The analysis incorporated 12 studies, including one very large randomized trial with 2,377 participants. There was no difference between pre-exercise and post-exercise stretching in the effect on soreness. Of the 12 studies, 11 used static stretching and one used PNF stretching. Here’s a forest plot of some of the results, from the BJSM summary:

As the Cochrane Review notes, people generally stretch for one of three reasons:

1. reduce the risk of injury;
2. enhance athletic performance;
3. reduce soreness after exercise.

There’s plenty of evidence that the second point is misguided: stretching actually seems to harm athletic performance in many contexts. Now this Cochrane Review reaffirms that the third point is misguided too — and the BJSM reviewers make it clear that, in their opinion, this isn’t one of those tentative findings that might be modified by future research:

The best available evidence indicates that stretching does not reduce muscle soreness. These findings were consistent across settings (laboratory vs field studies), types and intensity of stretching, populations (athletic or untrained adults of both genders) and study quality. As such, they are unlikely to be changed by further studies.

That leaves the first point — reducing injury. There’s still a little wiggle room here. Numerous studies have failed to find any reduction in injuries following stretching as well.

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/17/bjsports-2011-090599.extract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21735398

http://sweatscience.com

Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they have to learn to work out at just below their “lactic threshold,” that point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate. Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic thresholds.

But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.

The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago, said George A. Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it seemed to make so much sense.

“It’s one of the classic mistakes in the history of science,” Dr. Brooks said.                                                    

Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its bottom half in a jar. The frog’s muscles had no circulation — no source of oxygen or energy.

Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog’s leg electric shocks to make the muscles contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then, when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were bathed in lactic acid.

A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid, leads to fatigue.

Athletes were told that they should spend most of their effort exercising aerobically, using glucose as a fuel. If they tried to spend too much time exercising harder, in the anaerobic zone, they were told, they would pay a price, that lactic acid would accumulate in the muscles, forcing them to stop.

Few scientists questioned this view, Dr. Brooks said. But, he said, he became interested in it in the 1960′s, when he was running track at Queens College and his coach told him that his performance was limited by a buildup of lactic acid.

When he graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.

“I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it faster than anything else I could give them,” Dr. Brooks said.

It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of energy.

Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70′s. Other researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.

“I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I had my papers rejected,” Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on, conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent with his radical idea.

Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.

“The evidence has continued to mount,” said L. Bruce Gladden, a professor of health and human performance at Auburn University. “It became clear that it is not so simple as to say, Lactic acid is a bad thing and it causes fatigue.”

As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Dr. Gladden said, that never made sense.

“Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise,” he said. “You get sore one to three days later. The time frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found.”

The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.

Mitochondria even have a special transporter protein to move the substance into them, Dr. Brooks found. Intense training makes a difference, he said, because it can make double the mitochondrial mass.

It is clear that the old lactic acid theory cannot explain what is happening to muscles, Dr. Brooks and others said.

Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way possible to increase their mitochondria. “Coaches have understood things the scientists didn’t,” he said.

Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.

That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.

Just before a race, coaches often tell athletes to train very hard in brief spurts.

That extra stress increases the mitochondria mass even more, Dr. Brooks said, and is the reason for improved performance.

And the scientists?

They took much longer to figure it out.

“They said, ‘You’re anaerobic, you need more oxygen,’ ” Dr. Brooks said. “The scientists were stuck in 1920.”

By GINA KOLATA
Published: May 16, 2006

Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT) has worked well in getting professional athletes back on the field quickly — but, according to founder Greg Roskopf, it can help anyone. His most rewarding experiences have been helping people debilitated by chronic pain get their lives back. MAT is is taught in the Master of Science Health Fitness Management program at Globe University Online and Minnesota School of Business Online.

A motor neuron is a neuron that terminates in a muscle fiber. Because of the properties of excitation and excitation-contraction coupling, a neural signal can be sent from the brain and converted to an electrical potential. These steps include: (1) signal arrives in motor end-plate, (2) Ach (acetylcholine) is released into the synaptic cleft, (3) Ach binds to receptors on the sarcolemma, (4) Ligand-regulated ion gates open and create an end-plate potential. From this action potential, a voltage is perpetuated down the t-tubules, causing the release of Ca2+ ions and subsequent contraction of the muscle fiber(s) (Saladin). The amount of electrical activity in a muscle is directly proportional to the strength of that muscle. The Electromyogram (EMG) measures the amount of electrical signal running through a muscle and therefore can provide data for the activity of the muscle.

