Name: How to Get Strong Feet & Glutes at The Same Time (with exercises)
Uploaded: 2025-03-08T20:49:22.000Z
Duration: 11 min 23 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We all have different goals for our bodies.

Some want to move across long distances in the shortest time possible.

Others are trying to lift the heaviest weights or build the most muscle.

Maybe your aim is to try to develop more technical skills.

But whatever your specific physical goals may be, they all require one thing.

Movement is the currency, and to be a rich mover, you have to move well enough to progress towards your goals without getting injured.

The only way to do this is to build a physical foundation that can support your movements.

I mean, what is any structure without a strong foundation?

This is what we are focused on at Barefoot Strength.

The foundation I'm talking about has two critical pillars, the feet and the glutes.

We get movement strength and control from the glutes and hips, and load bearing strength from the feet.

Together, they create a strong and adaptable foundation that can handle any physical scenario.

If you need proof of just how important the feet and glutes are for supporting the body, try this.

Stand barefoot on one leg and hold your balance for at least a minute.

You'll start to feel the muscles in your feet and glutes working really hard.

Then start moving your body while staying balanced on that single leg.

Movement occurs primarily at the hips, which is controlled by the glutes.

There are your movement stabilizers in action, and the feet have to remain rock solid to support the motion occurring above them.

That's your load-bearing strength at play.

Now, if you can't even hold your balance in a static position for the minute, or if you start to lose stability as soon as a little movement is introduced, then you don't have the most basic level of foot and glute control to move your body well.

The single leg balance is a great litmus test for foundational strength.

We depend on it every single day to move our bodies from A to B.

I mean, while walking, 60 to 70% of the time is spent on one leg, and when running, we have to rely entirely on one leg at a time for stability.

Now, before we get into how to strengthen the feet and glutes, I want to highlight that the feet can't function properly without the glutes, and vice versa.

Understanding this interdependent relationship will help you grasp our methods for strengthening them together.

When standing on one leg, the glutes of the supporting leg work hard to keep the hips level, which helps maintain proper alignment of the thigh and shin bones.

This alignment gives the ankle and foot complex the best chance of remaining stable.

However, when the glutes are weak and less active, the pelvis loses stability and tilts.

This sets off a downstream chain reaction.

The thigh bone and knee pull inwards, the shin bone rotates internally, and the ankle becomes destabilized, causing the foot arch to collapse into overpronation.

We see a very similar pattern from the feet up.

A 2007 study found that when the feet collapse inwards into overpronation, the shin and thigh tilt elongates the glutes, causing them to shut down.

So, as you can see, it's not always simple to know which is the primary weak link in the chain.

Is it the glutes affecting your feet, or the feet affecting your glutes?

There are tests we can use to figure this out, but we have found that if we just work on both the feet and glutes at the same time, then it doesn't really matter.

Stronger glutes are going to help keep your feet more stable, and stronger feet are going to set a solid foundation for your glutes to function optimally.

In my years as a sports scientist, I've yet to meet a person who is not in need of stronger feet and glutes.

Now, the reason so many of us have weak feet and glutes comes down to two factors.

Most of us sit on chairs for 10 plus hours a day.

Sitting down on chairs shuts off the glutes.

I actually tested this in a university sports lab using shorts that muscle activity.

The glute muscles activity levels were non-existent while seated.

Between sleeping and sitting, over three quarters of a day is spent with inactive glutes.

Just like any muscle, when the glutes aren't used, they weaken and eventually atrophy.

Sitting makes this worse by tightening the hip flexors, which leads to an anteropelvic tilt.

This tilt limits proper hip extension, further inhibiting glute function.

With this type of lifestyle, if we don't spend dedicated time working on our hip and glute function, we can't possibly expect to have a strong and powerful backside.

Our main obstacle preventing good foot function is footwear.

Shoes are made hard and rigid to support us.

Our feet, on the other hand, are flexible thanks to their 33 joints.

So, when you put flexible feet into hard and rigid shoes, they will adjust to conform to that shape.

To make matters worse, most footwear manufacturers prioritize aesthetics over function, designing shoes with pointed toe boxes that hinder natural foot movement.

It changes my foot shape that looks like this when barefoot to look like this when wearing it.

My grey toe had to move 25 degrees out of alignment to conform to its shape.

Here is what that would look like out of the shoe.

Notice the bunion angle that is formed in my grey toe?

This change in shape reduces my footprints, which is my base of support.

So, it's ironic that the shoes that are supposed to support me only make me less stable.

Now, there is much to talk about here, but I have other videos dedicated to this topic, which you can check out.

The important thing to note is that we need to move away from stiff, cast-like shoes that aren't designed with foot health in mind and spend more time barefoot.

And choosing shoes opt for flexible, barefoot-style shoes that are shaped like our feet.

Okay, now that you understand why the feet and glutes are so important for our foundational strength, how they affect each other, and the common causes for their dysfunction, let's run through some techniques and exercises to help build their strength at the same time.

The simplest step you can take is to use toe spacers.

These silicone spacers increase toe splay, which expands your footprint, and provides a more stable base of support.

In our internal testing, EMG muscle activity data showed that wearing toe spacers during goblet squats led to increased glute activation compared to when toe splay was restricted.

When the feet are stabilized, they provide a solid foundation that allows the glutes to contract more efficiently and generate greater power.

This is supported by a study showing that using supportive insoles to stabilize the single leg exercises increased glute activation.

So improving stability of our feet with the help of orthotics like toe spacers could be an easy way to improve foot function and unlock extra glute activity.

Moving on, this exercise will increase your foot strength, improve your toe splay and mobility, unlock your hip mobility, and activate your glutes at the same time.

Start by squatting down with your heels elevated, balancing on your toes.

While in the bottom position of the squat, slowly move one knee outward and lower it towards the ground.

This outward motion when lowering the knee helps to engage and wind up the ankle, stabilizing it while encouraging the toes to spread.

Be careful not to move the knee inwards as you lower it.

This will collapse the foot, arch, and toes, defeating the purpose of the exercise.

Once your knee touches the ground, squeeze your glutes to lift your hips into full extension.

You should feel a stretch along the front of the hip and into your quad.

Go back to the starting position, balancing on your toes, and repeat with the other leg.

Do 20 to 30 repetitions of this exercise each morning to jumpstart your feet and glutes, or as a warm-up before a workout.

Next, you've probably seen the banded side step exercise used for activating and strengthening the glutes.

We've created a movement that gets more glute activation while simultaneously increasing your foot strength.

A 2012 study found that placing the band around the ankles instead of the knees increased glute activity by 25%.

But what makes this band placement around the ankles even cooler is that it adds a pronation force on the feet, which you need to resist by pressing your toes into the ground and raising your arches into supination.

So, now you have a variation of banded side step that not only demands higher glute activation, but also forces you to train your foot arch muscles.

Do 2 sets of 10 side steps to the right and 10 to the left, then follow with 2 sets of 10 forward and backwards as if you're walking on train tracks, all the while keeping constant tension in the band.

This will fire up your glutes and foot muscles, making it a great way to prime them before any activity.

But the best way to build a strong foundation through feet and glutes is through single leg balance work.

The simplest variation is to just do static balancing on one leg.

If you can comfortably balance for more than a minute, you can make it more difficult by closing your eyes.

This forces you to focus more on the sensory feedback you get from your feet.

Just make sure to do this barefoot so that you have better ground feel.

If that's still too easy, introduce forward tilting hip hinges into the exercise.

Adding motion will challenge the movement stability of the glutes, while simultaneously requiring more load-bearing strength and stability from the feet.