One Nike Air Max 90 Femme Rose of the major arguments posited by many for running barefoot or in minimalist shoes is that doing so reduces the likelihood of injury. However, although I trend toward minimalism in my own shoe preferences, I’ll be completely honest and admit that no study has confirmed that barefoot/minimalist running in fact reduces injury rates in runners (similarly, to my knowledge no study has shown that modern, high-tech shoes do either). Given this, where does this belief in the injury reducing capacity of barefoot/minimalist running come from?In the absence of studies examining the link between shoes/minimalist shoes/lack of shoes and injury risk, what we are left with is anecdotal evidence – many runners have reported overcoming old or nagging injuries by shedding their shoes or running in a minimalist shoe like the Vibram Fivefingers. www.aadkruiswijk.nl Nike Air Max 90 Herren However, for Nike Air Vapormax Femme every runner who reports being cured of old running injuries, a seemingly equal number of barefoot/minimalist runners succumb to injuries like the dreaded “top of foot pain” or metatarsal stress fractures. It is quite possible that many of these injuries are due to people doing too much too soon in a shoe that their body is simply not adapted to, and it is therefore hard to know if these injuries would still occur if a longer, easier adaptation regimen was followed. It is also possible that some people simply cannot tolerate running barefoot or in a very minimal shoe due to the unique structure of their body (human variation is very real, this I do firmly believe).Rather than dwell on the larger injury debate too much here, I want to focus on just one aspect – why do some runners seem to overcome injuries after making Adidas Superstar Femme the Nike Air Max 270 Damen switch to Nike Air Max Classic BW Femme running barefoot/minimalist?One of the things that many people notice when switching to a barefoot/minimalist running style is that their stride begins to change. Types of changes observed include a change in footstrike from heel to mid/forefoot, a shorter stride, and a faster turnover. I unfortunately never took the time to count my stride rate prior to going minimalist, but my sense is that mine has increased, and 3 recent measurements (on different runs) all put me at a cadence of 180 steps/minute. Stride length is harder to gauge, but wear patterns on my shoes do suggest that my heel strike has diminished considerably, and I can clearly tell that I land either midfoot or forefoot when I run in my Vibram Fivefingers (I tend to alternate between the two footstrikes while I run in them). These same types of observations Nike Air Max 270 Homme are noted Nike Air Max 90 Herr repeatedly by runners who make the switch.Given the above, one might hypothesize that one of the ways that going barefoot/minimalist might help some people is that it facilitates a change in running gait, and that change in some way ameliorates problems that were causing trouble for some people. After this long introduction, this is where the study by Dr. Bryan Heiderscheit and colleagues of the University of Wisconsin referred to in the title comes in. I will state at the outset that I have not read the study yet (I am trying to get ahold of it – I really wish all journals were open access!), but it has been reported on by two people who’s opinions I respect: Alex Hutchinson on Sweat Science and The Globe and Mail, and Amby Burfoot on the Peak Performance Blog.In a nutshell, Heiderscheit studied the effects of stride rate Nike Air Max 90 Femme (both Nike Air Max 90 Hombre increased and decreased) on gait in 45 recreational runners. They had each runner run (in their own shoes) on a treadmill at stride rates both 5% and 10% below (slower cadence) and above (faster cadence) their preferred stride rate. What this shows is that running with a faster cadence/higher stride rate reduced loading on the knee and hip, allowed for a more level carriage of the center of mass (less vertical oscillation), shortened stride length, and created less braking impulse.  All of this is very interesting, and seems to provide a possible explanation for why at least some runners are able to overcome injuries by going barefoot/minimalist. The reasoning goes like this: suppose a runner has a history of knee or hip injury, and decides to make a radical change and ditch their shoes or start running in something very Nike Air Max 95 Dames minimal.