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Outside Podcast

Dispatches: Can We Please Kill Off Crutches?

Outside Podcast

Outside Podcast

Sports, Wilderness

4.42.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2018

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Almost everyone who’s used underarm crutches agrees: they are terrible. They’re hard on your wrists, they cause falls, they cause nerve damage. This is why almost every country in the world has abandoned them. Except the U.S., where if you go to the hospital with a leg injury, you’re most likely going to leave with adjustable aluminum crutches. In this third installment of our series exploring how gear gets made, we look at the fascinating history of why better designs for crutches haven’t caught on, and whether or not they ever will.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode of the Outside Podcast is brought to you by Adidas, and the all new line of Terex outdoor gear.

0:06.0

I think it is the best kept secret that Ardidas has also an outdoor department.

0:12.0

This is Christian Zw, outdoor design director at Adidas,

0:15.0

and a man with a fairly substantial cold.

0:18.0

You hear my voice is a little bit, is a little bit dark.

0:22.0

But we're going to talk with them anyway because a few years ago

0:25.1

Adidas started a big push to make their outdoor department a lot more friendly to

0:28.9

the outdoors. Cut down on wasted material, cut down on water usage during the manufacturing process.

0:35.0

And they did.

0:36.0

But Adidas is also making more fundamental changes.

0:39.0

They're changing the design of their shoes

0:41.0

to make them less resource intensive to produce.

0:44.0

And that is changing the aesthetic and it looks very intuitive.

0:49.0

So you're looking at the product and you have already the feeling,

0:52.0

okay, that is different to everything I've seen before.

0:55.6

The first thing they did on the running and hiking shoes was refine the placement of the

0:59.2

reinforcements and abrasion resistance.

1:02.0

Some of those choices were to cut down on weight, but they also made the shoes last longer.

1:06.0

Make a product that has a longer lifespan or a longer life cycle.

1:11.0

It is already environmental friendly.

1:14.0

The second thing they did was they started looking closely at which colors they made choose

1:18.1

in.

...

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