Abstract:
A heel yoke system for securing a person&#39;s shod feet to skis, roller skates, crampons, or any other paraphernalia wherein the placement of the heel yoke is adjustable to provide a perfect fit for almost any kind of shoe over a wide range of sizes.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    This application claims the benefit of Provisional Patent Application No. 61/400,463 for “Weight Lifting Sandals and Their Weights” filed on Jul. 27, 2010 by Thomas Jay Zeek 
         [0002]    Much of the peripheral hardware shown in this application first appeared in Provisional Application for Patent No. 61/191,171 filed on Sep. 4, 2008 for “Weight lifting shoes and their weights” from Thomas Jay Zeek, and is shown in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/583,854 filed on Aug. 26, 2009 for “Weight Lifting Shoes” from Thomas Jay Zeek. 
     
    
     FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT 
       [0003]    Not Applicable. 
       SEQUENCE LISTING OR PROGRAM 
       [0004]    Not Applicable. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0005]    This invention is for a method of attaching a person&#39;s shod feet to devices such as snow boards, skis, roller skates, etc. It is a heel yoke that is very adjustable which works with straps to fit a wide variety of shoes and shoe sizes to hold a person&#39;s foot securely to whatever apparatus it is a part of. 
         [0006]    Finding ways to affix ice skates, skis, roller skates, crampons, and other paraphernalia to a person&#39;s shod feet has been an ongoing problem for centuries. Most people beyond a certain age remember the old roller skates that used a key to tighten them onto the sole of a shoe and a leather strap over the ankle to secure their heel to the roller skate. Those contraptions normally worked well enough for about fifteen minutes but the roller skate often came off of the user&#39;s foot at the front end as was left hanging by the leather strap. The invention was clever enough but it needed improvement to be used for anything important. 
         [0007]    A very secure system for attaching crampons to boots can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,471 to Warner but that system requires the user to wear heavy boots to protect their ankles from some of the hardware and the front clip part of the crampons will only fit on certain kinds of shoes and boots. 
         [0008]    U.S. Pat. No. 7,040,633 to Coburn shows a very secure and comfortable system for affixing roller skates to a shod foot but it requires that the shoes be made with a special part on the heel to work with that system. Its bulkiness also would make an issue of where to store them when they&#39;re not being used and its large elaborate parts would be expensive to manufacture 
         [0009]    Innumerable configurations of straps have been devised to secure sandals to people&#39;s feet and many of those configurations might be used to attach a ski or roller skate to a shod foot but straps alone will almost always have some give in every direction and aren&#39;t really practical when something needs to be really secure. 
         [0010]    Another way people have sought to solve this problem is by the use of boots or shoes that are specifically designed to attach to skis or bicycle pedals. That system is very effective and also very expensive, and it normally renders the shoe or boot useless for all other activities. 
         [0011]    The problem of affixing things like skis and roller skates is so difficult that sellers of roller skates in the United States have mostly given up, and sell almost exclusively roller skates that have their own shoe or boot permanently and integrally attached to the skates. This setup has been made more practical with the advent of cheap imports, but it is still a problem for parents to buy new roller skates every time their child&#39;s shoe size changes. It even brings up the question of whether their child is even going to do any roller skating before their shoe size changes again. 
         [0012]    The use of integrally attached shoes or boots, or of specialized boots such as ski boots is not only expensive but it can also make activities such as roller skating, skiing, and snowboarding impractical if not impossible for people who need special shoes because of bone deformities or injuries to their feet, or who need one shoe sole thicker than the other. 
         [0013]    There remains a need for and it is the object of the current invention to provide a means for attaching skis, roller skates, climbing equipment, and other paraphernalia to a person&#39;s shod feet that is inexpensive, highly adjustable, compact, and extremely reliable and effective. 
       BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0014]    The current invention is an adjustable, rigid, open backed heel yoke system that works in conjunction with straps and buckles to fit and hold securely to a wide range of shoes and boots. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0015]      FIGS. 1-3  are various views of a weight lifting sandal that is made with the heel yoke of this invention. 
           [0016]      FIGS. 4A &amp; 4B  show a weight lifting sandal with the current heel yoke correctly strapped to a user&#39;s shod foot. 
           [0017]      FIGS. 5A-5C  show a person doing various exercises with weight lifting sandals that have the heel yoke of this invention. 
           [0018]      FIGS. 6 &amp; 7  are exploded views of the weight lifting sandal shown in  FIGS. 1-5C . 
           [0019]      FIG. 8  shows a roller skate that is made with the heel yoke of this invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
       [0020]    A preferred embodiment of the current invention is shown in  FIGS. 1  (rear perspective),  2  (front perspective), and  3  (top view). 
