The design and technology of basketball shoes improve

basketball players’ performance on the court.

Yunlong Liu

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Introduction:

This paper explores basketball shoes’ design and technology and how it improves

basketball players performance on the court. Basketball is one of the most popular

sports at any age. No matter where you go, basketball is a trend. Which is why a lot of

manufacturers take advantage to this popularity and as a result, there are now

hundreds and even thousands of basketball shoes designs and styles from different

famous brands all over the world. A lot people have been wondering if basketball

shoes preferences matters? Would it affect the player’s performance on his or her

game? Well basically the answer is definitely a yes! Mainly because unlike any other

sport, shoes is the only equipment a basketball player has during the game, which is

why the right choice of shoes is somewhat considered as a big deal to any player,

even NBA players, as we all know has their own preferred comfort foot wears.

Basketball shoes can give any player the confidence to run, jump and move, making

his performance even better than the usual, however nothing can change the fact that

none of the many basketball shoes will make you a best player, no matter how much

you spend for it. Serious training and skill practice are always the solution to a poor

performance.

Basketball shoes differ in many ways, like for such, on its design, size, cushioning,

price, brand, traction and its structure. For instance,

Support: the need of ankle support depends on the player, if you are prone of

getting injuries or twisted ankle, then you better go for a shoe that can give you

what you need. For a sufficient ankle support, the high-cut or mid-cut styled

basketball shoes are ideal for you.

Cushioning: shoes with right cushioning are the best choice for comfort.

Therefore, look for footwear with great cushioning that will give you enough time

to practice, train and play the game without hurting your foot.

Traction: Shoes with great grip support will help you get rid of slipping, which

commonly leads to injuries. For a safer game play, try to search for shoes with

solid traction support.

As a big fan of basketball game and sneaker, I have bought a lot of shoes and when I

wear them, I really can not feel the big differences between normal sneaker or the

high technology sneaker. So I did this research and try to figure out how the

basketball shoes improve our performance on the court. I will talk about it in different

ways.

Literature review:

Basketball shoes as a whole:

One of the biggest reasons that attract people to buy basketball shoes is letting you

jumping higher. Certain basketball shoe manufacturers claim that their shoes allow a

player to jump 3 1/2 inches higher than the player can jump without the special shoes.

However, according to the research of effects of various parameters of basketball

shoes on vertical jumping performance: A case study, jump higher does not entirely

upon the shoes. The best performance was always obtained in barefoot condition.

Concerning SJ( squat jumps )performance decreased with basketball shoes associated

to the parameter “heavy” mainly. Concerning CMJ90(countermovement jumps, with

an intermediate knee flexion position of 90° ), the parameters “heavy” and “high”

were the most related to the decrease of performance. Parameters “mass”, “flexibility”

and “height” had the greatest influence when they were associated by pair. Moreover,

the condition “heavy + high” was pointed out whatever the kind of jump. (Blache, Y.,

A. Beguin, and K. Monteil. 2011).

This result clearly tell us that the basketball can make you jump higher is not true.

People with barefoot condition can jump the highest that you can jump. However, this

research still give us lots of information about the parameters that influences our jump

ability.

Shoe upper:

The term "upper" refers to the part or parts of a shoe that cover the toes, the top of the

foot, the sides of the foot, and the back of the heel -- it is attached to the outsole of a

shoe. Depending on the style of the shoe, the upper of a shoe can be cut from a single

piece, or can be comprised of many pieces stitched together. Parts of a shoe's upper

can include the vamp, the back, the tongue, the quarter, and the lining. Uppers can be

made from a variety of materials, with the most popular being leather, satin, suede,

and canvas. During the early period of basketball game, players just wore normal

sport shoes that were made of canvas or cloth. Those kinds of materials were easily

deformed and it can not give players’ both foot and ankle enough support, so it easily

cause injury. During 1970s, leather, nylon and cotton started to make shoe upper. The

most significant characteristics of basketball shoes of this period was firm. Firm shoes

provided perfect protection for players but it was heavy and poor permeability.

