Use what feels best, it’s a good rule of thumb.

I myself have transitioned to more minimal shoes, but not quite zero drop yet.  More importantly, I feel my form has improved, and, that’s really good enough for me and I think it’s the most important part anyways.  To me the whole minimalist debate may never get settled, because you can always come out with 2 studies that have contradictory restults.Great article Pete!!

Of course there’s a higher incidence of injury among NCAA and elite athletes. These athletes are constantly on the edge, pushing their limits as far as they can go for the sake of performance. It’s inevitable that at some point, you’ll push it too far. They’re not “random,” but it’s also usually not the fault of shoes or form. It’s just doing more than your body can handle, or not giving yourself enough recovery time, and ignoring the early warning signs of injury.

It’s all a matter of priorities. Obviously, getting faster and staying healthy are somewhere on everyone’s priority list. Getting faster is impossible if you’re hurt all the time, and everyone, even back of packers, loves a PR. However, you still have to choose what’s more important. I could run 50 slow miles per week and never get injured (and for my particular biomechanics and physiology, at that particular volume and intensity, I doubt that it would matter what shoes I did it in), but I’d also never improve. I’ll take the injuries if it means coming as close as possible to my speed potential. I did the running to be healthy rather than running to be fast right after college, and within months, I decided it just wasn’t for me. Other people make the opposite choice, and that’s fine. Different strokes.

Really though, the comment about the NCAA teams was meant as a tongue in cheek remark about how that video is making it sound like McDougall found this lost drill that no one has done in years, when in actuality, high knees are a pretty common form drill.

Thanks Martin!

I sent you an email with a few suggestions from Blaise Dubois, not sure if you got it.
Sent from my iPad

For me it was just that the logic and science behind it made sense to me, and I couldn’t resist trying it. Glad that I did.
Sent from my iPad

Pete, I’m in total agreement with you. I challenge the people who make comments like Becki’s comments above. Speed work will get you better at doing speed work. It has little to no effect on form while running easy. Again, this is why so many track runners can’t and or refuse to run at an easy pace. I know plenty of guys who aren’t comfortable running unless they are UNDER 7:00 minute pace. These are guys who’ve run in the 2:20s for a marathon, yet THEY CANNOT RUN AT AN 8 MINUTE PACE! And these are the same people mocking barefoot runners and saying working on technique is useless. I find it ridiculous that these runners can’t even go for an easy 8 minute pace run with a group of friends because it physically hurts them to run at 8 minute pace. Why? Because their form sucks at that speed, because they never worked on it.

I think this advice from track runners to just do speed work and or high volume to improve form is outdated and unethical since there is no evidence that speed work or high volume improves form. If anything, those who do speed work have a higher chance of injury (as Pete has stated above). It’s a bunch of N=1 studies based on feelings that happened while under the influence of the cascade of chemicals being released during the track workout. Yet the track and field zeolots continute to tell runners to just run more and run faster to improve their form????

So if we know that higher speeds increase risk of injury. And we know that people are interested in form because they want to run injury free, then why would we tell people to run faster to get better form to run injury free? Seems like the opposite of what makes sense and is logical – slow down and re-wire yourself to have good form.