This week on the USA Weightlifting Podcast, we’re back with another tip to help improve your lifts. In this episode our hosts will be discussing the benefits of lifting without shoes. Believe it or not, lifting barefoot may in-fact make lifting with weightlifting shoes much easier by improving kinesthetic awareness, ankle mobility, as well as cleaning up some mobility issues in your bottom position. Tune in for some specific warm-up sequences to try out before your next lift!

Topics:

10:26 - Testing your “air squat” without shoes
16:25 - Warm-up sequence
29:45 - Cleaning up some mobility issues
40:40 - Lifting in Nanos

Sponsors:

ROMWod.com - Optimize Your Range of Motion

Instruction:

Perform the 1st 3 warm up sets of any squat workout (overhead, front or back) and the 1st 3 warm up sets of any snatch or clean workout, without shoes (barefoot). If you’re unable to maintain sufficient quality in this way, then progress into it over time as indicated in the recording.

Whether you’re ready for weighted barefoot squats or snatches/cleans or not, we recommend that you perform light position drills and individualized mobility work barefoot as a daily and very effective complete warm up. See the sample sequences below to help you get started:

Sample Position Prep (General Warm Up)
3 Rds
-Extended Plate Squat 5 reps w/5 sec pause/rep
-Ankle Rock 10 reps/side (replace w/1-2 mobi drills most meaningful to you)
-Support Squat 30 sec

Weighted Barefoot warm up(OH/Frt/Back Squat)
*w/pause on last rep/set
-5 at bar
-5 at 35%
-5 at 50%