To develop better balance and a better walking gait, one aspect of alignment to practice is standing with the hips over the heels. For numerous reasons (such as tight/shortened hamstrings, tight/shortened hip flexors & quads, excessive upper spine curvature (hyperkyphosis), and weakened hip muscles to name a few) many of us have adopted a stance where our hips "fall" or hang forward of the ankles. This leaning forward causes excessive foot tension and an overuse of the front side of the legs. To correct many of these issues, simply develop the habit of standing with the hips resting vertically over the ankles or heels. You may feel like you will fall backward or that you have to fold your upper half forward to balance at first. This is simply due to the backside of the legs not having the coordination and strength to hold you up. Over time, this strength will develop and will help you find balance, better posture and a more robust use of the posterior chain of the legs. While walking: Start in neutral stance with hips back over the heels and then take a walk. Every once in a while, stop and check if your hips are thrusting forward and if you can center the hips over the heels.

Walking with the feet pointing straight ahead will help with the health of the bones of the feet, ankles, knees, hips, and back all the way up the body. Many of us have developed a turn out of the foot which can bypass using the calf muscles and affect the function of the hips as well as cause deterioration of all the joints up the body. A neutral alignment of the feet is when the outer edges of the feet point forward and create parallel lines to each other. This may seem very pigeon-toed to many people, but over time your feet and toes will adjust and it will seem natural. However, our joints have adapted to a certain way of walking over a lifetime and to force yourself to walk with neutral feet may put strain on your joints if you try to do it perfectly right away. Instead, while walking, just think of your feet as turning slightly inward or your heels as pushing slightly outward to progress toward neutral over time. Then while standing, practice finding a fully straight forward, neutral foot.

In order to get the muscles of the hip to drive our walking gait, we need to practice making our legs vertical and relaxing the quadriceps. We started this with getting our ankles at pelvis width apart and shifting our hips back over the heels, but now let's see if we can straighten the knees. We may have been taught to always keep some flexion in the knees to absorb shock while walking. But with a posterior driven gait, we are aiming to reduce if not eliminate any falling phase of the gait cycle and therefore we won't have to worry about absorbing the shock from falling onto the next foot. Also, when the knee stays in flexion, it overuses the quad, compresses the knee joint causing wear and tear over time, and inhibits the hip and butt muscles from doing their job. Test to see if you can straighten the knees and relax the quads: start by hinging forward at the hip and shifting your weight backwards with knees straight. This puts you in a position to take some of the weight off the leg directly. Then see if you can flex and release the quads. Look for the ability to lift and lower the knee caps. Then gradually bring your body upright testing the quads along the way until you can stand vertically with legs straight and quadriceps relaxed. Then take a walk, and just think about walking with the legs a little straighter than you're used to. Every once in a while, pause and check out if you can relax the quads dropping the kneecaps down.

Finding a neutral pelvis will help us identify if we compensate for tight hip flexors. We may be outsourcing the movement that should be in the hip joint and overusing the extension or rotation of the spine instead. while walking, our pelvis should remain relatively stable (not tilting anteriorly/posteriorly, nor rotating) and our hip should have the mobility to extend the leg behind us. One way to encourage this motion is through the practice of a simple lunge. and another way is to keep your hands on your pelvis to feel how it gets pulled around or how stable it is while walking.

Relax your ribcage down so that the front of the lower ribs line up vertically over the front outer edge of the pelvis (ASIS). The tendency to lift the chest up and thrust the lower ribs forward (also know as rotating your ribcage backwards) comes from multiple causes. One cause is a cultural teaching that "chest up" is good posture. Another cause is the chronic shortening of the Psoas muscle. However, learning to relax the ribs down will decrease the tension in your lower back, increase the stability of your core, and allow for a more stable torso for walking as your legs extend behind you.

When you've shifted your hips back and dropped your ribs down for a more neutral and vertical alignment you may find that your neck and head tend to thrust forward. This may already be an ingrained habit from how we sit and how we read/look at computer screens, etc. Often people tend to tilt and rotate their head back in order to look straight ahead, but that doesn't fix the problem of the weight of the head pulling the neck and upper spine forward. So a great habit and exercise to develop is "head ramping". This can be done at any time, but especially while walking. Like on a ramp, you think of your head as sliding back and up. It's helpful to think of the chin sliding back towards the throat as the top of the head yearns upward. Make sure while you do this that the ribs don't come up as you head ramp, and you'll lengthen the back of the neck and elongate the upper spine.

Because many of our daily activities tend toward placing our shoulders in an "internally rotated" position (think how you hold your silverware, read a book, type on the computer, drive your car, etc.) our arm swing, while walking, have a tendency to reflect that. This presents itself as the arms swinging across the body from side to side. The weight of the arms moving across the body causes more twist and torque of the torso and is not as efficient at counterbalancing the swing of the legs. So, while you walk, bring your attention to your arms swinging straight forward and back (on the sagittal plane) and see if you feel a difference!

The Neutral Knee Pit is an alignment marker that will help you understand how your hip is rotating. If our hips have trouble engaging or stabilizing, a general tendency is for the thighs to internally rotate while walking and standing. You can experience this if you bend your knees and let your knees collapse together. If the hips chronically rotate inward, the feet might start to splay outward to compensate. As a consequence you might experience pain and wear and tear at the knee joint due to the torque created from the feet turning one way and the hips rotating the other. Also, when the hips are internally rotated the muscles around the hip don't have as much leverage to stabilize your thigh when you are in the balancing phase of walking (hip listing and standing on one leg). To begin to find better balance, hip stability, along with healthier ankles and knees, we need to learn what neutral rotation of the hip is. You might think that just by looking at the knee caps you can tell if your knee joint is pointing straight forward and back, but actually the kneecap can travel either side of the knee joint depending on which quadricep muscles are tighter. So, instead, look at the back of the knees - also known as the knee pit. The hamstring tendons pass over each side of the knee joint, when the hip is internally rotated, those tendons and the pit of the knee will appear to point out to the sides, when the hip is eternally rotated, the tendons and knee pit will appear to point towards each other. Neutral alignment and the best way to walk forward is when those tendons and knee pits are pointing straight backwards and are parallel to each other. You can draw on those tendons with a marker to make them more visible. Most of us need to work on the external rotation of the thigh, so while standing, rotate your thighs externally and bring your knee pits to neutral. Notice that the arches and insoles of the feet might lift. The rotation of the hip is a main component that stabilizes the arches of the feet. Once you've externally rotated the thighs and kept your foot on the ground, try standing on one leg. Notice if your ankle and thigh wobble inward and outward. Practice toward maintaining the external rotation while balancing on one leg and you'll find an improvement in your balance, your arches, and your knee health!