past.
But this was a curved carbon plate and it was sandwiched in the midsole between two layers of foam.
And then the other sort of main difference I guess with that shoe, which we'd seen a little bit in some of the other kind of higher stack height shoes, the Hoka's for instance up to that point is the rocker on the shoe, so really um, assisting the runner in that heel to toe transitions or rocking them forwards onto their forefoot very quickly.
Um, so those, those are sort of the main differences.
Um, and in recent years we've seen other uh companies come up with their own super shoes, but they all seem to have those similar traits of the?
Um the newer foam uh, the full length carbon plate.
Uh, and, and we've seen different versions of that in different shoes.
Um the rocker sole and, of course, a very high stock height, which has since been regulated by World Athletics, to cap it at 40 millimeters.
Yeah.
And you know what, Chris?
The super shoes today are also starting to look almost not like shoes.
I don't know if they're experimental super shoes.
I just saw a picture on social media of, I think it was a Puma shoe.
It's a white and purple shoe.
And I'm not even sure... what to say about these shoes.
I mean, they are so different from anything that has existed previously.
And before we get into sort of how these shoes sort of impact your running form, I'd love to kind of just hear your thoughts on where you think this new trend is going.
Because just in less than a decade they have morphed and evolved so quickly into shoes that I'm now almost not recognizing his shoes.
Do you see that trend continuing?
Is there, is there a, uh, an end point to this?
I mean, where, where are we going to go here?
Yeah.
I mean, I think, um, what we were seeing was this, uh, kind of higher and higher stock height.
Um, and, uh, and, and we're still seeing that.
I mean there there's, there's stock heights um that definitely exceed that 40 millimeter stock height.
They're just not legal to, to race in, um, for world athletics purposes.
But people can train in them and the average recreational runner can still race in them if they like.
And so I think we've seen that increase.
And I did see that I think it was, you're right, it's the Puma.
I just saw a picture of it with a kind of hollow cavity.
I'm not sure if it's got maybe two carbon plates in it.
So I pulled it up on my phone here.
It looks like it is the Puma Fast XP.
And it... it's just really crazy.
I am going to put a picture on the strength running website along with this podcast episode so that folks can really get a good look at this.
I, I don't know how to explain it.
Yeah.
And you know, I I did, I briefly saw it and uh, it made me think of um, the leaning uh shoe uh, that's been up for a few years now.
Um, that has that hollow cavity and it has two carbon plates in it.
Uh, so it's not legal either?
Uh, because it's.
That's another regulation is that you're only allowed to have one carbon plate in the shoe.
Uh, and it has one sort of on the uh in the outsole and then one uh in the midsole, kind of closer to the top of the midsole.
Uh, and then this sort of hollow cavity in the middle which um can compress almost like a leaf spring.
Uh, and I, I, uh, I was given a pair of those to try out a few years ago.
And I went for a walk in them, which was I had to learn how to walk in them because they felt so different.
And I went for a run in them and they felt very different as well.
It was one of those shoes where I think you definitely there would be a learning curve to be able to use it effectively.
But like, boy, did I feel the bounce in it.
Crazy.
Yeah.
And you know I'm someone who have sort of retired from competitive training and racing, although you know I still run every day.
And I have, I've only run in a couple pairs of super shoes.
And that's one of the things that I've noticed as well is that you do have to sort of learn to run in them.
They feel a little bit different.
And I wonder if that does impact the gait cycle, your form, the technique that you're using to run.
Because we all know that shoes impact your form.
And now that we're running in these higher stack height you know very sort of squishy foam shoes, what do you see in the clinic when maybe you're doing a gait analysis or something similar?
How does that impact how runners move in these shoes, depending on the type of shoe they're wearing?
Yeah, so we're seeing a few things.
We're seeing a longer ground contact time.
And so that's partially just because of the high stack height and the large displacement we're seeing in the foam.
It basically means that you're kind of landing a little bit earlier and taking off a little bit later with every step.
And that allows that foam to compress and bounce back.