Muscle Activation Technique (MAT) is a type of therapy based on the physiology and biomechanics of muscle contraction:

When looking at the physiology of a muscle contraction, as the muscle (extrafusal fibers) is placed under a stretch, the muscle spindle (intrafusal fibers) sense tension as they are also placed under a stretch. The sensory receptors that encompass the intrafusal fibers send information back to the CNS, stimulating the alpha motor neurons, which in turn, send feedback back to the muscle telling it to contract in order to resist the tension. This is a normal response to a muscle when placed on a stretch. In comparison, if the extrafusal fibers of a muscle shorten due to contraction, the muscle spindle or intrafusal fiber would also shorten and be placed on a slack. This in turn would make the muscle incapable of regulating the load being placed on the muscle (Roskopf).

When a muscle is injured or traumatized in some way, there is negative feedback from the nervous system (neurologically and biomechanically). This causes a reduced capability for the muscle to contract as it moves into the shortened position. When muscle tightness is expressed, the underlying cause is muscle weakness (Roskopf). The MAT therapist will first diagnose a weakness through isometric exercises based on the action of the given muscle. If that muscle performs poorly, there are two options for treatment. The first is a manual therapy that involves pressing on the origin(s) and insertion(s) of the muscle. The second type of treatment is by isometric exercises. Once treated, the MAT therapist re-tests the muscle with the same, initial test to see if proprioceptive input to the muscle is restored. I will be testing the electrical component of these techniques. My hypothesis is that the EMG will show greater muscle activity on the same muscle after manual treatment and isometric exercises.

METHODS

Brad Carlson (certified MAT therapist) and Dana Lyon (world class athlete in the Javelin) made this lab possible. Eight weeks ago, Dana had knee surgery on her left knee. Because of this surgery, it was probable that the Rectus Femoris would be weaker on her left leg. The Rectus Femoris is a great muscle to test because it is large and superficial. With these two traits, I can confidently say “noise” from other muscles was minimal. After the EMG equipment and LabScribe 2 was set up, I connected the electrodes to the Rectus Femoris on both legs. The green electrode was grounded on her Patella, while the red and black electrodes were attached to the bulk of the Rectus Femoris (about mid and top thigh). The initial test showed a base-line muscle activity for her left (injured leg) Rectus Femoris. During the test, her left leg proceeded to muscle failure, so Brad proceeded to manually treat the left Rectus Femoris by pressing on the origin (Anterior Inferior Iliac Spine) and insertions (Patella and Tibial Tuberosity). We tested the left Rectus Femoris after treatment and found an increase in electrical activity and a visible increase in strength as the muscle did not fail. Next, we tested muscle activity after active-stretching (flexing the opposite muscle causing the Rectus Femoris to extend) and passive stretching (forcibly extending the Rectus Femoris). The passive stretch test showed a decrease in muscle activity on the EMG and proceeded to failure. Brad manually treated it in the same manner as before and we retested the muscle after treatment. Next, we tested the muscle prior to (in a traumatized state) and after isometric exercises. Lying on her back, Dana flexed her hip to 90º, pressed her hand against her knee and resisted six times, holding for six seconds each time. We retested the muscle after this isometric exercise.

RESULTS

The data from each of these tests is quite fascinating. As displayed in Table 1, the greatest muscle activity was during the initial, manual post-treatment, post-active stretch and second, manual post-treatment after the passive stretch. This absolute area average was 0.321u. The weakest muscle activity was recorded during the initial, pre-treatment test, post-passive stretch and pre-isometric tests. Their average absolute area was 0.76u. The percent change for muscle activity after the manual therapy was 275.38% increase (Figure 1). The percent change after isometric treatment was an astounding 609.90% increase in muscle activity (Figure 2). The greatest muscle activity max (2.161) was recorded in the same Rectus Femoris after treatment showing that greatest muscle activity can be achieved through this treatment. In terms of muscle activity, active stretching was more beneficial than not stretching and exponentially more beneficial than passive stretching. After Brad treated the passively stretched muscle, it showed a recovered state of activity.

