Are Highly Cushioned Shoes Harder On Your Joints?

I’m gonna say it’s more about your foot pronating or supinating more than usual due to the soft cushioning. Experienced something similar with knee pain after picking up a pair of NB Propel v1 for recovery runs hoeing the softness would help me snap back faster. Did a run in them, noticed knee soreness after strides, took a couple moths to subside. Still use the shoes occasionally after strengthening the area.

the dog wrote:

I’m gonna say it’s more about your foot pronating or supinating more than usual due to the soft cushioning. Experienced something similar with knee pain after picking up a pair of NB Propel v1 for recovery runs hoeing the softness would help me snap back faster. Did a run in them, noticed knee soreness after strides, took a couple moths to subside. Still use the shoes occasionally after strengthening the area.

Interesting. So the soft cushioning will exacerbate imbalances / weaknesses?

Kenaneeser Beckelay wrote:

the dog wrote:

I’m gonna say it’s more about your foot pronating or supinating more than usual due to the soft cushioning. Experienced something similar with knee pain after picking up a pair of NB Propel v1 for recovery runs hoeing the softness would help me snap back faster. Did a run in them, noticed knee soreness after strides, took a couple moths to subside. Still use the shoes occasionally after strengthening the area.

Interesting. So the soft cushioning will exacerbate imbalances / weaknesses?

This was my theory anyway - I didn’t have any knee issues until wearing those shoes a total of once. Those Propels aren’t just soft, but huge, sloppy and soft. Maybe all three things combined got me. Good thing they were cheap!

Kenaneeser Beckelay wrote:

Are highly cushioned shoes harder on your joints than more traditionally cushioned shoes? I’ve been really enjoying the Nike ZoomX Invincible’s, but have noticed a bit of knee pain. I’ve never had any knee pain from running before, which got me thinking.

I’ve read that higher cushioned shoes just moves the force of ground impact ‘elsewhere’. I don’t know if that is true or not. Anybody else experience pain from highly cushioned shoes?

I know of a bunch of runners who have run in such shoes (no plate, highly cushioned) who really enjoy running in them but many have had glute/piriformis issues.

This apparently doesn't apply to trail running shoes.

I've been running in the Invincibles and NB 1080 and have got a pain in the calf and shin,not sure if it's related but seems possible,will go back to my gt 2000 and see how it goes.

I have developed substantial knee pain in my left knee since starting to wear the invincibles. It feels more like tendinitis at this point. Someone else mentioned it may be the zoomx and lack of structure provided by the plate. Despite finding the shoes comfortable in the moment I am done with them.

In general, the emerging consensus is no. You will naturally adjust your stride to allow for the same amount of impact force, regardless of how much cushioning you have. If you wear minimal shoes, you will land softer and use eccentric muscle contractions for cushioning. If you wear cushioned shoes, you will land harder and use less eccentric contraction because the cushioning is doing that work for you. In either case, the total load ends up being the same. (I'm speaking colloquially.) More cushioning makes you faster by replacing metabolically costly eccentric muscle contractions with metabolically free (except for the added weight) mechanical cushioning.

That doesn't mean that a particular shoe won't cause problems for you, but it's usually not the mere fact that it's highly cushioned. Every shoe interacts with your body in a slightly different way, which causes different stride patterns, potentially exposing different weaknesses and imbalances. Disentangling all this is difficult. My rule of thumb is to immediately switch shoes if I start getting a new pain. Keep several in your rotation regardless. Rotating shoes has been shown to likely reduce injuries. Small changes in stride probably reduce the chance of repetitive stress from doing EXACTLY the same thing all the time.

Yes if they're too squishy.

I've recently been having some ankle discomfort. I have been running in the Invincibles the past few weeks, about 120mi total since I got them, all easy or long run stuff.

This week I've been rotating between a pair of Nike Streak 7s, Peg 37s and Next%s... not ankle pain, at all.

