Puma releases new super spike for Karsten Warholm. Check this baby out (pic)!

Puma makes junk shoes

I expect to see OP to run the 400H in these

do you remember a guy named Usain Bolt?

It must’ve been the shoes

They look like spikes.

Initially he and Puma had him in a shoe with a bare carbon fiber plate and no foam (Future Faster+ or something, the names are impossible), and so I wonder if some of the "foams are cheating" stuff was him puffing the shoe up for marketing. I imagine these were remarkably uncomfortable, as bare carbon plates usually are miserable in regular shoes - we use them sometimes for people with big toe/multiple toe amputations to aid with pushoff, and pretty much they require an beefy insole between the foot and the plate to avoid people being miserable. Can't imagine sprinting a 400 in them. He switched to the foamy shoes the following seasons (Nitro Naio maybe?). These look like they have foam at least in the forefoot.

they don't look very aerodynamic...

Hmmm, so here are some thoughts based purely on that pic.

1) So it's the new spike "favor of the month" set-up where there is the functional full length plate with a slab of foam in the forefoot and then another plate which is labelled as the "spike pin holder" in order to bypass WA rules on sandwiched plates.

2) But the "wavey" bottom plate confuses me as to its function. I guess it's been designed as a combination of traction and to increase stiffness, but that just looks real heavy (you can just see the side profile of the thickness and it looks like it's 2.5-3mm).

3) But by far the most interesting element is the 15mm toe extension on the full length plate. I know exactly what the logic behind this is. For a while now, "lengthening the lever arm" (in this case the foot) has been hypothesized as a performance enhancing aid for plated footwear. In theory it somewhat works but in practice it's a real stretch. Think about being down in the blocks as a sprinter and as you come out of them - the one thing every sprint coach on the planet tells you is to stay down and as low as possible during your drive phase. So low in fact that many coaches advocate a few steps of even dragging the toes but in a perfect situation you are skimming the track surface staying as low as possible until you exit that phase. And now you have a nice little flap of hard plastic there ready to catch the track surface. I can see that they have tried to curve this downwards (same as curling your fingers) to minimize that and maybe what they are telling athletes is that is been designed to purposely drag along the track surface. I can tell you from experience that will be a really tough sell to athletes. It's especially problematic for some sprinters that like positioning their toes just off the track surface in their blocks. I mean if it goes wrong and catches, you could stumble flat on your face.

4) This is definitely a 3D printed mock-up they are using for promotional purposes. I can tell that by the definition of the lines on the plate and also the spike pins - someone just drilled some rough holes and pushed spike pins in for the photo.

I appreciate the innovative intent based on the picture but my critical questions would be

1) The function and purpose of the bottom plate design (seems like it's just a design exercise to make something different vs truly performance enhancing)?

2) The weight of the product (which actual receptacles/fixed pins in it)?

3) Has the extended toe truly been adopted by athletes and tested to show any type of benefit?

I would be very surprised if Warholm was wearing this spike in Paris the way it is now. I would guess this is a pure promo/hype post - which as their highest profile athlete he should be doing for them anyway.

I don't agree that Puma makes junk shoes but this point makes no sense. Bolt wasn't running as fast in Nike, Adi, NB, Asics? Of course he was - Puma was just lucky to have signed him as a kid and made a good decision to give him the largest footwear ever seen in the sport in order to keep him.

Puma Berzerker? Love it.

Interesting that to save weight the spikes are passedthrough the foam to fix in the carbon plate.