Every sport has its own equipment.
Players can substitute a Buick for first base, but there is still a bat that is needed to whack the ball with. A couple of chairs or a pair of two-liter bottles work well for a makeshift goal, but while playing hockey, the athlete requires a stick to maneuver the puck.
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And every outdoor sport that participants compete on grass or dirt needs their shoes to be able to grip the turf for cutting, stops-and-starts, and planting their feet.
That’s why God invented cleats. Or, maybe the Roman Empire invented these.
With the advent of artificial surfaces in outdoor sports, there is a huge rise in non-contact injuries that occur when the foot gets planted as the athlete begins to turn his or her body and go in a different direction. The foot doesn’t release its position, something on the body doesn’t give, and then an injury occurs. This can be a knee sprain, tendons that pop inside the knee, or various hip issues.
A company called “Caddix” has invented cleats that contain studs that actually give depending on the movement of the athlete and help get rid of non-contact injuries.
A cleat that flexes? Really?
The Caddix Company refers to their athletic shoes as “cleats for your knees” because the cleat studs have a degree of rotation installed into their technology that gives a bit instead of becoming stationary.
About 30 NFL players currently wear Caddix cleats, including Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Flacco, San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk and QB Brock Purdy, and Miami Dolphins DE Matthew Judon.
Origin of cleats
Cleats have been around since the early days of “Association Football,” or as the game is called in North America: soccer.
It is said that the Romans invented soccer as a means to keep their soldiers in shape. But the rules were different from town to borough to village to different soldier camps as ideas were passed along.
Some permanent rules were needed so that no matter where your team’s travels happen to be, the game would be played in the same manner and would be organized. The English came up with a set of rules in 1886 entitled “Laws of the Game” that every country still follows today.
The game is called “football” internationally because it has always been called this since the rules of the game are listed under “Association Football.” Every sport that came after it has also named itself “football”: Gaelic Football, Rugby Football, American Football, Australian Rules Football, Arena Football, and Canadian Football.
They all sprang from soccer. The word “soccer” became a shortened version of “Association,” which converted to “assoccer” and then condensed again to “soccer.”
The origins of cleats, or football boots as the English call them, were again a Roman invention.
Roman soldiers wore thick-soled sandals called “caligae,” which had rough bottoms ideal for various terrains, grass, and dirt surfaces. Sometimes, when a lot more traction was needed, the soldiers drove into their caligae “hobnails,” which were short nails with a thick head that would protrude out of the bottom for grip in extreme topography and snow. Then a layer of leather was sewn on top of the hobnails to protect the bottom of the foot from irritation.
After all, Roman soldiers ended up in countries and surroundings they had never seen before. Hobnail sandals were not worn on slick surfaces such as marble, river beds, or ice.
This type of altered footwear eventually found itself on the playing field as soldiers discovered that the hobnails were perfect for planting their feet and changing directions while playing soccer, which gave them an advantage.
Around the 1500s, cleats were worn by every athlete. King Henry VIII’s inventory of his wardrobe in 1526 mentions “football boots,” which is the first written documentation of “cleats.”
For centuries, cleats were made of various layers of leather with spikes embedded between the layers. “Vulcanization” was invented in 1844, which became a method to harden rubber. At first, this new technology was only used in automobile tires, but soon spread to other applications, such as shoes, and was especially beneficial in the production of cleats.
The concept of spiked and studded shoes for other sports, such as track and field, began to emerge as well in the late 19th century. The first studded track shoes were invented in 1895 by Joseph Foster, who founded “J.W. Foster and Sons,” which decades later was renamed “Reebok.”
For an athletic shoe to be categorized as a cleat, it must have some sort of protrusion on the bottom of the soles. And different sports use a divergent type of cleat.
Baseball cleats have “spikes” underneath, which are usually made of metal with a flat tip. The reason is that all of the baseball infield positions, plus all base running, are performed on hardened clay. The normal rounded plastic cleat bumps don’t penetrate the clay, so good traction is never achieved. The metal flat apex does.
