Ryan

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

A lot of interesting things to read this week but I’m going to focus on an old myth that I bought into myself and another old myth that I never truly understood.

Fitness and sweating

First, the one I believed. I remember a long time ago being told that out of shape people sweat more than someone of average fitness but then the trend turns as you gain higher levels of fitness. One of the adaptations of becoming more fit is that you sweat more to moderate body heat.

Well, maybe not…

Essentially, fitter runners sweat more because they run faster and burn more energy, creating more heat. They produce more heat through burning more energy so they sweat more to regulate that heat. Put people of different fitness levels on a treadmill at the same pace and, as a whole, they sweat the same amount.

The catch is that efficiency matters. If you’re less efficient, you burn more energy, produce more heat and sweat more. Not real surprising.

I’m not sure how much we can take away from this other than correcting a myth and appreciating another benefit of improving our efficiency.

Muscles support the arch

For as long as I can remember, the talking point on the feet was that ligaments do the bulk of the work in the foot. They support the arch to act in a spring-like manner. That always left me wondering, why do we even have muscles in the foot? They aren’t big muscles that can be used in propelling us forward. So what are they doing? It only made sense to me that they work with the ligaments to support the arch and other structures of the foot.

Now, we have some evidence that this is the case.

In this article, the discussion is on how this knowledge might affect running shoe design. Maybe because I’m mostly interested in training, though, I instantly began thinking about what this means to training paradigms. We shouldn’t be ignoring the muscles of the foot. We should be strengthening them right along with the muscles of the leg. I would love to see some research but my gut says maybe doing so would reduce the risk of foot injuries that plague too many runners.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I’m going to focus this week on research involving running shoes. Exciting, right? Well, here it is:

Why aren’t shoes preventing running injuries?

Good question, explored here.

A change in footwear can affect the amount of impact the body absorbs during running, but it doesn’t change the fundamental stress of the activity.

I would change that slightly. Based on what I’ve seen and some basic laws of physics, I believe it would be better stated that a change in footwear can affect how the body absorbs impact during running. The amount is at least very close to constant and the fundamental stresses are still very similar. You’re just moving those stresses from one joint or muscle group to the other when you change shoes. If you know that, for you individually, you have strengths and weaknesses, you might be able to find a shoe that works with them and reduce your injury risk. As a whole, though, no one shoe is going to reduce our injury risk. Only move the injuries from one part of the body to the other.

Shoes and running economy

What kind of shoe is the most economical? Interesting question. Here’s a meta-analysis (review of many studies) that looked at different kinds of shoes and running economy.

Certain models of footwear and footwear characteristics can improve running economy. Future research in footwear performance should include measures of running performance.

I agree with that second sentence. As for the results of this meta-analysis, it’s basically the following:

Cushioned shoes appear to improve running economy more than stiff-soled shoes.

Weight matters a lot. Minimal shoes and light shoes are more economical than more standard or heavy shoes.

No surprises here, based on what I’ve seen in the past. Is anyone surprised that having a heavier weight on the end of the pendulum that is your leg will require more energy to move it? This is why racing shoes are light and the lightest racing shoes heavily advertise their featherweight features. We all know lighter is more economical. Also, past studies have shown that cushioned shoes allow us to relieve our muscles from some of the demands of cushioning our step. Less hard working muscles means less energy expended means more economical.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, though. It’s good to see the science confirming what we’ve already known.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

This week, I’d like to focus on two interesting studies I’ve seen in my feeds recently.

Placebo doping?

I’ve wondered for some time how much doping really helps athletes and whether there’s some placebo effect going on. It would only make sense really that there is some placebo effect.

Well, along comes a study to test this:

Compared to control, the injected placebo improved 3 km race time by 1.2%. This change is of clear sporting relevance, but is smaller than the performance improvement elicited by r-HuEPO administration.

This result shouldn’t be surprising. There is a placebo effect but we know those drugs do benefit runners so we should expect that the real thing is even more effective. Nevertheless, interesting to see some actual results and numbers behind all of this.

Foam rolling and DOMS

I’m sure most runners who use foam rollers have realized that DOMS can be reduced in some cases significantly and that we run better when using it.

Again, to little surprise, we have a study that confirms this:

Foam rolling effectively reduced DOMS and associated decrements in most dynamic performance measures.

No surprises. Sometimes, even when we’re sure we already know something, it’s nice to see science confirm this knowledge. Above are two cases where science has recently done just that.