The Problem with Forefoot Running Research – Reporting Bias

Forefoot running is safer than heel striking because the impact transient is eliminated. And most elite runners forefoot strike. Yet, many studies omit forefoot running as an effective strategy to avoid injury.

Many studies that compared the effects of heel striking and forefoot running on performance and injury has shown a systematic bias.

A big problem with research on foot strike in running is reporting bias. Many researchers may favor heel striking over forefoot running because they, themselves are heel strike runners. As a consequence, these researchers tend to show positive results for heel striking over forefoot running in their research.

Reporting bias is further compounded through the tendency to publish positive results, but confine negative or inconclusive findings.

However, newer studies on habitually barefoot runners where forefoot running is predominant, have demonstrated that runners who switched from a forefoot strike to a heel strike were much likely to have no benefit.

Unfortunately in other studies, evidence on the efficacy of forefoot running has been ambiguous because the participants were heel strikers instructed to adopt a forefoot strike without proper instruction. This type of scientific design is the reason the results on the health benefits of forefoot running have been difficult to reproduce.

The efficacy of forefoot running however, shines through in studies where runners were given proper instruction on the forefoot running technique. For good results to hold up in the research on forefoot running, participants must learn the proper technique of forefoot running.

And finally, habitually barefoot-forefoot runners from countries such as Ethiopia make better controls than barefoot-forefoot runners who were once shod-heel strikers. Why?

Forefoot runners from Ethiopia ran barefoot during critical stages of early developing, allowing them to have a more finely tuned forefoot running technique that closely approximates the forefoot running style of our ancestors 4 million years ago.

More from Run Forefoot:

• Being Heavier Does Not Make You Run Slower, the Wrong Foot Strike Does
• How Forefoot Running May Be More Efficient
• POSE vs Chi Running
• Alberto Salazar: Run Like a Sprinter to be a Great Distance Runner
• Best Shoes for Forefoot Running

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Run forefoot because you are faster than you think!