Jim Heacock is a 51-year-old tennis pro. Trim and athletic, Heacock lobs a pretty mean serve and makes his living on his feet. But try telling that to his athletic shoes.
A couple of years ago, the Coral Gables, Fla., resident felt what he called a “big stone bruise” on his heel: “Bam! You hit a stone–that’s what it felt like,” he says.
Only, there was no pebble rolling in his sneaker. Ill-fitting shoes had altered the way he was walking and running and caused a painful bone spur.
Even for serious athletes, choosing the right athletic shoes can be tough. To Nike, or not to Nike? Running trainers, or racing flats? How do you know what’s right for you?
Most people know which athletic shoe they’ll buy before they enter a shoe store, experts say–often the ones they’ve been seeing sports stars advertise.
They’ll give the shoes a cursory try-on, decide they fit fine and saunter out $50 or $100 or $150 lighter in the wallet but with a hot logo in their possession.
How do you know which athletic shoes to buy when market leader Nike alone dreams up 350 new sneaker models every year, everything from must-have air bags to see-through heels?
First, don’t put all your faith in what Michael Jordan or any other athlete is pitching on TV, says marathon runner Laurie Huseby, president of FootWorks shoe store in Miami.
“I think sometimes companies are competing against each other to have more bells and whistles on their shoes than is necessary,” says Huseby.
“The most important thing is to look for fit and how the shoe feels on your foot. How does the cushion feel to you? The air cushion feels firm to me but feels soft for some people.”
There’s the rub: There’s no single athletic shoe that’s perfect for everyone. You can’t even be sure that you can get the best by paying the most. A recent study reported in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, for example, found no link between the cost of a running shoe and the incidence of stress fractures.
The answer to the question, “What’s the best shoe?” depends on such things as:
– whether you’ll really do much running in your running shoes, or whether you’ll run fast;
– or whether the width of your foot falls in the vast middle ground that most shoe manufacturers concentrate on, or whether you need an EEE width (Some companies, such as New Balance, have won admirers because they make shoes in varying widths; others just offer standard sizes. And even those that offer shoes by width often make only a limited number, so it can be tough finding them at your local store.);
– or whether your ankles need a lot of support from the shoes you wear, or whether you weigh 100 pounds and don’t need much cushioning, or 250 pounds and do.
Cushioning, in fact, is the biggest advancement in athletic shoes over the past decade. Still, sometimes you’ll find “air bladders” (often visible as clear tubular plastic windows on either side of the shoe) that are deflated or not equally inflated on both shoes, which could lead to injuries. You can check this by looking in a mirror when you try on the shoes in the store.
It also wouldn’t hurt to test the shoes before you even try them on, says Bruce Wilk, a physical therapist and director of South Florida’s Orthopedic Rehabilitation Specialists in Kendall, a Miami suburb. You can do so by placing the shoes on a flat surface and examining them to see if they roll in or out. Gently place your hand over the shoes’ tops and rock them back and forth laterally. The shoes shouldn’t rock and should be equally stable on both sides.
Then, try them on.
“We’re buying wrong; it’s not the fault of the shoe,” says physical therapist Trish Harris of South Miami’s Florida Sports Medicine Center, who urges people to pick a shoe that’s meant for the specific task. Which means, for instance, not playing basketball in your running shoes, which aren’t made to be stable during the kind of side-to-side movements you make in basketball.
Sometimes, the shoe you walk into the store wanting ends up falling apart because of poor craftsmanship. The athletic-shoe industry claims a 1 percent return rate. But often customers don’t recognize that the problem may be a defect in their shoes, says Wilk.
“More defects have been popping up,” says Wilk. “Over the last three years, almost weekly I pick up a patient with a shoe-related injury.
Injuries can be caused by improper fit, shoes that are too short or too narrow for your foot: bunions, hammertoes, corns, calluses, ingrown toenails. Which is why it’s smart to try on shoes later in the day, after you’ve been up and around and your feet naturally swell.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you look, no matter how smart a shopper you are, you won’t find a shoe that’s just right, as is, in any store. Some people, like Heacock, need special inserts for their shoes called orthotics or orthotic devices, which are usually available from physical therapists: An optional heel cup can alleviate pain beneath the heel; an arch support treats pain in the arch and can be placed in a shoe after removing the insole that originally came with the shoe; a metatarsal pad relieves pain beneath the ball of the big toe or the other toes.
“A shoe has to have the ability to take out its insert for my own orthotic,” Heacock says, noting that, for him, “K-Swiss are good since they come in width sizes and they make an insert that I can remove and can put in my own.”
One last bit of advice, this from Harris, the physical therapist: Don’t go out the second you buy your new shoes and do a killer workout in them. “You have to break them in,” she says. “The best way to prevent injuries is to walk in them for several hours, or go and run one mile.”
So what can you look for to make sure you’re buying the right athletic shoes for you? Wilk says to check that the shoe is securely glued together. Hold the shoe and try to pull the upper part from the lower. It shouldn’t separate. Says Wilk: “Failure can be catastrophic.”
He also says to make sure the upper part is glued on straight. To check, put the shoe on a level surface, and then look behind it: You don’t want it to be crooked, inside or out. And while the shoe is on a level surface, make sure the sole rests evenly. Wilk has seen shoes where the sole is pitched inward or outward, which can cause problems.
For more information, check out Wilk’s Web site (www. defectiveshoe.com) and Runner’s World magazine’s site (www.runnersworld.com), which offers tips on buying shoes.
