Do Orthotics and Stability Shoes Help Long-Term

The only equipment we runners use is what we put on our feet, and so determining the footwear best for you and your individual needs is crucial to long-term success and health.

But when it comes to individual needs, where do orthotics and stability shoes come into play?

Do these produce real, long-term benefits for pronators and flat-footed runners like they advertise?

Listen in as Coach Michael shares his expertise in today’s daily podcast.


Audio Transcript

Michael: Hey Runners Connect fans. Welcome to another episode of the Run to the Top Xtra kick podcast.

I’m here to answer a question about orthotics and stability running shoes.

“I have severely over pronated arches. I have always used orthotics and stability running shoes.

Six months ago, I checked into an injured runner’s clinic and after they did a videotape, the physio overview, they advised strongly that I don’t use orthotics or stability shoes.

They cited recent research that orthotics makes no long-term positive impact. What’s your take on this? Should I use orthotics or not?”

First of all, it’s a good question and pretty loaded because we’re talking about two different things.

Orthotics and stability shoes are looked at the same. A lot of people think that they’re the exact same thing or at least that they do the exact same thing for your body, but they really don’t.

First, we’ll talk about stability shoes.

When it comes to shoes for those who don’t know, basically you have three different types. You have neutral, stability and motion control.

Motion control is essentially just heavy stability, so it’s just neutral and stability. The way it works is typically what you’re going to do, is get something called gait analysis, which it sounds like Michael got when he asked this question.

When you get gait analysis, you’re going to find whether you pronate normally or you over pronate or you under pronate.

The most common is over pronating. A lot of people over pronate to some degree and anyone who’s seeking out gait analysis, in all likelihood, will experience running injuries or something else.

You won’t be running that efficiently. In all likelihood, I would expect anyone checking it out to be an over pronator.

Under pronators are pretty rare, but keep in mind when we say pronation it’s either over, under or normal.

Just the word pronation sometimes carries a negative connotation and it shouldn’t be because pronating is very normal; that’s how your body distributes the weight across your feet as you run or walk.

It’s very normal to pronate. You don’t want to over pronate, but you don’t want to under pronate either.

A lot of it has to do with our arch hide as well.

Typically, what you’ll find is that people with high arches will be more inclined to be in a neutral shoe, and will typically pronate normally or even under pronate a little bit.

People with very flat feet are going to be those stability maybe even motion control in a severe over pronation case.

That’s just a correlation, doesn’t necessarily mean it always is. I’ve seen people with high arches who over pronate and I’ve seen people with very flat feet who pronate perfectly normally, and just need a neutral shoe.

It really depends on the individual.

It is worth getting checked out and getting into definitely a good pair of shoes, but we’ll kind of talk about the long-term implications of that soon, but really quick on orthotics.

Orthotics is a kind of a loaded term as well because there’s two types of orthotics. There’s the custom made orthotics, which is probably what most people are talking about.

Custom made orthotics can be very expensive. If they’re not covered by your insurance, custom made orthotics can potentially run up to like $500.

There’s also store bought orthotics or several brands.

One I know of is called Super Feet, and it’s very popular. Those are usually going to be around $50 for a pair and they’re not custom made. They’re obviously kind of store bought and you buy them for your specific feet, but they’re not custom made.

They’re not moulded like a custom orthotic is.

Now when are these most needed? That’s the question that Michael is asking here. When do you need them and when are they more of a crutch?

When they’re most needed and is post injury.

Let’s say you’re having a pretty serious injury. It could be IT Band Syndrome, Achilles tendinitis, or maybe it’s runner’s knee.

Whatever it is, if it’s post injury, that’s one of the best times to have some stability shoes or some orthotics if you need them.

It’s one of the worst times to try something drastically different, like barefoot running for instance, kind of on the total opposite end of what we’re talking about here.

That’s obviously not the time to try something like that. At that point you have to baby it a little bit, kind of cradle your legs and your feet a little bit more than you want to.

Because you’re getting through an injury, you have to get better obviously, before you can improve things long-term.

Post injury, what you want to do with either orthotics and/or stability shoes, I think for most people, just getting into a stability shoe is probably going to be enough.

