Barefoot weight lifting, when done correctly, can be an excellent technique to strengthen the muscles of your feet and improve your overall alignment.

What Are Your Feet Doing When You Lift?

Look at the shoes you wear for lifting. Chances are, they’re cushioned and designed to support your foot. When your foot is inside a super supportive shoe, it typically doesn’t do much work.

With 26 bones, 30 joints, and over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments each, your feet are made to work. They support your whole body and can continuously adapt as you move. Even when your feet stay in one place, they’re designed to work to maintain your balance and fine tune your alignment.

Unlike barefoot running, barefoot weight lifting allows you to strengthen your feet in a very controlled environment. You don’t have to worry about proper foot placement with each stride. Instead, for the most part, your feet stay planted while your body moves. It’s an ideal setup for strengthening the feet and putting the knees, hips, and upper body in optimal position.

How to Do It Correctly

  • Do some body weight only barefoot strengthening first. I’ve included some links at the bottom of this post to help you engage and activate the muscles of your feet.

  • It goes without saying, but don’t drop a weight on your foot. Whether you’re wearing shoes or not, it’ll hurt.

  • If you’re going to a gym that requires shoes, consider trying minimalist shoes for a similar workout.

  • Work out in front of a mirror or videotape yourself. This gives you invaluable feedback for improvement.

Try It Out

Below is a barefoot 20-minute workout with dumbbells. If you haven’t been doing any barefoot work, you’re welcome to try it in shoes. You can still work on foot muscle activation and alignment with your shoes on.

The workout is a series of 11 exercises. We do about 10 – 15 reps of each exercise. Depending on the complexity of each movement, we’ll use the first 2 – 5 reps to get our form and technique in place. The remaining 8 – 10 reps are where you put forth your best effort.

For access to more videos like this, subscribe to my Youtube channel here.

I teach a 40-minute barefoot dumbbell class every week. If you’re interested in trying that out, click here.

Stay strong!

For more information on foot strengthening:

Stronger Feet: Foot Doming in Three Steps

(Almost) Perfect Squats and Lunges

The information on this website and linked accounts is provided for education only and is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or an assessment by other wellness professionals.