Foot Strength Routine For Hikers

In this video, I share a simple foot-strengthening routine a hiker can use to build up their feet.

So many hikers struggle with foot issues. And this leads many people to explore ways to help strengthen their feet, so they can stay more comfortable on the trail.

But one major problem many hikers run into is that their 'foot training' ends up taking a hugely disproportionate amount of time. 

To help, I'm sharing a simple foot strength routine that hikers can use, which is both time-efficient and covers many of the bases for your feet. 

​Video Transcript:

[0:00] In today's video, we are talking through a simple foot strengthening routine for hikers. Now, in the world of hiking, so many people struggle with foot issues, and hiking as a sport is pretty demanding on feet. And this will often lead hikers to kind of go down the rabbit hole of looking at different ideas and different exercises on how they can strengthen up their feet to feel a bit more comfortable and perform a little bit better on the trail. But the tricky thing here is when it comes down to foot strengthening a lot of people tend to be just shooting in the dark in the sense that the feet have so many different muscles they have so many different functions and there are so many different issues which cause people to have problems with their feet so trying to actually find what is going to work for you is a little bit tricky and this will often end up with people just doing this complete massive laundry list of exercises or their feet, just thinking, okay, I'm not quite sure what's going to work for me. So I'm going to do this. Then I'm going to do this. Then I'm going to do this. Then I'm going to do this. And the tricky thing here is it can end up taking a lot of time out of your training. It can be really tedious because a lot of foot exercises are really finicky and not much fun.

[1:13] And in all honesty, they may or may not be covering what you need. Because as much as you may watch a video online saying this exercise will strengthen up this specific thing in your feet, there's always a question mark around whether that's actually going to happen and whether that's relevant to you. So the way I like to approach this with my honeys, instead of going down the rabbit hole of trying to do all these really little finicky exercises that are taking a huge amount of time, I've got a really, really simple routine that I get some of my honeys who want some extra foot strengthening which they can fit into their workouts. Now, this particular routine, it does cover a lot of bases. There's four exercises, but it covers a lot of different things that do need to be strong. And on top of that, it's very, very, very time efficient. You're not going to spend half an hour a day doing this and all these funny little exercises or whatever it may be. You can knock this over in three, four, five minutes at the end of a workout, and it can work out pretty well. Now, essentially, we've got four different exercises we're going to do. Now exercise number one is we're going to be in bare foot and what we're going to be doing, legs straight, glutes squeezed on tight. We're literally just going to be stepping on our heels forward and then stepping on our heels back. Now the idea behind this is essentially we are making sure that feet are pulled up so all the structures in the feet responsible for that are going to be working and we're just stepping forward, stepping back.

[2:39] Exercise number two, very similar. In this situation what we're going to do

[2:43] is instead of being pulled on our feet up, we're going to roll our feet out to the side. We're going to pull our big toe off the wall and we're going to take a step forward.

[2:52] And then step back. Again, in this particular exercise, the legs are straight, the glutes are on tight. So the legs aren't really doing anything, but you just step, step, step. And again, we want to do this barefoot. Exercise number three is the opposite of that. So now we're going to roll our feet inwards. We're going to pull the edges of our feet on the outside edges of the feet off. We're going to do exactly the same thing. Keeping the legs straight, keeping the glutes sucked on tight, and then stepping forward, stepping back.

[3:19] And then the last one is a little bit trickier. and what we're going to do here is we're going to start up on our toes and all we're going to do is pull foot up and down up and down up and down and again we're going to step forward and step back so we're doing toes up rolling on the outside rolling on the inside and then up on our toes up and down up and down and essentially how this routine goes it's very very simple you're going to do number one or 20 steps forward 20 steps back then straight in you're going to do number two 20 steps forward 20 steps back number three 2020 number four 2020 and you're going to repeat this one two or three times bang this out at the end of a workout it won't take you too long but it can cover a lot of bases now a few little tips for this um number one aim to do this barefoot if you can um if you have to do them in shoes if you're in a gym not the end of the world to try to do this barefoot. Like any type of training, we do want to progress over time. So we want to give the feet more challenging. So a few options where you can do here, you could always add extra sets each week. You may do two weeks of just doing one set. So one round through. Two weeks of doing two sets. Two weeks doing three sets. That could work pretty well. You could add extra reps. So you could go 20, 22, 24. Or you could even add a bit of weight. So you could put a backpack on your back

[4:42] with a small amount of weight or hold like a medicine ball at your stomach. Even hold a couple of dumbbells while I don't make it.

[4:48] Now, one thing you may run into with this is number four. Those first three are usually pretty doable. Number four can sometimes be a little bit tricky. So if you do find like this is too much for you, number one, you can start just doing this on the spot. So instead of walking forward and walking back, you just start on the spot. And then number two, if that's just way too difficult, you can just start by doing tiptoe walking and just walking up on your toes 20 steps, 20 forward and back, and then progress into this movement.

[5:15] And the last thing I will say is if you're going down this route, like I want to strengthen up my feet for my hiking, I'm going to give this a go. Just make sure you are also doing calf strengthening. Calf raises, they're boring, everyone knows about them, but they are incredibly

[5:29] effective for supporting the feet, supporting the ankles and helping run more hiking. So if you're a hiker who struggles with foot issues, please make sure you are also doing some type of calf work to complement this. Hopefully that just gives you a few simple ideas. As I said, the whole idea of foot training can be a little bit of a rabbit hole, can end up being that whole concept of just throwing mud at a wall, see what sticks. At the very, very worst case scenario, if none of these exercises are exactly what your feet need, it's not going to take a huge amount of time and it's probably going to be beneficial in other ways as well. So hopefully you can just slip this into your week. It won't take a huge amount of your time, but hopefully it'll give you some nice benefits for your feet and also for your future adventures.

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