Brooks website shows barefoot pronation

it's not at all contrived you can watch most of the population over pronate to some degree barefoot.

That vid is HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!

They are using the same foot for all three demonstrations. If you look at the angle of the calf, they are clearly NOT lining up the leg as it would while running or walking. They are FORCING it in and out.

That is a PISS POOR way to show the different foot types, even if you ARE a beliver in modern running shoes.

I am VERY dissapointed that Brooks, a company who generally is very good, would put rubbish like that on their site.

The Mild over pronator is the ONLY one of the three that accurately show that persons gait, and that is NOT over pronating, thats pronating. Most feet and legs look just like that. Nothing wrong with it when barefoot.

dead-on assesment, LaWoof. I'll be sure to bring this up with our favourite tech rep when I see him next.

That video is a piece of shit -- it's the same model and they angle them out. What a crock. My pics I took are better (copy and paste url into browser):

http://www.geocities.com/r_daws22021/caroline1.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/r_daws22021/caroline2.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/r_daws22021/caroline3.jpg

Note that she is only showing "over pronation" while wearing the Addiction.

LaWoof,

I suppose we can't be too surpised given the central selling point of Brooks shoes.

Well pronation is actually a very confusing issue. I'd be lying if I said I fully understood pronation, and so would the other "experts" chirping in.

The video is not "horrible" it is what it is, a dramatization intended to give a layperson some idea of what the terms mean. It was not submitted to the court as evidence for or against the argument that one can overpronate when barefoot.

To help clarify, Trackheads argument that one can not overpronate barefoot or in a minimal shoe comes from the oversimplified theory that pronation refers to the angle of the plantar surface of the foot with the ground. Without a midsole to compress the pronating forces during the stance phase can not drive the inner aspect of the foot lower than the outside. In otherwords, your foot can not be everted with respect to the ground. However, the situations depicted on the Brooks site can occur, and the foot can be everted with respect to the lower leg.

This eversion does occur when running barefoot. When studied carefully (with intracortical bone pins) some runners will have more eversion when running with shoes, some less (see posted figure from Stacoff et al. Journal of Biomechanics 33:1387, 2000). It all depends on the individual.

As for your podiatrist, I can't imagine why he would be suggesting you were an overpronator based on bone structure. All he would have to do is watch you run. Did he do that? A good podiatrist will treat function, not structure. Orthotics, if they are going to be used should be designed to treat an observed movement problem, not just molded to fit your feet. Pronation is too complex to make gross generalizations such as all flat footed people overpronate and high arched individuals underpronate, although those patterns may occur more often than not.

There's no real way of telling for sure, but it sure looks as though its the same leg "demonstrating" all three cases. If you believe in this, wouldn't you want people with three different "foot types" to make your point?

What a crock!

TH: check the links; site unavailable?????

LaWoof, I agree that the links are fake, but how can we take you seriously when you write this on another thread;

I have slow mo vid of his feet in the final 400m of a 5k where he (Gebreselassie) is heel striking.

You people just THINK that they are forefoot striking but if you REALLY slow it down, MOST runners will contact the ground with their HEEL first. That is not to say that they are slaming into the ground with the heel like most rec runners, but that the heel is being PLACED on the ground to help control energy and smooth out the stride. It saves energy.

Shorter strides are not the answer. They are a DRILL. You think that there are any runners that are taking shorter strides in a race?

Your information is incorrect.

JY,

Thanks for the info. However, I am not sure I'm any more educated about my own pronation tendencies. I just know that running in shoes for high arch people work for me despite the fact that I'm almost flatfooted. Medial posts invariably cause me discomfort.

Incidentally, I visited the podiatrist as part of a Brooks research study not because I was having any foot problems. Indeed, I was a bit perturbed that he didn't watch me run. I insisted that I was a supinator, but he was nonplussed. I don't think he noted this anywhere in his chart. From my case, I think Brooks found another candidate for the Adrenaline.

I run in Brooks shoes, but the medial posts drive me crazy. They need to remove these posts from both the Burn and the Racer ST. Thank goodness for the T3/T4s.

N.W.S

There must be a lot of architectural factors beyond arch height that determine how much you pronate. You could always try to have someone videotape your heel motion while jogging (you'd need to do it barefoot since the foot can move inside the shoe to obscure what's really going on). But it is more important to simply know what shoes work for you, and it seems like you've got that worked out. It sounds like we have similar gait patterens but very different feet. I underpronate quite dramatically, but I have the classic high arched rigid foot. I haven't worn Brooks for years, but struggle to find a show that works well for me and takes some of the pounding off the forefoot.

Good luck!

Jack Bristow wrote:

TH: check the links; site unavailable?????

copy past the url into the browser -- or it may be a bandiwdth usage issue

I've been wondering about this forever. Don's runners and shoe companies use "pronation" as a catch all for both inversion and pronation? Is it possible to do one and not the other? Do people have problems with one and not the other and do they have different causes?