How accurate is visual determination of foot strike pattern and pronation assessment

Nowadays, choosing adequate running shoes is very difficult, due to the high number of different designs. Nevertheless, shoes have two main characteristics to fit runners' technique and morphology: drop and arch support. Retailers' advices are usually based on the visual assessment of the customer's running technique. Such method is subjective and requires an experimented examiner while objective methods require expensive material, such as 3D motion system and pressure insoles. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of foot strike pattern and pronation assessment using video cameras, compared to a gold standard motion tracking system and pressure insoles. 34 subjects had to run at 8, 12 and 16 Km/h shod and 12 Km/h barefoot during 30 s trials on a treadmill. Agreement between foot strike pattern assessment methods was between 88% and 92%. For pronation, agreement on assessment methods was between 42% and 56%. The results obtained indicate a good accuracy on foot strike pattern assessment, and a high difficulty to determine pronation with enough accuracy. There is therefore a need to develop new tools for the assessment of runner's pronation.