Sock Lifters, Unite!

Because we could use some more unserious content these days.

This piece represents the first installment in a new vertical for WBC: Kicks. As in “kicks and giggles.” Here’s hoping it makes you laugh or at least smirk.

~Meredith

Sock lifters of the world,

It has come to my attention that people think we’re gross. That they think it’s unhygienic to remove our shoes and lift in our socked feet. They’ve started posting signs demanding that we “wear shoes” — as if the gym is some sort of “no shoes, no service” restaurant. And yet the runners go on hawking loogies around the trash can and dripping sweat all over the treadmills, teenaged boys and middle-aged moms alike aren’t wiping down their machines, and the gym staff haven’t cleaned a mirror all year.

What’s it going to take for these self-dubbed gym police to realize that socked feet are more sanitary than muscled torsos barely covered by bro tanks and the sweaty lower back beneath the no-shirt-just-a-sports-bra on the yoga mat that may or may not be cleaned before and after use?

When are the biomechanically illiterate going to realize that sneakers are neither right nor optimal for every form of exercise? That today’s marshmallow soles are a surefire way to break an ankle mid-lift — yes, even if that lift is the bench press?

Why can’t they see that to move properly, we need our feet firmly on the ground, like our moccasined forbears who, after creeping through the forest hunting prey, carried the game home on their backs?

We weren’t born with shoes, so why would we wear them now, while tossing hundreds of pounds overhead?

It’s far past time that we stand up for ourselves. That we go toe-to-socked-toe with these power-hungry pawns of Big Shoe. Just because they’re dropping major change on shoes with “sweat-wicking” holes in the soles doesn’t mean we have to. Buying unnecessary footwear doesn’t make them better than us — if anything, we and our resilient arches and impressive tri-pod foot stance are better and, indeed, stronger than them. I’d like to see them deadlift 300 without a collapsed arch. In fact, they probably couldn’t pull 120 without their pansy feet crumbling beneath them. That’s what they get for outsourcing foot strength to comfortable shoes. They’ll never know what it’s like to walk through a pine forest without breaking a twig, nor the satisfaction of stepping away from a lift and seeing a pristine footprint with all five toes defined on the floor.

Joke’s on them. When they inevitably land in physical therapy due to plantar fasciitis and bunions, they’ll be doing toe yoga with the rest of us and wishing they never tattled to the gym manager that someone’s over there lifting without shoes. Isn’t that against your policy? Don’t you value cleanliness here at all?

Thank you for your well-grounded attention to this matter of sole importance.

Sincerely,
No Kicks Got Me Kicked Out

P.S.
Does anyone have recommendations for socks with arch support?

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Previously in Women’s Barbell Club…

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Recommended Reads

• Everyone should be hybrid training (Alyssa Olenick, PHD at In the Lab)

• ‘The greatest arms I’ve ever seen’: Matt Damon’s muscular female stunt double Devyn Dalton (The Guardian)

• ‘I’m a pelvic floor PT — here’s why your feet or jaw might be causing your bladder to leak while you run’ (Stylist)

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