The primary intent behind an athlete using suitable running shoes is to try to assist in preventing injuries and help them run more quickly. The use of the wrong athletic shoes for a runner is considered to increase the chance for an exercise related injury and help to make the running less economical. Whereas if the appropriate running footwear was used then there's a less of possibility for an exercise related injury and the runner is more efficient in the way they run. There is a lot of dialogue if the running shoe does indeed actually achieve that or not. There's not a lot of evidence to back up that and just what little science there exists shows that it might not be the correct assumption that the running shoes can actually prevent overuse injury. Various running shoe businesses have approached the issue or concern diversely with each company offering up several strategies with different amounts of success. There is an really broad range of running footwear on the market, with each brand and model having several design features which the running shoe store is supposed to match all of them up to the requirements of the individual runner.
Just over a year back, Nike introduced the brand new Nike React Infinity running footwear with the bold promises that it can reduce running injury by 52% and that they had data to support that claim up. You need to be very careful making this kind of health claims about goods as they can be and have been the reason for legal action and also settlements with the regulation government bodies previously. As of writing this, the research that supports the Nike claim hasn't been published for peer assessment and all that is available is an abstract of the outcomes of the research. The investigation was performed by a university for Nike. The research separated 226 runners spanning various ages and abilities in to 2 similar groups as they had been preparing for a half marathon. Half of the athletes used the Nike Structure which is a conventional motion control running shoe and the other group ran in the new Nike React Infinity Run footwear. The outcomes demonstrated that runners running in the React Infinity had a 52 percent reduced overuse injury rate as opposed to those using the other running shoe. The wearers of the React Infinity additionally observed that they felt much less pain in their knee joints as well as the feet from the running. These results appear good, however the study needs to be placed under more examination prior to it being widely accepted.
A lot of these problems are often challenged and litigated in several places. An episode of the live chat, Pod Chat Live was focused on the above issues with running shoes. In that episode the two hosts (both runners) talked about the subject with Michael Nitschke who is a podiatrist, a great runner and also a running coach. In a thread on the discussion board, Podiatry Arena, there is a lot of comments on the Nike statements with regards to their Nike react minimizing exercise related injury incidence. Due to the wide range of varying perspectives and opinions this is an dilemma that's not going to be solved in the near future.