Winter sports season really hits its stride in February, and student athletes across North and South Carolina are facing the unforgiving surfaces of hardwood courts, wrestling mats, and indoor tracks. Even if you’re a seasoned pro, these surfaces can take a toll on your feet, making it more important than ever to take a moment to consider your footwear when participating in wintertime sports around the Carolinas.
What We’re Seeing From Our Patients
At SmartStep Foot and Ankle, we see a significant spike in overuse injuries this time of year. Specifically, athletic patients are presenting with stress fractures, heel pain, and Achilles tendonitis. Oftentimes, the culprit isn't the athlete's training, but a fundamental mismatch between their footwear and the biomechanical demands of their sport’s surface.
Your feet and ankles act like a system of pulleys and levers, and overuse or injury in one part of this system can lead to strain in another. Without the right footwear, small problems can lead to lasting pain, injury, and damage in a relatively short amount of time.
Whether we’re consulting with a family in Columbia via a live video feed or visiting a student athlete in the Charlotte Metro for an in-home gait analysis, we use a specific engineering checklist to audit footwear.
While every visit is personalized, the following is an overview of what we look for to keep your athlete in the game:
Hardwood vs. The Foot: Managing Lateral Shear
Basketball and volleyball are sports of "sudden stops." When an athlete executes a lateral cut on a high-friction hardwood court, the foot wants to keep moving inside the shoe. This creates a force known as lateral shear.
During a telehealth visit in which we conduct a virtual footwear audit, we often ask parents to perform a torsional rigidity test. This is where you hold the shoe at the heel and the toe and then twist. If the middle of the shoe wrings out like a wet towel, it lacks the shank support needed to protect the midfoot during a pivot.
We also look for a lateral outrigger, which is a small extension of the sole on the outer edge of the pinky toe. This increases the surface area and acts as a stabilizer, preventing the common inversion ankle sprain that’s so prevalent in sports like high school basketball.
The Wrestling Mat: Friction and Ankle Proprioception
Wrestling shoes are unique because they have to provide maximum feel while protecting the skin from mat burn. One of the problems, however, is that these shoes can lack a traditional midsole, and this makes them a high-risk factor for athletes with flat feet (overpronation).
If your wrestler is experiencing arch pain, we use live video to observe them standing barefoot on a hard surface versus standing in their wrestling shoes. If we see the ankle rolling in significantly in the shoe, the footwear is likely exacerbating a mechanical issue.
We often prescribe low-profile, medical-grade insoles that fit inside the narrow part of a wrestling shoe, providing arch support without sacrificing the flexibility the sport requires.
Indoor Track: The "Spike" in Stress Fractures
Indoor track surfaces are often much harder than outdoor rubberized tracks. When you combine high-velocity impact with the thin, minimalist design of a track spike, the metatarsals (the long bones in the feet) take a beating.
We recently worked with a high school sprinter from Rock Hill, SC, who was experiencing "vague" pain in the ball of his foot. Through an in-person, onsite assessment, we observed his "strike pattern" which showed that he was landing heavily on his midfoot in a spike that had zero forefoot cushioning.
By transitioning him to a distance spike with slightly more EVA foam and coordinating a training schedule to offload the impact, we caught a potential stress fracture before it became a full break.
Sever’s Disease: More Than Just Heel Pain
February is often the peak month for Sever’s Disease (calcaneal apophysitis) in middle school athletes. This is an inflammation of the growth plate in the heel.
To check for and treat this, we help parents measure the drop of their athlete's shoe during virtual and onsite podiatry visits. For athletes with heel pain, a zero-drop shoe is often the enemy. We look for shoes with a 10mm-12mm drop, which slightly elevates the heel and takes the tension off the Achilles tendon and the growth plate.
We also coach parents through the squeeze test on camera and in-person. If squeezing the sides of the heel causes sharp pain, it’s usually a growth plate issue, not plantar fasciitis. This distinction can change the entire treatment plan, so it’s an important part of a visit when the complaint is heel pain.
The SmartStep "Virtual Locker Room" Audit
Choosing the right shoe is a medical decision, not just a style choice. If your athlete is complaining of "growing pains" or fatigue this winter sports season in North Carolina or South Carolina, don't wait for a sidelining injury.
SmartStep Foot and Ankle offers live, 100% virtual footwear and gait assessments for families across the Carolinas. For those in the Charlotte Metro, we can even provide in-home visits to evaluate your athlete's biomechanics in their natural training environment.
Keep your athlete on the court, not the bench. Book a virtual sports footwear consultation today, and stay in the game!
Dr. Thurmond Lanier
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