12 ms·
The effect of high-top and low-top shoes on ankle inversion kinematics
- ortusdux 4y agoThis study was reciently highlighted in the Esquire story "The Rise and Fall of the High-Top Sneaker" https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a55587/high-top-sneakers-basketball/ https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a55587/high-top-s... "In 2008, Kobe Bryant, already in the league 12 years, decided for the fourth shoe in his Nike Zoom Kobe line, he wanted something different. "We got around to his next shoe, just talking future ideas and concepts, and he point-blank said, 'I want the lowest, lightest-weight basketball shoe ever,'" said Eric Avar, one of Nike's superstar sneaker designers, in a video interview. "'I want to prove to people that you can wear a low-top basketball shoe.'" "The official story, which feels sort of like a calm monologue in an ad, is that Kobe, though he attended high school just outside of Philadelphia, was mostly raised in Italy, and was passionate about soccer. Kobe noticed that soccer players, aside from the jumping unique to basketball, play in a fairly similar way to basketball players: lots of quick changes in direction, a lot of cutting, variation between sprinting and slower speeds, a need to suddenly spring in one direction or another. And when was the last time you saw a high-top soccer cleat? Is it possible that high-tops aren't necessary for basketball, either?"
- jjtheblunt 4y agoNFL cleats seem to vary between sneaker and high-top forms.
- appleiigs 4y agoIn my experience, the high-top add protection from being stepped on by other players who are wearing cleats. Useful for people who are pushing each other (NFL linemen, rugby scrums). Not for protection against ankle twists.
- jjtheblunt 4y agothat is a great point!
- pupppet 4y agoDecades of high-tops and we didn't need them, just goes to show these sneaker companies really have no idea what's best for the customer, as long as they sell.
- wilsynet 4y agoSame with nutrition industry. Decades of saying eggs are bad for your cholesterol, but no science to back it up.
- jack_pp 4y agoMore plates more dates got his labs done and then went on a diet that was high in eggs and noticed within a month that his cholesterol jumped significantly. I believe it is genetic
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago> And when was the last time you saw a high-top soccer cleat? Uh, last night, in our men's league? Just about every vendor of soccer boots has high-top variants of all their major models, it's up to player preference. EG: https://www.nike.com/w/soccer-high-top-shoes-1gdj0z6lqy0zy7ok https://www.nike.com/w/soccer-high-top-shoes-1gdj0z6lqy0zy7o... They're more like socks or an elastic collar that merge into the tongue/upper. Some say that the slight compression makes them feel better supported, but like elastic kinesio tape on the skin, it's not a mechanical prohibition, more psychological. Some say they're better at keeping you from getting stripped out of the shoe if someone steps on your foot, can't really deny that. And some say they avoid awkward bounces when the ball hits high on the instep near the sharp cut-off between instead of tapering in, but you already have a malleolus andd shin guard; maybe don't kick the ball there? It's definitely not a mechanical prevention of ankle flex like ski boot or calf-height hiking boot.
- crazygringo 4y agoI wouldn't call any of those high tops. Like you say, they're more like a sock lining that sticks out. High tops are when the main shoe material extends upwards for "ankle support", like you described in your last sentence.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoMy daughter swears by the Zoom Mercurials, both the turf and grass versions. She says they're the most comfortable soccer boots she's ever worn and she feels like she can run faster in them - so yeah, it's a psychological thing, not an ankle protection thing.
- canadianfella 4y ago[dead]
- dewclin 4y ago> And when was the last time you saw a high-top soccer cleat? Interestingly (?) early football boots were very much ankle-length [1], and this style continued well into the 1950's [2]. [1] https://www.footy-boots.com/football-boots-history/ https://www.footy-boots.com/football-boots-history/ [2] https://www.kraveantiques.co.uk/products/Nailed-Stud-Football-Boots-1404.html https://www.kraveantiques.co.uk/products/Nailed-Stud-Footbal...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yodon 4y agoIs there any similar work on hiking boots?
- pharmakom 4y agoThru hikers have been moving to low stack trail running shoes for a while. They dry faster and are more stable. I haven’t seen any hard data on the pros / cons, however.
- ghaff 4y agoI have a pair of custom-made heavy-duty (and heavy) hiking boots I use for backpacking and other strenuous hiking. But I wear "trail shoes" a lot these days. I'm not sure how convinced I am for a lot of weekend-to-weekend stuff that high top lighter-weight boots are a major improvement given equivalent soles.
- fellowniusmonk 4y agoThe problem with a lot of hiking shoes is that they are still rather tall like tennis shoes, when hiking I'm not "pounding the pavement", I want something puncture resistant with a low center of balance and grip or tread around the edges for gravel and loose rock and decent tox box protection (since I have the bad habit of shuffling at the end of a long day and don't want to stub my toe.)
- bjtitus 4y agoThe higher the top, the less debris ends up falling into the shoe, though. Of course, you could just strap on a gaiter instead as most thru-hikers do.
- DiffEq 4y agoIf one has a trail then minimalist hiking shoes or shoes in general are fine. If no trail…boots are my preference. Plus a good set are good for winter hiking to where you can add crampons if you need.
- pharmakom 4y agoThe current trend of super high stack running shoes (38mm) is interesting to see. Wouldnt be surprised to see mass rolled ankles, planar fasciitis, etc. in amateur runners over the next few years. Stop messing with your body’s existing functionality!
