Friday, February 25, 2011

The Inflence of Children's Shoes on Gait and Running

This is a great article that is free and you may want to save to your hard drive:

http://www.jfootankleres.com/content/pdf/1757-1146-4-3.pdf

Take a look and let me know what you think.

4 comments:

sal m said...

"Shoes affect the gait of children. With shoes, children walk faster by taking longer steps with greater ankle and knee motion and increased tibialis anterior activity.

Shoes reduce foot motion and increase the support phases of the gait cycle. During running, shoes reduce swing phase leg speed, attenuate some shock and encou-rage a rearfoot strike pattern."

Is any of this surprising? I'm no research maven, but this seems to be about what I'd expect. I guess it can also show how bad shoes can mess up a kid's mechanics.

Brian Green said...

Let me guess...we should all start burning our shoes and run barefoot....?

Joe Przytula said...

As I've gotten older (and maybe wiser) I am coming to the conclusion that its more than structure alone. Many look to footware/orthotics as the panacea for knee-down issues and its not. It comes down to physical competency- full body strength especially about the pelvis. So Brian, extended barefoot running is going to create a lot of work for us, because it is being used out of context by the mass media. Sal, what I'm taking out of this is too much padding and motion control is no sub for the training the body's shock absorber system.

sal m said...

I agree, no shoe regardless of the construction will correct/make up for poor mechanics. Neither will bare foot.