Comparing tibial declaration effectiveness between insoles and foot orthoses.

Introduction

Impact loading in runners, assessed by the measurement of tibial acceleration, has attracted substantial research attention. Due to potential injury links, particularly tibial fatigue fractures, tibial acceleration is also used as a clinical monitoring metric.

Our goal we to compare how effective different insoles & foot orthoses were at reducing tibial acceleration.

Setup

An accelerometer was fixed to the tibia of the research participant measuring acceleration data in the x, y, and z directions.

Where gyroscope was attached to trial participant

Gyroscope axis orientation

The acceleration value of interest was the ay value. This measured vertical acceleration.

There were 5 different tests run with two different insoles and two different shoes. Barefoot data was used as a control. The shoes used in the studies were Vans UltraCush Pro, and Reebok Club C 85. The following tests were run: No shoes, Reeboks with stock insoles, Reeboks with inStrydes, Vans with stock insoles, and Vans with inStrydes.

For each test, the participant walked for 5 minutes around a designated course on concrete flooring. The accelerometer continuously measured data throughout each testing session.

Data Collection

Data was collected and recorded for each tested insole and compared to the stock insole that came in the pair of Vans shoes. Over 1,000,000 data points were collected and analyzed for this study.

Results

No Shoes
(control)

Reeboks with Stock Insoles

Vans with Stock Insoles

Reeboks with inStryde

Vans with inStrydes

Filtered Data

Max ay & Percent Change

All Acceleration Data Per Insole

Discussion

The max tibial acceleration found in the control group came in at 18.58 m/s^2.

In the Reeboks shoes, the stock insoles showed a 29.76% decrease in tibial acceleration compared to the control. inStrydes showed at 31.97% decrease in tibial acceleration compared to the control.

In the Vans shoes, the stock insoles showed a 29.92% decrease in tibial acceleration compared to the control. inStrydes showed at 28.90% decrease in tibial acceleration compared to the control.

Conclusion

All tested insoles decreased the tibial acceleration and theoretically lowered risk of injury to parts of the lower leg. inStrydes showed the biggest improvement when used in the Reeboks by reducing the tibial acceleration by 2.21% more than other tested insoles and foot orthoses.