is the minimalist shoe movement dead?

Why? Does it bother you in any way that other people enjoy running in minimalist shoes?

I used to run 6-8 miles, 2x week on a golf course, barefoot. My conclusion was that I'm glad we have running shoes.

I do a good bit of my running barefoot since it fixes my shin splints. I do most of my runs with shoes, but I'll do cooldowns barefoot if my shins are bothering me, plus 5 miles sometime in the week. If I'm doing track stuff I'll do part of it barefoot, along with all strides/200s .

It took some getting used to, but I stopped having shin splints literally as I'd start a run barefoot, so it wasn't too bad of a trade. The biggest difference is how much it works your calves, though, mine are almost always wrecked if I run hard barefoot lol

The answer is simple. Because its not good for your health.

Running creates a lot of impact on the body, this is a fact. A good shoe helps to protect the body, you can do more miles. This is latest sience reflected in marathon/hm shoe technology. They have a good and also responsive cushion. If the shoe does not absorb the impact energy the body has to. If you run barefood the impact forces are still there.

Not good for your health? You are extrapolating way too much from shoe research. You run experiments/trials in science, and get results that you can analyze, but care must be taken not too stretch the conclusions of any given study beyond the conditions of the study and study participants.

Impact is not necessarily a bad thing. I haven't tried the new supershoes yet, but I never got injured in my first 22 years or so of high mileage running, some of it in minimalistic flats even before LR threads from about two decades ago. Your body adapts to impact and gets stronger. That's the thinking of needing to run on pavement instead of all trails if you were wanting to race a marathon (at least before supershoes). No matter what you wear, running is still an impact sport, which is a good thing in comparison to cycling for one, where long-timers often have bone density issues.

Minimalist running might be dead for mainstream running, and running for performance, but it's not a bad thing for other reasons such as certain aspects of health and lifestyle and just wanting to run barefoot. There are certainly good things about minimalist running and gear and barefoot running and what came out of that time, and I say that as someone whose regular shoes are Hokas.

For example, before that era, almost all shoes had a 1/2" (12-13mm) heel rise, which never worked well for me. Thanks to that era, apparently heel height has been reconsidered by the industry and heels that high have basically been eliminated. Now there is a variety from 0mm to about 10mm. There is also better recognition about some runners' need for wide toe boxes - recognition that too tight shoes are a bit like ancient Chinese foot binding in that a lot of runners' ugly and deformed feet, toes, nails, bunions, etc. are caused by too tight and small shoes.

Things I like about barefoot/minimalistic running, even as I don't do much:

- Runners who are adapted must have developed really foot strength and good bone density in their feet. That's a good thing. Anyone going to argue otherwise about the 2:3x barefoot marathoner and the 28:xx 10000 Vibram guy? Counterpoint: most adults won't easy adapt and build sufficient bone density to do that, and many who try get injuries like metatarsal stress fractures. Best solution: Start as a kid and do enough barefoot/minimalistic running to maintain that ability in as an adult. You don't have to care about it, but it's a cool ability to have in my opinion, and I wish I could do it.

- Runners who are adapted to barefoot running have longer Achilles, just like women who habitually wear high heels have shortened Achilles. Like the bone density point, adults trying to adapt to lower heels or no heel rise are very likely going to have injuries related to this. But if you start as a kid and generally wear no-heel every day shoes and trainers, saving the higher heels for races, you'd probably end up having a longer Achilles and (admittedly some speculation since studies would take far too long) fewer Achilles and related issues like Haglund's. I grew up in a no-shoes-worn-in-the-house family, so I'm used to being minimalist at home and in the yard at least, but you don't cover enough miles at home to become well adapted to running barefoot if you've always worn shoes for that.

- Barefoot/minimal running doesn't guarantee good form, but it does help some people. Shifts the balance of potential injury issues from the knee/shins more toward the feet but that might be the balance that someone needs.

- It'd be bad ass to win races barefoot. It'd just be cool to have that foot strength and use it on occasion, as much as it's cool to have climber strength and do climber strength things. (I used to do fingertip pullups and flips off the door jams at home for instance.) Perhaps one of my best high school memories ever was running barefoot with my team in Santa Cruz between beaches the afternoon after racing Wharf to Wharf.

- Barefoot strides on grass feels good.

- If I could redo my shoe history from when I was a kid with knowledge I have now, I'd very likely not have bunions, Haglunds, slightly deformed pinky/ring toes, sesamoid issues, Achilles tendon issues, etc. I'd be able to some barefoot runs for fun several times a week while using shoes for performance as a choice on other days.

- Not everything about running is for performance. I run a ton still, but haven't raced in years, so doing something just because it's fun is a good enough reason.

What is trackhead up to these days? I assume he moved on from the minimalist craze.

“Transitioning to minimalist shoes is definitely stressful to the bones,” said Sarah Ridge, study lead author and assistant professor of exercise science at BYU. “You have to be careful in how you transition and most people don’t think about that; they just want to put the shoes on and go.”

At the end of the 10-week period, MRIs were again conducted. The MRIs revealed that those who had transitioned to the minimalist shoes suffered greater increases in bone marrow edema (inflammation causing excessive fluid in the bone) and more stress injuries than those in traditional shoes.

