Really Serious Runners Wear Brooks Running Shoes

You can walk vigorously for extended distances in running shoes, but you should not run too often and too far in shoes designed especially for walking. If you do, as reported by a podiatric physician who administers to professional athletes, you are going to experience soreness in your ankles and knees and ultimately cause injury to those joints.

Men's and women's running shoes are specially designed to bend more easily in the midsole area while still providing more lateral support than other kinds of athletic shoes.Running shoes have different heel heights, different cushioning materials, and dozens of other design features that we never have to think of.

Shoes made for different physical activities are designed to handle bending and loads in different ways. Modern athletic shoes are made to respond more like complex, dynamic machines than the people who made those first pairs of sneakers could have ever dreamed of.

Runners get shin splints, sore knees, ankles and hips from wearing the wrong kind of running shoes for their particular foot type. The foot has twenty six bones and a complex array of muscles, ligaments and tendons that work together naturally when barefoot, but may conflict with each other when a shoe bends the foot the wrong way or creates pressure in the wrong places .

There are different foot types that should determine the particular running shoe that you wear. Some runners have what are called floppy-feet. Their ankles bend too early or too severely toward the midline of their body while they run. This is overpronation. It requires a motion control shoe.

Other runners have high arches that are very rigid. They do not bend easily to conform to the flat ground when all the weight is placed on the foot during the running gait. These runners need well cushioned impact control shoes made from a curved last that supports the arch throughout the gait. Runners with high arches may find that velcro laced shoes are more comfortable than string laced shoes because their foot sits higher in the shoe and rubs against the top.

You can tell what kind of foot type you have by the impression your footstep makes in wet sand, and by the wear pattern on the heel of your running shoes. Floppy feet do not leave a deep arch impression, if any at all. Shoe heels wear on the inside towards the middle. High arch feet leave a very distinct foot impression in the heel and toe area but little if any impression in the arch. Heels tend to wear toward the outside of the shoe.

The Brooks Addiction and Brooks Beast Running Shoe are motion control models. The Addiction is about 1.2 ounces lighter weight than the Beast.

The Brooks Glycerin model is made for high arches. Special cushioning, torsional controls, and other high tech features can mean the end of shin splints and sore knees for rigid feet runners.