Foot pronation

Abstract

Over the past decades, pronation has been discussed as a potential risk factor for injuries or as the mechanism behind impact damping. However, little is understood about pronation. The objectives of this paper were to (a) define and differentiate between the terms of pronation and eversion, (b + c) underline the importance and problematic aspects of pronation. The terms of pronation and eversion have often been used interchangeably in previous work. Both metrics describe rotations about two different axes of the foot. Due to the inaccessible location of the talus bone, mainly variables measuring eversion have been used to approximate the actual movement of pronation. However, the variety of surrogate variables does not facilitate the understanding of such particular foot movement. Since pronation is natural and it is necessary to successfully perform dynamic tasks such as running, normative values were developed for most pronation-associated variables. However, the optimal amount of pronation remains unknown. Furthermore, various aspects of pronation are widespread among researchers and clinicians. Despite their popularity, they are mis- or not well understood such as the impact damping paradigm and its link to running injuries. Especially, the exclusive causality between pronation and running injuries has been shown in neither cross-sectional nor longitudinal study designs with sufficient sample sizes. Therefore, it seems important to reconsider the topic of pronation from novel perspectives.

Keywords:

• pronation
• sports injuries
• overuse injury
• eversion
• foot and ankle

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.