Around the Blogs 02/12/11

It’s time again to share with you some of the more interesting posts I’ve found recently on running-and exercise-related blogs.

First, a good post from the Engaging Muscles blog on improving proprioceptive feedback. This is all about training your feet to adapt to the ground, at every single step. Like many other elements of running, it has to do with enhancing learned muscle patterns.

Second, a post from Amby Burfoot’s excellent Peak Performance blog about the latest foot-strike studies. In it, Burfoot concludes that, while there’s lots more data on this item that before, none of it’s conclusive. The best advice, he says continues to be “Do what feels right for you. Do what works for you. Don’t worry, be happy.” (Amby Burfoot is a very experienced runner, and, in my opinion, a very wise man.)

Next, a post from Alex Hutchinson’s Sweat Science blog about whether compression garments do anything during exercise to improve performance. It comes from a new Australian study just posted in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research.

And lastly, a really interesting post from the Science of Sport blog. This one is a round table discussion about natural and barefoot running. It features a lot of big names, namely Prof. Daniel Howell, an anatomy professor who formerly worked as a podiatrist but who now works in biomechanics and is an Asics research consultant; Prof. Benno Nigg, one of the world’s leading biomechanists; Dr. Mathias Marquard, a clinician and running coach; and Prof. Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist from Harvard, who recently published the Nature studies looking at how habitually shod and barefoot runners differ, and who wrote a key paper on how humans are adapted (skeletally and physiologically) to run long distances. Lots of good stuff here!