Let Your Toes Extend!
You need mobility in three particular areas for your healthy walking gait. You need extension in your hips, flexion in the ankle, and one that is often overlooked is the extension in the toes. The final phase of extending your leg back behind you happens when the back heel leaves the ground and the toes extend back. If your toes don't have the ability to flex, then chances are you may spin your foot out or in to avoid those toe joints and that may contribute to the turn out o the foot or the instability in your ankle. Or, you might adopt another strategy of simply lifting the back foot off the ground too early which may result in you falling forward onto the next leg. To work on this simply practice pausing between steps, let the back heel lift as you bring your weight onto the front leg and keep the toes and ball of the back foot on the ground. You can spend a moment feeling the stretch and extension of the toes and if you pivot your heel side to side you can explore different stretches on each toe. Another way to develop toe extension is to squat on your haunches balancing on the balls of the feet, or lower down to hands and knees (quadruped) with the toes tucked, or even practice lunges with the back toes tucked. The more mobility in the toes and feet, the better your gait!
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Calf Elevators to Climb Uphill
One intention in this teaching is to learn how to get better use of your whole body rather than overusing some areas while underusing others. In this case, we can find a way to get more use of the whole leg while walking uphill if we intentionally use our calves. This exercise will also be helpful if you walk longer distances and start to feel fatigued through the knees, hips, and thighs.
Calf Elevators are common exercises for strengthening the calves, but here we can apply them to walking uphill:
Take a step uphill but keep your weight on the back leg. In fact, you can test your weight and balance by lifting the front foot off the ground and then setting it back down. Then, use the calf muscles of the back leg to elevate the heel off the ground. Test your weight (and balance) again by lifting the front foot and setting it back down and see if you can keep the back heel up. Then go ahead and use your hip and butt muscles of the front leg to carry your body onto that leg and toward the next step. Take your next step up the hill and repeat the process.
Once you've played with keeping your weight on the back leg, elevating onto the ball of the foot, and keeping your balance, then try incorporating the calf elevator into your walk uphill. This simply decreases the amount of work that your thigh and butt muscles have to do to carry you uphill and brings about a more equal distribution of muscle activity through the whole leg.
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Put It Together - In Slow Motion
Throughout this series, we've been focusing on one aspect of our walking gait at a time. This is because so much happens in quick succession and at the same time. Focusing on too many things at once is just not possible, unless, we slow it way down. So in this exercise, we'll practice walking in slow motion. The slower the better. Try to pay attention to your stance, your hip list, pulling back from the standing leg, letting your floating leg swing forward and lowering that heel with control to the ground, keeping your back heel on the ground as long as you can, then pulling back with that new front leg, rising onto the ball of the back foot extending the toes, listing onto the front leg, experience a moment of balance, and begin the whole process again. Being mindful of each phase of your step and walking in slow motion is both great practice and a fantastic meditation.
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Mindful Walking: Moving With All The Points
This episode is the culmination of all the exercises, games, and alignment points we’ve been working on to develop our posterior driven gait. Think of this as a meditation while walking. Take a walk with me and use this audio recording to direct your attention to one aspect of your walking gait at a time. Then, use this as a template to make it your own. If there are a few exercises, tips, or games you’d like to work on, make them into a sequence and simply direct your attention to them for a few minutes at a time while you walk.
There are more meditations, games, bonuses exercises, and discussions included in this series, but as of now you have all the tools you need to develop a new sense of freedom while walking.
Happy walking and I’ll see you on the path!
Patrick
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The Next Steps
Thanks for walking with me on this "While You Walk" Journey! I hope you found it enjoyable and that you developed some awarenesses and skills you can take with you while you walk throughout your life. Much of what is presented here are the foundations for a good walking gait, and with each exercise there's many nuances and progressions that could be explored. If you wish to go deeper, try some of the other offerings on my website:
- Virtual Class Library
- Other E-courses
- Weekly Live Stream Zoom classes
or
schedule a private session!
In any case, no matter where you go, I wish you well and I hope to see you out there walking!
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