Walking Should Heal, Not Hurt: How to Perfect Your Gait

Walking is often recommended as the key to staying healthy. We spend so much of our time sitting, but our bodies are designed for movement, not for static load. In short, movement is medicine. These days, fitness trackers are all the rage, and many of my clients measure how many steps they take each day. While that’s a good start, the quality of our walk is far more beneficial than the sheer number of steps.

When we walk, the impact force acting on our tissues and joints is 1.5 times our body weight. For running, it’s 2.5x, for sprinting it's 4x, and when jumping from a height, it can be anywhere from 7-20x our body weight.

Our body should be able to process this impact force—which our receptors perceive as vibration—in a way that is safe for our tissues and joints.

The problem lies with our shoes, which often act as little coffins for our feet, and the hard, flat surfaces we constantly walk on. In today's society, we have to wear shoes, but the construction of the shoe is crucial. It should support our foot's function, not destroy it. This isn't just about our feet; it’s about our entire body. Problems from a dysfunctional and unstable foot travel up to the knees, hips, spine, and even to the head. In a narrow or overly cushioned shoe, our foot lacks stability and cannot properly "read" the surface it’s walking on.

Everything in our body is connected. From the foot, fascial lines extend throughout the entire structure:

Deep Front Line: From the foot, this line travels through the adductors to the pelvic floor, iliopsoas, diaphragm, and all the way to the tongue.
Spiral Line: This line runs from the big toe joint through the fascia latae, hamstrings, obliques, back, to the area between the shoulder blades and the back of the neck.
Superficial Back Line: Starting at the sole of the foot (plantar fascia), this line runs through the calves, hamstrings, back, and neck, ending just above the eyes.
Lateral Line: This line runs from the big and little toe joints up the side of the legs, through the glutes, obliques, and up to our neck and head.

As you can see, everything in our body is truly interconnected. The foot is a crucial, yet often neglected, part of our body.

A person's feet in minimalist shoes standing on a wooden surface.

The Foot: Your Body's First Point of Contact

The foot is the first part of the body to touch the ground when walking, and any dysfunction in it will be reflected throughout the entire body.

When our foot is enclosed in a soft, narrow, and cushioned shoe, we don't perceive the surface we're walking on. As a result, our body cannot prepare for the impact force and react to it adequately.

However, when we walk barefoot in a forest, the reaction in our body is completely different. We place our feet carefully and with anticipation. The foot and our entire body are already braced before the foot even touches the ground. It has inherent stability before making contact.

Impact forces are absorbed in less than 50 milliseconds. However, our muscle fibers take 70 milliseconds to activate. This means we are 20 milliseconds behind. This delay is a primary cause of chronic problems with our knees, hips, and lower back.

Brace for Impact: A Lesson in Anticipation

Imagine you’re about to slap someone. What does your hand do? Does it tense up only after your palm makes contact? Or is it braced before it lands? In the first scenario, your shoulder would likely absorb the force, and the slap would be weak and ineffective. It would lack the power and stability needed. In the second scenario, the impact would be far more powerful.

Here’s one more example. You have two identical-looking balls. One weighs 1 kg (2.2 lbs), and the other weighs 20 kg (44 lbs). You don't know which one will be thrown to you. You either brace your body too little and the heavy ball knocks you over, or you brace with maximum force, expecting the heavy medicine ball, and waste unnecessary energy.

These examples should make it clear why it’s so critical for our feet to learn to read the surface we walk on. It's why bracing the foot and the entire body before impact is essential. Only then can the body properly absorb the force, allowing our reaction to be anticipatory, not delayed. It only takes two to four steps for our body to adjust and brace appropriately for the incoming impact, protecting our joints from overload.

If you're looking to improve your movement knowledge and skills, you’ll benefit from my online video course, Restart Your Body. In this course, you will release tension, align your posture, and integrate everything into functional movement. You will build both mobility and strength and stability—one cannot exist without the other. Learn more about the course in the video here:

https://youtu.be/rOyrHjobz1Q