Mmmm, not quite. The ones you and I can buy have a single plate, and stack height of 36mm. The ban was for shoes (like the VaporFly prototype) with >40mm stack height and/or multiple plates. Not that this article clears the matter a whole lot, but there is more information (sorry, couldn't find a succinct article on the topic): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nike-vaporfly-running-sneaker-n...
I've used them (as a ~3:00 marathoner). They probably are good for a few minutes off your time. But what I noticed most was that the next day I said to my wife, "I don't think I ran hard enough." Oh, I ran hard enough, but the shoes do so much better at keeping the legs from getting trashed. Normally, I'd take the day off the day after a marathon. Instead, I said, "screw it, I'm going for a short run."
And the VaporFly has little to do with this proposition, other than using a spring-like device.
I wonder if that would do anything for my plantar fascitis...
I made a mistake in shoe choice for a vacation one year, before I knew how much my wife absolutely insists on walking at least 10 miles a day. That was 8 years ago and I still have pretty severe pain almost every morning.
Take this with a bag of salt, but I've heard people get notable improvements in joint, feet, leg health from switching to barefoot shoes. They also tend to be extremely comfortable. I've been using them exclusively ~5 years and ran a half-marathon in them. For what it's worth, a physical therapist told me my feet are remarkably muscular. I like the UK manufacturer Freet, btw.
Consider my perspective: I switched to barefoot shoes to prevent problems I didn't have and wrecked my knee to where I had to quit running entirely for ~6-7years. I'm finally able to run now again though but I'm never trying that experiment again.
People go too hard. If you're in your 20s, starting at ten minutes a day and working up to 90 minutes over the course of 18 months is a reasonable rate of change.
Tendons and ligaments do not adapt at the same rate as muscles. Nor do articulation patterns.
+1. I gave them a try during the pandemic and it led to some knee pain. Thankfully I switched back before causing serious damage. I’m sure that they work well for some people but they can also hurt.
My god, yes. I had knee and ankle pain while running, then also while walking. Too much padding was allowing me to walk incorrectly. After being ‘prescribed’ flat, flexible, low-stack shoes, all the pain went away. My toes are more spread out and my abductors are thicker. Nice gains!
(Still, your mileage may vary, I included lots of exercise specifically for the transition. And still run in Altras.)
In Born To Run they cite a study that surprised it's own authors. The more expensive the running shoe, the higher the rate of injuries i.e. the better the damping the weaker the foot and legs. And another one that showed the impact on the leg is 7 times higher in running shoes than barefoot. On mobile may provide links later.
[edit] Unable to find the one i searched but found this article claiming a 2-3x times bodyweight impact on the legs when wearing shoes.
> A large majority (68%) of runners participating in the study experienced no new injuries after starting barefoot running. In fact, most respondents (69%) actually had their previous injuries go away after starting barefoot running.
I know! This and ‘Exercised’ are what got me running. Both excellent, evidence-based books. I run in Altras for the transition, but hope to eventually have the legs for running in something that qualifies for barefoot (rise/stack/flex).
I am not an avid runner or hiker, but I do both occasionally. I find that I am far more comfortable after a day of walking or hiking on level ground if I'm barefoot. However running barefoot on any surface other than sand is painful in both my feet and knees.
I suppose that different activities require different footwear.
I beat the shit out of my plantar fascia when I took to longboarding one summer.
I basically had to stop any recreational walking for a year. I tried the Vibram FiveFingers and I think they helped (yes, I know about the lawsuit: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27335251), but my equation for recovery is rest + time then gentle strengthening (and luck I guess, in the case of my plantar fasciitis). And ergonomic everything wherever possible to prevent future issues before they occur.
I have one particular pair of dress shoes that are the most comfortable for me right now, even more so than my sneakers. I think it might be the rise of the heel, plus they were always pretty comfortable getting the start. I basically heal over the week while I'm sitting at work and then redamage over the weekend when I'm taking my kids out to parks.
I am NOT anyone with relevant credentials, just a lot of running over the last 40 some years in a lot of shoes. That said, I no reason to think that VaporFlys would help with plantar fasciitis. I hypothesize that it's the energy return (which is energy not pounding the legs) is what saves the legs, and I don't know that help plantar problems. And the shoes are designed around running, not walking.
Mainly, though, is they're $250 a pair. That's a pretty pricey experiment without some bit of evidence, even if anecdotal, that they might work for your problem.
Good luck, though. I know plantar fasciitis is a tough one to treat.
My thinking is that a spring that can provide power also absorbs power. Basically a low-pass filter, like a capacitor. IDK. I've tried the socks, the boots you wear while you try to sleep but can't because they itch too much, and all kinds of shoes. Honestly, I'm at the point where I'll try just about anything.
Anecdata, which I welcome you to ignore: A plantar fasciitis sufferer I know got substantial relief by walking around barefoot in the house at every opportunity. This helped because the tissues in the foot were actually too loose and flexible, which was the root cause of the complaint. The fascia was rolling around all over the place and becoming inflamed as a result. Doctor-prescribed stretching regimens and arch supports had actually made the condition worse. A physical therapist recommended the correct course of action, which was almost exactly the opposite: walking barefoot helped tone and strenghten the feet, and the inflammation subsided.
While an ideal spring may not exist, the foot itself might be the next best thing suited to that goal. It’s full of nerves that allow the brain to make micro adjustments, as well as muscles for executing those compensations in real time, based on feedback thats coming from the ground.
Hey there! I don’t know what you’ve done to treat it so far, but I am somebody who went through a year and a half of very painful plantar fasciitis after a few years of moderate pain. I tried every single solution under the sun and am actually “cured”! Some unsolicited input, if you want:
1) Kuru tennis shoes with an insert for PF are excellent.
2) Oofos slippers by my bedside even today. They provide such good relief
3) aleve > other pain meds
4) the PF splint which stretches out your foot cN work wonders
I ultimately had to get my plantar fascia released, my inflammation had just become so severe there was no other option. I’m really glad I did it though, it’s been completely gone ever since. My foot feels fantastic now, though the recovery was a little long. I was walking around after a few weeks but I didn’t feel 100% until probably eight or 10 months out. I still use all of the above and it has yet to return. But they were also incredibly effective at managing my pain/inflammation. I just had them recommended too late in the process.
