There’s a noticeable disparity in how stability running shoes are perceived by women and men. Many female runners happily use shoes with arch support, appreciating – very rightly so – the benefits not just for running, but also for standing and walking. Men, on the other hand, often look down on support shoes altogether.
Stability trainers are still widely seen as slower, clunkier and less exciting than neutral models, and bravado dictates that the ultimate goal of any running shoe is to make a (male) runner faster. As a result, shoes like the Structure Plus tend to be dismissed before they’re even tried.
