Benefits of training barefoot

Barefoot training - smart or dangerous?

Exercising barefoot can offer benefits for the feet as well as the body. Training barefoot improves agility, ankle stability, and the positioning of the joint, if done correctly. It can also relieve minor imperfections, such as a low arch or pain from repetitive movements like running.

Improve Movement

By going barefoot, your feet and leg muscles can send signals to your brain faster which improves your movement. This can help prevent workout-related injuries. Strengthening base – Moving around without shoes strengthens the connective tissue and muscles in your feet. This leads to improved stability and balance.

Removing the cushion and structural support from most training shoes places all of the balance, arch support, and force production demands back on the small muscles of your feet

Better Leverages

Heavy lifting is a game of leverage. Deadlifts can be particularly affected by your choice of footwear. With the average cushioned training shoe not only providing an uneven lifting surface, but also subtly increasing the distance the bar needs to travel from the beginning of the movement until you stand up fully. 

When you’re trying to produce maximal force and lift as heavy as possible, being as close as you can to the ground with as flat and consistent as surface as possible will make a big difference in your strength levels. 

Weakened Grip

The most obvious drawback of training barefoot is that shoes are naturally going to provide a better grip on most surfaces. Foot sweat, especially with hotter temperatures or training environments, can cause potential problems.

Certain exercises such as plyometrics also generally should be trained with proper footwear due to the risk of slipping and sliding as you leave and re-contact the ground.

Stray Foreign Objects

Hand in hand with risking sliding around due to reduced grip, there is also an increased risk of superficial foot injuries if you work out barefoot. Gyms are usually safe but the odd edged surface or pointed object could easily lodge into your foot. 

Who Should Lift Weights Barefoot

Training barefoot makes a ton of sense for certain lifters or certain exercises. Strength athletes, hikers or rock climbers, and gymnasts come to mind as a few different groups that stand to benefit in particular. 

Strength athletes performing deadlifts and squats benefit from executing these lifts or certain prongs of their training barefoot. If you’re looking to maximize deadlifting, removing your shoes and getting as close to the ground as you can may help you achieve a better starting position. 

Having improved proprioception through the foot can help with force production balance with split squat variations. Small improvements like these in performance can tally up over time, keeping your training (and your Total) on the rise.

Who Shouldn’t Lift Weights Barefoot

While there are some groups that benefit, there are also some groups that clearly do not. Olympic lifters and bodybuilders have less reasons to fret over barefoot training.

Olympic lifting shoes offer similar benefits to Olympic lifters that training barefoot would to a powerlifter looking to optimize their leverages. 

Barefoot training runs completely counterintuitively to the needs of power clean or snatch. To perform well in weightlifting, you need a rock-solid shoe that also has an elevated heel wedge. 

Barefoot vs. Minimalist Shoes

There is a great intermediary between pillow-cushioned training shoes and going straight to barefoot training. Minimalist shoes remove most, if not all, extraneous cushioning and allow for a nearly barefoot experience while protecting your skin from a nasty gym floor. 

Usually they will have an extremely thin rubber sole that accounts for many of the safety and grip issues that training fully barefoot may expose you to. 

Personal preference

I personally experience a more intense mind-muscle connection on exercises like the leg press if they slip out of their shoes. However, most physique-oriented training can be accomplished just fine in (or out of) shoes. 

For weight lifting, training or performing some mobility work and accessory work barefoot can improve foot and ankle stability, flexibility, and overall muscular recruitment and gains.

While there are certainly some risks of injury, training barefoot certainly offers more pros than cons overall.