Sometimes preventing an injury comes down to small details, like whether your shoe insert is helping keep your knee aligned throughout your run, not just at the beginning.
Fortunately, science dives into such matters. A new study in the Journal of Engineering in Medicine analysed changes in knee movement at the start of and 30 minutes into a run on subjects wearing inserts. The scientists were curious about this because changes in the knee angle could diminish the effectiveness of the insole – whether it helped prevent the knee from turning in during the stance (or foot-on-the-ground) phase of running, a movement linked to patellofemoral pain or runner’s knee.
Nine healthy runners participated and gait analyses were conducted during two 30-minute runs on separate days.
No significant changes to knee angle were found. That is, the inserts were doing what they were designed to do even as the body began to fatigue.
