The Effects of Minimalist Shoes on Plantar Intrinsic Foot Muscle Size and Strength: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Minimalist shoes are proposed to prevent injury and enhance performance by strengthening intrinsic foot muscles, yet there is little consensus on the effectiveness of minimalist shoes in increasing their strength or size. This systematic review assesses using minimalist shoes as an intervention on changes in plantar intrinsic foot muscle size and strength. PubMed, CINHAL, Scopus, and SPORT Discus were systematically searched for articles between January 2000 to March 2022. Studies were included if they had an intervention of at least 2 weeks with a control group and examined the effect of minimalist shoes on plantar intrinsic foot strength or size (either volume, or cross-sectional area, or thickness). 9 studies were included. There were significant increases and percent changes in foot muscle strength, volume, cross-sectional area, and thickness. Strength increased between 9%-57%, and size increased between 7.05%-10.6%. Minimalist shoes may effectively increase intrinsic foot muscle size and strength in healthy individuals, and they may also be more convenient than implementing time-intensive physical therapy programs. Future research is needed to explore using minimalist shoes as an intervention for clinical populations who would benefit from increased IFM strength and function. It will also be vital to improve upon IFM assessment methods.

A Novel Intrinsic Foot Muscle Strength Dynamometer Demonstrates Moderate-To-Excellent Reliability and Validity

“…31 Additionally, a longer foot has a longer lever arm that could theoretically generate a higher force. 31 Further, habitual use of minimalist shoes is associated with increased foot width 47 and increased IFM strength 48 compared to those in conventional footwear, which could indicate an association between foot width and IFM strength. In this study, foot width had a small but significant correlation with IFM strength of both dominant and non-dominant feet, which is in agreement with previous findings.…”