My hypothesis is just how squishy and unstructured the Invincibles are is causing instability. I don't get this issue in Next%s, Alphaflys, Tempo Next%s or in the Peg Turbos. Zoomx is great stuff but it needs a carrier foam or plate to make it really work. Zoomx + React (peg turbo) or Zoomx + a plate (carbon or nylon) work well and take the squish out. Zoomx alone is just too unstructured, even with the flared out forefoot and tons of rubber on the outsole.

I enjoy running in the Invincibles but only see myself using them on super slow and short recovery days (around 5k). Anymore and my ankles don't seem to like them, at all.

The other thing about the Invincibles is that they do change your stride. I can't seem to comfortably run up on my toes in them. They force me to land mid foot or even flat, especially when I fatigue a the end of runs. I saw most YouTube commentators talk about this stride issue as well. I know I feel it. I also bet that has something to do with the sore ankles I'm getting.

Agree with everything here.. the invincible is so much fun to run in, but when any shoe causes you pain there is cause for alarm.

I’ve never had any sort of knee pain before, so this really freaked me out.

I think Nike will be receiving a lot of these shoes back as late returns with their 60 day return policy.

It’s the most fun I’ve had in a running shoe in a long time, but at the cost of knee or other joint pain, no way.

Thx for bringing this up. Personally speaking, yes - but, depends on what you're used to. I'm 69, been running for 43+ years, so I'm a long-term experiment of one. I was weaned on waffle trainers, adidas trx trainers, and the first of many classics like the gel-lyte, epirus, saucony flite, etc.

In the early-mid 80s when nike came out with "air," I was instantly into plantar fasciitis territory. When the high-stack, stability Asics-Tiger x-caliber GT came out, I was into severe ITBS. Bottom line for me: super cushioned, high stack shoes have always caused me temporary injury that's almost immediately resolved when I change back into what has been my mainstay, except more recently.

Skechers Hyperburst two years ago: relentless piriformis for 2+ months, but I could jog. I had been in the Zoom Elite 9 w/ no problems. First lasting injury in my 40+ years.

Hoka Rincon and Torrent: Currently sidelined for over 3 months w/ PF - just in the attachment to the heel, and as of last week, now in a boot! Worst injury I've ever had - psychologically its killing me.

I bought into the line that, "...older folks need to protect their bones, etc." BS. I should have never left my Boston 6-9 iterations, and the adios line.

I know there are older runners who swear by max cushion - that's great. But for me, they are anathema. When I get over this PF - if I ever will - I need to find a shoe more akin to the adizero line - something like the Kinvara 12, maybe.

There is some evidence of a link, but again, everybody's different, for sure.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29900183/

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/is-more-cushioning-better-for-long-distance-running-shoes/

https://therunexperience.com/your-super-cushioned-shoes-are-killing-you/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281624364_The_effect_of_highly_cushioned_shoes_on_tibial_acceleraiton_in_runners

Again, it's a highly individual thing, but take note of the change of injuries in the last few years among elites: knees, hips, groin, lower back - not so much strictly foot injuries - kind of verifies what Harvard's Spaulding Center's research found. (Finished Fitzerald's book on running w/ the NAZ Elite, and don't know if it was preexisting, but while there training he took on a groin injury - just speculation on my part.)

I've got about 75 mile in my invincibles and while I've not had any knee pain I have noticed that my quads were sore after the first couple runs. It was kinda DOMS type if that makes sense. Nothing about my runs were unusual, they were my typical easy runs. However after the soreness I went back and looked at my Garmin run data and notice that my stride length was actually slightly longer than other runs on the same route. (1.01 m in other shoes compared the 1.09 in the Invincibles) I wonder if the longer stride, even as little as 3-4 inches might be a little bit of overload. Who knows, I do like the shoes, but I will pay more attention to any aches and pains.

sodbuster wrote: Bottom line for me: super cushioned, high stack shoes have always caused me temporary injury that's almost immediately resolved when I change back into what has been my mainstay,

This has been my experience also - I cannot stay healthy while training in highly cushioned shoes. I'll pull out the Vaporfly or similar for race day. But for daily running and workouts I stick to shoes like the Streak or Adios.

