“Get that cool out of you.”It was an early September practice during Madison Booker’s freshman season at the University of Texas, Austin. The team’s point guard, Rori Harmon, was out with an injury. The 6’1” Madison, a small forward, was asked to play point guard in Rori’s place. There she was, flipping between guard drills and one-on-one post ups, a mental load that’s about as easy to carry as trying to paint a picture while driving a car. She was turning over the ball under pressure. You’re not cut out for college ball, she thought. At the time, Madison considered her game to be patient, measured, cool. She could let the game come to her and still come out okay. That’s when head coach Vic Schaefer barked a line that Madison still thinks about to this day, as she leads a UT program battling for its first national title in 30 years.“This is not the place for cool basketball,” he told her. “Get that cool out of your system.”That cool wasn’t play style — it was her mentality. To win, she needed to be the aggressor.&nbsp;Now in her junior year, after becoming an All-American for the third time, Madison understands how to be that alpha leader on both ends of the floor and still preserve her sense of cool; she has what is possibly the smoothest, coldest midrange game in the country. She can score from anywhere at all three levels. Cool? Yes. Casual? Nowhere close. A lot like her favorite player, Kevin Durant, who recently signed her to be the first NIL athlete to compete under Team KD.&nbsp;Here, we catch up with Madison about her path to becoming one of basketball’s most complete players, from her childhood in Ridgeland, Miss., to the EYBL circuit, to the bright lights of the Big Dance.&nbsp;

The Record: What’s your earliest memory of falling in love with hoops?Madison Booker: When I was in elementary school, I remember waking up early in the morning and shooting in my driveway. My mom would always get on me, saying she didn’t want me to go to school all sweaty and musty [laughs]. I was happy playing all these scenarios in my head with the ball in my hand. Clock winding down, one-on-one. I remember playing that voice I played in my head. I loved the game even back then.TR: You’ve talked before about how your dad was huge in fostering your love for the game.MB: He played for Southern Mississippi in college. He later played overseas. As he got older, he’d play competitive pickup in my hometown. Whenever he wrapped up a game, he always took the time to train me. My time with him became a regular part of my day. Once he got home from work, I’d be standing there at the front door, waiting to play him one-on-one in the driveway.&nbsp;

TR: What difference do you think it makes to have a parent who played at a high level, compared to someone who’s figuring out the game with you?&nbsp;MB: I think they can keep you from overcomplicating what it looks like to be an athlete in your sport. I was a big Boston Celtic fan growing up. My favorite player was Rajon Rondo, who was their point guard. That’s what I wanted to be. And I remember my dad saying to me, “You’re not going to be a point guard. You’re going to be a basketball player.” It was the first thing he ever taught me about basketball.TR: It’s what happens when playing to a specific position actually becomes a barrier.MB: He told me, “Whatever your team needs you to do, you’re going to do it, regardless of the position. If they need you to post up and get boards, you’re going to do it. If they need you to score and pass, you’re going to do it.” It’s one way I try to use my story to help younger players who are trying to fit the mold of a type of player they have in their heads. It’s not about your position. It’s about doing whatever it takes for your team to win games.&nbsp;

TR: You were a three-time All-State player in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Your senior year at Germantown High, you led your team to the state title. You don’t hear many stories these days about players who stick with one school all four years.MB: Yeah, my mom’s a teacher there at the high school.TR: Oh, so you didn’t get any slack, huh?&nbsp;MB: [Laughs] No, I was a student athlete in every sense of the word. It was an understood rule that wherever she’d go to teach, I’d follow her. But after I started showing some promise, she was the one who encouraged me to move out of state to play basketball for another school, to raise my game. But I didn’t want to go to another place. I loved my community. I also wanted to put the state on my back. We have some dogs here in Mississippi for girls' basketball. I wanted to prove to people what we were capable of, and I could do that by staying loyal to my state.&nbsp;Making that state title run as a senior was incredible. I found this — I don’t know what to call it — almost like a takeover mode in all facets of the game. The self-belief we carried as a team was crazy. It was like, we weren’t going to lose, period.&nbsp;TR: I want to stay on that “takeover mode.” There had to have been a moment when you realized you were a level above everyone else. Was it when you were in middle school? Was it when you played for the Southern Starz in EYBL?MB: I actually thought I was complete trash until I got to college.&nbsp;TR: You serious? You know how crazy that sounds, right?MB: I know. Through high school and AAU, I always felt I was clumsy, like I couldn’t control my own body, like I didn’t know who I was. My IQ was there, which was the clearest jump when you go from high school to AAU. Most everyone has a love for the game, they watch the game at a high level, and they can process the game a cut above their teammates. Where I was lacking was more an assertion thing. I wasn’t taking over or being dominant in the way I needed to be. I was passive. The turning point probably came in the Augusta EYBL stop in 2021. I was in ninth grade. I remember because it came right after Covid, and it was the first time they combined the men’s and women’s teams in the same building. I remember having zero hesitations about what I needed to do to take over. Score, pass, defend. I could do it all. But it’s funny, because people bring up my midrange game as if I was born with it, but I didn’t really unlock it until I got to college.TR: It’s interesting, because your game is so smooth, it’s like you’ve never had any doubt about the levels to it. The first thing people say when they see your pull-up jumper is, “That’s so pure.” But if I’m hearing you right, it took you a while to believe that.&nbsp;MB: I’ve come to see myself as a player who’s always changing. I think my coaches would say I’m changing too. You don’t end your college career as the same player you were in high school. The change over time in how you perceive yourself is a good thing.TR: You’re officially the first NIL player who KD has handpicked to represent his KD brand. On that note of how you see your game, what are some of the qualities you see in him that you want to carry on? Beyond the literal similarities, like your middy game.MB: His game is so…complete. Of course, he’s a nonchalant guy, but in his game, there are no gaps. And his accomplishments are driven by a pure love for basketball, the kind that we can all remember having when we were kids. He watches a ton of women’s hoops. Whenever I talk with him, I can just tell he studies the game. He lives it. I want to honor a love for the game in the same way he has.TR: When you think about your legacy at UT, what do you think will be the clearest indicator that you loved the game?MB: That it’s a work in progress, every day. When I think of an accomplishment, it’s bringing UT a national championship. I want to give as much as possible back to this program after all they’ve invested in me. They’ve supported me each step of the way. A national title would really seal the deal.&nbsp;

UT’s All-American forward can play any position you throw at her. But it’s her mentality that sets her apart.

Basketball

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From the Newsroom

Athletes don’t compete in a vacuum, but having them train in a controlled setting can help Nike researchers design the most innovative apparel to help them compete. Introducing the environmental chambers in the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), which can mimic nearly any environment an athlete might face. <h3>What They Do</h3>Thermoregulation, or the study of how you regulate your temperature when you're moving, happens in your body through a natural, physiological response: sweat. When your sweat evaporates, your body can cool down.&nbsp;Nike's environmental chambers help researchers study thermoregulation up close and personal with athletes. The NSRL has three different chambers for athlete testing, each named after a different Olympic venue (Rio, Sydney and Athens) and each studying the crossover between thermoregulation, apparel design and athlete performance. The chambers allow scientists to test how different variables impact either the heat load on an athlete's body or the regulation of an athlete's body temperature through sweat evaporation.In the chambers, researchers can dial the temperature anywhere from -4 degrees F to 122 degrees F. Radiant heat with special bulbs can match the intensity of the sun's rays (there’s variance within perceptions of “hot”; anyone who does a summertime road run in Los Angeles will tell you it’s a very different setting from running in the streets of Miami). Scientists can also generate wind speeds up to 11 mph.“In the chambers, we can fine-tune our regulation of temperature, humidity, airflow, and radiant heat so we can re-create the conditions in which athletes perform,” says Grant Simmons, PhD, Sr. Principal Researcher, Thermoregulation. “These tools help us understand athlete challenges, their interaction with clothing, and the benefits of product solutions designed to make them better."

