Shoes, we all wear them. They’re a huge part of our daily routine and the majority of us probably don’t place as much emphasis or importance on them as we should. Even if all you do is get up in the morning and put on your dress shoe for work, it’s important that this dress shoe support you in the areas you require support. Not every shoe is made the same and more importantly, every one of us has our own unique footprint.

Now, despite having our own unique footprints, shoe companies would have a pretty tough task ahead of us if they tried to build each size of each model of every shoe they make to custom fit everyone’s feet. So rather than tackle that monster the shoe industry as a whole develops and markets shoes for people with three different types of feet; people with high arches, normal arches and flat feet, as per the diagram below.

Footprint Diagram

Diagram from the Injured Runner Blog

These foot types correlate with an alignment and can best tell us which shoe is right for our feet. By looking at the above diagram you can see how having a high arch or a flat foot can affect the natural direction of our knees and legs.

So, how do you know if you have high arches, a normal arch or flat feet? Well finding out is easy. Here is a trick you can do at home to get a good general idea. Before you get into the shower in the morning place a piece of paper on the floor outside the shower. As you get out of the shower, place your damp, bare foot on the paper to get a good look at your foot print. This is called a wet test and can give you a good idea of what type of arch you have. Below is a picture of what wet test results can look like.

Wet Test Footprint

Wet Test Diagram from An Eclectic Blog

This is just a rough diagram and your results might not look exactly like these three footprints. If you have very high arches, you may not even see the middle part of your foot print on the paper. As the first diagram showed, based on your arch (or lack thereof) and alignment there are particular shoes that are right for your foot. The shoe industry recognizes this and depending on your unique foot there are particular brands of shoe that are right for you. Find out which shoes YOU should be wearing.

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