Ballistic Trainers

Ballistic Trainers

OFFICIAL FOOTWEAR OF CROSSFIT AND THE CROSSFIT GAMES

For use with barbells, sandbags, and all the things that make you strong. The most versatile and functional shoes for training in the real world.

To push past your limits in garages and driveways and in fields and on asphalt the world over — you need a stable platform, and you need more support from your fitness & weight training shoes. When you run, you need support. When you lift, you need support. When you flex, you need support.

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Ballistic Toughness

The lace area, midfoot and heel is made from two panels of 1680D CORDURA® Ballistic Nylon — offering the toughest Special Forces grade abrasion resistance and superior midfoot and heel support during dynamic movements.

8MM Drop

Ballistic Trainers™ proudly have an 8mm heel-to-toe drop. It’s more than the others in the space. The 8mm drop creates the best biomechanical advantage when lifting heavy loads (squat, clean, snatch) or moving more than 400 meters (running or rucking).

Versatile Performance

Three different rubber compounds form a single, seamless rubber outsole. For the midsole, high rebound, flexible EVA in the forefoot provides cushion and support for explosive movement. Firm, stable EVA in the heel provides a stable platform to keep you grounded when lifting or squatting.

Unlike Any Other Trainer
With the Science to Prove It.

Our head of footwear is Paul Litchfield, a Shoedog with 35 years experience who has designed shoes that sold over a Billion pairs throughout his career.

We built the “Ballistics” from the ground up spanning three years with input from our community in addition to past male and female CrossFit® Games Champions.

2021 - 2023
Official Shoe of the Rogue Invitational

Ballistic Trainers are the official footwear of the Rogue Invitational and the preferred training shoes for people who want both maximum support under load and a shoe versatile enough to wear everywhere, all day long, without your feet getting smoked. For instance, 10/10 Volunteers (who live on their feet) at the Rogue Invitational chose the Ballistics over any other shoe developed for that community. These double as the unofficial footwear of the Fight Club class.

You Have 3 Arches in Your Foot... Not Just One.

And dynamic movements tax the hell out of all three of them.

3X SUPPORT™ = 3X STABILITY

When sprinting, running, and rucking— forward and laterally — you land on the outside of your heel (supination) and then as you roll into midfoot stance your tib/fib and ankles rotate so your knee is in line with your femur as your toes splay out (pronation). Your plantar fascia (which supports your arches) stretches, becoming a spring as you move to the propulsion phase. If you don’t have enough support, over time in an unforgiving world, your plantar’s gonna get overworked. Plantar fasciitis is simply an inflammation due to excessive, unsupported work.

When loading the body with a barbell or a sandbag, your tib/fib and ankles rotate, encouraging your foot to roll inward (pronation). That’s why people say you should point your toes outward and knees straight. But if there’s not 3X Support under your arches, you have a tendency to crash inward with your knees. This creates not only greater injury risk, but a loss of power. You do not want to lose power. Or get injured.

3X Support™ = 3X Stability

Hence 3X Support in your Ballistic Trainers™

A-B// Anterior Transverse Arch
B-C// Lateral Longitudinal Arch
A-C// Medial Longitudinal Arch

Stability + Mechanical Advantage

For Cleaning, Snatching + Squatting

Developing the 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

Optimal Flexibility + Cushioning

For Jumping, Sprinting + Rope Climbs

Let's Talk Drop.

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.

3X SUPPORT™ = 3X STABILITY

Work Harder + Smarter

0% of this makes you stronger, or faster. And it definitely won’t make you happier. Find some friends and do the work for that. But with 3X the support and stability from Ballistic Trainers™ — for all three of your arches — you can work harder and smarter.