With regards to stretching, active stretching recorded the second greatest EMG activity and isolated max. By utilizing dynamic (or active) stretching, the integrity of the muscle’s ability to contract is preserved. Passive (or static) stretching recorded the second lowest EMG activity and isolated max—only second to the initial pre-treatment test.

TABLE 1
Rectus Femoris Muscle Activity in Order of Procedure
Rectus Femoris T2-T1 (s) Absolute Area (du/dt) Max (u) Mean (u)
Pre-treatment 1.750 0.668 1.515 0.011
Post-treatment 1.752 0.831 1.755 0.011
Post- active stretch 1.752 0.784 2.203 0.020
Post- passive stretch 1.752 0.195 1.610 0.005
Post-treatment 1.751 0.732 2.158 0.004
Pre- isometrics 1.751 0.101 1.862 0.006
Post- isometrics 1.752 0.717 2.228 0.008

DISCUSSION
Through the data achieved from this lab, evidence suggests that MAT increased muscle activity (which is positively correlated to muscle strength). By pressing on the origin(s) and insertion(s) of a weakened muscle or performing isometric exercises, the proprioceptive sensitivity of the muscle spindles in the weakened muscle can be restored (BioConstructs). With regards to stretching, the evidence suggests that passive stretching is extremely detrimental to muscle activity whereas active stretching is greatly beneficial to muscle activity. Knowing that passive stretching decreases a muscle’s ability to contract efficiently, it can be coupled with MAT isometrics to restore a muscular function to an optimal level. I accept my hypothesis that both manual and isometric MAT treatment increase muscle activity to weakened or injured muscles.

REFERENCES
“Muscle Activation Techniques”. biocontructs.com. 11 Nov. 2010.
< http://www.bioconstructs.com/services_mat.html>
Roskopf, G. “The Science Behind MAT”. muscleactivation.com. 11 Nov. 2010.
< http://www.muscleactivation.com/science.html>

Documentation:
Muscle Activation Technician: Brad Carlson
Athlete: Dana Lyon
This report was reviewed by Lt. Col. Bishop

Melissa A. Beerse
Department of Biology, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado 80840

Go to the video section to SEE what passive stretching does!

Thrust enhancers, roll bars, microchips…the $20 billion running – shoe industry wants us to believe that the latest technologies will cushion every stride. Yet in this extract from his controversial new book, Christopher McDougall claims that injury rates for runners are actually on the rise, that everything we’ve been told about running shoes is wrong – and that it might even be better to go barefoot…

By CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL

Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same

At Stanford University, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company’s sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred.

Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer… nothing.

‘Didn’t we send you enough shoes?’ they asked head coach Vin Lananna. They had, he was just refusing to use them.

‘I can’t prove this,’ the well-respected coach told them.

‘But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries.’

Nike sponsored the Stanford team as they were the best of the very best. Needless to say, the reps were a little disturbed to hear that Lananna felt the best shoes they had to offer them were not as good as no shoes at all.

When I was told this anecdote it came as no surprise. I’d spent years struggling with a variety of running-related injuries, each time trading up to more expensive shoes, which seemed to make no difference. I’d lost count of the amount of money I’d handed over at shops and sports-injury clinics – eventually ending with advice from my doctor to give it up and ‘buy a bike’.

And I wasn’t on my own. Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, fast or slow, pudgy or taut as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone.

But why? How come Roger Bannister could charge out of his Oxford lab every day, pound around a hard cinder track in thin leather slippers, not only getting faster but never getting hurt, and set a record before lunch?

Tarahumara runner Arnulfo Quimare runs alongside ultra-runner Scott Jurek in Mexico’s Copper Canyons

Then there’s the secretive Tarahumara tribe, the best long-distance runners in the world. These are a people who live in basic conditions in Mexico, often in caves without running water, and run with only strips of old tyre or leather thongs strapped to the bottom of their feet. They are virtually barefoot.

Come race day, the Tarahumara don’t train. They don’t stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old.

When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they’re a track coach’s nightmare. They drink like New Year’s Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army.

