If you’ve never heard of Topo Athletic, don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either,
but you probably know more about what they believe than you think! See, Topo athletic’s founder and CEO is TonyPost (TOny POst = ToPo) and Tony was the president and CEO of Vibram USA for 11
years – specifically the 11 years of the FiveFingers.
After Vibram, Tony set up his own dream company of Topo and continued
his passion for healthy, minimalist shoes built for athletes.
Today I have the opportunity to review the 2014/2015 ISPO Award God
Winning shoe:
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The Sante is a Gym rat shoe specifically catered to the Crossfit style
athlete. The Sante, first and foremost
is a Zero drop shoe (you all know how I feel about that!). Bravo Topo.
The Sante is built low to the ground (14mm total stack height) to give you a nice solid feel through your lifts and they did a great job providing a flat surface for excellent stability in the bottom while giving it Excellent flexibility (and not just in the front third).
One of the first things you’ll notice about this shoe (it was the first
thing I saw) was the crazy knob-looking-thingie (that’s the Latin name for it)
on the side. This is the BOA micro
adjuster. What this thing does is
eliminates traditional shoe laces and allows you to turn the knob to tighten
your shoes (or simply press it in to release the tension and loosen them). My first reaction to hearing about this cool
new idea was “yep… I’ll break that in a week”.
However, I was somewhat relieved when the box arrived with a Lifetime
unconditional guarantee on the BOA system (still, a guarantee isn’t worth much
if you have to use it over and over). I’m
pleased to say, after using these shoes for a few months, the BOA system not
only held up perfectly, it’s probably my favorite part about this shoe.
Let me explain:
Not having laces to come untied is pretty awesome and the ability to
tighten it precisely in very tiny increments is a big bonus. It doesn’t create tension spots and instead
tightens up uniformly throughout. My
favorite thing about the system is how quickly and easily you can tighten and
loosen – so I can leave them loose for the running portion of a WOD and then
reach down and in ½ a second, with one hand, have cinch them down for
deadlifts.
The second part of the securing system of this shoe that I Really like
is the hook and loop midfoot strap (directly over the lateral stabilizers). This strap is a staple in all weightlifting
specific shoes but has never been effectively utilized in a WOD shoe – until now! This thing is really nice and I Love it on
OLY days.
Beyond the BOA system, I was really impressed with the shoes
flexibility (more on this later); it truly bends and moves like a minimalist
road running shoe.
I love the lateral stabilizers:
you don’t feel them at all while you’re running, jumping, etc. but when
lifting heavy they give an excellent solid-wall feel while doing it subconsciously,
not obtrusively.
The shoes look great, and while this doesn’t help you in a WOD, it IS a
nice bonus (don’t lie)
They are fantastically comfortable (the only thing I didn’t care for
was there is a bit of an arch – now, understand that I am ridiculously picky
about arch shape and while I didn’t care for it, none of the other testers even
noticed its existence).
They breathe really well while having the mesh made of excellent and
resilient material (something New Balance could learn a thing or two from….)
Conclusion:
So between the very low to the ground build, zero drop, unbelievably flexible sole, and the midfoot strap Topo has created a shoe that runs like a running shoe, jumps and allows lateral movement like a crosstrainer, and locks in and stabilizes like an OLY shoe. It’s pretty awesome.
So between the very low to the ground build, zero drop, unbelievably flexible sole, and the midfoot strap Topo has created a shoe that runs like a running shoe, jumps and allows lateral movement like a crosstrainer, and locks in and stabilizes like an OLY shoe. It’s pretty awesome.
Now, Everything has to have its draw back and the Topo has 1
Achilles. Now, let me preface this, when
I had an issue Topo was quick to respond, did not make excuses, and handled the
replacement quickly. Topo also assured
me that this was a fairly unique issue (more on that in a second), but
nonetheless, here’s the issue I had: For
me, I can’t rope climb in them. Well,
not that I can’t, in fact they’re quite comfortable for it and the BOA knob
doesn’t get in the way (which I was afraid of), it’s that I shred that nice
sole on my descent. Here are some things
to consider with this: There are a lot
of shoes that you can’t climb a rope in.
Then there are shoes (like the Nano’s and a couple of the Inov-8 shoes)
that are designed around rope climbing and are Beasts at the rope, but you
sacrifice some ground feel and flexibility in the sole. Topo attempted to go in the middle but
decided to focus on that ground feel and flexibility and, therefore, the sole
is softer (you just really can’t have both).
So, for me, I like the shoes for everything but rope climbing and on
days when I know I’m climbing, I wear something else.
If you don’t climb the rope, climb it few and far between, or know when
the rope will come into play and can wear another shoe on those days (like I
do) then I think this is truly a fantastic Crossfit/gym/lifting shoe. I believe it does a better job as a running
shoe, jumping shoe, lifting shoe, and lateral movement shoe than most anyone
else out there. But, if you are a heavy
climber and you integrate rope climbs into most of your WODs, this is probably
not the shoe for you.
Below you'll see the damage to the Sante from the rope climbs. I'm also including some pictures of the same spots on my (much much older) Nanos just for reference:
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