I Bought 9 Pairs Of Shoes In A Year To Find One That Didn't Hurt. Eight Of Them Failed — Two Of Them For A Reason I Had To Cut A Sole Open To Find.
If you're about to buy another pair of “supportive” shoes because your feet or knees hurt, give me ten minutes first. I've spent a year and about $900 finding out what actually holds up, and most of what's being sold right now fails in one of three ways — the third of which you can't see from the outside.
The question I got every single week
I sold shoes for twenty-two years. Small shop, regular customers, most of them over fifty.
And every week, someone would come in, put a pair on the counter, and say some version of the same sentence.
“These were supposed to be the good ones.”
Two hundred dollars. Recommended by someone. Worn for four months. And their feet or their knees were no better — sometimes worse.
For years I gave the answer I'd been taught to give. More support. More cushioning. Try the wider fitting. Maybe see someone about orthotics.
Then my own knees went, and I found out how useless that advice is when you're the one paying for it.
So I bought nine pairs and actually tested them
Not in a shop. Not for ten minutes on a carpet square. I wore each pair properly — at least three weeks, on real footpaths, doing real days — and I wrote down what happened.
By the end of it I could sort every shoe I'd ever sold into three piles.
Pile one: the cushioned “supportive” shoes
These are the ones everybody recommends. Thick foam, raised heel, firm plastic bits under the arch, a price tag between $140 and $250.
Here's the problem with all of them, and it took me far too long to see it.
They do the work your foot is supposed to do. A thick, stiff sole with a propped-up arch means the muscles in your foot have nothing to hold. Wear that every day for a few years and those muscles get weaker, not stronger — the same way your leg comes out of a cast thinner than it went in.
So the shoe that felt wonderful in the shop needs to be replaced by an even more supportive one next year. And the year after that.
And the raised heel changes how you land. Almost all of them sit noticeably higher at the back. That tips you forward and makes you come down heel-first, hard, onto a slab of foam. Your foot is sealed in a stiff sole so it can't spread or flex to absorb anything, and the shock travels up your shin into the knee.
Pile two: barefoot shoes that fall apart — or fake the bit you're paying for
Once I understood the first problem, the answer looked obvious: get out of the cushioning. Flat sole, wide front, let the foot work.
That part was right. What I didn't expect was how badly most of them are made — and how many are quietly selling you a feature that isn't there.
First: the glue
A lot of what's for sale is the cheapest possible version of the idea. Thin fabric upper, thin rubber sole, and the two glued together. Not stitched. Glued.
Look at the timing on that, because it isn't an accident.
A glued sole doesn't fail in week two while you can still send it back. It fails somewhere around month three, when the flex point at the ball of your foot has been bending a few thousand times a day and the adhesive gives up. By then you're well past the returns period and it's your problem.
Second: the grounding that isn't
Two of the pairs I bought were sold as grounding or earthing shoes — a conductive element in the sole that puts your foot in electrical contact with the ground, the way bare feet on grass are.
I want to be careful here, because this is where the marketing gets silly. So here is the only part of it that's simply, physically true:
Rubber is an insulator. That isn't a wellness claim, it's just what rubber is — it's the reason electrical cable is sheathed in it. Every conventional shoe you own puts a layer of it between your sole and the ground. A conductive plate through the sole removes that layer. That's the whole mechanism, and I'm not going to tell you what it will do for your health. Be wary of anyone who does.
What I can tell you is that of the two grounding shoes I bought, neither one actually conducted.
I only worked this out because I cut one of them open. You cannot see it from a product photo, which is presumably the point.
Pile three: the one that's still in my hallway
Number nine. A pair of Solyn Grounded.
I'll be straight with you about what it is and isn't, because I've spent a year being sold nonsense and I'm not about to hand you more of it.
It is not a cure. It's a shoe that stops doing the things the others were doing, and delivers the thing the other two only claimed.
How to check any grounding shoe — including this one
The four questions that sort the real ones from the rest
- Is the conductor solid metal, or a coating? A plated finish wears through on the footpath, usually within a month, and then you're standing on rubber.
- Does it actually reach your foot? This is the one that catches most of them. A rivet or plate with rubber on every side connects to nothing at all. Ask, or look at a photo of the inside.
- Does it poke into your foot? Some do. You'll know within an hour of wearing them, and you won't wear them twice.
- What are you standing on? It only works on conductive ground — grass, soil, sand, damp concrete, stone. Nothing happens through asphalt, vinyl, carpet or a timber floor, and no plate on earth changes that. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling.
What actually happened, week by week
I kept notes, so here they are without the polish.
I'm not going to tell you it fixed everything. Some days are still ordinary days. But I stopped buying shoes, and that's the most honest thing I can say about them.
Other people who've been through it
“Two pairs of expensive 'supportive' trainers before these, and both of them made my knees worse. I'd more or less accepted that this was just what fifty-eight felt like. Give them a fortnight — the first week is odd.”
“Thirty years on job sites and my feet were done. What I notice most is the end of the day — I'm not sitting down the second I get in the door anymore. Walk the grandkids to school most mornings now.”
“Twelve-hour shifts on hospital floors. I've tried everything the other nurses swear by. These are the first ones where hour eleven feels roughly like hour three. The wide front is the whole difference for me.”
Two things I'd tell anyone before they order
Go slowly for the first fortnight. This is the mistake nearly everyone makes. If you've had thirty years of stiff, cushioned shoes doing the work, the small muscles in your feet and calves are genuinely out of practice. Wear them an hour or two a day for the first week, then build up. People who go straight out for a 10km walk get sore calves, decide the shoes are wrong, and send them back.
And take your normal size. The fit is roomy at the front by design — that's the point of it — but it should still be snug at the heel.
Where to get them
Solyn sells direct. That's the reason a shoe built this way — stitched, and with a solid copper plate rather than a rivet in rubber — is a hundred and ten dollars instead of the two-fifty the shop I worked in would have had to charge.
Wear them for thirty days. Walk in them properly, outside, on real ground — not around the lounge room for ten minutes. If your feet aren't happier, send them back and get your money back.
That's the offer I wish someone had made me a year and nine pairs ago.
See sizes and colours →The Footwear Report publishes independent consumer testing on footwear. This article contains commercial links and we may earn a commission on purchases made through them, at no extra cost to you. Personal accounts describe individual experience and are not a substitute for medical advice. Grounding footwear is described here only in terms of what it physically does — conductive contact between the foot and the ground — and no health outcome is claimed or implied. If you have persistent foot, knee, hip or back pain, please see a qualified health practitioner. Prices in AUD and correct at time of publication.