Custom Running Shoes May Not Prevent Injuries.

I often get asked about 'what type of shoe should I wear?'. 

My response:  "The one that feels best."

I'm not being snide; on the contrary, just truthful.  As a former runner and lifelong active person, I've learned through trial and error that the best shoe is the one that feels best on your feet.

Now, a new study suggests that wearing sneakers tailored to your foot shape might not protect you against injuries.

New Balance, the maker of shoes used in the study, helps runners choose the best shoe for them by determining their foot shape, among other factors, in the company's online "Find your Total Fit" feature.

However, this technique is not sufficient for prescribing footwear if your objective is to prevent injuries according to an investigator on the study who manages the injury prevention program at the U.S. Army Public Health Command.

Shoe companies market different sneaker models to runners based on how their feet roll inward and distribute their weight when they hit the ground -- a term referred to as pronation.

Overpronators have feet that roll too far inward on each stride, while the feet of underpronators don't roll enough. Shoes are marketed under the assumption that by adjusting for some of these differences, runners can improve their mechanics and thus prevent injury.

However Marine Corps recruits who were fitted for sneakers with the pronation measurement method (commonly used at specialty running shoe stores) got injured just as frequently as those who were all given a basic shoe made for runners who pronate normally.

Close to 1,400 Marine Corps recruits -- both men and women -- all had their foot shape analyzed and were randomly assigned to one of two groups.

One group got a running shoe that was marketed for their type of pronation: runners whose footprints indicated they were overpronators got a motion control shoe, underpronators got a cushion shoe, and those with normal pronation got a stability shoe.

Members of the other group were all assigned stability shoes, regardless of their foot shape and pronation. Then the recruits wore their assigned shoes, alternating with combat boots, for 12 weeks of training.

During the study, a record was kept tallying the different types of injuries in the recruits, including overuse injuries and injuries to tendons and ligaments as well as bones and muscles.

With various data/statistical analyses methods, there was little difference in how often members of the two groups got injured. This was true for both genders.

In all, about 42 percent of men assigned custom fitted shoes and 41 percent of men in the stability shoe group got injured over the 12-week training period. For women, approximately 37 percent in custom fitted shoes and about 45 percent in stability shoes regardless of their foot type were injured -- a difference that was not statistically significant.

The findings agree with similar studies the investigators have done with military recruits. And when data from the three studies was combined together, there still wasn't a significant difference in injury rates based on shoe assignment.

New Balance representatives could not be reached for comment.

Oh, really???  Hmmm, wonder why?

Snideness aside, some researchers question whether the measurement technique is really a valid one for injury prediction.  

In my years of experience as a clinician, I would say that's probably correct.  They should be looking at other functional tests to determine injury risk.   This has already been done in other areas, such as ACL (knee ligament) tears, though the evidence doesn't exist for foot injuries.

How can someone's footprint really indicate whether they will have an injury?

Ultimately, what the head researcher concluded: "What it means," he said, "is that you can choose the shoe you like most and that feels the best."

Isn't that what I said?