Do you need to workout in shoes and extreme parkour...barefoot?

There's loads of debate about what's better: training with or without shoes. People ask me what's best all the time. Normally, I just defer to what they prefer or what feels most natural for them.

Personally, I dig working out in my chucks that provide protection without loads of support. I can feel more of my foot in contact with the ground which forces better proprioception: the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself..

If you've read my blog post on Barefoot Running and also followed the growing trend, we can understand the argument for running without crazy supportive shoes. But what about strength training barefoot?

Well I hate to say it but many body building websites, albeit packed with machismo, offer some pretty up to date insights if you can filter out the crap. This blurb is taken from TMUSCLE.COM

Tthrough years of wearing shoes, our feet lose their tactile capacity, which is bad enough. But they also fail to develop to their proper size and shape. Tendons and ligaments shorten, muscles weaken, and the risk for foot and ankle injuries increases.

If it sounds like the ancient Chinese tradition of binding the feet, it kinda is. "It's identical, but to a lesser degree," Rooney says. "Shoes crush the foot into abnormal positions and you don't get the movement the foot is designed for."

And while that might be a puppy upper to the foot fetishists among us, it's a doggie downer when it affects your results in the gym.

Because your feet are the only point of contact between your body and the floor on most lifts, your lifting success depends, in part, on their proprioception — the sense of where they are in space. The more precisely they work to grip the floor, the better they'll help you activate the muscles farther up the movement chain.

Rooney believes that if you free your feet up, allowing them to move and react to the surface beneath them, your lifts will show commensurate improvement. "Just like strengthening the rotator cuff can improve your bench press, strengthening the lower limbs is going to let you run faster, jump higher, and lift more weight," he says. "Your numbers will go up."

My personal experience? When I'm doing any type of unilateral leg work that requires balance, at least one person in a group training session complains that the muscles in their feet cramp or fatigue before anything else. hmmm

But I'm not decided on it being great for everyone. I have some people with ankle or foot issues that require extra support to limit pain and strain on the joints (AKA orthotics). Without the extra support, they wouldn't be able to workout pain free. So this leaves me scratching my head a bit.

MY ADVICE? If you don't have any serious foot or ankle issues, then drop the extra support during your training and try a few workouts barefoot or with shoes like chucks.


And to close this post with some fun, I found this insane video of a dude doing extreme parkour barefoot. If you check out the type of surfaces he's landing on, you can see why being barefoot would be essential for grip and balance. It's really amazing what he can do. I wonder how many times he's fallen and bumped his noggin.