Study Compares Barefoot to Shod Running

Six years ago the boom in barefoot running started. Runners debated which was best—running barefooted or shod. Alex Hutchinson reports on a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that compares the rates of injury of runners running with and without running shoes.

Allison Altman-Singles, M.D., at Penn State and Irene Davis, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, recruited 107 experienced barefoot runners and 94 runners who used ordinary running shoes and followed their injury status for one year. They found that the results were about the same for both groups. Thirty-two percent of the barefoot runners experienced musculoskeletal injuries. That was, for practical purposes the same as the shod group which had 34% injuries.

The big difference was in how far each group ran. The barefoot group covered 24 kilometers a week, while the shod runners ran 41 kilometers per week. The runners wearing shoes were running twice as much as the barefoot runners without experiencing any increase in their injury rate.

Hutchinson quoted Altman-Singles as saying, “Barefoot running attracts a particular demographic. They tend to be older and less competitive, which may be why they choose to run less.”

Participants in both groups, according to Hutchinson, had been running for an average of about 10 years. The barefoot runners had been running without shoes for an average of 1.65 years. They did three-quarters of their mileage completely barefoot with the rest in barefoot-mimicking minimalist shoes.

The barefoot runners group reported a total of 57 injuries to their feet. The injuries were cuts, blisters, bruises and stubbed toes. Those who ran in shoes reported only eight types of injuries.