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5 Ways To Lace Your Running Shoes
Get comfy and locked in, with these alternative lace styles for all foot shapes and types.
Any sort of discomfort in your running can be magnified by the thousands (or hundreds, or tens, no shame here!) of steps you take each run, so making sure you get the perfect fit and feel is extremely important.
The first step to obtaining that perfect fit is simply to ensure the shoe you are running in fits you correctly, you can find an article to help you find the perfect fit here:
5 WaysHow Should Your Running Shoes Fit? | Pro:Direct Running (prodirectsport.com)
If you feel pain, discomfort, slippage, or movement, you might benefit from trying a different lacing technique.
If your heel keeps moving around in your shoe, you notice excessive wear in the back of your shoe, or you get blisters on your heel, the “heel lock” style of lacing is ideal as it pulls your foot back towards the heel for a snug fit which means less movement.
I found that this method completely corrected the fit of one of my pairs of runners, stopping heel slip and improving comfort throughout my entire run.
It’s a bit odd this one, as you make your own eyelet with the laces, but it’s perhaps the most well-known alternative to normal lacing in the running community, it is also known as “runners knot”.
- Lace as normal, creating a zig zag pattern all the way to the last normal lace hole, or eyelet.
- Instead of finishing there, take each lace straight up the short distance to the “extra” lace hole located further up, and a little bit further back, and feed it through from the top.
- Do not pull it tight. You are looking to create a small loop.
- Cross the ends of the laces across the foot, and feed them through the loop you just created, from inside to outside.
- Now you can pull them tight and knot them as usual.
When your shoes feel tight on the top of your foot, try the traditional parallel lacing type to evenly distribute the laces.
- Skip alternate eyelets with each side of the lace.
- Run the laces up the inside of the shoe, then take them straight across to the other side.
- Skip an eyelet and repeat.
- Use the other side of the lace to fill in the missing eyelets using the same technique.
- Tie a knot to complete the process as normal.
Pain in the toes, or black toenails can come from having a tight toe box, with not enough room for your toes to stretch out and wiggle. This style of lacing lifts the toe box giving more room where you need it.
- One side of the lace should run straight from the bottom lacing all the way to the top eyelet on the other side on a diagonal.
- The other, longer side should criss-cross all the way up and out the other top eyelet.
If you struggle to get your wider feet in your running shoes, its probably best to try one of our wide fit shoes, but if that doesn’t suit you, or you still need more help, then try this simple method of loosening the fit.
- Lace the bottom line as usual.
- Use a standard criss-cross pattern, simply missing every other eyelet.
- Tie a bow as normal to complete the process and you’re good to go!
I personally find this style useful, while top end running shoes will often mould to your foot shape, if you need a bit of extra space somewhere specific in your shoe this will do the trick. You can even utilise this to your regular daily footwear styles, my Vans fit much better through the forefoot with this system!
You can give yourself more space in any part of the shoe by simply missing that section of the lacing. Skip a few eyelets low for a wide forefoot, in the middle for high arches, and towards the top for a high midfoot. Above are examples for each, starting with wide forefoot.
- Place the lace through the bottom holes as normal, then go up the side, out the first eyelet, then back through third, never crossing sides.
- From this point you can lace the shoes as normal with a criss-cross style all the way to the top.
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Find Your Perfect Fit
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