Global Therapies – taking part in research

Last week we were both over in Salford University, taking part in a bit of research about barefoot running. There is a piece of research being done about whether traditional running training or barefoot training has more of an effect on running economy. I thought it sounded pretty interesting. I don’t really have much of an opinion either way, which is good as that is what the research is meant to find out.

There is a lot of information and disinformation out there about barefoot running and how good, or not, it might be for runners, both in terms of becoming more efficient and also in terms of long term injury prevention.

The idea for this study is that a number of runners get tested for their running economy, spend 8 weeks either doing the intervention or not, and then get re-tested at the end to see if the numbers have changed significantly (and statistically).

Lynne and I both got tested, we don’t have the actual numbers, graphs or any of that kind of info yet, I suspect that we’ll get that at the end of the study along with an idea if we have improved or not. All interesting stuff, and although you can’t necessarily put numbers on the enjoyment of running, you can put numbers on performance, and it will be intriguing to see what happens over the next 8 weeks.

(If nothing else, its even more incentive to keep on training right through the Christmas period)!