- LeifCarrotson 4y agoI have observed (anecdotally) an increase in calf/achilles pain and knee pain reports in high school runners transitioning between XC and track meets in which they're wearing ultra-minimalistic spikes with negligible - often negative! - heel-toe drop, and training in high-stack "cloud shoes" with enormous amounts of exotic super-cushioning foam. I think this is particularly unhelpful when marketing the same shoe design that has essentially no material under the instep or heel to elites who have the endurance and form to be poised on their toes with negligible heel contact during an entire 10k to 15-year-olds who will start off with grand ambitions and then be slogging it in for the latter two laps of the 1600.. I definitely agree that runners using these "maximalist" shoes exclusively are likely to experience more foot injuries if they ever need to transition away from them. My coaches (from as far back as...two decades ago, yikes) had us do strides on the football field barefoot, as well as occasional speed workouts on the track in spikes or spike flats to ensure that we were not only conditioning our major leg muscle groups but also smaller muscles and ligaments in the feet. If you only ever train to go straight forward with even, highly cushioned footfalls, and step in a pothole or on a rock when your muscles are at their weakest, it's not good. That said, for long, slow, distance days, I love me some cloud shoes. I just make sure to switch them up with minimalist flats for speed work and tempos once in a while, and to get some barefoot strides in when I have access to good grass.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI run half-marathons on $55 New Balance short-tops ("regular sneakers"). I don't even know what a cloud shoe is?
- cfeduke 4y ago
- rollcat 4y agoI skate high-top shoes because they actually protect my ankles from being hit by the board. I only twisted my ankle once, but the board can hit it from the side a dozen times per session.
- jbandela1 4y ago> And when was the last time you saw a high-top soccer cleat? The problem with that type of logic, is that in soccer, you probably need maximum ankle range of motion to help with ball control and to aim the soccer ball without telegraphing it by changing your whole leg angle. Thus, you may give up some ankle protection to increase your ankle freedom. In basketball, you do not need that kind of foot control. Therefore, you should probably sacrifice some ankle freedom for more ankle protection.
- derekp7 4y agoBut you then increase the weight of the shoe. Which affects running and, more importantly, jumping.
- klyrs 4y agoI refuse to believe that a 200+lb athlete's jumping is significantly impacted by a few ounces of extra weight in their shoe. I could believe that rigidity in fabric around the ankle has an impact.
- InitialLastName 4y agoJumping, maybe not; for running, the shoe is a weight at the end of an arm that needs to be accelerated consistently. Even if it's mostly psychological, you can absolutely feel the difference with a lighter shoe.
- jackmott42 4y agoThere is a well understood relationship between running economy and small changes in shoe weight which lead to important changes. So even if shoe weight had no important impact on jumping performance it will save significant energy over the course of a game to shave even grams off of a shoe. The reason for this is running involves accelerating the foot, then decelerating it, over and over, and the shoe is at the end of that pendulum motion. Not to mention lifting it against gravity as well.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
- _0w8t 4y ago> 13 physical education students Honestly I do not see how such study can lead to any conclusion besides that more studies are necessary. The problem is not even the low N, but extreme bias of participant selection. I.e. the conclusion that high-ankle could be worse is only applies to students of physical educations. One just cannot generalize it beyond the given group.
- freeone3000 4y agoIt’s feet, not a subjective experience survey. Unless you have reason to believe that their ankles work differently than other people’s.
- ordu 4y ago> Unless you have reason to believe that their ankles work differently than other people’s. I cannot agree with it. The goal of the study to show that there is no reason to believe that it works differently for different people. There are individual variations in ankles of different people and probably they use their ankles in different ways, because it is a result of reinforced learning mostly. Different people can settle in different local minima. The sample is homogenous, and it seems relevant to the results. Physical education students may have some special traits. They had chosen to become physical education students, so they we above average in physical activities, and then they spent years training their abilities. Moreover there can be a 10% of people with ankles working in a slightly different way and a study with 13 participants will not be able to notice it, even if such people become physical education students with the same probability as people overall, but they can represent 95% of physical education students or 0.1% of physical education students. There are studies that are based on an established theory and they can try for example to measure some constants or something. These studies can use reasoning like yours, they can rely on speculative arguments when proving validity. But it means that some previous study addressed the issue of the validity of the theoretical model. If we believed that the theoretical model of a human ankle is beyond any doubt then why to run the empirical study? We could run a computer simulation and get any results we want. But this study is even more early stage of research, and if my explanations are not good enough, then the quote from the article (emphasis is mine): > These findings provide preliminary evidence suggesting that wearing high-top shoes can, in certain conditions, induce a delayed pre-activation timing and decreased amplitude of evertor muscle activity, and may therefore have a detrimental effect on establishing and maintaining functional ankle joint stability. It is a pilot study, with the only achievement: they developed and tested methods for the follow-up study, which could take a several hundreds of participants and to test them without tuning its methods when something unexpected happen (if you do it is a bad sign of a bad science). I personally leaning towards a belief that the results of the study should hold for the majority of professional athletes, but I wouldn't bet for the rest of population.
- russellbeattie 4y agoWhen I was in high school 30 years ago I switched to low top cross trainer sneakers (Bo Jackson was big then) because high tops seemed to cause me sprained ankles constantly. High tops never gave me any stability, and in my opinion acted as a lever on my ankle, the way you'd put something tall under a long board if you wanted to step on it and snap it in half. With low tops, my ankle would bend/roll naturally and though it might hurt, it didn't sprain my tendon. I've always assumed my ankles were just weird.
- engineer_22 4y agoFrom the conclusion: "These findings provide preliminary evidence suggesting that a smaller muscular effort (a delayed pre-activation timing and decreased amplitude of evertor muscle activity) and changed proprioceptive feedback may result from wearing high-top shoes, and this might be detrimental to establishing and maintaining functional ankle joint stability in ankle strain situations." I disagree that using lower muscular effort means the joint is less stable. I would conclude the opposite, that if it takes less effort to maintain balance, the ankle is more stable. Ergo, high tops are more supportive.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoDoes effort exerted and thus a tensed muscle not provide stability?