For years, CrossFit athlete Manon Angonese dealt with patellar tendinopathy and recurring knee pain.
Like many athletes, the initial focus was naturally on the place where the symptoms appeared: the knee. But over time, Manon started paying more attention to something further down the kinetic chain — her feet and the way they interacted with the ground.
Today, Manon trains and competes in The Nude Foot barefoot shoes, including during high-level CrossFit competition.
Her experience raises an interesting question for athletes:
Could the way your feet move inside your shoes influence the way the rest of your body moves?
Manon Angonese, CrossFit and the Importance of the Feet
CrossFit demands almost everything from the lower body.
Squats. Olympic weightlifting. Running. Box jumps. Lunges. Burpees. Rope climbs. Gymnastics.
Your feet are the point of contact between your body and the ground for many of these movements.
Yet athletes often spend enormous amounts of time strengthening their quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves while paying relatively little attention to the feet themselves.
For Manon, changing the way she approached her feet became part of a broader strategy focused on movement, strength and stability.
Instead of constantly isolating the knee, she began looking at the body from the ground up.
What Is CrossFit Barefoot Training?
Training CrossFit barefoot doesn't necessarily mean literally removing your shoes.
For many athletes, CrossFit barefoot training means using minimalist or barefoot shoes designed to interfere as little as possible with natural foot movement.
A barefoot CrossFit shoe typically includes:
- A wide, foot-shaped toe box that allows the toes to spread.
- Zero drop, meaning the heel and forefoot sit at approximately the same height.
- A thin sole that increases ground feedback.
- A flexible construction that allows the foot to move more freely.
- Minimal unnecessary cushioning or structural support.
The objective isn't to make training harder.
It's to allow the foot to participate more naturally in movement.
Why Are CrossFit Athletes Using Barefoot Shoes?
There is a growing interest in CrossFit athletes using barefoot shoes, particularly for strength training, functional fitness and everyday movement.
And there is a logical reason.
CrossFit requires athletes to constantly transition between different movement patterns.
During a heavy squat or deadlift, you want a stable connection with the floor.
During lunges and carries, your feet need to stabilize your body.
During running and jumping, the foot and ankle need to absorb and transfer forces repeatedly.
Traditional highly cushioned footwear can place more material between the athlete and the ground.
Barefoot footwear takes a different approach:
instead of trying to control the foot, it gives the foot more freedom to do its job.
Training CrossFit With Barefoot Shoes: The Potential Advantages
1. Better Ground Connection
When lifting weights, stability matters.
A thinner sole reduces the distance between your foot and the floor, creating a more direct connection with the ground.
For movements such as squats, deadlifts and many Olympic lifting drills, this can provide a more stable feeling underfoot.
2. Natural Toe Splay
Look at the shape of a natural human foot.
The toes don't end in a narrow point.
Yet many conventional athletic shoes compress the toes into exactly that shape.
A wide toe box allows the toes to spread more naturally, increasing the functional surface area of the foot during training.
For CrossFit athletes, that can be particularly relevant when creating a stable base under load.
3. More Foot Movement
Your foot contains 26 bones, 33 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments.
It's an incredibly complex structure designed to move.
Barefoot shoes allow significantly more movement than rigid footwear, giving the foot greater opportunity to flex, stabilize and adapt to the ground.
4. Zero-Drop Position
Many conventional training and running shoes elevate the heel above the forefoot.
Barefoot shoes typically use a zero-drop platform, keeping the heel and forefoot at the same level.
This changes the athlete's relationship with the ground and can influence lower-body mechanics.
It doesn't mean zero drop is automatically better for every athlete or every exercise. It means the shoe interferes less with the natural geometry of the foot.
5. Greater Sensory Feedback
Your feet contain thousands of sensory receptors.
They constantly provide your nervous system with information about pressure, position and the surface underneath you.
A thick layer of cushioning reduces some of that feedback.
A thinner sole allows you to feel more of what is happening underneath your feet — an important component of balance, coordination and movement.
The Cushioning Illusion
Modern athletic footwear has increasingly associated more cushioning with more protection.
But more cushioning doesn't automatically mean stronger or more resilient feet.
Think about another sport.
You wouldn't wear boxing gloves to play tennis.
The gloves offer enormous amounts of protection and cushioning — but they would also prevent your hands from doing what the sport requires.
The same principle raises an important question about footwear:
At what point does protection start interfering with function?
The goal shouldn't necessarily be maximum cushioning.
It should be finding the appropriate relationship between protection, movement, stability and sensory feedback.
For athletes like Manon Angonese, barefoot footwear has become part of that equation.
Can Barefoot Shoes Help With Knee Pain?
This requires an important distinction.
Barefoot shoes are not a medical treatment for patellar tendinopathy or knee pain.
Knee pain is complex and can involve training volume, load management, strength, biomechanics, previous injuries and many other factors.
However, the foot is part of the kinetic chain.
How the foot interacts with the ground can influence movement further up the body through the ankle, knee and hip.
This is why Manon's story shouldn't be interpreted as:
“Barefoot shoes cured her knee.”
The more useful lesson is:
Where you feel pain isn't necessarily the only place worth investigating.
For an athlete dealing with persistent symptoms, foot strength, ankle function, footwear, training load and overall movement strategy may all deserve consideration alongside appropriate professional assessment and rehabilitation.
Does Manon Angonese Compete in CrossFit Wearing Barefoot Shoes?
Yes.
Manon doesn't simply use barefoot footwear for walking or accessory strength work.
She trains and competes in The Nude Foot, including high-level CrossFit competition.
That's important because competitive CrossFit places very different demands on footwear.
A shoe needs to work across multiple disciplines rather than being optimized for one isolated movement.
An athlete might move from a barbell to box jumps, running, burpees or gymnastics within the same event.
This was one of the ideas behind developing The Nude Foot for CrossFit and functional training: creating a barefoot shoe that maintains the fundamental characteristics of barefoot footwear while being capable of handling serious training.
The Nude Foot: Barefoot Shoes Built for CrossFit
The Nude Foot was created around a simple idea:
Your footwear should respect the shape and function of your feet.
Our training shoes combine:
Wide toe box — giving the toes room to spread naturally.
Zero drop — keeping the heel and forefoot level.
4 mm flexible sole — providing ground feedback while protecting the foot.
Foot-shaped construction — instead of forcing the foot into a conventional narrow shoe shape.
Training-focused design — developed for functional fitness, strength training and everyday movement.
The result is a shoe designed not to replace what your feet can do, but to give them the opportunity to do it.
Should You Start Doing CrossFit in Barefoot Shoes?
If you've spent your entire life training in heavily cushioned or structured footwear, immediately changing everything isn't necessarily the smartest approach.
Your feet adapt to the environment you give them.
That adaptation takes time.
Start progressively.
Use barefoot shoes for walking and everyday movement. Introduce them during controlled strength sessions. Gradually increase training exposure before using them for high-volume running, jumping or intense CrossFit workouts.
Listen to your body and allow your feet and lower legs time to adapt.
Barefoot training isn't about proving how minimal your shoes can be.
It's about building feet capable of doing more themselves.
Strong Athletes Need Strong Foundations
Manon Angonese's experience is ultimately about more than footwear.
It's about changing perspective.
Athletes often search for another technology, another layer of cushioning or another external solution to protect their bodies.
Sometimes the answer may also involve developing the structures we already have.
Your feet are the foundation for almost every movement you perform standing up.
Give them space.
Let them move.
Train them.
Strengthen them.
And when something hurts higher up the chain, remember to look down too.
Manon Angonese trains CrossFit from the ground up.
THE NUDE FOOT.
One of Zero.