When you are walking, do you feel like you're strengthening your body?, Which parts?, Where's the "motor"?

Why consider changing the way you walk?

• To eliminate and prevent structural pain
• To improve your physical fitness
• To enhance your appearance

THE SYSTEM - THE BENEFITS OF A BALANCED BODY

Walking defines most everything about you, including your athletic prowess, your predisposition to pain, and your health with respect to aging. Although it seems that walking correctly should be something everybody does automatically, it’s not. Most people walk with small, but very significant structurally unsound movements. It seems impossible, or ridiculous, that how you walk might be why you have pain, or why you have a double chin, or saggy buns, or a potbelly. And just imagine, if how you walk is the reason why you can’t accomplish an athletic endeavor that seems like it should be easy to attain! Changing the way you walk can absolutely improve your level of fitness, eliminate structural pain, and help you look better.

The system is a combination of simple gait corrections and exercises that corroborate those corrections. There is a standard for walking. And every person has their own ‘walk’ that wavers from that standard in one or more ways. How many of you have a ‘walk’ which when you really stop and think, resembles somebody you loved, when you were first learning how to do it? I say, all of you have. It’s much less genetics, and much more patterning. (Imitating!) Your injuries and exercise history and habits and mood states all play a role in how you walk too! Once any of your weight bearing joints gets crooked, (don’t panic . . . there are only six, plus your spine . . .) or out of balance, your brilliant survivalist mechanisms makes it so you look and feel like you can walk perfectly well. You don’t realize the change, your whole body adjusts to it, and now, you’re askew. Even if it is very subtle, that change is a compensation, which is either wearing down that joint, or, one adjacent to it, or across from it, or diagonal to it. Somewhere, there’s a crooked joint, which eventually is going to give out. You’ll push a thumbtack into the wall, or pick up a paper clip, or just turn quickly, and you’ll think that that simple movement caused your pain. Actually, those previous compensations, set you up. You were an accident waiting to happen.

The most classic deviation is the lean back. Most people do this and it comes in many variations. The result, however, always turns out to be the same. The bulk of the weight is toward the rear of the body, and collapsed into the hips, knees and lower back. The majority of the weight will be felt in the heels as opposed to the balls or front of the feet, where it belongs. When that happens, the head and shoulders are forced to move forward, as a counter-balance to keep from literally falling on their rear ends. In corrective walking, we learn to lift our bodies up and forward with true grit muscle strength instead of being held up by our joints. This creates a much more fluid, graceful, and lofty movement pattern. And our weight is forward, where balance becomes our method of lifting our bodies against gravity, and strengthening becomes the result.

What if you could learn to fully understand and rebalance your body. With only six weight bearing joints (two feet, two knees, and two hips) and your spine, it’s doable! Stand and imagine growing as tall as you can, with your weight in the balls of your feet, your chest down and your knees unlocked. This is the place to walk from. Try walking with your feet as wide as your hips (those bony protuberances on your front and just below your waist)- Feel too wide? What if a ladder had its bottommost rungs an inch less wide than the next ones up? Get used to this one. Well-balanced feet will give you a chance, for all the joints above them to be in balance.

Expect this to feel awkward. How else could it change your ‘normal’? If you can understand that this is a process, one that will be served well by taking your time and going step-by-step, your physical and mental barriers to healing will fall away, as will your backaches, swollen joints and back and neck soreness. It’s an inexpensive drug-free and surgery-free method of ending pain, even if the pain has been with you for years.

Everyday someone comes into my clinic telling me they know they have bad posture and that is besides the point of the pain they came in for. When it happened to me, I also did not realize that my pain was more than one weak link that blew. It’s so hard to believe that something as simple as posture is precisely what is causing the weakness that allowed a joint to be vulnerable and give way. And the hardest part is convincing people that is totally changeable

We take an average of twenty-five hundred steps a day per foot. What this work would give you is the opportunity to make every one of those steps strengthening, instead of wearing down the very joint that right now, is giving you pain.

Pre Walking Quick Guide

From the floor up:

1. Where is your weight? Is it towards the balls of your feet?
2. Are your feet hip width apart and pointing nearly straight ahead?
3. Are your knees unlocked?
4. Are your buns untucked, relaxed behind you, and not held tightly underneath you?
5. Is your belly slightly contracted, helping you grow taller?
6. Is your body lifted up and over? Look down. Can you see the bows of your shoelaces? (Do not try walking with your head down)
7. Are you breathing sideways, out into your ribs, like a bellows?
8. Are your chest and shoulders pulled down, while you lift from your center through your spine, to the crown of your head?
9. Have you lowered your chin and your eyes to focus 20-25 feet to the ground in front of you?
10. Have you envisioned the long, wide diagonalized steps?

If you answered yes to all ten of these questions you are ready to walk yourself well!

Example of a walking relevant exercise:

The purpose of this exercise is to teach   proper body balance, with your weight forward. Most people lean back too much!

Standing Balance: The numbers are to guide you to the relevance of each piece of the exercise. Each detail is an exaggeration of what is needed to walk properly so that when you do walk, it will feel easy, relative to this exercise.

Get ready : 1. Stand with feet around hip width and nearly straight, (not turned out), 2.weight in the balls of your feet, 3.knees soft,4. belly slightly held, 5.arms outstretched as they would be if you were holding a giant beach-ball, 6.shoulders pulled down, 7.chin down so that the crown of your head would show if you were to look in a mirror.

Get set : 8. Move one foot out in front, toes on the floor, heel up. 9.,knee pointing slightly outward and slightly bent, 10. keeping hips level,11. take a long slow inhale through the nose.

