The Design
Our feet (and toes!) are as different as our faces.
It's not something we typically think about in street shoes, but your toe configuration makes a big difference in the comfort and fit of your pointe shoe, since all of your body weight is distributed over such a small area. Where you experience pain is very personal — it depends a lot on your foot shape and how well it fits the shoe. These 3 basic configurations don't begin to reflect the diversity of toe shapes.
Nobody's feet are perfectly shaped like a pointe shoe.
If you’ve ever noticed that your foot isn’t shaped like a tapered, squared-off block, you are not alone. Because your foot’s natural shape doesn’t match the interior geometry of the pointe shoe, it creates painful and damaging high pressure points due to uneven weight distribution. And it doesn’t help our cause that pointe shoes are the same for right and left feet.
The less of your foot in contact with the shoe interior (and the more space there is within the shoe box), the greater the pressure that accumulates at these high stress points. It’s basic physics: Pressure = Force / Area. But increase the surface area, and the pressure goes down.
The problem with padding: a reactive approach
Even worse, many toe pads are overly padded in known pressure areas. These kinds of toe pads, as well as gel accessories designed to pad pressure points, not only reduce the critical ability to feel the shoe and the floor, but also often increase the pressure in those areas by adding more “stuff” in your shoe.
Our feet (and toes!) are as different as our faces.
It's not something we typically think about in street shoes, but your toe configuration makes a big difference in the comfort and fit of your pointe shoe, since all of your body weight is distributed over such a small area. Where you experience pain is very personal — it depends a lot on your foot shape and how well it fits the shoe. These 3 basic configurations don't begin to reflect the diversity of toe shapes.
Nobody's feet are perfectly shaped like a pointe shoe.
If you’ve ever noticed that your foot isn’t shaped like a tapered, squared-off block, you are not alone. Because your foot’s natural shape doesn’t match the interior geometry of the pointe shoe, it creates painful and damaging high pressure points due to uneven weight distribution. And it doesn’t help our cause that pointe shoes are the same for right and left feet.
The less of your foot in contact with the shoe interior (and the more space there is within the shoe box), the greater the pressure that accumulates at these high stress points. It’s basic physics: Pressure = Force / Area. But increase the surface area, and the pressure goes down.
The problem with padding: a reactive approach
Even worse, many toe pads are overly padded in known pressure areas. These kinds of toe pads, as well as gel accessories designed to pad pressure points, not only reduce the critical ability to feel the shoe and the floor, but also often increase the pressure in those areas by adding more “stuff” in your shoe.
Our feet (and toes!) are as different as our faces.
It's not something we typically think about in street shoes, but your toe configuration makes a big difference in the comfort and fit of your pointe shoe, since all of your body weight is distributed over such a small area. Where you experience pain is very personal -- it depends a lot on your foot shape and how well it fits the shoe. These 3 basic configurations don't begin to reflect the diversity of toe shapes.
Nobody's feet are perfectly shaped like a pointe shoe.
If you’ve ever noticed that your foot isn’t shaped like a tapered, squared-off block, you are not alone. Because your foot’s natural shape doesn’t match the interior geometry of the pointe shoe, it creates painful and damaging high pressure points due to uneven weight distribution. And it doesn’t help our cause that pointe shoes are the same for right and left feet.
The less of your foot in contact with the shoe interior (and the more space there is within the shoe box), the greater the pressure that accumulates at these high stress points. It’s basic physics: Pressure = Force / Area. But increase the surface area, and the pressure goes down.
The problem with padding: a reactive approach
Even worse, many toe pads are overly padded in known pressure areas. These kinds of toe pads, as well as gel accessories designed to pad pressure points, not only reduce the critical ability to feel the shoe and the floor, but also often increase the pressure in those areas by adding more “stuff” in your shoe.
A new, more proactive approach.
It makes a lot more sense to design a way to fill just the spaces in the shoe box so that you can proactively offload pressure.
This is why PerfectFit is a smart fitting solution, not a padding solution. (It’s also why we call them inserts, not toe pads, in case you were wondering.)
3 smart ways it fills the space...
If we take a cross-section of a PerfectFit insert, along the line of the second toe (or any other shorter toe), you’ll see the putty helps fill the space in 3 really useful ways:
On top
It provides support and lift, plus blister protection for your knuckles (and also keeps your box from breaking down as quickly).
On the tips
It brings the floor up to your shorter toes to offload pressure from your longest toe.
On bottom
It increases grip and control when you point your foot by filling that little space between the pads of your toes and the metatarsal heads.
On top
It provides support and lift, plus blister protection for your knuckles (and also keeps your box from breaking down as quickly).
On the tips
It brings the floor up to your shorter toes to offload pressure from your longest toe.
On bottom
It increases grip and control when you point your foot by filling that little space between the pads of your toes and the metatarsal heads.
On top
It provides support and lift, plus blister protection for your knuckles (and also keeps your box from breaking down as quickly).
On the tips
It brings the floor up to your shorter toes to offload pressure from your longest toe.
On bottom
It increases grip and control when you point your foot by filling that little space between the pads of your toes and the metatarsal heads.