By: Kerry Ding
In the years after Nike released the first super shoe, the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%, many other shoe brands began releasing their own style of super shoes. Super shoes are expensive shoes with a high-stack, advanced midsole, and carbon-plated design. These shoes seem to give its users superpowers as huge amounts of records were broken during this year’s professional track and field championships in Paris. This is because the shoes speed runners up with an extra push upward when they push against the ground.
Scientists are starting to notice another effect the shoes are creating. The more users run in the super shoes, the more adapted they are to the shoes, which makes them better. “Because the shoes are a new tool, the more we run in them, the better we adapt,” said Geoff Burns, a physiologist and biomechanics expert with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. This is because these are still very new, the oldest only was released in 2016.
These shoes are especially useful for track and field runners. Many sports scientists believe in the specificity principle which argues that the adaptation of the body or change in physical fitness is specific to the type of training undertaken. When athletes are practicing for a contest or meet, they would train with the same products as the meet or contest provides them. So, that would mean athletes would train with water if the meet or contest only gave them water. This also applies to shoes, so if you’re planning to use the super shoes in a contest, it would only make sense to train in them.
All these benefits mean that professional runners can’t resist the super shoes. Hundreds of professional and amateur runners are lining up to wear them, and it is easy to see why.
The shoes are easy to run in and make the users fast. They have reduced the pain in some athletes’ legs, too. Lindsay Flanagan, a professional runner, and one of the three women to go to Budapest to compete even said, “Since I’m going to be wearing super shoes in races, I want to get a good feel for them in training,” Flanagan said. “I’ve found that I can log more quality days, as well as more mileage in general because my legs come around sooner.”
However, there are some complaints that the super shoes can cause injuries. Adam Tenforde and Amol Saxena, two experts on running-related injuries, argue that the super shoe can cause serious injuries and ailments. In the Journal of Sports Medicine, experts have discovered five possible ailments caused by the super shoes. Also, a recent study from May 2023 showed, that a runner’s running skills improved less when wearing super shoes. But the same study also proved that the runner’s muscles ached less while running with super shoes on. However, according to the New York Times, “Wouter Hoogkamer and Max Paquette, say they have seen no convincing data that runner biomechanics are dramatically different in super shoes than in traditional ones.” This means that the shoes are not proven to work differently from normal shoes, and probably would damage the feet in the same way. Another issue with the shoes is that they are expensive. They can cost between one hundred and two hundred dollars per pair. Many people are just not able to afford these super shoes and are waiting for when they become less expensive to buy them.
Although many runners have encouraged the use of super shoes, it may be a double-edged sword. Even though it improved the speed of runners and made them hurt less, the shoes can slow training progress, damage your muscles, and are quite expensive.
Sources:
Wavelight Technology Sets Runners on a World-Record Pace – The New York Times
The Real Power of Super Shoes Could Be Supercharged Training – The New York Times
Bone Stress Injuries in Runners Using Carbon Fiber Plate Footwear |
SpringerLinkhttps://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10799/presentation/3505
https://www.britannica.com/topic/specificity-physical-conditioning