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First, thank you to everyone who donated to the Domestic Violence Prevention Centre. I’ve already made nearly one-fifth of the fundraising minimum to run the Gold Coast Half Marathon. Your donation is truly helping change people’s lives.
This week, I wanted to finally look at carbon-plated shoes and whether they are causing injuries.
Full disclosure: a lot of nerdy research in this one. :-)
This was inspired by a recent article where a D1 runner sued Nike, claiming the Alphafly caused their stress fracture. I’ve actually wanted to write a newsletter about this topic for a while, and what better time than now.
It feels like every year someone declares carbon-plated running shoes are the cause of new injuries. You see headlines. Social posts. Anecdotes about navicular stress fractures, shin pain, calf overload, instability, and so on. But when you actually look at the evidence, as opposed to social media, the truth is more interesting, more complicated, and a lot less dramatic. I’ve been curious, though. It has taken my body several years to adapt to the load carbon plated shoes put on your body.
About 15 years ago, minimalist shoes were all the rage. We were running marathons in flats and shoes that weighed two ounces. Then people got injured, and the focus shifted to protecting your feet. Stack height upon stack height became the new thing.
The question at the time was how can one get injured in minimalist shoes when they allow your body to “run naturally”? Well, some people need more cushion. That’s likely the case with carbon-plated shoes, too.
To be clear, there isn’t a big prospective study showing runners who use carbon-plated shoes are more likely to get injured overall than runners who don’t. The research simply doesn’t exist yet. What does exist are small biomechanical studies and case reports. Valuable, but limited. This is important.
Researchers themselves acknowledge this gap. They point out that the idea carbon shoes cause injuries is a topic of clinical debate, not a confirmed fact.
One of the most-cited pieces of research is a case series describing five runners who developed navicular bone stress injuries after training and competing in carbon-plated shoes. These weren’t recreational joggers. They were elite athletes, and the paper is a clinical opinion article, not a large-scale study.
The takeaway
Carbon shoes may alter how forces are distributed in the foot and ankle.
In these specific cases, that shift coincided with navicular stress injuries.
The authors suggest a gradual transition to carbon footwear rather than abrupt use. But we should know to do this with all running shoes. Do we always do it? No.
They also call for more research because current evidence is limited.
Here is the key: Case reports can point us toward something worth studying, but they’re not proof that one thing caused another.
Carbon-plated shoes are designed to make running more economical for performance. That’s well documented. But biomechanics research shows that these plates also alter joint angles, plantar pressures, and muscle activation patterns compared with traditional trainers.
For example:
Carbon plates may reduce some ground reaction forces in certain joints, which could theoretically lower injury risk in those areas.
But they can also increase loading in other areas, especially the forefoot and midfoot, under certain conditions.
This doesn’t mean they cause injuries per se. It means they redistribute loads. And redistribution is exactly how injuries happen when you change any training variable too fast. If you load a muscle you don’t usually load, that muscle may be weak. Adding too much load too soon can overwork it and result in injury.
Clinicians and podiatrists have offered explanations for how a rigid plate could interact poorly with an individual runner’s anatomy:
If your foot structure doesn’t match where the plate is meant to bend, stress could build in areas like the arch or metatarsals.
Carbon plates reduce natural foot flexion, which shifts load to other tissues that may not be used to it.
Quick transitions from flexible trainers to stiff plated shoes amplify these effects.
These are clinically informed hypotheses, not proven science, but they align with the limited case evidence we have.
Multiple review articles and emerging studies agree on this: carbon plates change running biomechanics. But whether they increase injury risk overall is still unknown. There are small case series, biomechanical changes, and plausible mechanisms, but not large datasets proving harm.
Here’s the honest, evidence-aligned takeaway.
Carbon-plated shoes are not proven to cause injury in most runners.
There is no definitive large-scale study showing they increase injury risk across the board. The case reports are interesting, not conclusive.
They do change how your foot and leg load force.
Redistributing force, especially in a system that’s been performing another way for thousands of miles, can create new stresses in unfamiliar places. Loading weaker muscles too fast can cause injuries. This is true of using any running shoe. If you’ve always run in a stability shoe, and move towards a neutral one, you will be loading your body differently and it can cause an injury.
Most concerns appear when runners make abrupt changes.
Switching to carbon shoes for every run without adaptation, especially workouts and long runs, is currently the change most likely to cause problems.
Elite athletes, runners with a history of stress injuries, and those with structural foot differences might respond differently than others.
Some runners adapt perfectly fine and see performance gains with no injury issues. Others feel stiffness or unusual niggles when they switch abruptly.
Treat carbon-plated shoes like a training variable, not just a new pair of sneakers.
Start slow. Use carbon shoes for shorter runs before moving to long runs or workouts.
Rotate shoes. Don’t eat, sleep, and breathe only carbon-plated models. You should not be running daily in carbon-plated shoes.
Listen to your body. Early foot pain, especially midfoot discomfort, can lead to a more serious injury.
Avoid sudden mileage spikes with new tech. Same logic as switching any training variable.
The idea that carbon-plated shoes cause injuries is not scientifically proven.
The state of the research is still early, and researchers themselves emphasize the need for more data before drawing broad conclusions.
In other words, carbon-plated shoes may change injury patterns in some runners, but they are not definitively injury machines. If you use them with awareness and a smart progression, you can likely reap their benefits while minimizing risk.
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Navicular Bone Stress Injuries and Carbon Fiber Plate Footwear
Clinical opinion article and case series discussing navicular stress injuries in elite runners using carbon-plated shoes.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10356879/
Biomechanical Effects of Advanced Running Shoes
Review examining how modern running shoes, including plated designs, alter joint mechanics, plantar pressures, and muscle activation.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11850346/
Do Technologically Advanced Running Shoes Reduce Injury Risk?
Biomechanics-focused study analyzing whether advanced shoe designs may reduce certain mechanical loads associated with injury risk factors.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19424280.2025.2493283
Effect of Carbon-Plated Shoes on Foot and Ankle Loading
Study exploring how carbon plates may increase or redistribute loading in the forefoot and midfoot under specific conditions.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0021929023001665
Carbon-Plated Running Shoes and Injury Risk: A Review
Strength and performance review summarizing current evidence and emphasizing the need for more injury-focused research.
https://researchdirects.com/index.php/strengthandperformance/article/view/146
ASICS Metaspeed Ray Shoe Review
Brooks Glycerin 22 Shoe Review
