What Is The Best Style Of Shoe For You, If You Pronate?

Alright, so let’s get started. 

What is pronation? Pronation really means that you have a very floppy foot. You may already know that, sorry if that’s news to you. It just means that your foot bends a lot, this isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing. Lots of people are flat-footed and they have absolutely no problems. People pronate throughout their whole life and have no problems. But when you’re gonna run, a lot of times it’s much better for you if you buy a shoe that’s gonna help adapt your foot so that you have a little bit more structure. 

So, but let me, backup a bit. I think I got ahead of myself. I’m gonna show you what a pronated foot does, with my wonderful little foot here. 

This is a right foot. You have your pinky toe, you have a big toe, and you have that middle arch. Now for people who pronate, this does vary a bit, do not hit the outside of their heel at all. They completely bypass anything on the outside of their foot. For some people, when they pronate, they really hit on the inside of their foot and they just stay on the inside. For some people what happens is they hit on the outside of their heel but then they quickly get all the way over very quickly. They spend no time on the outside of their feet. They just jump right over too early to the inside of their foot and smoosh down that arch and then push off of their toe. The problem comes that by coming over, by hitting the outside edge and then quickly coming over, what happens is they compress too quickly. They don’t give their body the time to actually absorb the impact and then recoil, they really just smush right over. And because your foot is so flexible you then bend normally at this very odd angle. What I’m trying to get at is that this is where bunions come from. That’s what I’m attempting to point out. When you go over too quickly, you come at this angle on an end angle versus straightforward and that adds extra pressure to the middle aspect of your first toe because you’ve rolled all the way into the inside of this arch. You’re adding pressure to the outside of that bone here, which then can cause your big toe to come inward pointing towards the second toe. 

And then you’re really pivoting, not even on the bottom side of that big toe, but on the outside of that big toe. That’s where a lot of people have problems and that’s how you develop bunions. In addition this is also how plantar fasciitis is developed.  With this way of walking you overstretch all the ligaments and muscles on the bottom side of the foot causing the whole arch to just get smushed. Again there are varying amounts of pronation. Some people slightly pronate, some people are just completely flatfooted. Overall what it means is that your foot is a little bit more flexible or a lot more flexible than it should be. Which allows your foot to lose its arch. When you’re running it, it causes you to lose a lot of force production, because your foot smushes so much, there’s no recoil, there’s no stiffness for you to bounce off of. You are just flattening your foot and losing a little bit of energy and then trying to move forward and typically using the wrong muscles. At the very least the muscles are not being utilized as well as they could be if the bones and the arches were in a more ideal alignment. 

How can shoes help? 

This is where shoes come in. This is why it’s important to make sure that you buy a shoe that will help accommodate for the amount of flexibility in your foot. Really what you’re looking for is one that’s gonna give the inside of your foot, so by the inside I mean where the arch is, a little bit more structure. The shoe should prevent you from rolling all the way over to the inside of your foot. 

Depending on where you need the extra stability, you can get a shoe that helps with stabilizing the toe box, middle of the shoe or the heel.  The point of the shoe would be to prevent you from rolling all the way in, keeping your foot in a more neutral (straight) position.

But for somebody who is flatfooted or has a very flexible foot this would mean buying a shoe that they typically would not buy. Typically someone with a flexible foot will want a shoe with no structure.  When I start to work with someone who pronates, and I look at their shoe, I’ll find that their shoe bends a lot. In fact, it might as well be a ballet slipper, like an actual ballet slipper. There’s no structure to that shoe at all because they don’t like the structure since their foot wants to be able to do what it wants to do. 

And really who likes to be told what to do. You don’t want your shoe telling you where to move. You want your shoe just to do what it is that you want it to do. You want it to bend wherever your foot wants to bend. You don’t wanna get any of that restriction.  

I can appreciate those who dislike rules, but if you’re trying to run, you really don’t want your foot just to be able to splay completely, roll in and do everything that it naturally wants to do because that over time is gonna wear down. 

It’s either gonna cause plantar fasciitis, it actually can stress out your achilles tendon, and/ or it stresses out knees. A lot of times people have inside knee pain because when they pronate they put a lot of stress on that inside knee. Then we can get into hip problems and ITband problems which are all caused by how your foot hits the ground. 

