The strangest thing about this is that children know this without any input, and then go bad. I've watched my older son (now 5) go from having a perfect squat and hip hinge to starting to bend over "like an adult" with the arched back.
There must be some reason that everyone, to some good approximation -- I'm in the US and this is what I see, does this the wrong way. Even people who know better seem to require conscious effort to do the motion correctly, myself included.
Maybe it's because squatting and hip hinging are thing that require that you work into the position, rather than "falling" into it. It is strange that it follows cultural lines; possibly it's just imitating what people around you are doing, so fixing this would require some pretty large-scale brainwashing.
I've been doing taichi for about 5 years. In addition to changing how I bend (for the better), about a year in I was in the process of renovating my gait a second time. As a person who always gets asked to 'slow down' it was a weird experience to have to ask others to do the same. Unfortunately for them now I walk faster than ever.
I came to this from a world of leg and back pain. It hasn't fixed everything but I can do almost 5 times as much without tipping over into chronic joint pain.
The quickest things I can relate to people that I learned from this time: 1) Never lock your joints. 2) "Lift with your knees not your back" is the wrong advice. Lifting "with your knees" is loading your quads. That and joint locking put all of the stress on the parts of your knee (cartilage especially) that are already overworked in the western posture.
The correct advice is "Lift with your legs", which takes longer to explain but the Cliff's Notes version is that your legs are 3 joints and lifting with your knees is only using one set of muscles and essentially locking the rest. The right way to lift is to engage your calves, your ass, and your hams.
There's a great saying I heard somewhere about the Problem with Western Posture being that we try to use our hips as a hinge joint and our knees as a ball joint. There are a lot of tight muscles in the hips and upper thighs that have to unclench to get there, and you literally feel like you're falling over while you try to sort that out. But man if you do, I've avoided half a dozen spills that should have put me in the doctor's office and one that would have sent me to rehab for torn ankle ligaments for sure.
The downside of this experience has been that I have to fight an urge to analyze everyone else's posture. I end up staring at people if I'm not paying attention. I probably look like a creep. And some people make me feel sympathetic joint pain. The number of people with fallen arches is crazy.
I've had fallen arches since I was a kid. Is there something I can do to fix it? There was a point where I was doing a lot of barefoot running on the beach and being extra careful to focus on my ankle and foot posture, and I think it helped, but as soon as I stopped running every day I reverted to my old posture (ankles rotated slightly outwards, feet as flat as a board).
I solved most of my back problems by switching to entirely flat shoes. No arch support at all. No heel drop. No sculpted foot bed. Thin soles. They are basically leather moccasins with a 3mm vibram sole.
While making the adjustment, my calves and tendons hurt for a month or so. Then they adjusted, and wearing regular shoes (dress shoes for events) feels so awkward and unnatural that I cannot stand it.
Contrary to what one might imagine, this did not give me flat feet, but exactly the opposite. My arches have never been stronger or more well formed.
My gait entirely changed. I tend to either place my foot down flat, or put down the ball first.
I had the exact opposite experience, in that getting shoes with more and better support helped really correct my gait and give my knees much-needed relief without much other change to my routine. I also have orthotic inserts but I had those before.
>I solved most of my back problems by switching to entirely flat shoes. No arch support at all. No heel drop. No sculpted foot bed. Thin soles. They are basically leather moccasins with a 3mm vibram sole.
Yep, that's what I buy. Best price you can find for something like this. The only real alternative I have found (for same or similar quality) is using a cobbler, for about twice the price.
I've been wearing these Xeros [1] for a few months now and love them. My gait is noticeably different, and my arches are stronger (though they were not particularly weak to start). I do walk more slowly now though.
Vivobarefoot makes some great ones as well, and some look normal enough to wear to an office. I have their running shoes and hiking boots as well, all are great!
I had a fallen arch on one of my feet for as long as I can remember, and doing mindful stretching daily is helping me fix mine. It's a really painful process, if this is anything like yours. Muscles were far too weak in the areas required to use my feet properly, all over my legs.
