I’ve written about how posture can impact your chest development here, but now I’ll focus on shoes and how they impact your posture.

When talking about footwear and their impact on posture we mainly want to know one thing – do they shift the center of gravity. Ideally, you would want to wear footwear that does not, as that will allow your body to position itself correctly when standing or walking.

Here’s an example of how shoes can shift your center of gravity.

And this is how your body compensates to maintain balance

As you can see, we want to avoid any footwear that’s not completely flat at the soles. Any raise in the heel over the front will shift your center of gravity forward, which will force your body to compensate with slouching the shoulders and rotating the hips anteriorly. It’s either that or tipping over. This effect is multiplied with height, so the taller you are the more you will be affected by this. Therefore, for proper posture you absolutely have to have proper footwear.

What you’ll want to do is find any footwear that has flat soles. Things like chucks, skate shoes or zero drop shoes. I personally suggest you wear zero drop shoes, simply because they’re made specifically to have flat soles, hence why they’re called “zero drop”.

But other shoes will work as well, as long as you can make sure they’re truly flat. You could use something like a small level to check them, or even a marble placed at the heel. If the marble moves forward then the shoes aren’t level.

You can also try to “fix” shoes that are slightly tilted by placing insoles only in the front (cut off the heel). I’ve done this myself successfully and it worked pretty well, as long as the insoles are secured properly. Trust me, you really don’t want them sliding inside.

Other than that, you will want to find shoes that are comfortable for you. Especially if you’re doing a lot of walking or standing. If you live in a city and walk on pavement a lot you will want to find shoes that have thick soles to cushion the impact, or alternatively you can place some thick insoles in them. Our feet really aren’t built for walking on very hard surfaces like pavement.