I'm Rich Birkett, owner and coach at Rich Birkett Performance Coaching (RBPC). Before I got into coaching I spent 14 years as a professional rugby player, picking up four Premiership titles and two European Cups along the way. 

These days my team and I coach cyclists, mostly in the 30–55 age bracket and our whole approach at RBPC is built around three pillars most riders completely neglect: strength, mobility and nutrition. 

I call it the missing piece of cycling performance and our motto is “Getting faster on the bike starts off it!” Feet, weirdly, sit right at the centre of all three pillars…

Here's the thing about cycling: everyone assumes it's the joint-friendly alternative to running. No impact, no pounding, easy on the body. And compared to smashing out 10k on tarmac, yes fine, it is. But that reputation has let cyclists get away with completely ignoring their feet and in my experience, it’s costing them more than they realise.

Your foot is the only part of your body actually in contact with the bike that's producing power. Every watt you push travels through it. If your foot can't stabilise properly in the shoe, if your ankle's got no mobility or if your cleat position is off by even a few millimetres, you're leaking power before it even gets to the pedal. I see this constantly with clients who come to me chasing bigger numbers on the bike and never once think to look at what's happening inside their shoe.

The complaints are predictable once you know what you're looking for: hot foot (that burning, tingling sensation on long rides), numbness in the toes, forefoot pain that shows up an hour into a ride and won't shift. Most riders just accept it as "part of cycling” and it doesn’t need to be. Nine times out of ten it's a mobility or stability issue further up the chain — stiff ankles, weak intrinsic foot muscles or a shoe and cleat setup that's compensating for a problem rather than solving it.

Then there's the stuff that builds up over years rather than hours. Cyclists spend so long locked into a rigid, £350 pair of shoes, in a fixed position, pedalling in a dead-straight line, that the small stabiliser muscles in the foot and ankle basically go to sleep. Add in zero off-bike strength work (which is still the norm for most riders I meet) and you end up with feet that are strong in one very narrow range of motion and doing nothing outside of it. That's how you get bunions, hallux rigidus and ankles that can't produce power efficiently in a sprint or out of the saddle on a climb.

So what actually helps? A few things I get every client doing, cyclist or not:

Spend time barefoot. Not winding you up I promise! Walking around barefoot at home lets the small muscles in your feet actually work instead of being propped up by a shoe all day.

Build ankle mobility into your routine. A stiff ankle limits how much force you can put into the pedal stroke, particularly out of the saddle. Simple dorsiflexion drills, a couple of minutes a day, make a genuine difference.

Get your cleats checked properly, not guessed. Most riders set them up once and never revisit it, even as their flexibility and strength change over the years.

Don't skip the shoes-off strength work. Single-leg stuff — step-ups, split squats, calf raises through a full range — forces the foot and ankle to stabilise the way they were designed to, not the way a cycling shoe lets them get lazy.

None of this is complicated. It's just consistently ignored, because feet are boring and everyone's obsessed with FTP numbers and power meters instead. But if you want to keep producing power efficiently into your 40s, 50s and beyond and therefore keep riding pain-free rather than managing niggles, your feet are not optional. They're the foundation the whole thing is built on.

Look after them properly and the rest of the engine works a lot better too.

Rich Birkett is the owner and coach at Rich Birkett Performance Coaching (RBPC), based online and also in Reigate, UK, specialising in strength, mobility and nutrition coaching for cyclists.