How come the shoe guys never thought of the 4% technology until now?

Leaf springs have been around for ages. I think it’s more like Nike was the first to get away with it. Also it’s very difficult to get into the shoe market.

I think this is a good example of combining minor, incremental adjustments to create a breakthrough. That's pretty typical of innovation in general, actually. Even something like the printing press was based on some fairly unspectacular advances in die making and metallurgy.

With the Vaporfly, everybody has been working on something to outdo Boost for the past few years. Hoka has been having success with high stack but lightweight shoes for several years. Mizuno has had midsole plates for many years. Getting just the right combination simply takes a lot of experimentation, and not all shoe companies have the personnel or resources to sustain that kind of R&D.

Wejo, have you tried running in a pair? The experience is revelatory.

Yes, Boost is what lit the fire under Nike. And the only reason they grabbed onto the plate was because the foam they found was too unstable. And yes, the fast Boost shoe drop is what convinced Nike to go that direction.

Watch the final few kilometers of Dennis' world record at Berlin. The bounce and ride he was getting was all Nike had to see, to realize that dead-feeling and overly-flexible Free shoes were a dead-end.

because the point of the breaking2 project was to break 2 regardless of legality vis a vis a world record

before then people were trying to make legal shoes

Nobody thought a shoe with a spring would be legal.

wejo wrote:

From what I can tell scientists are in agreement this technology with its lever or spring like effect (not sure how to describe it) is superior and the concept doesn't seem that complicated. (Maybe it is complicated because I can't explain it).

The plate doesn't do nearly as much as you (and most) give it credit for. Just look at the Zoom Flyknit. Same carbon plate, not nearly as responsive. It's mostly the foam developments.

Comically, some companies are just refusing to adapt and innovate, or are taking too long. Look at Asics, Mizuno or hell, even Newton (how much longer until they're finally out of business???). Asics's top selling shoes still use gel as cushioning.

My guess is that Nike decided to add more foam in their shoes, ala Hoka, and wound up with a very unstable shoe. In an attempt to control the wobble, Nike added a carbon fiber plate. They were surprised to find that the shoe with the plate worked better than the lighter shoe with the plate. And viola, the 4% was born.

This may sound outrageous, but look at all the crazy shoes Nike has marketed over the years. I think their vaunted R&D is a lot of throwing stuff against a wall and seeing what sticks.

Didn’t let’s run interview Brad Hudson and he dismissed the shoe as something that he saw shoe companies do in the mid 90s? I thought he basically said it may help some but isn’t for everyone.

IllinoisPhotographer wrote:

wejo wrote:

From what I can tell scientists are in agreement this technology with its lever or spring like effect (not sure how to describe it) is superior and the concept doesn't seem that complicated. (Maybe it is complicated because I can't explain it).

The plate doesn't do nearly as much as you (and most) give it credit for. Just look at the Zoom Flyknit. Same carbon plate, not nearly as responsive. It's mostly the foam developments.

Yeah I thought there was a paper that showed most of the energy return came from the foam rather than the plate?

David S wrote:

IllinoisPhotographer wrote:

The plate doesn't do nearly as much as you (and most) give it credit for. Just look at the Zoom Flyknit. Same carbon plate, not nearly as responsive. It's mostly the foam developments.

Yeah I thought there was a paper that showed most of the energy return came from the foam rather than the plate?

That’s my take as well. A normal plastic torsion bar wasn’t stable enough to allow the shoes to be run in. The carbon plat was simply light enough and ridge enough to make the high stack of soft but bouncy foam usable for running.

My reading wrote:

David S wrote:

Yeah I thought there was a paper that showed most of the energy return came from the foam rather than the plate?

That’s my take as well. A normal plastic torsion bar wasn’t stable enough to allow the shoes to be run in. The carbon plat was simply light enough and ridge enough to make the high stack of soft but bouncy foam usable for running.

That make me wonder about what saucony could produce. Their version of boost is more gummy like and feel bouncier to me. I wonder if they made a nice thick stack of that stuff but a bar in it to stabilize it how it would compare.

My intuition was that the foam helped more, sabalized by the plate. My old track spikes in the 90s were basically full length plastic plates. I feel with track spikes they've had similar plates for a very long time.

There was a movie that came out in 1961 starring Fred MacMurray, something about springy shoes and improved performance.

BTW, the 5 minutes wait almost makes me not want to submit a post anonymously.

Free_the_thigh wrote:

Nobody thought a shoe with a spring would be legal.

how do you define a spring? the point of running shoes being allowed is that it protects your feet with cushioning. you can argue that everything that is a cushion is a spring.

There is nothing really innovative about VaporFly design.

They use a new higher energy-return foam, and manufacturers have been re-inventing and branding those for decades.

Rigid plates are also nothing new.

The dual-plate version Kipchoge had - is that even in production? Seems tweaked for a forefoot striker, which is a modest segment of the market.

wejo wrote:

...

My question is how come no one thought of this previously?

It took 200 years for the first 5 million inventions to be patented in the US, but it only took 28 years (from 1990 to 2018) for the next 5 million inventions to be patented. So, what happened in 1990?

The World Wide Web was created in a useable form. This allowed information to be shared "world wide", which allowed products to be created 10 times faster.

The new shoe technology is like Mark McGwire's bottle of Andro that he planted in his locker for all of the reporters to see. It's a smokescreen to detract from the real reason why times have improved so much.

Nike had another racing flat with a forefoot plate in it years ago, the Zoom Katana Star. The plate started in the midfoot and extended to the first two toes. It didn't work very well.

wejo wrote:

The shoe companies have been trying to come up with a faster shoe for ages.

From what I can tell scientists are in agreement this technology with its lever or spring like effect (not sure how to describe it) is superior and the concept doesn't seem that complicated. (Maybe it is complicated because I can't explain it).

My question is how come no one thought of this previously?

Was everyone else obsessed with foams and what not and Nike thought of changing the angle of the shoe? Or was this only possible once foams got super light?

Oddly enough, I was just reading about "clap-skates", the kind used in speed skating, which in my opinion draws very strong similarities to the current shoe debate. While the concept and patent for them originated in the 1900s they weren't actually implemented until the 1980s. Sometimes it just takes time for the pieces to come together.

Carbon fiber on the level of consumer retail products has also advanced a great deal in the last decades enabling the feasibility of this scale of production.