We all learn a lot from being involved with CrossFit. One of the things that I used to take for granted was my shoes. Yep, that’s right, shoes. Now, my wife says that I have a shoe fetish these day. She’s probably right. For me, my footwear was something that I just never used to consider much. I just bought what I thought looked good and that was about the extent of it. But, these days my shoes are a big focus for me. They directly affect how I move and feel. Yep! they are THAT important.
In CrossFit we really talk about 2 primary types of footwear and I want to focus on one of those two today. One of course is a minimalist shoe that we love so much but, I’ll save that “you should be wearing these” for another day. The second type of shoe is the Olympic weightlifting shoes.
Part of the reason the topic came up is Rachel E. got her first pair of lifting shoes (pictured here next to Coach Matt’s shoes, guess which is her’s). Now, if you know Rachel, you know she doesn’t look like a “big time” lifter but, I know different. Is she going to the Olympics to show off her lifting skills? No. But, is she a big time lifter in the sense of realizing the benefits of lifting? You’d better believe it. Lifting has changed how she moves and feels in her every day life. In my book…that’s as BIG TIME as it gets!
As coaches, we get to know every athlete’s strengths and weaknesses (and so does the athlete for that matter). For Rachel, she has some ankle flexibility “stuff” going on that will always be a part of her fitness journey. There are lots of flexibility challenges that can be fixed but, some that cannot. For her we found that we could negate her ankle flexibility restrictions by having her put her heals on a small weight. This told us that she is the perfect candidate to wear a lifting shoe. But, then…so are you. EVERYONE will benefit from a weightlifting shoe. Want to know why? Here is a great article on why! http://www.liftbigeatbig.com/2012/07/you-need-olympic-weightlifting-shoes.html