Super Shoe Whiplash

The next few years will be interesting as more people switch to super shoes not only for racing but for training as well. Something has to happen for better or for worse. The flexion of the big toe and the windlass effect has a profound effect on gait. Taking that away in racing and training...has to have an effect. My guess at this juncture is more PF and tendinitis. Faster times, but something else as well. My crystal ball says maybe the plate goes away at some point and we just have fast foams and stack?

This would be a super easy study to do. Supershoes to date are not considered harmful so pretty easy to do a prospective study and get approval.

Whiplash?

Plate never did much anyway. It was just the best way to market and sell the shoes. Most people intuitively see foam as a cushioning element in the context of damping force which isn't really linked to running faster. But "carbon plates" gets the hamster wheels in the head spinning - "springs" "like prosthetic blades" kind of nonsense and that in the context of race shoes is mind-share gold.

Little secret - when Kipchoge had his first attempt at breaking 2 in Monza his Nxt%'s didn't have plates in them at all. Just foam. He didn't like or want the plate. I don't know about anything else he's done since but I know for a fact those first shoes did not have the magic plates even though the commercial shoe obviously did.

So I agree with you - plates will disappear (they are expensive too) and it will just be a combination of foam (lightweight "super" foams and probably basic EVA chassis.

You know, the movie starring MIles Teller and JK Simmons.

Except Adidas and Nike are the "My time! Again! No! Stop! Again!"

And my body is the last scene drum solo.

LRC has been predicting a massive wave of super shoe injuries for 3-4 years now.

At this point most serious runners have been doing their racing, fast training, and even some easy runs in super shoes for quite some time. The predicted wave has not come to pass.

Where did you hear this "little secret"? I've never heard that. Did you personally tear down Kipchoge's shoes after the race?

There have been plenty of plateless shoes with super foams. Pegasus Turbo, Invicible Run, Fuelcell Rebel, etc. None of them have been race worthy. And then there's the most disappointing shoe release in recent memory, the ZoomX Streakfly. Everyone thought it was going to be this groundbreaking 5k racer, but they didn't include a plate, and it turned out to be just a slow trainer that only looks fast. Meanwhile people have been setting records left and right in similar-but-plated Takumi Sen 8 and Fuelcell Pacer.

It's gonna take more than a few years. It will take a generation. The people running faster in them now didn't grow up running in them. The next generation will. If what a previous poster said before about the plate being a gimmick is correct then I suspect what makes them effective is a variation of the old elevated heel. I could be wrong though. The elevated heel allows one to effectively extend the hip a bit farther back without needing the flexibility in the hip flexor or the strength in whichever glute muscle gets recruited for that last little bit of push. It gives your heel something to push back against that is isn't as far back as the ground.

Alphafly hardly forces you onto the forefoot with its 5mm drop, depending on how you measure. The Alpha is probably the most neutral of all the super shoes. If you’re not a forefoot striker, the Alpha won’t force you, although I have no idea why anyone would wear the Alpha unless you consistently hit that air pod square.

I just recently got a pair of Adios Pro 3, and these *really* roll you forward onto the toes. However, they are super fast, and the miles float by. For me (forefoot striker) the Pro 3 is fastest and still provides excellent forefoot cushioning.

I will suggest that you aren't really a "forefoot runner" but rather you think you are because you have a wedge under your foot. You are exerting force from your heel but your heel is pushing against a foam wedge and not the ground so you get the sensation that you're running on your forefeet.

The future is training barefoot, then running in a 100m stack shoe with a nanotech variable stiffness plate

The cheat shoe is propelling you too much?!

I am a forefoot runner. Barely mark up a heel and wear down the forefoot. Makes no diff if the shoe is 10mm or zero mm drop. Why do you think I don’t know? Ive been running for more than 40 years.