Nike Mens Free Rn 2017 Running Shoes Review

Due to the extreme flex and compliant nature of the Free sole engineering, the Free RN mimics the experience of barefoot running since the human foot is allowed to flex naturally with the ground topography.

According to Nike, the Gratuitous line was developed after learning that Stanford athletes were trading barefoot on the golf form.

Therefore the flex of the sole has been designed to specifically mimic the biomechanics of a barefoot running experience.

The event is a shoe that feels natural on the feet and and is a joy to run in. I tested the Gratuitous RN on different surfaces, including wood, basic trail, and asphalt.

Nike Free RN General Info

When I beginning laced them upwards, my outset impression was that the Free RN feels more like a slipper than a running shoe.

In a way, it reminded me of the La Sportiva Vertical K, which feels a bit like a climbing shoe in the way it wraps effectually your pes.

The Free RN sole is very flexible, in this regard I compared information technology to a minimalist shoe, such equally the Inov-viii Roclite (I run with the 285's occasionally). Even so, unlike the 285'southward, the Complimentary RN has cushioning along the foot.

The Complimentary RN weights in at 8.55 ounces (men'south size 10), which is lightweight, in-line with minimalist running shoes.

The farthermost flexibility of the Free RN derives non only from the flexible sole, merely also from the overall uppers and heel blueprint. Dissimilar many running shoes, the heel of the Complimentary RN is not potent since there'due south no plastic heel loving cup.

Instead the heel is fabric and foam, with a last running from the elevation of the heel to the midsole.

The shoe is so flexible that you can even pull the Free RN on like a slipper if the laces are tied. This complete design defines a running experience quite close to barefoot running on grass.

I encounter the Free RN (and associated Nike Gratuitous shoe designs) every bit an important role of the evolution of the minimalist and barefoot running shoes blueprint from the past decade, which have included notable shoe designs from companies such as Inov-8, Merrell (http://www.merrell.com/en/barefoot/), and the Vibram Five Fingers (https://the states.vibram.com/shop/fivefingers/men/) line, where the goal was to offer project for running over unlike surfaces, while allowing the feeling of barefoot running.

This often meant reduced cushioning, and required some fourth dimension for your anxiety to strengthen, since the minimalist shoes generally offer less back up than traditional running shoes. This was largely due to the materials used and the sole pattern.

In order to mimic the barefoot feeling, sole designs focused on being very thin in lodge to reduce sole stiffness, thereby assuasive better compliance between sole flexing and foot flexing.

Therefore, the high flexibility of the sole came at the expense of minimal cushioning.

Now, this would be ok for soft surfaces, but on difficult surfaces it would exist more than uncomfortable and for me personally, would reduce the distances I could run, even though I very much like the barefoot feeling of running.

Transitioning to a minimalist shoe would as well have some fourth dimension, since a runner would need to build upward their foot strength, or risk injury if they went from a high cushioned shoe to a minimalist and decided to run a marathon without allowing time to go used to the minimalist blueprint.

This is where I see the interesting value that the Free RN brings, information technology combines the natural barefoot feeling with cushioning.

The combination of high sole flexibility with a lite weight design and cushioning ways you tin can really use the Free RN equally a general running shoe and maintain the barefoot running feeling.

At first I didn't have a lot of exceptions running on the Free RN on asphalt, as this is where my past experiences with minimalist shoes have come upwardly shot.

Yet, I've been quite impressed by the ability of the Free RN to cushion on cobblestone while maintaining freedom of move.

On the trail the Free RN works well if you're on a normal trail, merely you lot can well-nigh guarantee that modest rocks will get wedged in-betwixt the openings of the sole, and additionally you'll experience larger rocks equally you run on them.

Running over a soft forrest floor is a squishy experience, and there's basically no ability to finish from sliding given the lack of treads on the sole (however, this was fully expected).

Nike Free RN Sole Unit

The softness of the Free RN sole makes the running experience a bit similar walking on soft spring grass or fresh snow, in that y'all feel the ground beneath your foot, but it's very soft and inviting.

Nike Free RN – Sole

Of class, since information technology is a shoe and not snow, the shoe moves with you while you run. Due to the softness of the sole and the lack of stiff treads, the Free RN is not an ideal shoe for mountains or climbing up steep trails.

You can run with the Costless RN on moderate trails, but it's more suited to flat basis including concrete and asphalt. The softness of the sole will likely non exist durable enough for excessive abuse on hard trails.

Of course, due to the high sole flexibility, you really wouldn't want to use the Free RN on difficult trail adventures. Since the sole is made of foam, in that location is cushioning along the full sole, making it flexible and shock absorbing.

