The Art of Locking In: Nike MIND

Everyone talks about getting in the zone.

Nike just built a way to get there faster.

Meet the Nike MIND 001 and 002, two neuroscience-driven silhouettes engineered to sharpen focus before you train, race, or do anything remotely intense. Ten years of research, design headaches, and lab testing led to this: footwear that’s built not to move, but to prepare you to move.

Underfoot are 22 independent foam nodes, bonded to a flexible, water-resistant base that moves like a living surface.

Each node acts like a piston and gimbal, sending micro feedback through your feet. Translation: your brain feels the ground in real time.

This interaction activates key sensory areas of the brain, the ones tied to balance, focus and awareness. The more tuned in your feet are, the sharper your head becomes.

Call it neural prep. Or, less romantically, very smart foam.

Ten Years, Countless Prototypes, One Strange Idea

It took over a decade of engineering headaches to make the MIND platform work. Nike’s Mind Science Department (yes, that’s a real thing) built one of the world’s only mobile brain-and-body imaging labs to study how athletes’ nervous systems fire under pressure.

The result? A completely new category of gear that sits between preparation and performance, designed not for how you move, but how you think when you move.

Two Ways to Tune In

• MIND 001 – The mule. Slip on, zone in. Easy-on design meets that 22-node base. Ideal for the quiet before the storm.

• MIND 002 – The sneaker. Anchors your foot for all-day focus. Same neural tech, more structure. For when you’re already halfway to training but not quite ready to stop thinking about it.