It’s an outpatient procedure where they, to be super simplistic about it, cut the plantar fascia and have it regrow. When successful, the inflammation that has been recurring is essentially “removed” as a result. The new tissue doesn’t just start with it. They told me the recovery would be 2 to 3 months, but it was definitely longer.
It’s an old procedure at this point that different doctors have different opinions on. In my case, I had a second opinion from a doctor who thought he was going to tell me no, but then he looked at my history of treatment and went “yeah at this point, you have no other option. It’s this or live with what you’ve got and I would say go for it.” Considering he was going in prepared to tell me no that was actually very encouraging and I’m glad I did it. But it does not mean it is for everyone, I highly recommend if you are considering it to get two or three opinions on it, and to exhaust all your other options.
By that point I had pretty much integrated every single piece of equipment that could give me a relief and had done multiple rounds of steroids - both oral and injection. It would always get close to getting better, then would start re-inflaming. I’m 18mo out now and doing great.
I had it for years, even had to get cortisone shots in the bottom of my feet.
The only solution that worked for me was stretching. When you are standing on a step, let your heel hang down as low as possible one foot at a time. Do this for both feet and do it with straight legs and bent knees multiple times a day. It only takes about a minute and does an amazing job of curing plantar.
when I had plantar fascitis the only thing that helped was finding the right running/working out shoes. It was like magic in how quickly that fixed it.
In my case, I needed shoes with more support around the mid-foot so the feet didn't rotate in or out too much.
The flip side is that as soon as I wear the wrong kind of shoes my feet let me know within a couple of workouts.
I also wear superfeet insoles in all my casual shoes.
The brand that works for you may not be the same as mine but Hokas work well right now and Saucony ProGrid Omnis worked really well too in the past. Saucony unfortunately keeps changing the names of their shoes but I think the current "Grid" type shoes are similar.
Asics, Mizunos, Brookes, etc. were all useless to me.
So, I would say keep trying different pairs of shoes.
I'm usually a big fan of sports medicine and physical therapy, but in this case those fields were pretty clueless about deducing the cause beyond general platitudes.
Edit: To add, my symptoms were first caused by wearing the wrong kind of shoes because Saucony stopped making the ones I was used to and I tried another brand on someone's advice.
This sounds like my problem. I do have an over pronation problem when I walk barefoot. I have arch supporting shoe inserts, but I think my sneakers allow too much ankle roll.
I have Brookes right now. They felt good when I first got them, but they just didn't hold up. I think my local shoe store must have too many Brookes shoes. They push them really hard every time I go.
Im sure after that much time you have your own remedies but for me —-a golf ball, tennis ball, and on severe pain days a frozen water bottle under my desk does wonders when mine is inflamed. Just take off a shoe and roll your foot over each rotating golf, tennis, water bottle.
In fact, the shoe was not banned and it is one of the most widely used marathon racing shoes out there. Nearly all other running shoe companies followed suit and made more efficient racing flats with carbon plates and high energy return foams. Some restrictions did come out, including limits on the "stack height" racing shoes and more stringent restrictions on the track. The current generation of these, the alphafly 3, were just used to break a world record in the Chicago Marathon by Kelvin Kiptum. Those are unreleased as of yet.
The specific version of the Nike Alphafly shoe that Eliud Kipchoge wore for his sub 2 hour marathon (out of competition) was banned, but subsequent versions of the Alphafly and Vaporfly are legal and still being used to break records today. As a result of Kipchoge's sub-2 marathon run, some rules were set on shoe design, namely:
1. Max stack height of 40 mm
2. Only one carbon plate allowed per show (Kipchoge's had 3)
My father built a prototype of such a device 20 years ago. He abandoned the project after trying the prototype, because it accelerated dramatically and he could not brake. He jumped sideways into the gutter and was really scared.
My personal opinion is that the bicycle is already invented and its excellent energy efficiency is hard to beat.
Seriously though, if you don’t have your helmet adjusted about as far forward as it can comfortably go, there are a number of angles at which you can take a header where part of your face touches the ground. If you’re lucky nothing hits but helmet. Less lucky, a bit of road rash. Less lucky still, maybe some loose teeth.
The higher speed collisions I heard about mostly involved back injuries, which is less fun than artificial teeth. Younger people try to face plant.
Eh, I'm not worried about their top speed claims... I'd be far more concerned that you could reach those speeds, and the hospital bills incurred by the inevitable accidents. You're going to have to have a massive amount of safety gear weighing you down (thereby losing speed) to keep you from busting your head open like a rotten cantaloupe moving that fast. Velocity squared is a bastard.
Bike crashes at 40 mph are brutal. The vast majority of fast, competitive cyclists in races are topping out at or below 25-30 mph in flat ground riding.
So what? These people will no longer be your run of the mill "runner". They will be augmented, much the way we're augmented by using bicycles and skis, etc.
The original claim that if someone were to be able to move at these speeds that they would suddenly need to be heavily bogged down in safety gear is flat out ridiculous. Comparing it to other sports where we move at similar speeds should be more than enough evidence of that.
People do ski faster than that but low friction means slower deceleration which is a huge reason it’s even possible to learn reasonably safely. This applies to basically all high speed winter sports and is under appreciated by most viewers. Similarly landing from a jump or fall on a hill the force vectors mean people are mostly sliding on the surface resulting in significantly less forceful impacts.
Biking at 45-48 MPH is rare, dangerous, and free of tripping hazards which I think are a much larger concern. Further, people also add extra protection for downhill MTB such as a back protector, thick gloves, goggles, helmets with neckbrace, padded clothing, and knee pads. Yet it also has similar benefits from being on steep hills.
Not sure where you get that from. Amateur road cyclists can pretty easily reach 50MPH given a long enough hill and do so pretty uneventfully.
That's dressed in just shorts, jersey, helmet and fingerless gloves.
A professional racing cyclist could easily break 60MPH on closed roads and even 80MPH on occasion.
For someone like Tom Pidcock who knows[1]. In the linked video he's topping out at about 100kph (60mph) but it's worth noting that that's without being allowed to sit on the top tube of this bike. They banned that (even though it wasn't linked to any crashes).
The bike manufactures will eventually just add dropper posts to all pro road bikes and those speeds will go up again.
Rare as in what percentage of the time is someone on a bike going 45+ MPH?
