The Way You Walk Can Hurt You
Walking is one of the most fundamental methods of movement. Every creature that has legs learns to walk. Studies show that people who walk regularly are healthier and happier. Couples who walk together also have healthier relationships.
In a nutshell, walking is one of the most healthiest things you can do.
However, modern industrialized society has taken the basic function of walking and turned it into something that is bothersome, unnecessary, and even difficult for many people. Our conveniences have reduced our need to walk to a bare minimum. So, we pay little attention to how we walk and, with the increase in sedentary living, our bodies have adapted in such a way that the mechanics of walking actually hurt us.
I’m referring to how we walk in every day life.
When we walk for fitness, we buy shoes specifically made for walking. Our workplaces require us to wear shoes or boots specific to the needs of the job. If we go hiking, we wear boots or shoes made for hiking. There’s a shoe for every kind of activity. But, have you ever noticed how you and others actually walk?
Back in history, people didn’t have shoes for every activity. People wore what was most practical for their every day life.
However, what really changed how people walked was the simple invention of the heel and thick soled shoes or boots and we have been walking that way ever since. Our bodies were not originally designed to walk the way most of us do. Just look at how a toddler steps. You will see a difference.
That’s because of several reasons.
First of all, having a solid heel on your shoes allows you to step heel-to-toe without bruising your foot. Similarly, having a nice, thick sole on the bottom of your shoes allows you to put your weight more into your step. The shock to your bone structure is reduced and even eliminated, so you walk and run without regard to the impact on your feet. The heel and sole create a kind of movement dependency, meaning you depend on them to take the impact on the ground as you step.
Compare that to how you move when you are barefoot, or in slippers. You glide more, step with greater balance, your weight is more centered, and you are aware of the impact on your feet because it hurts when you step wrong.
See, that’s how we moved back before the invention of hard soles and heeled shoes and boots. Just look at indigenous tribes all over the world, the ones who are either barefoot, or wear think shoes like leather moccasins. You will see their movement is different in how they stand, walk, and run. They have no dependency on their shoes, because they move in such a way that the impact to their feet is minimal.
I have spent over 30 years studying and practicing old Japanese martial arts. Learning how your body moves, particularly how you step, is an essential and primary component to training. The focus is on efficiency, balance, and natural power. A very old method of walking and running in Japanese culture is called Nanba Aruki. This was used by messengers back in the Edo Period (1603-1868) to run messages and other deliveries over many miles. They commonly ran between Edo and Tokyo in roughly a week, which was about 300 miles (roughly 480km)! They didn’t have the latest Nike running shoes, either. They often wore bamboo sandals strapped to their feet, offering very minimal protection and support. Some even ran barefoot, so as to keep their sandals clean and functional when they arrived in town.
So, you can imagine the need to really develop effective ways to walk and run that didn’t wear down the body and cause injury.
Yet, so many in our modern society suffer from bone, ligament, and tendon injuries from the wear and tear we do on our bodies from just our average (i.e. minimal), day to day movement.
So, what’s the problem?
Heels were developed in order to ride horses. The heel structure fit into the saddle stirrups, keeping riders from falling off or having to waste energy trying to hang on. Boot heels also gave added support by digging into the ground, making manual labor easier. The military and nobility utilized the loud thumping sound of a solid heel to add authority to their marching and walking. As social classes developed, higher social classes wore heels as a show of superiority over their lower class peasantry. Even though they may never be used to ride horses or aid in manual labor, heels became a social requirement to show one to be noble or of high class. In many developed cultures, it was normal to click your heels, or announce your entry with the sound of your heels stomping.
Our modern society has continued this trend with the invention of raised heels, spiked heels, platform shoes, and all other forms of heel-based fashion.
As such, our methods of walking have evolved farther from the efficiency of our ancestors and we have been suffering for it ever since.
When you walk in shoes, you most likely walk heel-to-toe. That’s how we were taught. But, when you consider the heel of your foot, you can see that this is a bone with very little padding. No matter how large you are, most of us only have about a quarter inch or less of tissue between the ground and our heel bone. To add, that tissue is soft, squishy, and not very resilient to impact. Those who walk barefoot more will develop thicker skin (callouses), but these can also crack and cause pain, because we keep beating up our feet in how we walk.
Every time our heels impact the ground, it sends shock trauma through our bones. Bones are hollow and porous, filled with fluid and tissue, so vibrations can travel quite far. Think of pipes in a tall building and how you can tap on a basement pipe and hear it many stories up. This shock trauma can slowly disrupt blood vessels, deaden nerve endings, and eventually cause micro-fractures in bone structure. Even your internal organs, feeling the constant shock waves from the bone structure, feel the impact and begin to suffer. All this causes the body to try and adapt by creating scar tissue, even bone density, in order to protect itself. However, as the trauma continues, the body loses the struggle to keep up and the effects take a permanent toll.
