How to Get Stronger Feet
Stronger feet can relieve back pain, make you run faster, improve balance, and reduce ankle and feet injuries. Get-Fit Guy has 5 tips for stronger feet.
Ben Greenfield
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How to Get Stronger Feet
Every time your feet touch the ground when you’re walking, you’re asking them to absorb two to three times your body weight – with each step! Considering the average person takes around 3,000 steps per day, that’s a lot of weight.
And if you happen to be a runner, you might land on your feet 5,000 times per hour during just one long run. So think about that: If you take 5,000 strides and your feet are absorbing around 300 pounds per stride, then you’re putting 1,500,000 pounds on your body during a 1-hour run! If you’re sprinting or running fast, your feet take an even greater pounding. Each foot strike of Usain Bolt, the world-record holder in the 100-meter sprint, hits the ground with over 1,200 pounds of force – about four times greater the average jogger!.
Even if you don’t run, your feet take a beating simply walking around and standing. If they’re not up for the challenge, the result of those weak feet can be strain on the low back, knees, and hips, not to mention foot injuries such as plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, or metatarsal fractures, and ankle sprains and strains.
See also: Is Running Bad for You?
That’s why in this episode, you’re going to learn how to get stronger feet!
How Feet Get Weak
Most people have weak feet – and this is a direct result of not only wearing shoes for most of the day, but specifically wearing shoes that are designed for maximum stability and cushioning. Just imagine if from the time that you were born, you wore protective gloves on your hands all day long. If you ever got into a situation in which you had to take those gloves off and do manual labor such as moving furniture, doing some pull-ups, or swinging a golf club or tennis racquet, your delicate hands would be beat up and blistered in no time!
In the same way, you can’t keep your feet constantly in the protective cocoon of padded shoes (even fancy fitness shoes), never strengthen your feet with the exercises you’re about to learn, and expect your feet to somehow last through a long run, a bike ride, or a pickup game of basketball, soccer or tennis.
How to Get Strong Feet
So how can we get strong feet that can help with back pain, make you run faster, improve balance, and reduce ankle and feet injuries? Here are 5 Quick and Dirty Tips to get strong feet:
Tip #1: Stand More
In the episode 7 Ways to Burn Calories By Standing More, you learned that sitting can be a potentially life shortening activity and can also shut down your fat burning metabolism. But that’s not all! Sitting all day can also keep your feet from getting strong. For this reason, I personally use a standing workstation and stay on my feet for most of the day in either minimalist shoes (such as my Skoras or Vibrams) or barefoot. To both strengthen and stretch my feet even more, I’ll often roll a golf ball around under my feet, or even stand on two or three golf balls to get my feet strong while I’m chatting on the phone or working on the computer.
Tip #2: Lose the Shoes
If you’ve been wearing big, bulky, protective shoes for a long time, then your feet may have difficulty properly sensing the ground. So try incorporating “feel-for-the-ground” activities such as standing on one leg when you’re brushing your teeth, standing on one leg on a balance disc or balance pillow at the gym, standing on one leg for exercises like overhead presses, or even bouncing on one leg on a mini-trampoline a few times a week.
Tip #3: Do Single Leg Exercises
While some of the balance activities I mentioned earlier will help strengthen your feet, I also recommend standing on one leg and practicing rolling your entire body weight from the outside of your foot to the inside of the foot and back, until your foot is tired. You can do this at home, or as a warm up at the gym.
While at the gym, it can also be helpful to do cable kick forwards and cable kick back exercises while standing on one foot. If your tiny foot muscles start to burn and fatigue with these movements, you’ll know you’re conditioning your foot muscles. You may find that as you do these types of exercises, the bottom of your foot, your calf muscles, or your Achilles tendon feel tight or painful. So you may also need to work on the flexibility of the back of your legs with calf stretches and foam rolling.
Tip #4: Go Barefoot
As I discussed in The 411 on Barefoot Running, it takes about 4-8 weeks for muscular adaptation to occur.So if you want to start running barefoot, take baby steps. For example, for the first 4 weeks, you can simply walk barefoot for 20-30 minutes each day and try to have your shoes off as much as possible, especially when standing at work or home. For the next 2 weeks, begin to run barefoot for very small distances on soft surfaces, like a few laps around a park or any easy jog several blocks around a soft track, just 2-3 times per week, and no more than 1 mile. Each week, gradually increase this volume.
See also: The 411 on Barefoot Running
After 8 weeks, if your feet are pain-free and you feel comfortable on soft surfaces, you can start experimenting with harder surfaces, paying very close attention to how your feet feel and whether or not anything hurts (which is a good clue that your feet aren’t quite strong enough yet for longer distances or hard surfaces). I used this approach for the past couple of years, and a few weeks ago I ran about 7 miles around town barefoot (not that I endorse this for everyone, but it’s just an example of how tough your feet can get).
Tip #5: Include Plyometrics
You can condition your feet to better withstand the impact of the ground. This is especially important if you’re used to always wearing shoes, since the cushioning of a normal shoe provides significant impact reduction and absorption. Plyometrics are explosive exercises in which you hop, bound, and skip, and reverse direction as quickly as possible after landing on the ground. Try side-to-side hops and single leg jumps onto a box.
If you have more questions about how to get stronger feet, then join the conversation at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy!
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.