I’d be surprised if it’s more than 1% for more than a handful of people. An ultra elite athlete on a normal bike can hit that on level ground in an absolute sprint, but you can’t sprint for very long. Going downhill requires time spent going up the hill.
The women’s 1 hour speed record is 30.6MPH, the men’s is 35.3 MPH. So sure downhill, rolling start, or motor-paced people can reach extreme speeds but they really aren’t doing so for hours a day. Streamlined recumbent bicycle can do it far more easily but that’s niche territory.
The amount of time that standard cars reach 100MPH is rare, and it is dangerous. Professional racing drivers have cars that reach 200MPH+, it is insanely dangerous and all kinds of specialized equipment is in place to keep the driver from dying.
You seem to be conflating that if someone reaches a particular speed it is safe which the whole 'velocity squared' doesn't give two damns about. The energy you have to safely dissipate increases very quickly.
> Biking at 45-48 MPH is rare, dangerous, and free of tripping hazards which I think are a much larger concern
Two decades ago I was doing downhill MTB. On a road section it was quite frequent for me to reach those speeds†; and that's with a MTB (tuned to that end), friends†† with road bikes reached these speeds with ease, some of them regularly hit 80-90kph on specific sections.
One of the wide hairpin turns happened to be littered with gravel, and as I was banking for the turn the bike wheels started zipping off laterally as it the ground was ice, propelling both of us sideways at full speed towards the downward outer bank.
Luckily a) I had slowed down to approach the turn so I was going more like 45-50kph and b) the bike had much less ground grip than my body so it flied away while body-ground friction (painfully) slowed me down to a stop before I hit any tree or rock down the bank. Sheer luck had it that I walked away from the event with only a few bruises and a lot of scratches (one of my elbows still bears burn scars)
† Top recorded speed ever was 74 kph, at which point gear ratio was such that `cat pedalling > /dev/null`
‘On specific sections’ doesn’t mean people are spending a lot of time doing something. If you’re going downhill at 45+ MPH you quickly run out of hill.
I doubt the total time by any bike rider over 45 MPH was 0.1% of the total time people ride bikes.
I do that on flat grounds with a roadbike, and can hold that for about 5 minutes, then falling back to about 60 to 65 kph, which I can hold for an hour, after which I usually am where I wanted to be. Rarely doing longer rides anymore. Usually at sea level.
That thing where you are 'running out of hill fast' I'm doing comfortably with 80 to 85 kph, and sometimes when in a 'real crazy' mood, and weather is allowing it (strong gusty winds, and possibility of black ice NOT good) with 90 to 95 kph. Though I'm really having to pedal like mad then, like in 1st gear, even faster.
Usually anywhere between 2000 to 4300m above sea level.
Got myself 2 really nice roadbikes recently, after having ridden an antique citybike with only 3 gears for almost 2 decades now.
> Can hold that for about 5 minutes, then falling back to about 60 to 65 kph.
If you’re suggesting doing 60 to 65 kph for an hour on a normal road bike after 5 minutes of 75 kph, I simply don’t believe you.
The world record 1 hour time on ultra flat indoor terrain set in 2014 was 51.852 km (32.219 mi). It’s climbed since then but your suggestion of ~63 kph for a full hour on a roadbike comes off as silly unless your using serious electric assistance.
I believe that you don't believe me, because that's what I always got. Except when on rare ocasssions ppl followed me with a car or motorbike. OR I pushed them to ride like they couldn't believe when they rode with me, which was also rare.
A long time ago, 1989 or 1990 I went with 65kph into a larger roundabout at around 4 AM, with only one car in it, a Citroën 2CV. As usual, the thing was SLOW. I thought I'd could overtake it left, while staying behind it, but not much. What I didn't think of was the possibility that it would brake right there and then to exit into a small private driveway directly adjacent to the roundabout, instead of the regular exits.
So I touched the thick rubber lip of its back bumper at its far right side, almost the corner with my front wheel, while already being banked right by about 30 to 45 degrees (because turning right in a wide bow from the entering main street).
INSTANT STOP and I FLEW over the back of that f...ing thing.
In that moment I felt surprise, and anger, for being so stupid, but also thought in ultrafast-forward about anything I could think of to dampen the crash.
Which was to spread the energy of impact as much as possible around my whole body, execpt my head, and separate like hell from my roadbike.
I actually managed that while doing a summersault, not by myself, been already catapulted into it, still attached to bike, but got free of the pedals, and managed to spread out my arms and legs while flying feet forward, and somehow stay oriented like that.
BAM! Hit the road with my back at least a dozen meters away from 'lift-off', could have been 20 to 25 meters also. Can't tell anymore.
Hands outstretched, palms flat down. Head UP, chin toward my breast. Soles of my shoes also flat down, legs slightly bent upwards at the knees.
OOOF! Couldn't breath for a while, that just didn't work anymore, even if I tried. That went on for about 30 seconds, then I managed to gasp, and then it was gone. It didn't hurt, I just couldn't.
My palms tingled. The soles of my feet too. Like hell. But only for about a minute or so. Then that was gone, too.
In utter incomprehension I sat up and checked my hands, arms, ribs, legs, head.
Nothing. Everything still attached, not broken, no blood, while the chalk white faces from that 2CV emerged, running toward me, shocked.
I told them to get their damned 2cv out of the roundabout, to avoid another crash, grabbed my bike from the street where it lay a few meters away, and went to the sidewalk, still debating with the shocked people that I wouldn't need an ambulance, that nothing bad happened, and they could calm down now.
No torn clothes. Yay for Levis 501 and Nomex45p Bomber Jacket CWU!1!! But the roadbike was trash. Not even the frontwheel, as I'd have expected, but the whole frame and fork bent diagonally sideways in a hard to describe way.
Did walk the rest of the way home, after removing the saddle, very light bell with a nice ring, tachometer, its sensor, cable and fixings.
Sitting on a bench in a park next to a river, thinking: Insane, insane, this can't be, can't have happenend like that, can't can't...
Moving on, still a few kilometers to walk, through forest. Sun rises. Still thinking can't be, can't be, like in an endless loop.