<h3>What They Help Us Do</h3>In the Rio chamber, scientists study athletes in the heat to identify new opportunities for Nike DriFIT innovation. Here, the NSRL uses custom methods, developed specifically for the LeBron James Innovation Center, where the NSRL is housed, to study an athlete’s sweating efficiency, or the percentage of your sweat that evaporates to cool you during exercise. If you have sweat pouring down your forehead or dripping down your back or soaking your shirt or bra, you’re not sweating efficiently. The more efficiently you sweat, the slower you dehydrate, and the longer you can run, dance, play basketball, or compete in your chosen sport. As an athlete works out on a stationary bike, scientists use several different weight scales and custom engineered equipment to break down their sweating response into separate parts. By isolating the evaporated sweat from the sweat that drips off the body, beads up on your skin, or is absorbed and retained in clothing fabric, scientists can map the outcome of every gram of sweat secreted during exercise. This allows them to study the sweating response like they’d study a household budget; identifying areas of waste and opportunities to be more efficient by reducing excess sweat that dehydrates the athlete, but doesn’t cool them down.Nike scientists also need to pinpoint where athletes tend to sweat so apparel designers can embed sweat-wicking properties in high-need areas. This is the kind of detective work that happens in the Sydney chamber. Recorded by surface-mounted cameras, athletes wear a range of body sensors as they run on a treadmill. The sensors cover a range of data: skin temperature, heart rate, core body temperature and more. The goal of these studies is to understand the distinct needs for individual athletes during exercise, revealing preferences based on different metabolic states and environments. After an athlete works out, they drape the sweaty garment they wore over a manikin and a thermal camera displays where the sweat is accumulating in the product (the sweat is cooling the apparel fabric as it evaporates). Nike scientists ask athletes to drape the apparel over the manikin, versus evaluating it on body, so they can get past the complications in variations in skin temperature, which can influence the thermal imaging. Apparel designers use this info for computational design to “zone” a garment with the right kinds of sweat-wicking materials, tuned for areas of high or low sweat. The Sydney chamber helps scientists see sweat in a new light, literally.When scientists need to control even more variables, they tap the Athens chamber. It houses two of the NSRL’s primary tools to study sweat: a pair of thermal manikins named Hal (male) and Haley (female). These adult-sized manikins have a copper shell with a precisely-regulated temperature; the shell measures heat loss across 30 different zones over their body surface. That measurement helps Nike scientists assess the thermal properties of specific apparel worn by the manikins as the figures swing their arms and legs. For example, data collected across the chest helps scientists zero in on the ideal material properties for a sports bra. Scientists can test apparel in a matter of days using the thermal manikins, reducing a timeline that would take weeks with human volunteers.

NSRL Climate Chambers

The science of regulating your temperature is serious business in the Nike Sport Research Lab.

Sport Science

Next Level

The NSRL Environmental Chambers

The 200-meter track in the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) is more than a workout space. It’s a supercharged testing environment that allows Nike scientists to study how athletes move while wearing new shoes and technologies — and how to make those products the best in the industry.

<h3>What It Does</h3>Look up, and you’ll see one example of the track’s capabilities: Above the two lanes and rigged onto steel erectors is a collection of high-res motion-capture (“mo-cap”) cameras that can collect 250 snapshots of reflective marker data per second as an athlete moves around the track. Look down: Force plates situated beneath the track’s rubber surface collect up to 2,500 contact-force data points per second as an athlete hits the ground.NSRL researchers can set an LED pace light system, or “rabbit,” along the track’s innermost lane for paces from casual walking all the way to simulating world record times. The track also has practical features ideal for testing product across a variety of surfaces. For example, both the backstretch and the homestretch have a concrete lane to simulate running on sidewalks and roads.

<h3>What It Helps Us Do</h3>An athlete like Faith Kipyegon makes running look effortless. The NSRL track's capabilities help scientists quantify the poetry of her elite athleticism. Last year, in preparation for her attempt to break the four-minute mile, Kipyegon visited the NSRL, undergoing multiple tests on the track. Scientists placed mo-cap sensors over her body to analyze how a range of Nike spike prototypes influenced her gait pattern. In another test, a data-informed resistance sprint device was attached to Kipyegon to measure her power output at full speed. Near the track, Nike researchers tapped into an array of testing tools to measure Kipyegon's aerobic and anaerobic profile, such as her V02 max.

Testing for Breaking4

Nike uses nuanced testing environments like the track to study not just the traits of elite athletes, but the types of wearable technologies that can help every athlete move more efficiently. Enter Project Amplify, a powered footwear system designed to act like an e-bike for the human body. Nike research teams logged most of its 1,500 miles from test participants on the NSRL track. That’s more than 12,000 laps, with data measured from over 2.4 million steps.&nbsp;To keep up with the participants, Nike scientists actually used a motorized scooter and rode around the track during experiments to log real-time data on the device.

Project Amplify

For Project Amplify, the volume of data researchers measured on the track was crucial to quantify how an athlete moves, the amount of energy they're using, and how they feel while they're moving. When testing for Amplify’s metabolic benefit — whether athletes could move farther while using the same amount of energy — Nike researchers found that many athletes experienced a metabolic boost while running. For those who saw the greatest benefit, it was like going from a 12-minute mile to a 10-minute mile while expending the same amount of effort. Walking benefits were even greater.Of course, sometimes you need the immediate validation of seeing how you’re faster than you were before. NSRL researchers programmed the track’s LED pace light system to do a runner’s typical, non-augmented pace — say, that 12-minute mile — then asked the participant to wear Project Amplify and try to hold their usual speed. Many of the athletes found it a challenge to slow down and keep even — they almost couldn’t help moving faster. They found a capability they didn’t know they had in them. And the NSRL track was a crucial tool in helping them find it.&nbsp;

NSRL Track, Faith

When Nike researchers create the sports innovations of the future, they tap into this one-of-one space.

The NSRL Fieldhouse Track

What would the back of your athlete trading card say? That’s what Nike’s Baseline testing is for: A way for all athletes to understand their physical tools.What It DoesNike's Baseline testing, made up of five assessments, is as foundational as it sounds. The assessments are borrowed from the worlds of biomechanics, physical therapy and exercise science, and can be completed in a matter of minutes: a 3D body scan, a foot scan, a barefoot pressure test, an ankle range of motion test and countermovement jumps. In many ways, Baseline is the most ubiquitous tool that the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) offers. Every professional athlete who visits the NSRL has the option of doing the testing, no matter their itinerary. But that doesn't mean it's a resource exclusive to a precious few. Baseline is the one test series in the NSRL that's also open to every Nike employee.Considered together, the test results form the baseline of a person’s athletic profile — how powerful they are, how mobile they are, how explosive they are, and other traits. Knowing these attributes gives Nike researchers, scientists and designers a clearer picture of how to serve an athlete's needs.

What It Helps Us DoJackie Shea, Baseline Operator, Innovation, says Nike researchers selected each of the&nbsp;Baseline tests to set an experiential, diagnostic tone for every athlete interaction within the NSRL. Before the opening of the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-the-nike-sports-research-lab-lebron-james-innovation-center" target="null">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> in October 2021, athlete engagement in the lab was largely reserved for testing footwear and apparel prototypes. There’s nothing wrong with that, says Shea, a former D1 athlete who studied kinesiology and exercise science. But that process largely treats the athlete as a test pilot secondary to the vehicle — the product — they are steering. “We wanted Baseline to help bring athletes to the center of the lab, distinct from product,” she says.&nbsp;Through their Baseline results, athletes can see nuances in their athletic profile. Are you geared toward slower endurance or more explosive power? Your vertical jump results might point you toward an answer. Does your anatomy from the 3D body scan suggest you have any imbalances in your proportions? These results are valuable to athletes for their own sake. You don’t need to test a product to gain a better awareness of your own body.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

After guiding more than 4,000 athletes through Baseline, Shea has learned to spot trends in physical profiles among different sports while offering remedies via other Nike tools. For example, runners tend to have weak posterior strength, so in their back, glutes and hamstrings. They stand the most to gain from consistent weight training, provided in the hundreds of workouts from the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/ntc-app" target="_blank">Nike Training Club App</a>. Athletes who play lateral sports, like basketball, tend to have limited mobility, so a Nike yoga class at a nearby store might be just what they need to balance out.Key to Shea’s job is a fair amount of myth-busting when discussing test results. An athlete might comment on how running hurts their knees, but when they test their ankle mobility, the athlete grimaces, looking stiff as a board. They test their gait on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-nsrl-form" target="_blank">NSRL Form</a> — a recent addition to the test lineup — and are clearly overstriding. With each step, most of their force is displaced through their knees and their back instead of transferred evenly through their body. Running doesn’t hurt their knees, the way they run hurts their knees. Baseline results help give athletes a course of action for what troubles them the most.&nbsp;

Baseline does play a role in ensuring that Nike researchers test products efficiently and orient them toward real solutions. For example, Baseline results are a common way for NSRL researchers to recruit for new studies. An athlete with strong results in explosive vertical jumping power is an ideal fit for a future basketball jumping study that tests a new hoops silhouette. A distance runner, on the other hand, might find a steady-state treadmill run in the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-sport-research-lab-environmental-chambers" target="_blank">climate chambers</a> a better match, which in turn can help scientists evaluate the latest sweat-wicking material innovations like <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-aero-fit-official-images" target="null">Aero-FIT</a>. As more and more athletes do Baseline, the lab’s research specificity gets sharper and sharper. The same is true for product development.&nbsp;That process is ongoing. A Baseline evaluation is never the end of the story. It’s the beginning of a conversation.&nbsp;“Baseline creates relationships with athletes that aren’t passive, but active,” says Shea. “The conversations between athletes and their test results are in a constant cycle with each other. One of my favorite parts in this job is getting to ask follow-up questions. You’re showing some imbalance between your left leg power and your right leg. Did you have some kind of injury to your leg early on? Tell me more. There’s always more to every athlete’s story.”

