
Improve your walking technique - privong
https://www.suunto.com/en-us/sports/News-Articles-container-page/how-to-improve-your-walking-technique/
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mr_t
Two years ago I bought my first pair of barefoot shoes (no elevated heel, thin
and ultra flexibel sole) after listening to an episode of TED Radio Hour,
where they featured the talk “Born To Run” and started reading more about the
whole idea. I started to learn how to walk forefoot strike and did a running
course for how to run forefoot strike properly. This was the start of going
down a never ending rabbit hole. Some of the things I learned during the past
two years:

* Learning a new walking technique is super hard, it takes at least months, if not even years.

* Wearing barefoot shoes and walking forefoot strike seemed to significantly decrease my lower back pain (although I’m not a 100% certain if there is a correlation, I just know that my back pain decreased a few months after switching to barefoot shoes)

* Got rid of my neck pain completely (I’m extremely certain that there is a correlation here, because my posture changed, more on that in a later point)

* I realized that my leg muscles (especially hamstrings and calves) are extremely tight and possibly also shortened. In the beginning I had trouble to get my heel to the ground without feeling tension in the calves.

* Just because I adapted my style of walking, my posture increased significantly. I walk and stand way more upright than before (I compared recent pictures to older pictures)

* Significantly decreases the number of migraine attacks. I’m also quite sure this is because of the forefoot strike (although not 100% certain) since heel strike puts a lot of pressure in the neck and head. You can easily Test or experience this Stress on the neck and head yourself if you stick your fingers in your ears and walk barefoot with heel strike over firm ground. You should “hear” it. For me it works best when I put in noise cancelling over ear headphones and walk heel strike (no music, just the noise canceling effect).

Of course all of this is highly subjective and many/all things I described may
not correlate at all. This is just my personal experience.

~~~
FreshAtom
What would your advice be to anyone interested in getting into barefoot
walking?

~~~
throwaway1239Mx
Take your shoes off. (sorry, I had to)

Go walk outside without them on something mildly unpleasant, like "chipseal"
pavement or gravel for short distances - the increased feedback will encourage
you to walk gently (advice stolen from Barefoot Ken Bob's book, which is
rather nice).

Take it slow. Don't feel like you have to go 100% minimal-shoe all the time.
Take your shoes off at home. Maybe get a pair of thin sandals - I personally
like Xero Shoes (they also sell a kit if you're into that, and they're one of
the only pairs of sandal I've had that actually last for multiple years).
Moccasins are also lovely, if you can find some with a thick sole (or buy some
buffalo hide and DIY!).

Minimal shoes don't last any longer and generally aren't any cheaper than
regular shoes in my experience - getting comfortable with your feet on the
ground when possible is the cheapest long-term option.

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rahimnathwani
The Chinese idiom 邯郸学步 is about learning to walk. It's based on a story about
someone who hears of a place (Handan) where people have the most gracious way
of walking. He wants to learn, so he goes there and tries to imitate the
people of Handan. He fails to learn how they walk and, in the process, forgets
his original way of walking. Then he runs out of money to fund his travels.
Unable to walk, he is forced to crawl all the way back to his home town.

~~~
acituan
I can't help to think how this story might reflect many of us who immigrated
to the US for the "gracious way", forgot the way we used to "walk" and now
find it difficult to return back home. It is saddening.

~~~
agumonkey
Same for my mother. She can't bear her old place now.

~~~
ckarmann
It's hard to get back to Plato's cave.

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tlb
> It’s worth the effort because there’s usually a huge leak of energy when our
> gait is unbalanced or restricted.

Why do I want my walk to leak less energy / be more efficient? A fast walk is
nowhere near my aerobic limit, so what would be the benefit of using less
energy? Having a sedentary job, I generally need more exercise, not less.

A better thing to optimize for would be less impact on knees and back.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Your argument doesn’t really makes sense. I spent a lot of time fixing my run
and posture and indirectly how I walk due to injuries.

You 100% want to be moving correctly. Correct, efficient movement also helps
with injuries. They’re related.

Once you are moving correctly, getting more exercise injury free is trivial.
You just work longer, heavier or faster. You don’t need to move inefficiently
(and probably incorrectly) to “get more exercise”.

