Walking Gait and what it tells us about the body
Walking Gait is the pattern that you walk in, and whether you believe it or not, your walking gait is incredibly important. But not only is it incredibly important, your walking gait provides a vivid insight into the functionality of your ankles, knees, hips, lumbar and even your overall athleticism.
How so?
Well, your body requires correct skeletal alignment to maintain its mechanical efficiency. In lay-man’s terms, the bones and joints of your body are ideally stacked efficiently, one on top of the other to allow correct biomechanical movements to take place. And the muscles of your body are the support system to this skeletal structure and allow it to mechanically move. However, in the 21st century, there can be little doubt that humans are no longer sufficiently active to maintain enough muscle mass to keep our skeletal alignment in check.
Skeletal Allignment
Alignment refers to how the head, shoulders, spine, hips, knees and ankles relate and line up with each other.
As the body becomes more and more inactive, a remodelling process takes place within the body. This remodelling causes certain muscles to become overly weak and overly tight, thereby causing pain or dysfunction. As the functionality of the lower body's joints is progressively undermined through limp musculature, so too is the skeletal alignment of the body as a whole.
This remodelling of muscles undermines the functionality of each joint in one of two different ways; namely the loss of joint mobility or joint stability.
Each Joint’s Primary Need through the lens of Mobility & Stability
Elbow - Stability
Gleno-humeral– Mobility
Scapula – Stability
Thoracic Spine–Mobility
Lumbar Spine – Stability
Hip – Mobility
Knee – Stability
Ankle –Mobility & Stability
The loss of either joint mobility or joint stability typically causes pain in the knees, lower back and shoulders/neck area. Additionally, the loss of joint mobility will also substantially lead to the increased likelihood of obesity, as I highlighted in my previous article; ‘The Physical Impacts of Sitting: and why you may have been unsuccessful in the gym in the past’.
However, when treating these issues, too many PT’s, physio's or other healthcare professionals typically treat the area of pain in the body, but nowhere else.
Solely treating the source of pain will often only cause short term or temporary relief and results.
In opposition to this approach to treating the painful areas of the body is the Joint by Joint Approach, which argues that wherever pain is located in the body, the answer and root of the problem is usually found in either the joint above or below the area of pain.
Why is this?
Well let's take the ankles as an example; the body requires a certain degree of mobility in the ankles to walk, jump, squat down or run for the bus.
However, when an individual is sitting and inactive for too long, the ankles lose their mobility.
But the individual in question is still walking, jumping, squatting and running for that bus.
Your body still needs that same degree of mobility to do these physical feats, but as it can no longer find it in your ankles, it will look to the joint above, in this case the knees, to provide that very mobility for these actions.
Unfortunately the knees are designed to provide the body with stability, not mobility, and by demanding that they provide the body with a service outside of their intended purview, the body displays signs of pain as a warning to redelegate and reassign the load distribution throughout the body.
As stated, when the musculature weakens due to inactivity, skeletal alignment breaks down. But to examine the ankle in further detail, we can see that this breakdown can happen in one of two ways; overpronation or oversupination of the ankle joint itself. Or what some people incorrectly label as ‘flat feet’.
Basically, weak, and therefore fragile ankles that are no longer in the correct position to bear the weight of the body.
Now, imagine doing those 10,000 steps per day that you’ve been lectured to on completing daily, but on dodgy and fragile ankles?
I'm sure there are some readers who are beginning to see the problem with running or brisk walking to get fitter when the very foundations of the body are not capable of even supporting the biostructure of the body when it is stationary, let alone in motion.
The solution to this issue?
Well, I highlighted last week how modern day footwear trends, as seen in Nike AirMax, Balenciaga's, Doc Martins and Asics are slowly but surely undermining the functionality of the ankle joint primarily due to the overly thick footsoles and elevated heels, so I am sure readers are intelligent enough to infer that one ought to aim towards wearing shoes with minimally thin foot soles instead.
Or simply avoid elevated heels in any footwear whatsoever like the plague.
In more practical or physical terms, when walking, you ought to insist on the big toe pointing directly forward when walking and allowing the heel to follow in the direct trajectory of the big toe.
Correct walking gait should adhere to the following phases and stages of locomotion; heel strike, early flat foot, late flat foot, late flat foot and most importantly, the toe off phase.
Ensure that while wearing thin soled shoes that you thoroughly and firmly engage with the principle of the Windlass Mechanism (the toe off phase) and actually push from your big toe to create the momentum to move forward.
Become familiar with the primary musculature surrounding the ankle joint, namely the gastrocnemius, soleus, plantaris, the posterior tibialis and the anterior tibialis.
And finally, don't become too overwhelmed. The ankle has only got 3 forms of weight distribution to understand; weight distribution when the ankle is upright and stationary, weight distribution when the ankle is in dorsiflexion (the pulling motion of the ankle) and finally weight distribution when the ankle is in plantarflexion (the pushing motion of the ankle). These are the three positions that the ankle needs to become stronger and more secure within to provide either pain prevention or pain reduction long term
Now, until my next article, I wish you good luck if you are willing to embark on recorrecting your walking gait and to those who are unwilling, or perhaps uninterested, I promise I won't write about feet or footwear for at least a few articles, else I may be accused of some sort of foot fetish in the comments.
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