Since I wrote about flat feet wrecking my squats, the messages haven’t really stopped. Not so much “do I have flat feet”, more “okay but what do I actually do about it”, which is fair, because I’ll be honest, I rushed past that bit a little in the first post in favour of the biomechanics nerdery. So here’s the follow-up. The actual stretches and exercises, in roughly the order I did them, with enough detail that you’re not left squinting at vague instructions like “activate your arch” and wondering what that’s even supposed to mean.
Quick recap if you haven’t read the original post: flat feet mean your arch collapses inward under load, which sets off a chain reaction up through your ankles, knees and hips every time you squat. Knees cave, heels want to lift, the whole thing feels unstable no matter how many times someone tells you to “push your knees out.” The feet are the actual foundation problem. This post is the fix.
Start With Mobility: Stretches for Feet and Ankles
Before you can strengthen anything, tight feet and ankles need to actually move properly. I skipped this bit at first because stretching felt like the boring, less effective half of the job. It isn’t. Do this part for a couple of weeks before expecting much from the strengthening work.
Ankle dorsiflexion stretch (knee-to-wall): Stand facing a wall, one foot back. Keeping your heel flat on the floor, bend your front knee towards the wall without lifting the heel. Hold for a couple of seconds, repeat 10 times each side, daily. This is the one that made the biggest early difference for me, mostly because I realised how little my ankles were actually moving before I started.
Plantar fascia release: Roll the sole of your foot over a tennis ball or a frozen water bottle for a minute or two each side. Properly uncomfortable the first few times. Worth it.
Toe spreading and extension: Sit down, try to spread your toes apart without curling them, hold for a few seconds, repeat 10 times. It feels completely pointless and looks ridiculous. It’s rebuilding control you’ve probably never had to use before, because most of us spend our whole lives in shoes that don’t ask our toes to do anything.
Then Build Strength: The Exercises for the Arch
This is the part that actually transfers to your squat, and the part that takes the longest to feel like it’s working.
The short foot exercise (doming). Sit or stand with your foot flat on the floor, then try to “shorten” your foot by drawing the ball of your foot towards your heel without curling your toes, lifting the arch slightly off the ground. I covered this one in the original post because it’s genuinely the most important exercise here, but it deserves repeating: it looks and feels completely daft the first time you try it, like you’re attempting to move a muscle that doesn’t exist. Persist. Do 10 reps, holding each for 5 seconds, ideally daily. I didn’t notice a real difference in squat stability until around six weeks of doing this consistently, so don’t give up on it after four days because nothing’s changed yet.
Toe yoga. Lift just your big toe while keeping the others flat, then reverse it, lifting the four smaller toes while keeping the big toe down. Sounds easy. Genuinely isn’t, especially the first few attempts. 10 reps each way, each foot.
Slow calf raises. Up onto your toes over 2 seconds, hold for a second, down over 2 seconds. Three sets of 12-15. Controlled, not bouncy. The slowness is the point, it forces your foot and ankle to stabilise rather than just using momentum.
Single-leg balance. Stand on one foot for 20-30 seconds, both sides. Once that’s easy, close your eyes (near a wall, not in the middle of the kitchen) or do it on a slightly uneven surface like a folded towel. This one transfers directly to the stability you need mid-squat, where you’re relying on one side or the other to correct slightly without you consciously thinking about it.
Bring It Into the Actual Squat
Doing the exercises in isolation only gets you so far. At some point you need to bring the improvement into the lift itself.
Heel elevation. Small plates under your heels, or a pair of weightlifting shoes, instantly reduce how much ankle mobility you need to hit a decent squat depth. I borrowed a pair of lifting shoes early on and squatted 5kg more than the week before, more upright, no heel lift, which was honestly a bit embarrassing given how simple the fix was. If you’re not ready to spend on proper lifting shoes, a pair of flat, hard-soled trainers (Converse work, and they’re about twenty quid) gives you a more stable base than a cushioned running shoe. I’ve got some other budget options for kitting out a home set-up in my budget home gym post if you train at home.
Stance width. A slightly wider stance with toes turned out a touch more can reduce how much ankle mobility the squat demands, which takes pressure off the weakest link while you’re still building it up.
The cue that actually worked for me: “spread the floor apart” with your feet, rather than “knees out.” Thinking about pushing the ground apart engages the whole foot, including the arch, rather than just yanking your knees sideways and leaving your feet to collapse underneath anyway.
If you’re still fairly new to squatting generally and this all feels like a lot at once, my beginner lifting guide is worth reading alongside this, so you’re not trying to fix your feet and learn the whole movement pattern at the same time.
A Simple Weekly Routine to Actually Stick To
The exercises above are useless if they live in a browser tab you never reopen, so here’s roughly how I structured it:
- Daily (takes about 5 minutes): Ankle dorsiflexion stretch, plantar fascia roll, toe spreading.
- 3 times a week: Short foot exercise, toe yoga, calf raises, single-leg balance, done as a quick circuit before or after training.
- Every squat session: Use the heel elevation and the “spread the floor” cue while you build strength elsewhere. Don’t wait until your feet are “fixed” to squat. Squat with the support in place while the underlying work catches up, and bring that support away gradually as things improve. I still use progressive overload principles here, just adding load slowly as my feet keep pace with the weight rather than the other way round.
How Long Before You Notice a Difference
I’ll be honest about the timeline because I think it gets glossed over a lot: this took me three to four months to feel like a genuinely different squat, not three to four weeks. The short foot exercise alone took about six weeks before I noticed anything. The heel lift and knee cave didn’t disappear, they faded gradually, to the point where I only properly noticed how much better things were when I went back and tried squatting in a flat shoe with no plates after a couple of months and it suddenly felt fine.
Flat feet don’t get “cured.” Mine are still flat. But they’re functional in a way they weren’t before, and that’s the realistic goal here, not some Instagram-worthy overnight transformation.
When to See a Podiatrist or Physio
If you’ve given this a proper go for a couple of months and you’re still getting pain (not just discomfort from new exercises, actual pain), or the knee cave and instability aren’t improving at all, that’s worth a podiatrist or physio rather than more time on your own. They can check for things beyond general flat feet, like overpronation that needs specific support, or a hip or knee issue that’s being mistaken for a foot problem. Persistent pain, especially anything sharp or that’s getting worse rather than better, isn’t something to just push through with more reps.
Final Thoughts
This is the unglamorous, slightly boring follow-up to a post that was mostly about explaining why the problem exists in the first place. There’s no single exercise that fixes flat feet overnight, and anyone telling you there is one is skipping past the bit where it actually takes consistent, slightly tedious work over a few months. But it does work. My squats are properly stable now in a way that felt genuinely out of reach when I started, and it came down to exactly the boring list above, done often enough to matter.
If you’ve tried any of these and found one that made a bigger difference than the others, or you’ve got a fix I haven’t covered here, let me know in the comments. I’m always curious what’s actually worked for other people rather than just what the theory says should.