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These shoes walk themselves. They're the world's first powered footwear designed for running and walking like an e-bike for your feet, and I'm one of the first people ever to try them alongside even more groundbreaking wearable tech. Like these slides that can calm your brain down through haptic stimulation, this adaptable jacket that changes shape and regulates temperature, and these sports jerseys made out of waste that perform even better than other high-performance jerseys. I got to meet with the brilliant scientists behind it all at Nike who's sponsoring this video for a sneak peek into the future of sportswear and tech. From early innovations like using a waffle iron to design the bottom
of a pair of shoes in 1972 in order to improve the grip while running, Nike has always been pushing the limits of athletic performance, but today's tech is beyond anything we've ever seen. First up is Mind One, the shoe that can calm you down. You're most likely aware that your hands are super sensitive organs, but we often forget that our feet are as well. Both the palm of the hands and bottom of the feet contain glabrous skin or hairless skin, which is rich in nerve endings and contains specialized nerve receptors that allow for high tactile sensitivity and grip control. They're crucial for detecting fine details, vibration, and movement.
And there's a body of literature looking at feedback from our feet specifically. We have many sensors on the feet that detect pressure, vibration, shear, and pain, and these of course all influence your balance and posture, but research has found that they may also impact your mindset. And this is what the neuro scientists and Nike's Mind Science Department were most interested in. Can we use the mechanoreceptors of the feet to impact the way that people feel and potentially aid athletes both on and off the court or field? Brain scans showed that the shoes and slides increased activity in the somatosensory cortex, which is great and to be expected, but they were also able to measure significantly increased alpha wave
activity in the brain, which is typically associated with calm and focused energy. So, they began experimenting with nodes under the feet that would not only move and react based on the surface below, but translate that haptic information to the foot, which then sends those signals to the brain. The designers and engineers had to figure out the optimal size, spacing, and hardness for each node to stimulate the brain to the right degree while still being comfortable and enjoyable to wear. Put any two nodes too close together and the brain will read them as one single input. After many prototypes over 10 years of development and thousands of hours of testing on hundreds of elite and everyday athletes, they landed on this design, a
mind-altering shoe that activates athletes' senses and enhances the pre-game mindset. The goal here is to allow athletes to lock in before a game, but this is just a first step of Nike looking at the entire body as a sensory organ and a canvas to play around with in sport technology. Up next is AeroFit. These Nike clothes are made from 70% post-industrial clothing waste like scraps from the production process, and the other 30% from post-consumer clothing waste like clothes that are thrown out and would otherwise end up in a landfill. And while textile-to-textile recycled products do already exist, this is the first time it's been done in an elite performance product without
sacrificing performance, and that's always been a massive challenge. Typically, when you break down and reuse a material, it loses some of its quality and will often be used in a lower grade product or application. But if you want athletes using a new product, whether sustainable or not, it needs to live up to the design advantages they've come to expect like staying cool, feeling lightweight, and high durability. And that's what Nike's broken through here. They've been able to take old clothing, grind and process it down into chips made of pure or raw polyester, which is then processed further into much finer pellets, and finally that's extruded into high-performance yarn. This new
yarn is 11% lighter, has 20% more stretch, and has over double the air permeability, which means way more air comes through to cool you down. In their athlete testing, they found that the shirts were less likely to get wet because of the airflow between the skin and fabric. sweat would evaporate off the body more quickly as opposed to the jersey, which improves cooling. And the material lives up to the necessary durability of different sports like being tugged or pulled without ripping. Now, two really important factors that had to be considered here are number one, as the climate crisis worsens and the Earth gets warmer, these kinds of advancements are more and more necessary
for athletes, particularly those who compete outdoors. Both the World Cup and LA 2028 are right around the corner and will have some of the harshest and hottest environments, and innovations like these that improve airflow will allow athletes to perform at their best. And number two, the long-term goal of circular economies, where the waste materials end up going back into the system and can create new clothing. Each successive time you recycle or reuse materials, you lower the upfront environmental cost it has. And this AeroFit material is primed to go back into recycled products as it's already been processed. Now, this is Nike Air Milano, the adaptable jacket. Something you probably experienced is going
outside on a cool day all layered up only to end up sweating once you start walking around and having to take those layers off, or you start the morning wanting something warm, but know the afternoon's going to be cool, so you have to travel with multiple options. And this is exactly what Therma-FIT Air Milano set out to solve. It's actually a really neat evolution of the Nike Air platform, which uses air pockets and has been used in footwear since 1978. In this case, they are inflatable and deflatable. The reason air pockets are so useful here is because they act as a good insulator. The widely spaced molecules in air significantly slow down two ways you lose heat. One, conduction,
which is the direct transfer of heat from your body through the fabric. Fewer collisions between air molecules slows down the rate at which heat can transfer. And two, convection. The air pockets prevent warm air by your skin from being easily replaced by colder air. When inflated, the jacket provides insulation similar to that of a light or mid-weight puffer, but if you're wanting to be cooler, simply deflate the jacket. Now you lose the properties of heat retention that the air pockets provided, the jacket cools down quickly and acts more like a hoodie or a light windbreaker. Nike is actually debuting this innovation on the world stage as
the official medal ceremony jacket for Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics, so you'll see it in Milan this winter. And finally, the moment I had been waiting for all day, Nike Amplify. The inspiration here was trying to figure out how to help athletes move faster and farther with more fun. It's like an e-bike for your feet. When you ride an e-bike, you can travel much further and typically faster without expending nearly as much energy. And Amplify does something similar with your shoes. In some ways, it's like building you another Achilles tendon or calf. And the experience is really cool. First, there's a two-step process for Amplify to get to know you. The system inflates
and puts pressure against your calves to basically learn how they're sitting on your legs and understand when the motor will start to engage on your body. Second, as you begin to walk, they start measuring how long your steps are, how your ankles move, etc. The shoes then engage and start assisting and amplifying your movement. When running, they're able to cushion or soften your landings or give you a stronger boost forward, and the intensity of the experience can be controlled in an app. The shoe itself is specifically designed with a mechanism and actually contains a firm composite material inside to allow
for all these adjustments and movements to assist you without simply bending the shoe material. And as soon as you slow down or stop moving completely, the mechanism either adjusts to your new speed or completely disengages. You're in control, not the shoes. I've been wearing these shoes now for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and it took it turning off for me to realize how used to it I had gotten. Now my feet feel like dead weight, so please turn them back on. You have the power. There we are. Now, these are still being tested and not yet in the market, but I think the potential is so neat. Not only for an average person to get around in a novel way requiring less energy like an e-bike, but also the potential for
assisting those with mobility issues or strength concerns, taking people to places they may not have been able to get previously. Or perhaps they'll end up in elite athlete games one day. It's an innovation that I'm super excited to see fully realized and a great example of Nike taking risks, allowing their genius engineers and designers to experiment and play with product designs that can help imagine the future of sport. So, there you have it, some amazing new wearable technology and high-performance clothing to look forward to, some of which you'll see popping up at major sporting events all over the world very soon, and others that may develop into completely different technologies in the future. But all in the name of sport innovation,
brilliant engineering, and design. It was a lot of fun for me to dive into these and try these products, so I want to thank Nike for including me, for sponsoring our content, and allowing me to sit down with their teams and learn from them. I'm curious which products you think are the most interesting, which you're most excited to try out yourself or get your hands on. Let me know in the comments below, and we'll see you ASAP for some more science. Peace.
