Flat foot Cinderella strikes again

April 14, 2014 7:41 AM

Wearers of Brooks Adrenaline sneakers: Please help me find more spring and summer shoes.

I have extremely flat feet. I land hard on my heels. I need overall foot support and heel support, but arch support does not work well for me at all.

Last year, AskMe directed me to the most comfortable sneakers I've ever owned. I love them so much that I bought a replacement pair before I needed it, just in case the 14s are disappointing.

Now, I need to find other fair-weather shoes, both casual and dressier. These (discontinued) shoes are what I wear in the fall and winter -- when I asked the store if there were Dansko shoes that had footbeds without prominent arches, I really lucked out.

Are there brands that are known for a foot support/heel support/no arch combo, or that any of you fellow Brooks Adrenaline fans can recommend? I find that shoe shopping, even in a place where I get attentive service, goes much better if I have at least a few ideas. Thanks in advance!

posted by gnomeloaf to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (1 answer total)

I am a a Brook Adrenaline wearer!

I have awful feet. Pancake flat and all sorts of issues as a result of being a distance runner/endurance athlete for 17 years (and I'm not stopping!)

First off, get thee to Footsmart For all of your arch support, foot hurty, brace, blister and bunion needs. They have shoes on there too but they are kind of...ugly. But that's just my opinion.

So...you say that arch support does not work? Well, the reason why the Adrenalines are so awesome is because they offload your heel striking with their heel/toe drop ratio to allow you to make surface contact with your mid foot (e.g. Arch) rather than your heel which would be your normal first point of ground contact. So you're a heel striker, that's all. Look for shies that have a higher wedged back as compared to the front (look at the example ones you posted - from the side the heel is higher than the toe). You also should be able to trick out whatever shoes you would like with some basic heel wedge inserts (look under heel pain on the Footsmart website) to offload the pressure. The reason why high heel dress shoes wouldn't be ideal is because they center everything on the ball of your foot.

I've learned that having tricky feet kind of means that we can't do the fancy trendy things all the time. We kind of just have to stick with basics. Personally, I would rather be wearing sensible shoes and destroy marathons than look "cute". Meh. FWIW, I'm 33 and put reasonable time and energy into my appearance. I do not, however, give a flying fajita about what people at work think of my shoes as long as they are clean and presentable because 90% of the time they are under a desk or conference table.

In the winter and fall (e.g. Not sandal season) I wear dansko clogs or Clark's brand (Clark's brand has lots of nice styles that look nice with work pants and such). Ecco is another good brand as is Keen.

In the summer I wear Birkenstocks to the office, but nice ones like these rather than the classic hippieish kind (no offense to hippies of the world). I can get away with this with lots of skirts in the summer because then the focus of my outfit is the skirt rather than my shoes.

I save all heels, trendy, pointy and generally stylish fancy-pants shoes that I own for special occasions. When I do wear them, I make sure to put vasoline or body glide on blister prone areas and trick out the insides of those shoes with stuff like Dr. Scholls Dreamwalk series. I feel like I'm not wearing them for any real length of time so it's ok.

Feel free to memail me. I figured most of this out through years of trial and error and sacrificed the majority of my teenage years to the gods of awkwardness with shoes.
posted by floweredfish at 5:04 PM on April 14, 2014