Uh, we're seeing a longer stride length, um as well.
Um, with that.
And so that's obviously then kind of being transferred to an increase in speed.
Um, and those are sort of the main things, but then there's there's been other things that um have been showing up.
So uh, higher ground reaction forces um potentially producing larger, um moments more proximally.
So at the knee and hip, seeing larger forces and larger bending moments there.
There's been some research on that.
It's been a little bit inconsistent so far, but there may be a link there with some of the injuries that I'm starting to see a little bit more of in the clinic.
And those are like more sort of proximal stress fractures.
So, seeing you know, bone stress, injuries of the um, the shaft and neck of the femur um, as well as the sacrum um which you know, in the past we'd see those, but they were often associated with um runners who were um experiencing sort of a like a relative energy deficiency.
So uh, you know, poor nutritional or hormonal status um, that was affecting the ability for their bone to regenerate.
Um, But now I'm seeing those a lot more frequently in runners who don't have that.
And so I can only assume that it's linked to the shoes and possibly because of those higher forces and moments that we're seeing in those areas.
Isn't that really concerning?
Because it's difficult to get a stress fracture in the sacrum or in the femur.
These are some of the biggest, sturdiest bones in the body.
And like you said, they really only occur not just because of the training.
There typically does need to be some nutritional or hormonal issues at play too.
You know, as a physical therapist is, is that something that you're worried about that, that we are now exposing ourselves to a higher risk of, you know, some serious injuries?
You know, like i'd rather an achilles issue from wearing my toe shoes than you know, a sacral stress fracture?
Yeah, and i mean i, i guess the the point is that uh it's, it's which injury do you choose?
Because um, you know runners uh, runners get injured regardless.
Um, and it's, it is a high, high injury risk sport.
Um, and so, you know, maybe we're just swapping these injuries out with others.
Um, but the yeah.
I think that one of the main concerns I have is that those uh injuries often go uh undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for uh for longer.
Um, because people aren't necessarily looking for them.
Um, and they can manifest uh or or present as as other injuries like uh, you know uh, quads or hip flexor strain um, And so you know there's concern there that they go undiagnosed and therefore mistreated and mismanaged for a longer period of time, which has negative effects for sure.
They're also potentially harder to manage and take longer to heal.
And so those are concerns as well.
Yeah, I mean, I am concerned and it would be nice to kind of know is it, you know, a biomechanical problem?
Cause here is it.
Is it just the you know, the changes in, in forces?
Um, is it something that we can, you know, accommodate to like, like a lot of runners were able to accommodate to the minimalist shoes, if they did, you know, give it time?
Um, can we do the same thing with these shoes, um or not?
I'd like to know that.
I'd like to know also um, is this truly, um like a biomechanical issue, or is it because runners are able to to train harder now than they were before as well?
Because, you know, a lot of runners will tell you that they like these soft, cushy shoes because they feel like they can recover better.
They can, you know, run sooner the next day, or run faster or harder in them.
So are we just seeing, like overtraining sort of manifesting with these injuries?
Yeah, we're definitely going to cover a little bit more about sort of the implications of wearing these shoes and what we can do from a training perspective to help mitigate some of those potential drawbacks.
Now, going back to how super shoes change your form, you know you mentioned a whole bunch of things and you were talking about because of the foam, because of the stack height.
It seems like Those are the two aspects of the shoe that are going to most impact your form.
Does the carbon plate itself have any impact on your running form?
Does it change your cadence or your step rate or how your foot impacts the ground?
Anything along those lines?
Yeah, so the carbon plate obviously stiffens the shoe.
And so it essentially creates a longer run. lever arm.
Um, so that normally, uh, you know, as you roll through your stride, uh, you'll bend at the toes.
Um and, and so you'll actually lose energy um, as you go into that uh, that position.
But with the stiffer shoe and a full length carbon plate, you actually um, don't bend at the toes as much and you roll off the toe.
And so you get a little bit of a longer, lever with every step.
And that means that more work is being done by the ankle and the calf muscles, which can then sort of generate more force.