What would the back of your athlete trading card say? That’s what the Nike Sport Research Lab's Baseline testing is for: A way for all athletes to understand their physical tools.

John Shiel photographs the truth of Innovation—unpolished, intimate and in progress. He explores the choreography of art, science, and athletes, documenting an honest record of Nike Innovation’s inner life, covering the rebels, dreamers, and makers who are forging the future of sport.He leads the Creative Studio in Nike Innovation, tracking the next frontier of Innovation stories that have the power to inspire athletes everywhere.

John Shiel

The NSRL Baseline Testing

Get to Know Our Nike Sport Research Lab

A neuroscientist, a computational engineer and an industrial designer sit at a desk, poring over the latest electroencephalography (EEG) and pressure-mapping results. Down the hall, pressure plates respond to steady footsteps while motion-capture sensors blink to life as another round of testing begins.This isn’t a scene from a NASA work room or sci-fi Hollywood blockbuster — it’s a typical day at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> and its top floor Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), where dozens of scientists, engineers and designers come together to study every element of human performance.&nbsp;While many people know this facility exists, few understand the full scope of its work, or that the research extends beyond the physical and into the mind itself. Led by world-renowned neuroresearchers, Nike’s Mind Science team is devoted to exploring how the brain and body interact to shape the future of athletic performance.

Nike Mind Nodes 1

Their latest breakthrough, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-mind-001-mind-002-official-images" target="_blank">Nike Mind</a>, is a sensory footwear platform more than a decade in the making that aims to redefine how athletes prime for and recover from competition.&nbsp;We sat down with seven Nike Mind teammates to learn how this long-awaited technology moved from concept to reality.

THE NEURAL ARCHITECT: GRAEME MOFFAT, PHD Principal Researcher, Nike Sport Research Lab As principal researcher on Nike’s Mind Science team, Graeme Moffat leads the neuroscience behind Nike Mind — decoding EEG readouts, pressure maps and muscle signals to understand how sensation shapes focus and performance. With a background in brain-computer interface research, he’s helping translate the science of perception into design principles that can be felt underfoot. For Moffat, this project isn’t just about a new shoe. It’s about proving how the mind and body can be trained together through sensation.One of the easiest ways to get out of your head is to get into your body — to actively engage your senses. With Nike Mind, what we see in the brain is increased activity in the sensory motor network and a rise in alpha oscillations linked to relaxed alertness.&nbsp;Like your hands, the bottom of your feet have unique skin with 10 to 20 times more mechanoreceptors than most other areas. These are the parts of our body to feel and navigate the world. To complement this, each node in Nike Mind moves independently, shifting slightly to translate force through the bottom of the foot. The result is a more direct connection to the ground.We used sensory science to determine the placement of the 22 nodes. By measuring what’s called the two-point discrimination threshold — how far apart touches have to be before you feel them as separate — we were able to map the density of receptors across the foot. That’s why nodes are more closely spaced in the forefoot and wider apart in the heel.We used everything: underfoot plantar-pressure sensors, electromyography of the lower limbs and human EEG. Athletes walked in the shoes and comparator models while we measured their brains before, during and after. What we saw were clear differences in brain activation and oscillation patterns, signals that reflected how the sensory system in this shoe was activating the brain. This is a completely new way to make footwear, designed from the sensory system outward. It took nearly 10 years of research and iteration to make it work.It is incredible technology. It's like a walking anti-fatigue mat built into my shoes. It's just a fantastic feeling. I don't want to take them off at the end of the day.The Mind Science team itself is unique. We have neuroscientists, perception researchers, physiologists and engineers all working together. It’s a mix of disciplines that normally don’t sit inside a company like Nike, and it allows us to move from deep scientific insight to real product innovation quickly. We can prototype, test with athletes and iterate at a pace no one else can. It’s a capability that sets Nike apart.

THE BRAIN MAPPER: TREVOR BARSS, PHD Lead Researcher, Mind Sciences Team Working alongside Moffat, Trevor Barss helped run the early neuroscience studies that defined Nike Mind’s foundation. A sensory neuroscientist specializing in neurophysiology, he used EEG and other measures to study how tactile feedback changes patterns of brain activity, the signals linking movement, focus and awareness. The team’s findings revealed distinct shifts in sensory-motor activation and alpha rhythms when athletes wore Nike Mind footwear, insights that continue to shape how the NSRL explores the mind–body connection.For the first 45 years, Nike’s research focused on the body from the neck down. The next forty-five will include the brain.&nbsp;My role was to study unique aspects of brain activation while athletes were wearing the footwear. We measured electrical activity in the brain before, during and after movement and paired that with perception data. The goal was to connect what athletes reported feeling with what we could actually see happening neurologically.We found that this collaboration between perception and neuroscience is what gives the work its power. You might detect increased activation in one region of the brain but without understanding the athlete’s experience, you don’t know whether that’s good or bad. When you combine both, you get meaning.When I first arrived at Nike, I was amazed by the environment. In most research settings, if you want to talk to an expert outside your field, you email, you schedule, you wait. Here, I can walk three desks over and have a conversation with someone who is a world-class expert in biomechanics, physiology or materials science. That proximity accelerates everything.The strength of this lab is its seamless flow of expertise. Neuroscientists, engineers, designers and developers work side by side, testing, iterating and learning from each other in real time. It removes silos and sparks ideas that none of us could reach alone.We’re at the starting line of an entirely new field. The methods are established but applying them to footwear and apparel is uncharted territory. Each experiment raises new questions.For me, the most inspiring part is being surrounded by brilliant minds who share that curiosity. When you pair deep scientific expertise with creative design thinking, you open doors to discoveries that redefine what performance can mean.Looking ahead, the possibilities are endless. We have sensory receptors all over our body. Anytime you change sensory input, you’re interacting with your nervous system. Delving into that connection could open up whole new ways of supporting athlete awareness, focus and recovery.

Nike Mind Top View Scan

THE ENGINEERING WIZ: ELIZABETH RAISSIAN Senior Director, Performance Engineering Inside Nike’s Performance Engineering Lab, Elizabeth Raissian’s work lies at the intersection of product functionality and code. For Nike Mind, she and her team built the digital framework that made the concept manufacturable at scale, using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and simulation tools to model how each node, flex point and pressure zone behaves underfoot. Their modeling ensured a precisely tuned sensorial design that delivers consistent feel and feedback across every size and stride.The big unlock was using computational methods to crack the scale challenge. Nike Mind has many small parts within a larger system. We wrote scripts that determined where each node needed to be for athlete performance and how those placements could still be manufactured consistently.Our goal was to make sure every athlete has the same experience no matter their shoe size. We used FEA to test variables like node size, height and material. That helped us identify the sweet spot between too much and not enough sensation. Once we had that, we could scale it proportionally across sizes so the product felt consistent from end to end.For me, this has been a dream job I didn’t know existed. I get to combine tough technical work with the creativity of working alongside designers, sports researchers and other specialists. After 23 years, I still haven’t been bored.What excites me most is how fast the tools are evolving. We’ve built a strong foundation and now new technologies are coming in that let us do things we wouldn’t have thought possible a decade ago. It changes how we approach products and opens doors for the future.

THE BRIDGE BUILDER: SEAN LU Footwear Developer For more than two decades, Sean Lu has helped take Nike’s boldest concepts from prototype to production. As a developer, he works at the crucial handoff point where innovation meets scaling the shoe production for Nike’s business. On Nike Mind, that meant solving unprecedented production challenges like how to create and bond 22 independent cushioning nodes while preserving the precise sensory design that makes the technology groundbreaking.My expertise is to bring a design to life by practicing project management and leadership while working closely with many different functional teams. The goal is always both team excellence and product excellence, making sure the product meets the brief, the design intent, is tested and proven.The biggest challenge was producing and attaching 22 individual nodes in a consistent way. Regular shoes might have five or six major parts. Here we had 22, each needing to be made and bonded precisely. Solving that required new methods of make very different from conventional shoemaking.One crucial breakthrough was the stretchy strobel. In normal shoes it’s stiff. But here it had to stretch multidirectionally so the nodes could move freely and transfer sensation. Without that, the whole system wouldn’t work.There were moments we thought, this is too difficult, maybe we can’t do it. But we always asked ourselves: are we truly doing the best we can or is there another way? Once you achieve it, the value for the athlete makes it all worth it.

