Sports Trainers and Technology Advances

I come from an era where the order of the day during PE lessons in the UK was blue shorts, white t-shirt and nameless rubber soled plimsolls which were invariably black. I think maybe the only other colour you could get was white, but they were for girls, so mine were black. At that time, certainly in my infant and middle school years, the brand wars in the trainer department hadn’t really started although top athletes from around the World were starting to see benefits from scientifically proven track shoes prvided by the likes of Adidas.

Move on a few years and if you look at what scool children wear now (except maybe the very young), there are no black rubber soled plimsolls to be found. They have been replaced by air cushioned, technically superior trainers from a whole host of different companies. They come in so many colours that it is almost impossible to count, and there are some manufacturers who will even allow you to design your own. Although a lot of companies that make trainers now days push them based on thier technical superiority over other brands, they are purchased as much for their appearance as their performance, and they have become more and more a fashion statement.

Although being displaced by the technically advanced trainers available today, the featureless black plimsoll of yesteryear was itself a technical breakthrough for the time. The invention of a process called vulcanisation, still used today allowed for the manufacture of items like the humble plimsoll. THe process uses heat to join cloth and rubber together to form a very string bond and made plimsolls easy to make and they started to be sold to the mass market in America as early as 1917, where they were not called plimsolls, but sneakers, as they allowed the wearer to move around almost silently.

As I have said, technology has moved on, and this is no more evident than in sport, where the demands of the athlete for faster times, higher jumps and greater accuracy have meant that lots of different materials are now brought together in order to give more support or flexibility to different parts of the foot at different times, depending on the sport. The greater the demand for performance, the more money is poured into research and development of new technologies that offer lots of different advantages over older technologies. Now, instead of bringing together separate types of material which perform different functions on a single shoe, scientists have developed composite materials that have all these qualities and make the shoe easier to manufacture. Some new materials offer greater strength even though they are lighter. Some offer greater stability to stop the foot twisting. Some offer greater flexibility and remember their original shape so the shoe doesn’t permanently deform.

Other advantages have been built into sports shoes. For over a hundred years, spikes have been available in running shoes, since they were introduced by Reebok in the UK in the 1890’s! The spike was a natural enhancement to a running shoe. The fouders of Reebok, Joe and Jeff Foster enjoyed running but wanted to increase grip and therefore speed. The spikes were added as a way of achieving this. In 1925, Adi Dassler and his company Adidas introduced hand forged spikes. Dassler’s brother would go on to form the Puma sports shoe company.

In the 1970’s, scientists started to look at styles of running in order to better meet the needs of the athlete. During their studies, they found that there are essentially three types of running style.

Neutral
The neutral runner strikes the floor with the heel of his foot first, and transfer of weight is in a straight line from the heel to the toe.

Pronation
Pronation is where the heel of the foot hits the ground but then moves to the side as it travels forward. The term refers to the inward roll of the foot.

Supenation
This is where, after the heel hits the ground, the foot rolls outwards.

These different running styles cause different problems for athletes due to shock and vabration caused by different parts of the foot coming into contact with the floor. Sports shoe manufacturers use this information to design shoes that can compensate for different running styles. This can be achieved through the addition of different materials such as foam, silicon and gel which cushion the foot in different places depending on your running style.

In the 1970’s a plastic called ‘ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA)’ was developed, and this revolutionised sports shoe manufacture. The material contains tiny air bubbles that provide support and cushioning against shock. The material can be injection molded into lots of different shapes, including for example, heel supports for running shoes.

In 1979, Nike introduced its ‘Air’ technologoy to the World of running shoes. Nike used a air filled bag which was inserted into the sole of the shoe to provide cushioning. This first ‘Nike Air’ was called Tailwind and provided the basis for more advances in shoe doesign and technology at the Nike company.

These advances in shoe design and technology cost money of course and in 2003, the average amount spent on a pair trainers in the USA was $50. However, although there is a need for athletes to buy shoes based on the technology they use to improve their performance, there is also another market to cater for, the fashion market. This is one of the reasons why sports shoe manufacturers sponsor top athletes around the World for millions of dollars just so that they will wear their shoes. The idea of this of course is that when people see Usain Bolt breaking World Records in the 2008 Olympic Games, echoes of ‘mum, I want a pair of those trainers’ reverberate around the World.