So there's an advantage to that in terms of being able to generate more force, lose less energy every stride.
But that also places more demand on the calf and Achilles as well.
The other thing that the plate does, though and I think this is probably more important um, you know a lot of these things.
We're still trying to figure out their exact role but um, it's uh, it's described well by uh, Roger Crom um, in a paper he wrote uh, a couple of years ago now.
Um, it's this sort of gymnastics floor effect.
And so, um, with the foam being so, uh, compliant, you know, you get this compression.
And if it's pushing off of the ground, if you have that sort of hard surface that's pushing off of there, that's fine.
If you have the carbon plate sort of sandwiched between the two foam types, you can actually get the foam compressing off both the plate at the top and then the ground at the bottom.
So you're getting a bit of a double effect there.
But then you also have the effect of, rather than having sort of a single point of compression so the point that's in contact with the ground you have multiple points along that curved plate that are you're able to compress off at the same time, and so then that's sort of thought to give more spring.
If you think about it like bouncing on a trampoline, you know you can get more, more bounce from that trampoline, from the whole trampoline, sort of essentially sort of collapsing like a, like a spring, and then bouncing you back.
So That, I think, is probably more relevant to what we're seeing.
It sort of enables the foam to act better.
It sounds like super shoes, despite making you into a faster runner, put a lot more stress on the body.
Because you mentioned putting more stress on the ankle and the calves, but you're also seeing higher impact forces with stress fractures in some of those proximal bones like the sacrum and the femur.
Does Super Shoes just sort of put more stress on all of the musculature of the legs, even though you are running faster?
Like I guess I'm having trouble conceptualizing that because it does seem a little bit counterintuitive.
Well, every force has an equal and opposite reaction force, right?
And so to generate, you know, to go faster, you need to generate more force.
And so that means the body's experiencing more force.
So it does make sense.
We're just sort of enabling that.
We're enabling the body to generate more force, but then again we're experiencing more force as well.
Okay, so then, as long as we're ready for that force, presumably we'll be okay.
We'll be able to mitigate it.
If someone comes into your office and they're like I've never worn super shoes, but I'm about to start a marathon training cycle and I'd like to wear them for my workouts and long runs, would you have that runner get used to them in a certain type of progression or do anything else in training to sort of allow their body to better handle those shoes and the effects of those shoes?
Yeah, so I'll answer that in two parts, because I think there's a bit of a myth out there about and this was exactly the same myth that was sort of perpetuated with the minimalist boom that your body can adapt to anything.
It just needs time.
That's not the case.
That's the case to a certain point, but the body's capacity to adapt is not absolute.
It's not infinite.
And it's also not linear, meaning that the body can adapt to increases in frequency of of loads um much more easily.
That can adopt to um increases in magnitude of load.
So a magnitude of load has a much greater uh effect on the body um in terms of the stress experienced.
So and and Rich Willie and I talked about this in a paper um a couple of years ago.
I can, I can send it to you to link into this.
Um, but it's you can't just say that you, you know you'll be able to run in these shoes if you strengthen the right muscles or, you know, ease into them.
Um, that is true to an extent, but it's again not not infinite, doesn't mean you could then necessarily run all of your runs in this and, you know, just continue to get stronger and adapt to them more.
Um, and we also have to remember that nonlinear relationship between um the, the frequency of the stress applied and the magnitude of that stress applied, because i think that is one thing that uh, people don't think about.
Um, if you, you know you can, if you increase your uh, the magnitude of the stress experienced um, by 10 percent, you effectively have to reduce the frequency of cycles, so the number of steps, in this case by 50, to have the same stress effect on your body.
So that's significant.
So if we're getting greater magnitude of stress with these super shoes, it's gonna have a very significant effect on our ability to handle that stress.
So would you then not advise this runner to to all of a sudden start wearing their shoes for all workouts and all long runs?
Uh yeah, I typically advise people to rotate their shoes a bit um and and save those shoes for um you know, key workouts and and the race.