THE CREATIVE VISIONARY: ERIC AVAR VP, Creative Director, Innovation Few designers have shaped Nike’s visual and performance language more than Eric Avar. After spending decades creating some of the brand’s most iconic footwear from Foamposite to Free to the Kobe line, Avar joined the Nike Mind project to help translate complex neuroscience into design. His focus: find simplicity, stay curious and create a shoe that reawakens the body’s natural connection to movement.What made this project next-level was the chance to forget everything we knew about traditional footwear. Instead of chasing propulsion or flight, we asked how to create a more natural sensory underfoot experience — one that could strengthen the mind-body connection to help make athletes feel calm, focused and present.My role was to help guide the creative vision. To connect the macro and micro details of science, art and story. The best ideas happen when those dimensions align. My job was to help the team see the true north and to bring clarity to how the science should feel once it’s on foot.Every dimension of this project was new — new science, new engineering, new design language. Each insight from the lab reshaped how we approached materials or geometry and every prototype fed new questions back to the scientists. That constant back-and-forth was where the breakthroughs happened.Performance design is always a balance. Too much cushioning and you lose sensation; too much sensation and it becomes overwhelming. Our challenge was to find harmony between comfort, clarity and awareness.This feels like a new frontier — a new paradigm of performance. We’re proving through science but we’re also discovering through intuition. The more we lean into that mix of curiosity and expertise, the more magic we’ll uncover.What I love most about this new technology is that it represents the unknown. It’s a reminder that performance isn’t only about going faster. It’s about feeling more, thinking deeper and reconnecting with the moment.

THE MASTER ORCHESTRATOR: MATTHEW NURSE, PHD Chief Science Officer, NIKE, Inc. With a background spanning biomechanics, physiology and performance research, Matthew Nurse has guided Nike’s most ambitious science-led innovations. As Chief Science Officer, he oversaw the Nike Mind project from a multidisciplinary vantage, coordinating scientists, designers and engineers to keep the various parts moving in sync.Most people don’t fully appreciate the importance of sensory feedback from the body, especially the feet. The foot is full of thousands of sensors that give the brain constant information about balance, position and spatial awareness. This is the first product built with the intent of influencing that feedback to help athletes stay focused, present and more aware of their environment.If the body is the engine, the mind is the driver. With Nike Mind, we’re starting to think about how to make the driver sharper and clearer. Mental preparation has become just as important as physical and we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible.Science and creativity have to leapfrog each other. Science shouldn’t limit dreams but it can help target them. Some of these concepts aren’t new but only now do we have the design and manufacturing capabilities to make them real. Building floating, independent nodes that compress and rotate to deliver sensory information to the brain wasn’t possible 20 years ago. Today it is.Athlete feedback drove everything. We went through hundreds of iterations, tuning the number, density, flexibility and placement of the nodes to make sure the sensation was enough to feel and focus on but not so much that it became distracting. It had to be “just right” and only athletes could tell us where that balance was.The beauty of Nike Mind is that beyond feeling grounded, you are grounded. Using tools like EEG, we’ve measured changes in brain activity in the areas linked to focus and presence. That’s the first time we’ve been able to show — and prove — that footwear construction can influence how the mind works.And this is only chapter one. We’ve focused on the body for decades. Now, as we look at the mind alongside it, the opportunities for athletes are limitless.

THE PROBLEM SOLVER: BRYAN YOUNGS Innovation Program Director, Footwear Bryan Youngs brings more than 20 years of footwear expertise focused on transforming innovation into manufacturable reality. For Nike Mind, he led the scale-up effort, translating a handcrafted sensory prototype into a system that could be produced consistently and reliably. By bridging advanced innovation with global manufacturing, he helped ensure the concept could move from lab experiment to product launch.The idea of sensory footwear has been around for a decade but the challenge was scale. For years it was an arts-and-crafts project —&nbsp;something you could hand-make but not mass-produce. With MIND, we had to move past that to create something we could build with our manufacturing partners while still preserving the complex architecture underfoot.With our manufacturing partners, we developed a system that simplified the build from dozens of individual attachments down to just a few key steps. That shift allowed us to replicate the sensorial experience athletes loved from the earliest prototypes while making it manufacturable at scale.Our willingness to wrestle with the hardest problems is something that makes Nike very unique. We’d failed to solve sensory footwear for 10 years but each attempt taught us something. We have the willingness to keep asking the big questions and then the patience and persistence to finally crack them. With these two new products, we’re just getting started.

Rachel Cavanaugh is a Portland-based freelance writer who covers food, lifestyle, travel, fitness, adventure and the outdoors. Her work has appeared in Men’s Journal, Outdoor Life, GearJunkie, MSN, Yahoo, The Independent, The Hollywood Reporter, Digital Trends, Bustle, Elite Daily, Mic, Travel Oregon, Matador Network and others. She has a background in digital production and brand storytelling and holds a journalism degree from the University of Montana.

Rachel Cavanaugh

It took more than a decade to crack it: shoes that can connect your body to your mind to help you stay calm, focused and present.

Zach Doleac's work is as eclectic as he is, a tasteful blend of polish and grit. His imagery forges honest connections with real people — from boxers in Goma, refugees in Beirut, clowns in Cairo and cowboys from Polson to Houston.&nbsp;When not on assignment, Zach is rarely still, pedaling around the Pacific Northwest, grooving to a beat, or sliding on snow, usually in the company of his pup, Frida.&nbsp;You can find more of Zach's work on his <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.zachdoleac.com/" target="_blank">website</a> or follow him on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/zachdoleac" target="">Instagram</a>.

Zach Doleac

Feature

Innovation

Inside the Nike Mind Team That Turned Neuroscience Into Footwear

Essential Read

The Willy Wonka factory for innovation. The NASA of sports science. The epicenter of performance-product creation. Athletes, industry leaders and visiting partners have described the Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., myriad ways. Our teams like to call it their dreamland. The place where creating, designing and breaking limits to better serve athletes has no bounds. The secret rooms where the unimaginable — the future of fastest, strongest, greatest — is made real. The images below capture a behind-the-scenes look into those unknown spaces, with audio context from Nike employees who help bring the dreams to life.

LEBRON JAMES INNOVATION CENTER

The <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-the-nike-sports-research-lab-lebron-james-innovation-center" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> is where listening to the voice of the athlete is made tangible.&nbsp;While athletes are observed,&nbsp;others are at play: researching, testing and, yes, creating the future. The goal is to understand athletes’ unique needs and opportunities, to contextualize challenges and generate breakthroughs across the spectrum of play and movement in a variety of environments.&nbsp;Much of that action takes place in the building’s top floor, the Nike Sport&nbsp;Research Lab (NSRL), which houses the world’s largest motion-capture installation (400 cameras); a basketball court, pitch and track with 97&nbsp;force plates; sweat-wicking mannequins; and three environmental climate chambers that can mimic nearly any condition on Earth. Some of the innovators’ prize tools: more than 80 prototyping machines that allow the Nike team to produce samples to test in under an hour.

Noah Murphy-Reinhertz on the heel-shaping machine at the LeBron James Innovation Center

Noah Murphy-Reinhertz on Nike innovation magic

DEPARTMENT OF NIKE ARCHIVES (DNA)

Understanding the past can inform and inspire how we innovate for the future, and no space at Nike preserves and stokes a more thorough accounting of our heritage than the Department of Nike Archives (DNA). This 50-plus-year Nike archive is the greatest in the world. From the actual busted waffle iron Bill Bowerman made famous to the self-lacing shoes from everyone’s favorite futuristic movie to Serena’s iconic gladiator outfit, DNA houses the tangible history — papers, posters, photographs, memorabilia and, of course, shoes — that represent the culture and soul of the Swoosh.

Matt Williams on Nike DNA

Matt Williams on unboxing Nike Air history

AIR MANUFACTURING INNOVATION (AIR MI)

There’s something magical about putting on a fresh pair of Nike Air shoes, and we think it's thanks to our&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-blueprint-pack-official-images" target="null">unique Air technology</a>. In three facilities in the U.S. — two located a mile from Nike World Headquarters — experts on our Air Manufacturing Innovation (Air MI) team make that magic happen. Air MI is where we produce the propriety material that forms our Air units, and where we hold 500-plus patents. It’s also the place where a highly skilled team comes together to build the products that break sport barriers. Inside the facility is a dedicated team led by multiple manufacturing expert functions, eight PhDs and more than 100 engineers across 15 engineering specialties. Air MI custom-builds&nbsp;shoe&nbsp;technology platforms across flexible, scalable production lines to deliver the exact capabilities needed to manufacture the next generation of Air. Our skilled production teammates, trained across the line, ensure we deliver Air units with the highest fidelity and quality.