I'm not a healthcare professional but I would start with stretching your hamstrings like the article says and stretching your feet, getting to know the muscles that you have down there and how they work when you move your feet. You can follow a course or a guide, it may help, but know that every situation is different and you need to listen to your own body, experiment with some motions that you've never tried. Guidance might be good at first, but just don't stop listening to your body and try to avoid making it do something it doesn't want to do, but be aware of it. Unconscious avoiding of stiff or painful muscles gets you in this mess, so if you catch yourself mindlessly going through the motions (it does happen, often), take a moment to assess what kind of trouble you're in at the moment, muscle-wise.
Strengthening all of your leg muscles will help awaken the nerves in your legs. I can't remember the name, but it's a huge one that runs from your hip all the way to your toes that is the culprit of flat feet. Help your legs do work the right way, and then you'll start to see that you don't have to put much conscious pressure on the front of your feet at all to stay in balance.
There is nothing "wrong" with a low arch. It's just a different genetic adaptation. Don't believe the hype that there is something wrong with your foot that needs attention and dollars to fix.
Considering there are over 100 muscles in your foot, there definitely is something "wrong" with a totally flat foot. A relatively low natural arch is one thing, but fallen arches is a medical condition that can cause complications and can be fixed. And it doesn't take that much attention, and no money at all. Just a few for exercises and learning to use your body correctly.
People get fixated on the arch, what you should do is look at the ankle. If you're rolling your ankles, you should fix that. If your feet aren't that curvy, well your feet aren't that curvy.
My flat feet made me walk splayfooted, which then eventually started giving me knee troubles when I began to walk a lot. I find it a little puzzling to read these kind of takes, testimonials for Five Fingers shoes, etc. If nature could fix everything with no intervention we wouldn't need to brush our teeth either.
> If nature could fix everything with no intervention we wouldn't need to brush our teeth either.
Well, I'm not saying nature actually can fix everything, but in case of toothbrushing, it's dependent on your diet. There are peoples knowing nothing of brushing, but they feeding themselves different than we "civilized" people are.
Yeah. I have had fallen arches as a kid too, and had issues exacerbated by a bad sprain.
I looked up Youtube videos on how to do it. There is something involving a pencil and a penny to know where to "push" down to the floor without collapsing the arches. Then it is a matter of practicing walking and moving with those feelings until it can be done without thinking. I chose to practice this during martial art practice, hiking, and day-to-day walking.
From a PT my instructor uses: your arches are impacted by weak gluteus minimus muscles. Try to keep your heels under your hip bone. Imagine your feet are straddling a board if that image helps.
Concentrate on carrying your weight on the knife edge and the ball of your foot. Feels like a paradox but do the knife edge exercise for a while and you’ll figure it out. Good exercise to do while waiting in line or shopping with someone who is slow.
Sorry, I'm using unfamiliar terminology from martial arts.
Look at the bottom of your foot. The metatarsal for your pinkie toe is supported by a pad of flesh that it theory can touch the ground almost all the way from your heel to the ball of the foot. With fallen arches the ankle rolls in, the mid foot starts to touch the ground and the strain on the ligaments of the arch and the inside of the ankle are increased.
On the hand, that is the same side you would use to 'karate chop' someone. Ie, using your hand like a knife. The knife edge. Some people use the same term for the foot.
In the 80s they used to put giant insoles into your shoes and it made walking painful until 1) the insole compressed or 2) you twisted your ankle out so you wouldn't put all your weight on the insole. But it turns out it's better for people to manage this on their own and you have shoes like Vans that hardly have an insole at all.
One thing I've found personally but not in the literature, if the shoe is tight around the ball of your foot, you are not going to be able to get your foot posture right. If you need a wider toe box for your feet to be comfortable, solve that problem first before trying to solve the fallen arch problem. Before I threw out my old shoes I would get all sorts of recurring foot pain when I wore the 'uncomfortable' ones.
You can get new shoes, thinner insoles, or lace your shoes differently to get a little more room. I've saved a couple pair of shoes by doing both (insole and relace) to them.
