Myth Busted
A shoe company paid out $3.75 million because it could not prove this. A court then barred it from repeating the claim. And when researchers filmed the fastest distance runners on earth, three quarters of them were landing on their heels.
75%
Of elite half marathoners
land on the heel
$3.75M
Paid out over
unproven claims
0
Reviews finding
switching cuts injury
2010
The year one book
changed everything
Section 01
Before 2010, almost nobody in recreational running thought about which part of their foot touched the ground first. Then two things landed at once.
The first was Born to Run, Christopher McDougall's bestseller about the Tarahumara runners of Mexico — a genuinely wonderful book that made millions of people believe modern trainers had ruined a natural human ability. The second was a paper by the Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman, which made the cover of Nature in the same year, showing that habitually barefoot runners tend to land on the fore or midfoot, and that doing so produces a smaller impact spike than heel striking in shoes.
Together they launched an industry. Minimalist shoes, barefoot clubs, gait coaching, a decade of runners being told their heels were the problem.
Here is what almost nobody checked. Lieberman's paper was not a study of injuries. It measured impact forces and predicted that lower impact might reduce injury. Prediction is not evidence, and the paper never claimed otherwise. It has nevertheless been cited ever since as proof that barefoot running prevents injury, while every systematic review since has concluded the opposite.
There is also an awkward footnote that rarely appears in the retellings: parts of Lieberman's barefoot research were funded by Vibram, the company selling the shoes, and he appeared in promotional material for them. Academics raised it at the time. It does not make the measurements wrong — but it is worth knowing who paid for the study that started a global trend.
Section 02
In 2012 a customer filed a class action against Vibram, the makers of FiveFingers — the glove-like shoes that became the symbol of the whole movement. The complaint was simple: the company advertised that its shoes strengthen muscles and reduce the risk of injury, and it could not prove it.
Vibram settled. It put $3.75 million into escrow to refund customers who had bought a pair, with individual refunds running to as much as $94. It was required to run hundreds of millions of banner-ad impressions publicising the settlement. Leftover funds went to the American Heart Association.
But the financial part is not the interesting part. As a condition of the settlement, Vibram agreed to stop making any claim that the shoes strengthen muscles or reduce injury — unless it discovers new scientific evidence supporting it.
Read that again slowly. The central promise of the barefoot movement was withdrawn as a legal undertaking, more than a decade ago, by the company that profited most from it. And people are still repeating it in running clubs.
Section 03
If heel striking were genuinely inefficient and destructive, it should have been selected out at the elite level, where hundredths of a second are worth a career. Researchers have repeatedly gone and filmed them to check.
At the 15km point of an elite half marathon, footstrike was recorded as 75% rearfoot, 23% midfoot and just 2% forefoot. Three quarters of professional distance runners — heel first. At the 2017 World Championships marathon, most competitors were again rearfoot strikers, and most did not change footstrike at any point during the race, even as fatigue set in over 42 kilometres.
There is one honest nuance, and it is worth stating because it is the strongest thing the other side has: within an elite field, the very fastest runners include a higher proportion of midfoot strikers. But even among them, forefoot striking remains rare — around 4% in one analysis. It appears to be a correlate of running very fast, not a technique that makes you run fast.
Which makes intuitive sense once you notice it. Sprint, and you will land on your forefoot without being told. Slow to a jog, and your heel will come down first. Footstrike is largely an output of speed, not an input you choose.
CHANGING YOUR FOOTSTRIKE
DOES NOT REMOVE THE LOAD.
IT JUST SENDS IT SOMEWHERE ELSE.
Off the knee. Onto the Achilles.
Section 04
A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis in Sports Medicine looked specifically at the benefits and risks of changing footstrike. Its conclusion, on both counts people care about: there is no evidence that switching from a rearfoot to a mid or forefoot strike reduces injury risk or improves running economy.
Economy in particular tends to surprise people. When habitual heel strikers are asked to run on their forefoot, their efficiency stays the same or gets worse. Your body has spent years optimising around the pattern it already uses. Overriding it costs energy.
The transition itself carries real, measurable risk. In one study, 36 experienced recreational runners were followed over a ten-week switch to minimalist shoes. Those who transitioned showed significantly more bone marrow oedema on MRI — early bone stress — than the control group who stayed in normal trainers. Case reports of metatarsal stress fractures in experienced runners attempting the same transition sit alongside it in the literature.
The mechanism is not mysterious. Landing further forward reduces load at the knee and increases it at the ankle, calf and Achilles tendon. The injury does not disappear. It relocates. Which is why the honest clinical position is that footstrike may raise the risk of some injuries while lowering others — useful information if you have a specific problem, useless as a universal rule.
Section 05 · Five Things Worth Knowing
The thing people are usually looking at when they say heel striking looks wrong is a foot landing far out in front of the body with a straight leg. That is overstriding, and it genuinely does brake you and load the knee. But it is a stride length problem, not a heel problem — and the two are physically coupled. Shorten the stride and the foot lands closer beneath you, and the footstrike very often sorts itself out with no conscious effort at all.