Unlike their Western counterparts, the Tarahumara don’t replenish their bodies with electrolyte-rich sports drinks. They don’t rebuild between workouts with protein bars; in fact, they barely eat any protein at all, living on little more than ground corn spiced up by their favourite delicacy, barbecued mouse.

How come they’re not crippled?

Modern running shoes on sale

I’ve watched them climb sheer cliffs with no visible support on nothing more than an hour’s sleep and a stomach full of pinto beans. It’s as if a clerical error entered the stats in the wrong columns. Shouldn’t we, the ones with state-of-the-art running shoes and custom-made orthotics, have the zero casualty rate, and the Tarahumara, who run far more, on far rockier terrain, in shoes that barely qualify as shoes, be constantly hospitalised?

The answer, I discovered, will make for unpalatable reading for the $20 billion trainer-manufacturing industry. It could also change runners’ lives forever.

Dr Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, has been studying the growing injury crisis in the developed world for some time and has come to a startling conclusion: ‘A lot of foot and knee injuries currently plaguing us are caused by people running with shoes that actually make our feet weak, cause us to over-pronate (ankle rotation) and give us knee problems.

‘Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet and had a much lower incidence of knee injuries.’

Lieberman also believes that if modern trainers never existed more people would be running. And if more people ran, fewer would be suffering from heart disease, hypertension, blocked arteries, diabetes, and most other deadly ailments of the Western world.

‘Humans need aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy,’ says Lieberman. ‘If there’s any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it’s to run.’

The modern running shoe was essentially invented by Nike. The company was founded in the Seventies by Phil Knight, a University of Oregon runner, and Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon coach.

Before these two men got together, the modern running shoe as we know it didn’t exist. Runners from Jesse Owens through to Roger Bannister all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: their only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. Thumping down on their heels was not an option.

Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention

Bowerman didn’t actually do much running. He only started to jog a little at the age of 50, after spending time in New Zealand with Arthur Lydiard, the father of fitness running and the most influential distance-running coach of all time. Bowerman came home a convert, and in 1966 wrote a best-selling book whose title introduced a new word and obsession to the fitness-aware public: Jogging.

In between writing and coaching, Bowerman came up with the idea of sticking a hunk of rubber under the heel of his pumps. It was, he said, to stop the feet tiring and give them an edge. With the heel raised, he reasoned, gravity would push them forward ahead of the next man. Bowerman called Nike’s first shoe the Cortez – after the conquistador who plundered the New World for gold and unleashed a horrific smallpox epidemic.

It is an irony not wasted on his detractors. In essence, he had created a market for a product and then created the product itself.

‘It’s genius, the kind of stuff they study in business schools,’ one commentator said.

Bowerman’s partner, Knight, set up a manufacturing deal in Japan and was soon selling shoes faster than they could come off the assembly line.

‘With the Cortez’s cushioning, we were in a monopoly position probably into the Olympic year, 1972,’ Knight said.

The rest is history.

The company’s annual turnover is now in excess of $17 billion and it has a major market share in over 160 countries.

Since then, running-shoe companies have had more than 30 years to perfect their designs so, logically, the injury rate must be in freefall by now.

After all, Adidas has come up with a $250 shoe with a microprocessor in the sole that instantly adjusts cushioning for every stride. Asics spent $3 million and eight years (three more years than it took to create the first atomic bomb) to invent the Kinsei, a shoe that boasts ‘multi-angled forefoot gel pods’, and a ‘midfoot thrust enhancer’. Each season brings an expensive new purchase for the average runner.

But at least you know you’ll never limp again. Or so the leading companies would have you believe. Despite all their marketing suggestions to the contrary, no manufacturer has ever invented a shoe that is any help at all in injury prevention.

If anything, the injury rates have actually ebbed up since the Seventies – Achilles tendon blowouts have seen a ten per cent increase. (It’s not only shoes that can create the problem: research in Hawaii found runners who stretched before exercise were 33 per cent more likely to get hurt.)

OXFORD, 1954: Roger Bannister crosses the finish line, running a mile in 3:59.4, in thin leather slippers

In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.

It was an astonishing revelation that had been hidden for over 35 years. Dr Richards was so stunned that a $20 billion industry seemed to be based on nothing but empty promises and wishful thinking that he issued the following challenge: ‘Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?’

