Dang that thing looks complicated, but the description is so simple.
Public Service Announcement: Check your shoes, did you tie a Granny Knot when you meant to tie a Standard Knot? Fix it now, stop your shoes from untying!
It may seem like a secure knot, but you may find it hard to prevent your laces from ever untying. As Brian Krebs points out, “operational security is hard to do well consistently.”
An alternative that always works for me: Tie the first knot, make a loop in each lace, then finish like a regular square knot.
I tie the first knot first then loop the second loop through the eye of the first knot into a “Granny’s Panty Half Hitch” then go to the closet and get my Slip-ons*.
*Thanks for the post though, I will try it later when I get home.
I always end up resorting to this:
:
I greatly prefer the double wrap, where it’s a standard shoelace knot except in the last step where you just go around twice before tightening. And, as with most knots, the tightening is the most important bit.
An alternative that always works for me: Tie the first knot, make a loop in each lace, then finish like a regular square knot.
Like this?
YES! I taught myself this one many years ago. Incredibly simple to learn. Never comes untied. Just as easy to untie. Only minor issue is that you have to make one lace longer than the other when you string them up. If you don’t you could end up with not enough lace to do the double or just an uneven knot.
I thought my muscle memory for shoe tying was set in stone when I was three, but I taught myself this one years back, and was totally worth the minimal effort. It works as advertised and unties easily (though not too easily) without making a toxic wad.
Exactly. I was visiting his site since before he published his book, so this might have been where I first saw it.
I’m embarrassed to say I managed to grow well into old age without ever picking up the official way to tie shoes. I made up my own clumsy, stick-the-laces-in-a-bow, way and it was woefully insufficient.
I learned what everybody knew only recently when I watched a TED presentation which finally showed me the old way and the new way. Heh. It’s the very first 3 minute Ted Talk from 2005 by Terry Moore.
“How to tie your shoes”
I still have to double knot to keep the knot from falling apart. I’ll try Ian’s knot above.
I’ve always not been great with knots. Although these days I can at least comprehend the logic that goes into tying a knot. I remember when I was a kid being utterly astounded at the magic of an adult twisting pieces of string together in an incomprehensible way then suddenly a knot that does its job. Every time, in a predictable manner. I was baffled. I never got the hang of logically puzzling out knots. If I tried to tie my shoes with any conscious thought, I’d never be able to do it. I had to learn by muscle memory, and thinking about it cocks it up.
As I always told my kids, if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.
Why is it that velcro shoes are considered kiddy shoes? Are laces objectively better in some way or is it just a marketing thing?
Laces are modular, replaceable, and… compared to the service life of the typical sneaker, you have a strong point.
I’m a big fan of velcro on my shoes. I have flat feet that were both broken and reset for bunion surgery back in high school, and the bunions have come back over time. Being able to readjust my shoes at different points while leaving others still attached lets me fix a pair that’s either too loose or rubbing a sore spot without even sitting down.
If we’re talking about shoelaces on runners, you might want to give my policy a shot:
There’s a window of lace tension on almost any pair of runners where you can leave the laces done up and slip them on and off, but it’s still snug enough around your feet. Find that tension without tying the normal knot but instead, knotting each lace on itself just where it exits the shoe. Make sure you have it right by leaving it for an hour or so before you cut off the unused bits of shoelace.
I’ve been quite disappointed by the lack of Velcro-fastening shoes for adults, especially as my son who is nine is already in adult-sized shoes and has some fine motor control issues that makes tying shoelaces a problem for him.
I bought him some elasticated lock laces, and they’re great! I also got some for myself, and one of the things I like about the is that if you leave them in tightened you’ve effectively got slip-on shoes, but you can easily tighten them when you want a firmer hold. They also never come undone, and you never get the loop from one of them caught in the chain of your bike. I’m a convert.
