Shoes come untied? Professor Shoelace shows what knot to do

SACRAMENTO - Many of us remember the long-ago day we learned to tie our own shoes.

"I learned how to tie my shoes when I was 3 years old," said Kimberly Gomez Santos, a senior at Sacramento State. "My mom taught me."

"My grandpa taught me how to tie my shoes," said classmate Michaela Graves.

Both women along other students in their Sac State journalism class agreed to help shed light on a problem as old as laced shoes themselves– while exploring an option aimed at keeping their shoes tied.

"When I'm rushing to class and my shoelaces come undone, it's kind of annoying. For me and everyone behind me," Amaya Segundo said with a chuckle.

What these students didn't realize is that the people who teach children how to tie their shoes are probably teaching them wrong.

A 2017 study by U.C. Berkeley demonstrated with a treadmill how a traditional shoelace knot gradually comes undone through inertia from the simple process of walking or running.

"Where Berkeley was focusing on the ends of the shoelaces coming undone, they hadn't focused on the mechanics of the actual knot itself– the underlying power of the knot slipping and loosening," explained Ian Fieggen, an Australian computer specialist whose interest in shoelace knots began 40 years ago when tried to figure out why his cotton laces frequently broke.

Fieggen discovered the problem was a lopsided knot he'd been tying since childhood that caused uneven wear on the shoelaces.

"I didn't realize at the time I was tying a granny knot, a knot that is inherently insecure."

Fieggen simply changed the direction the fingers take before finishing the bow and in the process created what is known in Australia as a reef knot– what Americans would recognize as a square knot. And it not only prevented uneven wear on the laces, the knot also helped keep them from coming untied.

Fieggen proudly calls it the "Ian knot," and the discovery led him to publish a book and website showing how to tie it and many other alternative knots. Along the way Fieggen earned the nickname Professor Shoelace.

A side benefit of the Ian knot is that it can be faster than tying a traditional shoelace knot. In a YouTube tutorial, Fieggen ties an Ian knot in under two seconds. But be warned: Your results may vary!

We presented Ian Fieggen's YouTube clip to the journalism class along with a detailed step-by-step diagram and asked students to tie their shoes with an Ian knot.

They quickly found– as you might– it's not easy to unlearn muscle memory developed over decades.

Failed attempts by multiple students led to laughter among all of them.

"It's really difficult," Kimberly Gomez Santos announced. "My brain wants to go one way and my hands want to go another."

Now you know why you might still remember the first time you learned to tie your shoes.