         [0021]      FIGS. 1-3  show a weight lifting sandal made with the adjustable heel yoke of this invention. The weight lifting sandal is an article of footwear which enables a person to pick up weights with their feet. The weight lifting sandal is equipped with tabs  64 L and  64 R that attach to corresponding hardware on weights or weight holding devices that are made for use with these sandals.  FIGS. 5A-C  show a person doing exercises with these sandals. 
         [0022]    The heel yoke  12  is basically U shaped and it has an open back design so that shoes and boots of varying shapes will fit into it. It is designed to only contact the user&#39;s shoe above the user&#39;s heel because if it applies pressure below the user&#39;s heel it might tend to pull their shoe off. It also has a slight front to back curve to make it fit the heel of a person&#39;s shoe at the correct angle at the top. 
         [0023]    The heel yoke  12  is attached to the heel yoke anchors  14  by means of holding screws  22  that protrude through horizontal slots  18  in the heel yoke anchors and through vertical slots  16  in the bottom ends of the heel yoke. The holding screws  22  are fitted with washers  20  and wing nuts  24 . 
         [0024]    The heel yoke anchors  14  can slide in and out of the sandals to adjust them for the width of the user&#39;s shoe. This is accomplished by loosening the width adjustment screws  28  no more than about half of a turn and then pushing or pulling the heel yoke anchors into the desired position, and then tightening the width adjustment screws again. The width adjustment screws  28  go into tee nuts  30  that are embedded in the body of the sandals. The tee nuts  30  are visible in  FIGS. 6 and 7 . This process only needs to be done once until the user gets new shoes and then it can be repeated for the new shoes. 
         [0025]    The heel yoke anchors  14  do not have to fit the width of the user&#39;s shoes tightly because the sandals have a non-slip surface  60  which will not allow the user&#39;s foot to move around, although tightness of the heel yoke anchors can be used in some applications if desired, as in the roller skate shown in  FIG. 8 . The non-slip surface  60  is made from the same sandpaper type of material that is normally found on the decks of skateboards. 
         [0026]    The wing nuts  24  should be loose when the user first places their foot onto the sandal and when the user has their foot placed correctly on the sandal they can then push the heel yoke  12  tightly against the back of their shoe. This is the major object of this invention. The heel yoke of this invention can be positioned forward and backward and at varying heights and tilts so they will fit a wide variety of shoe styles, will continue to fit over years of shoe size changes, can be shared or handed down among different members of a household, and boots are never required to protect the ankles or the Achilles tendon. 
         [0027]    With their foot placed on the sandal and the heel yoke  12  pressed firmly against the back of their shoe the user can tighten the wing nuts  24  to lock the heel yoke into that position. The user then feeds the long strap  34  back &amp; forth across their shoe through the buckles  42  on the front straps  38  and finally through the buckle  42  on the heel buckle strap  36  and then presses the long strap  34  back onto itself. The long strap  34  is hook &amp; loop material and the long strap&#39;s end  35  is the hook material while the rest of the long strap is loop material. 
         [0028]    The long strap  34  and the heel buckle strap  36  are attached to the heel yoke  12  by circular shaped fasteners, in this example they are ordinary brass grommets  32 , which allow the direction of the straps to be changed as needed to make the straps lay flat on the user&#39;s shoes, and the same is true of the front straps  38  being attached by the front grommets  40 . It is desirable to make the length of the heel buckle strap adjustable. 
         [0029]      FIGS. 4A-B  show the weight lifting sandals with the current heel yoke system correctly strapped to a user&#39;s shod foot. 
         [0030]      FIGS. 5A-C  show a person using weight lifting sandals with the current heel yoke system to do various exercises. When the straps are cinched down correctly the heel yoke system of this invention prevents any sporting gear from moving or becoming maladjusted even under extreme or prolonged stress such as would be experienced from lifting weights and walking with these sandals. The straps do not have to be uncomfortably tight for this invention to work. 
         [0031]      FIG. 6  shows an exploded view of a weight lifting sandal with the heel yoke system of this invention without the straps  34 ,  38 ; the non-slip surface  60 ; the covering plate  50 ; or the grommets  40 . 
         [0032]    The heel yoke anchors  14  go into the recesses  44  and the tee nuts  30  which are barely visible go into the width adjustment slots  26 . The tee nuts  30  protrude through holes  47  in the base plate  46  by less than the thickness of the heel yoke anchors  14  so the heads of the width adjustment screws  28  will contact the heel yoke anchors before they hit the tee nuts. The use of the width adjustment screws  28  is described in paragraph 0024 above. The only reason the tee nuts  30  protrude at all is to maximize the number of threads in the tee nut so they won&#39;t be stripped. If the base plate  46  was thicker then the tee nuts  30  could be flush with the base plate  46 , and the width of the width adjustment slots  26  would be reduced to the diameter of the width adjustment screws  28 . 
