How to buy New Football Cleats
Bottoms Up: How to Buy Football Cleats
You aren't kidding when it comes to football. You spend hours in the gym each week, hours on the field doing drills repeatedly until you're sure you're the best. You fine-tune your nutrition and might even hire a personal coach or trainer to give you a bigger advantage. So why are you wasting all that on the WRONG cleats? Don't spend more. Spend smarter. Choose cleats based on your position and playing surface.
In this series, we'll take you step by step through the process of determining the best cleats for you. We will describe personas for different athletes who might be just like you. See if you can find yourself in these examples, and then see if the cleats you are wearing right now are right for you.
The Terminator
This athlete is big. Huge. He's solid muscle and plays like a wall of steel bashing into his opponent. Like so many athletes, he's caught up in the latest trend of lightweight cleats. Lightweight cleats make you faster, and fast is good, right? Well sure, but the Terminator's job isn't to race; it's to push and pound. He needs to stay on his feet and drive into the guy ahead of him. Within a month or two, he might start to have ankle injuries. Most Terminators will have to tape their ankles or wear ankle braces with their lightweight cleats. Any weight they shaved off by wearing low, lightweight cleats is added back (and then some) with the braces.
He needs a "big man" cleat. These solid cleats are generally 11 ounces or heavier and rise to about a mid or three-quarter height on the ankle. The dirty little secret of the industry is that to eliminate weight from the cleats, they are reducing the amount of materials used, including insoles and padding. When you're a lineman, you need everything you can get.
If you're the Terminator and you still want to develop speed, the best thing to do would be to train with a weighted vest or ankle weights. When the weights come off on game day, you'll have more bounce in your stride and more velocity.
Stay tuned for more in this series as we explore other athlete archetypes, including the Jack and the Flash.
Bottoms Up: How to Buy Football Cleats
Position - The Jack
You love football, and you devote a large portion of your life to improving your game. So why are you wasting all that on the WRONG cleats? Don't spend more. Spend smarter. Choose cleats based on your position and playing surface.
In this series, we are taking you step by step through the process of determining the best cleats for you. Last time we described the Terminator, an athlete who is a lineman who needs a mid-height, solid cleat. In this article, we'll discuss the Jack, the versatile linebacker who moves quickly in very tight areas.
As you learn about these personas and how we decide which cleats are right for them, try to find yourself in these examples, and then see if the cleats you are wearing right now are right for you.
The Jack
The Jack is a guy who is versatile, a jack-of-all-trades. He's usually a linebacker, quarterback or a running back. The Jack has some of the same challenges as linemen, but he has to cover more ground. So what should he wear?
Just like the Terminator, the Jack needs support. Any time you are in a position where more than 50 percent of your job involves you in a big pile of testosterone and helmets, you need ankle support. Without support, you can turn, twist or sprain your ankles so easily when you get slammed by a Terminator or when you are making sudden, heavy direction changes.
The Jack can spend a lot of time at that optimal 60-degree angle as they are pushing through a wall of bodies. That forward tilt puts a lot of pressure on your Achilles tendon as it gets stretched. A mid or three-quarter height cleat will automatically help keep your ankle at a safe angle that will make it harder to injure the joint if you don't land perfectly or if you get suddenly knocked off balance. Combine with solid forefoot traction that goes beyond the standard flat-plane studs on most cleats, and you're set.
Many brands like Under Armour shape their stud patterns to act like rudders down the midline of the cleat. Not only does this propel you forward as you move through your stride, this also serves to keep you in place if oppositional forces are trying to knock you down. Most brands, including Nike and adidas, provide secondary cleats on their molded styles that offer a second, shallower depth, placed under the ball of the foot. When you press down into turf with these cleats, you'll get another level of dig and stability. Often these secondary cleats are turned at angles different from the main studs. This unique angle offers multidirectional traction that is so essential for the Jack.
Some of the best cleats for the Jack are lightweight cleats, as long as attention is paid to the construction. Look for outsoles that wrap up at the instep area to stabilize the plantar fascia area. Flex grooves at the ball of the foot are fine, but that should be the only point on the cleat that flexes. Inserts made of fiberglass or carbon fiber are common in the midsole areas to add rigidity. A strong midline chassis system that doesn't skimp on materials to stabilize the cleat is important, as is the lockdown provided by the upper. Many mid-height cleats offer lockdown straps either at the ankle or across the vamp.
In summary: Lightweight and low-cut = Bad. Lightweight and mid-cut = Good.
