Effects of barefoot and minimally shod footwear on effective mass – implications for transient musculoskeletal loading

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the effects of barefoot and minimally shod footwear on effective mass, and determine the implications that this has for transient loading during running. Fifteen male runners ran at 4.0 m/s in five different footwear conditions (barefoot, running trainer, Nike-free, Inov-8 and Vibram five-fingers). Kinematics were collected using an 8 camera motion capture system and ground reaction forces via an embedded force platform. Effective mass was examined using impulse-momentum modelling and differences between footwear were examined using one-way repeated measures ANOVA. The findings showed that effective mass was significantly larger in the barefoot (11.47 %BW), Nike-free (9.81 %BW), Inov-8 (12.10 %BW) and Vibram five-fingers (8.84 %BW) compared to the running trainer (6.86 %BW). Furthermore, instantaneous loading rate was significantly larger in the barefoot (347.55 BW/s), Nike-free (178.76 BW/s), Inov-8 (369.93 BW/s) and Vibram five-fingers (339.37 BW/s) compared to the running trainer (133.18 BW/s). It was also revealed that there were significant positive associations between effective mass and the instantaneous rate of loading for each footwear. The findings from the current investigation indicate that effective mass has key implications for the generation of transient forces and also that running barefoot and in minimally shod footwear may place runners at increased risk from impact related injuries compared to the traditional running shoes

Effects of running in minimal, maximal and traditional running shoes: a musculoskeletal simulation exploration using statistical parametric mapping and Bayesian analyses

“…It was also revealed using SPM that medial tibiofemoral loading was greater during early stance yet via discrete analyses that the lateral tibiofemoral integral was greater in minimal compared to both maximal and traditional running shoes. This observation supports those of Sinclair et al (2018) who showed via SPM and the discrete knee adduction moment, that minimal footwear enhanced the extent of medial knee loading compared to traditional running shoes although there has yet to be any investigation comparing lateral tibiofemoral loading in minimal, maximal and traditional running shoes. Therefore, as the aetiology of degenerative hip and tibiofemoral joint pathologies are influenced by compressive joint loading (Johnson & Hunter, 2014), it is possible that minimal footwear may enhance the risk of chronic hip and medial tibiofemoral pathologies.…”

“…The impact peak was defined in the maximal and traditional running shoes as the first peak in vertical GRF. In the minimal footwear where there was not a consistent impact peak, according to the protocols of Lieberman et al (2010) and Sinclair et al (2018), we defined the position of the impact peak at the same relative position as in the maximal and traditional running shoes. The time to impact peak (D time) was quantified as the duration from footstrike to impact peak.…”

“…The change in foot vertical velocity (D foot vertical velocity) was determined as the change in vertical foot velocity between the instances of footstrike and the impact peak (Chi & Schmitt, 2005). The velocity of the foot was quantified using the centre of mass of the foot segment in the vertical direction, within Visual 3D (Sinclair et al, 2018).…”

“…There has been considerable research interest into the biomechanics of running in minimal and maximal running shoes with regards to the biomechanical parameters linked to the aetiology of injury. Minimal running shoes have been shown to be associated with increased vertical loading rates, tibial accelerations, effective mass and vertical limb stiffness when running compared to both traditional (Sinclair, Greenhalgh, et al, 2013;Sinclair, Atkins, et al, 2016;Sinclair et al, 2018) and maximal running shoes (Hannigan & Pollard, 2020;Sinclair et al, 2015) although no differences in impact loading parameters has been found between maximal and traditional running shoes (Chan et al, 2018;Hannigan & Pollard, 2020;. Furthermore, ankle eversion/ tibial internal rotation has been shown to be greater in minimal and maximal conditions compared to traditional running shoes (Sinclair, 2014;Hannigan & Pollard, 2020).…”

“…Furthermore, ankle eversion/ tibial internal rotation has been shown to be greater in minimal and maximal conditions compared to traditional running shoes (Sinclair, 2014;Hannigan & Pollard, 2020). In addition, minimal footwear have also been shown to be associated with enhanced Achilles tendon forces compared to traditional (Sinclair, 2014;Sinclair et al, 2019) and maximal running shoes (Sinclair et al, 2015) and greater medial tibiofemoral compartment loading compared to traditional running shoes (Sinclair et al, 2018). However, across several investigations minimal footwear has been shown to reduce patellofemoral joint loading compared to both traditional (Bonacci et al, 2018;Sinclair, 2014Sinclair et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2019) and maximal running shoes conditions.…”