[foreigner]

This was my first thought as well. How is it the article doesn't mention weight at all? Still I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to move the weight out of the shoe. The shoe could expose a cord that you hook in to a separate machine to provide the force for tightening.

[jarvuschris]

That loses one of the big benefit though: being able to take breaks from the tight lace and restore it easily on the go

I can't imagine the weight couldn't be cut down to the same order of magnitude you're looking at for a shoe with strong support anyway.

[foreigner]

The application here is professional sports. In that context every tiny bit of weight matters. And they're not really "on the go" - they could just keep the machine on the sidelines.