Dr Richards waited and even tried contacting the major shoe companies for their data. In response, he got silence.

So, if running shoes don’t make you go faster and don’t stop you from getting hurt, then what, exactly, are you paying for? What are the benefits of all those microchips, thrust enhancers, air cushions, torsion devices and roll bars?

The answer is still a mystery. And for Bowerman’s old mentor, Arthur Lydiard, it all makes sense.

‘We used to run in canvas shoes,’ he said.

‘We didn’t get plantar fasciitis (pain under the heel); we didn’t pronate or supinate (land on the edge of the foot); we might have lost a bit of skin from the rough canvas when we were running marathons, but generally we didn’t have foot problems.

‘Paying several hundred dollars for the latest in hi-tech running shoes is no guarantee you’ll avoid any of these injuries and can even guarantee that you will suffer from them in one form or another. Shoes that let your foot function like you’re barefoot – they’re the shoes for me.’

Soon after those two Nike sales reps reported back from Stanford, the marketing team set to work to see if it could make money from the lessons it had learned. Jeff Pisciotta, the senior researcher at Nike Sports Research Lab, assembled 20 runners on a grassy field and filmed them running barefoot.

When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found. Instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own – stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan.

‘It’s beautiful to watch,’ Pisciotta later told me. ‘That made us start thinking that when you put a shoe on, it starts to take over some of the control.’

Pisciotta immediately deployed his team to gather film of every existing barefoot culture they could find.

‘We found pockets of people all over the globe who are still running barefoot, and what you find is that, during propulsion and landing, they have far more range of motion in the foot and engage more of the toe. Their feet flex, spread, splay and grip the surface, meaning you have less pronation and more distribution of pressure.’

Nike’s response was to find a way to make money off a naked foot. It took two years of work before Pisciotta was ready to unveil his masterpiece. It was presented in TV ads that showed Kenyan runners padding
along a dirt trail, swimmers curling their toes around a starting block, gymnasts, Brazilian capoeira dancers, rock climbers, wrestlers, karate masters and beach soccer players.

And then comes the grand finale: we cut back to the Kenyans, whose bare feet are now sporting some kind of thin shoe. It’s the new Nike Free, a shoe thinner than the old Cortez dreamt up by Bowerman in the Seventies. And its slogan?

‘Run Barefoot.’

The price of this return to nature?

A conservative £65. But, unlike the real thing, experts may still advise you to change them every three months.

Edited extract from ‘Born To Run’ by Christopher McDougall, £16.99, on sale from April 23

PAINFUL TRUTH No 1

THE BEST SHOES AND THE WORST

Runners wearing top-of-the-line trainers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap ones. This was discovered as far back as 1989, according to a study led by Dr Bernard Marti, the leading preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern.

Dr Marti’s research team analysed 4,358 runners in the Bern Grand Prix, a 9.6-mile road race. All the runners filled out an extensive questionnaire that detailed their training habits and footwear for the previous year; as it turned out, 45 per cent had been hurt during that time. But what surprised Dr Marti was the fact that the most common variable among the casualties wasn’t training surface, running speed, weekly mileage or ‘competitive training motivation’.

It wasn’t even body weight or a history of previous injury. It was the price of the shoe. Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.

Follow-up studies found similar results, like the 1991 report in Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise that found that ‘wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (eg, more cushioning, ‘pronation correction’) are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes.’

What a cruel joke: for double the price, you get double the pain. Stanford coach Vin Lananna had already spotted the same phenomenon.’I once ordered highend shoes for the team and within two weeks we had more plantar fasciitis and Achilles problems than I’d ever seen.

So I sent them back. Ever since then, I’ve always ordered low-end shoes. It’s not because I’m cheap. It’s because I’m in the business of making athletes run fast and stay healthy.’

PAINFUL TRUTH No 2

FEET LIKE A GOOD BEATING

Despite pillowy-sounding names such as ‘MegaBounce’, all that cushioning does nothing to reduce impact. Logically, that should be obvious – the impact on your legs from running can be up to 12 times your weight, so it’s preposterous to believe a half-inch of rubber is going to make a difference.

