The race to create the top-performing – but also most stylish – pair of sneakers goes on. Retailers have been adopting the latest design trends, investing in athlete partnerships, and turning to social media to keep up. But staying relevant in a competitive, multi-billion-dollar market can be challenging.

How is the industry pushing for innovation? Research labs. A science that analyzes an athlete’s qualitative and quantitative data, to be more specific.

Yahoo Finance’s Brad Smith jumps into his athletic gear and laces up at the New Balance Sports Research Lab where researchers are, quite literally, running tests on him in a quest to find his best-performing shoe, following in the footsteps of marathon record-holder Emily Sisson.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Cindy Mizaku.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRAD SMITH: Yep, that's me, Brad Smith. I'm here at New Balance's research lab in Boston, Massachusetts, where I'm testing their new it shoe, the FuelCell SuperComp Elite V4. Unlike your typical treadmill, this running lab is designed to capture every motion from the contact on the plate beneath me to the 20 plus cameras recording my every move from above with the ultimate goal of creating the best performing shoe.

SAMANTHA SICILIANO: We want to make sure that we're getting that comprehensive look at you as a runner. So some of that information that you're telling us while you're running, how your stride feels, that combined with the quantitative data is really how we can package something to our designers to say, this is what we might want to change or influence.

BRAD SMITH: From the brief snippet of 45 seconds of me running, What can you tell about me as a runner?

JINGER GOTTSCHALL: You are very comfortable running, so you had your shoulders relaxed, your hands relaxed, nothing was really tense. So the actual treadmill wasn't causing you to run differently than I would expect if you were outside. You are more of a heel to midfoot striker. That is actually what we find for around 70% of our runners is more to the back into the midfoot.

BRAD SMITH: Is the data saying that there's a different shoe that I should probably test out?

JINGER GOTTSCHALL: This shoe I would recommend for you for performance and for some of those faster runs.

BRAD SMITH: OK.

JINGER GOTTSCHALL: You don't have any significant either pronation or supination, so I wouldn't put you in anything that's necessarily a stability shoe.