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“Your feet are the foundation of your body, and if the foundation is not working well, everything above it is going to be affected.”
— Dr. Emily Splichal

If your feet hurt, if your balance feels off, or if your arches are collapsing, it’s not just a foot issue—it’s a whole-body concern. Time and time again when I’m working with patients, I find that when we start addressing impairments—whether it’s balance deficits, knee, back, or shoulder pain; or difficulty with daily activities—we trace the root problem back to issues originating in their feet.

Most people’s feet are weak and dysfunctional thanks to modern footwear, lack of direct training, and years of neglect. Weak feet don’t just lead to plantar fasciitis or bunions. They mess with your posture, movement, and stability, increasing your risk of knee pain, back pain, and poor performance in everything from running to lifting.

Approximately 75% of Americans experience foot health issues at some point in their lives, yet most do nothing to strengthen or restore function. Foot pain alone affects between 13% and 36% of the adult population, with even higher prevalence in women and those with obesity. Despite these numbers, foot training is rarely prioritized in fitness routines, leaving most people with underdeveloped and dysfunctional foot mechanics.

The Problem: Why Your Feet Are Weak

Your feet aren’t just lifeless slabs at the bottom of your legs—they’re highly complex, dynamic structures built for movement. Each foot contains 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments, all designed to adapt, stabilize, and absorb impact. But modern living has stripped them of their function. The standard cushioned shoe limits sensory input, weakens foot muscles, and alters biomechanics, leading to collapsed arches, poor plantar flexion control, and reduced proprioception. And that’s when the real problems start.

Weak feet don’t stay a foot problem—they become a knee, hip, and back problem. Your arches act as natural shock absorbers, helping to distribute force evenly through your body. When they collapse or become rigid, the force doesn’t just disappear—it travels up the kinetic chain, throwing off knee alignment, hip mechanics, and even spinal posture creating low back pain. Poor plantar flexion control—your ability to push off the ground efficiently—can lead to inefficient movement patterns that overload the knees and Achilles tendon, setting the stage for chronic pain and injury.

One of the biggest overlooked connections is plantar flexion strength and ACL injury risk. Research shows that weak plantar flexors reduce the foot’s ability to absorb impact properly, increasing knee valgus (inward knee collapse), a major risk factor for ACL tears. Athletes with poor foot strength often compensate with poor landing mechanics, putting excessive stress on the knee joint. Strengthening the foot and improving plantar flexion control can reduce ACL injury risk and improve knee stability in cutting, jumping, and landing movements.

It gets worse. We sit too much and move too little—on flat, predictable surfaces. Our ancestors walked barefoot or in minimalist footwear across uneven terrain, forcing their feet to adapt and stay strong. Today, we spend our time on hard, flat surfaces like concrete, tile, and gym floors. That means our feet rarely get the challenge they need to develop strength, balance, and mobility. Less variation, less adaptability, weaker feet.

On top of that, most people don’t get enough proprioceptive feedback from their feet. Proprioception—the body's ability to sense where it is in space—is critical for balance, coordination, and athletic performance. Weak, stiff feet with limited movement reduce proprioceptive input, leading to higher fall risk, worse movement efficiency, and an increased likelihood of injuries.

The Fix: How to Strengthen Your Feet

Just like any other part of your body, your feet need progressive strengthening and mobility work. Here’s how to rebuild their strength:

1. Go Barefoot More Often

• In the house: Take those shoes off as soon as you get home. Make it a habit.

• In the world: Invest in some barefoot or minimalist footwear to increase proprioception and strengthen the intrinsic foot muscles. Nowadays this can be done with dress shoes, casual shoes, and even just socks that act as shoes. Find the full list of my favorites here. Just make sure not to wear open-toed sandals—more on that below.

• When working out. Start with lifting and yoga and then work up to HIIT and rucking. If you decide to go running barefoot then start very slow. See this article for how to gradually transition to minimalist shoes.

2. Train Toe & Foot Strength

Building strength in your toes and feet is essential for balance, stability, and overall foot health. These exercises and tools will help you strengthen the muscles that support your arches and toes while improving overall foot function:

• Primary Foot Exercises: Address the issue head-on.

  • Foot and Toe Mobility Exercises:

    • Towel Curls: Place a towel on the floor and use your toes to scrunch it up. This directly targets the intrinsic muscles of the foot, improving mobility and dexterity.

    • Big Toe Press-Downs: Keeping your smaller toes lifted, press your big toe into the ground to engage your medial arch and stretch the foot.

    • Calf Raises with Toes Spread: Perform calf raises while actively spreading your toes to stretch and strengthen the foot muscles.

    • Toe Splays & Short Foot Exercise: Actively spread your toes and engage the foot muscles to build arch stability and strengthen the intrinsic muscles.

    • Single-Leg Stance & Barefoot Squats: Stand on one leg or perform barefoot squats to improve your foot mobility and ground reaction force.

    • Resistance Bands: Using toe-specific resistance bands can both strengthen the muscles and also give proprioceptive input to help identify how to move each muscle.

      • Recommendation: Fasciitis Fighter Toe Bands

• Secondary Foot Exercises: Gradually incorporate these tactics into your routine.

  • Dynamic Exercises: Incorporate dynamic exercises to challenge your feet and improve strength:

    • Jump rope

    • Box jumps

    • Single-leg pogo jumps

    • Agility ladder movements

  • Dynamic Sports: The same exercises that are great for bone health (impact loading ones) are great for foot health. Pick up dynamic sports like tennis, pickleball, soccer, volleyball, martial arts, or start sprinting. Ideally doing these in minimalist footwear. Less effective (or altogether ineffective) sports include swimming, biking, and rowing.

