Your first running shoes

The script in any shop is always the same: they put you on a treadmill, film your feet, tell you that you pronate, and sell you a pronation-control shoe. It sounds like medicine. It’s more debatable than it seems.

What the big study found

In 2014, 927 people taking up running were followed for a year, classified by degree of pronation, and all of them were given the same neutral shoe. Over that distance, pronating more was not associated with getting injured more. Heavy pronators did not get injured more than neutral runners.

In fairness, not everything points the same way: a secondary analysis of another trial published in 2021 did find that motion-control shoes specifically reduced pronation-related injuries, though not the others. So the matter isn’t entirely settled. What can be said is that prescribing by foot-strike type doesn’t have the backing it’s assumed to have.

The alternative: pick what feels comfortable

Given the lack of evidence on pronation and impact, another idea was put forward: every runner has their own movement pattern, and intuitively picks the footwear that lets them move within it. That criterion was called the “comfort filter”. The hypothesis is that this filter, on its own, already lowers the risk.

What to do in the shop

• Try them on in the afternoon: the foot swells over the course of the day.
• With the socks you’ll actually run in.
• Run in them inside the shop. Walking doesn’t count.
• A thumb’s width between your longest toe and the front of the shoe.
• If they pinch and you think “they’ll break in”, leave them. They don’t break in enough.
• Keep the most comfortable one, not the one they tell you corrects the most.

And you don’t need to spend a fortune. To start with, any neutral running shoe from a known brand at mid-range price will do.