         [0033]    The depth of the recesses  44  is exactly equal to the thickness of the heel yoke anchors  14  so that the covering plate  50  will make direct contact with the heel yoke anchors to help hold the heel yoke anchors down. 
         [0034]      FIG. 6  also shows detail of the holding screws  22 , wing nuts  24 , and the washers  20  that hold the heel yoke  12  to the heel yoke anchors  14 . 
         [0035]    The holding screws  22  have a thin flat head to minimize interference with ingress &amp; egress of the user&#39;s shoe. They go through the horizontal slots  18  in the heel yoke anchors  14  and then through the vertical slots  16  in the heel yoke  12 . The slots  16  &amp;  18  are what make this embodiment of this invention work. The horizontal slots  18  allow the holding screws  22  and thereby the heel yoke  12  to be positioned forward &amp; backward and the vertical slots  16  allow the heel yoke to be positioned at any desired height. 
         [0036]    After the holding screws pass through the heel yoke anchors and the heel yoke they are fitted with washers  20  and wing nuts  24  that are tightened to hold the heel yoke in the desired position. The holding screws  22  are made by filing down the heads of carriage bolts because carriage bolts have the square section  23  that prevents them from turning inside of the horizontal slots when the user is trying to tighten the wing nuts. 
         [0037]    A thin layer of rubber can be put on the outside of the heel yoke anchors for increased friction to help hold the heel yoke in place but for most applications that is unnecessary. 
         [0038]      FIG. 7  is an exploded view of the weight lifting sandal without the heel yoke  12  or straps but with the covering plate  50  and the non-slip surface  60  not shown in  FIG. 6 . 
         [0039]    The bottom plate  52  has holes to accept the big part of the tee nuts  30  and it is the same thickness as the big part of the tee nuts so that a flat surface is created when the sandal is assembled. The front bottom plate  54  is a piece of steel that is bent to create tabs that the front straps  38  can be attached to and it is also the same thickness as the bottom plate  52 . The tee nuts  30  go through the holes  47  in the base plate  46  into the recesses  44  that are created by gluing the T plate  48  onto the base plate  46 . 
         [0040]    The covering plate  50 , the T plate  48 , the base plate  46 , and the bottom plate  52  are all made of polycarbonate. They are glued together with a suitable glue along with the front bottom plate  54  and the tee nut  30 , and then the curved heel section  62  is glued onto the back of all of them. Then the rubber laminate  66  is glued onto the bottom of everything and the non-slip surface  60  is glued onto the top. The non slip surface  60  does not cover the entire curved heel section  62  because that would prevent it from flexing. 
         [0041]    The covering plate  50  helps to hold down the heel yoke anchors  14  and provides a surface to glue down the non-slip surface  60  over the heel yoke anchors. Both the covering plate  50  and the non-slip surface  60  have holes to accommodate the heads of the width adjustment screws  28 . 
         [0042]    The curved heel section  62  is made of ordinary rubber and is there to facilitate walking. It is designed to flex if pressure is applied by the user&#39;s shoe because if it applies force to the user&#39;s shoe at that low point it might tend to pull their shoe off. The curved heel section  62  being flexible ensures that all of the pressure will be borne by the heel yoke  12  above the user&#39;s heel. 
         [0043]    The heel yoke can be made of a variety of different metals and plastics provided that the plastic does not become brittle in cold weather, or it can be made from several pieces of differing material including leather and cloth for the uppermost portion of it, but a rigid design is preferred to help the heel yoke apply pressure high on the back of a person&#39;s shoe. 
         [0044]      FIG. 8  shows a roller skate that uses the heel yoke system of this invention. It shows that this heel yoke system can take various forms and can be used in conjunction with other systems. 
         [0045]    The heel yoke anchors  14  are replaced by special yoke anchors  15  that have ridges  70 . The ridges  70  are intended to bite into the sole of the user&#39;s shoes. The width adjustment screws  28  are not present because the width of the heel yoke system is adjusted by the use of an old fashioned roller skate key. The width at the front of the roller skate also uses a roller skate key and clamps onto the user&#39;s shoes just like the old roller skates. 
         [0046]    This embodiment of the heel yoke system uses all of the same straps and buckles as the weight lifting sandals in  FIGS. 1-7 , but the roller skate does not use the rubber heel piece. 
         [0047]    Accordingly the reader will see that the heel yoke system of this invention provides a method of securing articles to a user&#39;s shod foot that is effective, safe, low cost, highly adjustable, and easy to operate. 
         [0048]    Although the description above contains many specificities, exact descriptions of the hardware and materials used may be innumerable. The yoke anchors might not be adjustable for width and might be formed simply by bending the metal edges of a roller skate up or down, or the heel yoke could have small cylindrical ends that go into holes drilled through the holding screw. Examples shown should therefore not be construed as limiting the scope of this invention but as merely providing illustrations of some of the presently preferred embodiments. 
         [0000]    
       
