Do cushioned shoes weaken your feet?

The foot is a set of muscles, not a platform

Each foot holds small muscles that start and end inside the foot itself. They hold up the arch, spread and grip with the toes, and stiffen the foot so it can push off. Like any muscle, they grow when they work and shrink when something else does their job.

A modern shoe does a lot of that job. Arch supports hold the arch up, a stiff sole stops the foot bending, and a narrow toe box stops the toes spreading. The question is whether decades of that leave the foot weaker.

What comparisons between groups show

In 2018, Harvard researchers compared adults who habitually wore minimal footwear with adults who wore conventional shoes. The minimally shod group had larger muscles along both edges of the foot, measured by ultrasound, and higher, stiffer arches when walking. The bigger the muscle under the arch, the stiffer the arch.

A 1992 survey of 2,300 Indian children aged 4 to 13 found flat feet in 8.6% of children who wore shoes and 2.8% of those who did not. Flat feet were most common in children who wore closed-toe shoes, less common in children in sandals or slippers, and rarest in children who went barefoot.

Studies like these compare groups. They can't rule out every other difference between those groups, such as how much the people walk or what ground they walk on.

What happens when people change shoes

Trials that change what people wear are stronger evidence, and they point the same way.

Study	What people did	Result
Ridge et al., 2019	57 runners, eight weeks: walking in minimalist shoes, foot exercises, or no change	Minimalist-shoe walking grew foot muscle size and strength as well as the exercises did
Curtis et al., 2021	Adults wore minimal footwear for daily life for six months	Foot strength rose by 57% on average

So foot weakness from shoes looks like ordinary disuse. Asking the muscles to work again brings them back, within months.

Running: heel or forefoot

A 2010 study in Nature compared runners in the United States and Kenya. People who had always run barefoot mostly landed on the front or middle of the foot. People used to running shoes mostly landed on the heel. Barefoot forefoot strikers produced smaller collision forces at landing, even on hard ground, than shod heel strikers.

A cushioned heel makes heel striking comfortable. Barefoot, it hurts, so people land differently. The study suggests this softer landing may help avoid some impact injuries. It didn't show that shoes cause injuries.

What the evidence doesn't show

The popular claims run ahead of the research.

• A 2017 systematic review pooled 15 studies of 8,399 people who habitually went barefoot. It found only limited evidence of long-term effects on biomechanics or health, and none on physical performance. Barefoot living may help, but the proof that it does is thin.
• You often read that the foot sole carries 200,000 nerve endings. We could not find a study that counted them. Recordings from the nerve to the sole do show touch receptors spread across it, tuned for balance and movement.
• No large trial yet shows that thin-soled shoes prevent falls in older people.

Changing shoes too fast hurts

A foot that has spent decades in supportive shoes is not ready for barefoot running. In a 2013 study, 19 experienced runners moved gradually to thin, toe-shaped shoes over ten weeks. MRI scans afterwards showed new bone stress, swelling inside the foot bones, in 10 of them, more than in runners who kept their usual shoes. The authors advise a very slow transition.

What you can do

1. Start by walking, not running, in flat, flexible shoes with room for your toes.
2. Go barefoot at home and on grass or sand, where the ground is soft and uneven.
3. Add time slowly, over months. Stop and back off if the top of the foot or the heel aches.
4. Try foot exercises: pull the ball of the foot towards the heel without curling the toes, and stand on one leg.
5. For children, choose flexible shoes with a wide toe box, and let them go barefoot where the ground is safe.
6. With diabetes, nerve damage or poor circulation in the feet, see a podiatrist before changing anything. Those feet can't feel an injury.