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Don’t waste your money on expensive trainers

Expensive running shoes offer no benefit in terms of cushioning impact and overall comfort compared with 'cheap' trainers, reported The Times and other newspapers on October 11 2007. The researchers found that “no amount of built-in air bubbles, shock absorbers or other cushioning makes a difference to the overall pressure on the foot.” The stories are based on a study that compared the performance of low-, medium-, and high-priced running shoes in men while they were walking, and in a smaller group who ran. The interpretation by the newspapers that this study has shown that expensive trainers do not protect runners’ feet is not quite accurate as the “running” part of the experiment was small and the researchers themselves state that “it was not possible to reliably detect differences between pressure in shoes from different brands and across cost ranges”. Importantly, the participants in the study were normal runners. They didn’t have any gait abnormalities such as over or under pronation (where the foot has some rotation when it moves) and as such, were unlikely to require expensive, specialist shoes.

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