Choosing Good Gym Shoes

Getting the right shoes for your sport and your feet can be an absolute game changer. Think about it, your muscles are built to work as one big machine - that’s why they call it a musculature system. Tightnesses, weaknesses and general imbalances in one muscle group can have a ripple effect throughout your body.

The ripple effect of bad foot alignment

An example of how one imbalance can have an effect throughout the body.

• Over-pronating feet (favoring the inside of your foot, by the arch) —> tight calves (lateral gastrocnemius and soleus).

• Tight calves —> SHIN SPLINTS, tight ankles, and more.

• Tight ankles —> issues with range of motion during squats, step ups, lunges, and more —> innefficient movement and a struggle to find moves that engage gluteal muscles.

• Weak atrophied glutes —> overtightened hamstrings, overtightened hips, unstable knees, and tight low back!

• Tight hips —> tight lats (they tie in at hips and extend up to the shoulder joint!)

• Tight lats -—> shoulder issues like rounded shoulders, bad posture, anterior deltoid/shoulder injuries!

The way your foot falls not only affects lower body sport performance, it affects basic postural alignment and rate of injury throughout your body. Our feet are our most frequent point of contact with the ground and they way they make that contact can have a greater effect than most of us realize.

Why talk about shoes?

Your feet, your form and your overall output during workouts will benefit from good shoes. The right shoes will help you to develop good habits from the start. If you don’t have any imbalances yet, the wrong shoes will definitely lead to some.

Already have some imbalances? Buying good shoes might not be all you need to correct them but it is a simple and quick fix to a lot of big issues.

Three important categories of training shoes:

1. Running shoes

2. Gym training and cross training shoes

3. General activity outside of workouts

Running shoes

In my opinion, running shoes are the most personal. Everyone has a different gait, a different way their joints and muscles are connected, and a different way their feet will land. We can work on our running form to get closer to the “ideal” posture, but our gait will always be unique and our own and we shouldn’t try to avoid that. Having the right running shoe is super important as your feet will hit the ground hundreds of times per run. This means a small misalignment can have a huge ripple effect.

My advice: go to a running store that has a treadmill in house. In the bay, I’d recommend Road Runner in Burlingame! Take your old shoes with you, they may want to take a look at the wear patterns to see how you land. Trust their recommendation, but don’t be afraid to take advantage of the return policy. It’s hard to know from a test run if they’re the perfect pair.

Avoid the trends: do not get squishy athleisure shoes (like Adidas Ultraboost) that are marketed as runners if you plan to log any moderately serious distance. Perhaps for a .5 mile warm up on a treadmill they’d be ok, but nothing over a mile in my opinion. Most of benefit from something structured and supportive - the minimalist shoe trend is very overrated.

Don’t size down, size up: I think women especially always want to size down because small sizes look really cute and adorable. I’ve done it. Shoes always look less cool in my size. Don’t do this for exercise shoes! Our feet are moving more, making more impact with the ground, and growing slightly (because they get warm). We usually need to size up. For example, I wear a 7.5-8 women’s for casual wear. For running, I size up to a 8.5-9.

My personal favorite running shoes:

• My current shoe: Nike Zoom Structure 21

• A past favorite: the Saucony Guide series
  disclaimer: I haven’t tried the current version but really liked the Guide 10.

• Matt’s favorite men’s shoe: Brooks Adrenaline
  He’s actually a serious runner.

Gym Training and Cross Training Shoes

These provide a good balance of cushion and dynamic stability. Dynamic stability means they provide stability during multidirectional movements while running shoes are built to stabilize movement in one direction for a long duration. Crosstraining shoes are pretty well rounded training shoes. You can do most gym based lifting and conditioning workouts with these!

I think it’s easier to recommend a couple of specific cross-training shoes as good accross the board than it is for running. That’s both because what we need out of this shoe varies less from person to person and because they don’t make a lot of great ones (yet).

Don’t be thrown off by CrossFit branding. I don’t do CrossFit, but CrossFit has brought great shoes into our lives! Before this, there weren’t many shoes for gym based strength conditioning workouts!

My personal favorite Cross training shoes:

Nike Metcon
The most popular CrossFit shoe. A little boxy and hard.

Nike FreexMetcon
A fusion between Nike’s cushier running shoes and their metcon crossfit design. Great for those who want to lift moderate weight and still get a little warm-up run in at the gym.

Reebok Nano
My absolute favorite. I love the old ones, I love the new ones. I wear them all the time.

General activity shoes - for all that movement outside of workouts!

This is the time to use those cushy fashionable shoes. As my own trainer says when I try to work out in my athleisurewear, “those are for brunch not for this workout.” You still want something relatively stable and supportive, so do pay attention to how your feet feel after a long day of walking in any shoe. Use your running shoes, use your athleisure shoes that are collecting dust now that you do your workouts in these awesome shoes I’ve recommended, use your birkenstocks. Just - don’t use heels that often. They’ll really mess with and exacerbate your muscle imbalances.

My personal favorite bouncing around shoes: Adidas Ultraboost
I do really feel like I’m bouncing around the city in these! They just don’t provide the support I need for serious training.

Ending shoe tips

When to get new shoes: if your feet and ankles (and maybe even knees) start to inexplicably feel more fatigued at the end of the day, it’s likely time for new shoes. If they feel that way after non exercise activity, it’s likely that you should try some different casual shoes. Usually - for training - I get new ones yearly. I use them a lot (15 hours a day), so you may not need them quite that often.

Why switch shoes: Switch it up with your workouts! Rotate your shoes throughout the week! No shoe is perfect. All shoes will have an effect on how we stand so its better that this effect varies throughout the week. This will lead to fewer repetitive stress related issues.

Make them less smelly: I toss some baby powder in mine each week! This keeps ‘em fresh.