PRODUCT REVIEW: Xero Shoes (Cloud, HFS, Oswego)

 (Smoke Sill - Broke For Free)

I hate shoe shopping.  I hate shoe shopping more than I hate shopping for pants, and I hate shopping for pants a lot.  First you have to find shoes that you like the look of, then you gotta pray they have them in. your size, then you gotta pray that they fit your foot right when you try them on, and THEN you gotta pray that the price is right.

That's all before you get the things home, break them in, and live in them for a few miles.  Only then do most shoes begin to tell their story, and that story doesn't always have a happy ending.  By then, you're out of luck when it comes to returns.  As if that weren't enough...those shoes are gonna wear out.  Some of them can wear out in a few short months if you use them enough, which means you get to suffer multiple times a year!

Joy.

Thankfully, I'm not alone in my hatred of these things.  Steven Sashen and Lena Phoenix have these gripes as well, and they're much more motivated than I am.  Between the two of them, they founded Xero Shoes.  Their promise?  Shoes that fit right, look cool, require no break-in period, can be easily sized, ordered online, and last for a really long time.  So...basically, solving shoe shopping.

Let's break those promises down and look at them one by one:

"Shoes That Fit Right."  The solve for this is equal parts simple and...sort of frustrating, depending on who you are.  Xero Shoes has a fitting chart that you can print out and put your foot on.  Mark off your measurements appropriately, and voila!  You now know what size to buy!  The only problem with this is that I, like many people I know, don't own a printer at home.  Are there ways around this?  Certainly, but this is the one semi-weak link in the entire Xero Shoes process.  Quite frankly, if they were going to have a weak spot, this is the best place to have it.

"Shoes That Look Cool."  Xero Shoes offers a wide variety of shoes, boots, and sandals on their website in a variety of cool colors.  Better yet, they always seem to be adding new models so their inventory frequently has something cool to look at.  For a non-mainstream show company, their selection is pretty good.

"Shoes That Require No Break-In Period." Getting around break-in periods comes down to two things: 1. What you build your shoe out of, and 2. How much of it you use.  Xero Shoes claims that their footware is ultra light and ultra flexible because of the materials they use and the minimalistic nature of their product.

"Shoes That Can Be Easily Sized."  Once you know your foot size, Xero Shoes offers fitting guidelines for each model of shoe, boot, or sandal to tell you if you should buy a size up, a size down, or plan for an expected fit.

"Shoes You Can Buy Online."  Well, they've got a website, a secure merchant portal, and you can even get their stuff through Amazon.

"Shoes That Last A Long Time." To put it bluntly, Xero Shoes has a 5,000 mile guarantee on the sole of their shoe.  That doesn't say anything about the laces or the upper, but that kind of a claim on the sole's durability is an impressive one.

And now, we get to the part of this review where things get a little nuts, because I've ordered three pairs of Xero Shoes so far, and as far as I can tell...they're telling the truth about everything.  Every pair of shoes I've ordered looks great and feels high quality.  They were all easy to ordered, were usable right out of the box, and required virtually no break-in period whatsoever.  Best of all, they fit.  Every pair fits according to the guidelines Xero Shoes had me follow.  The first pair of shoes I ordered was their Cloud sandal.  It was reasonably priced and a good way to get into the whole 'minimalist shoe' thing. (More on that in a moment...) Xero didn't offer the Cloud in half sizes and suggested that I either order an 11 or a 12.  Their claim was that either size would do me just fine.  I opted for a 12, and while it was just a smidge big, I was easily able to compensate for it using the sandals' fitting system of straps and cords:

See how thin that thing is?  That's a huge part of that whole 'no break-in period' thing.  There's very little shoe to actually break in, and what's where is ultra flexible, so it just sort of...moves the way you think it should.  It's also incredibly light, so you sort of...tend to forget that you're wearing the things.  No foot fatigue when you take 'em off either!

That thinness I mentioned earlier is also part of what allegedly sets Xero Shoes apart.  Without going too deeply into it, Xero Shoes is all about making shoes that are as low to the ground and flexible as possible.  Their claim is that a thinner, more flexible shoe allows the foot to spread out and flex like it's intended to do, and that humans weren't meant to run around with heels on their shoes.  The case they've built for these claims is reasonably well-researched and sensibly presented without making outrageous claims.  I did my own research into the mechanics of minimalist walking and running and found that their claims were well within the realm of fact.  TL;DR: The human foot needs to be able to flex, move, and feel the surface it's moving on in order to do its job and not pass the buck to the ankles, knees, hips, and back.

