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let the experiment begin
Britspin
Posts: 1,655
in General Chat
My pressie to me.....newtons & therefore ankle sprains, achilles problems, calf pain etc etc...I hope not.
I shall keep you informed on progress.
I shall keep you informed on progress.
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I really want a pair, but i love my sauconys so much I am worried that for 120 i will have wasted my money!
Maybe an experimental jog/run tomorrow.
I don't really believe that a fore foot strike is feasible and sustainable in an event of over maybe a mile. Having done a lot of sprinting in my past, I'm very conscious of the different feel of upright sprinting on your forefoot, where you’re striking the ground tall and clawing, compared to jogging where you strike with your heel, roll along the foot and toe off.
Sprinting on the ball of your foot is really powerful, it minimises the contact time between foot and ground, and transfers power in the direction in which you want to travel, whereas a heel strike dissipates the impact and has a braking effect on your body as a result.
If you try to run tall and claw without sprinting, it’s somewhere between a bound and a jog – it’s fast, and it’s a great drill and warm up, but you can’t run 5k like that, let alone 10k and above.
If you run on your forefoot, you’re taking a huge amount of shock absorption into your calves as they try to prevent your heel from hitting the ground. I would always try to run tall, but I don’t think I could stay on the balls of my feet for long.
Have a look at the differences between a pair of sprinting spikes, racing flats and general running shoes and you can see the difference in the way they control which part of your foot strikes the ground as appropriate to the exercise you’re doing.
All that said, I don’t have any experience of Newtons; I’m happy with my Adidas racing flats; if I see a pair I’ll have a good look, but I’m not convinced by the general concept. With any luck they’ll have some I can try at TCR.
The idea behind forefoot running is that as you say nivagh it minimises deceleration and the risk of injury. It minimises injury risk because at the point of contact the leg is not straight, therefore there is reduced stress on the knee joint. Yes it does require the calf to act as a shock absorber but its a lot better having the calf as your shock absorber than your knee joint!
Also midfoot landing will help to store up elastic energy which provided you unweight that foot quick enough will be used to help power you forward and increase your economy.
I believe the newtons and their lugs or whatever they are! are designed to encourage this midfoot landing, you are not running on your toes like your are in sprinting, and you are not using your calf/hallicous(big toe) muscles to push off like you do in sprinting.
Ah, that's a bit clearer! (Newtons and 7..!)
I have paid the full £120 for them though which hurt alot! I needed a new pair of Asics though and I usually go for the Gel Nimbus which comes in at about 90 quid so I thought it would only be an extra 30. I have endless problems with my knees, so anything that transfers this to my calves would be great.
One question though, I am a neutral runner and so went for the Gravity shoes, but they were out of stock and the guy from Tri Central rang me and told me that the Motions were essentially exactly the same, but also gave you lateral motion control. Hence he was saying for a neutral runner they were just as good, if not better (as they stop you going over onto one side). If this was true however, what is the point of them making 2 different pairs of shoes?!
I have ordered them anyways as I need to start running again on Monday for my Ironfit programme. I've had a month off due to aforementioned bad knees!