By Aylin Woodward

Sneakers have morphed from the barefoot minimalism of a decade ago to towering platforms engineered today to give runners both speed and comfort.

But shoe companies aren't done yet.

The latest innovations include smart shoes that record information about a runner's gait and stride -- details that could one day be used to personalize footwear and ward off injuries that can be trade-offs of running in high-performance shoes.

Meaningful upheavals to the basic running shoe came around 2009, when Christopher McDougall's book "Born to Run" popularized the idea of running barefoot or in toe shoes in a manner akin to ancient hunter-gatherers. The thinnest profiles offered runners direct ground-to-foot feedback and an opportunity to strengthen the muscles within their feet.

But many runners who transitioned to minimalist shoes experienced plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis and stress fractures, according to Kevin Kirby, a sports podiatrist who has been practicing for more than 40 years, and other physiologists and biomechanical researchers.

"Minimalist shoes were like an economic stimulus plan for podiatrists and physical therapists," Kirby said.

In the decade that followed, podiatrists like Kirby began directing patients toward sneakers from the company Hoka with extremely thick, cushioned midsoles.

"When I first saw them, I said, 'God, they look like clown shoes,'" said Kirby. "Now, you go into the running-shoe store, and I'd say at least half, if not two-thirds, of the shoes in there look like they're Hoka variants."

The high stack height -- the amount of material between your foot and the ground -- of these shoes promised maximum comfort and performance.

"The idea was to see how you could run down a mountain as fast as possible, as smoothly as possible," said Colin Ingram, Hoka's vice president of global product.

The Hoka craze might have burned out like the minimalist shoe fad, according to Geoff Burns, a physiologist with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, if the brand's rise hadn't coincided with the genesis of what the industry calls the "super shoe" -- a high-stack sneaker that combines thick foam with carbon fiber plates to return more energy to the runner.

The midsole of any running shoe compresses on landing, momentarily stores energy and, as the midsole expands, propels runners forward. A super shoe does this more efficiently.

Nike's super shoe made its debut on the world stage in 2016 at the Rio Olympics. Curved plates made of carbon fiber rocked runners from their heels to their toes. The plates were ensconced in hefty foam cushions to ensure athletes lost less energy per footfall than existing options. The design enabled wearers to run faster for the same effort, shaving minutes off marathon times.

"That kind of blew up the industry," Burns said.

Nike's success prompted other brands to develop super shoes, kick-starting a foot race that continues to this day, with each brand manufacturing a stack height tall enough to accommodate its foam-and-plate technology, according to Chris Napier, a sports physiotherapist and director of the Simon Fraser University Run Lab in British Columbia.

To level the playing field, in 2020, the World Athletics, the governing body that oversees most international running events, capped stack heights at 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) for road racing.

Despite enhanced performance, such shoes come with trade-offs.

"There has to be ramifications if we're basically cheating the body out of what it's naturally supposed to do, and making it more efficient," said Kyle Barnes, an associate professor of exercise science at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

In shorter shoes, more of the work is done by the foot and the ankle, causing more stress in those areas. Taller shoes absorb more of the impact, but the forces are transferred to the knees and hips.

The downside of a shoe with a higher stack height is that it is also less stable, said Robin Queen, a professor of biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech.

That trade-off might make for a more comfortable shoe, but a riskier run.

"We think if we put a lot of cushioning there, that it's going to make you less susceptible to injury," Queen said. "But because you're not feeling it, we find you start to kind of not pay attention as much to what's going on."

A shoe -- even a super one -- can't necessarily prevent injuries that plague half of regular runners annually.

Training regimens, personal health and physiology all play a role in injuries that affect the knee, foot and lower leg, regardless of what you have on your feet, according to podiatrists and medical professionals.

Still, Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, said that helping people pick the right shoe based on how they run would go a long way in prevention.

High-tech solutions include sneakers manufactured by Avelo, a Miami-based company started in 2023.

Sensors embedded in the insoles of the company's high-performance shoes connect to a Bluetooth app to monitor information including pace, stride length, how much a runner's foot rotates inward or outward and what part -- the front, middle or rear -- strikes the ground.

An "impact score" captures how much force and stress have been applied to the body. A "resiliency score" can help inform when to run again, and how far and fast, said CEO and founder Royi Metser.

Avelo's first batch of preorders are being shipped in December.

But Napier -- a consultant for Avelo -- the Olympic Committee's Burns and others think the formula of the foams behind super shoes remains the ripest area for innovation.

"There's a foam arms race on," said Peko Hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Brooks, New Balance, Hoka and Nike are fine-tuning their shoe foams' composition, thickness and shape to maximize performance and comfort.

"Stack height alone doesn't dictate outcomes," said Nike spokeswoman Erin Byrnes. "How those millimeters are engineered does."

Some recipes reduce impact on the body. Others provide greater energy return.

Many brands are also looking to match technology to individual running styles.

"The shoe of the future needs to be one that is individualized for the runner," Virginia Tech's Queen said. "Maybe someday we can get to the point where you can go to the store and have a shoe that is designed for you."

Write to Aylin Woodward at aylin.woodward@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 25, 2025 08:04 ET (12:04 GMT)

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