There was a point in my life where sizing my shoes was as simple as going to the store with my parents, trying on a shoe that looked cool, and saying good enough.
A couple jumps and sprints down the aisle, followed by the obligatory, “I can jump higher in these shoes. They literally make me faster!”
My parents would press on my toes to see where they sat and I never knew what was good or not, I just wanted them to make me look cool.
Maybe you have shared the same experiences as me. They were a lot of fun and it’s great to be care-free, but there comes a time when we have foot problems to solve or preventative measures to take. That time is now.
I’ve since learned that my previous shoe-sizing strategy was woefully insufficient. What I have found instead, however, is almost as easy as my first example. Not to mention, it’s foolproof. You can’t screw it up, really.
Dr. Ray McClanahan calls it “the shoe liner test” and it goes like this:
1). You find the shoe you want.
2). Pull out the “liner” which is the little pad inside the shoe that sits on top of the sole. It should come out with a little tug.
3). Put your foot on top of this liner while it’s laying flat on the floor and see how things look.
Simple as that!
Your feet and toes should be COMPLETELY on top of the liner without hanging over the sides at all. You should be able to see the color of the liner from all angles while you are standing over it with your foot on top. This is how you know it’s wide enough for you.
The width of these liners typically reveal to people that their shoes are not wide enough for them, as I’ve learned myself.
There should be comfortably enough space in the toe region. There should be no worry of your toes hitting the end of that liner where the wall of your shoe will be sitting when you’re wearing them. You don’t want your toes ramming into that wall and having to curl in different directions in order to find room.
I’d recommend you do this shoe liner test with no socks on. The reason why is because our socks compress our toes together which won’t give us an accurate representation of how they will splay and move while we are walking in our shoes.
That’s about it. Its a very simple test that needs little thinking. You may learn from running this test that the shoes you wear are too narrow for you or maybe you just need to jump up by a half size like I did.
This test is a good preventative measure to avoid future foot problems like bunions, various toe defects, or plantar fasciitis.
Avoid the method at the beginning that only determines how you feel at the moment when you slip your feet in the shoes. Your feet need ample room in there and many shoes won’t cut it when you look at your foot’s shape versus the shape of the shoe design.
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