Does the reebok floatride energy or the adidas boston count as minimalist shoes? Mine weigh just over 7 ounces.

The only thing that study proves is that if you exercise you’ll have inflammation. Any exercise or strengthening will cause inflammation. Not a bad thing. If allowed the recovery you will become stronger for it, and being barefoot will strengthen your feet and improve coordination. That is a very good thing.

the minimalist movement isn’t dead, it just got “mainstreamed”. No we’re not running in traditional 3oz flats but, plates aside, compare the shoes of now to the shoes before the minimalist craze and it’s clear that the point was made. “Stability” isn’t a big thing anymore and everything is far lighter. Now you’re starting to see the new tech reach normal shoes; streakfly, Rebel 2, SC Pacer, etc… sure they’re likely to be higher stack but the foams are so much squishier than they need the height to avoid bottoming out. Old EVA didn’t t have that problem.

When i ran actively, I did everything from recovery runs to marathons in e.g. Asics Pirahnas, maybe up to Saucony Type A7. Running has since passed me by, so it says little that I still run in such shoes (I would be slow either way). However, the one advantage was that I could put on any shoe, be it Hokas or penny loafers, and run 40km without caring - my lower legs were never bothered. I forgot my shoes to a conference one time and did 70km in three training sessions wearing a pair of old dress shoes with wooden soles, no problem.

I had a pair of Xeros and I loved them for walking. I also taught myself how to run forefoot on them. I tried Nike Frees and they hurt my feet. Thats when I started just going back to traditional shoes including some altras. I love the lone peaks for trails.

One problem is our sedentary lifestyle. We are not used to stand long, we are not used to walk long, we have lost our flexibility here and there (e.g. hip flexor) etc. Sitting has degraded us. Most people are not used to run or even walk barefoot. Not all of course. That alone makes a change to minimal shoes risky and highly injury likely.

We both agree that running is a (high) impact sport. The landing energy must be absorbed somewhere. There is a cost of cushioning. The body can heal things up to a point, however year-long regular damage to the muscels, bones and joints because of the impact of running, are bad for us.

From performance standpoint: If you don't believe in science then believe the professionals. Kipchoge or any other serious marathon runner wants to run the marathon below 2h, he tried it at least 2 times. If he would be faster in minimal or even no shoes he or another runner whould wear it. Period. The opposite is the case: They wear and use well cushioned responsive shoes to protect the muscles, bones and joints. They get less fatigued during a marathon, because of less muscle damage etc. Muscle damages are reducing muscle/run performance. So protecting the body by wearing those shoes, lowers the times. Nike, Adidas, etc. they are all on this train now.

In a lot of sports the material plays a big role. It is naive to think that is not the case with running.

A drop in the shoe helps to move forward, because you should lean forward while running.
Running is not walking. A 12mm drop is too high, i agree, but there is more and more evidence that there seem to be an optimum drop height somewhere between 4-8mm.

I remember seeing people RACE 5ks on the road without shoes...

I don't think this is quite right. Not only CAN the body heal damage, it relies on that damage to maintain the system. That's partly why swimmers and bikers lose bone density, and why you lose cartilage thickness on bed rest. So some impact is a good thing, and as long as you eat enough and aren't getting injured it's probably not doing long term damage.

IMO the long term effects of some of the recent innovations that shift loads off the foot/calf/ankle, like carbon fiber plates or steep rockers, are more questionable. Are you going to overload something higher up the chain? Especially if using these shoes as trainers, which seems to be the current direction from shoe companies.

For you the answer to why you wouldn't use a minimalist shoe is simple but it doesn't explain why you care about what other people run in.

The physiology is pretty simple. Wear less shoe, gain more power. It was a fad, but only because fads come and go and as someone mentioned already "the pendulum swings."

There is a lot of power to be developed in the foot and lower leg that you don't do running on a mattress all the time. I think a great hybrid approach would be to run in minimalist shoes some of the time for the strength-building and to race and some harder road efforts in supershoes, certainly racing.

I went into to the local store and found a great minimalist shoe that was being dumped for half price $84 as they will be dinosaurs shortly (apparently).....love them....the primary issue with people getting injured during the minimalist fad was due to suddenly moving to a minimalist shoe all the time....yeah...not going to work....its a process.

Would be interested in the support for the claim that it's not good for my health.

lexel,

Get "impact" and "pounding" (if you use the latter term) out of your lexicon, at least as negatives.

I concur with others, not on a hunch, but on basic human physiology, that the stresses we create is stimulus, we recover and the body adapts to be able to do that impact/stimulus again...and adaptation continues. This is exactly why you do it, to have impact-stimulus-recovery-adaption process.

The power that can be developed in the foot with minimalist shoe (done responsibly) is an important part of running. Watch a ballet dancer. The power they have in the foot is incredible. Leonardo da Vinci, found that the foot is incredible in terms of human engineering if that is a phrase....like a suspension bridge.

relative to plated supershoes and sprint spikes, minimal shoes and barefoot running is equivalent to wearing a motion control shoe

the barefoot fanatics are caught up in a naturalistic fallacy rather than striving for some good training stimulus

sure motion control shoes are bad and block range of motion, but shoes can also be built in a manner to give you range of motion beyond what barefoot can offer