Pick Your Running Shoes Wisely, Because Heavier Shoes Can Slow You Down
Researchers have come up with the fact that running time slows when shoe weight is increased.
A lot of gym goers love to run for long hours on the treadmill. But they need to be more careful, because according to a new study, running with heavier shoes can slow the race times. Researchers found that running time slows when weight of the shoes is increased even if only by a few hundred grams.
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For the experiment, researchers from the University of Colorado-Boulder in the US brought 18 runners and measured their energy consumption and 3,000-metre race times with runners wearing shoes of different weights. To measure the running time and capacity, each participant ran on a treadmill using three pairs of almost identical shoes with slight differences.
Researchers played a little smart and without informing the runners, they added small lead pellets inside the tongues of two of the three pairs of shoes used by each runner. While one pair didn't have pellets, each shoe of second pair was made 100 grams heavier and the third pair was loaded with 300 grams of lead pellets per shoe.
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Each of the runners ran treadmill tests in which oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production were measured with all three differently weighted shoe pairs.
The results showed that energy costs of the runners rose by about 1 per cent with each extra 100 grams of shoe weight.
Though the lead author Wouter Hoogkamer, postdoctoral student at University of Colorado-Boulder said that ¡°Lighter is not always better¡± because when shoe mass is reduced by compromising with cushioning it doesn¡¯t mean that you will run faster. According to the previous studies proper cushioning also reduces the energetic cost of running.
So next time while selecting your running shoes be aware of this trade-off between shoe mass and cushioning.
