Does enhanced footwear comfort affect oxygen consumption and running biomechanics?

Comfort as an essential parameter for running footwear is gaining importance in footwear research and development, and has also been proposed to decrease injury rate and improve metabolic demand in the paradigm of the comfort filter. The aims of this study were to determine differences in oxygen consumption and biomechanical variables associated with lower extremity injuries in response to running shoes of differing comfort. Fifteen male runners attended two testing sessions including an incremental lactate threshold test, a comfort assessment and treadmill running trials for the biomechanical and physiological measurements. Statistical analyses were performed on oxygen consumption, spatio-temporal variables including foot-ground angle and coupling angle variability of 12 couplings in five stride phases. No decrease in oxygen consumption was found in the most preferred shoe condition. Investigation of potential biomechanical contributors to changes in metabolic demands revealed differences in the stride rate between the most and least preferred condition. In coupling angle variability analyses, only one coupling (ankle dorsiflexion/plantarflexion to knee varus/valgus) yielded a significant difference between conditions in the phase including the touch down. Based on the findings of this study, previous suggestions regarding positive effects of enhanced footwear comfort during running cannot be supported - neither on economy nor on injury prevention perspective. However, a prospective study of lower extremity injury combined with measurements of biomechanical and physiological variables seems to be required for a definite support or contradiction of the comfort filter.