Talking the walk

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Reebok’s EasyTone running shoes promise to tone your butt — just by walking. Not so fast, experts say.

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Leslie Vlahos isn’t sure if her toning shoes work, but ‘they look great.’

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Some brands offer flip-flop versions of their toning lace­ups. Some brands even promise the wearers will burn more calories than they would wearing regular runners.

An attractive brunette in a tight pink top and clingy short shorts looks directly at the camera when touting the benefits of her Reebok EasyTone running shoes. The cameraman, however, has a hard time focusing on her face and instead moves the lens low before zooming in on her small, toned backside.

"Dude!" says the young woman, sounding more invigorated than annoyed.

She continues her pitch and promises that the shoes she's wearing "work your hamstrings and calves up to 11 per cent harder and tone your butt up to 28 per cent more than regular sneakers -- just by walking."

A male voice ends the spot with a convincing tagline: "Better legs and a better butt with every step."

Welcome to the world of women's toning shoes -- a genre of exercise footwear that vows to firm and strengthen the lower body.

Such shoes -- with their promises of effortless muscle firming -- have enjoyed runaway popularity over the last couple of years.

Most toning shoes look like traditional athletic shoes (although some brands are clunkier than others) and work on the principle of the balance ball; they offer unstable soles that throw the body off balance. That instability, say shoe manufacturers, forces muscles to work harder, thereby creating tighter, firmer legs and behinds. Costs of the shoes vary, with some models retailing for as much $140.

Some brands offer flip-flop versions of their toning lace-ups. Some brands even promise the wearers will burn more calories than they would wearing regular runners.

Upon seeing the ads, women around North America have flocked to athletic shoe shops in search of the holy grail: a better body.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the United States, toning shoes (which, in 2008, totalled $17 million in sales) reached a hefty $145 million in sales last year when Reebok and Skechers introduced their lines of toning shoes, according to market research from NPD Group.

But medical professionals have a warning for the millions of customers buying into the hype: toning shoes don't quite live up to their claims.

"I think someone's a got really good marketing strategy," says Winnipeg podiatrist Iain Palmer, who is concerned that toning shoes can make wearers injury-prone.

The problem says Palmer, is that some of soles on toning shoes "are a little too soft."

The foot specialist says the technology behind today's toning shoes is nothing new; orthopedic doctors and podiatrists have used rocker soles for years to help people with limited heel-to-toe motion.

He says some toning shoes, however, encourage lateral motion -- which can be dangerous.

"You actually rock left to right," says Palmer. "I'm scared that people are going to physically do a lot of ankle sprains because they aren't used to wearing footwear like that."

Palmer adds that, since spring, he's seen a surge in patients wearing toning shoes. At least a couple of those patients have even showed up at his office with ankle sprains and swelling -- injuries, he says, that are directly related to their footwear.

He says a week of replacing their toning shoes with regular runners resolved the patients' injuries.

Palmer says opting for toning shoes with firmer soles might help wearers avoid injury. He also advises them to wear the shoes for short periods only, depending on "how much demand they put on the body."

"An active person close to normal body weight, used to using the leg muscles, might possibly be fine," says Palmer. "But maybe if you're a sedentary, overweight person wearing them, it's adding too much demand. They are the people I think could have problems."

Leslie Vlahos loves the Reebok toning shoes she bought a year ago. But when the new mother used to visit the gym, she decided not to wear them -- especially on the days she was doing squats and lunges.

"Because they were a little bit more unstable and I was kind of worried about rolling an ankle. But they are really comfortable and they look good," says Vlahos, who wears her toning shoes often and for long periods.

The Fort Garry resident is up-front about the virtues of the product.

"I don't think that they work," she says. "My legs didn't feel any different or more sore; maybe the back of your hamstrings are a tiny bit tighter the first few times.

"But they look great."

Vlahos admits what was behind the purchase of her first pair of toning shoes.

"The thought that just walking can give me legs like you see in the ads, which every woman knows isn't true but yet a small part of us wants to believe is true."

Pediatric sports physician Dr. Merrilee Zetaruk tried a pair on during a recent Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine conference in Toronto. "I felt quite unbalanced, almost dizzy when I was walking. It definitely gives you different sensations," says Zetaruk, who quickly got used to her newfangled footwear.

Nevertheless, she says consumers need to be cautious about toning shoes.

She says they probably do work the leg muscles, but asymmetrically, or in an unbalanced way.

"That's not ideal," she says. "Anytime you're trying to strengthen or tone, you want to work the muscles in the front and the back."

Although most companies offer up studies about the efficacy of their toning shoes, Zetaruk says their claims aren't credible. (Toning shoe companies have yet to present a study that's peer-reviewed and published in an established journal.)

"Until (toning shoes) have been subjected to a little bit more rigorous scientific method, it's hard to really promote (them) as being what they are (promising) it to be."

Winnipeg-born, Los Angeles-based personal trainer Jennifer Cohen offers her own line of toning shoes called NGR, which stands for No Gym Required. Her shoes have landed on the set of TV's Desperate Housewives. She says actress Courteney Cox also owns a pair.

Cohen says her shoes are different from the rest because they provide interchangeable, weighted insoles. She says she chose to bypass the balance technology because there's little evidence that it works.

Her NGR Shoes brochure promises that a pair of her shoes "reduces unwanted cellulite." It also claims the footwear will "strengthen, tone, firm and shape the lower body and core."

As for critics who question those claims, Cohen says adding weighted resistance to the body has long been proven to increase calorie expenditure.

"And like every other piece of exercise equipment, you've got to be careful."

Have an interesting story idea you'd like Shamona to write about? Contact her at shamona.harnett@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 23, 2010 D1