Published in the Sept. 30 – Oct. 13, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Dorene O’Malley
Dorene O’Malley
The Morgan Hill community has many wonderful places for getting some walking exercise — from the San Pedro Ponds Trail, the Coyote Creek Trail, or a fun jaunt exploring the downtown district. But for some people, walking can be a physically uncomfortable experience and so they don’t take advantage of this health-building activity.
Has walking for exercise been suggested as an activity for you, but the actual doing of it causes pain in the knees, back, hips or even torso? Have you seen the people who seem to glide over the pavement and wonder what they are doing differently than you? Perhaps you had a toe injury or even a shoulder injury and, without realizing it, the rest of your body began compensating for the injured area and then — boom — you have bursitis in the hips or some other nagging pain and the idea of strolling through the neighborhood no longer thrills you.
Walking with ease involves a coordination of the whole body. Our pelvis and legs need an assist from the torso and the arms. The joints and bones act as shock absorbers and send the force of the foot’s impact on the ground into the soft tissue along the pathways determined by the joints. As the shock travels upward, our muscles and fascia help to keep our brain from rattling on each step.
Since our bodies were designed to move and function in a specific manner, if we change any of the details, we change the pathways and efficiency. These changes may make walking an uncomfortable experience or unknowingly be contributing to some of our health issues.
Take a look at your feet. Do they turn out away from each other? If so you may be contributing to bunions and hammertoes. You are also changing the way some joints were designed to function and thus changing the pathways up the chain into the rest of the body.
Do you commute to your job and then spend much of your time in a chair? If so you are in a perpetual state of hip flexion, which is shortening the muscles connecting the thigh to the pelvis and torso. You may no longer have the ability to sufficiently extend your leg behind you without excessive pelvis twisting. This is limiting the push-off during walking and causing you to take small steps — again changing patterns.
Can you stand up straight on one leg for 60 seconds without falling over? If not, your hips may be lacking strength. Since walking requires us to be on one leg during 80 percent of the gait cycle, you may be compensating by “falling forward” and overusing the knees.
To make walking more enjoyable, more efficient and less painful try some of the following:
Keep your torso upright, don’t let it get in front of you. This is using gravity to move you forward and your joints are overworking to soften the landing. Your core musculature is involved here so if you are weak in the core, holding yourself upright may be difficult.
Work on your feet — move all the toes, arches and ankle joints. Yes — all your toes should be able to move independently of each other and the feet should point straight ahead when you are walking.
Beef up the buttocks muscles. The gluteal muscles are not there to make you look better in jeans, they keep you from falling off to the side when you walk.
Stretch and activate the hamstrings. The muscles you sit on a good portion of the time are the ones that push back to propel you forward. They need to be at their full length to do the actual job of moving us forward.
Open up your hip flexors. All that sitting is also not allowing your thigh to move back behind you with ease.
Don’t land on a bent knee when you send the leg in front of you. This is that bopping up and down motion you see and is a surefire way to aggravate the knee joint. Bopping is an indicator of lack of hip and outer leg strength.
So if the doctor advises you to walk more for your health, but walking feels like it is doing more harm than good, check in with a professional that can help you analyze your gait, make adjustments and recommendations and make the changes that you need so that you can head out onto all the trails accessible to us in Santa Clara County.
Dorene O’Malley is the owner and a certified instructor at CoreHealth Method — Pilates & Corrective Movement in. She wrote this for Morgan Hill Life.
