Category Archives: Orthotic Friendly Shoes

Women’s Asics 2130 is one of my favorite shoes. It works for narrow and wide feet, which are shallow in depth. It’s not quite as narrow as the now discontinued 2120 but it does come in a 2A width which is great.

Recently (7/08), Asics released new colors of the 2130 which is good or bad depending on what you’re looking for. The new version is slightly narrower and a 1/2 size shorter, than the older models. The new colors can be found on Zappos.com, in Black/Platinum/Cherry and Storm/Lightening/Hot Pink, which is the shoe below.

If you’re wearing the old version and purchase one of the newer colors of this shoe, carefully compare it to your existing fit. You may need to go up in size or width to get the same fit.

This shoe has a lot of mesh in the forefoot upper, which can help if you have hammertoes and /or bunions. The back of this shoe has a firm heel counter, which helps guide heel strike if you pronate excessively. This shoe also has firm EVA (ethyl vinyl acetate) in the midsole extending from the arch to the back of the shoe which makes it very stable.

A general rule of thumb is the darker (more grey) the outsole, the more firm or less flexible the shoe will be. This design feature helps those feet who need lots of support, especially at the rearfoot. The difference between the Ultimate and the Moderate version is the Ultimate has EVA which wraps around to the heel wheras the Moderate just has EVA in the instep.

The mens and womens version of this shoe come in medium and wide but not extra-wide and the toe-box is not too deep which can help fit considerably if your foot is wide and shallow.

Version 7 has just been released and from what I can see on Zappos.com, it looks to be essentially the same as version 6, but I’ll keep you posted if that changes. The other good news is, because version 6 is being upgraded, you can probably find this shoe on sale. At Sports Basement in San Francisco, this shoe is marked down from $100 to $64. Quite a deal for a well made shoe!

D.M. came in today with his barely worn Nike Air Pegasus Trail shoes. He was recovering from a fractured sesamoid bone (small bone under the big toe joint) and wanted me to evaluate his shoes before he resumed running.

He had purchased the running shoes prior to his injury and spent over two hours in a specialty running shoe store, trying on every shoe in the store, because of his difficult to fit narrow foot. Finally, with the help of the sales staff, he found this Nike Air Pegasus Trail shoe. It was apparently rated highly by a runners magazine, which helped to close the sale.

The above image shows the shoe which on first glance appears moderately deep and wide, but I was keeping my fingers crossed, at least until I saw D.M. stand in the shoes.

Normally, the back area of the shoe (heel counter) should be perpendicular to the standing surface. As this image shows, the heels are turned out, which is not good for healing sesamoids, knees or alignment in general. No wonder he wasn’t getting better.

Moral of the story. Just because someone says shoe xy or z is the best shoe ever, make sure the shoe works for your foot and not someone elses. It could me the difference between healing and continued pain.

Finding a wide shoe for soccer is no simple task. Most soccer shoes fit painfully snug, so if your foot is outside of the bell shaped curve, trouble may loom ahead. I found this shoe for someone having serious ingrown nails, because of the narrow toebox fit. Luckily I found the Adidas 7406 which have a couple of great features and fit him perfectly.

• The eyelets extend beyond the ball of the foot, closer to the toes. This allows for width adjustability. Many soccer cleats don’t lace down this far and if your foot is wide, this can really help.

• The arch width doesn’t hourglass in like most soccer cleats, given the arch full support as seen below.

And the overall width is slightly wider than most other soccer shoes and has a removable sock line which will accommodate an orthotic if you need one.

I ordered a pair of Asics 2130 running shoes from Zappos.com which turned out to be slightly short. Since I do more outdoor walking than running, I decided to order the Asics 2130 trail shoes instead, and was surprised to discover they are not the same shoe. The running 2130 is on the left, whereas the trail running 2130 is on the right.

The 2130 trail shoes are much wider than the Asics 2130 running shoes. The Asics 2130 trail shoes are much deeper than the running shoe version.

And the Asics 2130 running shoe is shorter than the same length 2130 trail running shoe.

Once again even though both shoes have the same name and outsole design, they are entirely different shoes. Make sure you thoroughly check the different version of the same shoe, because more and more, they will not be the same.