Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about how minimalist running shoes do not cause stress fractures.
I just had a call with an interesting patient who is a runner who got a stress fracture in one of the metatarsals in her foot and one of the questions she asked me was whether or not her minimalist running shoes actually caused the stress fracture.
This is a great question, but you have to understand that minimalist running shoes do not cause stress fractures. In fact, running doesn’t even cause stress fractures. Excessive stress on the bone and insufficient recovery before the stress is reapplied to that bone is what causes stress fractures.
So I know that seems like a little oversimplification, but the truth is, you have many different forms of stress affecting the bones in your feet when you run. You have biomechanical stress, meaning the force is applied to the bone when you land, the way that you push off, the amount of padding between you and the ground underneath you and all of those things can change or influence the amount of stress getting applied through the metatarsal bone and then you also have your body’s response to that.
If you have excessive stress in your life, believe it or not, it can actually influence the rate of recovery in those bones. and all over-training injuries are a consequence of under recovering.
So if you’re ramping up your activity very quickly, and you get a stress fracture, it’s not the shoes, it’s not the surface you ran on necessarily.
It’s always a mistake in training.
It’s running too much, too hard on a surface that you’re not prepared for and that can vary considerably throughout your training season, dependent upon how fit you are, and how stressed out you are as well.
So you have to remember that stress fractures are caused by stress. And yes, if you haven’t really been training sufficiently, you’ve only been doing a couple of runs a week where you’re doing three miles or four miles and then you suddenly ramp up and do an eight or 10 mile run and your form starts to fall apart at the end of your run, if you’re running on hilly surfaces and you’re form degenerates because you’re exhausted because you’re running on hilly surfaces, then yes you can get too much stress that could lead to a stress fracture because the bone gets damaged and then doesn’t fully repair itself before you do your next workout.
So if you do any run that you think is really kind of a stretch run for you and it is pushing the limits of your fitness, even if it really doesn’t seem like it’s that long to you, if you know it’s out of character from your other workouts, you really want to be diligent about reducing the potential for recurring stress in the form of biomechanical stress, like running on it too soon, running too far, doing a recovery run that might actually beat up the bone. You have to really make sure that you don’t do those things. So that’s really the key here.
It’s not that minimalist running shoes caused the incident. It’s the way that you applied forces during that run and yes, some people will tell you that more conventional running shoes protect you or cushion you more and there’s some truth to that, but it’s not really the culprit.
So if you’ve been running in minimalist running shoes for a long time and then you get a stress fracture, it is not the shoes. It is a mistake that you made in training. It is an error in judgment that you had during that run when you actually sustain the injury that led to the stress fracture or even more, probably it was a mistake in judgment when you actually ran on it too soon after that specific run. Those are the things you need to evaluate and really think about when you get a stress fracture.
So if you think you have a stress fracture, one of the things that you might find really useful as a video I made for you. It’s on the website, under the Doc On The Run Podcast tab at DocOnTheRun.com. It’s the top 10 questions that will help you decide when you can run, if you have a metatarsal stress fracture. So check it out and watch it now.
There are several question you need to ask if you think you have a stress fracture and want to get back to running as quickly as possible. I’ll walk you through them.
Get instant access to the video here…
Top 10 questions to help decide when you can run if you have a stress fracture.
Watch the video now!
There are several question you need to ask if you think you have a stress fracture and want to get back to running as quickly as possible. I’ll walk you through them.
Get instant access to the video here…
Top 10 questions to help decide when you can run if you have a stress fracture.
Top 10 questions to help decide when you can run if you have a stress fracture. Watch this video now!
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