Why I Lift Bare(sock)foot
A year or so ago, I thought it was about time for me to drop some dough on a pair of good, expensive lifting shoes.
Should I get powerlifting or olympic lifting shoes? Which do I do more? Which ones come in red? What about on days I do more cross training or high intensity lifts?
There was a lot I did not know.
I did know that I did not want a heel lift. I had just spent the past few months working on my ankle mobility. Have you ever seen someone squat with a small weight, a book, or something under their heels? It’s likely because they do not have the ankle mobility yet to squat full depth. Lifting your heel up on a surface allows you squat full depth without making compensations.
NOTE: A heel lift is not a good permanent fix for your lack of ankle mobility. You have do mobility work to fix your ankle mobility. That is for another article. In the meantime, this video I made has a few ankle mobility exercises: Exercises to help common foot and ankle injuries in female soccer players
Back to my search for a pair of perfect lifting kicks, I also knew that I did not want a shoe with excess cushion. I had been working on maintaining balance in my tripod stability stance. The tripod stance refers to gripping the ground with three points of contact in each foot. Those three points are the part of your foot right under your big toe, the bottom of your heel, and right under your pinky toe. The point of the tripod stance is to create a balanced base while you perform lifts, rather than being heel or toe heavy.
As I continued to look for the perfect lifting shoe for myself, I started to notice a few things:
I stopped being heel heavy in my squats and deadlifts.
I noticed my foot strike pattern more when I walked Kya.
That slight pain in my foot was starting to go away.
I had heard of lifting barefoot before and I remembered learning about it in my biomechanics class in graduate school. I started to do some research on it rather than continue to look for a lifting shoe. I found out that by lifting without shoes, the muscles in the arch of my foot were mostly likely being activated again. With a classic running or cross training shoe, the excess support does the work of the arch muscles. This causes them to get weak over time. (This is could also be why my arch cramped a few times when I started barefoot lifting at first. Read on for why it might be beneficial to transitioning into barefoot lifting).
By using my arch muscles more, and by taking away the excess support of a cushion, I was also getting better force absorption when I was lifting. This means that I was pushing into the ground more, and that push was helping me lift better. If I push more into the ground, especially on deadlifts, that force going into the ground is going to help me gain opposite force to lift the weight off the ground. A classic running or cross training shoe is designed to minimize this absorption.
I also was giving my toes room to breathe. Most sneakers cramp your toes, leading to small imbalances here and there. These may or may not cause pain, compensation, or other issues later. The narrow shoes also make it more difficult for the tripod stance. If my toes are more spread out, then I will have a greater surface area to create a strong, stable, tripod stance.
Today, I continue to lift without shoes.
Why?
The real reason I continue to lift barefoot (slash in socks), has nothing to do with anything I explained above. The real reason I continue to lift in socks is to show off these dope Rocket Power socks that @allibaerry copped me for my birthday this past year. Thanks, best friend.
I’m kidding.
Here are some suggestions if you want to transition to bare(sock)foot training:
Depending on where you are in your lifting journey, I would not go cold turkey into barefoot lifting. Make sure that you are not too heel or toe heavy in your main lifts first. If you are, start working on your tripod stance. Squatting bodyweight without shoes is a good place to start this.
If you do not get the privilege of being able to lift during off hours of crowded gym, safety first. Don’t be stupid. Dropping a dumbbell on your toe is not fun. Minimal shoes could be a good option for you guys and gals. Minimal shoes are also a good option for anyone not quite ready to take the full barefoot plunge yet.
Lastly, here is where I found most of my information on the topic as I was learning about barefoot lifting:
The biomechanics class I took in graduate school at University of Northern Colorado.
The following websites were a good refresher of the information I learned in that class:
Squat University https://squatuniversity.com/ — great videos and blogs on the topic, plus a great source of information about lifting in general.
https://powerliftingtechnique.com/lifting-without-shoes/ - this article is chock full o’ information.
There is not a lot of scientific research on barefoot lifting, especially in comparison to barefoot running (see disclaimer below). There were the articles I found on the subject.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7918349/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33670253/
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2018/06000/Shod_vs__Barefoot_Effects_on_Force_and_Power.5.aspx
These studies do not heavily lean way or the other. They all know that they need more replication before any strong conclusions can be made.
DISCLAIMER: This article does not discuss running kicks. Running shoes are for another day. In the meantime, Born To Run by Christopher McDougall is a great book about that.
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