Author: Racquet Network

Racquet Network staff are certified experts. Many are also certified coaches. Racquet Network Experts undergo extensive training and product knowledge testing in order to ensure that we have the most knowledgeable staff in the racquet sports industry.
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Wrong Product – Right Price

It doesn’t matter what you are buying — racquets, shoes, string, accessories — price should not be your most important consideration. If it is, you will almost certainly make a poor decision.

In the past 24 hours, for example, we have had two customers make poor decisions because they had price-focused tunnel vision. One spent twice as much as she should have because she refused to consider a less expensive pickleball paddle that was perfectly suited to her needs. Another saved $40.00 but walked away with shoes that will actually detract from his on court performance and may actually lead to injury.

We understand that price has to be a consideration at some point in the purchasing process. That is completely reasonable. But it should never be a starting point.

Sports are about performance. The products that you purchase for sporting activities must not hinder or detract from your performance.

All too often, customers come into our store with the preconceived notion that expensive is good and cheap is bad. While this may be generally true (most products are priced according to their input costs), it is not always the case. Sometimes, the better option is the cheaper one.

How can you know? Come into our store and ask our experts.

Staff at Racquet Network are trained to ask questions. They want to know what level you will be playing at and the context you will be playing in. They will also want to know what problem you are trying to solve. Once they have this information, they will be able to help you select some products that fit your needs.

Often, our staff will come up with a category of products that will support your performance goals. And within that category, there will be items at different price points. At that point, price considerations become appropriate. But not before. Otherwise, you run the risk of buying the wrong product just because it is offered at the right price.

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Size 15 Court Shoes in Calgary

Racquet Network carries Calgary’s largest selection of size 15 court shoes for men. In fact, we have the largest selection of court shoes of all kinds. Come in for a fitting with our experts and leave with the perfect fit for your feet. We are open 7 days a week. Monday to Friday 10:00am to 8:00pm. Saturday and Sunday 10:00am to 5:00pm.

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Choosing Squash Shoes

Squash Shoes
Come into our store and get some advice from our experts.
Whether or not you choose to have a designated pair of shoes just for squash (squash shoes) or a general pair of shoes that you use for multiple indoor racquet sports (indoor court shoes) is entirely up to you. The principles remain the same regardless of the decision you make.

Squash Etiquette

Squash etiquette (which is backed up by rules in most facilities) requires players to wear clean shoes with non-marking soles. This means that the shoes you play in should not be the shoes you wear while traveling to or from the squash court.

Outdoor shoes are not squash shoes; they are not squash shoes because they are dirty. Dirty shoes make dirty courts. Dirty courts become slippery courts and slippery courts are dangerous courts to play on.

Shoe Selector For a full list of shoes in this category, please check out our ONLINE SHOE SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.

Not Suitable for Squash

Basketball shoes are not squash shoes either. Nor are cross-trainers or running shoes. Almost without exception, black-soled shoes are not suitable for squash.

Badminton shoes or racquetball shoes can be substituted for squash shoes. However, tennis shoes are not squash shoes and should not be used for squash under any circumstances.

Gum Rubber Outer Soles

Squash shoes and indoor courts shoes typically have outsoles made of a blend of synthetic rubber and gum rubber. Pure gum rubber is blonde in colour and soft to the touch; however nobody makes pure gum rubber outsoles anymore. Virtually every manufacturer now uses a blend of gum and synthetic rubbers that is soft to the touch and sticky on hardwood floors.

The first thing you should be looking for when shopping for indoor court shoes of any kind is soles that are soft to the touch. If the shoes you are looking at have soft rubber in their outer soles, they are made for use on indoor courts.

Shoe Selector For a full list of shoes in this category, please check out our ONLINE SHOE SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.

Things to watch for:

Shoes that are too short may cause you to lose a toenail. The repeated pounding of your toenail against the end of the shoe will damage the nail bed. Eventually, the nail will loosen and fall off.

Shoes that are too tight will cause pain when your feet swell. Keep this in mind when trying shoes on in the store. Remember that your feet swell during a typical squash match.

Shoes that are worn out on the inside will cause your feet to hurt the next day. If your feet hurt signficantly the day after you play squash, check the inside of your shoes for wear.

Rule of Thumb

Serious squash players replace their shoes in a season as many times as they play per week on average. In other words, squash players who play squash three times per week will replace their shoes three times per season.

Of course, not every player wears shoes out at an equal rate. Players who toe drag, for example, will replace their squash shoes more often than players who do not drag their toes.

