When it comes to protecting your lower back long-term, the research reveals that foot strike matter immensely whereby forefoot running prevents the weakening of the shock-absorbing structures in the back, preventing impact-induced degenerative changes to the back that are caused by heel strike running.
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.
One of the few ways Achilles tendon pain may arise in forefoot running is you may be landing too high up on your toes without letting your heel drop down to the ground. This directly causes Achilles injury by placing more jarring force, loading and mechanical strain on the Achiilles, and calves. To avoid this injury, you must engage a proper forefoot strike which is a much flatter foot placement, where initial ground-contact is made on the balls of the foot, then the heel drops down to the ground, which does a better job at safeguarding the Achilles as compared with toe striking and heel striking.
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.
Ankle pain in a new forefoot runner is adaptive pain as the ankle, which is used more functionally in forefoot running thanin heel strike running, is just gaining more developmental strength to the new running condition. The pain will vanish once the ankle has adapted to forefoot running. Why does this pain arise in the first place? Its because the ankle has a bigger role to play in balancing the body, which significantly eases mechanical strain off the knee. In contrast, in heel strike running, the ankle is not used in this functional way but the knee is, which is why over-use knee injuries are higher in heel strike runners, since the additional mechanics engaged by landing heel-first was found to mis-use the knee in ways that causes loss of cartledge to the joint!
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