Peter Clinch said:Chris Malcolm said:Gonzalez <[email hidden]> writes:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Again, I wouldn't recommend it. Boots afford
superior ankle support. Even on the Tourist Path I'd
recommend boots.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Boots aren't necessary in good weather and dry conditions
for walkers with strong ankles and good foot placement
skills. In fact the weight of boots sufficiently reduces
agility and increases clumsiness that they greatly
increase the number of "boots saved my ankle" anecdotes.
They also weaken the ankles.
Quoted message said:"Superior ankle support" is a really silly Sacred Cow, as
it implies that typical people haven't got enough support
from their tendons, bones and muscles to do what we've been
doing for so long the time spans are geological. If they've
been couch potatoes for their lives then quite possible,
but anyone regularly hiking should have strong enough
ankles not to need them unless they're doing special things
with their ankles. An example of something special that
really benefits extra ankle support would be skating or
downhill skiing, which puts significantly more stress on
ankles than walking.
I acquired unusually strong ankles as a childhood ice
skater, and kept them strong by deliberately stressing them
when offered the opportunity on steep slopes, e.g., walking
on the edges of my feet. I can't stand the stiff ankles of
skating boots, and always have to soften them up by pricking
them, oiling them, and smashing them a lot with a hammer.
Quoted message said:And just as they weaken ankles by propping them up and
preventing them from getting a proper, normal workout, they
also add to the leverage if you put your ankle over a long
way which aggravates the potential for injury (those extra
rotations again, do they remind you of anything?).
People often aggravate ankle injuries by trying to keep
their footing on a badly place foot, which puts the whole
body weight on something which can't handle it. You can
learn to avoid this by teaching yourself never to do that,
but instead to deliberately collapse or fall over in such a
way as to relieve the damaging ankle pressure. I suspect
wearing tough ankle-supporting boots actually makes this
worse, because it makes people feel their feet and ankles
are protected, and they take less care in where they put
their feet and how they stress their ankles when
"protected". Many grown-ups who very rarely do anything
difficult enough that they fall over now and then acquire a
superstitious fear of falling, and will go to very injurious
lengths to avoid falling when they begin to lose balance.
Thus they turn their ankles, break their wrists and
collarbones, etc., when simply collapsing gently to the
ground at the first instability would very often have saved
them from injury.
A good way of learning how to care for feet and ankles by
skill rather than armour is scree running in trainers or
sandals :-)
Quoted message said:I work next door to an orthopedic centre, and one of the
chaps there did some research into ankle injuries in
walking populations back in his native India. All the
serious ones used shoes, with barefoot having the lowest
serious injury rates, despite "common sense" and no extra
ankle support whatsoever suggesting otherwise.
Quoted message said:Look at the hundreds of competitors in a typical mountain
marathon. They're running rather than walking over
difficult terrain (peat hags and tussocky grass a
favourite) and they're carrying a weekend's gear with them
too (minimalist, yes, but not lighter than a typical day
pack). What do they wear in these terrible conditions for
ankles needing ("common sense" would dictate) lots of extra
support? They wear things like these: northernr-northernr-Open ↗
unner.com/storeProductDetails.cfm?product=486 Spot the
ankle support. Another case of received wisdom and common
sense being far from the best solution.
Generally speaking evolution has come to favour the approach
of avoiding injury by skill and intelligence rather than
armour. It's a strange paradox that allegedly the most
intelligent animal on the planet is in general becoming more
and more convinced of the case for armouring itself against
the terrible hazards of the outdoors environment.
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
["]http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
