Support is a very important feature in running shoes. Pronation problems can increase your risk of injury and supportive features in running shoes can reduce that risk. If you over or underpronate or hyper or hyposupinate, then you especially need to find a pair of running shoes that will help correct your gait and promote healthy pronation and supination.

Now, just because you have normal pronation and supination doesn’t mean that you don’t need support. Shoes form a protective barrier between your vulnerable feet and the outside world. They provide protection against painful rocks, prickly thorns, and hot concrete. Furthermore, when you are running, your risk of tripping, stumbling, slipping, and falling increases, because you’re moving much more quickly than if you were walking. Support helps to stabilize your step to reduce your risk of fall-related injuries.

If you are going to be running in an environment that has flat terrain where the ground isn’t slippery and you don’t have pronation or supination problems, then you don’t need nearly as much support as if you were going to be running on a hiking trail or in the woods somewhere. However, even if you don’t have pronation or supination problems, you still need support.

Supportive Features in Shoes

Shoe manufacturers realize that the burden is on them to provide their consumers with shoes that provide enough support to help protect their consumers from fall-related injuries. As such, considerable progress has been made in the shoe industry in terms of supportive features built into running shoes. These supportive features can be found in the upper, the heel, the arch, the insole, the midsole, and the outsole sections of the shoe. Not every running shoe is the same! Always check the support features of your prospective running shoes to confirm that they offer the support where you need it and don’t provide support in areas that you don’t need it in! Supportive features that support areas of your foot that don’t need to be supported can result in injury and discomfort, too.

Even though the midsole has a layer of cushioning between it and your foot, it provides effective support that you can feel without discomfort if the support is located in an area that needs support. Every manufacturer of running shoes uses some form of midsole support technology and each has its benefits, so do some research before you invest in a specific shoe to confirm that it has the support features you need in the amounts that you need.

Shock-absorption is essential to reducing your risk of shock-related injuries. Cushioning is used to reduce and absorb the shock and force generated by running. The best running shoes provide ample cushioning to absorb and disperse shock effectively without compromising on support and flexibility. Cushioning in a running shoe can be found in the upper, insole, midsole, and outsole regions of the shoe. It can take the form of a gel cushion, air pockets, padding, and foams, including high-density, multilayered foams.

Shock, Force, and Motion: The Impact of Impact on Your Foot

Think back to a time when you were running. Imagine going through the motions associated with running right now. You push against the ground with your forefoot and propel yourself forward. Your foot supinates and rolls outward as you bring it back around heel-first for the heelstrike. Your heel connects with the ground and your foot rolls inward just a bit as it rolls forward. The process repeats as long as you are running.

Now, imagine two cars traveling at a high speed slamming into each other headfirst. What happens to cars? The drivers? The fronts of the cars get crushed and the drivers are jarred inside their vehicles. The drivers develop pain and discomfort from injuries they sustained in the accident.

Sir Isaac Newton discovered three laws of motion, but the third one is the most relevant to running. Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The two cars barrelling towards each other slammed into each other with equal and opposite force, which halts their progress and causes damage to both cars. The equal and opposite force generated by the ground as you run allows you to propel yourself forward, but that’s not all it does.

Energy is required to run. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed according to the law of conservation of energy. The energy you use to run gets transformed from one form to another during the process of running. There are byproducts of this transformation of energy. These byproducts include sound, force, and shock. When you run, your feet make noise, but this doesn’t release all of the energy generated by the impact between your foot and the ground. Force is generated each time you go to take another running step, which is met in kind by an equal amount of force pushing back on your foot by the ground. That force transforms into shock, which is the jolting of your foot, ankle, leg, hip, and back resulting from the hard impact between your foot and the ground, just like how the two drivers were jolted during their car accident. The shock generated from each running footstrike can also cause injuries, just like the shock generated by a car accident. This is why it is important to have the best shock-absorbing running shoes.

When you’re running, you absolutely need to have good traction. A good outsole in a running shoe has patterns and grooves in it that allow water to escape from beneath your shoe. For example, a shoe with grooves that end before the edge of the outsole would trap water beneath it and, like a car, you can hydroplane, fall, and get hurt. So, you want the grooves to make it to the very edge of the outsole so the water has somewhere to go.

Some outsoles have lugs, which are grooves in the shoe designed specifically to grip the ground whereas others have reverse lugs, which are protrusions in the outsole. Both lugs and reverse lugs promote traction and grip. The more lugs and/or reverse lugs the shoe has, the more effective the traction will be, but outsoles with fewer and larger lugs will also be effective.

Ultimately the only running shoe outsoles you should avoid are narrow, incredibly small lugs or nearly flat outsoles. These shoes offer very little by means of traction and grip, so you’d be more likely to slip and fall. You should also avoid any running shoe that has an outsole made of leather or crepe. These materials do not offer good traction and usually, don’t absorb enough shock to be effective in a running shoe.

Flexibility is another important safety feature to consider when you are looking for your first running shoes. Shoes that are too rigid and don’t bend and flex naturally with your foot can result in injury due to poor shock absorption, which jars the foot, ankle, leg, and back.

It should be noted that any of the previously mentioned criteria is good only in moderation in that it doesn’t negate the effects of the others by drowning out the effect. You can have too much of a good thing, even in running shoes.

Flexibility can be fostered in a running shoe in a few ways. The upper, insole, midsole, and outsole can all be designed in ways that would foster flexibility without sacrificing support, cushioning, and traction.

No one wants to run with wet, hot feet. It’s uncomfortable and unhealthy for your feet to be enclosed in a damp, hot space for prolonged periods of time. Damp, warm, closed spaces are prime locations for the development of foot fungi and to promote bacterial growth. Fungi and bacteria also produce foul odors, which are unpleasant. Temperature management features in a running shoe can reduce and combat the development of fungi and bacteria in your shoes. Shoe manufacturers manage temperatures in shoes in a number of creative ways.