We take our feet for granted until they're injured. I persisted in running too many extra kilometres in my favourite running shoes until my feet told me to grade-up to new shoes. 

As well as bringing out my new shoes, I decided to walk barefooted every day as a way of reconditioning my feet. That turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as I have now found out. You might like to give it a try.

When I decided to walk barefooted, I had no specific theory in mind. I just figured that having the bones, tendons and muscles of my feet moving across a natural surface - road, trail, and the beach in my case - would activate neuromuscular pathways that shoes don't.

We rarely hear of the need to keep our tendons healthy. But we know that our balance gets worse as we age. The things we need to do to keep our tendons healthy also help us better sense the position and movement of our joints.

As we age, our ability to sense the position and movement of our joints degrades, even in very active older people. This loss is more severe in inactive people and leads to a less stable gait and more falls.

This is why it helps to think of regular daily exercise as a means of living longer better by avoiding falls - and also looking better longer with an upright posture. Your aim is not to build muscles and exhaust yourself; it is to improve your balance. In doing that, you'll need to build more muscle, but that outcome is a side-effect.
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The best program to combat loss of balance is a combination of aerobic, balance and strength exercises. This combination keeps our tendons healthy, as well as our ligaments and muscles.

As we age, falling is one of the major causes of reduced lifespan, because of the terrible consequences of broken bones and broken spirits.

You may have had the distressing experience of witnessing a healthy older relative who fell, became inactive, and quickly deteriorated. That is why exercising - for all of strength, endurance and balance - is a key to living longer better.
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The question is this: if you wish to focus specifically on more competent walking, which exercises and muscle groups should you give most attention?

I have an answer, based upon several related research studies.

We all have distractions. Some, like the pandemic, are a massive one for all us and can be demotivating. Others can demand our attention, and some simply provide excuses to slip into old habits or to procrastinate.

A friend had recently started on an exercise program I designed for him. But after 3 weeks he surprised me by saying that he had lost the motivation to do his morning exercises. I wasn't immediately sure how to help, but we worked it out together to get him started again.