ISPO 2016 - Customize your shoes

8a has visited ISPO 2016. From what we have seen there we can predict it is possible that in the future customized climbing shoes will be available on a larger scale. While testing and buying Saltic shoes in a shop you can select up to four different mid-soles as well as the preferable thickness of the rubber. Saltic will then hand-make your shoe and send it to your shop, where you will get it within two weeks. If they had just presented this innovation, they would have probably won the ISPO gold award. La Sportiva representatives said they had been doing it in this way for several years with their athletes and that they had been thinking of doing it on a larger scale. In general, to get the same stiffness as a result, smaller shoes should have less thick mid-soles compared to bigger ones, i.e. the demands for stiffness varies between a 40 kg and an 80 kg heavy climber. It could also be of interest to have much thicker rubber in your indoor training shoes than in the ones you use outdoors.