The latest craze in athletic footwear is making an awful lot of promises.  Can a pair of shoes tone and tighten your legs, give you a perky derriere, burn more calories and get you in shape without setting a foot in the gym? Let’s examine ….

The idea of reshaping your body with your shoes is not original. Remember the earth shoes craze in the 70s?  They featured “negative heel” technology that promised natural body alignment and better posture.   And Dr. Scholl’s exercise sandal — the wooden sole and leather strap sandal that promised beautiful, toned calves.

The latest in the line of “fit” shoes are the “rockers” – MBT’s Antishoe, Skechers‘ Shape-Ups and Reebok’s Easytones. Will the other major shoe companies be far behind?  With the least expensive model starting at right around $100, this is very big business, as sales are predicted to reach over $800 million in 2010.

The rocker shoe isn’t new, but as its comfort and design has improved, so has its popularity. Rockers were initially developed for people with back pain, poor circulation, people who suffer with plantar fasciitis or for those who are on their feet all day. The highly cushioned, curved sole forces the wearer to work harder to maintain balance while the shoe takes pressure off the forefoot, resulting in relief for the hip and knee joints and immediately improving posture. The rolling heel-to-toe gait is designed to simulate walking in a more natural environment, sort of like walking on sand, activating more muscles in the feet, legs and derriere.  More active muscles burn more calories.

The theory is valid.  The question is — do they really do more than your standard fitness shoe?

In a six-week trial commissioned by Skechers and conducted by a California chiropractor, each of a dozen women were given a pair of  Shape-Ups and told to wear them during their normal daily activities and walking programs. There was no control group and the test wasn’t rigorously designed. To summarize briefly, the results showed an average weight loss of 3.25 lbs, a small loss in body fat, and an improvement in glute strength and lower back endurance.

In an unpublished study commissioned by Reebok, the University of Delaware tested five women on a treadmill with electronic sensors attached to their legs.  The results showed that wearing the EasyTone worked the gluteal muscles an average of 28 percent more than when wearing a typical Reebok walking shoe and hamstring and calf muscles worked 11 percent harder. Reebok maintains that it has collected 15,000 hours’ worth of wear-test data from shoe users who say they do notice the difference.

WLKY TV, a television station located in Louisville, Kentucky, performed its own study, which it reported on just last week. In a test similar to Reekbok’s, three subjects walked on a treadmill with sensors attached to the muscles in their legs, glutes and abs.  One wore her Mary Jane shoes and then switched to Fit-Flops and the other two wore their regular running shoes and then switched to Sketchers Shape-Ups and Reebok Easy Tones, respectively.  Their results were quite surprising — in each case the leg and glute muscles actually worked less in the fit shoes than in the standard shoes.  One positive note — the subject wearing the Skecher  Shape-Ups did show a significant increase in abdominal activity (400%).

There have been no studies to date on the long term benefits of walking in rockers.  Once the body adjusts to the unstable walking surface, the added toning effects, if there are any, may not last.

The American Council on Exercise (ACE) has commissioned a study by the researchers at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, to investigate the claims of the Reebok EasyTone and other “toning” walking shoes. The results of that study are expected to be available in Spring/Summer 2010.

Rockers aren’t for everyone, so you may want to consider a few things before investing in them.  (1) Wearing rockers can aggravate symptoms of motion sickness.  (2) Switching from your stilettos to rockers can cause major damage to your calf muscles and hamstrings, so be sure to do some warm up exercises and stretches before donning the shoes. (3) If you have balance problems or your feet tend to over-pronate, you may want to avoid the shoes entirely.  And (4) rockers are recommended for walking only – they aren’t safe for running, jumping or activities that require lateral movement.

As you can see, the jury is still out on this one.  If you’re in the market for a new pair of walking shoes, try them out.  Let us know what you think!