How do strength shoes work

These exercises are similar to the exercises in many other vertical jump programs and are proven to increase your vertical jump even without the addition of Jumpsoles. At first, you will feel a bit awkward when training with Jumpsoles attached to your shoes. They are quite heavy and uncomfortable and the additional weight is very distracting especially for one-foot jumps. The difference between doing the prescribed exercises with or without Jumpsoles is the increased intensity for the calf muscles.

But, does that even make sense? I think there are two reasons why this is NOT the most effective way of training your vertical jump:. Vertical Jump height is determined by the fast extension of 3 different joints: ankles, knees, and hips. This so-called triple extension is a motion pattern involving a lot of different muscle groups like the feet, calves, upper legs, glutes, lower back, and even shoulders and arms.

This varies depending on your jumping style one-foot jumpers depend more on the calves, two-foot jumpers less , but it shows focusing on the calves might not be the best idea. You can also do a little experiment for verification. Try to jump with your knees and hips fully extended and only using your calf muscles.

You have to have pretty strong calves to get off the ground. If you want to improve any athletic ability, you want to do exercises that closely resemble the actual movement for which you are practicing. By training with jumpsoles, you will become very good at this very specific type of jumping, but you still have to translate your new skill back to regular vertical jumping. The elevated position of your feet during Jumpsole training or strength shoes leaves your ankles exposed to lateral ankle sprains.

These are little plastic plugs you attach to the bottom of the Jumpsoles and further increase the instability of your feet. By training with Proprioceptors, you are supposed to strengthen your ankles reducing future ankle injuries and improving efficiency during take-off.

While I believe you can benefit in the long term from this training, you also have to be very careful during the training to avoid injury. You could technically argue in favor of Strength Shoes and Jumpsoles since at face value they do have something going for them. The approach of reducing the stability of your entire body forces it to activate the stabilizing muscles, which most notably challenges the calves. Destabilization is actually incorporated in many injury-prevention and rehab protocols to kick the stabilizer muscles into action and is often used alongside balance boards.

When jumping, you undergo a triple extension motion that consists of the ankles, knees, and hips. Most of the force you generate comes from the quadriceps , with the hamstrings and glutes being the two other prime muscles. From then on you have the calves, abdominals, and all the other muscle groups that come into play, but these secondary muscles are simply not that important. Actually, if you just skipped out on using the products altogether and just stick to the exercises, you would probably be a lot better off.

One of the key principles for effective athletic programs is to use sport-specific movements that imitate the movements you would be performing in-game. In this way the practice you put into running or jumping a certain way while training is easily transferable to the sport of your choice. However, with Strength Shoes and Jumpsoles, the feet are forced into a rather uncomfortable position that places all of your body weight on the balls of your feet.

All your weight is forced onto the balls of your feet thanks to the raised forefoot platforms. This makes jumping more difficult as you start with an awkward stance and undergo unnatural movements. Not only do Strength Shoes and Jumpsoles force you into an unnatural position, but they also amp up the risk of injuring yourself.

When excessive stress is placed on the calves, the Achilles tendon, and the tibia, that entire area becomes more prone to being damaged; this has been backed up by numerous scientific studies. Dozens of courses and programs have come to light promising equally great results. At the same time, you also have to be careful with your choice, because not all programs are good.

In my case, there are two jump training programs that easily stand out from the crowd in the amount of value they provide. The Jump Manual can be considered as the grandfather of vertical jump training programs, not only because of its age, being more than a decade old from its original release, but also because of how influential it was to the vertical jump community.

The training groups trained three times a week for 10 weeks. They followed identical programs prescribed by the manufacturer. All subjects were pre- and post-tested for yard sprint, vertical jump, standing broad jump, and right and left calf girth. There were two dropouts in the no-training group, eight in the regular-shoe group, and 10 in the Strength-Shoe group. Seven of the Strength-Shoe dropouts and one of the regular-shoe dropouts were due to injury that could be attributed to the training.

The changes in performance and calf girth are summarized in the table. Both training groups showed a tendency to improve their sprinting and jumping by 0. The Strength-Shoe group tended to do better than the regular-shoe group in the sprint and vertical jump, while the trend was reversed for the broad jump.

There was also a tendency for the Strength-Shoe group to develop bigger calf muscles. None of the differences between any of the three groups was statistically significant, so we can't say whether any of the observed differences are likely to be true for athletes in general. Percent changes in performance and calf girth of college-age men in three groups after a week training program. In their promotional literature, Strength Footwear Inc.

These claims were clearly not supported in this study. In fact, any slight gain that might be possible with Strength Shoes would appear to be more than offset by the higher risk of injury. One of the problems with this study is that the subjects were not trained athletes.

It's possible that athletes with well-conditioned muscles and joints would not get injured with Strength Shoes. Another problem is that the training program might not have been optimal.. It's possible that some preparative weight training should have been included in the program. Another possibility is that the intensity was too high for untrained individuals ballistic shock is not well tolerated by untrained muscles or connective tissue , and that the volume was too low.

A better balance of intensity and volume might have increased the gains in both training groups and increased the gains in the Strength-Shoe group relative to the regular-shoe group.