Hypercushioned shoes help a few people, at least for a while. For most of us they’re likely doing quiet harm, and the reason is one I’ve been explaining to patients for years: when you can’t feel the ground, you can’t balance on it.
What the Wall Street Journal reported
On October 20, the WSJ ran a piece by Kate Murphy (page A13) on what the industry calls “max-cushion” shoes: two inches of springy foam between you and the ground, sometimes with a carbon plate baked in. They sell because they feel wonderful. The podiatrists, orthopedists and sports-medicine physicians she interviewed are less sure they’re good for you.
Their concern, in short: the soft stack lets the foot wobble and torque, the leg rotates to follow, and that rotation travels up through ankle, knee and hip. The foam also mutes proprioception, the sense of where your foot is relative to the ground. A 2018 study she cites found that the thickest cushioning actually increased total load on muscles and joints compared with moderate shoes, because the foot stays on the ground longer and the leg stiffens on landing.
Murphy is careful, and so am I: the long-term injury risk is not settled. But the mechanism isn’t mysterious.
Disconnection to dysfunction
Your feet are sensors. Every step, they send the brain a stream of information about pressure, tilt, texture and give. The brain uses that stream to balance you, moment by moment, without your ever thinking about it. That’s what posture is: not a shape you hold, but how you actively balance your body. It’s the second of my Posture Principles, and it’s the one hypercushioned shoes quietly undermine.
Put a marshmallow between the sensor and the ground and the stream gets blurry. Less proprioception means a wobblier base. A wobblier base means more small corrections at the ankle, knee and hip- one link stressing the next. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand steps a month
This can take a big toll on your ability to stand tall and balance- with symmetry. That’s my experience and it goes a step past the article. That said, it follows that the blurred signal doesn’t just reduce balance in the moment; it gets learned, burned in over time to feel “normal for me”. Interoception is the felt sense of where your body is and what it’s doing, and inaccurate information coming in results in evolving errors in posture, and how you balance to move. Its a common path from disconnection to dysfunction, and from dysfunction to the kind of chronic ache that sends people to my office with no injury they can name.
Sensation governs movement. For better or worse.
One of the coaches Murphy interviewed, a USA Track & Field endurance instructor, made a point that stuck with me. He wants runners he trains to feel sore. Soreness is how the body says back off, and shoes that erase it take away his governor.
I’d widen that. Sensation is the governor of all movement, and it works in both directions. Feel the ground accurately and your nervous system makes small, cheap corrections before anything goes wrong. Lose the feel and the corrections come late and large, at the edge of balance, where ankles roll and knees twist and people fall.
This isn’t only about running shoes. I’ve watched it for thirty years in patients who never ran a mile. Couches that swallow you. Desk chairs with no feedback. Mattresses so soft the body never has to find itself. Old shoes with the structure worn out of them. Same pattern every time: remove the sensation, and the nervous system loses track of where the body actually is.
The shoe-store test
Don’t just walk the carpet.
Before I buy any footwear, hiking boots or running shoes, sandals or dress shoes, I check my connection with the ground right there in the store, using a few StrongPosture® Balance exercises. The core test takes about a minute:
- Stand tall on one leg, knee straight, eyes on a fixed point. Breathe slowly. Hold for 30 seconds.
- Switch legs. Another 30 seconds.
- For athletic shoes, add a walking lunge, then rise onto your toes and hold, then rock back onto your heels and hold. If the store has room, a short hop and a dead stop.
What I’m checking isn’t comfort. It’s two things. Can I really feel the floor through the sole? And can I control the shoe, stabilizing the roll of my foot to hold my balance, or is the shoe locking my foot and ankle for me, acting as a balance crutch?
If I’m swaying more than I usually do, the shoe isn’t telling my body what it’s doing to keep me upright. That’s not a trade I want to make for the next few hundred thousand steps. It was good to see the WSJ piece recommend much the same check: up on the toes, back on the heels, a few pivots, and listen to your footfall.
What to do
None of this is medical advice for you in particular, and I’m not telling anyone to throw out their shoes. The body adapts to what it can perceive, and only to that, so the practical rules follow from the mechanism:
- Buy for fit and stability before cushion. The softest shoe on the wall is likely not automatically the safest.
- Run the StrongPosture® balance test before you buy. If the shoe passes, good. If you can’t feel the floor, keep looking.
- Break new shoes in over a few days, not one long walk. Your nervous system needs time to recalibrate to a new surface.
- Rotate your shoes, and as recommended by several of the experts in the article for training use more than one kind of shoe. Variety keeps the sensory system honest.
- Pay attention to what you feel. That’s the whole point. Comfort that comes from numbness is not the same as comfort that comes from feeling your control of your body.
If you’re already dealing with recurring ankle, knee or hip trouble and you suspect your feet have lost the plot, that’s worth a conversation with a clinician who thinks about balance, not just the joint that hurts. That’s what we train chiropractors, therapists and trainers to do as a Certified Posture Exercise Professional (CPEP®)
Source
Kate Murphy, “How Cushiony Shoes Add Stress to Your Feet,” The Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2026, page A13. The article is behind the WSJ paywall; I’ve paraphrased it here and quoted nothing at length.