Went to bed at about 6AM after checking for bruises, swelling but nothing to be seen or felt. Used the next day to get me another roadbike (used) for 2000 Deutsche Mark ;-)
With bikes at least the mechanics of the bicycle mostly work for you instead of against you. Riding no handed wouldn’t be something children learn on their own if the system weren’t at least slightly self-righting.
The last time I attempted to run at full speed after not running for years, I struggled to keep up and lost my balance. I started tilting forward slowly and eventually fell then slide on the ground for a while, resulting in multiple scratches on my face, front pelvis, etc.
Over short distances (up to about 800m) a cheetah's sprint speed of nearly 100kph dominates, true. However, because they only maintain that for up to 30s, an augmented human moving at 75kph would be less than 10s behind at that point and might be able to catch up over slightly longer distances. I'm unsure the exact distance as I don't know offhand what running speeds a cheetah can maintain for longer than 30s and I'd also assume that cheetahs have better dodging agility than a human with giant springs strapped to their legs (and as per above hopefully some safety gear).
But I stand by my assertion that I want to imagine such a scenario.
I took jumping stilts classes in 2010-11. They work the same way -- you swing arms and body in the air, *land with straight knees* to compress the spring and preserve the energy, and then fly back up in the air. Maybe they are less efficient than the proposed device, but...
Running in them, even properly like mentioned, was like running a sprint. You were wet and exhausted in half a minute.
Fell from them twice -- once while running, a rubber shoe of the leg that was moving forward, brushed the asphalt, and I fell forward. Despite my arms were ahead, I hit the asphalt with elbows and ribs.
The other time, year later, a rubber shoe broke apart when I landed on it, and the other leg, under much weight, bended slightly off the turning plane -- there was no fracture, but I barely could walk or cycle. It took a week till I could cycle, 2-3 weeks to walk normally and 3-4 months to stop feeling pain.
Overall, it's too exhausting, you can't run in low energy mode. Walking in them is noteably harder and not much faster. You also can't stand straight in them -- must always keep stepping to keep balance, because there are no human feet to balance back&forth.
Another issue is that it puts a lot of load on spinal disks, and some bone/connective tissue conditions forbid this -- you can walk but jumping will cause chronic pain for some time.
Not to mention you can't walk in them in autumn, when asphalt is wet and covered with slippery leaves.
Overall, it's more like downhill MTB -- for skilled and fit, and not scared of a fracture every season.
==== EDIT: Ok, maybe the whole problem with jumping stilts is height. I'd still love to see a mechanical stilts with springs that don't put you that high in the air, but have springs on the sides.
I considered using jumping stilts to run to work rather than skating or cycling. However, the skill level required to master them sufficiently to run required more training than I was willing to put in.
I eventually ended up buying some shift.io moonwalkers, which do have quite a speed-up effect. The problem is that they're quite heavy and the walking motion required to use them effectively ended up requiring my anterior tibialis muscle to have more endurance than it does currently. Additionally, at higher speeds they're dependent on your foot stepping direction, which I have slightly outwards rather than in-line forwards, which causes a slightly skating motion when walking.
I want to get somewhere faster with portable tools. Used to skate, but annoying to take skateboard everywhere. I live in SF, so bike gets stolen. Currently use Lyft e-bike rental but ideally have similar speed but backpack-able portability.
Honestly, maybe I wear cooling vest and just jog to work. Walking too slow: 15+ min / mile.
I am an excellent ice skater and decent, not great rollerblader. Rollerblades are difficult to control and stop quickly (haven't mastered the sliding turn quick stop). They are much more sensitive to surface imperfections and slick surfaces than a bicycle. Finally, rollerblades are heavy and still require you to bring extra shoes, putting them on and taking them off takes about 5 minutes... All of this makes them impractical for commuting.
No, the difference is when/how you load the springs. This proposal seems to be that you load the spring with your leg in the air before it makes contact with the ground (achieved by attaching the top of the spring up the leg), then land the loaded spring and unload. Their argument is that this allows for higher overall energy output from the human body (akin to cycling). In a jumping stilt you're loading the spring when you put your foot on the ground and unloading immediately, so the energy output only really occurs during that period of foot contact, which presumably lowers overall output.
You do the same in jumping stilts. You move arms and body in the air to increase jump amplitude, and land on a straight leg to compress the stilt and let it bounce back.
If you try working with hips/knees while touching the ground, you'll amortize all the energy you generated, and exhaust quickly. Beginners suffer from this, and it takes some learning to run properly.
Also, the energy converts from motion into spring load and back into motion, and you can keep adding it. Pro stilt jumpers can jump several times with more and more energy and increase height.
When I took such classes of spring stilts, the coach showed us jumping above 2.5 m. Me and a classmate held a ribbon in our hands above our heads (we stood in stilts too), and he jumped several times towards us, each time higher, and finally flew above the ribbon. This is actually much more work than olympic jumping, where the COG of the jumper is actually a bit lower than the bar. This guy had to jump with COG much higher than the ribbon.
But as I mention in the other post, if you fall down even routinely while running on stilts, it's very painful -- falling forward with your arms extended ahead, you still hit the ground with the ribs. Then they ache a month.
Actually, you're right, now I recall it better, you swing arms in the bottom point, to compress the spring better. Waving arms in the air does not help.
Regardless of when you swing your arms, by doing so you're introducing additional energy into the system so is kind of beside the point. The relevant comparison (in the context of their paper) is how fast you can convert chemical energy into kinetic through your gait, not how much chemical energy you can load into the springs. Jumping stilts are a 4-step cycle:
1a. LOAD (Foot-ground contact, foot is descending)
2a. UNLOAD (Foot-ground contact, foot is ascending, optionally arms swing to boost upward force)
3a. WAIT (No foot-ground contact, foot is ascending)
4a. WAIT (No foot-ground contact, foot is descending)
Their proposal is 3-step:
1b. LOAD (No foot-ground contact, foot is descending)
2b. UNLOAD (Foot-ground contact, foot is ascending, optionally arms swing to boost upward force)
3b. WAIT(No foot-ground contact, foot is ascending)
Step 1b performs the same function as both Steps 1a and 4a, but is closer to Step 4a alone in terms of duration. By reducing the overall time one cycle of gait takes you're able to convert the same amount of energy from chemical to kinetic in a shorter amount of time (ie. achieve a more powerful gait cycle). This presumes that you can achieve equivalent levels of energy input with both methods, but this doesn't seem like a huge reach to me since both methods rely on springs so presumably you could fiddle with the spring constants until the overall energetics are the same.
