Protection: Textured Insoles Win High Scores
By JOHN O'NEIL
Published: April 8, 2003
Arough surface inside the shoes of athletes can help protect their feet, knees and ankles, according to a new study that involved 17 members of the Australian women's soccer team.
The study, published last week in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that the women had a poorer sense of changes in the positions of their feet when they wore their soccer shoes than when they were barefoot, but that adding a textured insole to their shoes brought their scores back up to the barefoot level.
One of the researchers, Dr. Gordon Waddington of the Canberra Hospital, said the insoles were made from a rubber matting with four one-millimeter high nodules per square centimeter. The stippled texture appears to convey more information to the nerve endings in the sole of the foot than do smooth surfaces, he said, thereby giving athletes a better "feel" for the position of the foot on the ground.
Earlier studies had shown that athletes wearing shoes that were more heavily cushioned were more likely to be hurt in games requiring agility, he said.
"The degree of cushioning that may be of use to a runner on a concrete footpath may be reducing sensitivity to feedback information from the foot (and potentially increasing injury risk) in individuals who play court and field sports that require rapid changes of angle and direction," Dr. Waddington said.
Some athletes involved in the study have continued to wear their textured insoles, Dr. Waddington said. He expressed the hope that more research would lead to some commercially available shoes that reflected the study's findings.
In the meantime, he has begun using different kinds of sneakers for different sports.
Dr. Waddington said that a colleague had continuously used textured insoles in both his work and sport shoes to help with a chronic ankle problem.