Adidas Traceur Parkour shoe

I wrote most of that last post a little while ago. Fast forward to today and the Adidas parkour shoe has been made. A local traceur whom I train with was lucky enough to win a pair of these shoes through a competition, so today you get so see the first decent photos of it:







(All pictures copyright of Shaun Wood)

Adidas has made the world's first purpose-built Parkour shoe titled the Adidas 'Traceur.' The shoe was developed with a UK bussiness of Freerunners called Urban Freeflow, who are famous for being the first crew to bring Freerunning to the english-speaking community, misrepresenting Parkour and selling out. Nonetheless this shoe actually looks very promising and much more authenthic than the previous pairs of runners that Adidas used Urban Freeflow to promote in what was known amongst the Parkour community as the Adidas HYPEride debacle (see previous post).

The shoe was originally dubbed the Adidas 'Rapide' and has undergone a few design changes since images of its prototype first started emerging. Most noticibly the A3 cuschioning system is gone, quite possibly due to Nike sueing Adidas over the A3 systems supposed breach of patent.



I am actually very impressed by the execution and look of them, plus I really like the lines of the black front rubber bit. A few of the reported features that make this shoe specific to parkour are the presence of climbing rubber moulded around the front of the shoe and a slightly convex sole. Another important one I noticed is that the shoe's sole is very flat almost like a basketball shoe. This enables more surface area to be come in contact with flat walls which means more grip. Personally I have an issue with using new sneakers for arm jumps because the thick grooves or waffles don't provide much surface area for grip on walls until they are worn down. Sneakers are made to be worn straight out of the box and to be able to perform straight out of the box and while runners are widely regarded as the most suitable type of shoe for parkour, they still don't have that ability.

Initial reviews of this shoe seem to agree that the grip is very good, though the shock absorption is not quite as good as some other pure runners. However this shoe performs, it is a positive step in the development of parkour footwear.


At the moment there is no set release date for these yet.

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