Cassie Rigles-Kocker on AirMI

Cassie Rigles-Kocker on Air MI pride

Pat Sageiel on AirMI

Pat Sagebiel on the “Kim Testers” at Air MI

Advanced Product Creation Center (APCC)

The APCC is a top-secret, state-of-the-art facility focused on innovation in product design. Consider it the home of rapid prototyping for Nike designers, scientists and researchers who need to test, refine and create new ideas for athletes at scale. With advanced methods of make, the APCC explores more flexible and forward-looking approaches that streamline the development and manufacturing process, reducing time and effort while pushing boundaries in sports innovation.⁠ You’ll find chemical, mechatronics, process and robotics engineers as well as machinists, all dedicated to accelerating ideas through trial and experimentation faster and more precisely than ever before.

Holli Pheil on the APCC

Holli Pheil on reimagining product creation

Photography by <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.instagram.com/alastairwiper" target="_blank">Alastair Philip Wiper</a>, shot for the “<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/detailpages/nike.html" target="_blank">Nike: Form Follows Motion</a>” exhibit at the Vitra Design Museum.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at Nike’s World Headquarters and the places where we innovate, design and dream, all to serve athletes.

Photo Essay

The Spaces Where Nike Creates the Future of Sport

Jordan Air Rev

Around 2017, the brief arrived for a new golf shoe for Jordan Brand, straight from MJ: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/t/jordan-air-rev-golf-shoes-7xn7c0/FV6338-101" target="_blank">the Air Rev</a>. He wanted <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/jordan-brand-air-rev-golf-shoe-official-images" target="_blank">an innovative, research-backed golf spike</a> to give even the most powerful golfers an edge, helping them drive the ball further.“MJ is adamant on creating the most performance-oriented golf product in the industry,” says Matt Plumb, NIKE, Inc. Men's Sport Footwear Director. “He wanted to create a footwear system that could help players generate more rotational power. Whatever margin we could find, it was our job to find it. He knew we had the tools, the expertise, and the curiosity to find new solutions through footwear.”

The Research

Rather than a product of brute force, a sound golf swing more accurately resembles the balletic weight transfer of a tennis serve. The ballistic force on the swing needs to start from the power center, the back foot. But then that power must be finely channeled down through the lead foot, like a row of steel balls swinging through a Newton’s cradle, before rotating into the swing’s follow through. The golfer must remain stable. Wobble even a little, and power is seeped away, taking away precious yards from a drive. And a few yards does matter. Consider that many of the money leaders on the men’s professional tour also rank among the top of the field in driving distance.

In a swing, the back foot and lead foot are solo acts, but complementary. One is a gas pedal. The other acts as an E-Brake. So, what if removable cushioning systems could be applied to the sides of the shoe, based on whether the golfer was right or left footed? The means for experimenting could be found in NIKE, Inc.’s wide portfolio of cushioning technologies, including Zoom Air and foams.

Studying the Foot's Movement“Traditionally, we’ve combined Zoom Air and our performance foams for vertical force and horizontal. Think jumping up for a rebound in basketball, or bounding across the track,” says Yoon Choi, Lead Designer of the Jordan Air Rev. “But rotational movement made us think about the responsiveness of Air in a different way: Giving that starter-block effect off the back foot for rotational movement. Then, we could use a firmer foam on the lead foot to help brake the body and maintain balance.”Up to interrogate the idea was Nike NXT’s “Space Kitchen,” an experimental team of engineers, scientists and mathematicians whose jobs are to explore the furthest reaches of sport performance design. The team flew to Florida to visit Grove XXIII Golf Course, MJ’s private course. There, they worked alongside Darren May, Grove XXIII’s head golf coach, and were given free rein to test the potential for footwear that could help enhance rotational velocity. Specifically, they had to understand just how much lateral force a golfer could stand to gain, were the feet assisted by a kind of propulsive sidewall. But there wasn’t a convenient tool that could measure the rotational power a golfer develops as they pivot during a swing.Translating the BenefitNever before has a Nike shoe implemented Zoom Air laterally to help an athlete generate rotational power. A responsive sidewall, logic said, could act like a brace against which the back foot could plant. Depending on where the research led, the insights could be applied to shoes in other sports based in rotational movement. A baseball hitter loading up and swinging for the fences. A discuss thrower heaving her lead leg out of the spin and launching for distance. The hypothesis was exciting in theory, but it was just that: a theory.

True to form, the NXT team improvised, creating a turntable gauge to spin from a radial point. They backed the trail foot against a spring-loaded sidewall where the lateral forefoot and the back quarter panel were both secured. As a golfer swung, they’d drive off their back foot, registering the force via a gauge fixed to the ankle.The team invited a roster of pros to the Grove to test their driving power. Over the course of their sessions, NXT researchers dialed up or down the assisted force from the plate’s spring, mimicking the PSI (a unit of pressure) responsiveness of a Zoom Air unit.

The Discovery

Over months of testing, the data was promising. Golfers were describing how they felt more secure and more powerful — two qualities at their best when they're harmonized — with the help of the spring-loaded turntable. But how much artificial energy return was enough while giving that same yardage benefit? And could Zoom Air do the job?The team began stripping away, one by one, the spring-loaded components of the turntable and replacing them with Zoom units adhered to the lateral sidewall. Around the same time, the NXT Kitchen began creating a range of shoe prototypes that experimented with laterally placed Zoom Air. Some of the results were borderline unbelievable. One of them, modified from a Jordan ADG 3 Golf, had two Zoom units bolted onto the shoe and was overlayed with fang-like traction spikes.

The outlandishness of the prototypes got at a tension that was shared by the project’s researchers, developers and designers, who would inevitably need to translate the biomechanical research into a tangible project, and finally a real shoe, trusted by golfers over an 18-hole course.“We all knew the system was working. We knew that Zoom Air could be applied in this way to great results,” says Choi. “But could this be wearable? Or would this ultimately be a science project?”Choi and a team of developers tried funneling the research into a few more prototype concepts, and one direction stood out: a removeable strap, adhered to those rotational sweet spots across the midfoot, that could slot in and out removeable Zoom Air units depending on the foot preference of the golfer.

The Clarity

The shoe’s concept was finally beginning to appear. Prototypes revealed what looked to be a functioning performance shoe. The Flight Lock containment system was born, which included the lateral cushioning, the midfoot strap, and a tightening dial on the tongue.&nbsp;The doubts would return to Choi every so often: Perhaps the shoe was gimmicky. Maybe this interpretation of lateral containment wasn’t realistic, because its benefits weren’t easily believable.

TKTK Prototype

The Final Product

“Every time we started to question what we were doing, we’d hear more feedback validating how players felt stronger in driving the ball further, and they'd add that the Flight Lock system was comfortable, not a distraction” says Choi. “For a lot of us, this project represents exactly what Bowerman was doing decades ago with his track spikes: explore a performance benefit, no matter how small, and ruthlessly experiment how to achieve it.”The willingness to seek out every last margin of competitive advantage was core to Bowerman's approach. Fittingly, the mindset is shared by MJ himself. When he welcomed Jordan Brand and Nike NXT teams to Florida for the initial briefings, he emphasized how the Grove was a place to let loose with their research.“MJ told our team from the beginning, ‘You’re always welcome to come here. Test out anything you need,'" says Plumb. “He’s always encouraged us to break ground on new standards for what we think is possible."

Behind the Design: Jordan Air Rev

Through a unique application of Zoom Air, the Jordan Air Rev is a promising experiment in designing for rotationally-powered sports.

