Can you give your muscles a better workout simply by changing your shoes?
The athletic shoe giant Reebok claims you can. The new EasyTone walking shoe, a provocative
new marketing campaign says, leaves leg and buttock muscles better toned than regular
walking shoes.
Consumers are buying it — literally. Officials from Reebok, a unit of Adidas, say the
EasyTone is the company’s most successful new product in at least five years.
Other companies have marketed shoes that promise a physiological benefit. Masai Group
International, of Switzerland, sells the MBT, a “rocker” shoe with a curved sole, said to
ease arthritis and back pain. Shape-Ups from Skechers USA are designed to improve posture
and muscle tone and promote weight loss. The FitFlop brand has been engineered to increase
leg, calf and gluteal muscle activity, giving the wearer “a workout while you walk.”
While most athletic shoes offer support and cushioning, the new muscle-activating shoes are
engineered to create a sense of instability. Design elements like curved soles and Reebok’s
“balance pods” are said to force the wearer to engage stabilizing muscles further, resulting
in additional toning for calf, hamstring and gluteal muscles.
That sounds great, but do they really work? To support the claims, the shoemakers each offer
company-financed exercise studies suggesting that the shoes produce a higher level of muscle
engagement, at least in a controlled research setting.
But the studies don’t show whether more engagement leads to meaningful changes in muscle
tone or appearance over time. Nor is it clear whether the high level of engagement continues
once the walker becomes accustomed to the shoe.
Reebok’s EasyTone has made the biggest splash in the muscle-shoe market, especially with its
advertising. In one commercial, the camera drifts away from the woman’s face and zooms in on
her backside. Another advertisement claims that the leg and butt-toning effects of EasyTone
will “make your boobs jealous.”
The advertisements, aimed at younger women, have appeared in magazines and online, and a big
television campaign is under way: 3,000 commercial slots have been scheduled on network and
cable in November and December.
But the claim that the shoes offer muscle toning is backed by a single study involving just
five people, not published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. In that study, done at the
University of Delaware, five women walked on a treadmill for 500 steps wearing either the
EasyTone or another Reebok walking shoe, and while barefoot. Using sensors that measure
muscle activity, the researchers showed that wearing the EasyTone worked gluteal muscles an
average of 28 percent more than regular walking shoes. Hamstring and calf muscles worked 11
percent harder.
Reebok’s head of advanced innovation, Bill McInnis, said the size of the study was adequate
to determine the effect of the shoe and added that exercise studies of this nature commonly
used small numbers of participants.
The EasyTone is the brainchild of Mr. McInnis, a former NASA engineer, who said he was
interested in the stability balls used in gym workouts and wanted to translate the
technology to a shoe. In particular, he was intrigued by the Bosu ball, a small half-sphere
that exercisers stand on during workouts as a way to engage leg and core muscles better.
In designing the EasyTone, Mr. McInnis and his team sought to mimic that concept by adding
“balance pods” to the toe and heel of the shoe. As the person walks, the air pushes back and
forth between toe and heel, and the person sinks into the shoe. The effect is similar to
that of walking on a sandy beach — which requires more work, balance and muscle engagement
than walking on a flat surface.
John Lynch, head of United States brand marketing for Reebok, said the company’s market
research showed that four out of five women were especially interested in products that
toned their leg and gluteal muscles. Mr. Lynch added that retailers were reporting brisk
sales of the shoe; one Los Angeles sporting goods store reported that its Reebok sales more
than doubled in November.
Reebok says it has collected 15,000 hours’ worth of wear-test data from shoe users who say
they notice the difference. “They definitely feel something in their muscles after they’ve
walked in the product,” Mr. McInnis said.
One of them is Carol Vanner, 51, an executive assistant in Atlanta who had tried the
larger-soled FitFlop shoe and was skeptical she would notice much difference with the
EasyTone.
“I thought there was no way they would work, but I tried them and I felt like I had worked
out,” she said. “Do I look like I’m 20? No, but I feel like when I wear them for periods of
time that I have exercised and worked those muscles.”
Shay Gipson, 31, an apparel product manager in New York City, said she tried the shoes after
hearing a friend rave about them. She immediately felt the balancing effect, she said, and
she likes walking in the shoe.
“I can definitely feel the muscle groups in my legs working more than I would in regular
shoes,” she said. “I feel more toned.”
But it remains to be seen whether such effects will make a difference over time. In a July
2008 study of instability boards and balls, Canadian researchers found that among
experienced exercisers, moderate instability balls like the Bosu had little effect on muscle
activation.
The shoes are designed only for walking, and because of the instability design, wearers are
discouraged from running, jumping and engaging in other athletic activities while wearing
them. So the real effect may come from simple awareness that they are wearing a
muscle-activating shoe, causing them to walk more briskly and with purpose.
“I think buying them with this in mind is likely to increase mindfulness, which is good for
health,” said Ellen J. Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has studied the connections
between mindfulness, exercise and health. “It will probably result in even more walking,
with the implicit and explicit virtues endemic to exercise.”
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