As 21st century was coming, more light and strong material were produced and used

on basketball shoes like flywires, foamposite

and flyknits.

The height of shoes’ upper also had different styles like low, mid and high, which

provided more choices for different position of players. Basketball footwear

requirements are dependent on playing position. (1) guards require speed and agility,

(2) centers require strength and strong leaping ability, and (3) forward players are

versatile all-rounders. Overall, ankle stability was rated the most important shoe

characteristic and mid-cut uppers were favored by the majority of players. Shoe

preferences differed only marginally between playing positions: guards put more

emphasis on low-weight and more flexible shoes whereas center players prefer shoes

with high stability and injury protection. Accordingly, center player favored high-cut

uppers. (Torsten Brauner, Marc Zwinzscher and Thorsten Sterzing. 2012). The reason

that different positions choose different upper because of their different advantages.

Low-cut shoes are the lightest and give you ankle enough free space to move. Mid-cut

shoes are the popular ones among players. It does provide ankle support. High-cut

shoes are heavy but it gives the ankle enough protection. In the shock attenuation test,

the use of high-support shoes resulted in higher forefoot impact forces and higher

shock transmission to the head, but showed lower shock transmission to the tibia. The

use of high support shoes resulted in lower ranges of eversion and higher ranges of

inversion of the ankle on landing. In the motor performance tests, the high-support

shoes reduced the height jumped and increased the time to complete the running

course relative to the low-support shoes. We conclude that increased ankle support

reduces ankle eversion range but increases shock transmission, and reduces both

jumping and running performance. (Brizuela, G., S. Llana, R. Ferrandis, and A. C.

Garcia-Belenguer. 1997). So the high upper basketball shoes do increase ankle

protection and support but it increase the weight which also influence jumping and

running performance.

Midsole:

The midsole is the layer in between the

outsole and the insole, typically there for shock absorption. Some types of shoes, like

running shoes, have additional material for shock absorption, usually beneath the heel

of the foot, where one puts the most pressure down. Most of basketball players are tall

and big, so midsole cushioning can decrease the impact on their foot during jumping

or running. The first basketball shoes’ midsole was made by rubber which can provide

some cushion but not enough. Converse all-star was a good example for this period of

basketball shoes. Then more new materials were used in midsole with 21st century

coming like EVA, phylon and lunarlon. All of those kinds of material were soft and

elastic which can give more feedback force and quick speed and reaction. With more

tech used in basketball shoes, another important opinion was created- air cushioning.

The first air cushioning was created by Nike. Nike Air is pressurized air inside a

tough, yet flexible bag. The Air Sole units are located in the midsole beneath the heel,

forefoot or in both areas. The Air Sole units in Nike Air shoes compress to reduce the

force of impact. The Air Soles then immediately recover to original shape and

volume, ready for the next impact. Nike air have different branches such as, air sole,

air max, air shox and zoom air. Each of them had their special characteristic and you

can choice you favorite by you personal circumstance. To test the effect on basketball

shoes cushion, several research were found that the cloth sport shoes has 2.55 BW of

impact force but basketball shoes only has 2.37 BW of impact force.(Fong, Daniel

Tik-Pui, Hong Youlian, and Li Jing Xian. 2007. ) Second research show that A

combination of landing in shoes of 3 midsole densities (soft, normal, hard) from each

of 3 landing potential energy(PE) levels( low, median, high). Ground reaction forces

(GRF), acceleration (ACC) of the tibia and forehead, and sagittal kinematic data were

sampled simultaneously. The GRF results showed that the forefoot peak GRF in the

normal and hard midsoles was significantly greater than the soft midsole at the low

and median PEs. Rearfoot peak GRF was significantly greater for the hard midsole

than for the soft and normal midsoles at the median and high PEs, respectively.

(Songning, Zhang, Kurt Clowers, Charles Kohstall, and Yu Yeon-Joo. 2005). The

design and technology of midsole can really decrease the impact on foot and reduce

the possibility of injuries.