When it comes to sensing the softest caress or tiniest grain of sand, your toes are as finely wired as your lips and fingertips. It’s these nerve endings that tell your foot how to react to the changing ground beneath, not a strip of rubber.

To help prove this point, Dr Steven Robbins and Dr Edward Waked of McGill University, Montreal, performed a series of lengthy tests on gymnasts. They found that the thicker the landing mat, the harder the gymnasts landed. Instinctively, the gymnasts were searching for stability. When they sensed a soft surface underfoot, they slapped down hard to ensure balance. Runners do the same thing. When you run in cushioned shoes, your feet are pushing through the soles in search of a hard, stable platform.

‘Currently available sports shoes are too soft and thick, and should be redesigned if they are to protect humans performing sports,’ the researchers concluded.

To add weight to their argument, the acute-injury rehabilitation specialist David Smyntek carried out an experiment of his own. He had grown wary that the people telling him to trade in his favourite shoes every 300-500 miles were the same people who sold them to him.

But how was it, he wondered, that Arthur Newton, for instance, one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time, who broke the record for the 100-mile Bath-London run at the age of 51, never replaced his thin-soled canvaspumps until he’d put at least 4,000 miles on them?

So Smyntek changed tack. Whenever his shoes got thin, he kept on running. When the outside edge started to go, he swapped the right for the left and kept running. Five miles a day, every day.

Once he realised he could run comfortably in broken-down, even wrong-footed shoes, he had his answer. If he wasn’t using them the way they were designed, maybe that design wasn’t such a big deal after all.

He now only buys cheap trainers.

PAINFUL TRUTH No 3

HUMAN BEINGS ARE DESIGNED TO RUN WITHOUT SHOES

‘Barefoot running has been one of my training philosophies for years,’ says Gerard Hartmann, the Irish physical therapist who treats all the world’s finest distance runners, including Paula Radcliffe.

Ethiopian Abebe Bikila on his way to gold in the 1960 Olympic marathon – running barefoot

For decades, Dr Hartmann has been watching the explosion of ever more structured running shoes with dismay. ‘Pronation has become this very bad word, but it’s just the natural movement of the foot,’ he says. ‘The foot is supposed to pronate.’

To see pronation in action, kick off your shoes and run down the driveway. On a hard surface, your feet will automatically shift to selfdefence mode: you’ll find yourself landing on the outside edge of your foot, then gently rolling from little toe over to big until your foot is flat. That’s pronation – a mild, shockabsorbing twist that allows your arch to compress.

Your foot’s centrepiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Push up from underneath and you weaken the whole structure.

‘Putting your feet in shoes is similar to putting them in a plaster cast,’ says Dr Hartmann. ‘If I put your leg in plaster, we’ll find 40 to 60 per cent atrophy of the musculature within six weeks. Something similar happens to your feet when they’re encased in shoes.’

When shoes are doing the work, tendons stiffen and muscles shrivel. Work them out and they’ll arc up. ‘I’ve worked with the best Kenyan runners,’ says Hartmann, ‘and they all have marvellous elasticity in their feet. That comes from never running in shoes until you’re 17.’

SO SHOULD WE ALL BE RUNNING BAREFOOT?

BY JUSTIN COULTER, SPORTS PODIATRIST

Running barefoot may have some benefit in muscle strengthening as the muscles have to ‘tune in’ to the vibrations caused by impact loading.

If, like Zola Budd, you grew up running barefoot on a South African farm, your tissue tolerance would adapt over time. But for someone who has grown up wearing shoes and is a natural heel striker (see right), the impact loading will be beyond tissue tolerance level, and injury will occur.

We are all individuals, therefore it is prudent to have your own running technique assessed and work around that.

As for getting out your old worn out trainers and running in them – don’t! Based on the individual’s size and running surfaces/conditions shoes should be changed between 500-1,000 miles. It’s best to seek the advice of a specialist running store.

Greg Roskopf was an athlete who found himself constantly falling prey to injury. Rather than continuing exercises that seemed only to exacerbate the problem, he took a different approach to recovery with Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT). MAT focuses on finding the sources of muscle tightness and weakness and remedying them. Globe University / Minnesota School of Business (http://www.msbcollege.edu) is only college in the U.S.A. that has access to the Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT) Jumpstart program, approved by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) for CECs.
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