I have just celebrated 10 years since I bought my first elevators – the 4 inch (10cm) Ischias were my first loves if you want to know, aaaah – and I have to tell you I remain absolutely and increasingly convinced that they are the ONLY option if you want to add height. In fact more than ever I can see – particularly looking back and reviewing everything – that everything I did before was a kinda lead-in to ‘the real thing’ – elevators.

I have mentioned before in my posts that before I finally decided on elevators, I had spent a fair amount of time adding lifts to ‘normal’ footwear and aiming to get as high as I could. And part of the reason for this was that I did not have a greatly positive perception of elevators: at the outset of my journey adding height, there was not a lot available which could in any sense be described as fashionable or even up-to-date. But by the time I looked again in 2014 it really had all totally changed.

I’m moved to write this because I get emails from guys asking for advice (I post about height in various places) and it’s interesting that many many still ask simple but revealing stuff about “are elevators OK?” (having seen a posting by ‘be-happy-with-your-height’ on some site saying that elevators are proved to cause wars or your ears to fall off (‘FACT’).

I am not fully sure of what elevators were like in, let’s say, 2009, but if they were anything like the ones I bought in 2014 then I really wish I had taken the plunge and done it all many years earlier. I too had doubts which were fuelled by slightly odd perceptions: odd perceptions not backed up by anything other than kinda hunches or a weird logic that “they just can’t work, I mean, why would they?”

It’s odd that when a solution proposes itself to people they often think their way out of trying it. Finally a decade ago last month I did indeed try the solution, genuinely thinking: “Well if I get these and they do not work, then OK I have wasted my money but I at least know”. Of course the opposite happened, the comfort of those 4 inchers against my agonizing two inches of  standalone lifts was a joy. No-one noticed I had added an additional couple of inches. The rest is history and I have surprised myself with buying at least half a dozen different pairs in the subsequent 10 years.

Ah but there’s another anniversary for me I guess, and it goes back further, back another ten years into my teens TWENTY years ago – and that was when I started seriously adding height. This was by using various degrees of separate lifts and foam and all kindsa stuff jammed into standard footwear. With varying degrees of success and often very uncomfortable I managed to get up to about two inches or 5cm added height. Useful, OK, and a help when I later bought elevators much higher, but OMG I really wish that that ten years without elevators had been shorter in time, and that the ten years WITH elevators had been longer!

So my advice to anyone thinking about it all, do not agonise, don’t find yourself waiting ten years with lifts jammed into your Nikes or Timberlands. Get your first pair at a reasonable height, and you will be amazed at the difference.