The Importance of Your Foot Strength - And How to Improve It

I recently attended a session at Maher Sports Therapy to address some issues I’d been having throughout my body; I was surprised at how in-depth the session went just from focusing on my feet.

I’d been having some hip tightness issues which were causing a lot of my upper back and neck to feel tight as well and decided that I finally needed to get it addressed. I had broken my leg about 7 years ago and discovered that that was the root of a lot of my problems. The result of the leg break was that 56% of my weight was shifted onto that side of my body, all day every day.

The whole session worked on working out and tightness and knots in my feet that was causing problems throughout the chain of my body and from the conversations I had and research I’ve done after I’ve found some very interesting points that I’d like to share.

Going barefoot

We have over 200,000 nerve endings at the base of our feet. These nerve endings feel the ground around us and tell our brain when to take steps forward or move according to our environment.

The detriment of wearing shoes is that we cover up these nerve endings, meaning our feet can’t feel the ground around use. Our feet begin to tighten up to the rigid form of the shoe and lose this sense of feeling, resulting in the weakening of the muscles in our feet. This can cause overpronation of the feet and ankle due to these weak muscles and corrective footwear is required to combat it.

Correcting my feet

I, myself, have overpronation of my ankle. Because of this I wear an insole in my running shoes to prevent any damage when running on the roads and ensure my foot is in a stable position.

However, outside of this I’m reluctant to use orthotics in my daily life. Over the past couple of months I’ve been wearing barefoot shoes to try to strengthen my foot and the muscles in my foot. While going completely barefoot would be ideal, it’s not a practical or socially acceptable activity within society so I feel like this is the next best thing. I wear my barefoot shoes most days in work and during my gym sessions. Barefoot shoes have a wider toe box compared to the narrow shoes that most people wear. These narrow shoes cause the toes to ‘squish’ together and become crowded, as a result people see issues such as bunions arising from wearing narrow shoes.

I’ve seen a great improvement in the structure of my foot over the past couple of months around my toes. From wearing a wider shoe with minimal ground separation I’ve experienced improved foot strength along with a noticeable increase in the space between my feet. Now, when I walk barefoot, there is space between my toes that didn’t exist a few months ago and a lot of pain I experienced from wearing narrow shoes playing sport (such as ‘turf toe’ ) has disappeared. However, I still have a lot of improvement in this space.

If you look at the feet of people in tribes, or even babies, their toes are spaced out well and it is just through a sedentary lifestyle and incorrect footwear that our feet have morphed into narrow shapes throughout our life. Our ancestors didn’t have the feet issues that we have now, and it causes a cascade of problems up through the rest of our bodies due to a weak and unstable base.

I’d highly recommend looking into wearing barefoot shoes, I use Vivobarefoot but there are other brands out there also. Alongside this, things such a toe-spacers can be used to correct the crowding of your feet and force them to spread back into their natural position.

Like always, if anyone has any questions feel free to contact me!

Jack.