Anatomical reason not to lift barefoot in a home gym?
I am 69 years old, 5’10’ and 200 lbs. I have been lifting weights at a local gym for about 6 months - using their methodology, which included bench press, deadlift, squat - and a bunch of auxiliary exercises.
I really liked getting under the barbell, but I think Starting Strength makes a lot more sense, and I have started to put together a simple home gym in my garage - I’ve got a power cage, bench and barbell, and as soon as I recover from COVID, I will pick up some used plates.
I have a question about lifting shoes - or actually no shoes.
I can understand that you would not want people working out barefoot in a commercial gym for sanitary reasons, but are there anatomical reasons not to lift in bare feet?
As I said earlier, I am 69 years old, and my wife and I do a lot of social dancing. About 10 years ago, I was having a lot of issues with various kinds of foot/knee pain dancing, and I had seen podiatrists and was trying out various kinds of insoles and supports.
One night my wife and I got to a dance, and I only had one dance shoe. I thought, “What the heck am I going to do?”
So I danced barefoot - and had no foot pain at all. I had blisters on my feet, but no other issues.
After that, I danced barefoot for a while, and that seemed to solve all of the problems with my feet.
Since then, I have sought out minimal footwear - in the sense of very thin soles and no arch support. That pretty much means trail running sandals when the weather is warm and Vibram FiveFingers when the weather is colder.
I wore FiveFingers/sandals when I worked out at the gym for the last 6 months, and did not notice any problems.
Are there good anatomical reasons not to lift weights in bare feet at a home gym?