Why the Jordan Air Rev Could Change More Than Golf

NExt volume

When Marquis Mills Converse founded his eponymous company in 1908 in Boston, Mass., his mission was to create an operation that functioned independent of the industry’s monopolies, rooted in a community of the best rubber shoemakers. His first products were galoshes and waterproof winter boots, which meant demand for his wares dipped in warmer seasons. To keep his highly skilled craftspeople occupied year-round, Converse needed a summer offering. A canvas tennis shoe with a rubber sole debuted in 1910, but the company’s true breakthrough didn’t come until it saw an opportunity to apply its signature innovations to a sneaker expressly designed for a then-newfangled local sport: basketball.Invented in 1891 in nearby Springfield, Mass., basketball was growing in popularity and being adopted by regional colleges when Converse introduced its “Non-Skid” shoe in 1917, defining the design as the “All-American Basket-Ball Shoe.” It was crafted on the company’s original dress shoe last with two-piece quarter for superior ankle fit and paired with a non-skid sole that employed Converse’s patented diamond-tread pattern.&nbsp;

The sneaker was first marketed to the area’s coaches, who provided Converse with constructive feedback, including noting that they’d prefer a darker canvas upper because the light tan hue revealed too many scuffs and dings. In response, the company created a dark brown version of the Non-Skid, featuring black trim up the eye row. The iteration was officially branded the “All Star” in 1919, kicking off a new round of basketball-specific innovations that came to characterize the silhouette as the leading performance basketball shoe of the next half-century.As for the shoe’s namesake, Chuck Taylor (aka Charles Hollis Taylor), he arrived a few years later.

Converse Archivist Sam Smallidge on the intersection of Converse, Chuck Taylor, and basketball.

He was hired by Converse in the early 1920s…

True to its name, the Chuck Taylor All Star was worn by basically every top basketball player pre-1965. These athletes included players competing on the world’s biggest stage in 1936, when Converse equipped the U.S. men’s basketball team with white Chucks featuring red and blue stripes on their foxing tape. The custom version was such a hit that competing teams adopted it, and the colorway was permanently added to the product line. In 1939, America’s first national college basketball championship featured players in Chucks. In 1962, basketball’s professional single-game scoring record&nbsp;of 100&nbsp;points was made in Chucks. In 1971, Chucks debuted in team colors, allowing teams to match their uniforms to their shoes for the first time. Chucks was basketball, and basketball was Chucks.

Howard “H” White on the Chuck’s basketball legacy

Howard “H” White on how Chucks made the game

As it turns out, the performance innovations that made the Chuck a great basketball design also made it a great skateboarding shoe.

Skateboarding debuted in mid-century California as “sidewalk surfing,” a pastime for when the waves were flat. The low-top Chuck, which came out in 1957, was already a favorite of these “beach boys” and perfectly adapted to the new street sport, thanks to its underfoot cushioning, grippy rubber and form-fitting canvas upper.

Converse Archivist Sam Smallidge on how the slip-on style became an instant hit with “sidewalk surfers."

The low-top came out in 1957…

Over 50 years later, the Chuck retains its foundational status in skate and with its top athletes — even as the sport has moved from the street to the world’s premier competitions and into its leading museums. In 2023, the Design Museum in London hosted “Skateboard,”&nbsp;the exhibition arm of a multimedia project that also included <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.phaidon.com/store/design/skateboard-9781838667498/" target="null">a book</a> created in collaboration with curator Jonathan Olivares, Converse and Phaidon, chronicling the countercultural design history of skateboarding.

The Chuck’s simple, no-frills style also reflects skate’s democratic, live-on-your-own-terms DNA — which has taken it everywhere.

Converse CONS team rider Sean Pablo upholds the shoe’s legacy in Los Angeles.

Streetwise Chucks

Tyler, the Creator says it well: “I’m from LA, and I grew up with skateboarders. [The Chuck Taylor] is a very staple shoe in that lifestyle.” The Chuck bridged skate and music in the ’90s and early aughts, but the shoe’s musical roots stretch back to artists topping billboard charts in the ’50 and ’60s. These global stars wore the silhouette everywhere: on stages from California to England, crossing Penny Lane, traversing the beaches of Hawthorne, and strolling the streets of Haight-Ashbury.

Over the decades, the Chuck has collected a roster of musical artists that rivals a legacy record label’s list and spans all genres, from punk, alternative and grunge to hip-hop, indie rock and pop. It has also cemented its place in recording studios, on album covers and at global music festivals, even infiltrating classical music halls. In 2018, when the conductor Jonathon Heyward forgot his formal shoes for an orchestra performance, he wore his red Chucks onstage, nearly upstaging the concert. “Being able to find a sense of relatability within classical music is something that I am really passionate about, and Chuck Taylors are incredible barrier breakers,” explains Heyward, who is Music &amp; Artistic Director of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, and Music Director at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. “By simply wearing a pair of Chuck Taylors to my concert, I become more relatable — and people’s openness becomes greater when there is that sense of relatability. The walls go down and I can take them on a journey, which is what classical music is and what a live classical music performance is about.”

As a cultural bellwether of mid-century America, the Chuck couldn’t ignore color. First introduced for basketball-centric reasons, the rainbow of hues also made a statement by breaking down color barriers on court and off, celebrating diversity and championing self-expression in all forums.

Converse Archivist Sam Smallidge on the introduction of color into the Chuck family.

Not conforming and rebelling is kind of baked into our DNA…

From primary tones came endless prints and motifs, with the ’80s debuting camouflage and animal and glitter treatments along with checkerboard, strike and glow-in-the-dark patterns. New materials, heights and shapes followed, evolving the Chuck from a signifier of specific subcultures to a customizable badge for those independent enough not to follow — and for an ever-evolving roster of collaborators.

Jonathan Olivares on what makes the Chuck iconic

Jonathan Olivares on the Chuck as an iconic canvas

It all began in 1934 with Disney, Converse’s first brand partnership, which defined Chucks as the first shoes to feature Mickey Mouse. Despite this high-profile launch, it wasn’t until the late aughts that collaboration became a central element of the Chuck. The 2008 Converse 1HUND(RED) Artists collection commissioned 100 global musicians, graphic designers and graffiti artists to use the Chuck as a canvas on which to express their support of the fight against AIDS, empowering community for a cause and unleashing a dam of creativity. The stream of joint creations has remained steady, including signature contributions from the brand’s longest-standing collaborator, Comme des Garçons (CDG) PLAY.

Chuck Upcycled Flannel

The instant, persistent popularity of the Converse x PLAY Comme des Garçons partnership confirmed what had been apparent for decades: The Chuck effortlessly resides in high-fashion spheres, whose leading visionaries grew up with the shoe, influenced by its anti-conformist ethos and customizable style. As fashion designer Rick Owens put it, “When I think of Converse, I think of the black and white Chuck Taylors and the punk rock generation. These have always been iconic pillars of my aesthetic.”As the aughts wore on and digital media democratized access to the fashion world, the Chuck cemented its status in this once-rarefied yet open-minded world. It graced runways in both original and bespoke forms at the same time as it populated the pages of glossies and appeared in street-style snaps from global fashion weeks.

Deeply entwined in the fabric of global culture, the Chuck has likewise witnessed myriad historical moments, adorned the feet of diverse history-makers, and embedded itself into the greater societal landscape.

As its endless iterations prove, the Chuck could likely claim the title of the most customized sneaker in history. It has been splatter-painted and Sharpied; adorned with badges, pins and spikes; embroidered and cross-stitched; inverted. Like a fingerprint, each expression reflects its creator’s unique creativity. As confirmed by Converse All Star Rocco Montagnoli Bruzzone. “Chucks have helped me express myself and my individuality since I was a child, when I used to sketch on them. Now, I wear a clean pair of Chucks to my meetings.”

Artist Cory Infinite on the Destiny All Stars and his lifelong love of the Chuck.

I’ve loved Chuck my entire life…

Photographer Denise Stephanie Hewitt on the power of the Chuck

Denise Stephanie Hewitt reflects on the Chuck

Recognizing the powerful relationship a one-of-a-kind Chuck fosters with its wearer, the brand introduced limited-edition offerings&nbsp;as far back as 1988, via mail-order catalog. Next came hyper-local Chuck collections, such as Lunar New Year and City Packs. Often made in collaboration with local creators, these city-exclusive designs weave the distinct cultural weft of their locale into the Chuck’s signature form. In 2015, Converse further evolved its personalization platform with the introduction of Converse By You, a digital design program that reached new heights with the record-breaking 2024 Converse By You x Billie Eilish collaboration — all in an effort to bring creators closer to their Chucks.

A Chuck gets better the longer you wear it…

And that’s just the first century.

The shoe’s journey from afterthought to global icon defies convention, which begins to explain why the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star has served as a talisman of self-expression for multiple generations, subcultures and genres: It has never tried to fit in.