Besides collapsed arches, Kelly Starrett has written multiple books on basically moving properly, including this classic hip hinge. I sort of became obsessed with his mobility teachings for a year or so after reading his "Deskbound" book (https://www.mobilitywod.com/deskbound/). Part of the problem is that we sit all day, and sitting in chairs is so ingrained in our culture. At some point we forget how to move properly, and our body begins to adapt to the awkward positions it's forced to sustain for hours on end every day. We develop scar tissue in key areas in order to strengthen and lock our spines/shoulders/hips in place in the bent over sitting position, such that when we do normal human movement tasks our primary muscular movement systems are out of commission due to lack of mobility. So our secondary and tertiary muscular movement systems need to be used instead, like our lower and mid-back muscles for bending over. But these are weaker and were never meant for long term repeated use. So we end up hunching over with terrible back pain all of our lives. The classic hunchback old person who's a full foot shorter than he was 40 years ago that we see here all the time is not a thing in places where people are physically active their whole lives and squat or sit on the floor instead of sit in chairs.
When you do it right, you know it. The whole leg is involved, and the butt, and the lower back.
I think people avoid it because they're lazy - or "sedentary", to use a nicer (?) word. Seems like a bit more effort to lift with your legs.
However, if you're active and in good shape, it actually feels more natural to lift with your legs. You can just drive so much more force into the ground. You're far more effective this way, whereas lifting with your back suddenly appears weak and quite sketchy.
I have had similar experiences rebuilding my posture, gait, arches and such with baguazhang -- including analyzing other people's posture. (Though that is not such a bad thing if you are finding postural weaknesses to exploit in other people, if you are into that kind of a thing).
Lots and lots of people with plantar fascitis are rolling their ankles. Sometimes I get lazy and lump them all in together with the 'fallen arches' crowd which is really something different and nothing I said here is going to help you with that. Apologies for the mixup.
But if you are rolling your ankles, do yourself a favor and figure that shit out while your ligaments are still in good shape.
Watch for your son to start heel-striking too, if he isn't already.
I think you're right about the large-scale brainwashing! But I think another essential part of the solution is going to be re-evaluating our society's relationship with sitting. I don't think it's a coincidence that the "tipping point" for a lot of children, where their movement patterns degrade, is when they start sitting primarily in chairs, rather than on the floor.
Think heel striking happens because of the large heels we have have in shoes. I wear zero drop shoes and focus landing on mid/front foot is much easier. Didn’t realize how different my walk is compared to others until my coworker recognized me in a different building because of the way I walk.
Was also told to heel strike by my mom, makes less flopping noise doing so. She has a way of doing what blends in, doesn’t want her kids to be different, the whole largest nail gets hammered.
> Think heel striking happens because of the large heels we have have in shoes.
I think you are right. I had to wear "normal" shoes after wearing zero-drop shoes for about a year. Within a few minutes of walking, I was back to heel striking.
You can find cheaper, but I've replaced the insoles in almost all of my shoes with Superfeet Carbons. They're a hair thinner than most insoles so they open up the toe box a little bit too, and having enough space in the toe box totally changes how I walk.
(Ecco shoes tend to be low-rise already, but for some reason their insoles always squeak for me. I replace them for my sanity, not because the replacements are lower. But other brand have a taller heel).
I still heel strike when I walk, but only barely. The knife edge of my foot lands just after my heel, instead of what most people do which is lift their toes a half inch to an inch. Ouch.
You might like Altra shoes; they're zero drop and have a very open toe box. I'm about 9 months into wearing them, and I love them. They felt weird for the first couple of weeks because of the open toe box, but after that anything else feels wrong.
definite NO on the converse, and didn't like styles on vans. I have wide feet, so classic looks are out as converse only has them in normal width, same issue with my PF Flyers.
Same, almost all of my shoes are near zero drops, including my hiking(mountain) shoes. I've always walked around the house on the balls of my feet as well. I hated hearing people stomping around on floors, and I just naturally adapted not to.
