The Walking Code: Basic Tips
Chapter 3.
Walking Basics
Before getting into too many details about the mechanics of walking, I would first like to go through a list of basics. These basic rules are ones you can use to assess your current walking style and should serve as a guide as you become more conscious of your walking technique.
1: Elevate the Head
Proper walking technique requires proper posture. Begin by elongating the neck and floating the head upward. The eyes should be directed forward, not down at the ground. If you find yourself walking around like you are looking for loose change, shift your focus to the horizon. Imagine a balloon connected by a string to the crown of your head. Imagine the balloon floating upward, elongating your neck. Think up, not back. The eyes should be forward and the chin level with the ground. Always keep the muscles relaxed. While your head is floating, let the shoulders sink as if they are moving toward the ground as the head moves toward the sky.
2: Don't Lean
The spine must remain vertical, from the neck to the pelvis, at all times. Don't lean forward, and don't lean back. Feel like you are floating forward, not falling forward. It is a common mistake, sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious, to think that leaning forward will help initiate your forward movement. This is not the case. If we lean forward to walk, gravity immediately begins to pull us down, not forward. We can't walk like we are riding on a Segue. Even the smallest amount of intention to lean creates misalignments in the posture and increases the force of impact of every step. The excess stresses on the body are enough to create dysfunction over time, even when the amount of lean isn't enough to be visible.
3: Move from the Core
It is a good question to ask yourself, how do you begin to take a step. Intention is everything. Intention is how our mind tells our body to move. We begin by intending to walk, and our mind must signal this intention to the body to initiate movement. When we move effectively, this intention must go directly to the core. This is where all functional movement begins. The movement begins in the core. The actions of the legs and the arms are reflections of actions of the core. Keep the core relaxed and move from your center, gliding forward with each step. If you feel like you are falling and landing rather that floating and gliding, you aren't using your core correctly.
4: Be Conscious of Your Arm Swing
The relaxed swing of the arms is a reflection of the rotation of the core when we walk. The arms should swing in opposition to the legs. When the left leg goes forward, the right arm should go forward. When the right leg goes forward, the left arm should go forward. This movement should come from the core, not from the arms. You should be able to keep your arms perfectly loose and relaxed. They should swing with no active effort to make them swing. It is a sign of poor core function if your arms are not swinging naturally, or if they are swinging across the body rather than forward. It is a really bad sign if your arm swings on the same side as the swinging leg.
Check how conscious your walking is by trying to walk while thinking about the coordination between the arms and legs. Begin by consciously stepping forward with your right leg while letting your left arm swing forward in a relaxed manner. Then consciously and slowly step forward with your left leg and let your right arm swing forward. In my medical practice when I assess a patient walking, I often ask them to focus on their arm swing. In most cases, even in patients who walk with a normal arm swing, thinking about it throws them off completely. This is because most people walk by remote control. They have little awareness of what they are doing to make the movement happen. This is dangerous because without awareness, you can't have refinement. This makes people vulnerable to injury due to inadvertent errors in their walking technique.
As I mentioned, the natural arm swing should be relaxed and the active portion of the swing should be forward. The backward portion of the swing is passive and occurs when the active forward swing stops. The arm should drop back even with the torso during the back swing. If your arms swing back actively behind your body when you walk, this is an indication of a problem with your walking technique and your posture. As already mentioned, if your arms swing across your body, this is also an indication of abnormal walking function. Lack of arm swing or the arms swinging with the leg on the same side are additional signs of incorrect technique.
The timing of the arm swing is also critical. The endpoint of each step and the beginning of the next is at the moment of initial heel contact. This is the moment when the change of weight should be initiatedd and also when the change in arm swing should be initiated. For example, after the left heel contacts the ground, the left arm should begin swinging forward as the left forefoot is brought flat. If the change in arm swing doesn't occur until after the forefoot reaches the flat position, this indicates improper timing in the step. It will lead to forward pitching of the body or it will result in having to arch the upper back to maintain a vertical posture. This example was illustrated in the previous chapter.
If you have difficulty controlling your arm swing, work on it with your conscious mind. The more naturally you control your arm swing, the more it indicates controlled action of your core. When you begin to walk with consciousness, you can begin to refine your walk. You can begin to glide and not be at the mercy of gravity.
