What about neutral shoes?

“People often think that if you’re wearing an orthotic, you don’t need a stability shoe,” says Charbonneau. “That’s a huge assumption. If someone severely overpronates, they may not be able to tolerate an orthotic that is giving 100 per cent of the correction they need. It’s just too abrasive, so the solution often is to put the person in an orthotic that is tolerable and then into a shoe that offers better-than-average stability.” New Balance’s Korell agrees. “You can’t always say that every orthotic wearer should only consider a neutral shoe. One of our sponsored runners, Rachel Hannah, the number one women’s ranked marathon runner in Canada in 2016, wears the New Balance 860, which is a stability shoe, plus orthotics in her daily training. They can work together to keep a person linear – because if there’s any repetitive rolling in or out, that’s when injuries happen. So the answer isn’t always a neutral shoe.” “Today many shoes have a neutral midsole that have really good torsional strength that we’ve typically seen in stability shoes,” shares Charbonneau. “So we have to be a bit cautious to say this is a neutral shoe. We can easily create sub-categories within the neutral shoe arena.” Marylene Vestergom is a freelance writer and runner living in Toronto