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Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footwear
Dr. Daniel Lieberman of Harvard Univirsity has spent years in the study of how and why the human body looks the way it does. His Bio on the Harvard Faculty page states he is primarily "interested in when, how and why early hominins became bipeds, and am especially interested in how, when and why humans became so exceptional as long distance endurance runners. In all these endeavors, my lab uses both experimental and comparative methods to examine how morphological features important in human evolution grow and develop, how they function, and how their function affects performance ."
In his Skeletal Biology Lab, he spends time investigating the "biomechanics of endurance running, comparing habitually barefoot runners with runners who normally run in modern running shoes with built-up heels, stiff soles and arch support". Becuase of his research many runners and shoe manufactures are rethinking running mechanics and shoe design.
From his Website:
Here is a summary of our findings, which we explain with the aid of videos and images in the following pages:
Our research asked how and why humans can and did run comfortably without modern running shoes. We tested and confirmed what many people knew already: that most experienced, habitually barefoot runners tend to avoid landing on the heel and instead land with a forefoot or midfoot strike. The bulk of our published research explores the collisional mechanics of different kinds of foot strikes. We show that most forefoot and some midfoot strikes (shod or barefoot) do not generate the sudden, large impact transients that occur when you heel strike (shod or barefoot). Consequently, runners who forefoot or midfoot strike do not need shoes with elevated cushioned heels to cope with these sudden, high transient forces that occur when you land on the ground. Therefore, barefoot and minimally shod people can run easily on the hardest surfaces in the world without discomfort from landing. If impact transient forces contribute to some forms of injury, then this style of running (shod or barefoot) might have some benefits, but that hypothesis remains to be tested.