I will stress that especially if you pronate it is a good idea to find a shoe that will help accommodate for that flexibility.  I also have other suggestions. Obviously I’m a physical therapist. I think you should work with somebody to help create a little bit more balance in your foot. But again, not in this video.  I’m not gonna harp on that. 

Just the idea that if you give your foot more structure, it’s going to help you have better performance while you’re running and less likelihood of long-term injuries coming forward. 

You’re gonna want a shoe that will only bend at the toe box. Let me see if I can give you an example of that. Good. So here is the shoe that I’m wearing obviously and <laugh> see how it, it just naturally bends at that toe box. There is a little bit of give, but it’s not I’m certainly not gonna be able just to bend it in half. This is what I would not suggest for you, I would not suggest you go buy a shoe that if you bent it in half it would bend at basically anywhere along your, the arch of your foot, so from your heel to your, to the, the ball of your foot. You really just want it to bend where your toes are in the shoe. 

That allows you to have a little bit more of that structure that you need. You don’t want your shoe to just be able to twist. For instance if your shoe was wet, you wouldn’t

wanna be able to wring your shoe out. There are sneakers that you can do that to, and for somebody who pronate, it’s just not ideal. Because you really do need to get some structure from your shoe. 

Other things to consider is the lacing in the shoe is actually part of the support. 

And so <laugh>, I just violated my own rule because I just slid my own shoe off, but I’ll have to untie it to put it back on. If you do not retie your shoe, if you just slide them on and off, you’ll stretch out the actual structure and the stability that you get from the shoe.  If you can slide your foot in and out, it’s not as supportive as it could be if you are having to retie your shoe. That’s why I always suggest that you should unlace, or untie the knot, open it up, and then when you’re gonna put it back on, you lace it back up. That way you get all the support from it, especially if you’re gonna go on a run. 

When looking for the proper size you wanna be able to put your thumb between your longest toe and the front of the shoe. What that looked like on my little skeleton foot is, in this case, the second toe is the longest. So you would shove your thumb down and now if you’re just running five miles or less at a time, then I would say that it’s perfectly reasonable for you just to buy the sneaker that has just that amount of room in it. What that space does is that it prevents every time you decelerate, you don’t jam your toes into  your shoe. You have a little bit of that room for deceleration. Another reason to fully lace your shoes so that your foot is actually staying in place and not just sloshing all over the place. 

If you are gonna run longer for instance while training for marathon distances then I would suggest you going up a full half size in the shoe. 

More about running shoes 

The reason you buy a running shoe is for the impact absorption and proper foot support. To that end, shoe makers have come up with amazing things. I’m just always amazed that they can come up with devices that do these things. But really as you run over time, the support built into the shoe will decrease.  There is supposed to be a little bit of  recoiling or like reabsorption when the weight of your foot is not on the arch support. But to get that full recovery, it needs about 24 hours, which means that if you’re gonna run daily, you need to invest in two different shoes so you can alternate them. That way you get the most outta the support that you’ve purchased from that shoe. 

Those are the big things I’d like to hit on for pronation. 

Short recap

If you pronate, it means that your foot is very flexible. What you wanna get from your shoe is more structure so that you have the ability to properly use the muscles in your feet and to insure you’re not overstretching your ligaments. Proper shoes help reduce the strain of your foot, knee and hips as you’re running. Especially the longer the distance, the more apt you are to have an injury if your foot is going all over the place. When you’re buying the shoe, you wanna make sure that you have enough room for your toes and that you can just put your thumb in the front of the longest toe so that you have the ability to decelerate or slow down without jamming your toes into the shoe. You also wanna have enough space in there if you’re doing really long runs to allow your foot to swell during your run. Swelling can cut off circulation, you can just be uncomfortable and/or  you can cause blisters. 

There’s all sorts of reasons that you don’t want to have your foot be too squished inside your shoe for longer distances. If you’re running daily, you wanna make sure that you’re gonna get the maximum out of the shoe support that you’ve purchased. So you want all of the arch support to come back, i.e the insert to reabsorb back into its original state, which takes about 24 hours. 

I hope that you find this information helpful and I wish you the best luck with your next pair of sneakers.