Top 10 Walking Technique Tips

Hello, I am Dr. Todd Martin, creator of The Walking Code. I can think of few things that we spend more time doing but less time thinking about than walking. The result is an epidemic of pain, dysfunction, and disability. Here are some tips to help keep you walking safely, effectively, and without pain. I put some different tips in the video than I have written below, so there are more like 14 tips in this post. 

 

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 misalignment 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.

 

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. This can be improved with a variety of different stretches designed to help loosen the hip flexors and elongate lower back muscles.

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.

 

Figure. In this figure, the posture is vertical and the pelvis is level. A level pelvis will allow you to stand with your heels, buttocks, and shoulders all touching the wall at the same time. 

Figure. In this figure, the pelvis is tipped forward, called an anterior pelvic tilt. The upper torso compensates by pulling back, creating an exaggerated curve in the lower spine. This creates misalignment of the spine in the lower back which creates stress and can lead to pain and dysfunction. Notice that the shoulders cannot touch the wall at the same time as the buttocks when the pelvis is tilted forward. 

 

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.

 

 Figure. In the above figure, the man places the heel of the right leg while gliding forward. There is no pushing from the left leg. The weight is then pulled forward, using the proper rotation of the core to create the movement. The pelvis and the posture remain vertical.

In the below figure  on the left, the man places the heel of the right foot and then pushes with the hip of the left leg to get the body to move forward. The weight is pushed forward without the proper rotation of the core. This causes the pelvis and posture to tip forward. This is a very common problem. As people get older, this posture may become fixed. You will see many elderly people with this tipped forward posture even when they are not walking.

In the below figure on the right, the man is pushing forward just like in the figure on the left, but compensating for the forward pitching by pulling back with the shoulders. This creates what appears like vertical posture, but at the expense of poor alignment in the lower back.  

 

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.

 

Figure. The man in this figure is exhibiting a more and more common problem, walking with the feet turned out. This is especially common in people who wear flip flops a lot, probably because the turn out prevents the flip flops from flying off the feet. Unfortunately, it tends to result in a permanent change in walking technique, even when not wearing flip flops. 

 

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 hip 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.