My 13y/o son (7th grade) is competing in t&f this year. I’m a bit torn on what type of shoes to get him. He has absolutely zero arch and I was curious if spikes would give him enough support or should we go with some performance stability shoes? He’s not running any long distance but competing in the triple jump, 200 dash, and the 4X100 relay.
Any advice is appreciated.
trav
No, they won’t give much of any support, but it’s not needed. Especially for sprints.
No, they won’t give much of any support, but it’s not needed. Especially for sprints.
+1
If his heel touches the ground when running, he’s doing it wrong.
If you want to be one of those parents, jumping uses different spikes than sprinting. And high jump, long jump, and triple jump all use different spikes too
Here is the sole of a triple jump shoe:
vs. High Jump
vs sprint (I couldn’t find a good sole shot but you can see that there is no heel at all, just some hard plastic)
X2 what brider said. Doing sprints, he won’t be on them long enough to hurt anything (might even help build some useful support muscles). It might be a bit of a challenge to find some that are comfortable, though, as most are pretty narrow in the arch region, so try on several models.
Having the spikes will provide more traction on the track versus trainers and will be much lighter. At that age, though, with much growth to come, you could probably do nearly as much functionally at a cheaper price with a set of spikeless flats (a la the ubiquitous Nike Waffle Racer). Granted, it was a while ago and I was at the poor, South-side junior high, but I remember only a couple kids had actual spikes when I was that age and we all did okay. …and some tracks either still didn’t allow spikes or limited them to 1/8" pins, which would be an issue for some of the newer, permanent spike shoes.
I have a 13-year old 7th grader who runs distance events - he’s actually running tomorrow morning in the USATF Indoor National Championships.
In a nutshell, get him the spikes. I’d get my son the right spikes for each event, but that’s just the attitude of my wife and I. He’s takes it seriously, trains year-round and wants to succeed. I’d recommend all parents who’s kids take in interest in track and field do that same. On the plus side, because they don’t get a ton of use, there is always a secondary market for preowned kids track spikes.
Hopefully this helps.
I’d just ask his track coach.
But my two cents, you can get Nike Zoom 6 spikes for $60, maybe even cheaper on sale. This is all he really needs at this level.
Since he is on a relay, you can ask him if his team mates will be wearing spikes. If they aren’t, you can probably decide to skip the shoes.
For the triple jump, I think he should stick with his trainers. The hop and skip put stress on the foot, and until he is stronger, he may be better off in trainers practicing technique. You said he doesn’t have arches so running barefoot strides once and a while on the football field to build strength may be a good idea.
My junior high track days are well behind me but unless your kid is competing at a high level, spikes are not really common. I would consider avoiding the gear trap and just see how it goes in regular trainers.
My junior high track days are well behind me but unless your kid is competing at a high level, spikes are not really common. I would consider avoiding the gear trap and just see how it goes in regular trainers.
More accurately it is not uncommon to see kids in running shoes at the 6, 7, 8th grade level. However, spikes are pretty normal for most of the sprinters and jumpers.
My kids (girls BTW) wore spikes for cross country right from the start, some time around the age of 10. Again, not unusal to see kids in running shoes, but most had spikes.
As a high school and college sprinter (200/400 or 220/440) my heal never touched the ground between getting in the blocks and hit the finish line.
Which reminds me - The memories of cinder tracks and 3/4 inch spikes, cotton sweats, 6 parents with sweep hand wind up stopwatches, and blocks that had a 4" spike at each end that was pounded into the track with a rock and still had to be stood on by the shotputter to hold them down.
Thanks all, much appreciated. I have asked his coach and she wasn’t much help. I guess I’d call her more of a coordinator than a coach. When we looked at various shoes I was surprised that t&f spikes were so much less expensive that regular trainers. I’ll probably go that route.
Thank You All
trav
I did T&F in High School and College, and for those events a good pair of sprinting spikes will be the best if you only want to get one pair, and they are good up to around 400m distance and for all the jumps!
Which reminds me - The memories of cinder tracks and 3/4 inch spikes, cotton sweats, 6 parents with sweep hand wind up stopwatches, and blocks that had a 4" spike at each end that was pounded into the track with a rock and still had to be stood on by the shotputter to hold them down.
I was a quarter miler through most of high school… Those were the days. Though we did have digital watches.
My junior high track days are well behind me but unless your kid is competing at a high level, spikes are not really common. I would consider avoiding the gear trap and just see how it goes in regular trainers.
More accurately it is not uncommon to see kids in running shoes at the 6, 7, 8th grade level. However, spikes are pretty normal for most of the sprinters and jumpers.
My kids (girls BTW) wore spikes for cross country right from the start, some time around the age of 10. Again, not unusal to see kids in running shoes, but most had spikes.
As a high school and college sprinter (200/400 or 220/440) my heal never touched the ground between getting in the blocks and hit the finish line.
Which reminds me - The memories of cinder tracks and 3/4 inch spikes, cotton sweats, 6 parents with sweep hand wind up stopwatches, and blocks that had a 4" spike at each end that was pounded into the track with a rock and still had to be stood on by the shotputter to hold them down.
Remembering back, in middle school, most kids did not have spikes. But quite a few did.
In high school, almost everyone did. Except those that didn’t care at all for it. Even the poor kids (me) had spikes.
In Cross country, it was ~50/50. All of our varsity runners had spikes though, even the one poor kid.
Totally different shoes. We were also limited to 3/8" spikes on tracks - the nicer rubberized tracks were just starting to roll out, ours was asphalt. 3/4" to 1" were pretty common for CC, half the fun was trying to match spikes to the course and weather 
But the first time your kid slips, he’ll come asking for spikes. Check out firsttothefinish.com - that’s where I got the pictures above. They’ve got a good supply of closeout spikes in the ~$20 range if they’ve got his size.
I’m a good chunk of years out of middle school but spikes shouldn’t hurt him any to wear for races and some workouts. However, if you just get him a running shoe, he’ll probably not be the only one without.
I ran in 6th and 7th grade without spikes and did mid-distance and long jump and whatever the hell we could score points in that day. 8th grade I did less of the miscellaneous and I think is when I started running in spikes.
Like others have said some kids will have them, some won’t. They help, but at that level they help some kids more than others. Kind of like starting blocks (1 out of 5 or so kids actually knows how to leave blocks at that age)
www.fttf.com
They have good deals at all levels.
Go with spikes. Nike Zoom are good to great track shoes for running and jumping too. Just mentally putting on a pair of spikes and getting out of the trainers took me into a mental state of preparation for the race. Best to your son in the races this season and for a life of fulfillment from racing. Regards, Doug
Doug, thanks so much and kudos to everyone else for the great advice. I hope he sticks with it; we are supporting him as best we can.
trav