Foot Strike and Injury Rates in Endurance Runners
Foot Strike and Injury Rates in Endurance Runners
Purpose: This retrospective study tests if runners who habitually forefoot strike have different rates of injury than runners who habitually rearfoot strike.
Methods: We measured the strike characteristics of middle- and long-distance runners from a collegiate cross-country team and quantified their history of injury, including the incidence and rate of specific injuries, the severity of each injury, and the rate of mild, moderate, and severe injuries per mile run.
Results: Of the 52 runners studied, 36 (69%) primarily used a rearfoot strike and 16 (31%) primarily used a forefoot strike. Approximately 74% of runners experienced a moderate or severe injury each year, but those who habitually rearfoot strike had approximately twice the rate of repetitive stress injuries than individuals who habitually forefoot strike. Traumatic injury rates were not significantly different between the two groups. A generalized linear model showed that strike type, sex, race distance, and average miles per week each correlate significantly (P < 0.01) with repetitive injury rates.
Conclusions: Competitive cross-country runners on a college team incur high injury rates, but runners who habitually rearfoot strike have significantly higher rates of repetitive stress injury than those who mostly forefoot strike. This study does not test the causal bases for this general difference. One hypothesis, which requires further research, is that the absence of a marked impact peak in the ground reaction force during a forefoot strike compared with a rearfoot strike may contribute to lower rates of injuries in habitual forefoot strikers.
Distance running causes high rates of running injuries, variously estimated to be between 30% and 75% per year. Although comparisons of injury rates among studies are complicated by different methods used to define and measure injuries and by differences between the populations studied, there is general agreement that running injury rates are unacceptably high, with no significant decline during the last 30 yr despite considerable efforts to reduce them. The causal bases for running injuries are obviously multifactorial and are often thought to include both intrinsic factors such as biomechanical abnormalities, previous injury, sex, and body mass index (BMI), as well as extrinsic factors such as shoes, flexibility, core strength, or the intensity duration and frequency of training. Many studies, however, have found that efforts to mitigate the effect of these factors on injury using either graded training programs or prescriptions of shoes and orthotics have either modest or nonsignificant effects.
Because a runner's kinematics affects how external and internal forces are generated and withstood by the body, this study considers how differences in general running form may influence overall injury rates. Although running form has many components, we focus on just one major aspect of running form, foot strike pattern, whose effect on injury rates has not been previously studied. Foot strikes vary, and there is no consensus on how to define and measure them (see Cavanagh and Lafortune and Lieberman et al.). Here, we define three categories of strike types that are prevalent among distance runners: rearfoot strikes (RFS), in which the heel contacts the ground first (heel–toe running); forefoot strikes (FFS), in which the ball of the foot contacts the ground before the heel (toe–heel–toe running); and midfoot strikes (MFS), in which the heel and ball of the foot contact the ground simultaneously. Note that we do not consider toe strikes, in which the heel never contacts the ground because this is a rare strike pattern among distance runners. We also note that strike pattern depends to some extent on speed, surface, footwear, and fatigue, but FFS gaits are generally more common at higher speeds, and among unshod or minimally shod runners, especially on hard surfaces.
There are three major reasons to test for a relationship between strike pattern and injury rates. First, how the foot strikes the ground involves disparate kinematics of the lower extremity. During a RFS, a runner usually lands with the foot in front of the knee and hip, with a relatively extended knee, and with a dorsiflexed, slightly inverted and abducted ankle; the runner then plantarflexes rapidly as the ankle everts just after impact (Fig. 1A). In contrast, a FFS runner lands with a more flexed knee and plantarflexed ankle (Fig. 1B), usually making ground contact below the fourth or fifth metatarsal heads; the runner then simultaneously everts and dorsiflexes the foot during the brief period of impact, usually with more ankle and knee compliance. MFS landings are highly variable, but generally intermediate in terms of kinematics. Second, different strike patterns generate contrasting kinetics, especially at impact. As Figure 1 shows, RFS landings typically generate a rapid, high-impact peak in the ground reaction force (GRF) during the first part of stance; FFS also must generate an impact, but they usually cause no clear and marked impact peak. MFS can cause a broad range of impact peaks, from high to low, depending on ankle and knee compliance. Strike pattern also affects lower extremity joint moments, with FFS landings causing higher net moments around the ankle in the sagittal plane and lower net moments around the knee and hip in both the sagittal and transverse planes. A final reason to study the relationship between foot strike pattern and injury rates is the growing popularity of running either barefoot or in minimal shoes that lack an elevated heel, contain no arch support, and have a thin, flexible sole. All humans ran either barefoot or in minimal shoes before the invention of the modern running shoe in the 1970s. Habitually barefoot and minimally shod runners commonly FFS or MFS, and habitually shod runners asked to run barefoot instinctively land more toward the ball of the foot. These and other sources of information, such as old coaching manuals (e.g., Wilt), lead to the hypothesis that FFS running may have been more common for most of human evolution. This hypothesis is relevant to the issue of running injury because if the foot evolved via natural selection to cope primarily with movements and forces generated during mostly forefoot rather than rearfoot strikes, then it follows that the body may be better adapted to FFS running.