If you want to change one thing about your form, change how often your feet hit the ground rather than which part of them lands. Taking slightly quicker, shorter steps at the same speed automatically brings the foot underneath the hip, reduces the braking force and softens the landing. It is one adjustment that fixes the real issue, and it does not require you to relearn running from scratch.
Research on self-reported footstrike found runners are unreliable at identifying their own pattern — many people who are certain they are midfoot strikers are filmed landing squarely on the heel. If you genuinely want to know, you need slow-motion video from the side, and most people find the answer is not what they assumed. Which raises the question of how many runners have spent years fixing a problem they never had.
Footstrike is not a fixed personal characteristic. It shifts with speed, with gradient, with fatigue, with the surface, and with the shoes on your feet. You will land differently in the last mile than the first, differently uphill than down. Treating it as an identity to be corrected misunderstands what it is — a moment-to-moment response to what your body is doing.
This is the practical conclusion of the whole literature. A heel strike in a runner with no pain is not a fault waiting to be punished; it is the most common pattern in the sport, including among professionals. The circumstances in which changing footstrike is worth considering are specific and clinical — a persistent injury at a particular site, assessed by a physiotherapist who has actually watched you run. Not because somebody in a running club said heels are bad.
The Bottom Line
Heel striking is not a flaw. It is how most runners run, including three quarters of the elite field at a professional half marathon. No systematic review has found that switching away from it reduces injury or makes you more efficient, and the transition itself has been shown to produce measurable bone stress.
The belief took hold because a superb book and a single impact-force study arrived in the same year, were widely misread as injury evidence, and were amplified by a company that was later required to stop making the claim as part of a $3.75 million legal settlement.
If something hurts, get it looked at properly by someone who watches you run. If nothing hurts, and you want one thing to work on, work on taking slightly quicker, shorter steps so your foot lands under your body rather than out in front of it. That addresses the real mechanical problem, costs you nothing, and does not require you to rebuild your gait around a decade-old marketing claim.
Otherwise: your heels have carried you this far. Leave them be.
Sources & Research
Anderson LM et al. (2020). What are the benefits and risks associated with changing foot strike pattern during running? A systematic review and meta-analysis of injury, running economy and biomechanics. Sports Medicine, 50, 885–917.
Hasegawa H et al. (2007). Foot strike patterns of runners at the 15km point during an elite-level half marathon. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Kasahara S et al. (2019). Most marathon runners at the 2017 IAAF World Championships were rearfoot strikers, and most did not change footstrike pattern. Journal of Biomechanics.
Lieberman DE et al. (2010). Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners. Nature, 463, 531–535.
Ridge ST et al. (2013). Foot bone marrow edema after a 10-week transition to minimalist running shoes. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. PubMed 23439417.
Perkins KP et al. (2014). The risks and benefits of running barefoot or in minimalist shoes: a systematic review. Sports Health.
Vibram USA Inc. (2014). De Falco v. Vibram USA — class action settlement, United States District Court, District of Massachusetts. $3.75m settlement fund and injunctive relief on advertising claims.
Frontiers in Sports and Active Living (2024). Accuracy of self-reported foot strike pattern detection among endurance runners.
Educational content, not medical advice. Persistent pain in a specific location is worth assessing with a physiotherapist who can watch you run, rather than self-diagnosing from a website.
Frequently Asked
There is no good evidence that it is. Heel striking is the most common pattern in running, including among professionals, and a 2020 systematic review found no evidence that switching away from it reduces injury risk or improves running economy.
Most of them, yes. At the 15km point of an elite half marathon, footstrike was recorded as 75% rearfoot, 23% midfoot and 2% forefoot. At the 2017 World Championships marathon, most competitors were rearfoot strikers and most did not change pattern during the race.
Not without a specific clinical reason. Changing footstrike moves load rather than removing it — less at the knee, considerably more at the ankle, calf and Achilles. In one study, runners transitioning to minimalist shoes over ten weeks showed significantly more bone marrow oedema on MRI than a control group.
No systematic review has found that it does. The evidence suggests footstrike may raise the risk of some injuries while lowering others, which makes it useful information for a specific problem and useless as a universal rule.
No, and this is the useful distinction. Overstriding is the foot landing far in front of the body with a straight leg, which does brake you and load the knee. It is a stride length problem, not a heel problem — shorten your stride and the foot lands beneath you, and the footstrike usually resolves itself.
You probably cannot tell without video. Research on self-reported footstrike found runners are unreliable at identifying their own pattern, and many people certain they are midfoot strikers are filmed landing squarely on the heel. Slow-motion footage from the side is the only honest answer.
MORE RUNNING MYTHS WORTH UNLEARNING.
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