So, what do we do?
Start by taking a look at how you stand. Read my article on “A Different Approach” for a basic tutorial on how to structure your body and balance from a centered alignment.
Now, as you step, you want your legs to hinge at the hips. Use the front of the upper thighs to lift your leg. Do not extend your leg out straight. Let the natural swing of the lower leg project your foot forwards. Your foot should only go out as far forwards as you need in order for your foot to touch down on the ground evenly. Do not raise your leg so high that you have to bring your foot back down. This is what causes your heel to impact the ground.
By using a slight lean forwards, allow your natural balance to shift your weight forwards onto your front foot as it touches down to the ground. Your knees should always have a slight bend, a soft and moving energy. Do not lock your knees out. They should absorb the movement.
Then, as your center of balance moves over your front foot, allow natural balance to pull your rear foot in the same hinging, pendulum motion forwards to take the next step.
Don’t put emphasis on any one part of the foot. Don’t avoid heel contact by stepping on the balls of your feet. Instead, practice a smooth, evenly pressured placement of the foot. To avoid stubbing your toe or tripping, you do lift the front of the foot slightly, but only to allow a very subtle rolling motion of the heel to the ball of the foot. Not impacting, just absorbing and rolling.
On a side note, learning how to effectively and safely roll on the ground uses the same principles. So, your feet are no different than the rest of your body. Both are receiving the ground and rolling across it with minimal impact and maximum efficiency.
When standing, walking, and running, your alignment should be vertical and straight. You should not bob up and down or side to side as you move. Keep your shoulders and hips in alignment with each other (instead of twisting your upper body opposite of your hips) and allow your arms to swing naturally in their sockets. Don’t “throw” your arms around. Let them swing close to your body in natural motion. You should not have to flex your shoulders to move your arms as you walk.
Keep your head upright and breathe fully with your diaphragm. Use your core activation technique (see my article on “Moving & Breathing”) to keep your structure intact.
If you need to run, you do the same technique. Just lean a little more forwards to create more gravitational pull with your balance. You don’t need to push as much to create inertia when you learn how to use the natural energy of gravity and balance. Tuck in your arms, bend your elbows, so that your forearms are parallel to the ground. Again, try not to twist your upper body so much as to lose that connection to your hips. Keep everything aligned and centered.
When you need to slow down or stop, bend your knees and pull back your structure and balance to reduce the gravitational pull (don’t lean back, though). Use the bending of the knees to slow you down and reduce the amount of kinetic force driving into your feet and impacting the ground. Think of how a plane touches down on the runway. You are using your movement the same way, just with stepping. It’s a sloping downward motion.
This is hard to explain in writing, so I hope this makes sense. In my workshops, I go into more detail and provide very specific instruction. But, I think you get the idea here that your goal is to minimize the impact to the bone structure of the feet and to allow your body to move in a centered, balanced, and graceful manner.
I encourage you to take off those shoes and go walk in nature. Enjoy the feel of the ground under your feet. There is a lot of studies to support the benefits of “grounding” yourself, to allow your feet to absorb the natural connection to the ground, without the barrier of rubber soles. Standing and walking barefoot is good for you, as it reminds your body how it was designed to move. You gain the benefits of natural movement without the trauma of impact to your bone structure.
When you do this, be careful with yourself. Your body has adapted to the physical dependency of shoes and boots. It expects a hard sole and heel to absorb impact. Be kind to your body by moving with an increased awareness of being balanced, centered, and graceful. Walk or run on soft ground, like sand, grass, or a soft dirt trail. I don’t recommend walking barefoot in urban environments, as the pavement can be hard on your bone structure. Also, there are many risks, such as broken glass, biological hazards (yuck!), and all sorts of other dangers. So, save the barefoot walking and running to cleaner, safer environments.
So, you need to take time to get out of the urban jungle and into nature. We all need it anyway. Find a park, get out of town, or even your own backyard lawn can serve that purpose.
In your every day life, when you have to wear soled shoes with heels, still practice this form of standing and moving. Don’t rely on the soles and heels to absorb impact to your feet. Just practice graceful and balanced movement. You will notice even your shoes don’t wear down as fast, so you may not even need to buy new shoes as often!
If your shoes can benefit, imagine how much more your body benefits. You can always replace shoes, but you can’t buy a new body.
Walking connects us
To ourselves
To nature
To each other
How we walk
Reflects our relationship with life
Own Your Center 