Why is my shoe rolling off?

October 2, 2005 9:01 PM

My shoe is rolling off...

I'm having a problem with one pair of shoes. The right shoe is always trying to roll inward, so I'm walking on the right edge. I haven't had this problem with other shoes. They are a nice pair of New Balance, only about six months old. It's kind of a pain to have to kick the instep every few minutes, is there a fix? I really don't want to trash them.

posted by Marky to clothing, beauty, & fashion (8 comments total)

Maybe if you glued some rougher fabric on the inside of the shoe your foot wouldn't slide. The shoes sound loose/wide also no?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:38 PM on October 2, 2005

Assuming you don't have a pronation problem, maybe you could simply look for an insert that will correct the pronation caused by the shoe.
posted by acoutu at 9:51 PM on October 2, 2005

What's with the New Balance warning? I've worn them for years and have never found any problems, if you get them from a NB store and not via a "fire sale" at a major sports store chain that sells nothing but seconds. The rolling in you describe may be a problem with your feet & instep called pronation rather than the shoe. NB has an entire line that specifically corrects for both types - inwards and outward. I know because I pronate inwards and my NB shoes correct it perfectly! I'd be interested to view a site that warns about the NB brand.
The B
posted by thebarron at 10:06 PM on October 2, 2005

This doesn't really answer your question, but I had a pair of new balances do the same thing for almost a year, and it didn't seem to bother them any. My walk also corrected itself as time went on, though.

I eventually blew one of them out playing basketball, but they held up under general everyday usage just fine up until that point.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 10:13 PM on October 2, 2005

Pronation is only when the foot rolls inwards (more than it is supposed to). When it rolls outwards, that's supination.

I supinate badly, and I find that all my shoes show the same signs of abnormal wear. (Higher quality shoes wear more slowly that cheapos, but they all wear in the same way.) If it's just the one pair of shoes, I'd say the problem is the shoes, not the feet.
posted by Shoeburyness at 12:39 AM on October 3, 2005

Sounds to me like a bad fit. Maybe the shoes are too wide? NB does offer a lot of different widths - perhaps you got a bad fit.
posted by srboisvert at 3:58 AM on October 3, 2005

Scoutu is right. I used to have a pair of Saucony sneakers that made my feet overpronate even though I never had that problem any other time. You can get insoles that will correct it.

Plus you'll be an eighth of an inch taller!
posted by bcwinters at 6:06 AM on October 3, 2005

Hm, was this always the case or has the shoe only recently started rolliing? I once had a pair of shoes that began doing that a few months after I got them and it turns out (similar to what YellingAtNothing said above) that the support grid system underneath the insole completely crumbled. See if you can pry the insole up and see what's going on in the inner workings. (I'd complain to NB if that's the case--6 months is not much in the life of sneakers. My problem shoes weren't sneakers, so I just shoved a piece of silly putty into the spot where the grid broke and that seemed to work ok.)
posted by veronica sawyer at 1:31 PM on October 3, 2005