360 Cleat Technology (Tanel)

Tanel 360 is a sport shoe company founded by a former college football player with a promising future, Mike Tanel.

In his senior year, at Carthage College in Kenosha Washington, the defensive end suffered an orthopedic injury that required reconstructive surgery.

The following year, after intense physical therapy he attempted a pro-career as a walk on free agent with the Green bay Packers. However, Tanel's once outstanding speed and agility were never quite recovered and the Packers finally released him.

Rather than accepting defeat though, Tanel chose to funnel his experience into something positive and began developing shoes that were safer for athletes. The 360 cleat design is one of the products of that research.

Tanel's own career ending injury was caused by an awkward pivoting action. Basically, (from what we can gather) his body twisted one way, but his cleats remained firmly planted. This is a common enough injury, especially amongst large bodied football players, and is also found frequently in baseball and soccer.

The 360 pattern of Tanel is specifically designed to prevent these type of pivot injuries, but along the way, the shoes provide a hell of a lot of performance.

Here is a nice picture of the lay-out.

The 360 design is actually the combination of a few concepts all contributing to a safer cleat pattern:

- perimiter studs assist in external foot shock absorprtion and stud pressure diffusion

- flex grooves add some flexibility while shortening the break-in period

- studs are made from a proprietary copolymer called SpiderFLEX, but we aren't clear if SpiderFLEX refers to the material or the cleat layout, or both. Regardless of the semantics, the results are hexagonal shaped cleats positioned web-like in the forefoot in positions that provide extra stability through a counter-balancing (cantilevered) pattern.

- in the heel two critical post studs add stability and pressure diffusion.

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