The flexibility of the sole is due to the engineered cut patterns, which run forth the sole in a triangular pattern (Nike calls it auxetic pattern).

Cut material is an easy style to build flexibility into a shoe sole, and may often be found in the sole region, only non e'er in a place where a person can run into it hands.

Basically it'southward an easy way to engineer different regions of bending stiffnesses using one fabric, as opposed to trying to build a sole from multiple materials of different stiffnesses (which would besides be much more expensive from a production viewpoint).

For example, the Salomon S-LAB X Alp Carbon GTX mountaineering boot (http://xalp.salomon.com/de/) includes a carbon chassis layer in the sole design, which includes cut in the material along the sole, which gives expert torsional rigidity along with flexibility along the pes length.

This is also how you can utilise a laser cutter to make a wooden tie (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:707915). Also, I've seen cuts engineered into Mammut trail shoes in order to localize insole flexibility. The signal is, yous engineer the desired cloth flexibility even with a stiff base material.

Now, equally compared to those examples, the reward of the Gratuitous RN is that the cutting regions define loftier flexibility in the cream of the sole.

The triangular pattern means that at that place is an even distribution in the stiffness reduction (due to the cut lines) in the three primary directions of the triangular cutting regions, which allows the sole to flex along the natural ways your foot deforms over the ground.

So, overall the sole is a nice residue betwixt price and flexibility. I'grand a big fan of flexible soles, especially if they flex comfortably at the brawl of my foot.

I have found that if the flex bespeak of a shoe is too far frontward, toward the tip of my toes, that it increases the take a chance of my toe nails being injured and falling off afterward distances beyond thirty km. So, overall I've quite happy with the flex profile of the Free RN and the softness of the sole.

Nike Costless RN Upper Info

The Flymesh uppers are colorful, breathable, and flexible. The design lines are clean and gratuitous of backlog material. I don't see any obvious stress points that would lead to premature failure of the uppers construction.

The lacing system works well to tighten over my foot, but I accept had the laces come undone on a few occasions. Information technology would be ideal to supersede the laces with one that grip better.

Nike Costless RN – Peak

The Flywire cable system loops through the laces and and so wraps around the sides of the foot to secure it to the midsole of the shoe. I've found the Flywire to work well in securing my foot in both the Gratuitous RN and the Vomero 11 shoes.

I'm mostly not a fan of lacing systems where the laces loop through a nylon material, since I have found on some past shoes that failure could occur over time due to the friction of the laces against the looping material connecting to the uppers.

If the laces go through nylon to be secured to the shoe, and then over time the lace may cut through the nylon.

However, this seems to exist mitigated in the blueprint, since the Flywire cables appear to exist made of a stiff and high tensile strength material, and with a hard surface, should minimize friction wear between the Flywire and the laces over time.

The advantage is that the laces are direct in contact with the Flywire cables that and then wrap around the pes. This, combined with the soft uppers actually allows for a slipper-similar feel and very good conformity between the foot and the shoe.

Given the softness of the uppers material, there is not a lot of structure to the shoe with regards to torsion of the pes.

Therefore, you tin await some movement of your pes in the shoe when negotiating technical trail features, but it'due south not an consequence when running on normal surfaces.

Nike Gratuitous RN Conclusions

Low-cal, flexible and cushioned. Those are the words that come up to my mind when thinking of the Free RN. The Gratis RN is a fun shoe, a pair you selection upwards for a quick run and might additionally habiliment in the city on a warm summer day.

My human foot doesn't feel constrained in the Free RN. It's a shoe y'all can imagine calling your comfortable shoe to relax in and bask life. Beyond running, the Free RN is a wonderful lifestyle shoe.

The bold styling also make it a nice choice for hipster style remixing, equally they pair nicely with greyness slacks or CEP running socks.

Overall I like the Complimentary RN. It provides a running feel close to barefoot, but offers cushioning on difficult surfaces.

The combination of loftier sole flexibility and cushioning makes the Costless RN more usable than the other minimalist shoes that I have experience with.

I would love to accept the aforementioned sole flexibility and cushioning in a trail or mountain oriented shoe. Withal, for metropolis and non-trail running the Free RN volition be a good choice for me.

For me, an expanded toe box book and laces with improve grip would be two areas of comeback for the future.

For most people, it won't be a shoe to choose for demanding runs upwardly a mountain or grueling marathons. Still, for a 5k, 10k, and maybe 20k run, information technology's a nice design.

We thank the nice people at Nike for sending the states a pair of Free RN to test. This did not influence the outcome of the review, written after running more than 50 miles in them.

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Source: https://www.runningshoesguru.com/2016/07/nike-free-rn-review/