Shoe Selector For a full list of shoes in this category, please check out our ONLINE SHOE SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.
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How to Pick Court Shoes

YONEX POWER CUSHION AERUS 3R COURT SHOE BLACK

Just about every day, somebody who comes into our store to buy court shoes spends more time looking in the mirror than they do listening to our experts about court shoes. This is unfortunate. Court shoes are not about fashion. They are about performance. With that in mind, these are what your priorities should be when shopping for court shoes.

#1 Traction

Without question, the single most important factor to consider when purchasing a court shoe is traction. Court sports require sudden changes in direction. Sudden changes in direction require one thing above all else: traction. Mess this up and you could get seriously hurt.

Traction is also the most important consideration for our court shoe buyer. He understands that our players need shoes with excellent traction. So he examines every shoe we purchase carefully to ensure that it will serve our players well. If the brand or the model don’t offer sufficient traction, we don’t carry it.

#2 Fit

It may surprise you to learn that fit is actually a more flexible standard than most people think. In fact, most modern court shoes are designed in a way that permits players to wear their actual size or even one half-size bigger. When problems start to occur is when players try (and about half of our customers do) to cram their feet into shoes that are too narrow or too short for their feet.

Shoes are not skates. The rule is this: if you want to avoid foot problems when you are old, wear shoes that fit when you are young. Your toes cannot be crowded; they have to have room to move up and down and even spread out a little inside your shoe. Also important: your circulation should not be cut off, especially on the top of your foot. If you crank your laces like you do when you are tying skates or ski boots, you are cutting off circulation to your feet. A shoe should fit like a winter glove, not a pair of yoga pants.

#3 Function

Most court shoes are multi-functional. For example, badminton shoes can work for squash, volleyball, tennis or pickleball. However, not all court shoes work well for all sports. For example, there are almost no Mizuno volleyball shoes that our experts would recommend to squash, badminton or pickleball players.

In order to figure out which shoes are right for your sport, you really need to ask our experts. Once you pose the initial question, they will ask you a series of questions back. Once they have your answers, they will be able to help you narrow down your choices.

#4 Brand

Brand is almost, but not entirely, irrelevant when it comes to choosing court shoes. “Almost” because there are a few brands that do not make court shoes, or if they do, do not make them very well.

Our expert advice to customers is to ignore brand completely. The reason for this is simple. Too many customers get tunnel vision when it comes to brands. As a result, they end up buying shoes with inferior traction or shoes that don’t fit right or don’t function properly just because they want a particular brand. Teens and tweens are the worst for this. All too often, their top priority in court shoes is brand — not traction, not fit, not function.

#5 Style

Customers in our store often have the luxury of choice when it comes to style. Unless their feet are unusually large or unusually small, we will usually have plenty of shoes in stock that offer the right amount of traction in the right size and for the right sport. After that, it becomes a matter of choosing brands or styles to help narrow down their choices.

Unfortunately, customers with wide feet or other special needs, will never have the same style selection available to customers with “normal” feet. Wide court shoes are extremely hard to find and when our buyer does find them, they are usually bland. So if you have wide feet, focus on traction, fit and function only. Forget about brand and style. Those shouldn’t matter to you at all.

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Why Subscribe to Our Newsletter?

Customers who know us well, know that the very best deals we offer are found exclusively in our newsletters. They also know that the best of the best offers usually require quick action. They know that we reward readers who are paying attention to the deals we are offering.

They also know that our newsletter offers some excitement and bit of competition. Unlike most stores, we send out a lot of severely limited offers. Our newsletter is like a radio station offering prizes to the first three callers. It is not unusual for us to send out a newsletter offering FREE STRINGING to the first three customers who place their order through our website.

Longtime customers also know that our newsletter subscribers are the very first to find out about demo racquet clearances and other special offers that typically feature discounts of 50% or more. Some of our offers are first-come-first-serve offers that reward customers for coming into our store. Others are online offers that require purchases through our website.

If you are a new customer, you may be interested in learning that we are grateful to customers who say nice things about us on Facebook, Google+ and Yelp. You may also be interested in the fact that our website app automatically sends out discount codes when customers post product reviews on racquetnetwork.com. And, you may be surprised to learn that we sometimes hide coupon codes in blog posts.

Here is an example of that right now. The coupon code is: blogsurprise422. For the next 24 hours, the first 10 customers who use this coupon code will enjoy a discount of 50% on any one item from our STRING category.

Find out about this discount too late? That’s unfortunate. The good news is that there is another deal just around the corner. Simply subscribe to our newsletter and pay attention to the articles we post on our website. Like we said above, we reward customers who are paying attention to our marketing efforts.

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