5: Level the Pelvis
The alignment of the spine when both standing and walking should extend all the way to the tip of the tailbone. The sacral spine is the portion of the spine at the level of the pelvis. Keeping this properly aligned means keeping the pelvis leveled. If you think of the pelvis as a bowl, keeping it level is like keeping a bowl full of water level. It shouldn't tip forward or back. Keeping the pelvis level is primarily a function of the actions of the lower abdominal muscles. They help both control the forward and back tilt of the pelvis as well as the rotation of the pelvis.
When standing still, we can work on leveling the pelvis by using the lower abdominal muscles in a relaxed way to pull up the pelvis to a level position. Don't over tuck the tailbone. Remember, the pelvis shouldn't tilt forward or backward.
For many people who stand with incorrect posture long enough, it isn't possible to level the pelvis. The hip flexors have shortened and the lower back muscles have shortened due to incorrect positioning for so long that the incorrect posture becomes fixed.
When we walk, the leveling of the pelvis occurs more dynamically. With each step, the lower torso activates on the side of the standing leg and releases on the side of the swing leg. This serves the purpose of both leveling the pelvis on the side of the standing leg while rotating the opposite side of the pelvis, along with the swing leg, forward.
The activation of the muscles in the core that rotate the upper torso turn in the opposite direction of the muscles that turn the lower torso and the pelvis. Since the arms are connected to the upper torso, they swing in opposition to the rotation of the pelvis. The net effect is that the lower abdominal rotation and the upper torso rotation appear visibly to cancel each other out. It makes it appear that the torso is still when we walk, but nothing could be further from the truth.
6: Keep the Hips Relaxed and Avoid Pushing
The rotation of the abdominal core muscles form two of the important components of the core that must be coordinated for proper walking technique. The third component of the core is the action of the hip joints. The hip actions must coordinate properly with the rotation of the core. One of the common errors people make when using the hips is pushing off with the hip from the mid stance position. That is the position when the full weight is balanced over the standing leg. By pushing, I mean extending the hip joint, pushing the knee backward. Pushing results in a lunging action, not a gliding action. This can lead to a variety of different problems, like excessive impact of the swing leg and over-striding.
Pushing off with the hip is a natural mistake if you ignore the necessary contribution of the torso rotation in walking. People think that pushing with the hip is required to make the body move forward. But moving forward or backward has more to do with the rotation of the waist than the action of the hips. I can extend the hip and push myself forward, or I can extend the hip and push myself backward. The hip action is the same in either case. The direction of rotation of the waist is what determines backward and forward.
Walking forward with a normal gait requires flexing the hip, not extending the hip. Instead of pushing the knee backward, the feeling should be one of pulling the knee forward. With the proper waist rotation, this causes the body to float or glide forward, not lunge forward. With a different waist rotation, the same hip flexion can make me float backward instead of forward.
If you find that you need to push with the hip to move forward, the first thing you should do is go back to the step on arm swing. It could indicate that you are initiating your step too late, after the forefoot has already come down. This will result in a need to push. When you initiate your step at the moment of heel contact, you will be able to glide forward without pushing. Pushing off should only be required when walking uphill. The mechanical details of these suggestions will be discussed in a later chapter.
7. Keep the Feet Facing Forward
You might think that this one requires no explanation, but unfortunately these days, it does. There is an epidemic of people walking around like ducks, and I personally lay the blame on the recent habit of people walking around in flip flops all day. The knees and the ankles and the feet are designed to travel forward in the direction the body is moving. They are not designed to roll sideways. Walking with the feet turned out is one of the easiest walking errors to observe when watching people walk. This problem is not caused by any physical defect. When I see young patients who come and visit me for pain in the knees or feet, frequently I see them walking with this error. In most cases, when I ask them how much time the spend in flip flops, they say they where flip flops all the time. The foot turn out is a subconscious action designed to keep the flip flops on their feet since there is no back strap. The more time spent in flip flops, the more this becomes the normal way of walking. The problem with unconscious walking is that these people aren't even aware they are doing it. They never give their walking form even a moments consideration. And when they start having pain in the inside of the knees, they don't make a connection because they don't even know they are doing it.