One of the things I noticed when I was living outside of the US is that you can tell who grew up with furniture and who didn't; those who didn't can sit on their heels with their knees on their chest in perfect comfort for hours. I can barely get into that position even while hanging onto something for support.
The most trying thing about traveling to Korea and visiting my wife's family, for me, is the extent to which you're expected to sit on the floor and eat, sleep on the floor, etc.
I wonder if it has to do with too much sitting in chairs? Prof. Galen Cranz discusses some of the effects on posture of western sitting styles in her book, "The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design". Though not scientific, she compares the common slump shouldered, curved spine posture of many westerners to the (better) posture of those who grew up without frequent chair sitting. It may be there is also a connection to lifting posture.
I left another comment up-thread, but yes, definitely. Watch someone in SE Asia or parts of Africa where people commonly work without chairs or tables; their knees are insanely flexible.
It’s more likely their hips and ankles are really flexible and this lets them fully use their knees. Loss of range of motion in the knee is relatively uncommon.
It's because we are supposed to be really good at squatting, but modern life just doesn't require it.
The biggest difference is not squatting to use the toilet. Until modern toilets, humans squat without sitting to poop. More sitting = less squatting, which leads to not squatting to pick up things since our muscles are underdeveloped.
I stopped sitting on toilets about 14 years ago after a camping trip when I realized how much I preferred squatting. I will never go back unless forced to due to injury.
So what toilet setup do you use most frequently? In the western world, all the toilets are the sitting type, as opposed to the squat-type ones commonly found in India and elsewhere.
I just lift up the toilet seat and squat over the bowl. It's only tricky on taller toilets but normally works perfectly fine. In fact, using public toilets it feels a little more hygienic as you don't actually have to touch the toilet seat or bowl.
I believe it's part of the reason my upper leg muscles have remained strong even when work has put a halt on exercise for longer periods of time.
I would be open about this if asked but never bring it up unsolicited in conversation as in the past I have found it regarded as outright bizarre.
Even if you squat over the bowl — that’s not a full squat... I’m quite familiar with this maneuver from a lifetime of squatting over public toilets to pee. Using a squat tube potty is a much more natural squat position.
Look into a Squatty Potty. An extension that is basically a stool to help you raise your feet and knees into a more squatted position to help defecate into the toilet. Or just bring a wide stool to the toilet with you that raises the same.
Children usually are proportioned to make squats easier as well.
As an adult, not being able to air squat with parallel feet isn't necessarily a symptom of bad body mechanics, muscle imbalance, or ankle mobility. It could just mean I've gotta big booty and a small head. Which incidentally, I do.
As an aside, I always found it so strange seeing men with a huge ass, and a normal sized body. Something I always associated with women, and having large hips. Sorry man!
Perhaps I should say, "Well defined"? I'm an amateur athelete, and one of my specialties is cycling. If you have proper glute activation, it gets developed. But so are my quads, hamstrings, calves, etc. I do not have very pronounced hips - my hip bones are not wide. Glutes are the biggest muscles of the body and the hardest to exhaust in endurance activities.
Kids probably also do it more because they frequently fall on their face when they try to bend over, until they get the hang of the whole balance thing
I wonder about that too. I'm especially bad in this. I have zero flexibility and never really liked stretching I grew up stiff and abusing joints and ligaments to lift stuff.
My ideas :
- having longer limbs change your gestures
- muscle strength and stiffness with time, which is something we do like to optimize way above "proper posture"
- lack of understanding of physics and muscle control (to move in the best way you have to distribute efforts in many limbs, which is less natural, especially in societies where complex movements are rare)
When I lived in Taiwan, I could from a distance tell a Chinese American apart from the local Chinese simply from the way they walked. Most of us could. It is very cultural.
There must be some reason that everyone, to some good approximation -- I'm in the US and this is what I see, does this the wrong way. Even people who know better seem to require conscious effort to do the motion correctly, myself included.
Maybe it's because squatting and hip hinging are thing that require that you work into the position, rather than "falling" into it. It is strange that it follows cultural lines; possibly it's just imitating what people around you are doing, so fixing this would require some pretty large-scale brainwashing.