The role of athlete response tests in the biomechanical evaluation of running shoes

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Abstract
The protection that the running shoe can offer against shock forces has been investigated by standard mechanical tests of individual materials or of a combination of materials used in running shoe manufacture, and by testing the athlete's response to a shoe by measuring the ground reaction forces produced by the runner while running in the shoes. The latter approach to the evaluation of running shoes has some considerable attraction because it purports to represent a more direct evaluation of the shoes' performance and accounts for the interaction that the athlete has with the shoe. Measurements made on running shoes in this way have yielded some useful data on, for example, the effect of barefoot and shod-foot running, the effect of running speed and the effect of body weight on the magnitude of ground reaction forces. There have also been some anomalous results reported which indicate that the athlete's interaction with his running shoe is not as predictable or as consistent as was first thought. This has made detailed investigations of running shoe properties difficult. This paper presents data from a series of studies which have attempted to uncover the nature of the inconsistency in the athlete's interaction with his running shoes. The results lead to the hypothesis that during the evaluation of various running shoe conditions, the athlete adopts a ‘movement pattern fixation’ which produces a consistent interaction with a particular shoe, but this fixation may change when the shoe or other conditions change. The implication of this hypothesis is that in the testing of running footwear using the athlete's responses, methods should be employed to establish the limits within which any movement pattern fixation may occur as a precursor to evaluating the footwear itself.