Author: Brian Davis | Updated: May 15th, 2025
As exciting as a new pair of baseball cleats are, it’s risky to play a game without properly breaking them in first. You’re going to be wearing them for hours, and during that time you’ll be doing a lot of running, shuffling, starting and stopping. If your feet start to hurt, it’s going to negatively affect your performance and make the game not nearly as fun. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. Here’s a few ways to properly break in your new baseball cleats:
Wear Your Cleats:
This is the easiest (and most obvious) way to break in your cleats. Go for a walk (mixing in occasional jumps and sprints) or wear them in the yard while playing catch. Better yet, take a buddy and head to the nearest baseball diamond so you can practice baseball-specific movements like taking grounders, shagging fly balls, shuffling your feet as you prepare to make a throw, or running the bases. These are great ways to break-in your brand new cleats. Just keep the session fairly short, at least at first. If you wear them for too long right out of the box, they could end up hurting your feet. A gradual break-in is more ideal:
Stretch And Flex Your Cleats Manually:
If for whatever reason, you’re unable to break your cleats in by wearing them, you can manually flex them (with your hands). This entails taking the shoe by the toe and heel and repetitively pushing the two parts up toward each other, mimicking how the shoe would bend if your foot was actually in it and you were walking. But don’t stop there. Bend the shoe in as many different directions as you can to break them in effectively. Twist it, turn it, squeeze it. The cleat will probably be stiff and offer resistance. If that’s the case, you can try softening it with a leather conditioner.
Soak Your Cleats:
This is an option used by some players, but since we’re not big fans of soaking brand new shoes in water, it’s our least favorite approach. If you’d like to try this however, let’s discuss how to do it properly. Start by filling a bucket with hot water and place it in front of you. Then, with your socks and cleats on, step into the bucket for 5 to 10 minutes. After taking them out, you can pat dry them with a cloth before walking around. It’s important you’re wearing socks since the goal is to help the upper conform to your foot in a game situation. After walking/playing in them for a while, take the cleats off and put them in an airy indoor location to dry out completely.
Tie Them & Leave Them
Similar to the old-school method of putting a baseball in a glove and tying it closed, you can break-in your cleats by tying them as well. Simply pull the toes up toward the laces (to set the bend in the arch) and tie the forefoot to the back of the foot. Then leave them for a day or two. The constant flex helps make the typically hard sole more flexible.
Why Do Baseball Cleats Need To Be Broken In?
Baseball cleats feature a thicker, harder bottom to accommodate the cleats themselves: Plastic cleats are molded right into the sole and metal cleats are screwed or riveted into the sole. Either way, the sole starts out very stiff. Oftentimes, the leathers used are a bit stiff as well. So it’s a good idea to flex/bend them repeatedly before wearing them for game day. Otherwise, the stiffness could hold you back, limiting your speed and explosion. By the middle or end of the game, you could also have blisters because you didn’t properly break them in first.
Baseball cleats take a beating and need to be replaced once you’re not getting the stability, cushion, and acceleration you need to play your best. Just try not to get yourself in a position where you have to wear new baseball cleats in a game right away. Take the time to break them in. That way you won’t lose a step at the most critical time!
