How To Tighten Shoelaces - Professor Shoelace

G'Day everyone Ian Fieggen here also known as “Professor Shoelace”.. Today'S video is about tightening shoelaces.. Now with my website having over SIXTY different methods, including basic “Criss, Cross Lacing”. I thought it'd be interesting to compare how the different methods are tightened because there's often quite different. Techniques.. Now, with “Criss Cross Lacing”, it's quite basic. Just simply get your fingers under each crossover work. Your way up the shoe pulling each crossover tight., You can grab under each side if you prefer. And finish at the top of your shoe., But there's variations of “Criss Cross Lacing”.. This variation, for example, is what they call “Lock Lacing”.. It'S criss-crossed most of the way up, so – of course – you tighten that the normal way., But at the top of the shoe the laces feed in a loop through these additional eyelets, and then these lace end [ s ] from the opposite side runs through Those loops., So you end up with these – sort of – – loops, underneath the top bits. And the way that's tightened, is by simply pulling. Notice, those top bits sort of act like a “pulley”. They pull outwards. That provides extra tightening force to really lock the lacing into the heel., And then you pull outwards and the locking bits lock back down.. You can do multiple steps to really give additional tightening – – each time you pull that it really uses leverage to pull that extra tight., And then you pull outwards to again lock those down. And then – of course – you tie it as normally.. So that's ... couple of variations of “Criss Cross Lacing”.. Now things get interesting when you do some other variations. This one, for example, is my own personal favourite.. It'S what I call “Over Under Lacing”., So every second crossover is either “over” – running over the top – – or “under” – running underneath.. The advantage is, there's less friction so on a small shoe. You can simply pull from the top and the whole lot will tighten., But on a tall boot like this, you only have to grab every SECOND crossover instead of every SINGLE crossover and pull tight.. So that saves you about half the amount of time of tightening.. Similar thing with this, what they call “Double, Helix Lacing”., The laces, run in a– sort of a – double helix. And to tighten those – – forget about the bottom ones and start from these second ones upwards, and just pull two at a time to tighten.. Here you – again – pull two at a time to tighten. And then by the time–. Now we've reached the top of the shoe. We just pull the last ones to tighten those., So that gives you an efficiency of – you know – half the ... tightening time.. Now we've got a similar thing with a straight lacing method.. This one is called “Straight Bar Lacing”, and this is called “Straight European Lacing”.. Now the “Straight Bar” is similar to the previous ones in that – – ignore the bottom two and we start from the ... second two upwards and pull to tighten.. Now we start from the next two and pull those to tighten.. Now you'll find that you actually have to sort of pull – – those ones I've had to pull from the left-hand side these ones. I have to pull from the right-hand side. Next two up. I pull from the left-hand side. And then the final two, which is the last horizontal plus the – – the top loose ends.. Obviously I can just pull both those at the same time. And .... There we go. We'Ve got that whole one tightened., So that's also got a 2:1 efficiency in that I only have to pull groups of two and ... tightens in about half the time of “Criss Cross Lacing”.. Now, on the other hand, “Straight European Lacing”, which has this underlying zig-zag of laces (, not sure if you can see that very well ), You actually have to do one at a time, because you pull this one from the left. Next one you pull from the Right. Just hold that. Pull that from the right to hold it tight, pull the next one from the left. Next one from the right. Next one from the left. Next one from the right.. So it's a little bit confusing you sort of have to alternate left and right. And ... eventually you'll get to the top.. I'D straighten those out later, but that's another story.. Okay. Now next we have a couple of military lacing methods. This one's one. They call “Army Lacing”, and the idea is that it allows flexibility of the– of tall boots like army boots.. Now to tighten these, you generally have to grab these “loops” [ or “verticals” ], which are sitting on the outside. Kind of hard to get your fingers under these inner crossovers.. You pull these loops. Go up to the next ... pair of loops – – pull those. Up to the top pair and pull those., So that's relatively easy to tighten.. Now this is a really unusual military method. They call “Gippo Lacing”., Looks exceedingly complicated with the way it's laced, but the idea is that you end up with these large tightening loops at the top. And pulling those loops – – what happens is that one pair of loops pulls both lots of lacing from the Middle and the other loop pulls both lots of lacing from the top, and the bottom. Now bit hard to demonstrate this when it's not on a foot. But if this was actually on my foot, pulling both loops at the same time would tighten the whole lacing from the top bottom and middle – – simultaneously Very interesting lacing, but – – like I say – bit hard to demonstrate here., Okay. Next, we have another couple of military methods.. Actually, this one is a method they call– – sorry this is “Ladder Lacing”.. Now each pair of eyelets is actually– loops under the previous– previous crossover.. So we begin with going underneath that vertical section there that's looped under., So at the next pair of eyelets, we actually have to pull these ones here from the side. Similar to that– that “Army Lacing”. Pull them from the sides.. Now this is a method that actually – – sort of – forms a “locking” at each pair of eyelets, because when you pull one – – notice how it's sort of locking under the previous– previous vertical there. So you work your way up the shoe and, at the top you'd end up with the whole lot nicely tightened and locked.. Now this is another one that actually loops under the previous rows – – this is one that they call “Zipper Lacing”. And – again – you sort of have to grab these external bits and pull. Now pulling there once again that “locks” that row in place. Pulling Here, locks, the next higher row. And so forth. All the way up, the shoe. And you'll end up with this unusual lacing. That looks a bit like a giant “zipper”.. So that's two methods where you actually have to – sort of – pull from the sides. Simultaneously. Now – finally – we've got – couple of– couple of tricky methods here.. Now there are both methods where you sort of have to start at the top and work down and work back up.. This is a method called “Double Back Lacing”, and it's specifically so that it will be quite tight near the top, because – – to tighten it – you have to – sort of – – start from that point. There go down two rows and tighten [ again. ] go down two rows and tighten.. When you get to the bottom of the shoe, you go up one row and tighten., Then up two rows and tighten. And keep going up – – in this case, we've already reached the top of the shoe – and tighten. And there's your finished very tight lacing. “Lattice Lacing” is somewhat similar in that you start from the bottom. You go up three rows and pull that tight.. Then you go up one row to pull it tighter.. Then you got ta go down here to pull those ones tight. And then up one row to pull them tight.. Finally, up to the top and pull those tight.. So it's a kind of awkward one to tighten, but – let's face it – this one has killer, looks that probably make it worthwhile. Anyway. That'S a quick look at different lacing methods and how they're tightened., If you want more information about any of these shoe lacing methods, you'll find them on Ian's Shoelace Site www.fieggen.com/shoelace, Thanks for watching – have a great day.