While a running shoe may look like proper gear to wear for pickleball, it isn’t! The main reason is that a running shoe is designed to propel you forward while a pickleball shoe is designed to endure high lateral loads (side-to-side).
Why don’t you wear running shoes on the court? Well, there’s a number of reasons and actually I ran into a blog that was fantastic. Click here for blog article.
He’s got great, great concepts of what the shoes are all about. And does a better job than I probably could do. He wears New Balance and I want to quick give you a quick story. I wore New Balance for years, great company and quality shoes.
I played pickleball and tennis in them and got black toes, not fungus but black toes due to irritation. The toe box was hitting the tip of my big toe and I ended up losing a nail. Not the fault of the shoes, but of the guy wearing them as they were never designed for what I was doing. After switching to a proper pickleball shoe, my toe nail regrew and I’m as good as new.