Go! : 12. Exhale as you raise the outstretched leg, 13. continue to keep your hips level and your weight forward, 14.so you feel it in the ball of your foot (not to raise the heel). This exercise is done in ‘Tai Chi" speed ,(very slowly)15. Inhale with knee still up, 16. exhale leg down to start…again, slowly. You should alternate sides doing 3 to 5 repetitions per side.

1. By keeping heels out, you can distribute the weight over your feet the way you’d like it to be in walking…center of heel , toward the outer rim and in the ball of the foot, and into the big and middle toes.
2. By moving the weight forward into the balls of your feet, you are getting the sense of balance with the majority of your weight toward your front as it will be in proper walking.
3. Knees should never lock during the course of walking. Standing with them soft will help to strengthen them in that position, so that it will be more easily elicited
4. Learning to keep the belly slightly held all the time is a critical piece of the system. In order to keep the weight forward, in order to keep the upper body’s weight lifted up off of the hips, lifted so that it does not compress the spine during walking, the belly has to be softly held, all the time.
5. Though the arms are not outstretched during walking, they should actively participate in propelling the body and using them here in this way is the beginning of training them to be active in the process of balance and walking.
6. Although during walking, the body is lifting with nearly all it’s parts, especially the hips, the belly and the upper back, the shoulders are actually pulling down, as a counterbalance.
7. The chin should be in to the extent that the crown, ( of your head would show, if you were to look in a mirror. When the chin is to high, the body will follow and lean back.
8. During walking, there is a temptation to lean back as you bring a leg out for a step. It is at this second that it takes extra abdominal strength to keep your body weight forward .
9. Often the great elicitors of the lean back are knees which either lock when the heel strikes or lock and point toward each other. By keeping the knees soft and slightly open, you elicit the optimal weight forward position.
10. In order to keep the hips level, it is necessary to use a particular kind of abdominal/back strength combination. It is the same combination that stabilizes your spine during walking.
11. Taking a long inhale through the nose should expand your rib-cage sideways. Your ribs should move toward your inner arms. Many people breathe up into their chests or out into their bellies. Both of these elicit the lean back.
12. At the end of a long proper exhale, you should experience a lower abdominal contraction, which is another crucial element to keeping your weight forward. The exhale will also make it easier to lift your leg in a perfectly controlled manner.
13. Explained in # 10.
14. Keeping the weight forward in the feet does not mean that you put your toes down first; it is always heel to toe in walking and, it does not mean that you rise up on your toes before pushing off to your next step. It only means that you feel the weight of your whole body toward the front of you instead of your rear.
15. The inhale that you take with the knee held up requires even more of that sideways breath combined with abdominal/back strength that I refer to in my book as ‘the sandwich system’. It is the glue that stabilizes your spine during walking and strengthens with every step you take, if you stay forward.
16. Exhaling the leg down in a slow controlled manner requires more abdominal/back strength, the standing hip, the belly and the upper back are lifting like crazy and the shoulders are pulling down as a counterbalance, all of which takes place, to a slightly lesser degree with every step you take.

The five most frequently asked questions:

1. Can how you walk cause a disc problem? Can changing how you walk reduce pain seemingly caused by a disc problem ?

Answer:

Yes. A style of walking which compresses the low back can, by disuse, weaken the abdomen and the back to the extent that it will blow doing a relatively easy task. And, by learning to walk correctly, i.e. using the abdomen and back muscles with every step you take, you strengthen them and greatly reduce vulnerability to those kinds of injuries. Often the reason for the pain is actually the instability and weakness around the joint and disc. So the strengthening becomes the healer, especially when it’s in the format of a fluid well balanced movement pattern. You can actually Walk Yourself Well.

2. Could other joints such as ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and necks be badly effected by how you walk?

Answer:

Absolutely. The obvious ones are ankles, knees and hips. It is clear that if one of these joints is crooked, it will get sore and effect others in a compensatory effort. Shoulders and necks are the surprise. Once you understand how the body works best symmetrically and how it’s all connected, you will understand how a small problem, a sore toe or a stiff neck can eventually cause the whole body to shift. When you walk with this ‘shift’, you can create real damage someplace far away from the original site of pain. Each weight bearing joint must be balanced and move with symmetry; walking symmetrically will strengthen and heal joints that were formerly out of balance.

3. Can anybody change how they walk?

Answer:

Yes. The only people I’ve seen who can not are the people who think they can not. or that something so basic can help. It takes practice and patience. It takes four focused five minute sessions daily using the corrective walking techniques described in my book. That’s all. And you can speed the process by doing some of the complimentary exercises also described and illustrated in the book.

4. What is the most common postural or walking problem?

 

Answer:

The Lean Back. There are many ways that this occurs, and they all end up compressing the spine, with a center of gravity that is in back of the feet instead of in between them where it belongs. If when you stand, you find that the majority of your weight is in your heels instead of the balls of your feet, then you lean back, and you are vulnerable in at least one of your major weight bearing joints.

5. How will learning to walk symmetrically help if there is no pain?

           Answer:

It is perfect preventive medicine. A weight-bearing joint that is out of balance or crooked will not show even an ache until it topples over. Something as small as picking up a shoe or pushing a thumbtack into the wall can cause the ‘topple’ when the joint is ready to blow. A balanced gait is also the way to your personal highest strength capacity. Muscles are strongest when used in efficient patterns which only balance will allow. Lastly, since we develop our shapes and contours in accordance with how we use muscles, things like double chins, saggy buns, pot bellies and saddlebags can be greatly reduced.

Buy Walk Yourself Well

"This book gives you the tools you need to read your own body and heal structural pain. That's one less thing for you to worry about"  - Richard Carlson, Best-selling Author of "Don't sweat the small stuff" and "Don't worry, make money"