For anyone wanting to consider a 'Zero Drop' shoe -- that is, a shoe with no elevation difference between the heel and ball of the foot -- a common piece of advice that you'll find online, Xero Shoes included, is to take it -slowly-.  It was strongly advised that I start out wearing my sandals for just 10 or 15 minutes at a time when walking.  Why?  Well, there are several reasons:

- A minimalist shoe will change your gait pattern, which means you'll be using different parts of the foot to move.  That means the potential for blisters can skyrocket because you could end up rubbing on skin that hasn't built up a callous yet.
- A minimalist shoe absolutely allows your foot to spread out and flex.  A lot of people's feet aren't used to that, so the muscles and connective tissue in the foot will need to adjust to being fully in use for extended periods of time.

Not paying attention to these items is a recipe for injury.  As someone who paid absolutely no attention to the warnings and promptly ended up with a huge blister on the bottom of each of his aching feet, I'm here to tell you that the warnings are real.  Take it slowly!

I wore my Cloud sandals everywhere I could once my feet healed up, and two months later, took the plunge on some new walking shoes.  I went shopping at Xero again because I was so happy with their sandals.  After some research, I ended up going for their HFS Shoe:

Xero is a bit coy about what HFS actually stands for -- seriously, watch the video on the shoe's site. Regardless, when I put my HFS shoes on for the first time, I was absolutely blown away.  Xero advised that I buy a half size up from what I'd normally purchase, so I went for a 12 again instead of an 11.5.  The result was, no bullshit, the best fitting pair of shoes I've ever worn in my entire life.  They're cool, comfortable, weigh absolutely nothing, and hug my whole foot like, as cliche as this sounds, a glove.  A lot of that is due to the way the straps on the side of the shoe connect with the laces.  When you tighten the laces up, you're not just putting pressure on the top of the foot, you're shoring up the fit of the entire shoe.  Let me tell you, it works.  While I don't anticipate these wearing out any time soon, the HFS is going to be my Go To walking shoe going forward.

One of the things I tried to pay attention to when I was moving around in my HFSs was how I was walking.  I work from home, so I spend a lot of time being barefoot, or in socks.  I didn't really notice anything remarkable about how my gait changed when I put the HFSs on, except that ...well, it just sort of felt good.  The real shock came after a rain storm.  I wanted to go walk again but my poor HFSs were soaked through.  They dried out quickly, but I still needed shoes.  I slipped back into my trusty Sketchers and...almost fell over.  Suddenly having an elevated heel, reduced flexibility, and no sense of what was under my feet was jarring.  I walked about a mile and a half in them, came home, and immediately purchased a backup pair of Xero Shoes to make sure I never had to do that again...

I ordered another pair of HFSs, this time in bright blue and neon yellow.  I thought I was going to be clever and I ordered them through Amazon instead of directly through Xero Shoes.  There were other things I was ordering, so I just slapped my HFSs onto my order as well!

Amazon promptly...lost them.  I waited for days after the expected delivery date and Amazon finally contacted me to say they 'couldn't be delivered'.  Fool me once, so I hopped back onto the Xero Shoes site and placed my order there instead.  My Clouds and HFSs had both arrived about a week after I ordered them and Xero offered me excellent shipping insurance for free, so...why not?

I stopped short of ordering another pair of HFSs though because, wonder of wonders, Xero had updated their inventory again, and these things were available:

These are Oswegos. (I ordered mine in a color called 'Loden', a gray shoe with a very slight green tinge.)  Thin, uber-flexible, breathable, and they don't scream 'FITNESS SHOE!' quite as loudly as the HFSs do.

The Oswegos had a fitting guideline of 'true to size', so I actually ordered them in 11.5, biting my nails the whole time.  Xero Shoes hadn't let me down yet, but the prospect of a too-small shoe and having to return it in the mail, and then order the right size, and...and...

I needn't have worried.  Like everything else, their fitting guidelines were on the money.  My Oswegos felt a -tiny- bit tight when I first put them on, but within an hour or two of simply sitting around in them, the shoes loosened up ever so slightly and...they fit perfectly now.

Minimalist shoes like the ones offered at Xero Shoes aren't for everyone, and Xero is quick to tell you that.  They're also quick to tell you that they think they're for most people though, and based on what I've seen I have no reason to doubt them.  I'm a big guy that demands a lot from my feet, and since I switched over to my Xeros, I can tell you that my feet don't hurt, my ankles and knees feel better, my gait has tightened up and corrected itself -- I used to pronate big time wearing shoes -- and I just...feel better when I'm walking around.  Walking is one of the primary vehicles I'm leveraging in my weight loss efforts, and at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, Xero Shoes has helped.  A lot.

You can't ask for much more out of a shoe.