Abstract Summary
We compared the effects of shoe midsole cushioning on the knee compression impulse during the first 50 ms of ground contact between midfoot (MF) and rearfoot (RF) runners, while controlling for the effects of: knee joint angle at contact, knee joint stiffness, shank velocity at contact, pelvis horizontal velocity and 50 ms braking impulse. Fifty-three runners (MF = 25, RF = 28) completed 50 trials of running at ~3.7 m/s while wearing: highly-cushioned and minimally-cushioned running shoes. Three-D video data were captured at 500 Hz and force data were recorded at 1000 Hz. An inverse relationship between shoe cushioning and the 50 ms knee compression impulse was found for rearfoot and midfoot runners. Increased shoe cushioning was related to decreased compression impulse for rearfoot (−0.023 ± 0.037 N∙s/kg), and increased impulse for midfoot (0.008 ± 0.035 N∙s/kg) runners, p < 0.05.
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