It's kind of like how an 18-wheeler can produce tons of torque (which it needs to move something heavy), but has less horsepower than a Porsche. Torque is what determines how much weight you can haul (or in the case of jumping stilts, how high you can go), but horsepower is what determines how much time it takes to go from 0-60MPH. Swinging your arms is like adding more torque, but the paper is about maximizing horsepower.
Ok, makes sense. But I wonder: if it's so hard to run in jumping stilts (which I know personally), does it make sense to make another device that can consume your muscle energy?
No, the article specifically talks about a device where the legs perform work continuously, as in cycling. The device you linked to only lets the legs work during ground contact.
I've used them for a year, and fell from them twice, the second time because a rubber shoe of the stilt broke apart, and strained a lot my knee. No broken bones, but it took a week to start cycling, then in 2 weeks I could walk almost normally, and it took whole 3 months to stop feeling the pain. I sold them after that.
Running in them is VERY hard, even if you do it properly (landing on straight legs, to not dampen the energy). You can run only at high power mode, like sprint, for 200-300 metres.
I think it's about having you being hanged in harness on the hips while you are running. This way you don't have to extend energy for your muscles to keep you upright. Springs do that. Then all the energy generated by your muscles can go towards creating motion.
Historically, human survival. No other animal can cover ground the way we can. We've evolved to be highly efficient, one example; we cool ourselves better than any other animal we can maintain a fairly high power output almost indefinitely due to sweating.
We have a cluster of veins at the base of the skull that dumps heat on the back of your neck after the blood reaches the brain, which is a similar convergent evolution. In the mid 90’s when I took an anthropology class, they had just worked out that the human family tree needed some adjustments based on the presence or absence of these ports on the edges of the occipital bone. These radiators were important to our big brain evolution. Without extra heat dissipation we’d cook our noodles. Humans with fevers over about 104-106 risk brain damage. It’s why willow bark tea and later aspirin were such pivotal discoveries.
(Recently learned that aspen bark also contained salicylic acid, which is how aspirin got its named).
There was a comedian who hit upon this in his act. Not only are we top tier endurance predators, we also have a very high wound closure capability. To the herbivores on earth we are all Mike Myers. Stop for a minute and he’s right there again. Wound him, and he comes right back.
He riffed on why aliens are always the scary ones in movies. Maybe we are the scary ones.
What? That’s faster than track cycling world records! The 200m flying start record is 9.1s which translates to 79km/h. The makers of this device are proposing to let humans run faster than a world record track cyclist!
An odd sense of calm would come over me any time I got my bicycle going over 40 mph. “If I fall now, I’ll bounce twice and then blackness.” I no longer recall my top speed, either 42 or 45. One particular little river valley with very good pavement and clear sight lines.
There is no amount of money you could pay me to run at 52 mph.
Am I correct that they propose to bend your leg (while it's in the air after a ground contact) with an additional force, which is used to conserve energy in an attached spring. Upon a next contact with ground this energy will be released, which gives a better boost than ordinary jumping stilts, since they are loaded only at the moment of contact?
I couldn’t find a mention of oxygen usage. Given that running at speed is aerobic past 800m or so (for Olympic-level athletes. Mortals hit that point way earlier), would athletes actually be able to make the extra effort?
My understanding is that a species' maximimum speed depends simply on muscle mass. The reason elephants don't outrun cheetahs is that they accelerate more slowly and run out of energy before hitting the top speed their muscles could produce.
Look up allometry for more. There are formulas for calculating top speed based on mass.
> My understanding is that a species' maximum speed depends simply on muscle mass
If so, that doesn’t mean that they would get faster if only they got more muscle. I would expect that species evolve towards not having more muscle than they can effectively use. I think looking at elite human runners supports that. At longer distances, they get less muscular.
> The reason elephants don't outrun cheetahs is that they […] run out of energy before hitting the top speed their muscles could produce.
> Look up allometry for more. There are formulas for calculating top speed based on mass.
“If muscles were all that mattered "elephants would reach maximum speeds of about 600 kph (370 mph)," she told AFP.
Instead, tuskers peak at about 34 kph (21 mph).
Big beasts, in other words, run out of so-called anaerobic energy, supplied by the muscles, before being able to reach their theoretically maximum speed.“
>> The reason elephants don't outrun cheetahs is that they accelerate more slowly and run out of energy before hitting the top speed their muscles could produce.
> Big beasts, in other words, run out of so-called anaerobic energy, supplied by the muscles, before being able to reach their theoretically maximum speed.“
This post really reminds me of Keahi Seymour. I forget where I first learned of him, but it may have been an HN post because he was the subject of an article about pursuing a dream for 30 years and failing. But basically, the story is that he wants to produce and sell “bionic boots”. I forget the exact challenges he has faced in getting his goals met, but apparently he does have a working prototype of some sort that is used in a YouTube video.
No, this is a different sort of spring-loaded mechanism that allows you to put energy into it when you retract a leg, then unleash that stored energy when your foot next hits the ground.
"However, the current top speed of augmented running, 11 m/s, achieved using a spring prosthesis in series with the legs (13), is 10% below the top speed of natural running. A spring in series with the legs can mitigate collisional energy losses but requires the legs to provide a large force to support the body, unlike the wheel of a bicycle (10, 13, 14)."
Sometimes they even fall just walking on their feet, I've heard.
The point is, these springs look terribly difficult to maneuver compared to bikes. No brakes, not continuously touching the ground, constant movement up and down etc.
ITT: people who read scientific articles by skimming the pictures.
The proposal isn't "springs under your feet" it's "springs along your legs that you load while your leg is in the air". The point is that by loading the spring with a leg which is otherwise not doing anything you're able to increase the overall energy output of the body. Their Fig. 2 shows exactly the (theoretical) difference between the naive "jumping stilts" approach and what they're suggesting.
> Cycling is faster than running partly because (i) the rolling motion of the wheels prevents collisional energy losses from stepping but also because (ii) wheels can support the weight of the body in place of the legs, while (iii) pedals enable the human to supply energy continuously in the air instead of intermittently when the leg is on the ground .
