This was a quick and short post, but some people ended up liking it a lot. In retrospect I should’ve written a bit more, maybe gone into the design of recent running shoes. For example, this Nike Alphafly has a somewhat thick heel made of springy foam that sticks out behind the heel of the foot, and in the front, there’s a “carbon plate” (a thin sheet of carbon fiber composite) which also acts like a spring. In the future, there might be gradual evolution towards more extreme versions of the same concept, as recent designs become accepted. Running shoes with a carbon plate have become significantly more common over the past few years. That review says:
The energy return is noticeably greater than that of a shoe without any plating, especially when you lay down some serious power. And that stiffness doesn’t always compromise as much comfort as you’d think.
So that’s the running-optimized version of shoes with springs using modern materials, while I was writing more about high heels worn for fashion.
Biomechanics is a topic I could write a lot about, but that would be a separate post. On the general topic of “walking” I also wrote this post. (japanese version here)
This was a quick and short post, but some people ended up liking it a lot. In retrospect I should’ve written a bit more, maybe gone into the design of recent running shoes. For example, this Nike Alphafly has a somewhat thick heel made of springy foam that sticks out behind the heel of the foot, and in the front, there’s a “carbon plate” (a thin sheet of carbon fiber composite) which also acts like a spring. In the future, there might be gradual evolution towards more extreme versions of the same concept, as recent designs become accepted. Running shoes with a carbon plate have become significantly more common over the past few years. That review says:
So that’s the running-optimized version of shoes with springs using modern materials, while I was writing more about high heels worn for fashion.
Biomechanics is a topic I could write a lot about, but that would be a separate post. On the general topic of “walking” I also wrote this post. (japanese version here)