I discovered this site two decades or so ago. I used it to teach my then young son—whose name is, appropriately, Ian—how to tie the fast Ian Knot. My spouse, a kindergarten teacher, used it to learn how to tie student's shoes with Ian's Secure Knot which has been very helpful as kid's shoes with conventional knots tend to come untied on the playground.
Same, I learned about Ian's knot over a decade ago myself and after a lifetime of shoelaces coming undone that finally fixed it for me. Well worth the 10 bucks donation.
"Ian's Secure Knot" is just a rebranding of a knot that is also known as the "Berluti knot", "Tibetan Trekking Knot", "Sherpa Knot" or the "Double slip knot".
It's a great knot, the best way to tie your laces, but spin it as much as you like it's just a bow with a double twist on the second twist, and has existed since long before Ian or Berluti tried to claim it as their own.
It's worth noting that Ian is acknowledging that his not an the Tibetan Trekking Knot are the same (and also the double slit knot). He just says his is a different way of tying it.
And I second that it's the best knot for tying laces. Especially if you have synthetic laces (common on some trekking shoes) that come undone easily.
You're making a granny knot. If you want the loops to stay sideways, you have to reverse directions between the first and second half of the knot. If you tie the first half left-over-right, then the second half has to be right-over-left.
Yeah, the proper knot shouldn't flip up like a granny knot. Granny knot is what I did in the decades until I stumbled across Ian's website. Granny knot would always come undone.
I'll have to give that secure knot a try. My son keeps getting his shoelaces undone, and we tend to solve it with just an extra knot on top, but maybe there's a better solution.
I've been tying my shoes for a couple of years now with his "Ian Knot" method, and it works very well. I never mastered the asymmetrical single-loop method, so all my life I'd been doing the bunny ears. Maybe the asymmetrical method doesn't make sense to me for a symmetrical knot. The Ian Knot makes more sense and is easier and faster.
Others in the family tried it too, but I don't think it stuck with them.
Woah, he spends 60 hours a week? That is some serious dedication. It is nice to know such passionate sites and individuals still exist on the internet today!
Side-note: sites likes these are the old internet that I got to know and love and they embody the spirit of what makes the internet a wonderful place: highly niche sites run by dedicated, passionate people that could only be discovered by word of mouth. This is digital heritage in its purest form.
This site was one of the top sites on Dogpile and then Google in its heyday. Google was the better search engine when it was new, but it wasn't impossible to find things on the early internet before that unless you knew someone.
I'm more of a Surgeon's Knot[0] guy, myself. Just like a "regular" shoelace knot, with one easy-to-remember twist. I don't recall that knot having ever come loose without my intentional untying. Great for ultramarathons when the last thing I want to do after 40 miles is bend over to tie a shoelace. (Especially if I'm wearing Altra shoes, whose laces I'd swear are coated in Teflon and come undone if I look at them too hard.)
i find it funny that as a kid, velcro laces are used, and then as senior, they come back. but in that time in between, "adults" are wasting their time fiddling with laces. it's one of the most useless things when other solutions are available.
US adults (and, to a lesser extent, those in Europe—I gather the loafer caps out a bit lower there as far as how “high up” you can dress it) can get away with wearing slip-on shoes a whole lot of the time, while also looking smarter-dressed than sneakers or what have you.
Doesn’t get you away from laces entirely, but can seriously cut down on how often you have to fiddle with them.
(Or you can come at it the other way and become a Crocs Guy, of course)
It’s somewhat buried in there but I’ve been using the Ianknot for near on 20 years now. It’s just a regular knot but it’s faster to tie than anything else.
The key detail is to not end up with a granny knot. The way you tie your initial overhand knot needs to match so that it sits correctly and doesn’t come untied.
I didn't learn how to tie my shoes correctly until I read this website in my 20s. As a child, I was constantly harangued about keeping my shoes tied, but none of the adults doing the haranguing ever stopped to teach me the difference between a granny knot and a proper square knot. Thanks, Ian, for filling in that gap in my childhood education.
>My own Ian Knot (yes – I'm the inventor) is the World's Fastest Shoelace Knot. Make a loop with both ends and simultaneously pull them through each other to form an almost instant knot.
I doubt he invented that, because I've been tying my shoes with that knot my entire life and I'm 70 years old. My dad showed me this because it's the way he tied his shoes and he was born in 1912.
Ian probably re-invented it, like many people before him, but unlike your dad, and I guess, many other dads, he made a website, and the website became successful.
There are only so many ways to twist a string, and practical knots tend to be simple, knots get reinvented all the time before ending in a book. This is also why there there is no approximation in knox tying. If your knot is slightly different than what's on the book, it is probably another knot (see: square knot, granny knot, thief knot, grief knot), or just a mistake no one bothered to give it a name.
