The best starting place to avoid heel striking when running is to avoid lifting the front of your foot back upon and at landing, rather learn to relax the front of your foot and let it fall to the ground so that you can actually land directly on the balls of your foot.
It turns out, cushioned running shoes are bad for your ankles! A new study finds thick cushioned running shoes with a large heel flare increases the risk for ankle injury by increasing inappropriate ankle movements at touchdown and results in higher initial joint pronation. Even worse, these shoes also caused the highest touchdown velocity of the heel, the highest vertical impact force peaks and the highest maximum vertical loading rate as compared with minimalist shoes.
Collective research has found heel lifts have no preventive effect on damaging heel pressures and peak forces on the Achilles in heel strike runners. The good news is, all that may be needed to prevent heel and Achilles injury in running is to avoid heel striking altogether and adopt a forefoot strike landing because there’s consistently little to no impact at the heel, while doing more to stabilize the Achilles tendon.
Over the last decade, study after study has found heel strike runners are 2.6 times more likely to have mild injuries, 2.4 times more likely to have moderate injuries and have an overall injury rate nearly 2 times higher than forefoot strike runners. The big reason heel strike runners have higher levels of injury is because all-around impact levels are often much more in heel strike running than forefoot running, and running shoes, despite thick cushioning, actually amplifies the already higher-than-normal impacts of heel strike running.
The mechanical components engaged by heel striking when running was found to increase bending moments beyond tolerance on the toes, while plantar pressure in the forefoot raised to pain-inducing levels. Another bad outcome from this was increases in dorsal bending moments and compression strains placed additional burdens on the foot, as compared with forefoot running, which showed a net-reduction in injurious foot loading.
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