If The Shoe Fits: Toe Box

Unless you're sporting a pair of sandals, every shoe has a toe box...but not every shoe has a toe box shaped like your toes! The toe box is the area that encloses your foot from the knuckle joints (metatarsophalangeal joints) to the tips of your toes.

There are three main foot shapes: Egyptian, Greek, and Square. In the Egyptian foot the toes taper down from the first to the fifth; Greek is similar but the 2nd toe is longer than the first. A square foot will have at least three toes the same length. You may or may not fall neatly into one of these categories, but luckily different brands of shoes have different shaped toe boxes, so with a bit of searching you should be able to find a match.

When looking for a shoe it's important that the shape of the toe box gives your toes plenty of wiggle room; the shoe might fit length wise but if the sides of the shoe press your toes together your feet won't be able to work properly, and you may even end up with bunions or hammer toes! Check out this picture posted by the folks over at Altra; this is the same foot that has been x rayed in a traditional shoe compared to the wide toe box of an Altra shoe. As you can see in the traditional shoe the toes are being squeezed in towards each other.

Besides knowing what your foot shape is and comparing that to the shape of the shoe, there's another test to see if the toe box is right for you: take the insole out and stand on it, if your toes overhang the edge then it's probably not a good fit. Here's an example of four shoes with different shaped toe boxes...these are from my personal collection and I've ran in all of these at one point and time. The red outline is the toe box area so you can get an idea of their basic shape. I have a Greek Foot of medium width, and I've found the Saucony Kinvara and Merrell Bare Access (the ones in the middle) fit me best. As you can imagine the Nike to the far right squeezed my toes too much, and I found the Altra (on the left) a bit too wide for my foot. These shoes all have a lower drop then regular running shoes, but you can find different toe box shapes in traditional shoes as well. So the next time you head out for a new pair of shoes, don't just check the length, make sure your toes also have some wiggle room.

~Nicki