Advancements in running shoe technology and their effects on running economy and performance – a current concepts overview

ABSTRACT

Advancements in running shoe technology over the last 5 years have sparked controversy in athletics as linked with clear running economy and performance enhancements. Early debates mainly surrounded ‘super shoes’ in long-distance running, but more recently, the controversy has filtered through to sprint and middle-distance running with the emergence of ‘super spikes’. This Current Concepts paper provides a brief overview on the controversial topic of super shoes and super spikes. The defining features of technologically advanced shoes are a stiff plate embedded within the midsole, curved plate and midsole geometry, and lightweight, resilient, high-energy returning foam that – in combination – enhance running performance. Since the launch of the first commercially available super shoe, all world records from the 5 km to the marathon have been broken by athletes wearing super shoes or super spikes, with a similar trend observed in middle-distance running. The improvements in super shoes are around 4% for running economy and 2% for performance, and speculatively around 1% to 1.5% for super spikes. These enhancements are believed multifactorial in nature and difficult to parse, although involve longitudinal bending stiffness, the ‘teeter-totter effect’, the high-energy return properties of the midsole material, enhanced stack height and lightweight characteristic of shoes.

KEYWORDS:

• Athletics
• footwear
• review
• endurance
• sprint

Author’s contributions

Milly Pamment: Conceptualisation, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Visualisation, Response to Reviewers. Kim Hébert-Losier: Conceptualisation, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Visualisation, Response to Reviewers, Supervision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.