Sneakers (also called trainers, athletic shoes, tennis shoes, gym shoes, kicks, sport shoes, flats, running shoes, skate shoes, or runners) are shoes primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise, but which are now also widely used for everyday casual wear.

Generally speaking, sneakers are used as running shoes. This means that they are designed to provide forward movement. On the other hand, trainers are used for versatile training such as plyometric training, gymming, weight lifting, and aerobics training. Structurally, trainers focus on providing lateral support.

Adolf “Adi” Dassler (the founder of Adidas) created the modern running shoe in 1925. It gained massive recognition when Olympic Gold Medalist, Jesse Owens, wore a pair of Dassler’s shoes to the 1936 games. The sneaker is the perfect shoe for active children and by the late ’30s both boys and girls were sporting them.

The British call them trainers, probably because they can be used for sports or training. The Americans, meanwhile, call them sneakers, presumably because, being soft-soled, they’re suitable for sneaking around in.

While training shoes can suit many activities like running, jumping, and weight lifting, walking shoes are designed for walking only. You may not, therefore, use training shoes for walking. Doing so may cause injuries to your feet and cause premature foot fatigue.

Sole flexibility – running shoes are for heel-to-toe movement. Training shoes are for multi-directional movement, especially lateral (side-to-side) movement. The sole of a training shoe is more flexible to allow a wide range of movement.

Therefore, wearing trainers continually can lead to poor foot posture (spreading or flat feet) or to the feet becoming wider. Therefore, trainers should be worn only in moderation, because healthy feet generally do not need such extreme cushioning. On the contrary – wearing trainers too often can be harmful.

In the late 18th century, people wore rubber soled shoes called plimsolls, but they were pretty crude?for one thing, there was no right foot or left foot. Around 1892, the U.S. Rubber Company came up with more comfortable rubber sneakers with canvas tops, called Keds. By 1917, these sneakers began to be mass produced.

Trainers provide a ton of comfort to take on the high impacts and acute stresses in these workouts. Weight training? Because of the excellent heel support in most trainers, there is less strain on the foot.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger
Jan Ernst Matzeliger (September 15, 1852 – August 24, 1889) was an inventor whose lasting machine brought significant change to the manufacturing of shoes….

The word was already in use at least as early as 1887, when the Boston Journal made reference to “sneakers” as “the name boys give to tennis shoes.” The name “sneakers” originally referred to how quiet the rubber soles were on the ground, in contrast to noisy standard hard leather sole dress shoes.

The British English equivalent of “sneaker” in its modern form is ” trainer “. In some urban areas in the United States, the slang for sneakers is kicks. Other terms include training shoes or trainers ( Britain ), sandshoes, gym boots or joggers ( Geordie English in the UK and Australian English ), running shoes,…

Modern footwear is usually made up of leather or plastic, and rubber. In fact, leather was one of the original materials used for the first versions of a shoe. The soles can be made of rubber or plastic, sometimes having a sheet of metal inside. Roman sandals had sheets of metal on their soles so that it would not bend out of shape.

However, in Australian, Canadian, and Scottish English, running shoes and runners are synonymous terms used to refer to sneakers; with the latter term also used in Hiberno-English. Tennis shoes is another term used in Australian, and North American English .