Super interesting to see that they still can't outperform cycling. Presumably their proposal resolves most or all of point (iii), so the difference is from (i-ii). I would assume that, of these, (ii) would be the hardest to replace with any kind of leg attachment
One of the reason pro cyclists clip their feet to their pedals is so they can load the “other” leg through the back of the stroke, and across the bottom as well by pulling back on the loaded leg. Come unclipped in a sprint and you’re fucked.
The idea that your muscles have enough strength on the upstroke to contribute meaningfully to cycling is actually a bit of a misunderstanding. Your leg muscles for lifting are much much much weaker than your leg muscles for pushing - they're designed to only lift up the weight of your leg and not much more.
The main advantage of the clips is to keep your leg in contact with the pedal throughout the cycle and make sure the ball of your foot is optimally placed on the pedal. With a traditional pedal you have to keep some downward force on the pedal to create friction to avoid slipping off, so even when that leg is rising up, you can't completely unload the pedal. With clips you can completely unload the pedal.
> The idea that your muscles have enough strength on the upstroke to contribute meaningfully to cycling is actually a bit of a misunderstanding.
Absolutely not, and there are plenty of easy counterexamples.
If you've ever raced track, team pursuits start from a dead standstill. You have to expend a ton of force to turn a huge gear, and the contribution of the lifting leg is crucial to getting up to speed. Of course it's not going to contribute as much as your lead leg, but all four of your limbs are at maximum exertion getting the bike up to speed. Even not racing at a track, you can test this on any road bike. Shift into high gear, come to a standstill, and time yourself getting up to speed.
Another trivial counterexample that anyone (with clipless pedals) can test is a hill climb. Being able to lift on the upstroke is an enormous additional benefit and the difference can be easily measured and proven. Perform a lengthy climb with and without involving your trailing leg, at a given level of intensity. Repeat this multiple times, and it will be patently obvious that your trailing leg is performing significant useful work. The steeper the climb, the more important this is.
Sprint finishes are another place where this is critically important, but it's harder to set up a simple test.
What all of these have in common are situations where outputting a higher force is more important than long-term endurance. Lifting on the upstroke is difficult to do at high pedal speeds, but at medium or low pedal speeds, it's a clear differentiator.
>the contribution of the lifting leg is crucial to getting up to speed
This might feel true, but it isn't. Buy or borrow a dual-sensing power meter (Garmin Rally, SRM X-Power etc) and you can see for yourself - there's practically no useful power in the upstroke. Toe clips or clipless pedals can extend the power stroke, but only by a few degrees at the bottom of the stroke.
The intuition of cyclists is a very bad indicator of actual performance. For decades people thought that hard, narrow tyres were faster, but nobody had actually tested it properly. Narrow tyres have lower rolling resistance on a smooth steel drum in a test lab, but they have much higher rolling resistance on real roads with bumps and ruts. When paired with suitable rims, the reduction in rolling resistance of wider tyres more than compensates for the penalty of increased weight and drag.
I strongly encourage you to actually test this yourself. Having personally done so myself, all I can say is that you will be surprised.
Time yourself on a max-effort sprint in a high gear from a standstill. Don’t pull up on half your efforts. Pull up on half your efforts.
The effect isn’t subtle.
I’m not particularly convinced by power meters not showing much here. The biggest reason being that pulling up has the effect of allowing you to push even harder down. Without pulling on the handlebars or pulling up on the rear pedal, the maximum force you can exert on the pedal is a function limited by your weight. By pulling up on those three points, your ability to push down harder is significantly greater.
Another simple counterexample is hills. There exist hills in my city that are physically impossible to climb without clipless pedals. You can stand on the pedal all you want, but your body weight is not enough to overcome the downward pull from the slope. On clipless pedals, while pulling up, you can climb the hill.
The summaries of these studies don’t seem to mention sprinters. Or climbers. I’m thinking the wrong people did these studies (people who didn’t actually “test it themselves”).
I would also say that as a former cyclist and bike mechanic, there were thresholds of pedal adjustment where your foot would stay on the pedal if you only applied downforce, but not sufficient for any other force. It was a common enough problem that there were articles written about it.
Early Look models had this problem, but not as substantially as most of their copycats. There’s a reason they had little competition for most of a decade. I think the Shimano MTB pedals (with the little countersunk cleats) sometime around 2nd Gen, were the first time Look got properly nervous.
There were some people for whom you had to dial the tension to the edge of “annoying” for clipping in in order to keep them from accidentally clipping out at speed or on hills, both if which can be dangerous.
Even when I had mine dialed in “right”, I ended up pulling one shoe vertically out of the pedal when I came to a stop without disengaging first. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
My cyclist's intuition says that leg clipping allows you to extort greater force on a down stroke. Without clipping the force is limited by your body weight, with it the only limit is your muscles.
Thinking about it your hands and a back leg allow you to apply a lot of downward force to your body and your lead leg can add all this force to a stroke. It doesn't matter that your hands or back leg individually are not so strong when pulling, because their efforts are combined.
In situations when you need not to extend as much force as you can, probably clips do not add much, though I do not know. I tried at some point to ride a bicycle without clips and nearly failed. My back leg tries to pull and leave a pedal.
They are saying that with high rpm cyclists do not pull. I can believe that, high rpm is beneficial exactly because you need to apply a relatively small force.
Clipless pedals also keep your feet on the pedals at high cadences.
I'd guess the highest power and torque outputs in cycling are from track sprinters. If you look at what they use it's both cleated pedals and straps.
No matter how they're generating that torque they definitely don't want to slip off a pedal going full tilt.
Riding a hardtail I always want clipless pedals because I don't want to have have my ankles at a weird angle just to grip pedals when I go over something rooty.
> When paired with suitable rims, the reduction in rolling resistance of wider tyres more than compensates for the penalty of increased weight and drag.
Unless you include specific conditions you can't really say that a hard, narrow tyre won't be faster with any confidence.
At some point having even wider tyres will only slow you down because the surface bumps don't get any bigger but the cda of your front tyre and rolling resistance due to hysteresis keep increasing.
e.g. a 4" fat bike tyre at 0.5bar is not going to be faster in a velodrome than a 23mm tub at 7bar just because they're wider. If you were riding on snow or cobblestones however...