Next, we will figure out the best cleats for the Flash, that ultra-fast trackstar of the turf, and then we'll introduce the very exciting, very dirty subject of playing surfaces.
Bottoms Up: How to Buy Football Cleats
Position - The Flash
Dear football players: Stop wasting your time and money on the wrong cleats. Choose cleats based on your position and playing surface, not merely for the latest trendy technology or the fastest-looking upper.
In this series, we are taking you step by step through the process of determining the best cleats for you. We have described the Terminator, an athlete who is a lineman who needs a mid-height, solid cleat. Last time, we talked about Jack, the versatile linebacker who moves quickly in very tight areas and should be wearing a lightweight and mid-height cleat. In this article, you'll learn about the Flash, that ultra-fast trackstar of the turf.
As you learn about these personas and how we decide which cleats are right for them, try to find yourself in these examples, and then see if the cleats you are wearing right now are right for you.
The Flash
"Whoa? what was that blur? I just ? I swear ? he was just here, and now he's gone, and dang - he took the football with him."
He's a wide receiver, a safety or a cornerback, and the Flash is fast. Of all the players on the field, he benefits the most from the latest trend in football cleat construction, that of ultra-light weights and ultra-low cuts.
The cleat manufacturers are constantly trying to outdo each other to claim the lightest football cleat on the market. They all have figured out ways to reduce weight while still providing traction.
So why are these good for the Flash? He needs to get to the end zone as fast as possible. Football players are generally not the lightest athletes in the world. They train hard to shave down their 40-yard-dash time, and the results are often phenomenal.
The biggest problem the Flash has is that football cleats are not constructed for speed. Cleats can have studs with depths up to .75 inches. The cleats dig into the turf to make it harder to slip on the grass and more difficult to fall over when someone slams into you. They are excellent for players who find themselves in the pile or for those who are trying to get a pile going, but they aren't made for speed.
Every time you take a step in a cleat, you sink deeper into the grass than you would if you were wearing trainers. It makes you more stable, but it also requires more energy to lift your foot. The theory behind lightweight cleats is that if you are working less to lift up your foot, you'll be able to move faster. It's brilliant, and it's why many athletes train and do drills with weights or resistance so that when game time comes, they'll be more explosive.
While the Flash would still be susceptible to ankle injuries in a low-cut cleat, he's the only player on the field where the risk is less than the benefit. We recommend he tape his ankle for some extra support to prevent injury and encourage good form.
Now that we've introduced you to our football team, we want to take you on a tour of the football field. Unlike men, they were not created equal. Many factors can change the surface conditions, from weather to climate to economy.
Bottoms Up: How to Buy Football Cleats
Playing Surface - Natural Grasses
Every athlete is unique. They come from areas that have huge endowments and from neighborhoods where the tight municipal budgets can't prioritize youth sports initiatives. We get that.
If you think this doesn't affect you - stop kidding yourself. Your team will have away games, and every field is different. You need to be prepared.
The dirty truth about turf is that different surfaces sometimes require different cleats. Where detachable cleats might be perfect, molded might slip. Where molded cleats keep you at the right depth of dig, detachable might get stuck and cause injury.
We break down playing surfaces into five categories: optimal natural grass, wet natural grass, dry natural grass, deep pile synthetic turf and short pile synthetic turf. In this article, you'll learn about how cleats work on natural surfaces.
Optimal natural grass is the superhero of grass. Weak, puny grass wishes it could be more like optimal grass. Well-maintained natural grass is neither soggy nor bone dry. The natural buoyancy of the grass along with the slightly soft topsoil underneath combine to create a fantastic field for football.
It is also very expensive to maintain, and not many cities can afford the cost to water the grass and keep an even blade height.
If you're lucky enough to live in a region where these types of fields abound, you should be wearing molded cleats with either a rubber or hard-plastic TPU outsole. Your studs can be rounder and shallower because the ground won't work against you.
Head to the South and you will probably find wet natural grass. It holds a lot of water that doesn't evaporate quickly because of the natural ambient humidity. Your cleats should be detachable so you can switch out the depths of your cleats based on the softness of the turf. Deeper cleats, up to .75" inches long, help you get closer to the hard-packed soil under the sod. Your traction will come from that point of contact, and differing cleat lengths will allow you to be flexible when you're faced with these variable fields.
Go west, young man, and the fields will get dryer. You might find dry natural grass. This grass is real, but it's usually shorter and sits on top of very dry, very hard-packed dirt. In those conditions, the grass is nothing but decoration. You need turf outsoles that have softer, shallower rubber studs that allow you to get traction without penetration. In some areas, you can get away with detachable cleats on these hard surfaces. Go for the bulkier detachables rather than the streamlined, peg-shaped studs to give you a lower center of gravity.
