- Good morning, Trainiacs.
If you just got into running,
or maybe triathlon, or any sort of endurance event,
you might be wondering
what is the best running shoe for beginners.
We're also going to add in what is the best running shoe
for beginners under $100,
because odds are you wanna get a really good running shoe,
but maybe you aren't yet ready
to spend a huge amount of money
into the two, three, $400 running shoes.
So what we're gonna give you today
is what you should look for in a beginner running shoe,
what running shoes satisfy that,
how to find these types of running shoes,
and what shoes actually satisfy those parameters
that we're going to lay out for you
to keep you injury free,
keep you running really fast,
and keep your wallet a little bit thicker
so that you can spend money on other things
besides running shoes that you go through
every single month.
This first thing that I wanna share with you
is a study called "Influence of Heel to Toe Drop
of Standard Cushion Running Shoes on Injury Risk
in Leisure Time Runners:
A Randomized Controlled Trial with a Six Month Followup".
And what this study showed is that of new runners,
of runners that are running less than three times a week,
the shoes that ended up creating
the least amount of injury risks
were the ones that had a small heel to toe drop,
that is the difference between
the amount of cushion under your heel
and the amount of cushion under the forefoot.
You want that to be fairly similar.
In my opinion,
anywhere around six millimeters or less
is a shoe that allows you to
function in your normal range of biomechanics.
After a runner has grown to be able to run three times
a week or more without an injury,
that's when the shoes ended up opening up,
that you could go to a more structured shoe,
to something with a bigger heel,
something with more stability.
But up until that point,
what they found is that runners needed to build up
the lower leg strength and mobility
in their natural range of motion,
and having all of those shoes with all the features
that restrict your foot from its natural range of motion
has a higher likelihood of causing injury.
So, the first thing that you're looking for
is a shoe with a six millimeter or less heel to toe drop.
This next study is called
"Influence of Shoe Mass on Performance
and Running Economy in Trained Runners",
and what this study showed is that
the higher weight a shoe was
that the less running economy there was,
that means there was more energy required to actually run,
and the heart rate ended up raising.
This is gonna be one of the biggest challenges
that an athlete will face when they start running
is a really high heart rate.
So, I recommend having a shoe
with that smaller heel to toe drop and under 10 ounces,
so we're starting to get narrower and narrower
with what we're looking for.
And this final study that I wanna share is
"Maximal Running Shoes May Increase Injury Risk
to Some Runners".
This is saying that even if a shoe
has that small heel to toe drop,
has a weight under 10 ounces,
I love you Hoka,
but those really big cushioned shoes
that feel like you're running on a cloud,
great once you built up the lower leg stability
to handle those shoes,
but up until you're running three times a week,
in that case you are better off
with a less structured shoe
because it's changing your natural biomechanics.
It's putting your square running peg biomechanics
into a round hole of shoe dynamics.
So, what we're looking for for new runners
is a shoe that is under 10 ounces
that has a six millimeter or less heel to toe drop
that isn't tremendously structured
to allow you to build up the lower leg stability,
to be able to be injury free.
So how do we then find these shoes?
Well, I go to runningwarehouse.com.
This isn't a sponsored video at all.
They don't even know that I'm making this.
I don't even know if I've ever bought a shoe from them,
but I like to use their shoe finder as a picker
because it has all of these selectors in the website
that can guide us towards the kind of shoe
that we're looking for.
And whatever website you use,
go to one that has this same sort of option.
So, we can go here and we can go with
heel to toe offset, somewhere zero, one, two,
or just making sure that we're under six.
Okay, so we're submitting that.
Next, we wanna go with the shoe weight
and somewhere under 10 ounces but over seven
is where I feel the sweet spot is
between getting enough cushion and not being so heavy
that the shoe is going to change your natural biomechanics.
And then the last thing that we wanna do is
I would very seriously encourage you
to start with a neutral shoe,
even if you have a stability shoe
or a pronation control shoe,
your foot is still going to do its natural biomechanics.
It's going to want to do that.
It's just gonna do that on top of the shoe.
The shoe is not actually going to stop those biomechanics.
Instead, it's just going to fight
with your natural biomechanics,
and at the outset,
we want you to be able to adapt
with your natural biomechanics instead of fight them.
It's going to allow you to adapt quicker
and build up the leg strength that you need to avoid injury.
So then with those parameters,
what I would do is search by lowest price.
I would go to around 50 results per page,
and then you can start looking at any shoes
that are under $100.
And just to comment on some of these that I'm seeing,
Skechers, I think they're very good.
I've ran in them before years ago.
I've actually raced in them.
Their dollar per mile is not great,
so I would definitely try to get them while they're on sale
because they don't last that long.
New Balance shoes, fantastic.
Saucony Kinvara, this would actually be like,
if I would say you can only get one shoe, get that shoe.
Topo Athletic I've heard good things about.
I don't know a lot about them.
Scrolling down here, Asics HYPER SPEED.
This is a good looking shoe.
Hoka, this is where we start getting into really good shoes
that I actually run in Hokas a lot,
but they might just have a little bit extra cushioning
for a beginner runner.
The Rincon is fairly minimal,
so I've got no problem with that,
but it's when you start getting into things like
the Clifton that you start seeing a lot more built up shoes.
And if you really wanna shoe that really focuses on
allowing your foot to move in its natural biomechanics,
Altra is actually a really well known shoe brand
for specifically that,
and I'll show you why.
When you look at the overhead,
you can see that it has this huge wide toe box.
That's going to allow your toes to splay out
and function in their normal movement patterns.
So, I hope that helps you select your shoe, Trainiacs.
If you're looking for a training plan to accompany that,
and you wanna make sure that you're getting good,
safe, well-structured training,
there's a link in the description below to our training app,
which has triathlon plans, running specific plans,
cycling, SwimRun, duathlon,
any endurance adventure you wanna go on,
you can click that link and try it for free for 14 days,
and we go to a lot of trouble to make these videos,
so if you found this helpful,
I would love if you hit the like button below.
Later, Trainiacs