Journey of an Icon: The History of the Chuck Taylor All Star

Inside our Design and Innovation

In the late 1950s, veteran track and field coach Bill Bowerman was dissatisfied with available running spikes, which were constructed of weighty leather and metal. As a result, he became obsessed with shaving ounces off shoes to help runners slash seconds off their times. His quest wound up redefining athletic footwear.&nbsp; Prior to this feat, Bowerman’s drive and relentless curiosity had precipitated a string of diverse accomplishments: Born in 1911 in Portland, Oregon, he excelled as a student-athlete while attending the University of Oregon and later gained acclaim as a high school football and track coach. He fought in World War II and came back a decorated hero. In 1948, Bowerman returned to his college alma mater and, during his 24-year tenure, led the university to four NCAA track titles and coached 16 sub-four-minute milers. Further, he introduced jogging to the community of Eugene in the 1960s, which helped spark a national phenomenon, and he served as the U.S. Olympic track coach in 1972.

Bowerman was also a mentor, coach and friend to Phil Knight, with whom he co-founded&nbsp;Blue Ribbon Sports, the precursor to Nike, in 1964. His confidence and counsel helped the company's original business model — importing and selling Japanese-made&nbsp;<a href="https://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pw/running-shoes/8yzZoi3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">running shoes</a>&nbsp;— succeed and grow.&nbsp;However, Bowerman’s own footwear innovations proved even more influential, shaping Nike’s ethos of leveraging athlete insights to design transformative products.

Building a Better Shoe

Bowerman first began tinkering with running shoes in the 1950s, when he wrote to several footwear companies proposing ideas for improving shoes to better serve runners. None accepted his recommendations. Frustrated but not deterred, Bowerman took matters into his own hands and, with the guidance of a local cobbler, learned how to make shoes. To start, he deconstructed existing racing shoes with his band saw and examined their anatomy. Then, he toyed with metal and plastic spike plates and assembled various uppers over diverse lasts. Later, a Springfield-based bootmaker provided technical advice and showed Bowerman how to craft shoe patterns.&nbsp;

Phil Knight became the first student-athlete to try a Bowerman original. In a letter to Knight dated August 8, 1958, Bowerman suggested a weight-training regimen and running schedule. He closed the letter with a postscript: If you have a pair of shoes that you think would make good flats, send them down to me. They will be ready for you when school starts. Bowerman fitted a handmade pair with an upper made of white rubber-coated fabric — “the kind you’d use for a tablecloth you could sponge off,” he explained — to Knight’s size. Knight says Bowerman chose him to try the shoes because he “wasn’t one of the best runners on the team. Bowerman knew he could use me as a guinea pig without much risk.”&nbsp; Whatever the reasoning, the young runner tested the shoes at practice one evening, but didn’t get to wear them for long. His teammate Otis Davis spotted the prototype and wanted to give it a try. He liked the shoes so much he didn’t give them back. In fact, Davis went on to win a conference championship and a gold medal in the 400 meters at the 1960 Olympic Games in Bowerman-made shoes. Moving forward, Bowerman custom fit shoes to his runners by drawing an outline of their feet, measuring widths and noting individualities, such as an extended heel or slim ankle. He experimented with dozens of textiles — kangaroo leather, velvet, deer hide, snakeskin and even fish skin — to find the ideal lightweight, stretchy and resilient material, churning out new creations on a weekly basis. As his prototypes grew more refined and reliable, he continued to seek alliances with footwear companies, to no avail. In an August 1960 letter to a Portland company requesting steel for spikes, Bowerman wrote: Most American shoemakers are not interested in what we track coaches think about track shoes. The best shoes...at this time are made by the Germans. Their sole material is not too good and I can either replace their sole or I can make my own shoe. I don’t think there is any question, certainly in my own mind there is not, that I now have the best shoe in the world – if I could just find some good American shoemaker to make it.

A Shoe in the Door

This opportunity finally arrived when Knight forged a relationship with Onitsuka in 1964, based upon the belief that less expensive Japanese-made running shoes could perform as well as standard-bearer German shoes. Subsequently, he and Bowerman invested 50-50 in the business of importing and selling running shoes, opening a path for Bowerman’s own ideas. The coach expressed his optimism in a letter to Onitsuka in May 1964: I hope that your arrangements with Mr. Knight would be such that I would be free to turn over the ideas that I have worked out on track shoes.&nbsp;Bowerman spent the following summer designing and in October traveled with his wife, Barbara, to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics Games, where three of his Oregon runners were competing. The couple stayed an extra week so that Bowerman could meet with Onitsuka founder and CEO Kihachiro Onitsuka as well as S. Morimoto, a company executive. Bowerman explained his ideas and toured factories to study the cutting and stitching machines. He gained confidence in the Japanese shoemaking process and established relationships with the two leaders, ensuring a receptive audience for his future prototypes and suggestions.

The Dawn of Cortez

Bowerman’s first breakthrough with Tiger shoes surfaced the following spring, in 1965, the indirect result of a track meet. At the meet, University of Oregon distance runner and future Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore moved wide in an 880-meter race, into the path of a passing teammate. The misstep resulted in a spike-inflicted gash on the outside of his foot. That injury led to a stress fracture and one of Bowerman’s most enduring inventions. Early in Moore’s recovery, the runner trained in the Onitsuka Tiger TG-22, a high-jump shoe that Blue Ribbon Sports mistakenly sold as a running shoe. When Moore’s X-ray showed a break across the third metatarsal, Bowerman asked to see his shoes and promptly ripped them apart. They had spongy cushioning in the heel and forefoot but zero arch support. “If you set out to engineer a shoe to bend metatarsals until they snap, you couldn’t do much better than this,” Bowerman growled. “Not only that, the outer sole rubber wears away like cornbread.”&nbsp; To correct the TG-22, Bowerman fashioned a running shoe with a cushiony innersole, soft sponge rubber in the forefoot and top of the heel, hard sponge rubber in the middle of the heel and a firm rubber outsole. In June of 1965, he sent Onitsuka instructions and samples for the shoe.

A month later, Morimoto responded, confirming that he was producing a training shoe to the specifications. But, Onitsuka had “some opinion as to the inserted sponge rubber at the heel.” Despite the objections, Bowerman pushed for the placement of sponge rubber in the heel, stating that it would help alleviate Achilles tendon issues. That summer, Moore rebounded from his stress fracture and logged more than 1,000 miles in Bowerman’s latest creations. Early Onitsuka prototypes featured two distinct pads in the heel and ball of foot, and a narrow heel. This eventually morphed into the full-length midsole Bowerman had originally conceived, a feature that ultimately became a major selling point for the shoe.Consequently, Onitsuka introduced the Bowerman-engineered Tiger Cortez, which an early 1967 catalog explained as: Designed to be the finest long distance shoe in the world. Soft sponge midsole through ball and heel absorbs road shock; high-density outer sole for extra miles of wear.

Consumers loved it. The Cortez was the first stable, comfortable shoe for the roads. It looked cool and debuted as running emerged as an American pastime, popularized by Bowerman and his 1967 book “Jogging.” And when Knight and Bowerman ceased importing and distributing running shoes through Blue Ribbon Sports and launched Nike as a designer and maker of athletic shoes, the Cortez silhouette carried over to the new brand. It also earned Bowerman a patent for its innovative continuously cushioned midsole. In July 1973, Runner’s World called the Nike Cortez “the most popular long-distance training shoe in the U.S.”

Waffle Windfall

The Cortez, however, was just the first of Bowerman’s celebrated inventions, which came to comprise eight registered patents, including shoes with an external heel counter, improved spike placement and a cushioned spike plate. It was also just the first success in his enduring quest to create the lightest running shoe possible.&nbsp;“He thought running shoes could be better,” Nike’s first full-time employee Jeff Johnson says about Bowerman’s early&nbsp;innovations. “He challenged accepted notions of traction, cushioning, biomechanics&nbsp;and even of anatomy itself.”Bowerman next sought to manifest a shoe with excellent traction on multiple surfaces, without metal spikes. The solve came over breakfast in 1970, as he&nbsp;contemplated the syrup-cradling depressions of the waffle on his plate. “What if you reversed the pattern and formed a material with raised waffle-grid nubs?” he wondered. He subsequently commandeered the family waffle iron and substituted melted urethane for batter. Unfortunately, Bowerman initially forgot to grease the iron with an anti-stick agent and it glued shut. Despite this setback, he persevered&nbsp;and fashioned a flexible, springy and lightweight rubber material with a raised, gridded pattern and grip traction.&nbsp;The Blue Ribbon Sports crew raced to debut the waffle sole at the upcoming 1972 U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene. They had nylon uppers flown in from Japan to pair with waffle soles hand-cut from sheets of rubber made in Eugene. Early Blue Ribbon Sports employee Geoff Hollister glued the components together, creating shoes for a handful of trial competitors to wear during training or on the infield at Hayward Field.The hand-built shoes were dubbed the Moon Shoe due to the distinctive imprint they made in the dirt, which resembled the lunar footprints left behind by American astronauts during the era’s historic Apollo missions. The first iterations were crude, but runners liked the feel and traction of the waffle sole and word of the invention quickly spread. Bowerman further refined the concept and developed the iconic Waffle Trainer in 1974.&nbsp;

