VS Athletics Shoe

[Stu Hughes]

Forgive me if this has already been addressed, search function brought nothing up.

The new VS Athletics shoe has a heel height of 3.3cm: 2.8cm mid-sole and 0.5cm sole. Is this an appropriate heel for deadlifting, or will I need it altered?

[Mark Rippetoe]

I think it's still a little high. My idea of the optimum heel is about 3/4" measured as the difference between the heel and the ball of the foot.

[TravisRussellDC]

I have the VS athletic shoes and I absolutely loved them for squatting. But, they had just too high of a heel for deadlifting. I had my shoe guy shave the heel down so they're as close to 3/4" as I could measure. They feel significantly better while deadlifting, much more comfortable. I was a little worried that I wouldn't like them as much while squatting. But in the first squat workout I used them for, I had no problems at all. In fact, I hit a raw PR.

My suggestion, get the heel shaved down if you want to use the shoes for both the squat and deadlift. Or, if you just have to have the high heel for quatting, buy another pair of shoes with a lower heel for the deadlift.

[38SS]

shoes - just to give you idea of how close they are for context

I posted this in another thread

The VS shoes have 3.3 cm heel which is thus 1.3 inches tall at the heel and about, by my measurements just, under a .5 inch at the toes. To me, that's a .8 inch heel height. Am I missing something? A .8 inch heel height seems pretty close to your recommendation.

The older version of the VS shoes had a 4.2 cm heel height. 1.7 inches - .5 = 1.2 inches which is signifcantly higher than your recommendations.

I have these shoes the height at the ball of the feet and toes are the same. They feellgood to me, and by my math, they are only off by about .05 inches from the Coach's recomendation. The old version was signficantly off - it must have felt strange squating in those. I think most of the complaints are about the old version.