Sydney - It's important to think about pronation, stability and motion control when choosing the right pair of running shoes for you. Bah-humbug, says Australian researcher Craig Richards. You might just as well make your pick according to what colour you fancy. Richards, who runs around 50 kilometres a week, says there is nothing in the literature to confirm the claims manufacturers make for their running shoes.

"Since the 1980s, distance running shoes with thick, heavily cushioned heels and features to control how much the heel rolls in, have been consistently recommended to runners who want to avoid injury," the Newcastle University researcher said.

"We didn't identify a single study that has attempted to measure the effect of this shoe type on either injury rates or performance. This means there is no scientific evidence shoes provide any benefit to distance runners."
The last 30 years have seen the dominance of the so-called pronation control elevated cushioned heel (PCECH) shoe.

The booklets that come with top-of-the-range PCECH shoes claim benefits in terms of arch comfort, leg alignment, cushioning, foot strike and pronation control. This or that model makes the runner more comfortable, more efficient, faster and less likely to sustain injuries.

It's all guff, Richards says in a paper published in the latest issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

"Not only can we no longer recommend a PCECH shoe, but the lack of research in this area means that we cannot currently make any evidence-based shoe recommendations to runners," he says. "To resolve this uncertainty, running shoes need to be tested like any other medical treatment, in carefully controlled clinical trials."