Orthotics can help as well, but I think for most people’s needs, stability shoes are typically going to do the trick. This is, if you’re over pronating.

If you’re not over pronating, even if you have injuries, that’s not the source of your problem.

It could be worth it to try out some stability shoes and/or orthotics for just a set amount of time. It doesn’t have to be very long, but while you get back to healthy running and while you get to the point where you’re able to build up some mileage, do some solid running.

Then what you want to do ideally, and this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always going to work out this way, but you want to be able to wean off.

You want to be able to run as naturally as possible. That’s obviously what we’re looking for what’s the most efficient running style for you, and what’s going to keep you healthy

What’s going to leave you able to train. Over time, you are going to wean off of stability shoes, orthotics, and whatever else.

One other idea that I was advised quite a long time ago, ended up helping me a lot. With orthotics, I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to run with them, by no means, because a lot of people do it very successfully.

I would use that as a last resort, but I would exhaust my options before going down that route.

What I was advised to do was to try walking in them. I was in college at the time, I was on a big campus, walked a ton, so I would just walk with the orthotics and it ended up helping a ton, because I was having plantar fasciitis issues and walking is going to hurt it just like running.

When it gets bad enough, when it’s really inflamed, it’s hurts just like it is when you’re running.

What I did is, I walked around and then I ran in my normal shoes and that worked really well for me.

Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work well for everybody, but something to consider is walking because a lot of us are on our feet a lot or walking around a lot, whatever it is and that can definitely make a huge difference.

Yet again we’re kind of going back to when I mentioned earlier about barefoot running.

We want to be able to run as naturally as possible, but with orthotics and stability shoes, I’m going to go kind of along the same route as I do with the barefoot running craze.

When the barefoot running craze really got big and I know it’s still pretty big and one thing I’ll say to people a lot is, “Hey, that’s great. Run natural,” right, “run free, run barefoot.”

That all sounds great, but you know it’s not whatever B.C. there’s roads everywhere, there’s asphalt, there’s concrete, that’s what we have, that’s our surface.

Not to mention, if you’re 50 years old and you’ve been wearing shoes, running in shoes your whole life, how are you going to expect to just suddenly go barefoot? It’s crazy.

Then the other thing is that hey, running a marathon is not natural.

There’s nothing natural about running a marathon, that’s why you have to do crazy stuff like make sure that your body can utilize fat efficiently, make sure you can utilize carbs the first half of the race, all this crazy stuff is because it’s not natural for your body.

You’re having to hack your body in a way, just to complete the run.

Training for a marathon is also not really natural when it really comes down to it. Natural is probably running a little bit each day, maybe three or four times a week, that’s probably more natural, but training for a marathon is far from natural.

When you think about it like that, a lot of people read about the barefoot running craze and they are like, “Wow! That’s really great. I should definitely do that,” but most of the time what I’ve found from experience is that, most people who try it end up having to go back into more supportive shoes.

I’m not saying the stability shoe, but a more supportive shoe because your feet, your legs can’t really handle it.

You end up getting hurt or end up with little like overuse injuries or excessive like leg fatigue and stuff like that.

It’s definitely not something that you want to go crazy with, same as barefoot running, so stability shoes are kind of the same way. Sure, you don’t want to use them all the time, but at the same time there definitely are cases where it’s necessary and perhaps even mandatory for some people.

There’s a lot of people that run in stability shoes every day and don’t really get hurt.

From experience, I can say that if they work really well for you, you don’t get hurt, your gait is relatively efficient when you’re running with them, that’s fantastic, but for most people with orthotics or stability shoes, you’re going to want to try to wean off them.

Try to get to the point where you’re running in more of a neutral shoe and get to the point where you don’t need those, at least you don’t need them every single day.

To conclude the whole thing, orthotics and stability shoes are useful for getting through an injury, that’s the number one use of them and that’s what they were intended to do.

They’re to help you get through an injury, not really prevention, utilizing strength work and proper running form is much, much better for reducing long-term injuries.

That’s it for today. Don’t forget to submit your questions and we’ll feature them on the show and have a great run today.

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