The rubber studs of the waffle sole offered give and cushioning that appealed to both elite athletes and everyday runners. The shoes, as TIME magazine wrote, were ‘’grabbed by the army of weekend jocks suffering from bruised feet.’’ The Waffle Trainer placed Nike on the global athletic footwear map, setting the stage for unparalleled growth. Bowerman’s legacy as an original thinker and innovator will forever be linked with the waffle sole, which like many brilliant inventions is so simple and intuitive it resonates immediately and broadly. Versions of it are still employed today in Nike footwear, as are Bowerman’s many other contributions to running shoe innovation, including the raised heel, the nylon upper and the continuous midsole.&nbsp;Nike’s footwear ideal has evolved, but Bowerman’s preoccupation with creating products that enable athletes to perform at their highest potential continues to fuel Nike's culture of innovation. Contemporary examples can be found in footwear technologies such as the Nike Free articulated outsole and the compressive woven-in support of Nike Flyknit uppers.&nbsp;

Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman's quest to create footwear to improve athlete performance is a driving force for Nike's ever-evolving approach to product innovation.

Bill Bowerman: Nike’s Original Innovator

Editor’s Note: Fifty years ago today, Steve Prefontaine died in a tragic car accident at the age of 24. Kenny Moore, the esteemed writer and UO runner, said the following at his memorial service: “[Pre] conceived of his sport as a service, in the way an artist serves. Without that, he would never have given us all the records. They were out beyond winning or losing, which a runner does for himself. They came from those furious minutes near the end of a race when his relentlessness and our excitement blended into a joyous thunder. All of us who now say, ‘I had no idea how much this man meant to me,’ do so because we didn’t realize how much we meant to him. He was our glory, and we his.” Fifty years later, we remember the magic of Pre, who taught us that transformation — not just victory — is at the heart of sport.In 1973, two years after the Nike brand was born and the first Swoosh adorned shoes, the nascent footwear company signed its first star runner. The phenomenal Oregon native held multiple American distance records, competed on track and field’s greatest stage in Munich in 1972 and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated as “America’s Distance Prodigy.” The prodigy was Steve Prefontaine, America’s best-known track and field athlete at age 22. He possessed warrior determination and ran each race as if his life depended on it. His competitive fire, gutsy race tactics and inherent charisma charmed crowds and inspired up-and-coming runners to stick with the sport and give it their all.&nbsp;

On Track for Greatness

At 15, competing for Marshfield High School in in Coos Bay, Ore., Prefontaine set his first national record, running the 2-mile event in 8:41.5. He won back-to-back state cross-country championships in 1968-1969, and went undefeated in cross-country and track his junior and senior years. Heavily recruited by top running schools during his senior year, Prefontaine was swayed by a handwritten note from University of Oregon head coach Bill Bowerman. “It said if I came to Oregon, he’d make me into the best distance runner ever,” Prefontaine recalled. “That was all I needed to hear.”

While training under Bowerman and assistant coach Bill Dellinger at Oregon beginning in 1969, Prefontaine won seven NCAA titles (three in cross-country, 1970-71, ’73; and four in the three-mile distance in track, 1970-73). In Pac-8 Conference track competition, he won three-mile titles each of his four years at Oregon, plus the mile in 1971. At home at Hayward Field during his collegiate career and beyond, he notched a remarkable 35 out of 38 victories between 1970 and 1975.&nbsp;

Prefontaine’s ascendance came at a time when running was far from mainstream. Drivers unwilling to share the road routinely yelled and threw garbage at runners as they sped past. Prefontaine helped changed that attitude from annoyance to admiration. On the strength of his indisputable achievement and winning personality, he was the first person to make running cool. His association with Nike helped establish the Swoosh as a trusted running brand and transform the company from national shoe distributor to worldwide brand.

As a competitor at the University of Oregon, Prefontaine had considerable exposure to Blue Ribbon Sports and Nike footwear (at the time, products were branded Nike but the company name was still the original Blue Ribbon Sports, or BRS). In the summer of 1973, Nike co-founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman extended a $5,000 yearly stipend to help offset Prefontaine’s training expenses and to relieve him of occasional bartending shifts at the popular Paddock tavern. In between track workouts and long runs along the McKenzie River, Prefontaine put in time at the BRS store in Eugene. Prefontaine became well versed in BRS and its products and he was an ace pitchman. He printed up business cards with the title National Director of Public Affairs, and began traveling around the Pacific Northwest sharing training tips and encouragement to athletes while introducing them to new Nike running shoes.&nbsp;

The Start of Swoosh Sports Marketing

“The amazing thing about Pre was he was a hell of a student of the sport and he just loved digging and learning about things,” said Geoff Hollister, a runner who also competed at the University of Oregon under Bowerman and became Nike’s third employee. Hollister managed the BRS store in Eugene, and he and Prefontaine became close friends who shared interests in architecture, sports cars, and, of course, running.&nbsp; The pair visited high schools, colleges, sports stores and running clubs. “Every place we went, Pre would take time to go for a jog with the kids. He would analyze their form, and talk to them,” Hollister said. Prefontiane easily related to teens and was a natural spokesman for the sport. In his book “Out of Nowhere,” Hollister remembered a talk Prefontaine had with students at West Albany:&nbsp;

Prefontaine took that same personal approach when connecting with athletes from afar, helping to create an early blueprint for Nike’s sports marketing. He introduced the sport’s elite to Nike products, sending shoes, along with personalized notes and his business card, to running friends around the world. “It was totally his own idea,” said Hollister. Prefontaine shipped boxes to Mary Decker in San Diego; New Zealand’s John Walker and Dick Quax; to Brendan Foster in England; and Kenya’s Kip Keino. “All those people ended up wearing Nike shoes,” said Hollister. In April of 1975, Prefontaine sent a note and a pair of ’73 Nike Bostons to the relatively unknown runner Bill Rodgers. The shoes' arrival created a stir among his teammates at the Greater Boston Track Club. “You’d hear about Nike shoes or see pictures, but it was the first pair that I’d seen in person,” recalled Alberto Salazar, who was a high school student in Boston and a teammate of Rodgers at the time. “He brought them to the track, and we were all holding them and passing them around. Everyone was real excited not only because it was a Nike shoe — which was kind of neat because it was different — but because Steve Prefontaine had sent the shoes with a note.” A few weeks later, Rodgers wore them in the local city marathon. He finished first.

Legacy

Prefontaine is also remembered for furthering the cause of American amateur track and field athletes, who were boxed in by the lopsided rules of the American Athletics Union (AAU). In the 1970s, athletes who wanted to participate in the Olympic Games were required to remain amateurs, making it difficult but necessary to train at their sport and earn a living doing something else. The AAU controlled runners’ competition schedules and took the lion’s share of appearance fees due to athletes. Prefontaine gave up offers upwards of $200,000 to go pro to preserve his eligibility for Montreal 1976, and instead collected a $3 per diem — the maximum amount allowed by the AAU.&nbsp;

He continually challenged the AAU and spoke out about the inequity, even when it put his eligibility to compete in jeopardy. Prefontaine preserved his amateur status but he never made it to Montreal. His last meet was May 29, 1975, in a race he helped organize against members of the Finnish national team and distance heavy hitters such as Frank Shorter. Competing in the 5000m, Prefontaine trailed Shorter the first two miles, then, with three laps to go, accelerated to a 63-second pace. In front of a Hayward Field crowd of 7,000, he finished with a 60.3 last lap and a winning time of 13:23.8, just off his own American record. He ran a victory lap, attended the University of Oregon track and field awards banquet and spent the rest of the evening hanging out and celebrating with friends. The biggest track and field star in the country came to a tragic end later, just after midnight, while driving home, his life cut short by a car accident at age 24.&nbsp; His legacy is multifaceted. To generations of athletes at all levels, he embodies the philosophy of training incredibly hard and going all out in competition. For Nike, he was both a muse on the track and a trailblazer who pioneered a highly original and personal way of inspiring athletes with the brand. For fellow runners hamstrung by the AAU, Prefontaine was a leader who helped turn the tide towards professionalism. After Prefontaine’s death, others joined Nike in taking up his cause, ultimately leading to the abolishment of the AAU by the U.S. Congress in 1978. It was perhaps his most important legacy off the track.

Prefontaine's competitive fire, gutsy race tactics and inherent charisma charmed crowds and inspired up-and-coming runners to give it their all.

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