By Elinor Fish For years Julia had some kind of running-related injury. It began as a soreness in her right foot that then moved up to the knee. After changing her shoes and running form, she experienced some relief. Then while training for a half marathon, the pain flared, this time in her right hip….
By Amanda Loudin Jason Bahamundi will go to his grave clutching his pair of Hoka One One running shoes. The finisher of five Ironman races and multiple ultramarathons swears by the big, cushy shoes—and he’s not alone. The brand saw sales increase 350 percent from 2013 to 2015 and most running shoemakers now have a…
The first work of fiction from Phil Maffetone: Million Dollar Marathon. It’s a novella (aka short story) that is now available on Amazon Kindle. When Xi, a shepherd from one of the most remote parts of Tibet, flees across the Himalayas to India, he doesn’t know what awaits. But his very act of fleeing—alone and…
By Jay Dicharry Jinge bells are out, mistletoe is up, and you are freaking out because you missed out on useless sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday…..uh oh. What do you do now? How about dig deep, and find a present for your fellow endurance athlete that’s actually worth its weight. This week, I’ll…
By Dr. Philip Maffetone What will U.S. Olympic Marathon Team look like? We’ll know for sure in a few short weeks, but one thing for certain is America’s fastest marathoner Ryan Hall won’t be on this team. At 33, Hall, who ran 2:04:58 at Boston in 2011, announced his retirement recently, citing extreme fatigue and chronically low testosterone…
In 1961 Simon J. Wikler, D.S.C. (Doctor of Surgical Chiropody) published Take Off Your Shoes and Walk, a successful attempt to explain how modern shoes gradually acquired the characteristics that now prevent the foot from functioning naturally. Despite the persuasiveness of his argument, he is realistic about the difficulty of convincing his opponents that being…
By Dr. Phil Maffetone Train better, race more and get faster — it’s all about energy, and it comes with a big bonus. Most competitive runners have at least three goals that include better training, more racing and getting faster. This trifecta may be the dream of most runners. But training harder and farther won’t…
Shoes as they are usually worn, not only deform but interfere with the functions of the foot by restricting the movement of its many small joints. Their action is more or less that of a splint.
Runners who are attempting to remain healthy and run more efficiently should learn the basics of good running tedchnique.
by Jim Hixson and Bill Katovsky As most readers who are already familiar with the Natural Running Center know, we have run several articles critical of running with “more shoe,” which in recent years has meant maximalist or hyper-cushioned shoes. We certainly don’t profit from our stance, especially since it’s difficult to find other sites…
by Bill Katovsky Cush·ion-ism ˈko͝o SHən izəm: Belief system by runners who prefer running in shoes with built-up footbed support, yet health claims and injury prevention remain unsupported due to the absence of scientific evidence. Cushionism first entered the vocabulary of runners in late 2010, when two Frenchmen, Nicolas Mermoud and Jean-Luc Diard, both…
I like to share this letter/email I recently received from my friend Alex Speed.– Dr. Mark Thanks again for your visit here to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, and for the clear voice you have raised on training and footwear for so many years. In the spring of this year I did a…
You think the running shoe debate is over? That minimalist and barefoot running had its feet crushed by “fee-fi-fo-fum” footwear giants? Just wait, and the pendulum will some day swing back to less shoe. How long the wait? Five, ten years? Which isn’t that long considering that the modern running shoe is a half-century old….
It’s with great honor to alert NRC readers that Two Rivers Treads has been selected as a top 100 small business by the Small Business Revolution (SBR), which is a year-long documentary project that showcases the stories of 100 small businesses across the country. Powered by the Deluxe Corporation of Minnesota, SBR tells 12 mini-documentaries…
by Bill Katovsky Thoughts on the Just-Completed World Track and Field Championships in Beijing…American track sprinters don’t just have a doping problem; they have a dropping problem. Well, the botched baton hand-off in the men’s 4×100 was actually due to illegal passing outside the restricted zone. But in years past, especially in the Olympics and…
One of the most inspiring scientists and self-experimenting athletes is my good friend, Japanese running guru Dr. Hiro Tanaka. I had the privilege of first meeting Dr. Tanaka, a Professor at Fukuoka University, Japan, at the Boston Marathon in 2011 after giving a talk on minimal running and the benefits of “easy.” Dr. Tanaka showed…
A week ago I received an email from a colleague in running retail, Eric Johnson, who is the general manager at Ultramax Sports, a “Top 50 Best Running Store in America.” Eric is really smart and gets it. He wrote, “This is by far the best video on prescribing running shoes I’ve run across.” This…
Adidas (it’s actually spelled with a lower-case “a”) has a long, storied history dating back to the 1920s. Two German brothers, Adi and Rudi Dassler, had started making sports shoes called Dassler in their mother’s laundry room. As sales steadily increased, they eventually expanded operations to a small factory in their home town of Herzogenaurach….
by Jim Hixson, CSCS It’s clear that minimalism is alive and well. Less shoe is thriving far beyond what naysayers and running magazines want us to believe. While mega-cushiony running shoes have taken over shoe walls at many independently owned stores (don’t get me started on big-box or running-chain stores), there’s still plenty of choices…
Discover newsworthy stories from all over the world on running –inspirational profiles, cool things and people, the weird and useful, injury prevention, diet, shoe reviews, videos, and a lot more. Just head over to the Natural Running Center Facebook page. Here are 15 of our more popular FB posts since the beginning of the year….
In the 80’s and 90’s, if you were serious about triathlon, you moved to one of the small, sleepy beachfront towns north of San Diego. Like surfers looking for the best swells, you wanted to be on the home turf of the world’s best triathletes, seeking out the steepest competition, for training, and then more…
by Bill Katovsky “Free range” is one of those terms that’s been in the news recently, and refers to parents’ dropping an over-protective, helicoptering approach to raising their children, and replacing it with much less restrictive control. It’s how childhood used to be. That was how it was with me and my brothers growing…
The new feature documentary, GOSHEN, reveals how the Tarahumara tribe’s ancient diet and active lifestyle can not only transform your personal health and fitness, but may be the key to preserving Tarahumara culture as well. Watch here via Vimeo. Own the DVD! GOSHEN is a powerful documentary depicting the diet and active lifestyle of the indigenous…
If you are reading this post, chances are you’re still very much a strong believer in minimalism, and have yet to drink from the maximalist Kool-Aid trough. Or if you have, it’s with extreme caution, and not in large mileage gulps. “Less shoe” is very much a key consideration for improved footstrike and body-ground spatial…
I recently spent time at the San Antonio-Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The ground floor of injury prevention for military members is Basic Military Training. For the US Air Force this is San Antonio-Lackland. Preventable injuries during physical praining in all the Armed Services costs millions of dollars a year in lost duty time…