Altra Drops Its Zero-Drop Design Policy. We Barely Noticed.

Published September 26, 2023 04:38PM

I clearly remember the moment I met Golden Harper and Brian Beckstead as they were unveiling their Altra running shoe brand to the world at the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City in February 2010. They immediately started talking about “zero-drop” shoes with a “foot-shaped” interior. These were new terms for the industry. Even though the minimalist movement was gaining steam, the focus to date had been on shoe flexibility and removing cushioning and support. No one before had isolated drop as a significant shoe feature.

They told me that the design of Altras centered these two key elements not found in other popular running shoes, which they believed would minimize injury while inviting a more efficient gait.

Their three initial models that debuted at running stores later that year—and every single version of the dozens of models since then—were built with a spacious toe box and a “zero-drop” or level platform. (Most other mainstream running brands had narrow toe boxes and a significant heel-top drop, a downward slope that dropped as much as 10 to 14mm from the heel to the forefoot.)

Harper and Beckstead were both accomplished runners, but they became shoe entrepreneurs after years of working in an Orem, Utah running store, studying customer’s running gait patterns and injuries and tinkering with shoe designs. The brand immediately gained a grassroots following amid the running shoe revolution that was afoot, a brief period of time focused on minimal design and natural, uninhibited running form. Within a few years, the brand exploded in both trail and road running, as it earned numerous shoe awards and gained increasing notoriety from runners.

All of that success led to the brand being acquired by VF Corp in 2018 and moving to Denver. Bolstered by additional resources and a high-performance biomechanics laboratory, Altra has continued to grow and evolve, expanding its hiking, walking, gym, and lifestyle shoe lines with offerings of original, standard, and slim fit profiles. Last year, Altra unveiled a carbon-plated marathon racing supershoe called the Vanish Carbon.

However, after Altra quietly dropped the term “zero drop” from its branding and literature in favor of “balanced cushioning,” one of the questions lingering around the brand since it has been under new ownership—especially after the departure of Harper in 2021—was whether or not it would deviate from its zero-drop design criteria that’s been tied to the brand’s DNA from the start. The answer is yes.

Introducing the AltraFWD Experience

On October 3, Altra will launch a new shoe called the AltraFWD Experience, a neutral-oriented everyday trainer with a 4mm heel-toe offset.

Believe it or not, the initial discussions began back in 2019. The thinking behind it was two-fold, both to offer Altra loyalists new options for their shoe quiver and, of course, to attract more runners who haven’t run in Altras—either because they haven’t wanted to or because they haven’t enjoyed the experience of running in zero-drop shoes. (One of the standard complaints about running in zero-drop shoes is that it takes time to convert to running on a flat platform and doing it too quickly can cause Achilles soreness and calf flare-ups.)

“It’s absolutely a big deal. And it’s something that we didn’t take lightly for the entire process,” said Alex Lind, a senior product line manager for Altra. “We just didn’t really want to create a Torin with a drop. We purposely just didn’t want it to simply add drop, but really be able to deliver just a different underfoot feel. So it took a while to find how we wanted to package it in a way that felt appropriate for us. We feel super confident and excited with what we came up with in the AltraFWD Experience.”

Initial Impressions

The AltraFWD Experience fits true to size with a medium interior volume and a spacious forefoot with plenty of wiggle room for my toes to splay during the dorsiflexion motion of my feet as they roll through to the toe-off phase of a stride. (It’s only available in Altra’s standard “Footshape Fit,” which is in between its wider Original and narrower Slim profiles.) The step-in feeling is smooth, seamless, and moderately soft, with a wide, padded tongue and extra padding in the heel collar. The tongue isn’t gusseted, but, along with the pliable, one-piece engineered mesh upper and semi-rigid interior heel counter, it helped sufficiently cinch my feet down to the chassis without any issues.

When I laced up the AltraFWD Experience for the first time, I was trying to ignore the fact that it was the first Altra shoe with a heel-toe drop, but, obviously, that’s hard to do when it’s such a prominent aspect of the shoe. But once I laced them up and went out the door, I wasn’t thinking about it at all. I was more surprised at how good I felt as I rolled right into tempo pace.

