If you had to walk five miles in high heels or wing tips your feet would be screaming. Why? Because those shoes are not made to promote the easy roll of your foot from heel to toe. Neither are they designed to accomodate pronated or supinated gait cycles.

The best walking shoes are high-tech marvels. There are 26 bones in each foot, and a well designed and well manufactured walking shoe does everything posssible to make sure all those bones work together the way nature intended to keep you happy and comfortable all day. Current bestsellers are the New Balance Women's WW844 Walking Shoe and the Rockport Men's World Tour Classic Walking Shoe.

Whether you spend most of your day on your feet because you have to, or because you know you need the exercise, a pair of well cusioned, flexible, breathable walking shoes will make your day a whole lot better. You select the best walking shoe by knowing your foot type and by selecting the manufacturer and style that matches your personal need. In the long run, the best walking shoe is the one you want to wear.

The complex alignment of bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons in your feet form side-to-side (metatarsal) arches and heel-to-toe (longitudinal) arches. Walking puts up to 1.5 times one's body weight on each foot as it impacts the ground. As you walk, these springy, flexible arches help distribute this weight evenly across your feet. Your arch type plays an important role in how you adapt to various surfaces as you walk, and is the most critical consideration for determining the best walking shoe for your foot type.

Buy Impact Control Walking Shoes for Rigid Feet

"Rigid" feet are high arched and tend to stay straight and rigid at the moment of impact with the ground. They do not conform to the shape of the ground on impact. They leave a high-arch impression in wet sand. Stress fractures are more likely than with any other foot type.

Rigid, high arch feet cause extreme wear on the outside of the shoe sole. The foot tends to roll out under weight.

Rigid feet need impact control or well cushioned walking shoes. Injuries from not wearing cushioned impact control walking shoes for rigid feet can be of the more serious variety. Typical injuries can include: stress fractures, shin splints, hip pain, and ankle sprains.

Walkers with low arches, or flat feet, should war motion control walking shoes to accommodate their over pronation.

Manufacturers' walking shoe recommendations for high arches:

New Balance Womens: 576, 926

Mens: 576, 926

Saucony Grid Omni Walker

Women Men

Brooks Womens: Glycerin 6

Mens: Glycerin 6, Radius 7