Female athletes run for longer in 'super shoes', UoG study finds

A groundbreaking study at University of Gloucestershire is comparing the performance benefits of a £250 ‘super shoe’ compared to the everyday running trainer for female runners – a group historically underrepresented in sports science research.

Building on previous evidence suggesting carbon plated shoes give athletes a significant performance benefit, the University’s research aims to understand why this is the case and if results are affected when athletes perform under conditions of fatigue.

The research compares two popular Nike models: the Alphafly 3, an elite-level marathon lightweight ‘super shoe’ with a rigid carbon plate designed to aid propulsion and conserve energy; and the Pegasus, a regular trainer costing half the price that is more flexible and heavier than the Alphafly 3, requiring runners to produce more force to propel forwards.

Athletes visited the physiology lab at the University’s Oxstalls Campus for two test sessions: one in which they ran in the Alphafly 3 and the other in the Pegasus.

Participants ran on a motorised treadmill for five minutes in the moderate intensity domain before and after a time-to-exhaustion test in the severe intensity domain.

The speeds during both the moderate and exhaustive running were individualised for each participant, ensuring differences in fitness levels between participants did not confound the analysis.

To further remove bias, half of the participants wore the Alphafly 3 upon first visit and the other half wore the Pegasus first, and none of them was aware of distance, pace and time during the time-to-exhaustion test – they were simply instructed to run until they couldn’t run anymore.

Now in the preliminary analysis phase, the study has produced some interesting early findings, including that all women ran for longer in the ‘super shoe’ than the regular shoe. On average, women ran more than 20 minutes in the Alphafly 3, compared to 13 minutes in the Pegasus.

Preliminary findings have also suggested that participants were more economical when wearing the super shoe compared to the regular trainer, identified by a lower global oxygen uptake per kilometre run.

Simon de Waal, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise at the University, said: “We found that while all athletes responded better to the Alphafly than the Pegasus, there was some inter-individual variability in the magnitude of the benefit both in terms of total time/distance completed and exercise economy.

“For example, some women ran only half the amount of time in the Pegasus as they did in the Alphafly, whereas others ran almost 90% of the time in the Pegasus as they did in the Alphafly.

“We’re now investigating why that might be – whether it’s related to biomechanics, muscle efficiency, or other individual traits.

“The next stage is to analyse the data to understand why the carbon-plated shoe might be more efficient. We collected everything from EMG, which measures electrical signalling to the muscles, to peripheral muscle oxygenation, which measures how much oxygen is being utilised by the working muscle. Once we start to weave these together, they help to give us a view into what is making the athlete more efficient.”

Professor Athanassios Bissas, Professor of Sport and Exercise Technologies, said: “Most super-shoe studies ask whether these shoes work; our study asks a different question: how and for whom they work, by focusing on female runners and combining physiological, biomechanical and muscle-tendon structural profiling to understand why some athletes benefit more than others.

“The project involved a wide team of academic staff, technical specialists and students, making it a collaborative sports science community project, with international expertise provided by Professor Neil Cronin from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, who is also a Visiting Professor at University of Gloucestershire.”

Picture: An athlete being put being through her paces on a mechanical treadmill at University of Gloucestershire for the study around the impact on performance of different running shoes