When choosing between hiking boots and trail runners, consider your ankle mobility and whether you want hiking footwear that can enhance it with time or whether you need more support because your ankle mobility is compromised.
Ankle mobility is a valuable asset for hiking and backpacking because it contributes to better balance and reduces fall risks, which benefits everyday life. This is particularly relevant for older hikers and backpackers aged 50 and above, although younger people can also benefit by cultivating better balance or proprioception ability.
The lack of ankle mobility and range of motion is one of the leading indicators of increased fall risk as we age. Two strong predictors of this are dorsiflexion (lifting your foot/toes up), which is a strong predictor of dynamic balance when walking or running, and plantar flexor strength (pushing your toes lower than your heels), which is a strong predictor of stationary balance. Both of these motions occur repeatedly when hiking, so it makes sense to preserve or enhance them to help reduce fall risk as we age.
Hiking Boots vs Trail Runners
There are many reasons why you may want to choose hiking boots or trail runners for hiking and backpacking, and all of the other variants in between including mid-height hiking boots, trail shoes, lightweight mountaineering boots, minimalist shoes, and sandals, waterproof hiking footwear vs non-waterproof footwear and so on. This article isn’t intended to be reductionistic or suggest that ankle mobility is the most important factor in the type of hiking footwear you choose.
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But one of the biggest differences between hiking boots and trail runners is the degree of ankle mobility they facilitate and their impact on hiking gait through your lower extremities including the hips, knees, calves, and feet.
Hiking boots, depending on the rigidity of the ankle area (for example leather vs textile) tend to limit the range of motion to provide more support, while trail runners and low hiking shoes, impose virtually no constraints on ankle mobility. While there is an increased risk of ankle rolls while building up ankle strength and proprioception awareness when switching from hiking boots to trail runners or low hikers, it’s worth asking whether the benefit of improved ankle mobility outweighs the risk in achieving it.
If you hike or walk a lot, and I mean a “real” lot, you can use your hiking and backpacking time to improve your ankle strength and balance while reducing your fall risk as you age. There are other ways to enhance your ankle mobility through programmed exercise, but you can’t deny that the sustained and repetitive activity of hiking and backpacking (hiking with a heavier load) may trump short periods of supervised exercise, especially since it requires so little extra time to perform.
For more information about the relationship between ankle mobility and fall avoidance, see:
Hernández-Guillén D, Tolsada-Velasco C, Roig-Casasús S, Costa-Moreno E, Borja-de-Fuentes I, Blasco JM. Association ankle function and balance in community-dwelling older adults. PLoS One. 2021 Mar 4;16(3):e0247885. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247885. PMID: 33661991; PMCID: PMC7932177.
Hylton B. Menz, Meg E. Morris, Stephen R. Lord, Foot and Ankle Risk Factors for Falls in Older People: A Prospective Study, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 61, Issue 8, August 2006, Pages 866–870, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/61.8.866