Um, it's a bit of a juggling act, because you do, you know there is a learning effect and you do want to make sure you try these shoes, cause they are quite different.
You want to try them before race day. but you have to be judicious about when you do that.
And you know, and the other reason for that is they're expensive and the foam doesn't last very long.
You know we're doing some work right now where we're looking at how durable that foam is, how long those benefits last after using a shoe for a period of time.
And it's not nearly as long as you know.
The more traditional shoes EVA foams that were used in shoes in the past.
So if you burn them up in your training, they're not going to be necessarily that advantageous on race day.
You know, there are a lot of runners out there who are going to be wearing their super shoes every day.
You know, like, you know, I live here in Colorado.
You almost can't go to the grocery store without seeing someone in a pair of Alpha Flies, because that's just the culture out here and someone's coming from a workout and you know they're just wearing the shoes all the time.
But it certainly does seem like a more judicious approach to using these shoes is the smarter idea.
Yeah.
But there are runners who swear by the recovery benefits of wearing these shoes.
They just feel better after a long run or a workout.
What would you say to that runner who's already wearing them for 80%, even up to 100% of their runs?
Are they missing out on some aspect of adaptation or training?
Benefit from wearing more normal trainers.
You know... this, this takes me back to a conversation, uh, I had maybe 12 years ago.
Um, and I was.
I was sitting in a restaurant this was after a conference and I was sitting there with um Blaise Dubois, who is um a uh Canadian physiotherapist, um and and strong proponent of uh barefoot running and menless shoes.
Um, and, and, uh, And I was sitting there with him and Alex Hutchinson.
And Alex Hutchinson, of course you know, the sports science writer and writer of several great books.
And it was a really interesting conversation.
So we were just talking about, like, you know, what we all wear to train.
And Blaze was talking about, you know, why would you wear what he called the big bulky shoes?
So non... non-minimalist, more traditional shoes to train.
They're heavier and that sort of thing.
It's not even an advantage to wear those.
So I have to work harder and that's what training is all about.
And it was just sort of flipping it on its head.
And I often think about that with these shoes as well, because you can have the advantage of running in these shoes and therefore running faster and being able to kind of hit some of those pace targets that maybe you wouldn't otherwise be able to have.
And I think that there's benefit to that.
But you could also argue that maybe there's benefit to doing that same workout in a shoe that's not giving back as much, and therefore you're having to work a bit harder to achieve that.
Um, and I don't really know, you know the answer to that, but I would say maybe there's advantages to both and uh, and there there's.
You know, maybe being able to go kind of go back and forth between those shoes is is a good idea and not always sort of getting um as much benefit from the shoe itself, and maybe you have to work a little bit harder and and then psychologically maybe it feels better um, to slip them on, you know, for those key workouts and for race day because wow, you really feel fast and light with them on when you're used to wearing those other shoes.
You know, I tend to be a moderate on all things training.
You know, I see pros and cons with almost every training strategy.
And I think, you know, most running rules can be bent or broken.
So it depends is a perfectly valid answer for most training questions.
And I'm really glad that you're painting this balanced approach to super shoes, because because I think you can use them very strategically, but you can also use other shoes just as strategically and not marry yourself to the super shoe for 100 of your training.
When we are thinking about injury risk, Is there an additional injury risk with super shoes just compared to a normal trainer?
Because I have seen people say that they help you recover.
And I have also seen people say I can't wear super shoes for one run.
Or my Achilles is going to explode or my plantar fascia gets really irritated, or I simply feel very unstable because of the foam.
And you know that quick little video I showed you when we were talking about that experimental Puma shoe.
You know, one of the things about is that if there's a little bit of lateral movement, it almost looks like you're on this high heel type of shoe and you're just going to fall off the edge of it.
Do you think about injury risk with super shoes compared to normal shoes?
And how do you balance that?
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
So in my role um as a physical therapist, um I'm often advising people on shoes, or or I'm asked to to advise them on on shoes.
And, um you know to to uh repeat what you said, it does depend um very much on the individual.
And, and I would say it, you know, taking into account their injury history is a big, big one.
