Over Pronation what is it?

Over pronation, you may have heard these words a lot, and the running shoe industry has put you in shoes based almost exclusively on this one single variable.  At the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine ( AAPSM), where I recently attended a conference, half a day was spent on this term. So what exactly is over pronation, and is it really bad for us?  

Over pronation can be defined as the rolling inward of the foot as it comes into contact with the ground during the gait cycle.   Most runners (or about 98% of you) pronate, meaning landing on the outside of the heel as the foot contacts the ground and then rolling inward from the heel strike to toe off.   Here is a little fact for you, only 2% of runners supinate, landing on the inside of the heel during contact phase and then rolling out during toe off.  Another way to put it is the rolling from the inside/out instead of outside/in.

Also, those that do pronate (most of you runners), will pronate to different degrees depending on how your foot, ankle and leg work together (our body's bio-mechanics) during the gait cycle. Without getting to technical pronation is simply the body’s way of dissipating the forces associated when the foot strikes the ground during the gait cycle.  Without pronation, which spreads the ground's reactive forces during contact phase over more muscles and tendons and bones, instead of one intense thud which would likely break your ankle.
 

So, is the industry’s concept of pronation, and the need to correct it, wrong?  That's the million dollar question!  These running sneakers that are designed to “correct” this mythical issue, over-pronation.  Are they unnatural, inefficient, or likely the cause of more issues than they were designed to fix?  The truth is that there is not one simple answer.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will go over some of the philosophy on this subject.