(Enlarge Image)
Figure 1.
Top, GRF and kinematics (traced from a high-speed video) for the same runner at 3.5 mIsj1 wearing standard running shoes during a RFS (A) and a FFS (B). Circles on the force trace indicate the instant of the kinematic trace.
Another motivation for this study is that a growing number of runners are adopting FFS or MFS landings in minimal shoes or sometimes even barefoot, many because of unsubstantiated claims that this sort of form can prevent injuries, as well as increase speed and improve endurance. These claims are problematic because they have not been tested. However, there are two major reasons to predict that strike type affects injury rates. First, as noted above, studies of GRF have shown that RFS landings typically generate a marked, substantial impact peak (Fig. 1A), defined as a brief, high spike of force that is superimposed on the upslope of the vertical GRF immediately after the foot's initial contact with the ground. The impact peak in a typical barefoot RFS has a rate of loading of 400–600 body weights per second and a magnitude of 1.5–2.5 body weights but is usually dampened by a shoe heel to a loading rate of 70–100 body weights per second, with a 10% reduction in magnitude. In contrast, the initial impact between the foot and the ground in FFS and some MFS landings is more compliant and involves the exchange of less momentum and, thus, does not generate a conspicuous impact peak with a high rate and magnitude. This difference presumably accounts for why unshod or minimally shod runners tend to FFS or MFS without the benefit of an elastic heel, which attenuates the larger impact peak forces during RFS landings more effectively than the human heel pad. Impact peak forces are hypothesized to contribute to some kinds of injury because they generate a shock wave that travels up the body, generating potentially high stresses and strains in skeletal tissues, which, in turn, generate high levels of elastic hysteresis that can contribute to injury over repeated cycles. Higher rates and magnitudes of impact loading have been shown by some studies to correlate significantly among RFS runners with lower limb stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, and other injuries such as hip pain, knee pain, lower back pain, medial tibial stress syndrome, and patellofemoral pain syndrome. Other studies, however, have failed to find a correlation between impact peaks and running injuries. All of these studies, however, examined only habitually shod RFS runners and did not look at FFS runners whose GRF lack a marked impact peak.
A second factor relevant to running injury rates in FFS versus RFS runners is the rate and magnitude of joint moments (or torques), which may cause repetitive stress damage in ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and other nonskeletal connective tissues that stabilize joints. During impact, RFS landings generate a lower net moment in the sagittal plane around the ankle than a FFS, but higher net sagittal moments in the knee. In addition, shoes with thick and wide heels nearly double the pronation-inducing torque in the coronal plane at the ankle, and RFS running in shoes increases peak external adductor (varus) rotational moments, external flexion and internal (medial) rotation moments at the knee, and peak external adductor and external (lateral) rotation moments at the hip. However, correlations between these moments and running injuries have not been studied.
To sum up, the general hypothesis we test is that, while both FFS and RFS runners incur injuries, FFS runners experience overall lower rates of injury than RFS runners after correcting for covariates such as distance run per week, BMI, sex, and race distance run. We also predict a trade-off among injuries in runners who habitually use FFS and RFS gaits. Runners who RFS are hypothesized to be more likely to incur injuries in the lower extremity caused by repeated, high and rapid impact peaks, as well as injuries caused by repeated, high and rapid moments in the knee and hip. Predicted RFS injuries therefore include injuries of the knee and hip, lower back pain, plantar fasciitis, medial tibial stress syndrome, and stress fractures of bones of lower limb excluding the metatarsals. In contrast, runners who FFS may be more likely to experience higher magnitudes of loading in the forefoot and higher and more rapid sagittal plane moments in the ankle. Therefore, predicted FFS injuries include Achilles tendinopathies, injuries of the foot, and stress fractures of the metatarsals.
Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
Purpose: This retrospective study tests if runners who habitually forefoot strike have different rates of injury than runners who habitually rearfoot strike.
Methods: We measured the strike characteristics of middle- and long-distance runners from a collegiate cross-country team and quantified their history of injury, including the incidence and rate of specific injuries, the severity of each injury, and the rate of mild, moderate, and severe injuries per mile run.
Results: Of the 52 runners studied, 36 (69%) primarily used a rearfoot strike and 16 (31%) primarily used a forefoot strike. Approximately 74% of runners experienced a moderate or severe injury each year, but those who habitually rearfoot strike had approximately twice the rate of repetitive stress injuries than individuals who habitually forefoot strike. Traumatic injury rates were not significantly different between the two groups. A generalized linear model showed that strike type, sex, race distance, and average miles per week each correlate significantly (P < 0.01) with repetitive injury rates.
Conclusions: Competitive cross-country runners on a college team incur high injury rates, but runners who habitually rearfoot strike have significantly higher rates of repetitive stress injury than those who mostly forefoot strike. This study does not test the causal bases for this general difference. One hypothesis, which requires further research, is that the absence of a marked impact peak in the ground reaction force during a forefoot strike compared with a rearfoot strike may contribute to lower rates of injuries in habitual forefoot strikers.
Introduction
Distance running causes high rates of running injuries, variously estimated to be between 30% and 75% per year. Although comparisons of injury rates among studies are complicated by different methods used to define and measure injuries and by differences between the populations studied, there is general agreement that running injury rates are unacceptably high, with no significant decline during the last 30 yr despite considerable efforts to reduce them. The causal bases for running injuries are obviously multifactorial and are often thought to include both intrinsic factors such as biomechanical abnormalities, previous injury, sex, and body mass index (BMI), as well as extrinsic factors such as shoes, flexibility, core strength, or the intensity duration and frequency of training. Many studies, however, have found that efforts to mitigate the effect of these factors on injury using either graded training programs or prescriptions of shoes and orthotics have either modest or nonsignificant effects.
Because a runner's kinematics affects how external and internal forces are generated and withstood by the body, this study considers how differences in general running form may influence overall injury rates. Although running form has many components, we focus on just one major aspect of running form, foot strike pattern, whose effect on injury rates has not been previously studied. Foot strikes vary, and there is no consensus on how to define and measure them (see Cavanagh and Lafortune and Lieberman et al.). Here, we define three categories of strike types that are prevalent among distance runners: rearfoot strikes (RFS), in which the heel contacts the ground first (heel–toe running); forefoot strikes (FFS), in which the ball of the foot contacts the ground before the heel (toe–heel–toe running); and midfoot strikes (MFS), in which the heel and ball of the foot contact the ground simultaneously. Note that we do not consider toe strikes, in which the heel never contacts the ground because this is a rare strike pattern among distance runners. We also note that strike pattern depends to some extent on speed, surface, footwear, and fatigue, but FFS gaits are generally more common at higher speeds, and among unshod or minimally shod runners, especially on hard surfaces.
There are three major reasons to test for a relationship between strike pattern and injury rates. First, how the foot strikes the ground involves disparate kinematics of the lower extremity. During a RFS, a runner usually lands with the foot in front of the knee and hip, with a relatively extended knee, and with a dorsiflexed, slightly inverted and abducted ankle; the runner then plantarflexes rapidly as the ankle everts just after impact (Fig. 1A). In contrast, a FFS runner lands with a more flexed knee and plantarflexed ankle (Fig. 1B), usually making ground contact below the fourth or fifth metatarsal heads; the runner then simultaneously everts and dorsiflexes the foot during the brief period of impact, usually with more ankle and knee compliance. MFS landings are highly variable, but generally intermediate in terms of kinematics. Second, different strike patterns generate contrasting kinetics, especially at impact. As Figure 1 shows, RFS landings typically generate a rapid, high-impact peak in the ground reaction force (GRF) during the first part of stance; FFS also must generate an impact, but they usually cause no clear and marked impact peak. MFS can cause a broad range of impact peaks, from high to low, depending on ankle and knee compliance. Strike pattern also affects lower extremity joint moments, with FFS landings causing higher net moments around the ankle in the sagittal plane and lower net moments around the knee and hip in both the sagittal and transverse planes. A final reason to study the relationship between foot strike pattern and injury rates is the growing popularity of running either barefoot or in minimal shoes that lack an elevated heel, contain no arch support, and have a thin, flexible sole. All humans ran either barefoot or in minimal shoes before the invention of the modern running shoe in the 1970s. Habitually barefoot and minimally shod runners commonly FFS or MFS, and habitually shod runners asked to run barefoot instinctively land more toward the ball of the foot. These and other sources of information, such as old coaching manuals (e.g., Wilt), lead to the hypothesis that FFS running may have been more common for most of human evolution. This hypothesis is relevant to the issue of running injury because if the foot evolved via natural selection to cope primarily with movements and forces generated during mostly forefoot rather than rearfoot strikes, then it follows that the body may be better adapted to FFS running.