~~~
hossbeast
What did you do to fix your running posture? Any recommendations? (Trying to
work on this myself)

~~~
cachestash
Not OP, but I am a nationally qualified running coach (in my spare time
outside of my day job). I have run all sorts of distances from 5k park runs to
100 mile and above ultra marathons. I have made every mistake in the book and
helped quite a few people avoid the same mistakes.

To keep things simple with two easy to follow steps:

1\. Tall posture, imagine a balloon is tied to the top of your head and is
pulling you upwards.

2\. Download a metronome app to your phone and set it around 170 and in time
climb up to 175 180 if it feels ok. You then want to time each foot strike to
a beep. This will cause your stride to narrow and discourage an overstride.
When you overstride the foot extends forwards and the force of landing gets
absorbed by your knee / hips, which is inefficient (its almost like applying a
break) and it can cause injury. Running at a high cadence tends to make you
ligter on your feet and encourages a good foot strike (under the cartridge of
the hips), landing in this way benefits from the elasticity we have in our
tendons and you get a certain amount of energy return from this.

This video describes it very well and the runner has beautiful form. Just
don't try to take it all in, focus on the cadence 170-175-180 rhythm and get
that right first

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSIDRHUWlVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSIDRHUWlVo)

~~~
netjiro
Be careful when changing running style. If you change too fast you increase
the risk of injury. Happened to me. Had knee problems. Switched to barefoot
running with short fast step and very light to no heel impact. Felt great! But
I pushed too fast, got a foot injury which is still bothering me and limiting
my long distance running.

For me a fast very short step on varied ground worked best to slow down.

[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0gXKdNPW-2U/V4EW8HkpSfI/AAAAAAAAi...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0gXKdNPW-2U/V4EW8HkpSfI/AAAAAAAAiM0/zE1A080-eJULh4LvwefB3E4w3xUSkfTQgCLcB/s1600/IMG_2103.JPG)

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codr7
I grew up on a skateboard, went on to martial arts; did a lot of rock
climbing, running, hiking, yoga, etc.

Then I managed to smash a vertibra in a climbing accident which meant spending
the next two months learning how to do all of those things, including walking
without putting strain on my spine.

There's a good book with the name Born To Run, one of the basic ideas
presented is that the human body is a perfect running machine. You don't need
to add anything, just stay out of its way and let it do what it was built for.

Here's what I would encourage anyone interested to try:

Start by balancing the spine sitting on the edge of a chair. Roll shoulders
backward, relax the stomach, tilt the hip forward and pull the chin in until
you feel your upper body is balancing on the root of the spine in your hip. Do
a body scan and release any sign of muscle tension, the idea is to use bone
structure and tendons to carry the weight. It should feel effortless, like the
upper body is floating mid air.

Then repeat the same procedure standing up.

Now comes the slightly tricky part, unlearning the funny walk you've most
likely been practicing your entire life. I recommend starting barefoot.

Keeping the same pose, and making sure not to tense any muscles, including the
muscles in the feet; lean slightly forward. If you manage to do it without
tensing, your body will start walking by itself and the feet will land exactly
where/how they're supposed to. Leaning further increases the speed.

Adding muscles will increase the speed further. Just make sure the energy is
directed backwards, pushing the body forward; and not straight down into the
ground which is what people usually do when running, especially with bouncy
shoes.

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thdrdt
For all citywalkers: check how the sidewalk slopes to move rainwater to the
street.

I was always walking on the right side of the city roads. This resulted in
pain in my right leg because most weight was put on that side.

The solution was simple: also walk on the left side of the road. I never
thought of this before.

~~~
nerdponx
Apparently this is a known problem that can affect people who run/jog on the
same side of the street all the time.

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starpilot
>Roll the feet: First place the centre of the heel, then roll the outside edge
of the foot down before placing the outer toes, and rolling down the inner
toes.

Do we know if this is better? I mostly wear barefoot/minimalist shoes and have
switched to mid/forefoot strike, from a heel strike.

~~~
bcassedy
You mid-foot strike while walking? When I wore barefoot shoes, I could mid-
foot strike while running but doing so while walking always felt extremely
unnatural and I couldn't adopt it.

~~~
Swizec
As a kid I was obsessed with cowboys and indians. Indians were the good guys
in my book so I learned to walk like them to reduce noise - mid-foot first.

20 years later and the shriek my girlfriend lets out when she turns around and
I’m _right there_ materializing behind her back like a ghost.

It’s amazing. Took about a week of conscious practice in middle school and now
that’s just how I walk. Heel first when barefoot or in slippers makes my feet
hurt.

~~~
cagenut
yea I don't know if I adopted this because my hamstrings are stunted or if my
hamstrings are stunted because I adopted this but its just been how I walk
since I was a teenager.

and like your anecdote, I've had to be mindful of things like neighbors or
coworkers in a hallway, going out of my way to scuff my feet or something
while I'm still 10+ft out. people really don't like it when you register as
instantaneously in their personal space.

