Ballistic Trainers

"Sure, the Ballistic Trainers™ are built to perform inside of a CrossFit box. You can do snatches and cleans and jerks. You can do squats, you can do heavy lifting in them. But the real challenge was to make these the most versatile and functional shoes for training in the real world. You're not always at a box. You're not always at a gymnasium. You are out in the world training, doing weighted ruck activities, doing sandbag workouts in dirty environments, environments where you need better traction and environments where you need more support. We took each portion of the shoe and scrutinized it — built it and rebuilt it over and over to ensure they will support you no matter what you're doing or where you're doing it.

The foundation of our approach was similar to creating MACV-1™ — begin with supporting the foot and human body as it goes through dynamic movement. In footwear development, biomechanics is all about keeping the body balanced and in alignment with your center of gravity. If you're carrying weight or doing dynamic loading of the body, whether it be from a squat, clean, or snatch or anything with a ruck or sandbag — you want your body to be in a neutral state for peak power output. Proper biomechanics means your body has the best chance to stay healthy and you get to train harder without injury.

The versatility and performance of the Ballistic Trainers™ is unlike any other product out the market — with the science to prove it."

–Paul Litchfield
30 Year Shoe Dog
Senior Director, GORUCK Footwear

People talk about a zero drop heel lift — which basically means the whole shoe is flat with no support (0mm) — and they talk about minimal, 4mm drop as if they’re good. They’re not.

They forget to talk about the discomfort and the injuries, and how you can’t wait to take your gym shoes off when you’re done. Some pain in life is good, zero drop pain is not.

For reference, weightlifting and powerlifting shoes are ~20mm because there’s a mechanical advantage to greater drop — but you can’t move in them at all — that’s a problem. Running shoes are 12mm drop because you need more support to reduce strain on the achilles, especially as you extend your legs and heel strike — but running shoes aren’t stable for any kind of lifts — that’s a problem.

From 20mm to 12mm and then came zero drop, a new fad harkening back to a time when the footwear industry didn’t even know how to create a performance shoe with drop, so that’s what lifters wore. The best way to deadlift is barefoot because you’re closer to the ground, so the second best way must be with a zero drop shoe … and boom! The marketers had their hook and everyone was sold. But then comes life and you have to move — that’s a problem.

Zero drop and minimalist shoes are insanity unless you weigh 100lbs soaking wet and grew up jogging barefoot on 10 mile trails to school and work your whole life.

If that’s not you or if you ever pound the pavement, literally, you need more support.

Ballistic Trainers™ proudly have an 8mm heel-to-toe drop. It’s more than the others in the space. Ballistic stability puts less strain on the achilles tendon during lifts, with additional heel stability to support your full range of motion when running, and moving, and living, and the forefoot knit fabric is different than the Ballistic nylon because when you need to flex, you need to flex more.

And no matter what, you always have 3 arches in your foot and you need to support all three. We built the Ballistic Trainers™ functional fitness shoes with this in mind — 3X Support™ and 3X Stability across all dynamic movements.