Despite years in the Scouts, both as a participant and a Leader, I am embarrassingly bad at knots. I've always had a terrible time following visual directions given to me by someone trying to teach me a knot, and even worse at following picture guides, videos, gifs etc.
I can reliably teach an 8 year old Cub Scout how to do a reef knot and a clovehitch and that's about it.
For my shoelaces, I was making two buddy ears and just tying them together. I'd seen the Ian knot in a TED video as well as on this site and just couldn't get it. I tried over and over again only for the laces to flaccidly flop out of my hands, or for me to end up with a simple overhand knot.
It struck me one day, like a bolt of lightning, all of a sudden I was able to tie it. And boy am I glad I did. I think I was able to piece together how I needed to avoid a granny knot, but otherwise the inspiration was completely inexplicable.
Tying my laces with the Ian knot is such a small thing, but if you piece together enough of those little things your life will change drastically - for the better. If you can only do one thing for yourself this week, learn the Ian knot.
It doesn't use the "Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot", but it shows that for the typical way of tying your shoes, there is a "strong form" and a "weak form", and shows you how to tell the difference.
I got lucky and have been tying the strong form my whole life, but it's sorta 50/50 depending on how you learn.
I had the photo of the week here once, back in 2016. I used to love doing different shoelace patterns back when I wore Converse, and this website was the best resource for that.
Just checked and another of my photos is one of the Best Of ones, that's neat.
He also has an iOS app which is pretty helpful. My kid needed to tie her shoes a specific way for marching band and Ian's site + app were really valuable in getting her set up. I got in touch with him afterwards and he was really nice to chat with. Definitely reminds me of the early days of helpful stuff you might find on the web.
This was so cool to see again. As a kid, I couldn't learn how to tie shoes, and it was actually this site (and the Ian knot) that helped me finally learn to tie them. I still tie them this way :)
This guy is super cool. I reached out to him a while back to provide feedback and we ended up chatting back n forth for a few weeks. Hope you're well my friend!
This site's so good. I use the Ian knot every time I wear sneakers. It is, by far, the best knot for keeping shoes tight...but it takes some time to get right.
I love that the Ian know exists. But after I learned it I tried it for a while and it didn't stick, I went back to the classic knot I learned as a kid after a week or so.
IIRC the reason was "yield" - I found my Ian knots were often wonky. So you save 2-3 seconds but the tradeoff is mental energy for doing "QA" on your shoelace knot!
But that was many years ago, I should try again. Maybe you just need more practice.
The Two Loop Shoelace Knot is something I'll always use. It's especially excellent for using on little kids shoes, which will come untied all the time. This one never comes untied by itself.
I actually discovered this stuff via a real-life physical book (complete with practice laces built into the cover!) which was published sometime more than 15 years ago.
I just reverse the starting knot (go under the right lace instead of over) and keep everything else the same. You know you got it right when the loops fall perfectly to each side. It rarely if ever comes undone because it has better physics. And it's only one step to learn differently. There's a name for it, but I forget what it's called.
I find the "Ian Knot" works fine for shoelaces, but only if there's a decent amount of excess string. When tying other things (aprons for my kids, drawstrings, etc.), I find that I often have an easier time using the "bunny goes 'round the tree" method, since it requires less excess.
Hey, it's the Ian knot guy! I taught myself the Ian knot like 20y ago and it's one of the best small life skills I've learned. My shoes haven't come untied since. I think I tried to tie a traditional shoelace knot a few years back and I barely remember it.
I used the over under on my boots and slowly converted all of my others over. And the gap lacing for shoes that were just a little too tight (since I started walking more I just went up a half size.).
I found this site and switched to the secure knot many years ago, and my shoelaces have literally never come undone since. One of those quality of life improvements that I now take for granted.
I saw someone tie Ian's knot at a running shoe store in Austin, TX six years ago. I assumed I'd never see it again, but here it is. Ian, you brilliant bastard. God bless you.
One of the timeless treasures of the internet for sure. It's a pity that, nowadays, that kind of content is customarily hidden inside the noisy mazes of some unnecessary Discord server or social platform.
It's time we stopped calling those aberrations "walled gardens" but rather damp dungeons.
I think this would be a series of youtube videos with titles like, "The only lace you'll ever need!", "I can't get my shoes off now!", and "This lacing should be illegal!"
> There's a certain kind of sci-fi premise of "what if every intelligent species has something they're particularly good at."
> Naturally, most stories revolve around something impressive (or damning) for humanity like "war" or "kindness", but in the past I've wondered what kind of story one could make if the answer was "knots".
> Perhaps that's a question for mathematicians, and whether some facility for topological knot-thinking might be very handy in some kind of physics or engineering.
It is sad to see that Ian is struggling to fund the site: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/support.htm