Nike especially, but all the super-high-stack supershoes cause major pronation.

Asics has a better idea going.

Get yourself some Asics Hyper Speeds. Back after a few years out of production. I'm 65 and they were always my mainstay -- and are again now, after a few years in Adidas. Recently had some PF coming on, these (and post run ice bathing) fixed it.

Adidas were Ok but I developed calf issues with them -- don't like the drop. Only shoe with a significant drop that I will use now is the % on race day or long runs (old pairs).

As another poster mentioned, the impact forces are overall the same between minimalist and maximalist shoes. In minimalist shoes you strike the ground lighter but with less material to absorb shock from the ground. In maximalist shoes you strike the ground harder but with more cushioning to absorb the impact. This is a great example of how your feet, given enough time, will adapt to any shoe.

Having said that, this adaptation process takes varying amounts of time depending on the individual and how big a jump from one shoe to another. If you've been wearing a Brooks Beast for ten years and you abruptly switch to a Saucony Kinvara, you're probably gonna have some aches and pains.

I think that heel-to-toe drop is also worth considering rather than just the amount of foam under your foot. While overall impact forces from ground contact to toe-off are generally the same for high and low cushion shoes, the impact peak can change depending on HOW you strike the ground (heelstrike vs. mid-forefoot strike). This has been studied by the people at Spaulding as someone mentioned and there are other journals out there as well that I should find. But if you imagine a graph plotting time from landing to toe-off on the x-axis against impact forces on the y-axis, the area under the curve (overall impact force) is the same for one person in different pairs of shoes at a given pace. However, for heelstrikers, the impact peak, that is, the instant of time when the impact force is the highest, is noticeably higher in heelstrikers. And the time at which that impact peak occurs is right after initial contact between the heel and the ground. That impact peak can lead to injuries in a lot of different areas. The calcaneous bone is much less equipped to take on the impact forces of running than the metatarsals. It has just enough fat around it to handle the impact of walking (which almost everyone does heel-to-toe).

This matters with mm drop in footwear because a built up heel can, over time, make you more likely to heelstrike and in turn be susceptible to injury. As you hit the pavement in a chonky-heeled shoe like a Mizuno Wave Creation, your foot feels the cushion and thinks "I must be running on something soft, and there's way less cushioning in the front relative to the back, so it's safe to land on my heel" (sometimes if you run barefoot on soft sand you may find yourself heelstriking more than usual).

So pay attention to mm drop rather than just cushioning, because this difference in shoes can change your running form and play a role in whether you get aches and pains. I am not exactly against heelstriking or high drop shoes, but am more in the camp of if you're gonna heelstrike you're gonna need plenty of cushioning and you're gonna have a sort of dependence on it. If you want to drastically change your gait and the shoes you wear it's gonna take a lot of time and guidance (that's what the folks at Spaulding are there for) and for most people that change isn't worth it.

That's my long two cents. Pronation vs. neutral vs. supination is an enormous interrelated conversation to be had as well. For those curious about how running shoes affect you, I would highly recommend listening to or reading anything from Benno Nigg, who is basically the world expert in shoe technology. He has a book called "Biomechanics of Sport Shoes" that I've been meaning to get for a while. He has also done a lot of research into why plated shoes enhance performance so much (forefoot rigidity turns off function of MTP joint to save energy, carbon plate acts more like extended lever than a "spring", etc.) Look up "Benno Nigg teeter-totter effect".

Within reasonable limits I think so. At least I find a lessening of a couple problems I had with heel and knee pain (undiagnosed) when I went to a firmer shoe.

I think the firmer--but not hard--shoe kept the foot movement to a minimum and reduced some extraneous wear on bone and liggies.

Me running with high cushioned shoes:

- More comfortable

- Lazy (heel striking)

- "Feel" my injury-prone area more

- Feels as I am running pretty/elegant some of the time

Me running with less cushioned shoes:

- Less comfortable

- Mid-to forefoot striking

- Don't notice my injury-prone area

- Feels as I am running pretty/elegant most of the time

feels clunky most of the time* with high cushioned