THE SHOE FOR YOU
THE SHOE FOR YOU
We receive a lot of questions on proper shoe sizing and how the heck you choose which Shoe is the Shoe For You.
Let's start with Men's vs Women's Sizing
All wrestling shoe manufactures only supply shoes in Men's sizing (no offense ladies).
Please consider a 2 size differential between a man's size and woman's size.
eg: Ladies- if you wear a size 9 you will be a size 7 men's.
One thing to keep in mind here - if it's a running shoe- tennis shoe or other do your conversion and add 1/2 size to it for your wrestling shoe. So now if you are a ladies size 9 running shoe then you will be a men's size 7-1/2 wrestling shoe.
For men's sizing take your running shoe and add 1/2 size and you should be good to go.
Cautionary tale- we cannot be held accountable to this rule of thumb as there are many different shapes of feet out there. The above will provide you with a good starting point.
What shoes do I buy?
This is where it gets ultra tricky. There are many differences between each shoe that these manufactures put to market and again differences in function and fit between the manufactures. What it really comes down to is a personal preference. How many times do you hear someone say -I only buy Adidas. That may have come from a good personal experience with that manufacture or possibly a winning streak wearing that particular brand. Wrestling is known to b a highly superstitious sport when it comes to gear and even the methods or the sequence one puts the gear on. But hey, that's a story for another time.
Shoes come in a wide variety of colours, designs, flexibility, material, total weight, toe grips, heel grips, side grips, split sole, solid sole, length of tongues and overall shoe height. We have seen first year wrestlers with the highest priced shoe on the market and a high level athlete with any level of shoe from high to low based on price.
Some wrestlers would say that a tighter shoe is best for handling direction changes and better for speed while a heavyweight might say they want a little looser fit as they may not rely on that speed and would rather have mat grip to go along with their strength.
The lower priced shoes tend to be a bit heavier vs the higher end competition shoes.
For the lower priced shoes - you can work out in them -skip- run indoors(only) and wrestle. If your going to purchase higher end shoes then these shoes are constructed purely for competition so why burn your money by trying to make them a multi-use shoe. Save them for competition use or wrestling use only.
Happy Shopping and Thanks for Getting on the Mats with Takedown.
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