         
               
             
               
               
               
             
           
               
                   
               
               
                 REFERENCE NUMERALS USED IN DRAWINGS 
               
               
                   
               
             
             
               
                   
               
             
          
           
               
                   
                 12 
                 heel yoke 
               
               
                   
                 14 
                 heel yoke anchor 
               
               
                   
                 15 
                 special yoke anchor 
               
               
                   
                 16 
                 vertical slot 
               
               
                   
                 18 
                 horizontal slot 
               
               
                   
                 20 
                 washer 
               
               
                   
                 22 
                 holding screw 
               
               
                   
                 23 
                 square section 
               
               
                   
                 24 
                 wing nut 
               
               
                   
                 26 
                 width adjustment slot 
               
               
                   
                 28 
                 width adjustment screw 
               
               
                   
                 30 
                 tee nut 
               
               
                   
                 32 
                 brass grommet 
               
               
                   
                 34 
                 long strap 
               
               
                   
                 35 
                 long strap&#39;s end 
               
               
                   
                 36 
                 heel buckle strap 
               
               
                   
                 38 
                 front strap 
               
               
                   
                 40 
                 front grommet 
               
               
                   
                 42 
                 buckle 
               
               
                   
                 44 
                 recess 
               
               
                   
                 46 
                 base plate 
               
               
                   
                 47 
                 hole 
               
               
                   
                 48 
                 T plate 
               
               
                   
                 50 
                 covering plate 
               
               
                   
                 52 
                 bottom plate 
               
               
                   
                 54 
                 front bottom plate 
               
               
                   
                 60 
                 non-slip surface 
               
               
                   
                 62 
                 curved heel section 
               
               
                   
                 64L 
                 left tab 
               
               
                   
                 64R 
                 right tab 
               
               
                   
                 66 
                 rubber laminate 
               
               
                   
                 70 
                 ridge