• Walking: Walk, walk, walk. All of the above is great but walking barefoot (or in minimalist footwear) is crucial to foot health. Walk!

3. Improve Foot & Toe Mobility

Flexibility and mobility in your feet and toes are just as crucial as strength. These exercises will help restore natural toe movement and enhance overall foot mobility:

• Toe Spacers: Ever notice that your foot shape matches the inside of a standard shoe? Your toes are meant to splay outward, not curve inward. Toe spacers help restore this natural alignment and can even prevent bunions. Wear them around the house or with minimalist shoes (not standard shoes) to give your toes the space they need. Start with an hour and work up to all-day wear.

  • Recommendation: Mind Bodhi Toe Separators

• Scrape the Calves: Use an IASTM (Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization) (a.k.a. a scraping) tool to gently scrape over your calves. This helps release tightness in the muscles and fascia to break up adhesions, or knots, in the muscles that connect to your feet. The calves play a crucial role in foot and toe mobility; tightness or restrictions in the calf muscles, particularly the gastrocnemius and soleus, can limit ankle dorsiflexion (the ability to flex your foot upward) and toe range of motion. I found this to be one of the most effective ways to relieve foot discomfort as well as toe health issues like plantar fasciitis.

  • Recommendation: 3 in 1 Stainless Steel Muscle Scraper Tools Set (& coconut oil as emollient)

• Toe Extensions: Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor. Place a small resistance band around your toes and gently extend them away from your body. Hold for 10-15 seconds, then release. This helps increase the flexibility of your toes and the surrounding muscles.

  • Recommendation: Fasciitis Fighter Toe Bands

• Round 2 Strength, Balance & Mobility Device (Fasciitis Fighter): This thing works by utilizing a high-load strength training approach that targets the muscles and tendons in your feet, calves, and ankles for both mobility and strength. I started using it myself and absolutely love how it targets the toes. You can do versions of this on a step or small ledge but this is great if you want to fine-tune that toe and foot health. I keep mine under my desk and incorporate it as I write.

  • Recommendation: Fasciitis Fighter Round 2 Foot Trainer

• Foot Rolling with a Golf Ball: I keep a golf ball at my desk to do arch rolls when I’m standing. I started with softer versions but now I love feeling the cracks in my foot each time I do this. It’s a hurt-so-good kind of pain that’s very easily adjusted based on how much pressure you put into it. Roll for 1-2 minutes on each foot.

• Stop Wearing Open-Heeled Sandals: When wearing open-heeled sandals, you unconsciously curl or squeeze your toes together to keep the sandals from slipping off. This causes your toes to move downward or inward, and with enough steps, this restricts their natural splay. This repeated movement can lead to muscle imbalances, contributing to issues such as bunions, hammertoes, less toe and arch mobility, and poor foot alignment. Fortunately, there are high-quality “Jesus sandals” that work great. These are the two I use:

  • Recommendation: Deliberate Life Designs and Luna Sandals

What I Do

Not once did I put any stock in foot or toe health for the first 3 decades of my life. I just never considered it a factor when it came to my health. I sprained my ankle playing soccer, rolled it many a time, and even chopped part of my foot with an axe while camping (fortunately with very minimal issues), and even still I just neglected how important the base of my body played a role in my overall health.

The catalyst came when I started having knee pain while running. I thought it was my shoes or my training but it turned out to be issues down the chain. I found the issues, and, like peeling an onion, found plenty of other limitations of my foot. After talking to my PT colleagues, reading Peter Attia’s Outlive, and assessing my patient’s impairments relative to their foot health, I am now all in on foot health.

• Footwear: I nearly exclusively wear no shoes or minimalist footwear (here’s the full list of what I wear). The exception is with running and trucking due to my prolonged ankle limitations due to a history of soccer injuries. I have prioritized decreasing the heel drop of my non-zero-drop shoes to see how low I can go without issues. For example, I now wear 10mm running shoes instead of 12mm ones which I wore last year. Also, I threw out all of my open-heeled sandals and transitioned exclusively to those Jesus sandals when it’s warm enough.

• Strength: I do plyometric exercises, walk often in minimalist shoes, ruck, and incorporate weighted seated and standing calf raises into my routine. I also try to mix up the terrain I’m walking on by hiking, walking on grass when I can, and doing running and sprinting work on the sand in the summer. When working out, I make a conscious effort to move outside of the sagittal (forward/backward) plane, which is often overused by runners, cyclists, and certain types of lifters, incorporating movements like lateral lunges, grapevines, and sideways jumps). And I add in unilateral and single-leg movements when lifting. Lately, I have also been using the Fasciitis Fighter tools above to hone in on my toe strength as well.

• Mobility: I roll my foot on a golf ball under my standing desk at work (leaving it there as a cue), scape my ankles a couple of times of week, wear toe spacers most days of the week, incorporate yoga moves like Warrior 1 between sets at the gym, and use the Fasciitis Fighter Round 2 Foot Trainer under my home standing desk.

Takeaway

Your feet are meant to move, adapt, and stabilize, yet modern habits weaken them. Strengthening them improves posture, mobility, and injury resilience, making barefoot time and minimalist footwear a smart transition. Training your feet like any other muscle—with toe spacers, balance drills, and foot-strengthening exercises—will help restore function and prevent issues like plantar fasciitis and knee pain. Exposing your feet to different surfaces, rather than limiting them to flat, even terrain, improves adaptability and foot strength. If transitioning to minimalist footwear, do so gradually to avoid overloading weak structures. Your feet are your foundation—treat them like it.

Related:

• The Science of Minimalist Shoes: Rehabilitation Benefits

• What Is The Minimum Effective Dose Of HIIT?

• The Minimum Effective Dose Of Zone 2 Training