So yeah, if people have um, a history of, you know, more chronic Achilles tendinopathy um, I'm going to tell them to be a bit more careful about wearing these shoes as regularly if they have a history of tibialis posterior pain, so kind of on the inside of the ankle.
Again, I'm going to caution them in the use of these shoes because you do get a lot more pronation happening because there's just, you know, we've got a thinner last through the midfoot, so there's just less support through the arch and a very soft foam.
So you do get a lot more and you can see it when people run, right?
Like there's just a big collapse there which again, to a certain extent, you can maybe prevent that with some strength training and adapting to the shoe.
But I think if you did run in those all the time and you had a predisposition to that kind of an injury, that probably is not a wise idea.
And then yeah, depending on where you're running to um, you know, we just had, uh uh, a 10K race in Vancouver here um, which is sort of one of the classic races here every year called the Eastside 10K.
And and there's sort of the beginning of the in the end cause it's an out and back route.
The beginning and the end have a lot of um turns in them.
So 90 degree turns uh, and it's the.
It's on cobblestones for a while, that sort of brick cobblestones.
And, uh, I remember like running in, in, uh, I can't remember what super shoe it was.
I think it was actually.
I ran into Vaporfly one year and found it really hard on those corners when you're going fast.
I felt very unstable.
And the next year I switched up to the Asics Metaspeed Sky, which has a lot more of a flare to the midsole and the forefoot and feels much more stable.
And I felt much better in those shoes on that type of course.
So you know, I think there are gonna be differences depending on where you're running and what your history is.
Yeah, those are good considerations because I don't think a lot of people think about the surface or the turns that might be present in a race.
And it's funny you mentioned that because I experienced that in a 5K this past June.
I was wearing the Saucony I forget the exact name, but the Saucony Super Shoes and there was 180 degree turn.
And with something like that, I mean you're almost coming to a stop and you're being very gingerly putting your feet down and being very careful with that, because I almost practically fell over with those super shoes just because they're so high but they also squish a lot.
And so when you're trying to go around that corner, it can be really, really challenging.
And it also brings me back to college cross country.
You know, I'm old enough to have been wearing Nike waffle spikes, which were literally just a thin sheet of hard rubber.
And those were actually very stable on the ground because there was no compression, really.
You know, you were landing and pretty much just feeling the ground underneath you.
And of course the spikes helped, but much more stability compared to the thicker you know bigger foam of a super shoe.
Yeah, definitely.
And, you know, there's a flip side.
I actually often will recommend um super shoes for people to um protect, you know, areas where they've had previous injuries.
Like, so, you know, if they're, if they experience, um, toe pain or, um, you know, if they, if we're trying to, uh, maybe they have, um, reduced, uh, ankle range of motion, Um, you know, we can get benefits from super shoes sometimes in that the, uh, you know, obviously with the carbon plate, they're not going to bend their toe as much.
So we can, we can control that.
Um or uh, with the rocker, with the shoe, we can get a bit more um or less ankle range of motion required to to get through the um, the stride.
And so you know there's there's benefits to them beyond just the performance as well, that that might work for certain people.
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Chris, I want to ask you kind of a loaded question here.
So it sounds like the high stack, the squishy foam and the carbon plate of a super shoe change your form to an extent where we may not consider it your normal slash, natural running form.
Would you then consider that an inferior running form that you should experience more conservatively, you know, only in your peak races, only in some of your peak workouts because it's potentially predisposing you to a certain movement pattern that is not ideal for you?
That is a loaded question.
I'll say yes and no.
I mean look, I think it's obviously not an inferior form if it's, if the goal is to complete the distance faster.
Because we've seen it, it does improve running economy and translate to faster race times.
So I think it'd be hard to claim that it's inferior.
It's going to be different obviously, because it has to be different to adapt to the shoe and to benefit from the shoe.
But I guess I would say in other sports, if we think about, let's just say soccer, you can do things in training that improve your ability to handle the loads that you're going to experience in a game that may be a little bit more out of your control.
