ExRx.net

Anyone have experience with these shoes? I bought a pair and have used them a bit, but along with the soreness in my calves came a soreness in my achilles and rear foot area. Is this normal or am I jumping too much?

Nunya, I'm not sure what you are describing with "strength shoes". Back when I was a kid, late 50's, early 60's, my father bought a pair of iron boots, that had a hole in the heel, where you could put a DB bar in, and add weight. They could be used for a variety of different leg/hip movements. I ;oved them. However, you may be talking about actual shoes. Please clarify (BTW, Nunya, as an ex-jarhead, I'm an x Navy chief. Good on you guys).
Tim

I am pretty sure he is talking about the brand "Strength" shoes

they have a platform that lifts the ball of the food off the ground forcing the calves to remain contracted or else the heel dips and stretches the calf.

seen here I think,

http://www.eastbay.com/catalog/productd ... 02&sport=0


So nunya, I would start out just easing into the shoes and wear them a bit. I wouldnt start the jumping workouts if you havent done a lot of plyometric training before.

huh! how bout that??

heck ..for that price, I'd go for THESE:

http://www.stevemadden.com/item_image.asp?id=10797#

dian

LOL nice! Yea those are the strength shoes I have. I tried taking old shoes and nailing some 2x4" into them. All was great for about 2 minutes until the bottom of my shoe tore off with the nail and wood, so I bought these to get my calves some much needed work!

Achilles tendons usually take a while to heal up so I'd be careful about training in them too much.

They have a booklet that comes with the strength shoe package and from what I hear, the booklet is pretty good in terms of training with that shoe on. You want to make sure that you don't overtrain with those shoes on.

One caveat that I've heard is that after taking off the shoes, many of the gains you made in terms of vertical leap will be lost as the body adjusts to having normal shoes on. So as always, your mileage may vary.

Ditch the shoes. They're junk. They very often lead to injury and provide no benefits that a solid plyometric program would not also provide. Read up about them on athletes.com or in the sports training section of bodybuilding.com

I'd check out the first question & answer on this page
http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/que ... ers53.html
if I were you. It is a review of many popular gimmicks that
are supposed to help you develop your vertical jump,
and it's a review coming from a real performance coach.
I'd also suggest you to check out this guy's homepage and
his Vertical jump development bible, if you're serious
about increasing your VJ and explosive power.