Strong feet. Strong everything.

In 1960, Abebe Bikila won the Olympic marathon in Rome barefoot, on stone and asphalt, in a world record time. He had grown up without shoes. His feet were not a weakness he overcame. They were trained.

01

A foot built to carry you.

A chimpanzee's foot is almost a second hand, with a big toe that grips like a thumb. The human foot gave that grip up for a long arch and short, straight toes. That shape is one of the reasons humans can walk and run long distances better than almost any other animal.

The arch works like a spring. As you land, it flattens a little and soaks up the load, then springs back and returns part of that energy. As you push off, the foot locks stiff so your push goes into the ground. Small muscles inside the foot hold the arch in shape. So the arch is not just bone. It is held up by muscle, and muscle can be trained.

02

Every movement goes through your feet.

The body is a chain, and the feet are where it meets the ground. Even walking, the ground pushes back on each foot with more than your whole body weight on every step. If your feet give way, part of that push is lost before it reaches your legs, and your knees, hips and back work harder to make up for it.

Each sport asks the feet for something different.

Swimming wants the ankle stretched long and the foot pointed. Swimmers who could point their feet further kicked faster.

Lifting starts at the floor. In a swing, a squat or a deadlift you drive the ground away with the whole foot, and the force travels up through the legs into the weight. A foot that rolls or sags spills part of it. The same is true of every pedal stroke on a bike.

Yoga asks for balance. In Warrior 3 you stand on one leg with your body tipped forward like a T, and the sole and arch hold you up.

Running lands on one foot at a time, with the ground pushing back at about two and a half times your body weight, thousands of times an hour. On a trail the foot also wraps around every rock and root.

So the feet need two things: strength to hold their shape and push, and mobility to point, bend and grip.

03

Shoes do the work your feet should do.

For most of human history, feet were trained for free by bare skin or thin sandals on uneven ground. Today most feet spend their lives in cushioned, supportive shoes on flat floors, and they adapt to that.

Daniel Lieberman's group at Harvard compared men in Mexico who wear thin sandals all their lives with men in the United States who wear ordinary shoes. The sandal wearers had higher, stiffer arches and bigger foot muscles. The same group found that people who walk barefoot grow thick skin on their soles and still feel the ground as well as anyone. A cushioned shoe protects by dulling that feeling, and a foot that cannot feel the ground cannot react to it.

A shoe that props up the arch and absorbs every landing takes over the foot's job. Like any muscle that is never used, the foot gets weaker.

Two pairs of feet photographed in 1905. Left, the soles of someone who never wore shoes, toes straight and spread. Right, feet that wore narrow shoes, shown beside the shoes, the toes pressed into their shape. — From Philip Hoffmann's 1905 study of barefoot and shoe-wearing feet (figures 1 and 6). Public domain.

04

What the best athletes put on their feet.

Look at the strongest people alive and you often find almost nothing under their feet. Chris Duffin, the first person to squat and deadlift more than 1,000 pounds for repetitions, tells lifters to deadlift barefoot or in the thinnest shoe they can find. A thick, soft sole tips the body forward and wobbles under the bar. A bare foot grips the floor.

The best runners seem to prove the opposite. They race in thick carbon-plated shoes, and those shoes work: in a laboratory test they saved elite runners about 4 percent of their energy. But a racing shoe is a tool for race day. Many of those runners, like Bikila, built their feet long before, barefoot or in simple shoes. A racing shoe can help strong feet go faster. It cannot make weak feet strong.

05

Feet can be trained.

When runners swapped their everyday shoes for flat, flexible ones and simply walked in them for eight weeks, their foot muscles grew as much as with a daily foot workout. No extra exercise. The feet got stronger because they were given their job back.

Yoga, kettlebells, swimming, riding and running already do this, so you do not need anything extra.

Yoga is barefoot. Every standing pose and every balance asks the toes to spread, the arch to hold and the sole to feel the floor.

Kettlebells are barefoot. Every swing, squat and carry starts with the whole foot gripping the ground.

Swimming points the foot. Every kick stretches the ankle long and keeps it mobile.

Cycling pushes through the ball of the foot, every stroke, so the foot has to hold its shape under load.

Running in minimalist shoes lets the foot do the work rather than the foam. If you run in cushioned shoes today, change slowly. Feet that have been supported for years need months, not weeks, to take the load back.

The rest of the day counts too. Walk barefoot at home, wear flat shoes, and take your walks onto grass, sand and trails.

Train your feet like any other part of your body. Every step, every lift, every pose starts where you meet the ground. Strong feet make every movement above them stronger.

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