Most people blame their knees when they start to ache.
Too much running. Too much walking. Getting older.
The classic responses.
But in my experience, and in the hundreds of people I've analyzed, knee pain often has way less to do with your knees… and way more to do with what’s happening beneath them.
Your feet.
When your feet can’t move or don't have the strength to control the forces at the foot & ankle, your knees take the hit. Stiff soles, raised heels, narrow toe boxes...they all force your body into unnatural movement. Your foot can’t land naturally, so your knee has to compensate for the lack of control. Over time, that compensation becomes discomfort. Then it becomes pain. A great example is doing lunges with a shoe with a thicker heel than the toe. This difference in sole height forces your center of mass forward aka more load goes through your knee rather than kicking on more of your posterior chain (you know, glutes and hamstrings). And then boom, you no longer do lunges because they hurt.
And most people never connect that pain back to their shoes.
When I built Minnemals, this was the entire starting point. I kept seeing people work hard to train their bodies while their footwear was quietly undoing half that effort. Their knees were tracking inward, their hips were fighting for alignment, and their feet were basically stuck inside a cast.
The moment you give your feet room to spread, flatten, and feel the ground, everything above them starts lining up the way it’s supposed to. Your gait cleans up. Your knees stop collapsing. Your hips stay open. And walking actually feels good again, like your body is finally working with you because your brain can feel what's happened at the foot and therefore better control it.
Your knees might not be the problem.
Your shoes might be.
That’s why I created a shoe that doesn’t change the way you walk. In fact, it just gets out of the way so your body can do what it’s built to do.
Because when you fix your foundation, you take the pressure off everything stacked on top of it.
— Delaney, Founder of Minnemals, Gait Analysis Specialist