Effect of shoe drop on running and walking biomechanics: a systematic review

Abstract

Objective: the aim of this review is to examine the biomechanical effect of the shoe drop on the kinematic, kinetic and spatiotemporal variables in running and walking.

Method: the search engine and databases used were Mendeley, Pubmed, World Wide Science and Science Direct, between the dates of January 2010 to December 2020.

Results: through the articles that include in this review, the studied kinetic variables have the tendency to increase as drop decreases, while the studied kinematic outcomes show a decrease with lower drop. In a similar way, the cadence is usually less as drop increases while the stride length grows.

Conclusions: this research work suggests that shoe drop has an important role on the modification of the human motion’s synergistic interactions. After this review, it should be noticed that further works should be carried out attending to only drops and to energetic variables linking the findings of each of them.