As I was running, I didn’t think too much about the shoes, except to note that I really liked how nimble I felt. I slowed my pace slightly about three miles into the run, but I was still feeling good so I decided to throw down four spontaneous 150-meter hill repeats and was pleased with how lithe and mildly responsive the shoes felt. The compression-molded EVA midsole foam didn’t feel bouncy or exceptionally propulsive—it’s a low-gravity, high-durometer foam that straddles the line of semi-firm and semi-soft—but the AltraFWD Experience provided a touch of liveliness in every stride or at least be conducive to quick leg turnover. (However, it’s definitely not a shoe with a supercritical midsole or propulsion plate that feels like it’s doing the work for you.)

From there, I cruised home at a recovery pace as the sun set over the mountains, focused mostly on how I could satiate my hunger pangs.

The next morning, I woke up and laced up the AltraFWD Experience once again and cruised around at a nine-minute mile pace for 45 minutes. Although my legs felt sluggish, the shoes felt great. I continued to wear the AltraFWD Experience over the next week or so, logging a long run of 14 miles, a six-mile tempo run and several other intermediate runs.

In my wear-testing, I found the ride of the AltraFWD Experience to be light, stable, and compliant, mildly vibrant but not uncommonly energetic. The wide footprint contributed to an inherently stable ride without inhibiting my ability to run an up-tempo paces, while the asymmetrically beveled heel and moderately rockered outsole seemed to accommodate a variety of footstrike positions and allowed me to quickly transition through the gait cycle.

Did I notice the 4mm heel-toe drop? Not specifically, but not negatively, either. I have run in many Altra shoes over the years and have had great experiences lately running in the zero-drop Rivera 3 (road) and Timp 4 (trail) models, but I tend to feel the difference in the level platform of those models. Did they feel like Altras? They did in the roomy forefoot, but otherwise I couldn’t tell.

Conclusion

For an everyday trainer, the AltraFWD Experience is a lightweight and versatile shoe with plenty of upsides. I’d consider it a do-everything shoe for novice-to-intermediate runners or those who prefer to have one shoe in their quiver.

If I was grading this shoe, I’d give high marks in the A-/B+ range to the fit, upper, comfort, and aesthetics, and I’d score the ride as a solid B+/B, realizing it’s not equipped with a superfoam midsole. And that brings up the obvious point that, if there is a limiting factor to the AltraFWD Experience, it’s the fairly standard EVA midsole foam. It offers a tiny semblance of liveliness, but it pales in comparison to the brand’s softer, high-rebound Altra Ego, Altra Ego Max, and Altra Ego Pro midsole materials found in its most popular road and trail shoes.

How does the AltraFWD Experience compare to other shoes? There are similarities to other popular everyday trainers, including the Hoka Clifton 9 (though not as soft or dramatically rockered), Brooks Ghost 15 (only lighter, more nimble and not nearly as soft), Nike Pegasus 40 (but not as soft or energetic), and Tracksmith Eliot Runner (only lighter, lower drop, and lacking Pebax-based superfoam). But it doesn’t compare at all to everyday trainers like the highly energetic Saucony Endorphin Speed 3 or exorbitantly cushy New Balance Fresh Foam 1080 v13. And it’s not meant to, as it is positioned as a reliable, middle-ground, easily-approachable, every-day trainer and casual shoe.

Ultimately, the AltraFWD Experience needs to be viewed first and foremost through the prism of Altra’s line-up: it’s a pretty good initial offering of a shoe with drop, but not a next-level trainer that’s going to take focus away from Altra’s range of exceptional everyday trainers (Rivera 3, Torin 7, Escalante 3, and Vanish Tempo).

So what’s next for Altra? Lind said the brand isn’t about to make a wholesale swing to low-drop geometries and wouldn’t be revising any of its popular zero-drop road or trail models with secondary versions. It will certainly see what kind of response it gets with the AltraFWD Experience, he said, and continue to evolve and innovate its shoes as it has done since its inception.