Adidas Crazyflight: Performance Review

Adidas isn’t known as a volleyball shoe company, but the adidas Crazyflight has been one of the best selling volleyball shoes for many years. For a long time, they were only sold in women’s sizing, and while I could just buy 1.5 sizes up, those sizes were hard to find.

Relatively recently, adidas added men’s sizing to the Crazyflight line. Read on to dig into my review of one of the best-selling volleyball shoes on the market. 

Disclaimer

Early spoilers here, but it’s important as it affects the whole review. I normally test each shoe that I review extensively. Shoes feel great when they’re fresh, but can get better or worse as they break in. This is why sometimes it takes time for new reviews to come out.

I didn’t test the adidas Crazyflight for very long. Quite frankly, my feet, knees, and back couldn’t take it. I’ll go into this more in the cons section, but the cushioning in the adidas Crazyflight is just not adequate for a volleyball shoe.

The worst impact protection I have ever felt was in the adidas Stabil Next Gen (this is why I haven’t reviewed them yet. They’ll get their own post at some point). The Crazyflight is a close second. I did push through and get some play time in these, though, since I know they’re such a popular shoe for the sport. Just know as you read on that my total test time for these was less than usual.

Pros

Traction

With the disclaimers out of the way, we can focus on what these do well! Adidas did design a good volleyball shoe overall. The most important feature in any court shoe will always be traction. The traction in these is fine. I tested them on both wooden and plastic courts, and even on dusty surfaces, the Crazyflight had a solid grip. They handled that dust especially well, managing to stick without picking up an excess amount of debris.

Lateral Stability

Moving laterally in the Crazyflight felt great. Your foot stays in the footbed and pushing off is very responsive (probably too responsive). The sneaker as a whole is very light so it’s impressive how well the upper manages to maintain lockdown on your foot. It’s a very basic lacing system, but it gets the job done. 

Court Feel

The biggest pro about a setup like the Crazyflight is the court feel. There might not be a shoe with better court feel. The flexibility of the shoe makes it smooth in heel-toe transitions in your approach, and the low-to-the-ground feeling is great. This is a severely double-edged sword, as we’ll discuss in the cons section, but there is no denying that adidas has made a shoe that lets you feel the court when you move around.

Cons

Cushioning

Alright, here we go. I don’t know what adidas is thinking here. Adidas has some great cushioning tech in its repertoire – Lightstrike 2.0, Lightstrike Pro, Jetboost, etc. (some of those are more running tech but running cushioning can be used creatively for court sports).

The Crazyflights use a Boost midsole, which is fine, in theory. In practice, it’s way too thin. I can feel this foam bottoming out when I land.

It’s technically extremely responsive, since when I plant my feet to jump, the foam compresses so much that it’s basically a solid surface to jump off of. This is great for jumping high. Not so great for protecting you from the impact on both ends of the jump though. It’s way too thin under the ball of your foot when you are hitting the ground to push off. There is visibly more foam under the heel of the shoe, but it’s still not enough. 

I think the popularity of this shoe can be explained in two ways: 

1. Some people are smaller and/or younger and won’t bottom out the foam.  
2. Some people are really used to bad footwear choices so their joints are adapted and/or they just don’t know that better options exist.

For reference, as I think it’s important since I’m claiming that most people will bottom out the foam on these shoes, I weigh in at a little over 200 lbs. I know this isn’t very light, but it’s not very heavy either, especially for a sport with so many tall people. If you jump even somewhat high, or are anything but extremely light, the Boost midsole in the Crazyflight is not going to cut it.

Adidas Crazyflight Summary

The adidas Crazyflight seems to be a staple in the volleyball world. I strongly believe that adidas can do better than this. They got everything right except for the cushion, but in a sport that involves max jumps on every point, that’s too important to ignore.

My rating for this shoe is a little odd because it scores well in so many features, but the cushion scores so low, that it ends up with a pretty middle of the pack score. If you’re a libero, these could work for you (although there are still better options if you aren’t worried about cushioning). For any other position, I think cushion is just too important to ignore for the sake of your knees and your future mobility.