After 15 years in fitness, this personal trainer trusts two Flux Footwear shoe styles

“I’ve been working in fitness since about 2011,” Kasee says. Over the years, he’s tried a few wide toe box brands before landing on the Flux. “I was dabbling in a couple of different [shoe] brands, and hadn’t found one that I liked. They tend to look clunky and goofy because they’re a little wider toe box.”

“This was the first one that I was like, I can wear these and not look like a jackass, for lack of a better term,” he says of the Flux.

More stability for the gym

“In the gym, I want to have the [Adapt Graphene XT] for a little bit more stability in it,” Kasee says.

“It’s got that little high arc, like a little triangle there on the side,” he says about the design, noting that the triangle on the side is doing more than just being aesthetically pleasing.

“It gives you some good lateral support too, where it's not enough to constrict your feet, but it’s just enough to kind of keep you steady,” Kasee says. 

He sees that stability in action when he does some of his go-to dynamic workouts. “I wear the trainer if I’m going to do any jogging on the treadmill, any sled pushes, any agility kind of work,” he says. “I’ll wear the trainer for that just because it is a little sturdier.”

The pair also works as a catch-all for Kasee in the gym. 

“It handles everything I do in the gym, from running to jumping, to sled pushes to squats,” he says. 

That sturdiness doesn’t come at the expense of breathability for him, though. “It’s pretty breathable, but it’s fairly sturdy,” Kasee says. “It almost feels like—plasticky is not the right term—but it feels a little sturdier than a normal fabric on a shoe.”

What Kasee has noticed since going wide toe box

“My toes feel better, my feet feel stronger,” Kasee says about wearing the shoes regularly. In fact, Kasee also has a personal theory that regularly wearing the wide toe box shoes may have played a role in how he bounced back after injuring his ankle, though he emphasizes that the experience is strictly anecdotal. 

“We were working at a charity event and I rolled my ankle walking to it,” he says. “I was wearing a different pair of shoes.”

“I was able to walk around the gym the next day, train people the first couple hours of the day and go on with my day just fine. But I think that that extra strength that I built up from those shoes helped me in that recovery.”

Kasee says, “and it’s just anecdotal, but I do think that the wider toe box, getting a stronger foot, getting more control in my feet helped me kind of bounce back from that ankle roll faster than would have had my feet been constantly bound in tight shoes.”

When he’s looking to maintain that wide toe box comfort outside of the gym, Kasee turns to the more casual Adapt Knit Trainer—and he says it can even handle some light workouts if needed. 

“They’re kind of like the classic, almost like Converse flat-bottom look,” he says. “I can wear them with jeans, I can dress them down, I can dress up a little bit. My everyday wear is that wide toe box casual shoe that they have.”

It can also handle some light exercise work as he says, “the casual one works pretty well for most gym activities like, biking [and] elliptical kind of stuff.”

While they still give Kasee the wide toe box he prefers and can handle an easy gym session, the casual shoes do lack in one department for him. 

“I don’t love the insert sole on the inside,” he says. Kasee describes that “it’s got little blue bubbles” and that “they rub a little bit” enough for him to notice when he wears them. 

He does note that “it’s just one of those really minor annoyances” and “because it’s the wide toe box, I have not experimented searching for the wide toe box insoles.”