Outsole:

The outsole is the layer in direct contact

with the ground. Dress shoes often have leather or resin rubber outsoles; casual or

work-oriented shoes have outsoles made of natural rubber or a synthetic material like

polyurethane. The outsole may comprise a single piece, or may be an assembly of

separate pieces, often of different materials. On some shoes, the heel of the sole has a

rubber plate for durability and traction, while the front is leather for style. Specialized

shoes will often have modifications on this design: athletic or so called cleated shoes

like soccer, rugby, baseball and golf shoes have spikes embedded in the outsole to

improve traction. Now more and more outsole used bionics to find the foot pressure

image to design the outsole which can give players more traction. The research show

that Three test playing surfaces: clean hardwood, dusty hardwood, and clean artificial

flooring, each approximately 18 in. The results indicated that in basketball the

magnitude of the resistance forces and torque are influenced by the outsole material

and outsole hardness of the shoes, the playing surface and player weights.(Donald

Rheinstein, Chauncey A. Morehouse, Beniamin W. Niebel.) Another research show

that a stipple pattern is a generally added to a basketball shoe outsole for cosmetic

reasons, however, it appears that if the stipples are lager and both in translation as

well as in rotation, by varying that size, location, and orientation of the stipple pattern

on the outsole, the ability to reduce free moments of rotation may be regulated to

some extent.(Gordan, Valiant) The outsole pattern design and technology can increase

traction force.

Entering the conversation:

After a long time searching, I finally found enough source that I could use in my

paper. I have to say that there are not many resources about basketball shoes’ design

and technology. Also some of them are out of style which are no longer reasonable.

However, the most confused thing is some researches show different results even

though they research the exactly same topic. For example, if you go back to the shoe

upper section, you can find that one of the conclusion is high-top shoes can increase

ankle support. But another research of the effect of high-top and low-top shoes on

ankle inversion kinematics and muscle activation in landing on a tilted surface show

that Shoe collar height did not influence the ankle inversion kinematics during landing

on an inverted surface, yielding no changes in maximum ankle inversion angle, ankle

inversion ROM, and maximum ankle inversion angular velocity. Therefore, the initial

hypothesis was rejected as no decreased inversion was found with high-top shoes.

(Weijie Fu, Ying Fang, Yu Liu and Jianfu Hou, 2014). So I don’t know which one is

correct. All researches are also more focus on testing basketball shoes as a whole and

ignore each individual part of basketballs. The reason is that some new designs or

technologies are only use in one or two parts of the whole shoes, if tester only focus

on the overall performance of the basketball shoes, we can not know how each

individuals work and perform.

Also after I conducting this research, I feel the need to correct the meaning of

basketball shoes improve players performance. Basketball shoes can not make you

jump higher or run faster. The significant reason to wear a pair of basketball shoes

when you play on the court is it provide a kind of protection and support. It plays a

helpful role in assisting players on the court. Players can focus on the game instead of

worrying about get hurt, so in this sense, it improves players performance.

Another important thing that I find is there are no big different performance in

basketball shoes between now and 20 years before. That makes me question why shoe

companies still advertise about the new design and technologies. Combining this

research with my assignment one of sneaker world, I find that the changing of the

definition of basketball shoes causes this problem. Basketball shoes are no longer a

kind of basketball equipment, it becomes a kind of fashion that more and more people

get familiar with. You can see many singers or actors wear basketball shoes singing

and dancing. That’s why shoe companies keep releasing new beautiful basketball

shoes with new technology and design to satisfy the need of the masses.

So what/conclusion:

The reason that I write this paper is to explore how the design and technology of

basketball shoes improve players performance on the court. As a result, different shoe

uppers give you different ankle or foot support when you play. You can choose what

you like based on the position that you play. Midsole cushioning can decrease the

impact on players foot, so it can reduce the possibilities of injuries. Outsole design

can increase the traction force. This paper also can give people a introduction about

which kinds of basketball shoes that are fit for you circumstance. In a word,

basketball shoes are more likely playing a helpful role, it provides more protections

and supports than improves our physical abilities on the court.

References

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