Research: Dr. William Rossi article flawed?

[Piggyback RidePlease]

There's an interesting research paper by the late Dr. William Rossi called "Why shoes make 'normal' gait impossible". It's probably in the BRS research links, if not it's easy to find.

I believe that, although much of what he says is correct, there is a fundamental assumption some of the research is based on which is frequently wrong. He assumes that all people walking barefoot land on their heel. I don't, some people do. I think that a lot of people probably land on their heel when walking BF because shoes have semi(?)/permanently affected their body in some way. Parts of the article refer to how shoes affect landing on the heel (walking) - fundamental mistake from my point of view

What would be interesting is to see how people walk who have never worn shoes and to then apply the same research again if it turns out that life time barefooters mostly front pad plant (or what ever you want to call it). Now you have a chance to correctly identify what's right & what's wrong.

Just my 2c worth.

:grade:

 

[Piggyback RidePlease]

Another interesting aspect of

Another interesting aspect of the above paper is to do with the :evil: toe spring.

Notice how, even now, we are getting shoes with a toe spring and these shoes are aimed at minimalist barefooters.

A point that is probably worth noting in the research paper: "18 of the foot's 19 tendons connect to the toes" - I'm sure it does not take much imagination to understand how much a toe spring can affect the natural mechanics of the foot.

Something where I think the Doc gets it wrong from a barefooters understanding of things: "On the bare, natural foot the digits rest flat", ok so far, "their tips grasping the ground", OK, "as an assist in step propulsion" - oh no, it's all gone wrong!



You can see that so much of the guys thinking is on the right lines but there seems to be a fair bit based on assumption rather than reality. Why does this matter to any of you? Because a lot of shoe manufacturers used this guy as a consultant or used his research and people continue to point to it now.

A lot of the rest of the paper seems to be inline with "our" thinking.

I hope that others will take a look & see what research is out there. The BRS is wanting to come up with a way to endorse(?) any given shoe with some sort of stamp of approval. I think it is very important to get this right or we will be back to the same old problem of shoe makers pointing to something flawed and people buying it.



Clearly the ultimate shoe will be perfect and will have no negative qualities at all from a biomechanical point of view. That's not going to happen. How do we get as close to perfect as we need and match that to a set of requirements or a "wish list"?



Perhaps we should make manufacturers backup all aspects of their shoe with peer reviewed scientific research? I don't think manufacturers would want to give away their "secrets". Actually I don't think they have any yet.

No disrespect to the top people in the actual activity but I think getting those folks to be high up in the chain of design risks something based on folklaw/hearsay/etc. rather than reality (again).

Some independent body (a university?) you would think could do the necessary research into what works.

Come on then, add your 2c...

 

[stomper]

piggy, i couldn't find this

piggy, i couldn't find this in scholar.google.com, which suggests that either the paper is not peer reviewed or somehow it has gotten lost in the annals of scientific indexing. can you provide a complete citation and link to the original?

thanks, stomper (editor of the BRS "Library", see link in menu).

 

[Piggyback RidePlease]

There seem to be loads of

There seem to be loads of versions of the paper and people have "tweaked" some. The first one I looked at was text only in a pdf and had the URL of some defunct podiatry site on it (Google 'william rossi "why shoes make normal gait impossible")'.

 

[stomper]

looks like it came from a

looks like it came from a podiatry industry magazine called "Podiatry Management" which may no longer exist, and doesn't look like it was peer reviewed. Not so much about running, but a lot of details about walking. For both those reasons it won't really fit in the Library's list of formal research (which, if anyone cares, is at http://barefootrunners.org/guide/academic-research-related-barefoot-running ). But a lot of fascinating thoughts about walking.

 

[Piggyback RidePlease]

I think that you need to

I think that you need to consider the effects of a shoe on walking because if you can't walk on it without it affecting gait then there is a subtle (or worse) problem for running. At the very least it is unlikely that the energy consumed in overcoming the shoe problems will return some completely positive benefit (i.e. with zero exchange of risk or fatigue etc.).

Somewhere between a "sock" and a "shoe" something goes wrong when you try it for walking (that if you front pad plant BF this mechanic is altered so that it no longer happens with the "shoe"). I'm guessing that finding the "shoe thresholds", (as I expect there will be more than one), will shed some light on how to make a better shoe (for walking or running). I've only got so much time to look at existing research and suspect if it was already there then no-one would need to wonder about why shoes do something undesirable at times because you'd be able to get the perfect "BF" shoe already.

A search for the author of the above paper seems to turn up consultation roles within the shoe industry. Not sure when he past away, (I think it was in the 90's he died so it's likely that a lot of his connections may not turn up via the internet), but if he has influenced a bit of the shoe industry then I think it's worth a little look to take into account how things are. Then you don't have to solve the whole problem anymore. Some companies will already agree with some aspects of shoe design that bother BF people. As an example, I don't think that any companies wanting to tap into the BF market think that a high heel will do the trick but there are other aspects which frequently creep in.

Some of these aspects of shoe design are debated within the BF community because there's not a definitive answer, e.g. the "toe spring". I think that if the BRS is going to say that they will give the stamp of approval to some shoe then they should be able to call on the best information available to back up that stamp or what's the point.

I don't know how you get to the point where you can reliably endorse most shoes without some hard cold clinical evidence beyond "what someone thinks/says/heard/etc.". You need to be able to point to, for example, a toe spring and point to the evidence that shows it to be good or you put it into the "questionable" category or the fail bin.

IMHO.