And so things like being able to sprint, you know very suddenly from a standstill, or to change direction quickly.
So cutting and pivoting.
And you know, you can train that in practice by strength training and doing different drills that mimic those in a sort of controlled to more uncontrolled fashion.
And I think, if we think about that in the context of running and super shoes, you don't want to just use those super shoes on race day because it is.
It's different enough that that's going to increase your risk significantly if you haven't run in that and you're not used to that.
Um, that way of running.
Uh, so I think you have to run in them for a certain amount before.
Um, but just like you wouldn't want to uh, have a game every day uh, and put your body through those stresses every day.
Um, you don't want to necessarily be using those super shoes every day and stressing your body in the same way.
So I think being judicious about when you use them key workouts, having a real purpose to using them, getting enough training in them but not too much is the balance that you're probably seeking.
I think a big part of this too is knowing yourself and knowing your body and what you respond to.
Because there are some people that are going to, I think, love super shoes and potentially some shoes better than other shoes.
And there's going to be some runners who don't really respond to them very well.
They just don't like how they feel.
And I feel like...
There is a lot of value in that subjective feeling of what you personally like, because if something doesn't feel good and you do a workout and you're just sort of negative the entire time because of how your shoes feel, that to me as a coach, is not a good mindset to have as an athlete, because you're almost not really believing in your training and you're not getting that buy-in to the workouts you're doing and to the effectiveness of your training.
So I think there's a lot to be said about finding a shoe and a cadence of how often to wear it that you personally like, because you're gonna, I think, flourish with more belief in what you're doing.
Yeah, I think that mental effect is huge.
I agree.
And it kind of goes back to, like you know, wearing them for those key workouts where you need to kind of know where you're at.
You know, before the before race day um, can you hit those splits?
Um, and yeah, if you slip those shoes on, you feel fast, you hit the splits.
Yeah.
You feel good and ready for race day and then race day comes and you can do it.
Um, and I think there's, there's definitely, um, a strong benefit to that.
Um and, and I think um, you know, it's the same with uh perhaps um, you know, certain supplements or recovery strategies.
You know, if there's that belief in them, we know that there's an effect that you get from just having that belief in it.
I'm starting to think of super shoes almost like hard workouts or more specifically race-specific workouts where they're going to be more and more appropriate as your race comes closer in time.
So if you're five months out and you're in just a base phase of training and you're doing a simple tempo run, Maybe you don't need the super shoes.
But, like you said, if you really want to see where you're at and you want to do a more race specific workout, you know, maybe you're training for a 10K and you're going to do, you know, six by a mile at goal 10K pace, something very similar to the race.
Maybe that is a much better candidate workout for super shoes than the early season, slightly more foundational workouts.
I would agree with that.
Awesome.
Always love having your validation, Chris.
I do want to get back to a question that I think I sort of asked, but I'd love to drill down a little bit deeper sort of in the training preparation we might do for super shoes.
So knowing some of the different stresses that we might experience.
I know you said that we can't indefinitely adapt to a stress.
And I'm glad you said that, because I tried to indefinitely adapt to barefoot running in 2000, 2001 and I got injured.
I had an Achilles injury.
And I can't just continuously get better at barefoot running so that I can then go run 85 miles a week with barely anything on my feet.
I learned that lesson the hard way.
Now, if someone came to me and they said I'd love to wear more minimalist shoes, there'd be some things I would do with them as a coach to sort of prepare them to wear less shoe over time.
What about from the super shoe side of things?
Would you have runners strengthen their feet and their lower legs?
Would you engage in some specific drills?
What kind of things might you do in training?
Yeah, I mean, I think knowing... there's going to be increased demand on the calf and Achilles.
I think that would be certainly an area I'd want to target ahead of time.
So definitely some strength training for that.
I think also knowing that there's going to be increased demands at the knee and the hip so, more proximally, just those increased loads.
Um, I'd also want to try and, um, give them the ability to, to prepare and adapt to that.
