Overload injuries in barefoot/minimal footwear running: evidence from crowd sourcing
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Epidemiology, Kinesiology, Orthopedics, Public Health
- Keywords
- natural running, running injuries, barefoot running, crowd sourcing
- Copyright
- © 2014 Daumer et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Overload injuries in barefoot/minimal footwear running: evidence from crowd sourcing. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e250v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.250v1
Abstract
Background: The incidence of injuries in minimal footwear or barefoot runners compared to runners using conventional running shoes is still being discussed.
Methods: We focus here on methods and results of a online survey in a community of minimal footwear/barefoot (MF/B) runners. The aim of the survey was to investigate the viability of the method and to record first insights on running behavior, distance performance and injuries.
Results: In total 226 runners answered the questionnaire, 15 subjects had to be removed due to invalid data. A total of 211 (94%) subjects (152 male, ages 15-71 years [mean=40]) were included in the analysis. The risk to suffer a running related injury was significantly increased during the time period of changing from shod running to MF/B running (see Table 2). The injury rate per km was markedly lower – about one half - in MF/B than in shod running, but threefold higher during the transition period.
Discussion/Conclusion: Future research into the right “dosage” of barefoot/minimal footwear running in the transition period is warranted. We speculate that special adaptations - which may take years and thousands of kilometers to become effective - of the neuromuscular control play a major role, very similar to the thousands of hours a person needs to play and practice playing the piano before becoming a musician.
