Why Do We Even Need Carbon Plated Super Trainer Running Shoes?

Ever since the Saucony Kinvara Pro was announced at the Running Event in Austin last November, I've been thinking about this question. Why do we even need super trainers? If plates are supposed to make us go fast, what's the point of plating up an EVA-foam based max cushioned shoe with an above 9 ounce weight?

The Reason These Shoes Exist

There's the opportunity to be cynical: plates are the latest tech, and like that Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro that Apple killed after one iteration, brands are stuffing them in everything knowing that more tech makes things sell. This is America after all. We run and we buy things; it's what we do.

There's another view, too—that these super trainers are watered down versions of the real thing, designed to give everyday athletes a friendlier and more affordable plated-shoe experience. They're not as high performing as the real thing, weighed down by features added to improve stability and durability so average runners will buy them. And that's true, but there's also a different perspective.

Carbon fiber racing shoes are the tools of the elite, designed for highest performance on race day by the most capable, specialized and highly trained runners. They help the top dogs reap the rewards of hard training, and they help us all run a bit faster too. And these new super trainers? They're bringing the added efficiency we get from super shoes on race day to rest of our training.

The problem is that brands haven't discovered how to talk about this yet.

The Problem? PR, Not Product

When Nike dropped the first super shoe in 2017, there was a clear narrative around the use case and benefit of the shoe. It was to help you run faster on race day, and it achieved that through efficiency—returning energy through the plate to give you a 4% performance improvement. The message was clear, simple and effective—the shoe was named the Nike Vaporfly 4% as a reminder of its value proposition—leaving no ambiguity why the Vaporfly existed.

Today, with the current crop of super trainers like the Saucony Kinvara Pro and Hoka Mach X, we don't have a product problem; we have a messaging problem. Whereas messaging for the Vaporfly 4% was structured around efficiency on race day, there's been no unifying theme or message around why we should buy these super trainers. They'll likely sell because they are the latest thing, but consumers have questions on how to use these super trainers and what the key benefit is from doing so.  

The messaging is muddier because the category grew organically; first the Nike Tempo Next% dropped in 2020 as a training companion to the Alphafly Next% 2, and around the same time Saucony popularized the super trainer concept—before it was even called that—with the Endorphin Speed, a plastic-plated training alternative to the Endorphin Pro carbon fiber racer. These shoes were designed for speed but to be more comfortable than super shoes.

With the current evolution of the super trainer category, we've seen brands lean more heavily into the comfort orientation of these plated trainers. In 2022's Saucony Endorphin Speed 3, the platform got wider and more stable. The Puma Deviate Nitro 2 (2022), Adidas Boston 12 and Hoka Mach X (both 2023 releases) all have weights greater than 9 ounces. The original Endorphin Speed weighed 7.9 ounces.

The Solution for the Category: Rebrand to High Mileage Trainers

These product developments suggest that the intent of the new batch of super trainers isn't to give regular runners a watered-down elite experience, nor is it to stuff plates into everything to sell more shoes for pure profit; rather, the purpose of super trainers is to make it easier for us to run more in greater comfort. Super shoes give us efficiency on race day, and super trainers give us efficiency in training. They may not help us run faster in the same aggressive way as plated marathon racing shoes, but they'll help us run more efficiently across the breadth of a training block. The research is growing, but anecdotal evidence from a recent New York Times article suggests that running in these plated shoes provides better recovery than non-plated shoes, allowing athletes to push harder than before.

So perhaps, a better name for the category would be "high mileage trainers." Daily trainers are for running everyday miles; high mileage trainers are for running high mileage days, weeks, months, training blocks. Brands should lean into that key benefit in their marketing around these shoes, particularly models like the ASICS Superblast, Saucony Kinvara Pro and Hoka Mach X. Use a super trainer and run more, train harder, recover faster—there's an opportunity for one or many of those brands to sponsor an academic study analyzing these benefits and seeing how this category of shoes can push the sport of running forward through better training.

Tighter messaging around this category will help consumers understand the benefits of the product they're buying more deeply, helping unlock greater training efficiency. And it won't just be purely altruistic, either. Once we understand the benefits, the shoes will sell themselves.

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