On natural grass, round bumps on the bottom of the shoe are located. Their length depends on the ground surface. Back in the 1970s, screw-in protrusions were common, which gave the athlete options of how deep he or she wanted the grip to be, or would fight certain conditions such as wet grass. Usually, about 10-12 studs on each shoe are prevalent.
With artificial surfaces, the entire shoe bottom is aligned with “nubs,” which are a series of short bumps or studs lined up in a pattern and can be as many as 30-50 on each shoe.
But in each of these instances, the bumps on the cleat bottom are stationary.
Even the screw-in variety uses a special wrench to tighten each stud into place. The fact that when planted, the cleat does not “give” at all can injure an athlete – especially on artificial grass surfaces.
The issue with non-contact injuries
Non-contact injuries occur without direct contact between players or with an external object, such as sidewalls in hockey, running into the goal post in football, the hoop stanchion in basketball, sliding into a base in baseball, running into the side of a lacrosse goal, or hitting the platform in performing the pole vault.
The damage occurs when the knee bends inward and twists. The end result is various degrees of injury, including tearing the ACL, the PCL, knee twists, hip issues, and MCL sprains.
Every year, there is a long list of athletes who will twist their knee or pop their PCL because the shoe planted and became rigid in one location, and did not give at all while the player was in the act of turning his or her body. The statistics are staggering: 1.5 million athletes suffer a non-contact ACL injury every year.
In the NFL each season, knee damage led the league in injuries at 20%, followed by ankle (12.4%), hamstring (8.7%), shoulder (8.4%), and head-related (7%).
When the cleat gets stuck in the ground and the athlete attempts to turn, something has to give. Unfortunately, increasingly it has become the player’s knee.
The act of cleat bottoms becoming a rigid hangup in the turf can be a problem.
Until now.
The Caddix Company has invented cleats that contain studs that actually give depending on the movement of the athlete and help get rid of non-contact injuries. The end result is cleats with studs that flex.
What are Caddix SmartStuds?
Back to that “cleats for your knees.”
Non-contact knee injuries are becoming more and more increasingly common every day in a variety of organized sports. Teenagers, children, and young men and women are progressing by being much stronger, which leads to becoming faster. More time is spent enjoying their sport on the field in practices and games.
Jack Rasmussen and his father, Jeff, were watching the Kansas City Chiefs against the Chicago Bears in a Week 5 game on TV during the 2015 season. Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles took a handoff near the 10-yard line and went down without contact while making a cut during the second half. The end result was a torn ACL in his right knee.
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The two men began talking about how Charles went down without being tackled or touched by a defender and how non-contact injuries were a lot more common than most folks knew. At the time, Jeff was in advertising, and his son Jack was a college dropout. The discussion ended with the two men on a mission to figure out a method together to change the effects of this injury.
The goal was to develop a new product to reduce the risk of injury for athletes. But first, it began in another “product that changed the world by first appearing in a garage” story.
Jack quit his job as a housekeeper in Utah, moved in with his parents in Maryland, and spent years studying engineering, biomechanics, and physics. The problem was that neither Jack nor Jeff knew anything about how to design cleats, much less were part of a $200 billion industry.
Jack’s first attempts at a phototype were made with quick hardening caulk and blue dish soap, which created a transparent yet very manipulative rubbery substance. This concoction was placed in a mold he made, which created a transparent object that could be trimmed and shaped into a cleat sole. He spent four years making various prototypes in Jeff’s garage.
Ideas came and went, and finally it was decided to focus on the cleat sole. The first ideas were centered on having the entire cleat sole flex. But there were several issues, including at the manufacturing level.
Then Jack spent the $62,000 required to test his first prototype and file his first patent.
