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…
Author: BillK
Cushionism: A Definition for Runners
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…
No Pain, More Fun!
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…
Dietary Guidelines for America Under Review
Dear Medical Colleagues, The current version of the Dietary Guidelines for America now being proposed is being challenged in Congress. There is still much room for improvement to be consistent with the evidence and clinical experience. This is a call to action sparked by Nina Teicholz’s recent British Medical Journal Article “The scientific report guiding…
Shoe vs. Shoe: Minimalist and Conventional Running Shoes
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….
Celebrating Small Business at Two Rivers Treads in Shepherdstown, WV
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…
Kids Don’t Need to Sit All Day in School: It’s Bad for Their Health
Bernadine Somers and Morgan Academy will be the first school of our region in West Virginia, maybe even the entire East Coast, to experiment with stand-up desks for kids. Most adults and children spend their days engaged in a damaging and unhealthful activity: sitting. Parking ourselves in chairs for long periods results in a chronic…
Run On Sentencing: New Column
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…
Slow Jogging: “Run with Smile, Midfoot Strike”
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…
Why We Run: “Born to Fly”
What is special about running? Why not just walk, cycle, swim, do some elliptical or maybe the “Gazelle”, or just squat repeated times through the day? My cousin Meaghan Cusack explained it all when she spoke to a group of physicians at a recent Healthy Running conference in Chicago. Meaghan is a self-addicted 5K runner…
Running Shoe-Fit Process Properly Explained
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 Early Track Shoes
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….
Why Minimalism Went Flat, Part III
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…
Join Us On Facebook
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….
Triathlon’s Tuesday Run: 20-Year San Diego Tradition
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…
Free Range Running
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…
2015 Minimalist Shoes–Check Out These Three Models!
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…
“Train, Don’t Strain”– Basic Military Training, Healthy Running, Lydiard and More
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…
Form vs. Running Shoes –Why Minimalism Went Flat, Part Two
by Jim Hixson, CSCS Minimalism isn’t going away. Too many runners have discovered for the first time what it’s like to run injury-free. They have awakened to the joy of a midfoot strike instead of heels hitting first, something that conventional running shoes with stiff, outsized crash pads pretty much guaranteed. But in the…
Healthy Running Courses
Teaching courses on healthy running is one of the greatest pleasures of work as an educator. I learn so much from the participants as we share experiences and variations on simple training principles that work to keep us healthy. The thing I like best is when after we tell a story, we do an exercise…
Why Minimalism Went Flat, Part I
Part One, by Jim Hixson, CSCS It was exhilarating and vindicating to see the increase in the selection of lightweight, flat, thin, flexible shoes several years ago. But now the minimalist utopia is threatened by market forces. I looked at the 2014 survey Peter Larson had on Runblogger.com –two of the top 20 shoes were…
Mindful Running = Stress-Free Running
by Elinor Fish After successfully completing Colorado’s infamous Leadville Trail 100 several years ago, I was on cloud nine, dreaming about my next big endurance challenge. While my imagination soared, my body plummeted into depths of exhaustion I’d never before experienced. I couldn’t seem to recover from Leadville, and almost a year after the race…
Original Strength for Runners: Go, Baby, Go
by Sarah Young We were born to run. We were also made to move. Our birthright is movement in all its forms. As babies, we began laying the building blocks to be runners by doing such seemingly mundane things as lifting and controlling our big heads (which weighed about 1/3 of our baby bodyweight). As…
Relief for Plantar Facsiitis
About once a week, the Natural Running Center will receive an email from a reader complaining about chronic plantar facsiitis pain in his or her foot. For these sufferers, conventional treatment ranges from orthotics to NSAIDS, neither of which are natural methods or recommended. Nor are they effective. These readers are looking for answers. Maybe…
Natural Foot Health vs. Shoe Industry
by Dr. Ray McClanahan. During a vacation with my family in Hawaii, we attended a Luau, where nearly every native Hawaiian had beautiful spread toes and strong healthy feet. That is not often the case on the mainland. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was related to the fact that they work and live barefoot…