Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot

I learned it around 5 years ago and it just makes tying my shoes feel so effortless, I also feel like it holds on a little better than the previous knot I was using. It took me a while to get the mechanics down.

I only realized in my 30s that I had been tying my shoelaces wrong my whole life and a super minor change in my method has changed them from coming undone multiple times per day (unless double knotted), to instead staying tied the whole day with just a standard shoelace knot [0] (also on Ian's site).

This article's web page actually has the essential note:

> NOTE: If your finished knot comes out crooked (eg. loops pointing heel-to-toe), it's probably because you tie your Starting Knot the opposite way to mine. This will result in an un-balanced knot, which sits crooked and comes undone more easily. See my Granny Knot page for more information.

Back when I still used to browse Imgur, there was a post illustrating how to identify and fix this easy to make mistake. It turns out that I was starting with the lace left-over-right as opposed to right-over-left (or vice-versa, not sure off-hand).

This quite literally changed my life, just a small muscle memory tweak and now my laces easily stay tied the whole day with a regular knot which is also super easy to release as well.

[0]: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/standardknot.htm

Edit:

I see he has a page dedicated to this mistake here: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

Stumbling across Ian's site almost two decades ago was kinda-sorta life-changing, because I'd been tying the "granny knot" my whole life and had to resort to double-knotting to keep my damn shoes tied.

Ditched the granny knot for the Ian's Secure Knot (https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm), and have been using that ever since for every pair of laced shoes I own.

Although that's a different knot (I use the one originally referenced), I taught my kids the knot in the animation and it's worked out well.

Added benefit: adults are impressed when they see my kids tie their laces.

My kids learned to tie their shoes this way from this site and never knew differently. They're 20 and 17 now.