It's silly to complain about 'super-shoes'

The energy return isn't artificial. The shoes don't give you more energy, they dissipate less energy.

I thought you were supposed to have some science knowledge?

CoachB wrote:

Let's get rid of high jump pits and go back to sawdust. That should get people to stop using that new-fangled fosbury flop!

Starting blocks too! How can Jesse Owens compete anymore?

Carbon fiber and fiberglass vaulting poles.....gone!

I mean, we're talking about the purity of the sport!

I don't like these new synthetic tracks. It's just cheating.

Bring back cinders.

Oodles McDoodles wrote:

I’m not anti-super shoe, I just think one of the fundamental ways we assess athletes (PRs) has changed and that shift happened because World Athletics wrote their regulations based on technology Nike developed rather than the other way around. Can’t unring the bell now.

If the Vaporflys had been developed by another company (maybe a smaller player like Hoka or On), would they have been banned?

C. 100%

There are some absolutely ridiculous arguments on here.

'Some elite athletes claiming 5% improvements'

'4.10 milers now running 4.00'.

Craig Engels hasn't ran any faster in these new super spikes. Neither has Donovan Brazier. Maybe they're not 'super-responders'. Or maybe a 'super responder' is just someone who happens to have trained well since their last PR and naturally has run faster whilst simultaneously wearing some new spikes. For example, Elliot Giles runs 1.43: must be the spikes. Were the spikes not working when he ran 1.45 the week before, or 1.46 the week before that? Or were they not working for Adam Ksczcot(sp?) who was in the exact same race.

If it wasn't for Cheptegei literally passing out during the race, he would have won the World Cross by MILES when he was 19 years old, beating 58.01 man Geoffrey Kamworor. To say that the spikes and those bloody lights is the clear and obvious only way he'd have broken the 5k/10k WR is obscene. There used to even be talk that Kamworor could have broken it [10k] back in 2015/16, so OF COURSE Cheptegei had a reasonable opportunity to do it.

I'm not saying these spikes have absolutely no difference than wearing a regular pair of trainers (but that's kind of the point of racing spikes), but the fact that people genuinely think they turn regular runners into superstars is mental. If they were that good EVERYONE would be running PRs - they're not.

It's an easy excuse to say times were just because of the spikes, but it's boring.

otter wrote:

seriously brah wrote:

That's - that's not at all how the supershoe plates work. Do some research, and then try and say that with a straight face. Even if it was how that worked, that energy isn't any more artificial than the energy returned by foam, which by your logic should be banned?

I'm not buying research funded by shoe companies. Sorry.

I am aware of their running economy theories. So they should take the plates out seeing as they serve no real performance purposes.

Nobody ever said that they don't. But there's no free lunch in physics, the plate isn't giving you "artificial energy". Not to mention that, unless you have a footstrike that's messed up beyond belief, you're barely flexing the plate at all. The purpose of the plate is to stabilize the soft foam and prevent the bending of the MTP joints, which unlike the arch of the foot and the Achilles, return no energy when flexed. As to your argument, there's plenty of shoes with plates that provide almost no benefits over regular shoes. Do you see anyone complaining about the Zoom Fly or Hoka Carbon X? The shoes don't work without a plate and the proper foam.

otter wrote:

The difference is the shoes use a carbon plate for stored energy from the weight of the runner to spring the athlete forward. The energy is artificial. Should we be ok with allowing motors to assist for bicycle races? If you understand physics well enough, you would know there is no difference.

This is the most ignorant post in the thread so far.

But i don't blame him. Shoe reviewers are constantly spreading misinformation on the topic.

The peak is when on videos they bend the shoe and release while throwing it up in the air and say LookAtThatEnergyReturn!!! Clown's. Its pathetic how a shoe reviewer cant even take time to do some research because they are more obsessed with pumping out entertaining videos/articles.

Notable Exception being TheDoctorsOfRunning....

Nick Young wrote:

There are some absolutely ridiculous arguments on here.

'Some elite athletes claiming 5% improvements'

'4.10 milers now running 4.00'.

It's an easy excuse to say times were just because of the spikes, but it's boring.

I "quoted" a line from an article saying that that some elites think the improvement could be up to 5%. That was not my estimate.

In the same article Nick Willis said it was significant and worth at least 2-3 seconds on a 1200 time trial. That is almost 2% for a guy of his ability. More so, I trust his opinion that they are definitly an aid.

How much no one knows including you and me. The only way to really learn would be for those setting huge PR's to race in regular spikes and that is not going to happen.

My only contention is asking how much improvement this or any technology would have to be for athletes to question what it is doing to the sport.

As far as boring; I find it boring when the first question asked after an AR or WR is "what shoes were they wearing?"

If we knew the precise % improvement of the shoes, what would be your allowable limit.....or can we strap a rocket on our backs?