We have a large amount of power meter data demonstrating that elite and pro cyclists do not, in fact, exert much force on the rising stroke when in the saddle. They maintain a net downward force on the pedal most of the time. The benefit of clipless pedals is repeatable positioning and the ability to start the downstroke right at top dead center, without slipping off the pedal. The benefit is not from powering the backstroke.
Personally outside of dramatic moments like the Big Hill or the club smartass trying to drop everyone for giggles, driving through the bottom of the stroke was the only thing that felt like it 1) mattered and 2) could be sustained.
But I think you have to go to triathletes to really see that effect more pronounced. Since they like to sit tilted a couple degrees farther forward on the bike, the hamstring is more accessible.
At the end of the day a pro is 5-10% better than a serious cyclist at five different things. Even before you get to diet and genetics (and doping, sorry) they’re already outputting more watts and getting more of them to the wheels than I could hope to. Technique adds up.
Yet cycling events are frequently won out of the saddle on the slopes or out of the saddle in the sprint.
And yes, sometimes they’re won by someone time trialing away from the pack while in the saddle. But even then, most of the time it’s a breakaway pack which fights for the podium in an all-out sprint.
The breakaway pack also typically sprints away from the peloton. Because drafting is 30% easier than riding at the front. If you don’t catch a wheel as it goes past, you’re dropped.
I’m looking around at all this ”data that we have about pedal strokes” and nobody mentions sprinters or climbing specialists. If they don’t know it’s important they won’t test for it. Sounds like “science” being done by domain neophytes and called objective.
What is interesting though is that one claimed that advanced amateurs have higher peak stroke torque than pros. Pros are spreading more power out over a larger arc of the circle. Now that could still be 130° of the stroke for all I know but that still sounds like circularizing to me.
I also haven’t found anyone yet who says LeMond was wrong about driving through the bottom of the stroke, which is how I rode.
Those are not necessarily examples of lifting. Those could as well be explained by the contribution of not pressing on the opposite pedal (to keep the foot from sliding).
And not pressing doesn't shine any light on the force of lifting.
The foot doesn’t slide with clipless peddles. The foot is locked in position. And you can absolutely use lifting and pushing combined - I have done this many times on long sportives (~100 miles); it can give respite to the ‘pushing’ muscles
So you obviously have never used clip in bike pedals before. Why are you trying to argue this point if you know nothing about what you're talking about?
If you're clipped in, why would you keep feet from sliding?
Preventing sliding by pushing is how effort is wasted and is a possible explanation why a cyclist might feel much stronger when clipped in and no longer has to push - while attributing the lower effort to the upstroke pull.
They are, and this is trivially
demonstrable by literally just trying it on a bike. Seriously. Go put a road bike in the highest gear and try to get up to speed from a standstill. Not only will you be pulling up on the rear pedal, but you’ll be using your arms to try and wrench the handlebars off the stem too.
Go climb a steep hill. Same thing occurs. It’s not like this is subtle. The contribution of your rear leg very clearly contracting will be impossible to miss.
> but all four of your limbs are at maximum exertion getting the bike up to speed.
Oh goodness yes. When you’re going full out it’s like you’re trying to wring water out of a steel towel. Pull up on left handlebar while using right arm to prevent oversteer.
Another fun failure mode is when you don’t quite trust your handlebars. I’m either not going to pull on these or I’m gonna stop before the Big Hill to find an Allen wrench and tighten these stupid things. I think the new design is meant to prevent a lot of that.
Any muscle is trainable. To some extent. If you cycle enough, you will develop muscles necessary to pull the pedal up.
Additionally, the goal isn't to double your power output. It is to be better than the other cyclist. Even by just a tiny bit.
I personally think that clipping the feet helps more with left right stability. Also, if you are pulling with one leg, you can potentially push more with the other. Normally you can only push as much as you weight, but with the other leg clipped you can push your weight plus the force you use to pull the other pedal.
This is true for certain metabolic zones but not others. If you're sprinting then yes, you get a higher power output while pulling up on the pedal. However if you're going for any kind of endurance (longer than a minute) the limiting factor is not muscular but cardiovascular/aerobic, and using less efficient muscles (the ones used for pulling up) will actually hinder your performance since you'll need to be supplying those with oxygen, thus decreasing total cycling economy.
I am not versed with cycling economy. But yeah, it makes sense.
On a bike, if you want to put up more power you have options to push harder or spin faster. If you had to push harder than your weight, you could always change your gears to rather spin faster.
Your goal in endurance conditions is to maximize the aerobic pathway, which means maximizing the number of active mitochondria. Recruiting more total mitochondria from more total muscle fiber will give you greater aerobic power output.
Like the parent said, the goal is efficiency not maximum power. And as another comment said, in practice the pros do not pull up. If there were even a minute gain in doing so, they would train themselves to do it (in fact some of them used to in the past before they figured out that it was a waste of time)
I think you’re imagining the hip muscles pull the entire leg up, but you’re pinning a double hinge between your body weight above and the pedal below. There are a lot of different muscles in the leg that you can activate to stay upright, but outside of yoga or tai chi most of us lock a bunch of them up and don’t think about them. Which is both a shame and a route to injury.
Similarly there as a few different muscles that can bring your knee up if it’s pinned between your hip and a pedal. The hamstring being one of them. Though personally (as an enthusiast rather than a pro) I always felt like I had more stamina from just driving through the bottom of the stroke. I only pulled up on hills and when someone tried to drop us.
I'm not disagreeing with the above comments though I am curious about the factor of how much energy output a person is actually capable of. Running isn't leisurely and you can reach (as far as I know) maximum physical (cardiac?) output running. My point being it's not like there is unused capacity to work harder when you're running that's making you slower. So there must be more to it than just doing more at times you'd otherwise be idle.
It looks like not only did he pull his foot out, he also clipped his chain or front derailleur with his foot and popped himself down into the small chainring.
Ha! Yes you're right, units matter. For me it was 2 km/hour, on rides for an hour or so typically above 20 km/hour, on a hybrid bike, on long streets in Marin. The ellipticals worked especially well, for me, in combination with bar ends.
It's not that far above what some people were claiming when they were new. There were people claiming 1mph improvement. I was... skeptical. Placebo effect? Who knows.
I don't think I ever got around to trying one. I was the youngest regular member of our club. Power output was not my primary problem.
