Running

Errr… so the forefoot/midfoot/ minimal thing is clearly something that polarises opinions but here are my many pennies worth. I should add that I speak from a precarious position in that I'm currently injured although I actually feel that my injury would have been less likely had I spent more time in my VFFs, not less.

1) People need to be careful what they are talking about when they are discussing fore/mid/barefoot striking. I think a lot of confusion arises out of mixing of terms and lack of clarity. An example is that gait is not necessarily dictated by footwear. Of course it would be unpleasant to heel strike in minimal shoes, but there are many people who's have always run with a fore/midfoot strike irrespective of footwear. Going the other way, runners in minimal footwear are not constrained to a forefoot strike, it is eminently possible to run with a midfoot strike in minimal footwear. People bandy all tees terms around as if they were hard and fast categories whereas in my mind the distinctions are a lot more blurred - where does the midfoot end and the forefoot begin anyway!?!

2) People also seem to have got very het up about the the debate as if one side or other were idealistically opposed to the other and that there could be no middle ground. Utter nonsense - what might work for one person may or may not work for another but I don't think that there is an absolute wright or wrong either way.

3) IMO fore/mid/minimal running is not inherently wrong and it does not cause any more injuries than heel-striking in conventional trainers, further, I believe that no data exists to counteract this statement. However, making big changes to your technique suddenly and without proper preparation certainly does cause injuries. I would suspect that most of the injuries people talk about WRT fore/mid/mnimal running arise not out of any inherent problem with the technique but rather from inexperienced runners jumping on the bandwagon and rushing the transition.

4) From my own experience I used to have a heel striking gait but was marred with injury up until 2009. Since then I bought a pair of VFFs and slowly worked on building up my atrophied calf muscles and transitioning towards a midfoot gait. I have run in Newtons but now run in light weight shoes with minimal heel-toe drop and maximal flexibility in the sole. Since making this transition I have run further and faster than ever before and with fewer injuries. Additional benefits are that the less footwear I wear, the more contact I feel with the trail and the faster and more confident I feel I am able to negotiate difficult terrain.

5) finally it seems to be the most polarising aspect of the debate, but the underlying thought process of minimal running strikes an intellectual and philosophical chord with me. Without calling on the hackneyed examples of the Tarahumara or the Bushmen, humans are clearly very well adapted to running (particularly mid-long distances). For thousands of years humans have run fast without the need for excessive padding, I fail to see why it is now a necessity.