Participants needed for barefoot study

[ChiroNels]

Participants needed for world first study!

Through Murdoch University, Australia, we are conducting a world first: a pilot study on the injuries that occur in barefoot running. To be eligible for this study you:

Must be over the age of 18 years old

Run more than 80% of your weekly mileage in barefoot or minimalistic shoes for at least the last 6 months.

Have internet access to be able to complete an online training log.

Unfortunately you are unable to participate in this study if you have suffered an injury to the leg/lower limb/back/ or hip in the last 6 months, that was severe enough to stop you from exercising for at least 1 day.

All you are required to do is fill out a simple online training diary after each exercise until October 31st 2011. Those interested please contact the research investigator Dr Luke Nelson, at: [email protected] for more information. This study has been approved by the Murdoch University Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval 2011/057).

 

[DB]

Dr. Nelson,Would muscle

Dr. Nelson,

Would muscle soreness, sensitive plantar skin, blisters, or other mild aches and pains that prevent someone from running for one or two days at some point in the last 6 months make that person ineligible for the study? I would guess that most barefoot (or shod) runners might not be able to meet this criterion. Those who could meet this criterion are probably very unrepresentative of barefoot (or shod) runners.

 

[stomper]

Dr. Nelson, thanks for

Dr. Nelson, thanks for letting us know about your study.

I wonder, will your design equate actual barefoot runners with minimal-shoe runners, so that they are members of the same class? Or will you be able to compare BF vs minimal?

One of the main suggestions to come out of all the discussions on this web site is that people in minimal shoes tend to go harder and hurt themselves more. That's a suggestion, not a conclusion, as we're not doing formal research here. But it's a very strong trend in the discussion, if you look at discussion threads about discomfort and injuries.

Your 6-month specification may help control for that factor, and make BF running more like minimal. But a lot of personal experience here on the site suggests that one certainly shouldn't assume that the effects of BF and minimal are the same.

Cheers!

 

[ChiroNels]

Unfortunately DB these type

Unfortunately DB these type of injuries does rule participants out for this study. This is something we did consider carefully. One of the reasons we did this was that other injury studies done in shod populations included this as a criteria (6months injury free), and so we want to keep some consistency here. We realise that this will rule some people out, and we have difficulty with study numbers because of this reason, this may be something we will revise for any future studies.

To Stomper, we will be differentiating between barefoot and minimalistic runners. Each entry in the training diary will include whether that run was done barefoot, shod or minimalistic. I too believe that this is a very important distinction, as we MAY find that those that run barefoot are less likely to be injured (vs minimalistic), but only time will tell. As this is the first study of its kind, there will be a number of trends that we will analyse at the conclusion.

If any of you would like further information, or would like to take part please email me at [email protected]. We need to get as many people as we can to increase the strength of this study!



Cheers

Luke

 

[DB]

Dr. Nelson,Thank you for

Dr. Nelson,

Thank you for your response. Based on the review of incidence of running injuries in van Gent et al. (2007), British Journal of Sports Medicine, it seems as many if not most such studies do not have such strict inclusion criteria or injury definitions (that is, injury had to be something more serious than merely taking a day off from running). More recently published incidence studies also do not have such restrictive criteria and definitions, and neither does the ongoing University of Delaware study of injuries in barefoot and minimalist runners (see elsewhere on these forums about that study).

Runners who run less than every day may never even know whether they have an injury that prevents them from running a day after a run.

The danger of excluding such a large proportion of runners is that you could overestimate the incidence of injuries due to regression to the mean. That is, runners who haven't had to take a single day off of running in the last 6 months may simply be experiencing a recent period of ache- and pain-free running and are likely to return to the more typical pattern of at least occasional aches and pains (even if minor).

One possibility might be to recruit as many volunteers as you can, without restriction, and then in your analyses provide summaries of all participants as well as of subsets of participants defined by more restrictive criteria.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Stomper, that's the exact

Stomper, that's the exact question I asked Dr. Luke when he wrote to me asking permisson to post this here. He assured me that the study would keep barefoot barefoot and minimal minimal. I'm sure he will share his findings with us when the study concludes.

I happen to believe that blisters are NOT injuries, BTW. They are just indicators of poor form or bad judgement (such as running on hot asphalt during the middle of a summer day). They are not injuries such as AT, PF, ITBS, etc.

 

[ChiroNels]

Thanks DB, there certainly

Thanks DB, there certainly are flaws in this method of recording, and this will be discussed in the study. However rather than over-estimating the incidence of injuries, it is more likely to do the opposite. You can argue that by having a cohort of injury free and healthy runners, they are actually less likely to be injured. You are right with the review by Van Gent in 2007, in that there is inconsistency in the actual definition of injury, making comparisons between studies difficult. More recently however there have been the following studies:

Ryan, M. B., G. A. Valiant, et al. (2011). "The effect of three different levels of footwear stability on pain outcomes in women runners: a randomised control trial." British Journal of Sports Medicine 45(9): 715-721: This study used “missed training days” as an injury definition, and had an exclusion criteria of no injury in previous 6 months

Buist, I., S. W. Bredeweg, et al. (2010). "Incidence and risk factors of running-related injuries during preparation for a 4-mile recreational running event." British Journal of Sports Medicine 44(8): 598-604: Injury was defined as any musculoskeletal pain of the lower limb or back causing a restriction in running (mileage, pace or duration) for at least 1 day.

In the study we want to quantify not just whether an injury occurred, but how much time has been missed. Injuries like blisters and cuts will be included as this is often a criticism of barefoot running, and we want to see the incidence of these.

Cheers

Luke

 

[DB]

Thank you, Dr. Nelson, for

Thank you, Dr. Nelson, for your further explanation.

You're right that those papers did use a very restrictive definition of injury. (But note that someone could have no "missed training days", and thus not be injured according to Ryan et al., but still have an injury by your definition if someone did not normally run every day.) I would be worried about interpreting the results of such studies because in my experience, such "injuries" are nearly universal among runners of all types. It would lead me to question whether participants are underreporting such experiences to enter a study (or maybe even willfully denying such experiences, as they may simply disagree with the researchers that such experiences constitute injuries). Some barefoot runners might see the injury definition as effectively rigged against barefoot running (if there are to be analyses in which all injuries are grouped together). They might want some assurances that "injuries" that are very temporary, skin-deep conditions are not classified as injuries, at least in some analyses.

I agree with you that the bias could also swing the other way, toward underestimating injury incidence (by selecting for the invincible few). The problem with your design is that you'll never know. One big strength of your design is that it sounds like you'll be collecting data at the level of days. If you were to open up your inclusion criteria, there could be real value in comparing your results with the University of Delaware study (under way for many months now).

 

[findingflow]

I went out for a short run

I went out for a short run the day after finishing the Napa Marathon (barefoot) in March, but every one of my dozen or more (shod) friends in the race did not run that day, or for many days.

"Didn't" or "couldn't" is hard to say - but it seems to me that any runner who has not had a injury-induced day off in six months either is not racing, or is underreporting. Either way, not representative.

Sorry this isn't really constructive - but it does suggest reexamining the qualification criteria.

-unshod ashish

 

[ChiroNels]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Thanks for the feedback guys. We are going to run with the current definition we have, the strength and weaknesses of which will be discussed in the study. Hope to see those eligible getting involved!

Cheers

Luke