Proper Walking
Walking should help loosen your muscles and joints and strengthen muscles. If you are walking improperly, you will cause structural changes that will result in stiffness, changes in muscle strength and slowly joint degeneration.
A famous doctor from Prague, Janda, has written about the muscles that shorten as we age. These are diagramed below.
These muscles are the major ones that stay contracted and are not stretched when you walk improperly.
Watch people walk. Some walk with a nice stride, their legs swing forward and back, their pelvis rotates slightly left and right, their arms swing slightly forward and back, the chest cage rotates slightly and the head is held upright.
Let’s start with your feet. You are supposed to land on your heel and push off with your toes. Your foot is like an airplane. It is supposed to land on the back landing gear and then come down gently on the front landing gear. You should be walking making little noise, absorbing shock in your foot and ankle not in your hip joints and spine. If you land with your foot in a more horizontal position or toe first, you are prone to tripping over rugs, thresholds and even cracks in the sidewalk.
The length of your stride is also very important. The longer your stride is the more muscles are used and the more strength you will have.
If you place your hands in your back pockets or over your gluteal muscles and walk, you should feel a contraction of the muscle when you land on your heel. If not, lengthen your stride until you do. When your gluteal’s (buttock muscles) contract you also exercise your abdominals. It is like getting gentle sit-ups for free.
If you do not feel the muscles contracting and you are walking with a long stride, you may be walking with your feet too far apart. This causes you to sway side to side and use muscles to swing your legs that you are not supposed to use. Watch people who have had an injury in the leg or are getting older. They tend to walk with a wide stride. This causes the muscles diagramed above to stay contracted and leads to chronic muscle contractions.
Your shoulders are supposed to move opposite your legs. This causes the muscles of your back to contract and relax. This alternating action on both sides helps to relax the muscles of the spine and increases your flexibility.
Finally, don’t stare at the ground. To maintain balance, you need to have your eyes and ears on a level plane. Look in front of you and practice looking at a horizontal object like the horizon, a building, sign or other object and walk.
To review:
- Land on your heel and push off with your toes.
- Lengthen your stride to activate your gluteal muscles.
- Keep your feet under you not out to the side.
- Rotate your shoulders opposite the forward leg.
- Keep your head up.
Remember, walking should strengthen muscles and at the same time allow relaxation of overly tight muscles.
If you have problems walking like this, ask us. You may have hidden problems with your musculoskeletal system that need to be corrected. If you feel this is the case, or just want to have your gait checked out to make sure you are not developing any problems please don’t hesitate to contact us. In our office we offer gait analysis which means that we will watch you walk and asses which muscles are not firing in the correct pattern or not at all. After your assessment we will design a treatment program specifically for you and give you exercises for you to do on your own to strengthen those muscles.
