Running barefoot is the way to go for that gold

Some of Kenya’s star athletes at the world cross-country championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, sprinted to the finishing line barefoot.

Would they have done even better in shoes?

“Hardly not – they had got it right”, says Prof Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University.

After sampling 200 elite runners from Kenya and the US, Prof Lieberman and colleagues from the universities of Moi, in Eldoret, and Glasgow, in the UK, say barefoot running is safer and more comfortable than shod feet.

“Most people today think barefoot running is dangerous and hurts, but actually you can run barefoot on the world’s hardest surfaces without the slightest discomfort and pain,” says Prof Lieberman, who has done extensive studies on sports medicine.

Although most of the top flight runners are in expensive and powerfully advertised shoe brands, several Kenyans who beat the world on Sunday, including bronze medallist Esther Cherono, were shoeless.

The team, in a study published in the Nature journal in January, looked at more than 200 shod and unshod runners in the United States and Kenya’s Rift Valley Province.

The volunteers represented a spectrum of shoe experience, including adults who had grown up wearing shoes, those who had grown up running shoeless but who now wore shoes, and those who had never worn shoes at all.

According to the study, the team arranged a trial in which each group ran shod and barefoot and measured their running gait and the impact on their bodies.

The team found that the shod runners landed on the ground almost four times more heavily than shoeless runners, while the latter indicated a more comfortable “ride” with less possibility of injury.

“As their feet collide with the running track, barefoot runners experience a shock of only 0.5 to 0.7 times their body weight, whereas the shod experience 1.5 to two times their body weight; a threefold to fourfold difference,” says the study.

Like many who watched the Kenyans make mincemeat of the rest of the world and marvelled at some barefoot youngsters, the scholars were also surprised by their own findings.

“I always assumed it was painful and crazy to run barefoot,” Prof Lieberman told Science Daily.

The study suggests that barefoot running can reduce the likelihood of pain and damage, because many running injuries are induced by the impact from hitting the track.

The team, however, does not recommend the doing away with running shoes for two key reasons. One is that shoes protect runners from glass and other debris on the ground, and two, because it would meet strong resistance from the multi-billion dollar sportswear industry.

“The upright man has the unique springy gait that is mainly designed for running. Homo sapiens, unlike the predecessors, have evolved a strong, large arch that we use as a spring when running. Our feet were made in part for running,” says Prof Lieberman.