I’m a huge fan of Laurent Malisoux and his team in Luxembourg; they have published more work on running shoes than any other group in recent years. The ‘drop’ of a shoe (the colloquial term for the heel height differential) has become very popular to discuss amongst runners, with some individuals and companies claiming there is an ideal or optimal – something anyone who understands human variation obviously finds difficult to accept. There has not been much data or research on this topic over the years, with claims usually being just anecdote (or marketing).
Just a few months ago Malisoux et al. published this paper in AJSM which concluded that overall injury risk was not modified by running shoe drop, but lower drop shoes could be more hazardous for regular runners.
This team now have 2 abstracts in for the IOC conference in Monaco which is taking place next month (16-18th March):
Part 1 (here) is an RCT looking at running injury prevention and risk, and again concludes that injury risk is not influenced by the drop of running shoes.
Part 2 (here) is an RCT looking at running biomechanics, and suggests that shoe drop did not seem to influence long term adaptation in running biomechanics.
In conclusion, dichotomous and inflexible comments made about the perfect drop of a shoe are not currently scientifically supportable…
