How To Tie Your Shoelaces To Prevent Them From Coming Undone Time And Time Again

February 18, 2019

Author By Mambee

Don’t you just hate it when your shoelaces keep coming undone as you’re walking? That’s because the shoelace tying technique most of us learned as children is wrong!

Katrin Kot / Shutterstock.com

Most people tie their shoelaces in what is known as the 'granny knot'. But it’s also the least reliable knot and the easiest one to be pulled undone by the tension that comes with movement.

In the conventional knot, the first part is tied left over right, and the bow is tied in the same direction.

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Actually, there’s a way to tie your shoelaces once and forget about re-tying them back for the rest of the day! That is, if you use the technique known as the 'reef knot'.

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How do you tie the reef knot?

Tying the reef knot is as easy as tying the granny knot, but it comes with one small change.

Try tying the first part left over right and then tying the bow in the opposite direction, like in the video below.

A 2017 UC Berkeley study showed that the reef knot is much more effective than the conventional granny knot. Try the new technique to tie your shoelaces and see for yourself!

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A post shared by Jim Haysom (@jimhaysom) on Oct 25, 2018 at 9:47am PDT

A few different ways to tie your shoelaces

There are a few different techniques that will give you the same knot, namely the bow knot.

Below, you’ll see six ways to make the bow knot, brought to you by Ian Fieggen, known as Professor Shoelace:

Practice the new techniques a few times, and you’ll see they work much better than the one you’ve been using before!