Getting A Sole… or Two!

Getting A Sole… or Two!

When I was training for my 10K run last year, my little sister told me about this new thing that you could get done in London where they filmed you running and told you what shoes would work best for your running style to make sure that your posture was good and that you weren’t doing any long lasting damage. At the time I didn’t think I could afford to get it done and it seemed like a little bit of a waste of money to me so I shrugged the idea off.

Fast forward to a year later and I was standing in a sweatshop, asking to try their machine. It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision but it was also because I went with my housemate who wanted to do it as well. I was still a bit skeptical of the whole thing but that changed when I saw the film clip of myself running.

And it was not good.

As I put my foot onto the ground, I witnessed as my legs went over my ankles because my foot wasn’t landing straight on the floor. It looked awful. And I think I can suddenly understand why I’ve twisted my ankle while running a fair few times. I also realised later, that I also walk this way. I can feel my feet landing awkwardly and it’s really not great at all. This is also because I have a fairly high arch on my feet and generally should be wearing shoes with arches built in already, but I don’t!

After the treadmill, some soles were made up of my foot shape. Soles that would, essentially help to get my posture back on course. I was then given some different sets of shoes to try on. All of which felt like they could definitely help my posture but were all, sadly, completely out of my price range.

However with the new soles and new pairs of shoes on, I stepped up onto the treadmill again to see if they were actually going to help.

And it looked so much better.

My legs were almost completely straight, obviously it would take some getting used to but I could really see ow the shoes and soles would eventually help my posture in the long run. Unfortunately, it also hurt my ankle – but that was mostly to be expected as my body wasn’t used to running in that position.

But as mentioned above, I could not afford the shoes. I did, however, buy the soles. These are now comfortably in my shoes which I have been wearing out and about as well as for my running training. And already I am seeing a big difference in the way I walk both with and without my shoes. This is a confident step forward for me.

So if you’re not sure about trying the treadmill test yourself, I say go for it. You can always say no to purchasing soles and shoes afterwards but it might just show you something important about your posture that you didn’t know before!