This is false, even cyclists who think they pull up and pull back do not, and it is less efficient to do so. However it is a VERY common misconception that you should do this.
When the only American who won the Tour de France without drugs tells people to do something, a lot of people are going to do it.
Anyway, I can't find any of these so-called studies that admits to knowing what a sprinter is let alone a green jersey, so I'm going to keep my eye out for less flawed studies.
In fact, get me one by a team medic or physiologist, and then we can talk. Until then it's nerds in coats coatsplaining things to people actually doing the work.
The next question, following this framework, is that in order for a suspended leg to load a spring, it will be necessary to apply a force against some other part of the body -- so where does it go? On a bicycle this is the other foot, which is made possible by the pedals. But with a spring affixed to the leg, the most likely result is a force against the dorsal surface of the thigh -- not exactly a pleasant idea (try pushing two fingers into the back of your leg if you're curious). So then you are inventing something of an exoskeleton to manage this.
Cycling is extremely efficient -- around 80% of the energy expended by the body is converted to forward motion, even in the simplest configuration, and this can be enhanced further under some circumstances.
If we're getting really transhuman with this, assuming the brain is more malleable than the leg, I think it would actually be easier physiologically to run backwards than forwards with this.
In the "clipped to cycling pedals" example, the description I was recommended to aim for was "rolling a log in a circle" as opposed to pushing/pulling.
It makes a big difference to be able to have both legs "inputting" energy into the system at the same time. I would say "non-linear response" but that's probably inaccurate... but maybe not? Basically once you've overcome rolling resistance to _start_ going up a hill, being able to continue it with "both legs" instead of one feels like you're not overcoming the "zero-to-one" hurdle as much and instead staying in the "one-to-two" zone. Like you're not "starting over" every downstroke, but instead transitioning your power from one leg to the other.
Given a pretty basic commuter bike that I'd upgraded over time, it felt like moving from ~35 to ~20 tires (basic to "road bike") felt like "gaining a gear" (what used to need 1st gear, I could now do in 2nd), and same with clips, also "gaining a gear" (cumulative: now I could be in 3rd instead of being in 1st).
I don't think they have a functional prototype, so probably difficult to predict a qualitative comparison to other types of motion. Honestly my guess is that it's not directly comparable to anything else really, because you typically don't have to output energy during the "off-phase" of walking. Maybe like having a rubber band around the bottom of your foot which you're also holding in your hand?
"Without external energy (but with external device attached)" is ... a bit disappointing. At what point does it cease to be running and start to be run-assisted catapulting? Or catapult-assisted running? It seems like more than just running.
As the father of a 6 year old who's never (yet) shared Naruto with my son, it's remarkable to observe that small children innately know how to do the Naruto run. Tragically, most children seem to forget the truth sometime around middle school age.
To be serious, though, the article suggests:
> Cycling is faster than running partly because the rolling motion of the wheels prevents collisional energy losses from stepping, but also because wheels can support the weight of the body in place of the legs, while pedals enable the human to supply energy continuously in the air instead of intermittently when the leg is on the ground.
but I think they miss the point by focusing on the last element rather than the first. I have lots of experience with running (where reducing ground contact time is often advantageous for efficiency), with cycling with clipless pedals where I can supply energy continuously, and with cycling with flat pedals. On the bike, I can sprint on the flats to about 16 m/s or 36 mph while clipped in. I don't do hard workouts nearly as often on flat pedals, so the data is more spotty, but I know I can reach at least 14 m/s or 32 mph; I'm just about spun out but typically not in my highest gear. I've never specifically tried to do a short-duration time trial on flat pedals, it might be higher than that, but it's not more than a 10% differential between intermittent and continuous connection to the pedals.
But running? In my prime, I could barely hit 9 m/s or 20 mph (I'm not and have never been a sprinter). If you tied a rope to my chest and towed me to 36 mph (using the rope to eliminate energy loss to air resistance) I'd be road pizza after a single step.
I can go faster on a pair of roller blades or ice skates, with one foot at a time providing an inefficient combination of sideways and rearward thrust, or a kick scooter using only one foot, than I could ever hope to run. The problem is not about the intermittent application of force, it's all about the need to convert angular velocity of your joints which has a very limited effective range into linear velocity over the ground. It turns out that cranks and chains over sprockets of various tooth counts are a great way to do this.
The problem is that confidently wrong comments are posted to social media like HN and Reddit so frequently that you'd actually be wrong assuming sarcasm most of the time.
So now you're just admonishing someone for trying to engage a comment instead of identifying the epic "anime run funny" humor.
IMO the sanest policy is to just allow people to respond earnestly to posts even if it might be a joke.
The person you are replying to was (probably) making a joke. Naruto run is an old meme.
I think they get the idea of what the article is describing going off of the full comment.
What you said is probably similar to what they said at the early invention of shoes.
Professional runners today already use an "external device," aka running shoes. If they ran barefoot or even wore mediocre shoes, they would perform worse. As long there's no external energy powering the device, I'd still consider it running.
With respect to the way this article presents efficiency, I would actually expect Naruto running to be slightly more energy efficient than regular running -- the further forward that one can lean while running, the more that gravity will contribute to forward momentum.
Under Resources at the bottom you can download a 9MB File (aay1950_movie_s1.mp4) of movie S1, but it only shows an animation of a disc running on blue, green, and red springs...
Who could have guessed - attaching springs to your feet makes you run faster. This is the kind of genius scientific insight that's going to ensure the long term survival of the human race.
I mean yeah it's not exactly a novel observation, but there is some subtlety in /how/ you attach springs to your legs which seems to be the primary contribution of the paper. The two naive options - referred to as "in series and in parallel" - don't see the same results as their proposal (which they discuss at some length in the intro). Their proposal is more about making the "springs on your legs" idea as effective as possible by using a hip attachment to adjust the loading/unloading cycle. By loading the spring with your leg while it's in the air you can improve the overall energy throughput of your gait. Other "springs on your feet" concepts (mentioned throughout the comments section) use a loading/unloading cycle that's 180 degrees out of phase with this (leg on the ground is doing the loading).
I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned that 2 recording breaking marathon runs were by athletes wearing the Nike Vaporfly shoe.
The shoe was ultimately banned due to the giving too much "bounce" (free energy) to the runners.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-athletics-shoe/nike-proto...