The Shoelace Blues - How to get the most out of your new sports shoes

By Dr George Janko - Medical Director McKinnon Sports Medicine

Feet are the foundations of the body just as the heart is the seat of the soul. Proper foot biomechanics are critical in injury prevention particularly when it comes to the lower limbs and back.

As long as we seem to be stuck with wearing shoes nothing is more important to our feet than good footwear. Shoes support our feet and the more snug the fit the better control our shoes give us.

Excessive pronation occurs in over 50% of the population. Normal pronation is the slight rolling in of the forefoot as the foot strikes the ground. Excessive pronation leads to outside heel strike and an over roll of the forefoot. It is responsible for significant number of injuries such as plantar fascitis, achilles tendonitis, shin splints, calf tears, patellar tracking problems, iliotibial band tightness and so forth. Most importantly pronation is responsible for tight calf muscles (especially the medial gastrocnemius - one of the long calf muscles) and the tighter your calf muscles are the more you will pronate. It's one of those vicious circles which continues forever until it is broken.

Orthoses can help reduce pronation and control it. Proper calf stretching with the correct form will also reduce pronation. But orthoses or even the most expensive shoes are not of much help if they are not well attached to the foot.

Support

For day wear 'boaters' are absolutely useless as are pull on type elastic sided boots. They give no support to the foot at all. Remember what you wear during the day is just as important as what you wear when you train when it comes to injury prevention. You wear your runners or cleats two or three hours a day - you may wear your day shoes for ten or twelve hours. So for day wear lace-up shoes with a broad sole and a rigid heel grip are recommended. This may be more difficult for the girls who may need to wear dress shoes for work.

Where possible runners or sport shoes should also have a rigid heel grip, a broad sole at the mid-arch, and be flexible at the toe and not in the middle of the foot. The runners should be laced up quite high so that the arch (with or without the orthotic) is well supported. I recommend Brooks Addiction or Beast as the most stable of training shoes. Asics Duomax are also a very stable shoe. Both have a medial rear high density inlay which reduces pronation.

But what about the laces?

Well there is no point having great shoes if the laces are all loose. Laces should be done up very firmly from the bottom of the lace mechanism and don't worry about cutting off the circulation unless you have some foot disease.

Elastic laces are another terrible invention when it comes to preserving foot stability. I recommend that for all but those with the most stable foot, use elastic laces for competitions only. Replace your laces with normal non-stretch laces at all other times.