Nike Joyride joins Nike Air and Nike React as the latest proprietary innovation within the company’s diverse array of cushioning platforms. Joyride is engineered to help keep legs fresh by delivering a personalized underfoot experience with great impact absorption in a surprisingly light, energy-returning package.
Nike Joyride is a Nike-only, proprietary cushioning system made of thousands of TPE beads.*
@ Nike 
© Nike
The beads are placed within zonally-tuned pods, which allows the foam to expand in all directions (we call this multi-dimensional displacement).**
The system creates a dynamic footbed that forms to your foot and feels personalised to you.
The pod scale is based on how the foot strikes the ground when in motion. The heel pod, for example, is bigger to absorb impact, while those at the forefoot are prepared to facilitate a smooth transition forward.***
The unique sensation is almost like running on bubbles.
© Nike
The engineering behind it:
*Joyride is the result of intense, iterative trialing. One hundred and fifty materials were tested before landing on a TPE (a copolymer of plastic and rubber) for the beads.
**Engineering the Pods also helped solve the problem of the beads migrating too much around the foot and becoming uncomfortable.
With Pods, Nike designers were able to create a zonal-tuning for each respective iteration of Nike Joyride.
***Beads are dispersed within the pods to match the zonal-tuning that aligns with the performance needs of specific points in your stride. (For example, if there are 8,000 total beads in a running shoe, some 50 percent of the beads would cover the heel strike while 5 percent would offer cushioning at the toe.)
© Nike 
© Nike 
© Nike
Where You’ll See It First:
Nike Joyride releases first in the Nike Joyride Run Flyknit. Designed for all runners, the soft cushioning and smooth transition helps ease impact — important whether you’re a seasoned marathoner taking a shake-out run or a novice looking to find your true stride. The Nike Joyride Run Flyknit is available to Nike Members July 25. A global release follows August 15.
Future silhouettes featuring Nike Joyride, tuned specifically for their unique purposes, include the Nike Joyride NSW, Nike Joyride NSW Setter (which debuted during Matthew Williams’ SS20 ALYX show at Paris Fashion Week), the women’s-exclusive Nike Joyride NSW Optik and the Nike Joyride Kids Nova, expressly engineered for the needs of young athletes.