Running News Daily

Why Carbon-Plated Running Shoes Can Lead to Injury

Ten Non-plated running shoes that let your feet move freely, provide stable cushioning, and deliver a fast, agile ride 

The advent of supershoes has transformed the running shoe world in every category, none more than the class of shoes that used to be called lightweight trainer-racers. Rather than low, flexible, relatively firm shoes, the majority of up-tempo shoes now have a thick stack of light, bouncy foam with a curved carbon or plastic plate embedded in the midsole. Shoes without a plate are now defined by its absence. But concerns continue to grow about injury risk in carbon-plated shoes, and a growing number of models are eschewing the high-stack-with-plate trend and reviving the simple up-tempo shoe category with modern touches.

Besides not having a plate, these shoes share other characteristics. Like supershoes, they all feature advanced midsole foams that are ultra-light and hyper-responsive. Unlike supershoes, however, they all have relatively low stack heights and tend to be built on wider platforms, both of which enhance their stability. They also all have a flexible forefoot (rather than a rigid, rockered one), svelte uppers that have just enough structure to hold the foot in place, and price tags that run around $100 less than their supershoe siblings. 

If plated super racers and trainers are indeed super, allowing you to run faster with less effort, why would anyone want anything else? The answer has two seemingly contradictory parts: 1) to avoid the excess stresses and accompanying injuries that supershoes can cause, and 2) to allow the natural training stresses that supershoes reduce, in order to build stronger, more robust feet and lower legs.

The problems start with supershoes’ thick, bouncy, sole that propels you forward, but can also throw you sideways. “Running in supershoes is a much less stable environment,” says Jay Dicharry, physical therapist, biomechanical researcher, and professor at Oregon State University. “If you have really good alignment and foot and ankle control, you might be OK, but if not, a supershoe will greatly magnify your instability. You’ll wind up with a considerable increase in stress—and if you have something borderline, it might push you over the threshold.” 

Amol Saxena, a leading sports podiatrist in Palo Alto, California, also points out issues with the prescriptive rigidity of the plates. “The problem with the carbon-plated shoes is that your foot is individualized, and the carbon plate is not,” Saxena says. “So if the shape or length of your metatarsals line up differently than where it has to bend, or your plantar fascia is less flexible, you can get stressed in those areas—that’s why people are breaking down. I’ve had people break or tear things just in one run in the shoes.” The more flexible plates found in many super trainers reduce some of this stress, but these shoes are still tuned to optimize specific strides and don’t let the foot move freely in its preferred patterns.

Research has also shown that running in supershoes changes your form: It decreases your cadence, increases stride length and peak vertical forces, and alters foot mechanics. All these add stress to joints. “When you put a supershoe on, you basically have a trampoline,” Dicharry says. “It’s going to compress and rebound, and creates a different rate of loading to muscles and joints.” While no studies to date directly demonstrate that supershoes cause injury, evidence links them to stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, achilles tendinopathy, and other foot and lower-leg issues. 

Paradoxically, while supershoes’ unstable platform and rigid plates can add excessive stress, their performance-enhancing rebound can also remove some of the training load. Supershoes lower the load at the ankle and foot, reducing the work they have to do and making running easier in the short-term, but simultaneously removing some of the stimulus for your body to adapt and grow stronger in the long-term. “If you run in supershoes exclusively, you’re going to end up with a bunch of deficient runners prone to injury—runners with less springy tendons, weaker tendons, and lower bone density,” Dicharry says.

The solution is to wear a variety of shoes in your training. “It is good to use different stack heights and flexibility,” Saxena says. “Plated shoes should be a training tool as well as for races—but how much depends on the runner.” You want to train some in the shoes you’ll be racing in, to let your body adapt to their unique stresses and stride patterns. But training in more flexible, less-bouncy shoes has been shown to improve running economy and build the strengths you need to handle the unstable rebound of supershoes. “If you want to run in super shoes you need to put the work in to show up with stable parts,” Dicharry says.

Fortunately, I don’t find training in these shoes a chore. They may not be performance-enhancing racers, but they are light, nimble, stable, and make my feet feel connected, engaged, and alive.

After having run in dozens of shoe models released this spring, I selected those that fit in the category and ran in a different shoe every day for six weeks—on asphalt, concrete, and dirt roads. I did at least one daily run and speed workout in each, ranging from 100-meter pickups to VO2-max intervals to tempo runs. Despite their similarities, each shoe has a slightly different ride and significantly different fit, so it’s worth trying out a few before buying. All of these models will serve as an excellent trainer for easy daily runs, interval workouts, tempo runs, and occasionally going long.