Stepping Into New Shoes: A Cross-sectional Study, Examining Acute Interaction Between The Hiker And Footwear.

Intro: There are two categories of hiking shoes, traditional footwear (TF) and minimalist footwear (MF). TF can be considered to be thick with an inflexible midsole, with the aim to aid ergonomics (toe-spring/foot-rolloff). MF is light, thin and flexible, designed to facilitate the foot and allow intended anatomical movement, however, offers no compliance on hard / rough terrain. PURPOSE: This study aims to investigate plantar forces (PF) and foot contact time (CT) of hikers wearing MF at an acute level. METHODS: The Footscan v.9.0 was used to assess PF and CT. The sample comprised of 21 habitual traditionally shod Irish hikers, (age = 61 ± 15, BMI = 26 ± 2; Males = 9, Females = 12). Each participant was assessed under four conditions, a barefoot control (BFc), a worn TF control (TFc) which were the personal possession of the participant, TF experimental (TFn) Mountain Warehouse’s Adventurer hiking shoe (unworn), and MF experimental (MFn) standardised VIVOBAREFOOT hiking shoe (unworn). Statistics were performed on SPSS v28.0, Friedman test was performed with Wilcoxon signed rank test with the Bonferroni correction applied. RESULTS: Differences were observed between shod forces across ten anatomical sites of the foot, where MFn was significantly different to TFc, TFn and BFc across the following sites respectively; Toe 1 (p = .002, .007, <.001), Metatarsal 1 (p = .003, .001, .002), Midfoot (p = <.001, <.001, .001). In addition, MFn was also significantly different to both TFc and TFn in the medial and lateral heel (p = <.001). Forces (N) were greater in the upper ranges of the TFn condition overall, MFn had a greater wider range of forces at upper and lower limits similar to BFc.and contrasting to TFc. CT was not found to be significantly different across any condition. CONCLUSIONS: It has been observed that across multiple anatomical sites and conditions forces differ between the MFn condition when compared to TFc, TFn and BFc. This occurs when introducing habitually traditional shod hikers are first introduced to MF. Following this study, it is suggested that a mixed methods study on the long-term effects of MF in hikers is conducted. Future studies should also examine forces internal to the hiking shoes, to identify the differences to external forces using sensor-lined insoles, that cannot be identified by the Footscan V9.0 solely. Supported by: Vivobarefoot PhD Scholarship