Minimal Drop Sneakers for Winter and Beyond

The slept-on Adidas I've been living in that are strangely on-trend.

Please note I may get a small commission if you purchase anything through a link in this post, all of which will immediately go to paying for childcare.

Sneakers are in a funny place right now. Big, chunky, spongy soles, in addition to probably being bad for our feet in the long haul, seem to be on the out, and taking their place are svelte silhouettes like the Puma Speedcat, a terrific, racing-inspired shoe. (My first mall job was actually at Puma at South Coast Plaza, where we’d trade our discount for free food at CPK. Speedcats: big with Europeans!)

For a few months, I was on the hunt for something specific: a minimal drop, almost barefoot shoe that allowed for toe flexibility and was designed to take a beating—two qualities seemingly at odds with one another, especially in the winter.

Nothing was remotely cool.

And then: a point of inspiration, just a few weeks ago, weirdly while on set. For SSENSE, we shot the visual artist Christine Sun Kim at the Whitney, and the stylist, Dominick Barcelona, one of the OGs at Opening Ceremony, was wearing these fantastically sleek Y-3 Japan sneakers in murdered-out black.

(via Reddit)

The Japans weren’t barefoot, but I took mental note of them. That night the shoe led me down a rabbit hole of old Adidas silhouettes that Yohji may have taken inspiration from before their partnership was consecrated in Y-3.

(Yohji’s pre-Y-3 sneakers, via Infinitearchive)

Anyway, long story short, it soon clicked for me that wrestling shoes, and broadly martial arts shoes, might allow for ideal foot mobility while still looking pretty sick.

Eventually, I landed on these Adidas Taekwondo shoes ($100), which aren’t zero-zero drop exactly but are great nevertheless. I’ve been wearing them pretty much nonstop for the last month in the New York slush.

I mentioned them on the Dewy Dudes podcast recently, but I really like them! Especially the quilting on the toe box. The lack of cushion on the bottom means there’s very little springiness between your foot and the ground, so you’re forced to activate all those tiny muscles and tendons that would otherwise get neglected in a thicker shoe like a Hoka. In practice, this fortifies all the musculature up and down your kinetic chain and helps prevent injuries.

I got these black-soled ones through some martial arts site (because I needed some new Muay Thai gear too lol) and they’re surprisingly grippy on the pavement. That they’re literally designed to help you roundhouse someone in face might make them the HEAVIESest shoe in existence. Big endorsement.

Thanks, as always, for reading HEAVIES. Consider becoming a paid subscriber for just $5.62 a month—literally the cost of a single cold brew—if you enjoyed this post.