(Enlarge Image)
Figure 1.
Top, GRF and kinematics (traced from a high-speed video) for the same runner at 3.5 mIsj1 wearing standard running shoes during a RFS (A) and a FFS (B). Circles on the force trace indicate the instant of the kinematic trace.
Another motivation for this study is that a growing number of runners are adopting FFS or MFS landings in minimal shoes or sometimes even barefoot, many because of unsubstantiated claims that this sort of form can prevent injuries, as well as increase speed and improve endurance. These claims are problematic because they have not been tested. However, there are two major reasons to predict that strike type affects injury rates. First, as noted above, studies of GRF have shown that RFS landings typically generate a marked, substantial impact peak (Fig. 1A), defined as a brief, high spike of force that is superimposed on the upslope of the vertical GRF immediately after the foot's initial contact with the ground. The impact peak in a typical barefoot RFS has a rate of loading of 400–600 body weights per second and a magnitude of 1.5–2.5 body weights but is usually dampened by a shoe heel to a loading rate of 70–100 body weights per second, with a 10% reduction in magnitude. In contrast, the initial impact between the foot and the ground in FFS and some MFS landings is more compliant and involves the exchange of less momentum and, thus, does not generate a conspicuous impact peak with a high rate and magnitude. This difference presumably accounts for why unshod or minimally shod runners tend to FFS or MFS without the benefit of an elastic heel, which attenuates the larger impact peak forces during RFS landings more effectively than the human heel pad. Impact peak forces are hypothesized to contribute to some kinds of injury because they generate a shock wave that travels up the body, generating potentially high stresses and strains in skeletal tissues, which, in turn, generate high levels of elastic hysteresis that can contribute to injury over repeated cycles. Higher rates and magnitudes of impact loading have been shown by some studies to correlate significantly among RFS runners with lower limb stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, and other injuries such as hip pain, knee pain, lower back pain, medial tibial stress syndrome, and patellofemoral pain syndrome. Other studies, however, have failed to find a correlation between impact peaks and running injuries. All of these studies, however, examined only habitually shod RFS runners and did not look at FFS runners whose GRF lack a marked impact peak.
A second factor relevant to running injury rates in FFS versus RFS runners is the rate and magnitude of joint moments (or torques), which may cause repetitive stress damage in ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and other nonskeletal connective tissues that stabilize joints. During impact, RFS landings generate a lower net moment in the sagittal plane around the ankle than a FFS, but higher net sagittal moments in the knee. In addition, shoes with thick and wide heels nearly double the pronation-inducing torque in the coronal plane at the ankle, and RFS running in shoes increases peak external adductor (varus) rotational moments, external flexion and internal (medial) rotation moments at the knee, and peak external adductor and external (lateral) rotation moments at the hip. However, correlations between these moments and running injuries have not been studied.
To sum up, the general hypothesis we test is that, while both FFS and RFS runners incur injuries, FFS runners experience overall lower rates of injury than RFS runners after correcting for covariates such as distance run per week, BMI, sex, and race distance run. We also predict a trade-off among injuries in runners who habitually use FFS and RFS gaits. Runners who RFS are hypothesized to be more likely to incur injuries in the lower extremity caused by repeated, high and rapid impact peaks, as well as injuries caused by repeated, high and rapid moments in the knee and hip. Predicted RFS injuries therefore include injuries of the knee and hip, lower back pain, plantar fasciitis, medial tibial stress syndrome, and stress fractures of bones of lower limb excluding the metatarsals. In contrast, runners who FFS may be more likely to experience higher magnitudes of loading in the forefoot and higher and more rapid sagittal plane moments in the ankle. Therefore, predicted FFS injuries include Achilles tendinopathies, injuries of the foot, and stress fractures of the metatarsals.
Source...