8: Avoid Bouncing
Walking should be smooth and level. There shouldn't be a very noticeable vertical up and down action, or bouncing. The goal in walking is to glide, not bounce. This reduces impact on the heels and stresses on all of the other lower extremity structures. Just like all of the other errors in walking technique, bouncing is a result of incorrect coordination of the core actions during walking.
9: Align the Joints in the Lower Body
The integrity and health of the lower extremity joints requires that a they be aligned correctly, just like the spine. Keep the hips aligned over the knees, the knees aligned over the ankles, the ankles aligned over the feet, and the weight evenly distributed over the weighted foot. When the weight is carried over the inside of the hips, the knees, and the feet, the joints and connective tissues that support these structures begin to wear out. This results in debilitating hip arthritis, knee arthritis, ankle pain, and a wide variety of foot disorders. Keeping the joints aligned is a function of the mechanics of the core. Various errors in core movement alter the alignment in the lower extremity joints. Correcting the alignment then requires correcting the core. If you feel you weight over the inside or outside of your feet when you walk or stand, that indicates you have an alignment issue that needs to be corrected. If you have been told you need arch supports, or especially if arch supports really bother you, these are good indications that you are not aligned correctly. This can be corrected with conscious awareness and understanding of your core.
10. Proper Footwear
Footwear becomes most important when people don't walk correctly. That is when very supportive shoes and often arch supports are needed to help correct misalignments that are a manifestation of faulty core control. When we function correctly, there is less need for these artificial supports, but many or even most people do benefit from them. In these cases, proper shoes and arch supports can at least partially correct for deficits in walking technique, but to some extent they are masking the problem rather than solving it.
In other circumstances, like the overuse of flip flops that I mentioned earlier, improper footwear not only fails to correct underlying problems but can also be the cause of them. In the case of flip flops, they alter they way people walk in order to keep them from falling off the backs of the feet. The fact that they lack any support in the arch is only a secondary problem with flip flops.
High heels are another potential problem for those who wear them frequently. In addition to being a doctor, I am also a professional Argentine Tango instructor and performer. My wife and dance partner spends a good deal of time wearing very high heels when performing, but she doesn't spend all day in them outside of her dancing job. She also knows how to correctly distribute her weight over her feet when in heels, and this prevents problems. When people don't know how to walk correctly in heels, or they spend too much time in them, that is when the problems begin. So if you do where heels, limit your time in them, and make sure you are walking correctly. If you have issues with bunions, plantar fasciitis, or other foot or knee issues, I would recommend you scrap the heels entirely. While the heels are not likely the sole cause of your problems, they are only going to make the problems worse.
11. Avoid Over-Striding
Each stride we take has a natural length based on our body structure. It is not arbitrary. Changing the length of the stride requires changing the mechanics of the way we walk. Taking too long of a stride or too short of a stride can both be an issue. Short strides can be a sign of advancing age, or sometimes medical conditions like Parkinson's disease. It is also common in people who walk with their feet turned out. In the former case, it is a sign of preexisting poor health. In the later, it is a risk factor for developing health problems. Less common than under-striding (too short of a stride) is the problem of over-striding (too long of a stride), but it is also important to guard against.
Over-striding occurs when each step is taken beyond its natural length. When this is done, it isn't possible to control the placement of the heel, leading to an excessively hard impact with each step. My tango coach used to call this stepping beyond your pedestal. If you take a normal length stride, you should be able to pivot your feet and find yourself balanced in a comfortable shoulder width stance. If you over-stride, your feet will be beyond a shoulder width apart if you pivot sideways. In a shoulder width stance, you should be able to easily maintain balance shifting from one foot to the other. In a beyond shoulder width stance, you won't be able to easily switch your weight back and forth between the two feet. Over-striding can be caused by a number of different problems, but they mostly involve incorrect use of the hip joints when walking. The exact details of this will be described later in the book.
Summary
The first step in achieving high quality walking technique is recognizing if there is a problem. It can be difficult to self assess when this is the case. The above tips can serve as a guide to recognizine the existence of a problem. If you find yourself looking at the ground, you know you have problem. If you feel like you are falling or lunging with each step rather than gliding, you have a problem. If you find your feet turned our rather than facing straight forward, you definitely have a problem. If you have an exaggerated curvature in your lower back, as if you butt is always sticking out, you have a problem. The next step is to correct the problem, and that is goal of the rest of this book.