And so that might be more sort of like uh, like plyometric training perhaps um, you know, things like box jumps and um and and and things to try and allow them to kind of experience those higher loads and um and handle them with um, with control.
Um, as far as the feet go, uh look, i i still haven't seen anything convincing that.
You know, foot strength in itself will make you a faster runner.
Um, i haven't seen an increase in foot injuries from wearing uh, these shoes.
I know there was a case series published on a potential link between super shoes and navicular stress fractures, but I haven't personally seen that in my experience.
And so you know whether I'd sort of you know stress the you know working on foot intrinsic muscles strength, that sort of thing I'd probably not.
I would work maybe a little bit more on like tibialis posterior.
So same sort of thing we were talking about before with that increased pronation collapse.
I would work on better control through the tibialis posterior.
That's probably... the extent of like the key areas I would hit.
What about progressing into the shoes?
So I assume you wouldn't want me to do the hardest workout of the season for my first workout in the super shoes.
Would you recommend saying maybe a short easy run first, maybe a slightly longer run the next time, an easy workout next.
Like what's the right progression to get used to these in a way that is going to limit any potential risk?
Yeah, I think you know common sense prevails, but I I agree.
I think you know, first time in the shoes, just taking for an easy run, short easy run, just to kind of uh, get used to the feel that the you know that, what it does to your stride um, and then you know progressing through perhaps like uh, you know a short tempo run um, you know, and then maybe into something more um, like high speed intervals or or fartlek training um, and then progressing to a race, I would say.
But there's probably not one perfect way to progress through those steps, but that's probably how I would approach it in a perfect world.
Yeah, I think that's a good conservative approach.
And if you've never worn super shoes, I probably would advise a conservative approach just to get a feel for it.
Like you said, common sense prevails, so let's be the most conservative if you don't have any data to go off of, so that you don't find yourself in a tricky situation.
Yeah.
Chris, is there anything that you'd want to add about how super shoes impact your form and predispose you to certain stresses that we might want to mitigate in training?
I know this is sort of a nebulous topic because it's very early.
We don't have a lot of data yet.
Uh, I think we're, we're all sort of just trying to find our footing with this topic.
Um, you know, I've I even had a really interesting conversation here on the podcast with uh ultra runner and philosopher, Sabrina little on the ethics of super shoes, and you know whether we're even violating the spirit of the sport with some of these shoes.
And so it's just such an interesting conversation.
Is there anything that you'd like to add that, that we didn't potentially cover?
Yeah.
I mean, the ethical issues is certainly an interesting one.
Um, I don't think we're violating that the spirit of the sport at, at, at this stage anyway.
Um, and I think there's a long history of, of, uh, technology in the sport of running.
Um, and you know, certainly on the footwear side, but also on the surface side, like I mean, look at the tracks that are being run on now compared to you know what?
Uh, Bannister broke the four minute mile on it.
It's completely different.
And, obviously much, much faster.
I mean, it'd be interesting to see what Bannister would run on, you know, one of today's tracks.
You know, the Harvard track in the 1970s was built to be the fastest track in the world.
And that was based off of like, you know, research on surface stiffness.
It was done at Harvard.
And it was the fastest track in the world for quite some time.
So I think, you know, technology has always been part of this board.
And I know that When the Vaporfly first came out it was definitely a question that people were saying hey, that's not fair.
Should they not allow it?
And I was lucky enough to be with the Canadian team at the World Cross Country Championships in Kampala Uganda, that year.
And Sebko was there and he held a little sort of forum for anyone who wanted to attend uh and i asked him what's world athletics gonna do about the nike vaporfly uh and he said at the time he said you know we're we're gonna embrace it um we're not anti-science we're not anti-technology um but we just need to make sure that it's safe for the athletes and we need to make sure that it's uh fair for the athletes, which means equal access.
And that was a big thing, I think was just making sure that uh, you know, any shoe that someone could race in had to be available to everyone.
Um, and, uh, so, you know, I think that's probably the way things will continue in the sport.
Um, it'll be interesting to see where this goes, because it just keeps seeming to, as you saw, you know get more and more extreme.
