What Kind of Shoes Keep Me Healthy?

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What Kind of Shoes Keep Me Healthy?

Well to start, what a loaded question, right?

There are stability shoes, neutral shoes, motion control shoes, minimalist shoes, maximalist shoes, super shoes with carbon plates, nylon plates, fancy foams, and intricate laces and/or no laces. So who is right? All of them. Yep, I said it. They are all needed and necessary to give us variability.

Our feet are so different from person to person that picking just one type of shoes for everyone would be like saying everyone should wear the same prescription of glasses because it works for most people.

Even individually, people need variability in their footwear. Wearing the same pair of shoes for everything we do makes no sense. It's easy to fall into a habit of having a "favorite pair" but your foot is meant to be dynamic. It can adjust to terrain and mold with the ground. Do we really think it can't adjust to footwear as well?

While we should make sure we have the proper fit and the proper type of footwear, the biggest indicator in satisfaction and shoes not causing pain is simply comfort. When you put the shoe on and it just feels right, it probably is.

Getting a proper fit and understanding what size you need is the most important part of selecting shoes. Knowing how much support your foot needs or doesn't will help you narrow down which shoes to pick from.

So what do we advise people to do?

1. Use a rotation of shoes. Having a group of shoes will allow you to use specific ones for fast running, easy running, long runs, and races. You'll get the most out of your training by doing it this way also. Plus, it takes much longer to wear out shoes this way.

2. Try new things. Get off your band wagon for Hoka's, Asics, Nike, Brooks, etc and try something new. "I tried Hoka's and they weren't for me" is not a good answer. They make so many different kinds of shoes that may work for you better than the specific model you tried. Saying you can't wear a brand of shoe is like saying you can't wear Lululemon because some shorts you got were the wrong size...just get the right size.

3. Ask for help from a professional or specialty store. PT's that focus on sports can be very helpful in the footwear department. We can assess your gait, wear pattern, training load, and mechanics and even talk about how the shoe needs to work specifically for you. Getting fit in shoes at a specialty store makes a huge difference also. These stores do this for people every day and the tech they use to help them is great. You get to try them on and even run in to make sure they are right for you.

If you're nervous about changing your shoes or have questions about the specifics of what that may look like for you, feel free to shoot us a text or email. If you would like to get a running gait analysis and evaluation to get your foot needs dialed in, we can do that as well. Click the Video Running Gait Analysis link below if you're interested.

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We also provide:

• Precision Hydration Sweat Testing

• Video Running Gait Analysis

• VO2Max Testing

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Dr. Dylan Glass, PT, DPT, SMTC

Dr. Josh Cornett PT, DPT, COMT, CDNT

Return 2 Sport PT

www.Return2SportPT.com

256-513-9525

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