Content area
Full text
Introduction
Running-related injuries are common, especially among novice runners taking up a running regime. 1 Foot pronation is believed to be a strong risk factor for injury, and a correct choice of footwear based on the runner's foot type has been suggested as a major intervention to prevent such injuries. 2 Motion control shoes are commonly prescribed to runners with highly pronated feet to pronated feet while stability shoes are recommended to persons with neutral to pronated feet and neutral shoes to persons with neutral to supinated feet. 3 This strategy, which has been used over three decades, has affected runners' choice of running shoes since 73% of all cross-country runners identify foot posture compatibility with shoe design as the most important factor in choosing a running shoe. 4 However, in a review from 2009, Richards et al 2 concluded that prescribing a specific shoe type based on the foot posture to distance runners was not evidence-based.
Ryan et al 5 recently questioned the efficacy and safety of prescribing motion control shoes to distance runners. On the basis of their findings in a randomised controlled trial, persons running in motion control shoes sustained both a greater number of injuries and had a higher risk of missed training days than persons running in stability or neutral shoes. In another study, no significant difference in injury risk was found between persons who were selected to receive motion control, stability or neutral shoes based on the foot's plantar shape compared with persons who received a stability shoe regardless of plantar shape. 6 This result was confirmed in two later studies. 7 8
Recent evidence therefore seems to contradict the traditional position that presupposes that supinated feet are best served in neutral shoes, highly pronated feet in motion control shoes and neutral feet in neutral or stability shoes. If, in fact, foot pronation is no strong risk factor for running-related injury, interventions to control foot movement among healthy individuals taking up a running regime may be superfluous. If this is true, pronators and neutrals should face a similar risk of sustaining running-related injuries when taking up running in a conventional, neutral running shoe. However, such hypothesis remains to be investigated. The purpose of the present study was to investigate...