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Kenyan adolescent: never worn shoes (Photo: Harvard University)
A new study finds that people who run barefoot move very differently from people who run in modern athletic shoes. The research, conducted in the U.S. and Kenya, found that shoeless runners land on the front or middle of the foot, whereas shod runners land on the heel. The researchers say running in shoes — as most Americans do — causes the body to strike the ground with more force and may increase the odds of athletic injuries. Keith Seinfeld of station KPLU reports.Download MP3
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. The African nation of Kenya has produced more than its share of elite athletes, many of them marathon runners. In a few minutes we’ll hear from one Kenyan who is hoping to compete in this year’s Winter Olympics. But first a study just published in the journal Nature suggests the way some Kenyans run, that is barefoot, may be better for their bodies than running in shoes. Reporter Keith Seinfeld of station KPLU has our story.
KEITH SEINFELD: Dan Lieberman is an evolutionary biologist at Harvard. He studies how humans run.
DAN LIEBERMAN: And I have always wondered how it is that people ran before shoes.
KEITH SEINFELD: Before shoes people obviously ran barefoot or in some sort of sandals. Even today some people run barefoot and Lieberman decided to study them. He put a barefoot runner on a special track that measures how hard your feet hit the ground. He was shocked. The runner’s feet registered almost no impact compared to a typical runner in fancy running shoes. To determine what’s going on with the body when a person runs without shoes, Lieberman then studied dozens of runners, with and without shoes, in the U.S. and in Africa.
DAN LIEBERMAN: So we went to Kenya where there is still a lot of people who grow up barefoot and do a lot of running. In fact, some of the world’s best runners come from the region we went to. It’s in the highlands of the Rift Valley.
KEITH SEINFELD: The scientists recruited kids, ages 12 to 16 from two different schools; one rural, where everyone is barefoot and one in a town where they all wear shoes. Lieberman’s team prepared a crude running track.
DAN LIEBERMAN: We used the driveway, a long dirt road. We cleaned it up so there was no pebbles on it. Just sort of a nice clean, smooth road.
KEITH SEINFELD: And then they used a high speed video camera to study how the kids ran. Lieberman’s team analyzed exactly how the kids’ feet, ankles, legs and hips moved. The kids who grew up with shoes ran just like your average American. As their feet touch the ground they landed on their heels before pushing off with their toes. The kids who grew up not wearing shoes ran very differently.
DAN LIEBERMAN: Most of the time, they landed very gradually on the ball of the foot.
KEITH SEINFELD: That is, on the front of the foot. Lieberman says one way to understand this kind of running is to go outside, jog to a corner and then keep moving while waiting for the light to change.
DAN LIEBERMAN: The best way to do it is just to run in place.
KEITH SEINFELD: Okay, so we’re standing on the sidewalk.
DAN LIEBERMAN: And you’re just about to cross and you’re waiting for the cars to come by and you run in place and you land with your foot right underneath your hip. First your toes come down, right? And then your heel comes down, right?
KEITH SEINFELD: And if I were to try to come down on my heel like this I would feel really like I’m jolting my body.
DAN LIEBERMAN: Right, right. So what barefoot runners do is they run like that. They actually land with their foot more underneath their hips. They have this very compliant, soft landing.
KEITH SEINFELD: Lieberman says running this way requires more strength in your foot and calf muscles because they’re working a lot harder acting like shock absorber. But Lieberman’s lab measurements confirm what proponents of barefoot running have been saying all along; landing this way, even if you’re totally barefoot on a hard sidewalk, actually causes less impact on your body than landing in a fancy pair of running shoes on your padded heel. Whether running barefoot style leads to fewer injuries to the feet and spine, that requires further study. For The World, I’m Keith Seinfeld.
MARCO WERMAN: We should note that the Harvard study was funded in part by Vibram, U.S.A. That company has long made soles for shoes and it now makes footwear that mimics the experience of going barefoot.
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I wonder if this article was inspired by the recent book by Christopher McDougall called “Born to Run”. He debunks ALL the hype about running shoes and the associated problems in foot, knee, arch; pronation, supination, etc, etc; saying that the human foot is uniquely designed to run. Running shoes create a problem where there was none. Go figure.
Did you know, In 1960, a shoeless Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the 1960 Olympics marathon in record time.
[...] (For the full story on going barefoot, see the story I produced for KPLU, or the one for The World.) [...]