Kane Revive Performance Review

If you’re into fitness and you have any social media accounts, chances are you’ve been targeted with ads from Kane Footwear, the company whose signature recovery shoe, the Kane Revive has been on the feet of everyone from running influencer Matt Choi to surfer Brianna Cope to (former?) superstar rapper Drake.

Given how much we all see this shoe on our social media channels, it’s been difficult for the team at WearTesters to find anyone outside the influencer world who’s actually tried the Kane Revive. So is the company actually blowing up with their NCAA licensing deal or are the right people just wearing these in viral videos?

Then again, we all remember when Ten Thousand seemed like an Instagram brand and now they’re one of the most respected fitness gear companies in the world.

To discover if the Kane Revive is truly the game changer that’s been promised by influencers and advertising everywhere, the WearTesters team (Editor’s Note: specifically Arune) purchased its own pair to try out – meaning Kane had no involvement in this review, didn’t receive an advance look at it, and has not attempted to influence it.

How does the Authors Train?

Arune Singh (age 42, 5’11”, 210lbs): Trains daily with functional fitness programming provided by Deadboys Fitness, founded by Colby “Seth Rollins” Lopez and Josh Gallegos, along with logging 30-40 miles of running per week. He also has a medical history of Sleep Apnea and Myasthenia Gravis, meaning Arune’s focus is on lean muscle mass.

What is the Kane Revive?

Kane describes it as:

A transformative, sustainably designed injection molded sneaker for active recovery.

Recovery & Comfort

How do you measure recovery?

That’s something I wasn’t sure about when I got the Kane Revive, but I noticed something after my first week wearing them – my whole body felt better.

It all starts, unsurprisingly, with your feet feeling like they’re being massaged by the raised nodes on the footbed. Though it took me a couple days to get used to the feeling, I did actually get used to it, unlike other recovery footwear that always seem to alter my gait in uncomfortable ways.

I also noticed my legs seemed to recover faster from increasingly intense cardio and lower body sessions, in a way that honestly made me forget to do some of the mobility movements and massage gun therapy I normally do (which I then paid for later, but that’s on me).

Most importantly, I’ve had recurring back pain for years and it has entirely disappeared in the last few weeks of wearing these shoes. I walk on hardwood floors a lot (the downside of work from home) and I never considered the impact on my body till I started wearing the Revive on a regular basis.

I wear the Kane Revive for 8-10 hours per day and I never want to take them off. The Revive weighs next to nothing on your feet and the dual density cushion helps you keep moving like you’ve got pillows under your feet (but without the instability of a max cushion shoe).

So, yeah, absolutely GOAT’d as the kids (maybe?) say (Editor’s Note: you’ve never sounded so uncool).

Training

We don’t review a ton of recovery shoes here (though we do have a Best Slides guide), so the traditional fitness categories of “Training” and “Cardio” might not seem fair, but one of the things that Kane and their influencers claim is that this shoe is great for a variety of activities, including some fitness. With that in mind, I’ve put it through the paces in some key categories and feel like it’s fair to retain these categories, albeit graded on a curve.

The Kane Revive is NOT a training shoe and so I wasn’t expecting it to be very good in the gym.

That was confirmed by the lack of traction on some of the surfaces. It wasn’t terrible on rubber floors, but it pretty much slipped on every other surface (making box jumps extra dangerous).

However, I’d actually put these in the “hotel gym” category of the On Cloud X 3. While not as versatile, the Revive is still incredibly stable for the kinds of lighter squats and deadlifts you’d get in, well, a hotel gym.

I wouldn’t recommend these for explosive movements like the aforementioned box jumps or Olympic movements like cleans, but you can do a surprising amount of basic movements really well in these if you want to (but, again, not our recommendation).

Cardio

Like Training, I wouldn’t normally think about the cardio performance of this shoe, but given all the promotion of this as an active recovery shoe, I had to try. And honestly, it’s surprisingly not terrible! (Editor’s Note: is he saying surprisingly not terrible is a good thing?)

I’ve done short jogs (max 2 miles) in these and found they’re incredibly comfortable, with much less heel slippage than you might expect. I’ve run in shoes where I got less energy return from the midsole and had worse fits, so the Kane Revive really outperforms expectations.

But that’s where the cardio praise ends. I did my normal rowing and shadow boxing tests in these shoes, though neither were really great experiences. In both cases I ended up going barefoot very quickly and preferred it.

Sizing

First, I have to warn everyone that Kane has specific recommendations for sizing and their return policy involves some costs that you may not like.

In my case, I normally wear a 9.5 in my training shoes but I have a slightly wider forefoot so I took Kane’s recommendation to go up .5 size. When I first put on the Revive, I was worried I’d made a mistake and they felt big, but I slowly realized the sizing allowed me full toe splay and to really relax my feet.

Will Kane’s sizing recommendation work for you? I can’t say for sure, but I can say that I’ve enjoyed these shoes enough that it’s worth the risk.

Aesthetics

The Kane Revive looks like the lovechild of a Yeezy Slide and a pair of Crocs. And like both those shoes, the looks really don’t matter. The Revive is so comfortable you won’t care how people think these look.

Luckily, we’re in the age of “ugly” shoes as fashion, so I never think twice once I put these on.

Price

At $75-85 depending on the colorway, the Revive is much more expensive than your basic Crocs Clog ($50), but the feeling on my feet is night and day. I wouldn’t blame anyone for opting for the Crocs, but if you’ve got the budget flexibility, I’d argue for upgrading to the Kane Revive.

Plus, you’re getting a more sustainably made shoe which makes helping our planet another justification for the price difference.

Kane Revive Final Verdict

I don’t think this will be a surprise, but the Kane Revive is the absolute gold standard of recovery shoes with a surprising versatility that makes it an incredible value at $80. I recommend this shoe to anyone engaged in any level of fitness or anyone who suffers from lower back or lower body pains.

Now I gotta order a second pair…