Pronation control for midfoot strikers - I look down, and see/feel my ankles collapse

If you really think you pronate and you get injured as often as you say you do...you might want to get used to the medial posting. I can tell you from experience that when I first got custom orthotics,they were a pain. It took a couple weeks, but I eventually got used to them.

Yes, pronation will effect your knees and your entire body for that matter. When you pronate you are putting extra stress on your body that it is not designed to handle. Pronation causes you to run less efficiently, which in turn causes you to fatigue sooner than you should. Running while fatigued greatly increases your chance of an injury.

I am not promising that getting into a shoe that will correct your possible pronation will fix everything because I went through an injury cycle for a couple years while running in the most stable shoes around. I followed that period with a couple healthy years in shoes that provided less stability.

I have similar mechanics - not flat-footed, but severe pronation, light-medium weight, midfoot striker. When I ran cross country my freshman year of hs, I ran most of the season in a pair of $40 adidas "trail running" shoes from Big 5. About half way through the season, my feet would start to fall asleep about 1.5-2 miles into a run, and I would get that pins and needles sensation. Since I was on JV and didn't take running very seriously at the time, I didn't mention it to my coach until almost the end of the season. When I did, he told me to come into the running store he worked at, took one look at my stride (and the crapo shoes) and knew exactly what the problem was. He hooked me up with a pair of motion-control asics, which were incomparably better than my previous trainers, but since then I've tried a bunch of motion-control models. Although I love the feel of a new pair of Asics, I find the best shoe for me, as a midfoot striker who's not super heavy (like most motion-control runners,) is the Mizuno Wave Alchemy. It's a little stiffer, not quite as squishy, and best of all, no medial post! It's also the lightest motion-control shoe I've ever had, and it has a fast feel to it. Without knowing a ton about shoes, I'd highly recommend you at least try these on, as your mechanics sound like they're similar to mine.

Best of luck!

Ah, sorry, just realized you were talking about flats, not trainers. If you're really worried about the pronation, I'd still recomend the Alchemy...as I said, it is quite light, and feels very fast!

Hope you find something that works for ya :-)

If you can see your knee collapse then look at your ankle, if you strike on the outside of your foot you'll be able to see it 'drop' in and then severly overpronate. That is not an issue of shoes but an issue of weak stablizing muscles, believe it or not but nearly all over-pronators can be neutral through some stablilization work.

work on the stabilizing muscles, especially your glutes or go and see a trainer who knows his running and ask them.

119 wrote:

If you can see your knee collapse then look at your ankle, if you strike on the outside of your foot you'll be able to see it 'drop' in and then severly overpronate. That is not an issue of shoes but an issue of weak stablizing muscles, believe it or not but nearly all over-pronators can be neutral through some stablilization work.

work on the stabilizing muscles, especially your glutes or go and see a trainer who knows his running and ask them.

Ok, I buy that, what stabilizing muscles are we talking about?