Um Yeah, I think one limit will be if the shoes start causing more injuries and that can be linked, because I think obviously that's not good for the sport, not good for people and ethically not right.
So I think if there are links there, there may be some limitations put on footwear related to that.
As far as like performance though, I think as long as that sort of spirit of fairness and that would be represented by you know having, in theory access, you know, to everyone, then I think we'll continue to see the shoe evolve in that way.
Yeah, I'm glad there are some regulations on the shoes.
You mentioned not having two carbon plates in a super shoe.
You mentioned if you're going to actually wear them in a race, there's a certain stack height.
So it seems like they're already somewhat limited.
They can't go above that height.
They're only limited to one plate.
I know I showed you that kind of ridiculous example of a concept shoe.
And one of my questions was going to be like, where might we see shoes in five to 10 years?
You know, is there going to be a little lawnmower engine in the back with a little rip cord start?
Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing, right?
So one of the rules is that it can't, um, it, it can't give you, uh, more energy.
Uh, so you can't add like a motor or an engine, um or uh.
You know, interestingly it was, I think it used to be framed as a you can add a spring uh, But of course foam is a type of spring.
And the carbon plate can be thought of as a spring as well.
But the idea is that you can't have it give back more energy than was put into the system.
So I don't think you'll see a lawnmower engine hooked up to a shoe.
But I think we are going to see the boundaries continue to be pushed in terms of maybe, things that the sport's not ready to anticipate.
And so it'll be interesting to see how the sport responds to some of those things that you know are really outside of the box.
That I'm sure we'll start to see.
I think we're going to see definitely we're already starting to see new foams, new chemical compositions and structures of foams that I think that is going to be another huge advance, like in the next year or two, with some of the new foams coming on the market in these shoes, you know, somewhat argued, like the new Puma shoe not the one you just showed me, but the the previously released one in the spring is an advance of that kind just from the new foam being used in it.
So I think we'll, we'll see more there.
And, and then I think we'll, we'll see, yeah, different ways that these sort of foam plate and, you know, shoe geometry interactions work together to, you know, achieve, half a percent or 1% here and there.
Well, we live in exciting times.
I can't wait to see what the next couple years hold.
And I think you're right.
I think material science is going to keep progressing and give us some really interesting foams in the coming years.
I just hope they last a little while longer and maybe don't cost 900 like some of these new super shoes.
Yeah, and that's the other ethical conundrum is the effect on the environment of these shoes that don't last as long because they just end up in landfills.
And so that is a big, issue.
It's a big concern.
Um, so yeah, I agree.
I hope that they they do last a bit longer um, and don't cost as much or accessible to to more people.
Um, you know, so they're not uh, prohibitive in cost but uh, you know, I think the the one thing that the original, you know, super shoe did was it.
It proved that there's a market for performance.
If a shoe's a ticket to getting faster, then... people will buy it.
For sure, Chris.
Well, thank you so much for your time today.
Where can folks learn a little bit more about your work?
Because you're a favorite of mine to have here on the podcast.
Because of your clinical experience as a physical therapist, but also your PhD, your background in exercise science.
You're also the author of Science of Running.
Analyze Your Technique, Prevent Injury and Revolutionize Your Training.
Where would you like to point people to?
Yeah, I think...
My lab at Simon Fraser University is the SFU Run Lab.
If you Google it, you should be able to find our website.
And there's lots of information on there and links to some of our publications.
And then our Instagram and Twitter feeds are on there as well.
So just add SFU Run Lab.
And there's opportunities to be part of our research as well.
So there's links on all those sites there if you want to be involved in some of our studies.
And as someone who has gone into a running lab to be part of a study, if you do have that opportunity, I definitely recommend taking it.
It's really fun.
You get to learn about yourself, about the science of running, and it's really fun.
So Chris, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Those reviews are incredibly impactful and helpful for this small business.
If you have questions about your running, feel free to email me at support at strengthrunningcom, or you can search our website at strengthrunningcom.
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