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k00b
If you want to learn more about how to walk and move better I can't more
highly recommend the content by biomechanist Katy Bowman
[https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/blog/](https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/blog/)
... She has a blog, a podcast, online classes, books, and a whole gamut of
content around restoring basic movement - and talks a ton about walking. So
important for all us desk jockeys.

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anonymousDan
I would be very careful of any claims made by barefoot shoe manufacturers
regarding it being more natural/it's how we evolved, especially if running on
roads or other hard surfaces. While I agree they can be beneficial in small
doses and/or on natural surfaces, I'm not sure the human foot evolved to run
on concrete surfaces.

~~~
karatinversion
Suunto makes sports watches, heart rate monitors and dive computers, not
barefoot shoes :)

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xwdv
Many years ago at an Apple WWDC event I saw a presenter give a talk about how
they used genetic algorithms to find out what the most optimal walk for a
dinosaur could be based on its bones and skeletal structure.

I wonder if such an optimal gait could also be discovered for humans, perhaps
for different heights, and when carrying different loads. Maybe the best way
of walking for a person who is very tall is different from someone who is very
short for instance. By constructing random human bodies and allowing them to
evolve over millions of iterations, we may be able to discover unrealized
walking techniques.

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superpermutat0r
I'm in the camp that whatever bodily motions you learn as a young child, your
body adapts enough to it that you won't get any kind of damage. I mean, we
even had articles here about children having extra bones on the back of the
head to counter constant smartphone gaze.

It is the weakening of the muscles that creates issues later in life, mostly
due to lack of movement, gaining too much weight and similar.

My whole spine is straightened (from neck down, I have lost the natural
lordosis of spine) because I've been sitting and looking at computer screens
ever since I was a child. My spine is fine, I do not have any pain, but did
start feeling pain in the upper back when I did not exercise for 3 years. Once
I started exercising pain went away (still slouched and sat a lot).

Also, there's absolutely no way I could return back to natural lordosis of
spine, my spine was straightened since I was 11 years old, my spine shape is
the result of adaptation to prolonged sitting.

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goblin89
Walking “properly” is a topic of interest for me. I believe it can be reduced
to one main constraint: ensure most effort is spent by abdominal muscle in
your core, with limbs and the (importantly) neck as relaxed as possible. Other
characteristics of “proper” walk naturally emerge as the easiest way of
following that constraint[0].

I find that walking “properly” wakes me up, has some positive effects on my
well-being, and can be difficult at times. Unevenly paved surfaces (like some
cobblestone pavements) seem to complicate walking “lazily”, forcing me into
the proper way of walking.

[0] IMO articles like TFA tend to focus on those “cosmetic” characteristics,
thus entirely missing the point.

~~~
k00b
You should be walking with your hips primarily. Your core is important though.

~~~
goblin89
That way it’s still possible to fall into other lazy habits, such as walking
with stiff neck and shoulders.

On the other hand, if one aims to relax all limbs (that includes feet) and
localize energy expenditures in the abs area as much as possible, “walking
with hips” might well be the only remaining acceptable way to walk.

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johnchristopher
The movement in the videos are demonstrated by a woman and one of them focuses
on the pelvis. Are there significant differences between how a woman's body
and a man's body walk ?

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hyko
Next week: teaching your grandmother to suck eggs!

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bobross
Any tips for people like me who have flat feet?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Stop believing that you have a severe deformity and just walk. It's part of
the scope of human phenotypes and harmless.

~~~
mbeex
Yep. Stop watching all sorts of advice from your chair. I have been hiking for
many years now at ca. 2000 km per year. The body simply optimizes itself in
time for all but very few people. A little adjustment might be necessary for
particular cases, but you will figure this out finally yourself.

But the highest priority by far remains doing the basic things. Regularly - in
any weather in this case - without excuses. That is the core. All other issues
are premature optimizations (or to be clear, no optimization at all)

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throwaway391003
You can't improve your walking technique unless you improve your life. Your
posture, your gait, your movements are a complete reflection of how you feel.

If you feel like you're carrying a load on your shoulders... your shoulders
are gonna show that. If you feel like you have to clench and grind through
your days, your jaw is going to show that. etc. etc.

A really interesting question to reflect on is when someone gains weight, what
determines where the weight goes? Their stomach? Their thighs? Everywhere
evenly distributed? etc.

~~~
jspash
I agree, for the most part. However there is definitely something to be said
for reversing the cycle. That is, when you feel down or frightened, purposely
sit/stand/walk as though you are fully in control and on top of things. You'll
find with some practice, your mood will improve. I think I heard it first from
Tony Robbins years ago, but I'm sure it's well known technique.

