Increasingly athletes have been looking to using what has become known as ‘recovery footwear’. This category of footwear are not running shoes, but are the shoes that runners like to wear after a run to hopefully facilitate recovery from that hard run.
In Australia, the Archies Arch Supporting Thongs are becoming very popular for this. Firstly, in Australia what they call thongs, the rest of the world call them flip flops. These are mostly sold in podiatry and physiotherapy clinics and they are selling well. We stock them in our clinic in Melbourne. What we find is that almost anyone who tries on a pair buys them. You do see questions pop up in different forums about them and I have replied to a couple here and here.
The Archies are useful as recovery footwear as the are soft and have a built in arch support. The strap on these to hold the thongs on the feet is tighter, so the toes do not have to claw to hold them on. This gives the muscles a rest after a hard run and uses other muscles in a different way, so that should help facilitate recovery.
The Archies were originally developed by a physiotherapist in Melbourne and were sold at weekend markets before they become more mainstream and more popular in Australia.
I have made no secret that I am a fan of these and have even recorded this video about a modification that I have done for some people who have the thongs:
