I recorded a short addendum to this video with an exercise I recently learned and find really useful. If you’re interested, you can click here to watch.
CLICK HERE for a podcast about this topic (episode 223 of Running Stronger)
In my 20s, I fell down the rabbit hole of barefoot stuff.
I wore the toe shoes.
I bought the really thin sandals.
I tried to walk barefoot in Tucson, Arizona, in the summer (don’t do that…)
And while it did some positive things for me, it also wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Sure, my feet got stronger, but my Achilles tendons and calves took a real beating and it kinda turned me off from running.
Not to mention my feet got slightly burnt (only once, I learned that lesson quickly).
So as someone who’s been playing around with these ideas for the better part of two decades, I wanted to share a bit of what I’ve learned.
First off, foot strength matters.
Having strong feet does, in fact, make a lot of other things easier and it can help reduce pain.
Foot mobility also matters.
If your foot doesn’t move well, then you’re more likely to exert force through other areas of the body (like your ankle) and get hurt.
Yet for most people, foot strength probably isn’t high on the priority list.
And even if it is, then your best course of action is to just spend more time barefoot around your house or buy a pair of thin shoes like Xeros or Vivos or Campers to wear to work.
If you spend all your time in highly padded shoes, then you probably don’t need a bunch of weird foot exercises.
You probably just need to take off your shoes.
Now…
If you already do a decent amount of that, we might need to do something like “reconnect” to the muscles of the foot.
Your foot should be fairly mobile, yet a lot of people kind of get stuck (for lack of a better term).
Much like we can get “stuck” with hunched shoulders as a result of leaning over our desks all day, our foot can get “stuck” in certain positions as a result of the shoes we wear or the things we spend our time doing.
So if your foot doesn’t move well, then we might need to do exercises like “short foot” or “foot pronations” or “towel drags” in order to help improve that mobility.
But again, it’s probably not your highest priority.
If anything, it’s something we’d probably want to do as a warm-up in order to get ourselves moving and prep our feet to serve us better during a lifting session or on a run.
And here’s the problem with a lot of training advice on the internet…
Someone will post some weird exercise and it will get a ton of attention even when the exercise probably isn’t all that useful for most people.
It just looks weird, so everybody starts doing it.
For a while, it was neck training.
Somebody started posting videos about training their neck and as a result, people started strapping their heads to cable machines or pressing plates against their foreheads.
Now I’m not against training.
It’s not a bad thing to do.
For certain individuals, like someone recovering from whiplash, it might actually be a great idea.
Although it’s probably not a high priority for most people.
And even if it were…
You’d probably just want to do some version of a wrestler’s bridge.
But you can’t sell a wrestler’s bridge.
You can, however, sell some weird helmet that allows someone to strap their head to a cable machine.
So that’s what people started doing.
It’s the same for your feet.
There are a lot of weird, goofy exercises that can help improve both the strength and mobility of your feet.
But the best ones tend to be pretty simple.
Walk around barefoot.
Stand on the edge of a step with half of your foot hanging off.
Practice flexing the arch of your foot by doing “short foot.”
Do heavy calf raises.
Now, if you already do all of those things and still have some propensity for injuring yourself in ways that are related to foot strength…
Then you might need to do some weird version of a split squat where your foot is hanging off the edge of a plate.
But even then, it should be done as a warm-up to prepare your feet for greater amounts of work.
Personally, I care about my foot strength, largely because I have a propensity for injuring myself in ways that are related to foot strength.
(Like my three separate ankle sprains last year.)
I also already spend a lot of time barefoot or in very thin shoes and I’m able to do all the normal “foot rehab” exercises like a champion.
So I do spend a little time during my warmup specifically focused on foot strengthening activities.
But I don’t really make it more of a priority than that.
Now if you care about foot strength or foot mobility, then you might want to watch the video above.
It runs you through all of the movements I discuss in this post, as well as a couple more.
It also gives you some context as to when these things might matter.
And if you need something even simpler, the little addendum I’m going to link in the post-script is probably right up your alley.
Foot strength matters.
Foot mobility matters.
Especially if you’re a runner.
We just have to prioritize activities that might actually be helpful.