After years of trials and tribulations, Jack finally had a product that worked. But he needed money to test his new prototype and raised $300,000 from friends and family. Before he accepted their funds, Jack made them watch the play where Charles took the handoff and then attempted to cut to his left as a hole opened up. Instead, his knee buckled without being touched. Jack wanted investors who understood the mission. He even turned away offers if the source didn’t get what he was attempting to accomplish.
In March of 2020, he approached I-Generator footwear out of Portland, Oregon, which is known for being innovators in footwear, offering qualitative research, market segmentation, competitive benchmarking, and trend and color forecasting. I-Generator took Jack’s working prototype and the money he raised to transform his flexible stud shoe into a wearable cleat.
I-Generator works with some of the largest shoe brands on the planet. They were skeptical about Jack’s design, and about Jack’s new shoe company. Jack had zero experience not only in making cleats, but zero experience in being in the shoe business. I-Generator told Jack that they would take his money and perform tests, but that his idea would not work.
LINK: I-GENERATOR WEBSITE
Next, testing began at one of the nation’s best facilities at the Bowerman Sports Science Center at the University of Oregon. Their tests focused on stress over strain and force return.
The concept was simple in nature, but difficult in application: injury prevention.
The patented Caddix SmartStuds release faster from the turf because of their ability to flex up to 12 degrees in any direction. Their release coefficients and anything flexible between the foot and the playing surface would reduce the rotational force that causes these injuries. Essentially, there is less of a chance for an athlete’s foot to get stuck as they try to cut and turn, which would reduce the risk of non-contact lower body injuries.
Nine patents were applied for, and after four years, every patent submitted was approved.
The “Caddix SmartStud” is a process that reduces rotational force on the knee and lower extremities. How this is achieved is that each cleat stud has the ability to flex on its own without being detected by the athlete.
LINK: CADDIX CLEATS
Jack was approached by Todd Heap, the former two-time Pro Bowl tight end of the Baltimore Ravens who Jack had a poster of in his room growing up. Heap’s career was altered from injury. Jack set up a meeting with Heap and explained his concept and design. Heap and former Ravens tight end Dennis Pitta ended up investing $1.2 million into the business and $5 million over the next three years.
This allowed the manufacturing process to begin. Flacco came into the picture and even went on the “Pat McAfee Show” discussing the new cleats. In December 2024, the cleats were finally available for sale.
Essentially, Caddix has invented the Gatorade of athletic shoes. What this means is a product that nobody thought about that will change every pair of cleats at every level.
As far as the cleats are designed as a finished product, there are studs in the front and rear of the shoe. The back ones are stationary, which makes sense because as an athlete pivots, the heel action is not affected. All of the front studs, however, have movable studs. The width of the toe box is a bit larger than standard cleats with more padding and arch support.
With this much technology involved, obviously, the cleats aren’t cheap. Products backed by science rarely are. But what is the cost of a torn ACL, the subsequent rehab, lost wages, and a full year of not competing?
The company’s X handle, as well as their Instagram icon, is @caddixcleats.
Editor’s note: Joe Flacco Caddix starts at 11:45
In professional sports, once in a generation, there are inventions that alter the course of that sport, and then become part of the fabric of the game.
The 1955 BT-5 football helmet facemask, a 1925 baseball pitcher’s rosin bag, 1917 Converse non-skid high top basketball sneakers, Montreal Canadians Jacques Plante’s 1959 goalie mask, Sam Widdowson’s soccer shin guards in 1874, the Wilson T2000 tennis racket which was the first steel model, Gatorade, the 1905 William Taylor patent for dimples on a golf ball, the 1980 HANS neck restraint device for auto racing, the TYR Wrinkle-Free Silicone Swim Cap for competitive swimming, and the 1928 Cascade bucket lacrosse helmet.
And just recently, Guardian Caps for the top layer of football, and now Caddix cleats for the bottom layer. Both are designed to prevent injuries with outside-the-box intentions and engineering.
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