THE BULL$#!T DETECTOR - SIMON BARTOLD

The last myth I have is one that I hear a lot, and that is that ASICS make the best runners. (Laughs) The people who have told me that don't actually know why they think that. I hear it all the time ‘ASICS are the best shoes for runners'.
Well, I do think that ASICS are acknowledged within the industry as making the most technical runners. Whether that makes them the best or not isn't for me to say. I certainly appreciate the science that goes into them. I think ASICS have been very brave. They made a decision not to stick with the marketing alone and to let universities do their thing and accept the answers without fear or favour.
We don't want to fall into the trap of saying every runner has to have an ASICS shoe because that's not appropriate. When I worked with football clubs, if they were sponsored by a particular brand, every player had to be in that brand. Sometimes you can't fit players to what that brand has to offer. You've just got to be aware of that. It's not a uniform world.

With your background, if someone wants to get into running or step up their activity, how should they determine what shoe suits them the best? Is it by going to see a podiatrist for example?
Yeah, I get asked this quite a bit. I think you've got to weigh up the cost versus benefit. In an ideal world, it's useful to go to a podiatrist and have an analysis and find out how you're put together and what your risk factors are. That makes an assumption that you're dealing with a podiatrist who has a really good grip on biomechanics. If you don't want to do that then the second option is to locate a technical running shoe shop, most of which offer pretty basic gait analysis. They'll be able to get a rudimentary idea of how you roll. And then they certainly should be pretty expert in shoe recommendations.