~~~
throwaway391003
After a lot of reflection I think I'm in a place now where I disagree with
this cause just taking over the body with mind control can lead to schisms and
narcissism and denial of self

I do agree bringing awareness is verrryyy helpful and healthy. the key is to
keep being aware of what comes up for you and accept it and embrace it and get
to know it and empathize with other postures/bodies to see how exactly your
body _could_ feel differently and as you realize more and more what your body
is really feeling, it'll naturally heal on its own. no need to step it and
change things consciously, which never really does anything anyways cause your
subconscious takes over as soon as your attention shifts away

the key thing to take away here is it's impossible to fully realize how your
body actually feels without some psychological insights into yourself as well,
to move some stuff from your subconscious to your conscious

like for example one can't fully realize how much anger their jaw is holding
unless they also realize how much they feel angry about their life cause of
something they haven't realized and have repressed

for anyone interested in reading more check out alexander lowen's books on
amazon. fascinating, fascinating guy with lots of veryyyyy interesting things
to say. any of his books will suffice really, i've read most of them

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01100011
This kind of reminds me of Feldenkrais or the Alexander technique.

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mongol
During my time as conscript in the Swedish army, I got a lot of experience
from marching around with fellow soldiers. Eventually I could recognise each
one of them (about 25) just on how they moved their legs. I could even close
my eyes and go through them on by one in my mind and recall their gait.

~~~
privong
I've had a friend say he could tell it was me approaching, based on my gait (I
hadn't seen him in several years and his eyesight was such that he couldn't
see my facial features from that far away, but apparently my gait was still
the same and he could identify that). There's been work to apply gait analysis
in an automated fashion for use as a biometric identifier:

[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1301521](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1301521)

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1556-4029....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2011.01793.x)

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veed99
Just as important is your breathing, focusing on nose instead of mouth
breathing, and tongue posture

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WalterBright
For some fun re-learning how to walk, take a latin dance class.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7JF4ZZvZ3Y&t=125s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7JF4ZZvZ3Y&t=125s)

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oh_sigh
They claim the second one where she is just shimmying is "freeing the pelvis",
but all of the motion is in her upper thoracic spine.

------
paulcole
Amazing that there are 32 comments and somehow this article avoided tripping
the HN This-Is-Just-A-Marketing-Blog-Post silent alarm.

~~~
Woberto
It's quite odd indeed - there's no links to actual research to back up the
claims, her statements aren't clarified (saying tilting the head down adds
weight - at least specify that it's adding weight to the neck or something.)
It's just a piece about what this lady says based off some other odd looking
website.

~~~
paulcole
My theory is that the nutrition and exercise posts get a pass because
everybody races to share their similarly unfounded opinion instead of even
looking at the post.

See the comments for every IF, keto, running is good, running is bad,
weightlifting, etc. post on here.

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klysm
I guess you have to be pretty far down the path of self actualization to worry
about things like this

~~~
keiferski
I had the opposite reaction. Walking costs no money, is something most of us
do everyday, and small changes can dramatically affect quality of life over
time. I’d compare it to sleeping or brushing your teeth.

~~~
klysm
> small changes can dramatically affect quality of life

I’m quite skeptical that small changes in my walking will dramatically change
the quality of my life. I think it would actual be annoying to think about and
I’d rather be thinking about things that interest me while I pace around

~~~
keiferski
The point is to consciously undo bad habits and build new, healthier ones, so
that you don't need to think about it.

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scubbo
"The head adds six to eight kilograms of weight, but by tilting the head
forward it increases to something like twenty kilograms"

Astonishing. My head's mass (or is it weight?) can be increased simply by
moving it slightly it? Someone alert the physicists!

~~~
m463
Well, honestly weight is not mass.

If you treat the neck as a pivot point it can require more or less force to
maintain position of the head.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever)

~~~
Woberto
Right, it adds a moment, which is force times a distance. Which doesn't need
to be explained to the average reader, but at least the article should say it
puts more weight on the neck, or something like that.

~~~
necovek
While you are technically correct, I can't imagine you challenging anyone
about their weight (in kgs/lbs) when they step on a scale because the scale
might not be calibrated to the "force of gravity" (which is itself not a
force) at the spot of measurement.

So since it, as you nicely put it, does not need to be explained to the
average reader, the complaint sounds like needless nitpicking.

Even "more weight in the neck" is imperfect — weight usually means mass, so
"load", implying force, is better.

Thus I think it's acceptable to use the original wording to avoid all the
technicalities that require a few parapgraphs to explain :)