Bet you didn't know there was so much to know about buying football cleats. We cleated kids at Eastbay geek out about football cleats the way some people geek out about cars or video games. Stay tuned for the down-and-dirty truth about synthetic turf.
Bottoms Up: How to Buy Football Cleats
Playing Surface - Synthetic Turf
The position you play in football is one of the main dealbreakers when you're choosing between styles of football cleats. The categories "molded," "detachable" and "turf" refer to which type of cleat is appropriate for different fields. We've talked about the recommendations for natural grasses, but we can't end the conversation without discussing synthetic grasses.
Back in the '60s, they created this wonderful product called artificial turf. It was a no-maintenance, perpetually green playing surface that bore little to no resemblance to real turf. This short-pile synthetic turf slowly took over the world as clubs replaced their natural grass with no-maintenance surfaces. Some areas of the country still use it, either because it's tradition or because they can't afford to replace it. If you ever play on astro-type turfs, you absolutely need the short rubber nubs of a turf outsole like those found on the football turf shoes
The Delorean of fake sod was pretty and looked good on camera, but it was notorious for its unforgiving hardness and its devilish ability to cause rug burns. The manufacturers of synthetic turf put their thinking caps on and asked the question, "How can we make synthetic grass that actually feels like natural grass?"
Thus was born modern synthetic grass. It has the length and consistency of natural grass with a softer, rubber-pellet infill that mimics the bounce of topsoil. It never needs to be mowed, and it's always green. It's softer to fall on, and if properly installed, it drains water away almost instantly.
This "sport grass" is a dream to play on, unless you're wearing detachable cleats. Since this is a relatively new technology, a lot of the side effects have taken some time to come to the surface. One complaint that has been heard more and more often is that the mesh that the synthetic grass is woven into can cause detachable cleats to catch in the mesh and take down the player, or at the very least, cause ankle injuries because their momentum is going forward while their feet are stuck in the ground.
Until they work out that flaw, we suggest that people playing on deep pile synthetic turf wear molded cleats that have a wider, more tapered stud. Molded cleats that have elongated, rudder-like studs are ideal. Most of the molded cleats we recommend for this surface have rubber studs, not TPU studs, which has TPU studs that are configured so each stud pair works like a shovel.
If you've read every article in this series, you are probably able to tell if you are wearing the right cleat. Choosing new cleats is a whole new level of complicated, but we try to make it easy for you at Eastbay. Next, we will explore an easy way to look at most of the cleats on the market today and see how they compare to each other and which ones are recommended for certain positions.
Bottoms Up: How to Buy Football Cleats
Expect More From Your Retailer
We have this revolutionary idea here in the football department at Eastbay. It's this: we should sell the cleats, not just supply them. Sure, if you're coming to Eastbay already knowing what cleat you want, we probably have them, and we're happy for your business. But there's a large majority of you out there who aren't quite sure which cleats you should purchase.
We make it easy, especially once you've read all we have to say about how to buy football cleats. By now, you should have a good idea what you should be looking for. So how can you get matched up with your ideal cleat? With our Cleat Coach app. We've categorized nearly every cleat we offer with labels that reflect our Bottoms Up philosophy. You can click through to see all our detachable cleats for linemen, or all the lightweight, low-cut cleats for wide receivers. Every combination is available so you can filter past the cleats that don't apply to your needs.
Okay, so we've found the perfect cleat for you. Is that all it takes to be a great athlete? Um... no. Not even close. While you can waste all your training on wearing the wrong cleats, you can also waste your cleats on ineffective training. "Eastbay, what can I do to be the best football player ever?" We're so glad you asked.
We developed an app called Close the Gap. CTG is made for youth athletes at the middle and high school levels. After indicating your grade level and position, you enter your stats and see how you compare to the best athletes in the nation at your position and grade.
Because we are who we are, we get to make friends with some awesome people. The folks at Football University (FBU) helped us set benchmarks for target stats based on the results from FBU athletes who were invited to train with them and participate in the US Army All-American Bowl. Then the fine men and women at STACK worked with us to develop recommendations to help you get as good as our benchmark athletes.
Based on your stats, we'll recommend workouts and drills that we hope will improve your skills so you can meet the goals. As an added bonus, we've even included position drill videos to help you perfect your form.
Go out there and dominate. We've given you the best, now it's your turn to become the best. Good luck, and let us know how it's going.
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