Welcome back to another episode of Runner's High If you haven't been here before, you should know I'm Jesse Funk. This is where we talk about everything running. And it's been a minute since we've talked about shoes, so I thought maybe we should come back around to a little bit more about shoes and for you in particular, if you're trying to find a shoe, what you should you be looking for, but more so if you have the problem of I've got a high arch. What does that mean for you? What kind of shoes are good for high arches? So that's what we're going to talk about today.
If you haven't been on the channel before. Hit the Subscribe button. Stick around for more videos in the future comes out every Tuesdays and Thursdays. Or right now, just Tuesdays, just we're working hard to the holidays. It's been tough to get all the filming in. So thanks for bearing with me as I'm, you know, coming out with a single video instead of double videos each week. But we're going to get back on the schedule here soon. So let's talk about shoes today.
A lot of people say, you know, what's your favorite shoe? What's the best shoe? If you look through like Google searches, those are very common. You know, questions. What is the shoe that you should be getting? Well, me in particular, I'm still wearing this guy. This is actually the version. This version two, I've got version ones as well.
The Nike Lunar Epic Flyknit. This is basically my favorite shoe I've ever worn. And if you know anything about shoes, you're going to go Jesse. That shoe came out five years ago. How do you still have a new pair? Because I poach them off of eBay whenever there are new pairs and I can find them. Eventually, I'll have to find a new shoe.
But I found this shoe a little bit in trial and error. But for the longest time, I wore the Asics GT-2100 series, which is a shoe that is generally for people who have slight over pronation.
It's my opinion since I spent three years full time working in a shoe fitting shop, working with runners, walkers, people with medical conditions, all kinds of people. That they were probably when I was getting fit with shoes as the running store, I went to probably a little overzealous in that. You don't have to have that overpronation shoe.
Everybody should ideally pronate a little bit. And what I mean by that if we use my shoe here. So this is your foot, it should roll from this side to this side. So you'll have this natural kind of inward rolling motion when you're running.
Sometimes people say that and they go, Oh, it's a problem. I need to stop that and they get something on the inside to stop it or they put arches in, but it's not a problem. However, if you've got high arches, you may have a different situation to deal with the opposite of over pronation, which is that again, rolling in side motion is actually called supination.
I'll put that on screen, so hopefully you can see how that's spelled. But when you supinate, that means that your foot rolls to the outside, meaning instead of going in that nice rolling motion when you run, it goes outwards.
And this is going to be generally someone with a high arch that has a higher tendency to do this. It's not always you can have flat feet and then roll outwards or normal looking arches and roll outwards. But as a generally correlated situation, high arches, supination go together.
So then you say what kind of shoe goes well with high arches or this supination problem. And it's going to be some kind of shoe, often that is going to have on the outside, wo this is the outside of my shoe, we turn here, there's going to be in the midsole here, this foam, it's going to be more rigid than what's on the inside.
And the reason is that when you're running, because you're putting this pressure to the outside rolling outwards, you're going to make the foam on that side collapse more easily than the stuff of the inside, which only worsens the problem. So to deal with that situation, shoe manufacturers have to put some kind of support and by support.
I've seen all kinds of different things actual physical posts like a physical chunk of plastic that they'll put in hard plastic, you know, they'll put in more dense foams, but usually there's going to be some kind of coloration or color difference here on the outside that'll show you that, hey, there's a feature here that we added, that's just for you.
That's something that's definitely going to show up. And if not, you know, if somebody at your local running store can obviously guide you to that kind of shoe.
The bigger question here that I always like to ask and came up on the Smart Athlete Podcast when I recently spoke with Mark Gallagher, who's a podiatrist in the UK, is does this fix the problem? Because it's often advertised that if you get this kind of shoe, it's going to fix your problem?
Got a little bit of a spoiler for you.
And that is that the answer is no, it doesn't really fix the problem. And if you think about this a little deeper, it'll make perfect sense, right? Ok, so if we think about the mechanics of our foot again, we're going to be rolling a little bit to the outside. We want to be doing this right. If we put some kind of foam on the outside, that makes it so that we don't smash that foam faster than the stuff on the inside, then will that stop our foot from rolling to the outside?
No.
And the reason is the shoe is flat. On the inside, you'll notice people take these out the insoles and they think this is arch support, but it's not.
It's just a cover to keep over the stitching so that you're not running on the stitching and sweating straight straight into the foam in the midsole.
What you need to actually look at to prevent the overpronation or to try to correct it is something that's referred to as orthotics or actual insoles, not just inserts that goes in the shoes.
Now, I don't have any on me because I don't wear any in my shoes, but there are over-the-counter orthotics that you can get to deal with this situation. One of the most popular that we sold the store that I was at for high arches is made by a company called Power Step. They make a number of different models, but that was very, very popular. As I got to talking to Mark again, the podiatrist on the Smart Athlete Podcast. If you want to listen to my whole conversation with him, we don't just talk about feet, but that is his specialty. So we do talk about it a little bit. I'll link to that at the end of this video.
As I talked to Mark more He brought up an issue that I kind of felt as I worked at this store in my early twenties. And that is that if you put the wrong thing in the shoe, it can actually make things worse. And it's really probably best left to the professionals to do anything too drastic.
So in Mark's case or podiatrists case, because they have the actual training, they can make something that's hard and form fitted to your foot to deal with your particular issue. The thing is that we sold and recommended and in my case didn't recommend enough much to the chagrin of my the owners of the store because they had great margins. They wanted to sell them, but most people don't need them. The issue is what we sold was softer. So not like what you would get as a prescription from a podiatrist.
In that case, it's going to be less likely that something goes wrong or you mess up your mechanics. But it's also not going to be as corrective. So there is a possibility that you could find something like this. Obviously, not this in particular because they've been discontinued and don't buy them. There are terrible shoe. You should let me have all of them that are left to the market, but you can find something in the neutral category doesn't have that extra posting that extra support cushion. But if you wear an orthotic made by a podiatrist, then you can actually correct your issue run "normally" with that regular slight, pronation, inward turning motion. And then also have the shoe that you want.
So there's a number of ways to approach the situation, but it depends on how severe your issue is if you have an issue to begin with because again, not all people with high arches supinate, turn to the outside, and then unfortunately, it's a little bit of trial and error.
You can go to a podiatrist if you're having pain or problems, but it's a little bit going to be: this is what I think my situation is to have somebody take a look at you and see, does this happen?
And then try some shoes on, go run in them, check them out, hopefully at your local running store, or they'll let you take them for a spin on the parking lot. The best running stores usually do, or they'll have a treadmill on hand to let you run in the store. That's going to be the tried and true test to see. Is this comfortable out of the box?
Not, I think it'll break in. It should be comfortable right away. That's when you know you found the right shoe.
So do you have any questions for me about shoes, about running the channel? Anything? Let me know. Leaving leave comments below. I'd like to make your video just for you in the future. I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runner's High. And before we go, check out that episode with Mark on the Smart Athlete Podcast the other, the show I do on this channel every Friday. Really awesome conversation again. We don't talk just about feet, but we do cover that a bit and he kind of gives his expertise. So check that out and I'll see you next time.