How To Get Strong Feet & Glutes (At The Same Time)

When it comes to whole-body musculoskeletal wellbeing and freedom from pain (especially when it comes to avoiding back pain), a remarkable lot depends on our feet and glutes.

So here’s how to help them to help the rest of your body:

A firm foundation

All physical goals—speed, strength, muscle growth, or skill—depend on good quality movement, which, in turn, depends on having a strong foundation.

The feet and glutes provide the physical base for movement. Specifically, the glutes and hips provide much of the movement’s strength and control, while the feet provide load-bearing directional support.

Standing barefoot on one leg tests both of these things. If you can’t balance for a minute or lose control during motion, your foundational stability is weak. This is, by the way, a reflection of functional strength— walking involves being on one leg 60–70% of the time, and running relies entirely on single-leg support, since at most one foot is on the ground at any given instant.

Common causes of weakness:

• For glutes: prolonged sitting shuts them off, tightens hip flexors, and leads to anterior pelvic tilt and atrophy. Without targeted training, everything in that general region of the body weakens.
• For feet: rigid, narrow shoes restrict motion, deform toe alignment, reduce foot stability, and create bunions. Shoes should be flexible and foot-shaped; spending more time barefoot is good too, which advice you might expect from a channel named “barefoot strength”.

Now, some exercises to improve strength in all the relevant parts:

1. Squat-to-knee exercise: begin in a squat on your toes, move one knee outwards and lower it towards the ground, keeping the foot from collapsing. Then lift your hips by squeezing your glutes to feel a hip and quad stretch. This builds foot and glute strength together.
2. Banded side-step variation: place a resistance band around your ankles (not knees) to raise glute activity by about 25%. This setup also challenges the arches to resist pronation, strengthening both your feet and glutes.
3. Single-leg balance progression: start by balancing barefoot for a minute, then close your eyes to focus on just the physical feedback. Progress by adding hip hinges or hip rotations, ensuring motion comes from your hips, not your spine. Doing these on a narrow beam further intensifies foot engagement, but do stay safe, please, and only consider progressing to that if you’ve mastered the previous exercises, are feeling confident, and don’t have a pressing reason why falling would be catastrophic for you (e.g. osteoporosis or such). If in doubt, don’t do it.

For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like:

The Secret To Better Squats: Foot, Knee, & Ankle Mobility

Take care!