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In a previous lifetime, my idea of a long-distance hike was a music festival. For four days, I’d parade across dusty fields or clotted city streets, traipsing from stage to stage in pursuit of the next show. Who knows how many miles I clocked in those peripatetic bursts, but at that extended moment—a music critic in his 20s, way more committed to partying than pulmonary fitness—it was the exercise I knew best.

Not long after I crossed the threshold into 30, though, that lifestyle caught up with me. Headed west on Gay Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, I sank onto the sidewalk and pulled off my boot, squeezing my left foot as though trying to force it back together. It was broken, I knew, a stress fracture from all these steps; why else would each step now feel like another new knife fight, as though someone were jamming a blade between my bones? I endured, switched into a pair of sneakers and limped around Tennessee until the festival’s end.

Back home, my symptoms suddenly subsided, appearing only sporadically during the next few years as I became obsessed with distance running. But in 2019, soon after I entered Maine some 2,000 miles into a northbound thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, that old ache returned. Was my foot broken, my hike done? Nope.

After staying up late one night in an AT lean-to for a tailspin into online medical sleuthing, I realized it was cuboid syndrome, when the pointy joint on the side of your foot shifts slightly out of line for a spell. With just enough bandwidth to stream a few video tutorials, I learned something called the cuboid squeeze and fixed it myself.

But now, I don’t even need that technique. After 11,000 miles of hiking and countless more miles of road running in almost every state in the country, I simply never leave home without a 1.5-ounce piece of sculpted silicone that’s changed my fitness and the way I travel: toe spacers.

Wait, What Are Toe Spacers—And Why Are They So Popular?

Toe spacers are having an unexpected moment. There are, right now, some 38 million TikTok videos that mention them. The Wall Street Journal has suggested they’re a panacea, and the New York Post notes they are “transforming people’s lives.” Neurosurgeon and frequent TV medical commentator Sanjay Gupta, Philadelphia Eagles star Lane Johnson, body-positive model Ashley Graham: They’ve all become advocates for a fitness craze I never expected to work, in late 2019, when I was desperate for anything to help me run again.

After finishing the Appalachian Trail, my first long-distance hike, my body was a mess—every attempt to return to running felt like another litany of physical insults. I’d already gone to multiple physical therapists and yoga classes, trying to recover, when a young pedorthist building custom inserts for my shoes took one look at my feet and told me I needed toe spacers. Bunions were forming on the sides of my feet, and my little toes were starting to scrunch into claws, or hammer toes. I needed, he said, to spread my toes back out after years of stuffing them into running and hiking shoes that squeezed them together. He pulled a clear zippered pouch from the wall and asked me to try them—Correct Toes, curved ribs of silicone with three holes through which your middle toes slide.

For the next several months, I wore them almost everywhere, tucked between the toe socks he’d also recommended and inside shoes with wide toe boxes, like Topos or Altras. I winced when I had to take my shoes off anywhere, knowing someone would inevitably exclaim “What are those?!” when they saw my spacers. But in the best way, my feet have never been the same again.

Which Toe Spacers Should I Buy and Try?

As best as I can tell, Correct Toes—developed by a podiatrist and runner named Ray McClanahan, who I interviewed for Outside in 2022—are the most expensive models on the market, at $65 per pair. They’re also the only ones I’ve ever needed, because they haven’t warped or ripped after five years of sporadic use. (More on “sporadic” in a bit.) I’ve never once resented what I paid.

But there are more affordable options now: There’s a $15 Correct Toes lookalike on Amazon, though some reviews there suggest you indeed pay for what you get. PrimalStep’s version for the same price looks more rugged, and I am certainly entertained by the idea of black toe spacers to match my endurance-black toenails. Correct Toes occasionally slip out from between my digits, so I like the way the Naboso Splay and The Foot Collective’s bright green Wild Toes wrap around all five. (The inclusion of an exercise band is a welcome bonus, too.)

You can even try foot-alignment socks with built-in toe spacers from Happy Feet, though I am slightly suspect of the oversized spacers that look more like toe bracelets from Yoga Toes for a reason I’ll get into right now.

So, How Do I Use Toe Spacers?

At the start, slowly. Have you ever stretched a muscle for the first time in a while, maybe because you noticed a new stiffness in your body? It was uncomfortable, right? That’s how toe spacers will feel for a bit, as you begin the business of prying apart bones, tendons, and ligaments that have been stuck inside narrow shoes for most of your life. I started with 15 minutes a day and gradually increased until I was wearing them almost all of the time, taking care to remove them before I fell asleep. (There is some suggestion that they restrict blood flow, especially at night; my toes simply feel stiff when I wake up with them still on.) Yoga Toes aren’t appealing to me, because they’re too big to slip inside shoes.

These days, I don’t use them all the time. My feet feel better, because I’ve changed my entire routine—foot socks always, Topo tennis shoes with wide toe boxes unless I’m “dressing up,” and a regimen of toe exercises using resistance bands. But whether I’m hiking across the country or going to another music festival, I always have a single toe spacer in my bag, ready to slot between my toes if my cuboid slips its position, as it sometimes does, or my arches begin to ache as though they’re on fire. I rarely travel with two toe spacers these days, because both of my feet generally don’t hurt at the same anymore. I’ve spent years learning how to manage them, after all.

During a recent 1,200-mile trek along Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, I would often end 30-mile days by wearing toe spacers in my tent, letting my toes stretch as I massaged my legs and made my dinner. I don’t think you need to use toe spacers for the rest of your life; I do think, however, they can be crucial for taking care of the body part that actually makes contact with the ground and supports the rest of the body in the process.

Do Toe Spacers Actually Work?

Toe spacers have reached such a critical mass of popularity that you can easily find opposing answers to this question, bandied about from the San Francisco Gate to Today. I’m not a doctor or a foot-health researcher, so I won’t pretend to tell you anything prescriptive or definitive.

But in the last five years, or since I started using toe spacers, I have logged close to 20,000 miles on my feet, whether hiking long trails, running on roads, or, yes, attending music festivals. I also turned 40. But I have rarely felt stronger as a hiker or a runner than I do right now, and I’ve had no substantive problems with my feet in a long time. My knees are better, too, and knee pain was often linked with the foot woes I experienced.

Again, I’ve never seen toe spacers as a cure-all; I massage my feet, strengthen them, stretch them. But when they ache, whether I’m on a long hike or a reporting trip in another city, a day with toe spacers is my first line of defense. It’s perhaps the best $65 I’ve ever spent on a piece of fitness gear—so much so, in fact, that I bought a second pair in an alternate color so that I can mix and match them as I travel. Hey, I’ve got to keep them looking surprising and ridiculous, since so many people now seem curious about what toe spacers are and if they can change how you feel, too.

Snag $15 Toe Separators Here

Or Here, From PrimalStep

Grayson Haver Currin is Outside’s thru-hiking and trail columnist. He finished the Triple Crown in November 2023, ending with the Continental Divide Trail, and has written about his and others’ adventures on trails across the country since 2019—including, most recently, how you’re hiking downhill wrong, as well as the woman who smashed the Appalachian Trail record, and ridiculously expensive hiking shorts that chafed him anyways. He still takes toe spacers to music festivals and on his adventures.