Jesse Owens, one of the greastest runners the world has seen
In today’s running world, running form is becoming a hotly debated topic. What’s right, what’s wrong, what you’re doing wrong and how you can fix it, is it all rubbish, and so many other topics fly across the blogosphere and magazine pages. Yesterday, I was reading Pete Larson’s excellent discussion of good running form (one of many he’s been writing lately) and while the entire thing is very interesting from a scientific perspective, I found the quotes from ASICS International Research Coordinator Simon Bartold (about mid-way down the article) more interesting. For a research coordinator of one of the world’s largest shoe companies, there’s some boneheaded information he’s throwing out. And just why is he doing it? Frankly, I see his responses as a CYA/save face approach since his employer has spent 30-plus years making thick, springy, “safe” shoes for people to move around in. There may be real data behind some of his answers but most of it pangs of being backed into a corner. Take this quote:
Sneaker Freaker: Do we really need shoes? There’s plenty of dudes running around the Kalahari in barefeet!
Simon Bartold: I think we do, especially in Western societies. We have been wearing shoes for thousands of years and have actually evolved to adapt to a ‘shod’ situation.
An opinion-based answer from a research coordinator is never an acceptable answer, it means he either has no idea how to really answer it empirically or is simply being defensive from the start. While I understand he may not be an actual scientist doing research and development, he’s got plenty of people who report to him — with fancy reports and information — that are doing research and know these answers. “I think we do” is not an answer, that’s an opinion, straight up.
When he says “we”, I have no idea whom he is talking about, he certainly cannot mean humans in general because “we” have been mostly unshod in all societies — Western or otherwise — up until about a thousand years ago and even then, there are many societies around the globe that are still unshod to this day. Paleolithic humans had no shoes of any sort. When were they around? 10,000 years ago. All human ancestors, from bonobos to cavemen, had no shoes, so where does Bartold get the idea that “we” have been wearing them for thousands of years? Now, it’s a documented fact of history that many historic societies wore sandals, but these can hardly be considered shoes. Why? They were merely pieces of hide or leather lashed to the foot to give protection against being stabbed in the foot, essentially. These leather sandals were flat and thin, they certainly were not shoes. Even the indigenous Indians of the Americas had moccasins that were little more than the same concept with a leather upper that wrapped the foot and possible lower of the leg. However, they’re still not shoes. Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Chinese, and just about every other ancient monolithic society had footwear of some kind and up until the period after the Dark Ages, you can be damned sure they were all the same design: flat leather sole, leather lashing/straps, possible leg coverings for protection/ceremony/et cetera. I’m not an archaeological podiatrist, but this stuff is not that difficult to figure out and offer support for: much of its been documented by those people for thousands of years already. Barthold either does not delineate sandals and shoes as separate entities, or simply views all footwear as “shoes”. In the case of the latter, then I suppose his opinion is wildly correct.
Now, what these shoes were not were supportive. They still allowed our evolving foot to remain flat and develop in a natural way, meaning our bones, muscles, and tendons in our feet strengthened and moved based on our own direct use of them in locomotion. Once the common shoe design everyone is used to today came into fashion (thicker wooden or leather sole, possible appearance of a raised heel box), there still was no real support in them. Our feet were still allowed to be mostly unbridled and allowed to spread out and splay, just as they had evolved to do over the last few million years of bipedal evolution. However, it’s apparent this did little to change our running form drastically as there are many cases documented of runners running basically the same way the Kalahari or Tarahumara do: quickly, lightly, and mostly without injury. Just as the image above shows Jesse Owens winning a race, take a look at his kicks. What do you see? A shoe that more closely resembles a moccasin than a contemporary running shoe that would come to life merely thirty years later. Herb Elliot graced the cover of Sports Illustrated twice and was barefoot both times. He ran record setting paces in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, he was obviously on to something.
This brings me to my conclusion: how can Barthold say we — humans — have evolved to wear shoes? Mountains of evidence point the other way all the way up until modern and ultra-modern times. I know he has to say people like shoes or otherwise, he would probably be out of a job but to say we evolved to like our feet in shoes? That’s just ballsy to say. I know I’ve only owned a single pair of ASICS shoes my entire life and they were my wrestling shoes. I suppose Barthold does not work in that division of ASICS because wrestling shoes are a modern link to the past: flat, zero-drop soles, leather/synthetic upper to lash them to our feet. they serve as little more than friction devices and toe protectors. Based on what Barthold said, I’m sure that my long retired wrestling shoes may be the only pair I own, unless they’d like to reach out and send some test shoes.
What are your thoughts on what Barthold has said? Think he’s right, think he’s wrong, or something else altogether? What do you think about running form?