Strong Feet Better Knees, Glutes, & Even Shoulders

Look online and there are endless posts about the importance of your feet for fitness and injury resilience goals. How important are the feet? Think of your feet as the foundation in which you are constructing a tall building upon. If the foundation is off, the ability of the building to be strong is going to be greatly negatively altered. 

With that said, we don’t need to do a million different foot training drills in order to experience the benefits of good foot training. In fact, we don’t even often need to make it a separate part of our training. Engaging our feet should be something we do on all our exercises because it makes our legs, core, and upper body stronger. 

In this 2022 study on baseball players, they found, “Baseball players with disabled throwing shoulder or elbow have high rates of impaired foot function and floating toes.” (PMID: 35139696)

Another 2019 study demonstrated that, “slight elevation of the foot’s longitudinal arch may influence the tissues of whole body. The observed increase in forefoot load may result in foot overloading, and what should be underlined is that this may be related to compensatory reactions within the trunk.” (PMID: 31748559)

One reason that I say that foot training is both important and doesn’t have to be time consuming or done in isolation is because we know that movement will help both the foot and ankle stability (both that are critical in what happens in the knee, hip, low back, and even upper body). 

Due to fascial connection in our body we have our feet directly and indirectly influencing all segments of our body. 

A great example of how we can build the strength and function of the foot that translates to so many benefits is through the use of Myofascial Integrated Movement (MIM) drills. There is so much research behind the principles and concepts that drive our MIM movements. Such great benefits can be experienced in the feet, ankle, lower body, hips, and core. 

For example, a 2010 study found that these types of movements could help improve peripheral neuropathy which is often a big issue for those in their feet (PMID: 20503464). These same methods were tested in a very cool 2025 study that found they were highly effective in improving ankle instability, functional balance, and reducing kinesiophobia, fear of movement (PMID: 39099186)

This is important because a lot of the foot training that people recommend tends to be very isolated and doesn’t challenge the foot to work with the kinetic chain so that we see the benefits carry over to other aspects of our movement and training. So, how can we use these ideas and make our time training so much more effective and efficient?

Check out this series of videos that can help build a foundation of many more progressions….

Save 35%  on our Myofascial Integrated Movement programs HERE with code “mim35”