Soul Insole: Support as Performance Infrastructure

THE LAB — SOUL INSOLE

By Chris Beaumont

Pickleball’s Foot Problem Starts Before the Pain Does

Pickleball injuries are usually discussed after the fact. A strained calf. A sore Achilles. Plantar fasciitis that appears overnight but has actually been building for weeks.

That framing misses the point.

In reality, most of what breaks down in a player’s body begins much lower down the chain, in a place that rarely gets attention until something forces it into view. The foot absorbs every change of direction, every stop-start exchange, every awkward recovery step. It is not a passive platform. It is the first decision-maker in movement.

That was the starting point of a conversation with Laina Gossman, founder of Soul Insole, on the World Pickleball Podcast. What followed was not a pitch for a product, but a challenge to how players think about support, injury, and adaptation.

And, more quietly, a challenge to how sport footwear itself is designed.

The industry problem nobody notices until it fails

Gossman’s background is not marketing-led or sport-driven in the modern sense. It comes from hands-on biomechanical work, beginning in a shoe store where her employer was a practising biomechanist.

She describes watching people arrive with long-standing pain and leave with a different way of moving. Not through dramatic intervention, but through small mechanical adjustments in how the foot was supported.

That experience shaped her view of orthotics early on, and it has not softened since.

The dominant model in the market, she argues, is still based on replication. A foot is cast, a rigid shape is produced, and the goal becomes correction through constraint. A fixed object designed to control movement.

Her criticism is not that this never works. It is that it misunderstands what the foot is doing during sport.

A running shoe, a court shoe, and an orthotic are not separate tools. They are part of a single system. Change one element and the rest no longer behaves in the same way.

This is where many solutions quietly fail. Not because they are badly made, but because they are conceptually incomplete.

Why rigidity and sport do not always align

The appeal of rigid orthotics is obvious. Stability. Structure. Predictability. For many clinical situations, that matters.

But pickleball introduces a different set of demands. The sport is defined by repeated deceleration and reacceleration over short distances, often on hard court surfaces, with constant lateral loading through the midfoot and forefoot.

In that environment, Gossman argues, rigid support can solve one problem while removing another: the natural ability of footwear to absorb and redistribute impact.

That trade-off is rarely discussed in consumer terms. Players tend to think in binary outcomes. Pain or no pain. Support or no support. But the reality is more complex. Every layer under the foot alters how force travels through the ankle, knee, and hip.

The question is not whether support is present. It is what kind of support is actually being introduced.

Her approach with soft orthotics is built around that gap. Instead of locking the foot into a fixed position, the aim is to guide movement subtly, while preserving the cushioning behaviour of the shoe itself.

It is a quieter intervention. Less corrective, more suggestive.

Pickleball exposes the gap between readiness and demand

If there is one sport that exposes this problem quickly, it is pickleball.

Not because it is extreme, but because it is deceptive.

Players often return to competitive movement after long breaks from structured sport. The cardiovascular system adapts quickly. Tendons, ligaments, and plantar structures do not. The result is a mismatch between perceived ability and physical readiness.

Gossman sees this repeatedly in recreational environments. People who feel “fit enough” to play at full intensity on day one, often after years away from sport.

The consequence is rarely immediate collapse. It is accumulation. Micro strain in the plantar fascia. Small instability events at the ankle. Compensatory loading through the calf and Achilles.

By the time pain becomes noticeable, the process is already established.

Plantar fasciitis, in this sense, is not a sudden condition. It is a delayed recognition of repeated overload.

Support as performance infrastructure, not injury response

Where the conversation becomes more interesting is in how support is framed.

If you’re following how the global game is shifting day by day, the World Pickleball Report breaks this down in our daily briefing.

Most sport discussion treats orthotics as reactive tools. Something used after pain appears. Gossman’s view is closer to infrastructure.

Support, she argues, is not only about preventing breakdown. It also affects how a player transfers weight, stabilises on contact, and maintains balance through repetitive movement patterns.

That moves orthotics out of the purely medical category and into performance territory. Not in the sense of enhancement, but in the sense of consistency.

There is a quiet but important distinction here. A stable foot does not automatically make a player better. But an unstable foot makes repeatability harder to sustain.

In a sport defined by precision under pressure, that matters more than it first appears.

The overlooked factor: adaptation, not correction

One of the more subtle points in Gossman’s thinking is her rejection of static correction as a final state.

Feet, she argues, are adaptable systems. Muscles respond to load. Movement patterns shift over time. A rigid intervention assumes the problem is fixed. Her approach assumes it is ongoing.

That is why she places emphasis on soft guidance rather than hard correction. The goal is not to impose a final shape, but to influence how load is distributed while the body continues to adapt.

It is also why she is cautious about full reliance on rigid devices. Without active engagement, including basic foot mobility and strengthening, external support can reduce intrinsic function over time.

This is where orthotics move from solution to dependency if applied without context.

The distinction is not theoretical. It is observable in how players describe reliance on inserts versus rebuilding strength in the foot itself.

What most players miss about injury signals

Perhaps the most striking part of the discussion is not about technology at all, but awareness.

Gossman describes a common pattern where people normalize discomfort to the point where it stops registering as a problem. Pain becomes background noise rather than feedback.

At that stage, movement quality changes without conscious recognition. Players adjust around discomfort rather than resolving it.

The result is a gradual loss of mechanical efficiency that is only noticed once performance drops or injury appears.

In her view, this is where prevention breaks down. Not at the point of intervention, but at the point of interpretation. Players stop listening to what the body is already signalling.

Final perspective

There is a tendency in modern sport to look for solutions that arrive fully formed. Equipment that fixes, systems that correct, products that remove uncertainty.

What this conversation suggests is less definitive.

The foot is not a stable platform waiting for correction. It is an active structure responding to load, history, and habit. Any system built around it has to account for that movement rather than freeze it.

In pickleball, where players often arrive with competitive intent but uneven preparation, that distinction becomes more than academic.

Because most injuries do not begin with a moment.

They begin with a pattern that nobody stopped to question.

Further Reading

• Latest pickleball news from around the world
• Tournament coverage and results
• Rankings and player profiles
• Regional pickleball coverage

Chris Beaumont

Founder and Editor-in-Chief

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…

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