I think mixing up force application can be good for anyone, and if you are in barefoot-style shoes exclusively then running on varied surfaces can accomplish the same result. If you think about how humans evolved, yes we ran barefoot, but we did so on a constantly varying terrain and not on a highly uniform surface like a road. So mixing trails and roads can be a way to approach this without changing shoes.

Very true Kevin, but with new people picking up the sport that weren’t running 30 years ago, old running lore may in fact be entirely new. You can even go back to reading some of Arthur Newton’s stuff from the 1930’s and find him talking about the effect of muscle vibrations, predating Benno Nigg’s science by decades!

It’s possible that the Asics just aren’t a good match for you. Maybe a few easy runs and see if any problems arise? But don’t rotate a shoe that gives consistent problems. I have a few shoes that I can tell in a few runs are not going to work for me, and they are ditched from the rotation.

I’m a newer runner (seriously running since last summer), and have found myself in this crux. I started running in Mizuno shoes (first an unidentified model bought in Brasil, then a Waverider 16), and never had any kinds of problem, no pain, discomfort or injury of any type. I did, however, have a durability problem, since I was foolish enough to run on sometimes very rocky trails with the Waverider, which thus got damaged way too early. So a running shoe shop clerk advised me to use an Asics Cumulus 15 and a Fuji Trabucco for trails. I immediately got severe achilles soreness with the Cumulus, and finally achilles tendonitis with the Trabucco. The problem with the Trabucco is clear to me: it’s labeled as “-universal-pronators”, but it includes that much support that they now issued a “neutral” version. But I can’t really figure out what was wrong with the Cumulus.
Anyway, I then bought a new pair of Waverider 17s and the problems immediately disappeared, no soreness whatsoever, and the residual tendinitis in the right foot waned away in a week or two.

So my question is: should I slowly rotate back the Cumulus in my training, to slowly strengthen the muscles/ligaments/tissues that the Waverider apparently had spared (and not to throw out of the window the 120€ the Asics had cost), or just write off the sunken costs and stick to the shoe that works? I’ve recently bought a pair of NB 980 Fresh Foam half price (in Hong Kong), and use them once a week on short easy runs, to get accustomed to a lower drop, and so far the experience has been good.

The idea of buying multiple running shoes and rotating them is not a new idea. I believe I read about this idea of rotating training flats in Runner’s World magazine back in the late 1970’s when I was running for the cross-country and track teams for the UC Davis Aggies. Also, during my years of running and racing during the late ’70s, most of my Aggie teammates also had a few different shoes to train in.

Anecdotally, I seemed to have decreased aches and pains and fewer injuries when I ran in at least two different running shoes. When I was doing marathon training, generally about 80-85 miles a week, I liked having three pairs of shoes due to the increased mileage. When I was only training 60-70 miles per week, I seemed to do fine with only two pairs of shoes. Sometimes I would run in my orthotics in one pair of shoes, but not in the other. My UCD coach (W.C. Adams, a PhD in exercise physiology) felt that having a variety of training stresses was important in keeping his runners less injured. From my experience, I agreed with him.

At that time from over 35 years ago, the thought among many of us that were rotating running shoes was that by running in a different running shoes during training that your legs and feet would receive different stresses on different specific body parts with each different shoe so that the chance of “overuse injury” on one single body part would be lessened. With that in mind, I would never get two pairs of the same shoes to train in but would rather try to find two shoes that I was comfortable in but had slightly different midsole/outersole construction designs.

In addition, during those days when I was often training 70-85 miles per week and doing both AM and PM workouts (double workouts), it was nice to have one shoe drying out while I went for my second run of the day in another shoe. Of course, in wet weather or soggy fields, having an extra pair of shoes meant that I could generally have a dry shoe to put on for my next run.

Having been a runner for over four decades, and seeing fads and trends come and go within the running community, it is somewhat amusing to me to see that some of the things that we did and thought back in the early years of the “Running Boom” are now being talked about again as if this was new or recently discovered information.

First it was the “discovery” of “minimalist shoes”, even though we ran in racing flats that were of nearly identical shoe construction 40 years ago. Secondly it was the “discovery” of taking shorter strides to improve running form, even though my high school cross-country and track coach in Sacramento from 1972-1975 continually told his running athletes to shorten their stride to increase their running efficiency. Now it is the “discovery” that running in more than one shoe can produce fewer injuries, even though this was fairly common practice in intercollegiate athletes from over 35 years ago for the same reasons.

I wonder what will be the next new “discovery”, that running with a combination of increased stride frequency an d increased stride length will make you run faster?

Nothing new under the sun.

Cheers,

Kevin

I almost run exclusively barefoot, depending on the weather, or place i run (if there’s a ton of goat heads lol)

i’d assume it’d be just as good as multiple pairs of shoes considering the completely unrestricted movement of foot…and different surfaces

She’s been alternating the Hokas and Altra Torin for about 9 months and hasn’t had any injuries that have stopped her, and this is after several years of nagging problems. But, it could just as easily be that we’ve found good matches for her rather than the rotation being a benefit. She really doesn’t run a lot of miles, but is very prone to injury. I’m more like you, could probably run all of my miles in one shoe without issue, but I’d get bored :)

Yes, but if a shoe company was confident enough that rotating would reduce injury risk, and that meant ultimately that there was strong evidence for people to buy multiple pairs, I could see one donating shoes for such a study. Of course then the study would be criticized for bias since it was supported by a shoe company :)

I’d agree here. My understanding is that EVA foam is composed of little sealed bubbles of air. I might be wrong, but for rebound to occur the bubbles would have to be porous. Like a sponge sucking water back up after compressing. If they were porous the cushioning would be lousy, as running with a sponge attached to your feet would feel. Compression sets over time take place because the bubbles burst and air escapes, and they don’t refill. Here’s a good article on this: http://anathletesbody.com/2011/05/16/do-shoes-have-feelings/

Sometimes I varied some of those things, but sometimes I didn’t vary things much for years. I run on trails often, but I also did up to 5,000 mile years where maybe 2/3rds was on pavement. I don’t think trails are necessarily protective. I love them, but things like sprains, scrapes, falling injuries, etc are more likely on trails/mountains.

The (lack of) injury history is a stronger effect than multiple shoes, so that’s what I’m seeing for myself.

For your wife, is a rotation better than using her Hoka full time?

And then a large enough sample size to see meaningful differences in injury rates… which means dishing out quite a lot of shoes!