Tuesday 26 May 2015

Buying A Pair of CrossFit Shoes

I've been CrossFit training for around five years. Crossfit is for people who want to take their fitness to a new level by combining a number of different exercises each day you attend.
The difficulty with buying a pair of CrossFit shoes is you need a shoe that can handle a range of tasks. The majority of shoes on the market are designed for one purpose so in this article I want to detail how to find a good pair of shoes for CrossFit.

Finding Cross Trainers

The type of shoe you require is a cross trainer. A cross training shoe is designed to be an all round shoe capable of doing a range of things well. I say well because it's a Jack of all trades and is not designed to do everything extremely well.

The problem any cross training shoe manufacturer has is "focus" If a big company like Nike decides to make a running shoe then all they need to do is focus on the sport of running and what a runner requires from a running shoe.

Focus is a luxury you don't get with a cross trainer. The good news is the manufactures understand this and the modern cross trainer is a lot more advanced and better at doing a range of tasks.

The other good news is Reebok, Nike and a range of other company's now make shoes just for CrossFit see the video below:
In order to start our search we now have two options.
1. Search for Cross training shoes
2. Search for CrossFit shoes

Research and Buying The Correct Shoes

Researching all the shoes on the market can take a very long time, below are a number of resources to help make to process a little bit quicker.

Amazon - if you go to amazon.com you will be able to simply type into the search bar Crossfit shoes or cross training shoes and instantly be presented with a wide range of shoes.
This is good but not ideal, we need to be able to narrow down our search results to find the ones with the best ratings.
Simply select a category and you now have the ability to refine the search with "average customer reviews" the search will now change and all the shoes are now ranked by customer satisfaction.

dsstuff - There are a number of websites that provide real testing and reviews but not many that specialize in CrossFit or Cross training.
The dsstuff team not only review and test the latest shoes on the market but they also compile there results into a very handy top 5. see best shoes for CrossFit here.

This is a huge time saver and the reviews really are in-depth. They all include a video review, text review, close up photos, pros and cons then a link to the lowest price online.

Youtube - For real user review videos youtube is defiantly the place to go. On youtube you will find real CrossFit athletes giving their true opinion on pretty much every CrossFit or cross training shoe on the market. I also like the fact some of these channels are now so big that they even get shoes before release dates.

You do have to be careful as some youtube videos are only designed to increase views or sell products.

Buying CrossFit Shoes Offline

Yes did you know you can buy offline, yes real stores still exist in the real world :-)
There are a number of benefits to buying in a store.
1. Depending on the store you should be able to try on a wide range of different brands.
2. No waiting for the postman
3. No need to return the shoes because they don't fit
4. In store help and assistance from the staff

There are also downsides to buying in a store mainly a higher price but at least you get your shoes the same day.
It's a bit cheeky but what I do sometimes is go to the store and try on a range of shoes I am interest in buying then simply find them online at a cheaper price. You still have to wait for them to arrive but this way you get the best of both worlds.

My Personal Recomendation

It's difficult to choose just one shoe because they all have good points and bad points however if I was pushed into a corner on the subject I would have to choose the Nike Free 5.0 v6.
The strange thing is this shoe is not even designed for CrossFit in fact Nike have another shoe called the metcon that is designed for Cross Training but I really can't stress how good the Nike free 5.0 v6 is it's just simply awesome.

Below are my top 3 shoes for CrossFit, check out the video reviews for further information.

The Nike Free 5.0 V6
The Reebok Nano 4.0
The Nike Metcon

I hope this information has been helpful and please feel free to comment or ask questions on any of the videos to get help.